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The sexually transmitted disease can mimic other illnesses, and many people don’t know they have it. Here’s what you need to know.
(Alessandro Puccinelli/Glasshouse Images)
Syphilis is making a comeback in the United States. In 2021, total cases of the sexually transmitted disease surged by 27 percent to more than 171,000, and the rate reached a 30-year high, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The spike is part of a concerning trend of rising sexually transmitted infections, but syphilis is particularly worrisome because it can mimic other infections and some people don’t even know they have it. Even among doctors, knowledge of the disease is low. Congenital syphilis, which affects babies born to mothers who had the disease while pregnant, is also increasing. Here are answers to some common questions about the disease.
What is congenital syphilis?
Who is most at risk for getting syphilis?
Why is syphilis on the rise again?
How do you get tested for syphilis? What’s the treatment?
Can I get syphilis again? | 2022-09-27T10:54:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Syphilis: Here's what to know about symptoms and treatment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/27/syphilis-symptoms-treatment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/27/syphilis-symptoms-treatment/ |
Most don’t read the fine print. Here’s what to look for before buying.
Advertisements, service contracts, warranties — all are riddled with enough disclaimers and legal footnotes to make your eyes blur. That is, if you can even read the fine print without a magnifying glass.
But there is important information buried in that fine print on containers, labels and web posts, much of it in coded language without specific details. Consumers must figure out what all of those terms really mean, or they could end up facing fees or conditions that they didn’t anticipate.
“In an ideal world, we would read it all, but rarely do we have time to decipher it or do much about it,” says Nicholas Creel, an assistant professor of business law at Georgia College & State University in Milledgeville, Ga.
This may or may not present a problem, says Andrew Forman, an associate professor of marketing at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. “The fine print is sometimes innocuous and other times comes up to the line of negating the offer.”
How can consumers protect themselves? Atlanta attorney Brad Elbein, a former regional director of the Federal Trade Commission, reads the fine print on every contract, but most of us have neither the time nor patience for that. And even if we do read everything, there’s no guarantee we’ll understand all the ins and outs.
At minimum, experts say, skim the fine print. Keep an eye out for asterisks (*) or superscript numbers or letters. “That’s there to modify the statement being made and send you to information to illuminate or obscure the information given,” says Elbein, a specialist in consumer protection law. If you see that asterisk but no additional information, walk away. Also be on the lookout for these words and phrases, which could be a sign of a “gotcha” buried in the offer.
“Our affiliates” or “our partners.” These phrases indicate that the company is going to not only flood you with unsolicited mail, email and texts but also sell your data to other companies with whom it has a tangential relationship and who will do the same.
“Third party.” This term is even broader in scope than “our affiliates.” In this case, the company can sell your personal data to any willing buyer. Love that new smartphone app that monitors your heart rate and pulse or clocks your daily steps? Are you willing to share your health habits with your insurance company?
“While supplies last.” Beware of this sign of a bait-and-switch. You go to the store for the item on sale. The staff says it’s out of stock, but here is an alternative — at full price.
“Introductory offer.” Similar to “free trial,” this term is found in apps and services with a subscription model. The first six months of internet service are a sweet $10.99 per month, then it jumps to $60. And odds are that canceling will be a hassle as you navigate phone menus or pushy salespeople trying to persuade you to stay.
“Automatic renewal.” This phrase is the ultimate gotcha. You sign an agreement, then it stays in effect each time the term ends unless you explicitly cancel it, even if you no longer want or use the subscription, membership or service. And that contract might renew at a much higher price than what you initially signed up for.
“Deferred interest.” The difference between a deferred-interest agreement and one that proclaims “no interest” can be confusing to consumers. Both are common terms used in agreements for appliance and furniture purchases and involve a set period — two years, for example — during which you can pay down a balance on an item without accruing interest. If you haven’t paid off the full amount by the end of the agreement, in both cases you will start being charged interest. But, Forman says, with deferred interest, “if you owe at the end of the period, you are on the hook for all of the interest accrued during the two years.” In a no-interest agreement, you don’t owe interest on that initial two years.
“Class-action waiver.” If your child’s swing set falls apart after six months, it may not be worth it to sue the company. Instead, you might band together with others to file a class-action lawsuit. This clause in a contract forces you to forgo that option.
“All sales final.” Sellers use this phrase to keep you from returning a product. However, Creel says, while you can’t simply change your mind, if you buy a vacuum cleaner and it’s defective, you can bring it back to the retailer. Your compensation depends on the word …
“Nonrefundable.” Even when a company won’t refund your money, if you return a defective product, it should replace the item or give you store credit.
“Restocking fee.” Returns are free, but the fee to put the item back in inventory may be up to 20 percent of the item’s price. Companies can have any sales policy if it is posted in a clear and conspicuous manner, says Elbein. If you like to test-drive electronic devices, you may want to buy from a seller that doesn’t charge this fee.
“Mandatory arbitration.” If you have a beef with a company or are injured by a product, you waive the right to sue. Instead, you must enter into arbitration. Almost always, the seller picks the place and hires the people to hear your case and decide how to resolve it. While this should be an unbiased process, remember who is paying the arbitrator.
“Opt out.” This phrase means that, unless you tell the company otherwise, it can use your information however it wishes. The onus is on the consumer to take the initiative to keep the data private. Typically the option to opt out appears when you sign up for a service or register to make a purchase and are being bombarded with questions and check boxes, says Creel.
“Voids warranty.” If you do anything on the void list, warranty coverage is canceled. For instance, if you have your smartphone repaired at an unauthorized facility or try to do it yourself, the seller or manufacturer may no longer stand behind the product, even if you are dealing with a new issue.
“After rebate.” This advertising come-on makes you think you are getting a good deal, but you pay for the product and receive the rebate only after the purchase is complete. Rebates are cumbersome, with a list of instructions and requirements such as proof of purchase, original receipt and product codes, all of which must be mailed to a fulfillment center. A rebate may take weeks to arrive and come in the form of a prepaid debit card that looks like junk mail and may get accidentally tossed in the trash. | 2022-09-27T11:27:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tips for deciphering fine print on products - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/09/27/tips-reading-fine-print/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/09/27/tips-reading-fine-print/ |
Pregnancy during Hurricane Sandy linked to kids’ psychiatric disorders, study says
A darkened Manhattan after much of the city lost electricity from Hurricane Sandy in October 2012. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
At the time Hurricane Sandy made landfall over New Jersey and inundated New York City in October 2012, Yoko Nomura, a psychology professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and Queens College, had already assembled a cohort of local pregnant women in preparation for a study about the impact of stress during pregnancy on their offspring’s development.
As the storm hit, and the toll of its devastation became clear, Nomura realized she was uniquely positioned to investigate a more specific question: How would the stress of the natural disaster affect not only the pregnant women, but their children who were exposed to it while in utero?
The newest data from Nomura’s years-long “Stress in Pregnancy” study, co-written by Jeffrey Newcorn, a professor of psychiatry and pediatrics and director of the ADHD and learning disorders division at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, left her stunned, Nomura said.
The study, published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, found that children who were exposed to Sandy, a superstorm, while in utero had substantially increased risks for depression, anxiety and attention deficit and disruptive behavior disorders. The symptoms of these disorders presented when the children were preschool-age.
The specific behavioral patterns varied by the children’s sex, the study found, with girls more likely to experience anxiety and depression, while attention deficit and disruptive behaviors were more prevalent among boys.
Among the most striking findings: Girls who were exposed to Sandy in utero experienced a 20-fold increase of generalized anxiety disorder and a 30-fold increase of depressive disorder, compared with girls who were not exposed to the storm. Among boys who were in utero during Sandy, researchers found that they were at an over 60-fold increased risk to develop ADHD, a 20-fold increased risk to develop conduct disorder and a 15-fold increased risk to develop oppositional defiant disorder.
“We know for sure that in utero exposure to stress during pregnancy affects the mental health development of the child,” Nomura said. “We know the perinatal period is a very vulnerable time. What we didn’t know, though, is the magnitude of that impact, and I was really surprised that our sample had such a high prevalence of these disorders. I did not expect this to be so clear-cut.”
The implications of the study, the researchers noted, are particularly significant in a world that is increasingly altered by a changing climate, with the effects of natural disasters disproportionately impacting already vulnerable and marginalized communities of color.
Climate change is also a racial justice problem
The study followed 163 preschool-age children from diverse racial and economic backgrounds, 40.5 percent of whom were exposed to Sandy in utero and 59.5 percent of whom were not, either having already been born before the storm, or conceived after it had passed. The research team conducted interviews with the children’s parents and monitored the health of the children to track both normal and abnormal development, Nomura said.
The mothers involved in the study were affected by the storm in a multitude of ways, Nomura explained: One told her that she had been trapped in an elevator for hours, unable to get help. Others were left without running water, or without access to diapers or formula for their children. Some lost their jobs, their means of transportation or their homes. These stresses are not unusual following a natural disaster, Nomura said, “but the difference is that these people are pregnant, so whatever stress they are dealing with, it goes directly through the placenta.” Many of these women, Nomura noted, exhibited symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of their experiences.
The study represents a novel addition to the substantial body of research surrounding the impact of maternal prenatal stress on the developing fetal brain, said Jill Goldstein, professor of psychiatry and medicine at Harvard Medical School and founder and executive director of the Innovation Center on Sex Differences in Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, in an email to The Washington Post.
“The study by Nomura and colleagues reports another example of how environmental occurrences, when extreme and sustained, have substantial impact on population health, and for those women who are pregnant, can impact the developing fetus,” Goldstein said. “Depending on the timing of exposure, it can have differential impact on the male and female brain … The authors use a natural experiment in a novel way to study [Sandy] and its impact on offspring psychiatric outcomes that differs by sex.”
The study, Goldstein said, underscores the fact that “maternal health during pregnancy leads critically to population health — a theme that is quite relevant during these current political storms around women’s health.”
Previous studies have shown that high levels of stress during pregnancy have been linked to outcomes including low birth weight, premature birth and an elevated risk of a multitude of physiological, psychological and behavioral disorders.
Newcorn noted that the new data “extends the work that’s been done in this area, it takes it a little farther in terms of psychiatric disorders,” he said. “And of course, it puts it in relationship to the major environmental stress of a natural disaster.”
The team is hoping to continue their work, he added, and follow the children as they age.
“We have to know what’s going to happen to those children when they hit adolescence,” Nomura said. “We are going to have to follow those kids to see how the manifestation of these disorders is going to present.”
When a parent's mental health struggle affects their kids
Newcorn said it is also important to explore exactly how maternal stress is causing these outcomes for children to help mitigate the risk. While there is clearly a relationship between environmental and genetic factors at play, he said, there are still many unanswered questions.
“We’d especially like to be able to do more research to find out why this actually happened,” he said. “What were the exact mechanisms that brought this about?”
Having a better understanding of this will be essential to helping society navigate a rapidly changing environment, he notes, where avoiding exposure to natural disasters while pregnant will often not be possible. In the meantime, the researchers say, parents, educators and pediatricians should be aware that children who were exposed to the stress of a natural disaster while in utero are at heightened risk for psychiatric disorder, even when they are very young.
“There is a general myth that makes people think that children don’t have psychiatric disorders at very early ages, but that’s not true,” Nomura said. “Everyone knows early intervention is most effective, but you can’t have early intervention without having an actual diagnosis.”
Ultimately, she said, she wants their work to help prepare future generations to better navigate a changing world.
“Because of global warming, natural disasters are going to continue to happen with greater frequency and greater magnitude,” she says. She hopes their research will “help guide what is going to happen, so that we will be able to come up with better planning, better intervention, better infrastructure. People are not going to stop getting pregnant just because natural disasters are continuing to happen, so we have to find a way to make it easier for society to have better-functioning children in the future.” | 2022-09-27T11:27:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pregnancy during Hurricane Sandy linked to kids’ psychiatric disorders, study says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/09/27/climate-pregnancy-psych-disorders/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/09/27/climate-pregnancy-psych-disorders/ |
Jim Craig of the Mississippi State Department of Health, left, leads Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, right, Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), center, and Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, rear, past sedimentation basins at the City of Jackson's O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Facility in Ridgeland, Miss., on Sept. 2. (Rogelio V. Solis/AP)
Jackson’s water crisis has been rightly described as a “climate justice wake-up call.” Decades of neglect led to a deteriorating water system that reached a breaking point this summer. When torrential rains caused a flood near Jackson’s largest water treatment plant in August — coming on top of staffing shortages and equipment failures — a major pump was damaged, a chemical imbalance was created, and the plant shut down. With that, the city of more than 160,000 residents lost access to safe drinking water. Though a boil-water advisory was recently lifted after six weeks, the crisis is far from over. Jackson has faced recurring disruptions, and the underlying causes have not been addressed.
Racism is one of those causes. Jackson’s population is 83 percent Black, and communities of color have long been likelier victims of drinking water violations in the United States. When Jackson’s water shut off, the water in nearby majority-White suburbs stayed on and stayed clean, because those suburbs — whose populations and coffers have swelled because of white flight from the city — are served by newer, better water treatment plants. “You cannot define structural racism any more clearly than the infrastructure management in this country,” says Brookings Institution fellow Andre Perry. Differing investments in local water systems “literally lay the groundwork for racial disparities.”
What’s happening in Jackson echoes previous disasters in Flint, Mich., and Newark and is accompanied by other ongoing crises that disproportionately affect people of color. A recent investigation of Chicago’s tap water found that 1 in 20 homes tested had lead levels above the federal limit — with the highest found in majority-Black and -Hispanic neighborhoods. And in Nevada, an increasing number of Native American households lack any indoor plumbing.
Americans are living on the carcass of an infrastructure — built during the New Deal by the Works Progress Administration — that has never gotten the reinvestment it needs. The American Society of Civil Engineers gives America’s drinking water infrastructure a C-minus. And climate-driven extreme weather will put it through its toughest test.
Yet our leaders consistently fail to properly acknowledge this emergency. Instead, we’ve seen craven politicians duck responsibility and attempt to score political points at the expense of constituents and mayors desperate for resources. Former Michigan governor Rick Snyder has been charged with willful neglect of duty for redirecting Flint’s water supply to the Flint River without proper treatment — the catalyst for that city’s crisis. And while residents of Jackson used bottled water to bathe their children, Gov. Tate Reeves (R) joked to a crowd elsewhere in Mississippi that it was, “as always, a great day to not be in Jackson.”
Globally, climate change will worsen our existing water crises — and create new ones. One in 10 people on Earth already lacks access to clean water sources within 30 minutes of home, and when more sources dry up, we could see water wars, mass migrations and horrific suffering. All told, the United Nations estimates that water scarcity could displace 700 million people by 2030. We need the leaders who talked about the climate crisis at the U.N. last week to deliver significant global action so that vulnerable people, who have done the least to cause the climate crisis, don’t suffer its worst effects.
This global investment must also be matched with investment at home — at the federal, state and local levels — to build resilience in our communities. Mississippi’s journalists and activists are keeping the pressure up. The team covering Jackson’s water crisis at Mississippi Today, led by Alex Rozier, just won the September Sidney Award for their extraordinary work illuminating the crisis. And Monday, the Poor People’s Campaign — co-chaired by Bishop William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis — led a “Moral Monday march” to raise awareness of Jackson’s crisis. | 2022-09-27T11:36:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Jackson, Mississippi, water crisis highlights climate injustice - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/jackson-water-crisis-climate-change-justice/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/jackson-water-crisis-climate-change-justice/ |
Man’s death ruled a homicide after shooting, vehicle crash in D.C.
A man who was found dead in a vehicle after it crashed last week off Route 295 in Northeast Washington had been shot, and his death has been ruled a homicide, according to D.C. police.
The victim has been identified as Harold Blair III, 45, of Northeast Washington.
Police said the incident occurred shortly before midnight Thursday on an exit ramp off D.C. Route 295 onto the 1000 block of Kenilworth Avenue NE, which also serves as a service road.
Police said a person in a vehicle pulled alongside the vehicle Blair was driving and opened fire. Police said Blair sped away from the shooting and crashed three blocks away in the 700 block of Kenilworth Terrace NE.
Blair’s vehicle overturned, and he was found dead inside. At the time, police said that they did not believe Blair had been shot and that his death might have been caused only by the crash.
But police said Monday that an autopsy showed Blair had been shot at least once. Police said the cause of death has been attributed to a gunshot wound and trauma. | 2022-09-27T11:40:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man’s death ruled a homicide after shooting, vehicle crash in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/27/dc-homicide-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/27/dc-homicide-shooting/ |
The Fed Is Underplaying the Pain of Inflation Fighting
The US Federal Reserve has made its inflation-fighting intentions abundantly clear. Now comes the difficult part: sticking to that commitment as tighter monetary policy restrains the economy and puts millions out of work.
Will the Fed stay the course? I sure hope so, but it will be a long, hard road, which raises doubts.
Over the past month, Fed officials have consistently demonstrated their resolve to push inflation back down to the central bank’s 2% target. Chair Jerome Powell called the commitment “unconditional,” the policy-making Federal Open Market Committee voted unanimously for a 75-basis-point interest-rate increase, and the FOMC’s projections show the federal funds rate reaching a target range of 4.25% to 4.50% by the end of this year and remaining elevated through 2023.
That said, it’s easy to be unified when you’re catching up after being far behind the curve, when the labor market is still strong and when the public views inflation-fighting as a priority. That will all change as the Fed’s inflation-fighting efforts start to take effect, increasing unemployment and likely tipping the economy into recession. Yet, judging from their own projections, Fed officials still haven’t been fully forthcoming about these consequences.
The FOMC’s median September forecast: After a sharp slowdown this year (most of which has already happened), growth picks up over the next three years, with output growing just 0.6 percentage point less than its potential over that period. The resulting increase in the unemployment rate is very modest — to 4.4% in 2023 and 2024, up from 3.7% currently and only slightly above the Fed’s 4.0% estimate of the long-term rate consistent with 2% inflation. Yet this somehow proves sufficient to bring inflation down sharply to 2.3% by 2024.
Albeit more plausible than the “immaculate disinflation” fantasies of March and June, this outlook is still unduly rosy. For one, the unemployment rate will have to go higher: Larry Summers has argued that it might have to be 2 percentage points higher than its long-term equilibrium level just to reduce underlying inflation by 1 percentage point per year. Second, the current relationship between job openings and unemployment, known as the Beveridge curve, suggests that the equilibrium level is actually about 5%. This implies a much higher unemployment rate would be needed to significantly reduce inflation. Third, the Fed’s projections have no precedent: Never has the unemployment rate increased by 0.5% or more without a recession (as the economist Claudia Sahm famously noted), and never in post-war history has it risen by just 0.9 percentage point (after 0.5, the next stop is 2 percentage points).
Another worrisome sign: FOMC members appear to disagree about how long the central bank will stick with its inflation fight. All but one expect the federal funds rate to end 2023 somewhere between 4.25% and 5%, but the range widens to 2.5% to 4.75% at the end of 2024. And this isn’t related to expectations that inflation will be vanquished by 2024. No more than a few forecast that it will have fallen to 2% by then.
So far, people seem to believe Powell’s pledge that the Fed will “keep at it” until the job is done. Longer-term inflation expectations appear well-anchored close to 2%. Prices in the Treasury market, for example, imply an annual inflation rate of 2.4% between 5 and 10 years in the future. Surveys also suggest that consumers’ expectations of long-term inflation have fallen back within their pre-pandemic ranges.
But what will happen when people realize that the job will be harder, and the pain greater, than the Fed has indicated? Support for its policies will probably decline, and it will lose credibility — something crucial to retain to get inflation under control. | 2022-09-27T12:24:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Fed Is Underplaying the Pain of Inflation Fighting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-fed-is-underplaying-the-pain-of-inflation-fighting/2022/09/27/58b67a72-3e54-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-fed-is-underplaying-the-pain-of-inflation-fighting/2022/09/27/58b67a72-3e54-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Texas AG denies he ‘ran’ to avoid subpoenas, says he felt threatened
A process server claimed that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) fled to avoid being served subpoenas in abortion access lawsuit
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas on Aug. 5. (Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg)
The subpoenas for Paxton’s testimony are part of a lawsuit filed in August by reproductive health groups looking to protect their ability to help patients access legal abortions in states outside of Texas, where performing nearly all abortions became illegal following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in June.
On Monday evening, Paxton addressed the process server’s claims, writing on Twitter that, earlier in the day, he had been avoiding a “stranger lingering outside my home” and was concerned for his and his family’s safety.
“This is a ridiculous waste of time and the media should be ashamed of themselves,” Paxton wrote in response to the Texas Tribune, which earlier reported the story. “All across the country, conservatives have faced threats to their safety — many threats that received scant coverage or condemnation from the mainstream media.”
Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post late Monday. A representative for Paxton’s wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton (R), also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the affidavit signed and filed on Monday, process server Ernesto Martin Herrera said that he arrived at Paxton’s residence in McKinney around 8:30 a.m., parking on the street in front of the house. Seeing the silhouette of a man in the living room, Herrera knocked on the front door, according to the affidavit.
A woman answered it, Herrera said, and he explained that he needed to deliver legal documents to Paxton. The woman, who eventually identified herself as “Angela,” said that Paxton was on the phone and was in a “hurry to leave,” the affidavit states. Herrera added that he saw a black Chevrolet truck parked in the driveway. He could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday morning.
Herrera said he went back to his car and waited, “per my client’s instructions,” according to the affidavit. Around 9:20 a.m., he saw a different vehicle — a black Chevrolet Tahoe — drive up to the home and back into the driveway. About 20 minutes later, Herrera said he saw Paxton walk out of the garage, so he approached Paxton and called him by name.
“As soon as he saw me and heard me call his name out, he turned around and RAN back inside the house through the same door in the garage,” Herrera stated in the affidavit, emphasizing the word “ran” with bold type and an underline.
Less than 10 minutes later, “Angela” emerged from the house and opened one of the truck’s rear doors before getting into the driver’s seat and starting the vehicle, Herrera said in the affidavit. Paxton then ran from his home to the truck, as Herrera called out his name and said he had court documents for him, Herrera claimed.
“Mr. Paxton ignored me and kept heading for the truck,” Herrera stated.
Paxton “got in the truck leaving the documents on the ground, and then both vehicles left,” Herrera wrote. | 2022-09-27T12:24:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton denies he 'ran' to avoid subpoenas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/27/texas-ken-paxton-ran-subpoena/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/27/texas-ken-paxton-ran-subpoena/ |
Here’s what we know about how autocratic regimes die.
Analysis by Kathryn Stoner
Riot police detain a demonstrator during a Sept. 21 protest in Moscow of the mobilization of military reservists. (AP)
For the first seven months of Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine, President Vladimir Putin tried to keep the conflict far from the everyday lives of average Russians. Recent polling, in fact, suggested that Russians’ interest in the war was waning. But all that seemed to change after Putin’s Sept. 21 announcement that Russia would be calling up as many as 300,000 reserve forces to supplement its beleaguered troops in Ukraine.
Public backlash against the announcement — a policy decision Putin had long avoided — was immediate. Antiwar demonstrators took to the streets across Russia, and social media platforms displayed scenes of fighting-age men flooding airports, train stations and border crossings to avoid being deployed. Putin also faced critical voices on state-controlled Russian television suggesting that the battle in Ukraine wasn’t going well, as political hawks insisted he needed to do something to turn the tide.
What does research on how autocracies die tell us about what’s happening in Russia — and the prospects of Putin being overthrown? Here’s how the war has undercut the myth of competency that has underpinned Putin’s support for two decades.
Ukraine is testing Russians’ faith in Putin
Putin’s legitimacy has rested on the myth that he is omni-competent. Government control of the media — including social media, increasingly — ensures that he is seen capably steering the Russian ship of state. He is presented as the defender of the Russian nation against an aggressive, malevolent West. And public opinion polls appear to support this perception. No other political figure in Russia (free or in jail) comes close to Putin’s 83 percent approval rating as of last month.
Personalist autocracies, those centered on a single leader, have certain strengths but also weaknesses. Putin has, until now, successfully tamed any challenges to his leadership. But Russian political institutions have been hollowed out to such a dramatic extent that they do not really constrain his decision-making, either. The Russian legislature (the Duma) offers a rubber stamp on Putin’s policies, and it does not provide a brake on his decisions.
But this also highlights one of Putin’s vulnerabilities: A lack of institutionalization means that personalist autocracies are not set up to execute policy successfully. In part, this dynamic helps explain Russia’s anemic military performance in Ukraine. The corruption and dysfunction that affects the rest of Russian bureaucracy also has afflicted the military.
Putin’s Russia, after an expensive and expansive military modernization effort over the last decade, appears to have impressive technical capability and weaponry on paper. The capacity to use it effectively, however, is hampered by corruption and poor organization, formulation and execution of policy. The poor showing of the Russian military in Ukraine and especially its losses during Ukraine’s recent counteroffensive threaten the myth of competency that has helped sustain Putin in office.
What are the three pathways from Putinism?
How do autocracies die? There are three basic paths: 1) democratic transition — the autocrat is ousted and democratically elected leaders are swept in by popular demand; 2) regime perpetuation — the autocrat is ousted by elites around him (or dies in office), and one of them replaces him; or 3) a new form of autocracy arises — the autocrat and those closest to him are replaced by a new set of autocratic elites.
It’s rare to see modern autocracies follow the first path and produce a liberal democracy through social revolution. Barbara Geddes, for example, shows that since World War II, less than 25 percent of autocratic breakdowns have led to democratic transitions, with 75 percent leading to the perpetuation of the autocracy under a new leader (think Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela after the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013), or the replacement of one form of autocracy with another (Iran after the fall of the Shah in 1979 and the rise of the Islamic Republic).
One autocratic government may lead to another in Russia
Despite a sudden increase in protests against the war, a popular uprising isn’t likely to end autocracy in Russia anytime soon. A perpetuated autocracy — essentially, Putinism without Putin at the helm — could become more repressive domestically and more aggressive in pressing the war in Ukraine.
One distinct possibility, should Putin die in office — he is rumored to have cancer or Parkinson’s — is that the group of elites thought to be closest to him would rule as a junta. This means Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Security Council; Sergei Naryshkin, the head of Russian foreign intelligence; and Aleksandr Bortnikov, the head of the Federal Security Service, would continue the core of Putin’s policies.
The challenge, however, is that none in this trio would seem to be able to carry Putin’s personal authority. So while they would be the real power behind the throne, they might rely on a more crowd-friendly frontman, someone like the mayor of Moscow, Sergey Sobyanin. The autocratic regime would essentially continue, however, with few changes to Putin-era policies — including the war in Ukraine.
Comparative studies on the end of autocracies also tell us that the other most likely possibility for a Russia after Putin is simply a different, possibly milder, form of autocracy led by another group of elites. This would be a group not tainted by Putin’s failures in Ukraine. It might consist of disgruntled oligarchs, perhaps more interested in ending the war effort by settlement to get access to the properties and assets they acquired over the past two decades that are now under sanction. But there is little reason to think that such a group would be inclined toward giving up the privileges they enjoyed under Putin’s autocracy in favor of a more equitable liberal democracy. The best case under this scenario would be a less oppressive form of autocracy and perhaps a faster settlement to the Ukrainian conflict.
The research, then, suggests that the odds are 3-to-1 in favor of Russia’s personalist autocracy being replaced by another autocracy — just without Putin. That’s the most likely scenario, despite the recent uptick in social protests against the mobilization of reserve forces to fight the war in Ukraine.
Kathryn Stoner is the Mosbacher Director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, and a political scientist at Stanford University. Her most recent book is “Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order” (Oxford University Press, 2021). Follow her on Twitter @kath_stoner. | 2022-09-27T12:24:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Autocracies like Russia end in these three ways - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/putin-ukraine-regime-survival-autocracy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/putin-ukraine-regime-survival-autocracy/ |
Races for state Supreme Courts will also influence the future of abortion laws
Good morning. NASA crashed a small spacecraft into an asteroid at 14,000 mph — and everyone is thrilled. Send space news (and health tips) to rachel.roubein@washpost.com.
Today’s edition: A five-year reauthorization of FDA’s user fees is officially in a bill to fund the government through mid-December. The White House laid out its plan to end hunger by 2030. But first …
Supreme Court races could affect the future of abortion laws in Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Illinois
Governors and attorneys general races are getting increased attention as the battle over abortion access returns to the states.
But there’s another type of often-overshadowed contest that could have major implications for abortion rights: state Supreme Court justices. States where party control hangs in the balance during November’s elections include Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Illinois.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion rights supporters have turned to state courts to attempt to halt newly implemented abortion bans. The legal arguments vary, but many are hinged on the assertion that provisions in the state’s constitution should protect the right to access an abortion. Some have already wound up in front of the state Supreme Court; others could at a later date.
State Supreme Court races typically fly under the radar, but they can affect everything from redistricting to school funding to gun control.
“I think that these are going to be some of the most important races that are happening in the entire country around abortion access this November,” said Jake Faleschini, legal director for state courts at the Alliance for Justice, a progressive judicial advocacy group.
In six weeks, voters will head to the polls and vote on state Supreme Court justices in roughly 30 states.
It’s a mix of mostly nonpartisan candidates, some partisan races and what’s known as a “retention” vote, an up-or-down vote to decide whether an incumbent justice will keep their seat.
In recent years, such elections have seen an influx of cash. During the 2019-2020 election cycle, a record $97 million was spent on these races across the country, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school.
But the focus on this year’s spending doesn’t appear to be concentrated on abortion. The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) is investing a record of over $5 million this year on state Supreme Court races. It previously announced redistricting as the focus of the funding blitz in a February strategy memo, and RSLC maintained yesterday that its strategy hasn’t changed.
As for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), the group is investing in state Supreme Courts for the first time.
“Our main focus is still on state legislatures, but state supreme courts wield tremendous power over redistricting maps, election implementation, and abortion rights,” Heather Williams, DLCC’s executive director, said in a statement. The group didn’t detail how much it plans to spend.
Here are four states we’re watching:
Michigan: Democrats currently hold a 4-3 majority on the court, but two seats are up for a vote. The candidates tend to be nominated by a political party, though that affiliation doesn’t appear on the general election ballot.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) asked the state’s highest court to strike down a 1931 pre-Roe ban on abortion. The state Supreme Court hasn’t yet ruled on the constitutionality of the ban.
North Carolina: Similar to Michigan, the Democrats have a 4-3 majority on the state’s Supreme Court. Party labels are included on the ballot, and two seats will be voted on, giving the GOP a shot at gaining control of the court.
In August, a federal judge reinstated a ban on abortion after 20 weeks. However, the case was filed in federal court, so it wouldn’t be appealed to the state Supreme Court.
Ohio: For the first time, party affiliation will be listed next to the name of the candidates on the general ballot. Republicans have a 4-3 majority on the court, and three seats are up for election.
Earlier this month, a Hamilton County judge temporarily blocked the state’s ban on abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected, which is roughly six weeks. That case has the potential to eventually wind its way to the state Supreme Court.
Illinois: The state redrew its district lines for the court for the first time in over 50 years, and that’s led to two competitive races this year, according to the University of Virginia Center for Politics. Democrats currently have a 4-3 majority on the court. Abortions are legal in this blue state.
On tap today: President Biden is slated to deliver remarks at 1:15 p.m. on lowering health-care costs, and protecting and strengthening Medicare and Social Security.
Congress secures a deal to avert pink slips for FDA staff
It’s official: Congress plans to renew for five years the Food and Drug Administration’s user fees, which help fund a significant portion of the agency’s budget. The extension was included in the text of a stopgap spending bill released just hours ago.
A Senate GOP aide familiar with the negotiations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly, had told The Health 202 that the measure will be a clean user fee agreement without policy riders. This comes after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had demanded that the deal exclude “extraneous items.” The legislation also includes short-term reauthorizations for some programs that accompany the user fees, setting up a future battle.
This includes reauthorizations through mid-December of programs such as a grant for improving pediatric medical devices, reporting requirements on generic drug applications and certain device inspections. This means that lawmakers will revisit these programs in a year-end spending deal.
Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.), chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee:
NEW: Chairman @FrankPallone on FDA user fees ⬇️ https://t.co/fEgZjDpZkD pic.twitter.com/27qDoepGNy
— Energy and Commerce Committee (@EnergyCommerce) September 27, 2022
New this a.m.: The White House released its strategy for ending hunger in the United States by 2030 ahead of the first national conference Wednesday on dietary health and food security in over 50 years, The Post’s Andrew Jeong reports.
In a 44-page summary, the Biden administration promised to make healthy food more affordable and accessible, as well as to invest in expanding physical activity programs and enhancing research.
Specifically, the White House plans to expand free school meals to 9 million more children within the next decade, improve transportation for an estimated 40 million Americans who don’t live near a grocery store, reduce sodium and sugar in food products and more.
University of Idaho may stop providing birth control under new abortion law
In a rare move, the University of Idaho’s general counsel issued new guidance Friday about the state’s near-total abortion ban, alerting faculty and staff that the school should no longer offer birth control for students, our colleagues Caroline Kitchener and Susan Svrluga report.
The university’s legal team said it was advising the school to adopt the “conservative approach” to contraceptives because the language of the state’s new law is “unclear and untested," according to the message obtained by The Post.
The state's trigger ban, which went into effect on Aug. 25, outlaws abortions after conception, except for limited exceptions for instances where the patient's life is at risk or in cases of rape or incest so long as the crime was reported to law enforcement.
University employees were also advised against speaking in support of abortion at work. If an employee appears to promote abortion, counsel in favor of the procedure or refer a student for abortion services, they could face a felony conviction and be permanently barred from all future state employment.
After covid-19, WHO director general plans for the next pandemic
As leader of the World Health Organization throughout the pandemic, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus’s life for the last 2½ years has been consumed by covid-19.
And while much of the world appears to be moving on from the virus, the immunologist from Ethiopia disagrees with those who say the pandemic is over. “We’re still in the middle of a big war,” he told our colleague Adam Taylor in a wide-ranging discussion, which WHO officials called his most substantial one-on-one interview since the pandemic began.
Now, in his second term as head of the top U.N. body for global health, Tedros has set his sights on a bold and controversial new project that he hopes will produce a new deal among global states on how to prepare for and respond to a pandemic. He’s in Washington this week to meet with senior Biden administration officials to push for more global coronavirus aid and shore up the country’s support for the initiative.
The international treaty on pandemic preparedness, he said, would be a “game changer” for ensuring scientific and political cooperation across borders both before and during an outbreak. A majority of member states support the idea and have pledged to finalize draft text at the World Health Assembly, the legislature that governs the WHO, by 2024.
But some experts have concerns about the deal. They contend there is still little consensus about what it should include and it may not be a binding document.
Hear more from Tedros:
"The end is in sight,” WHO Director-General @DrTedros says on the pandemic.
His comments come as fewer deaths were linked to Covid around the world last week than in any time since March 2020 https://t.co/oCBXokSQb2 pic.twitter.com/8FovZg3miI
More than 50 groups — including Public Citizens, Oxfam America and Families USA — are urging congressional leaders to fulfill the White House’s request for $26.9 billion to combat the coronavirus and monkeypox, per a letter shared first with The Health 202.
The Women Speak Out PAC, partner of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, launched a $1 million TV ad campaign in Arizona yesterday with the aim of contrasting GOP candidate Blake Masters’s senatorial campaign against incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D), who supports abortion rights.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra declared a public health emergency for Florida yesterday in preparation for Hurricane Ian. Such a move unlocks greater flexibility for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’s beneficiaries and providers.
Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced that it submitted an application to the FDA seeking emergency use authorization of its updated coronavirus booster shot for children ages 5 to 11.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton fled his home to avoid being served with subpoena, court record says (Eleanor Klibanoff l Texas Tribune)
New book recounts the FDA’s ‘unholy birth’ (By Erin Blakemore | The Washington Post)
Five things about covid we still don’t understand at our peril (By Mark Johnson | The Washington Post)
‘Eye of the storm’: Planned Parenthood in Kansas can’t keep up with abortion demand (By Lisa Gutierrez | The Kansas City Star)
The latest: Bipartisan group of lawmakers seeks executive action on investments in China | 2022-09-27T12:25:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Races for state Supreme Courts will also influence the future of abortion laws - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/races-state-supreme-courts-will-also-influence-future-abortion-laws/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/races-state-supreme-courts-will-also-influence-future-abortion-laws/ |
The U.S. lags on happiness, health, but it tops the list for cyber power
Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202! Noooooooo. Please don't combine one of my favorite things, the octopus, with one of my least favorite things, robots doing things I don't want them to do.
Below: Ukraine warns about forthcoming Russian cyberattacks, while the Biden administration and TikTok approach a possible security-related deal. But first:
Ranking the top players in cyberspace, both the usual suspects and unexpected ones
The United States ranks 16th on the World Happiness list, last place on health-care systems among 11 high-income countries and 129th on the Global Peace Index. But there’s one area where it’s still No. 1: cyber power.
That’s according to the second edition of the National Cyber Power Index out today, part of the Cyber Project within the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center.
The index makes its return after its inaugural edition in 2020. While No. 1 and No. 2 are the same as before — the United States and China — Russia has moved into the top three, and several nations have rocketed up the list, like Iran, Ukraine, Vietnam and South Korea.
The list ranks 30 nations across a range of factors, including offense and defense. It seeks to measure capabilities in eight objectives, like foreign intelligence collection or ability to destroy rivals’ infrastructure. Those that rank highly on the list demonstrate both capabilities with cyber power and the willingness to use it.
“Trying to apply outside data and indicators to parse this out, I think is an important endeavor,” Lauren Zabierek, executive director of the Cyber Project, told me. “Because how else do you even start the conversation and try to develop that understanding?”
One goal of the list is to look beyond the nations that most commonly emerge in conversations about cyber: the United States, China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. North Korea doesn’t even crack the index’s top 10, which is populated by a fair number of “not the usual suspects,” like France or the Netherlands.
That full top 10 is, in order: the United States, China, Russia, United Kingdom, Australia, Netherlands, South Korea, Vietnam, France and Iran.
The biggest climbers include Iran (to 10th from 22nd), Ukraine (to 12th from 29th), South Korea (to 7th from 16th) and Vietnam (to 8th from 20th).
Ukraine has demonstrated its defensive capabilities since the Russian war, for instance, and Iran has gotten more aggressive about using cyber for financial purposes.
While North Korea ranks only 14th, it’s well above other countries in that financial category.
The United States, meanwhile, ranks highly in almost every category, especially its destructive capabilities and in using cyber to gather intelligence.
Limitations to the idea
The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) assembled its own cyber power rankings last year, using a different method and system, but still concluding that in cyberspace, the United States is in a tier of its own.
Both ranking systems have drawn questions about their methodologies, but some have even asked whether they provide any value at all.
“The rankings themselves raise questions as to their value regardless of the methodology used, as trying to assess cyber power quantitatively and qualitatively is purely a subjective exercise,” Emilio Iasiello, a cyber pro and former Defense Intelligence Agency intel officer, wrote last year about the IISS list. “Quantifying amorphous issue-areas like cyber dependence and empowerment, global influence in governance (no headway has been made by anyone), the existence of a strategy and more importantly, military doctrine (often not publicly available), is more art than science.”
The authors of today’s report — Julia Voo, Irfan Hemani and Daniel Cassidy — acknowledge some limitations of the exercise.
“Due to the sensitivities of some aspects of cyber power, particularly destructive, defensive and espionage capabilities and their reliance on domestic national security structures, states may deliberately be shielding their intent and capabilities from public knowledge for strategic purposes,” they write.
But “just because something is hard doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try,” Zabierek said.
“We know the shortcomings of the index … but we stand by that this is better than nothing,” she said. “We know that we're only starting to witness these important conversations on cyber power, and we know they will spark debate, which we are proud of.”
Citing the specter of widespread voter fraud, Republicans across the country are embracing an aggressive tactic to bulk up state agencies’ power and resources to investigate election crimes ahead of the midterms this November, our colleagues Beth Reinhard and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez report.
But a Washington Post examination of an earlier endeavor in Arizona to sniff out fraud found it has prosecuted just 20 cases in the last three years, despite having received thousands of election-related complaints.
Rather than reassure citizens about the strength of the local voting systems, The Post’s review found that the state's election crimes unit fueled more bogus theories and distrust while sapping valuable government resources — an example of the dangerous consequences that can emerge when public officials use their power to reinforce false claims that voter fraud is a significant issue in American elections.
Ukraine raises alarms about a new wave of ‘massive cyberattacks’ coming from Russia
The Ukrainian military intelligence service is warning that Russia is planning “massive cyberattacks” targeting the critical infrastructure of Ukraine and its closest allies, specifically Poland and the Baltic state, Cyberscoop’s AJ Vicens reports.
Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence agency expects the incoming wave of cyberattacks to be focused initially on the country’s energy sector, with the goal of blunting the Ukrainian army’s ongoing offensive and increasing the destructive effects of missile strikes against the country’s energy supply facilities, the agency said in a statement posted to a government website.
“The experience of cyberattacks on Ukraine's energy systems in 2015 and 2016 will be used when conducting operations,” the advisory warned, alluding to two infamous Kremlin-backed assaults on the country’s power grid that left Ukrainians without heat or electricity in the middle of winter.
The announcement comes as researchers from Google have begun raising alarm bells about a growing body of evidence that suggests pro-Russian hackers and online activists are coordinating with the country’s military intelligence agency, the Wall Street Journal’s Robert McMillan and Dustin Volz reported recently.
But the Ukrainian announcement puzzled some in the cybersecurity world over its lack of specifics.
U.S., TikTok approach a possible security-related deal
The Biden administration and TikTok are hammering out the details of a preliminary agreement that would let the video-sharing platform continue operating in the United States without requiring its owner, the Chinese internet giant ByteDance, to sell it, told the New York Times.
The deal is still in flux, but people familiar with the foundations of the agreement said it would require the company to take action in three key areas:
Shifting its storage of Americans’ data to servers solely operating in the United States, instead of its own in Singapore and Virginia.
Bringing in Oracle to monitor the app’s powerful algorithms, which determine what content TikTok recommends for its users.
Creating a board of security experts to oversee its U.S. operations, which would report to the federal government.
Next steps: High-ranking officials from the Justice Department, which is leading negotiations with the company, and the Treasury Department have criticized the current draft as not tough enough on China or doing enough to address the administration’s national security concerns. That, coupled with the impending midterm elections, could force changes to the terms and prolong a final resolution to the issue for months.
The Times story arrived the same day that the United Kingdom raised the prospect of a $29 million fine for a possible breach of a data protection law.
Movement on battling spam texts
The Federal Communications Commission voted 4-0 Friday to approve a proposal to limit spam texts, Margaret Harden McGill reports for Axios.
"The American people are fed up with scam texts, and we need to use every tool we have to do something about it," said chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel.
This is just one step in the life of the regulations. The approved proposal, awaiting a vote for nearly a year, seeks comment from cell phone companies about the idea of requiring them to block spam texts from known illegal and fraudulent numbers. It’s a process that could add even more months to the timetable.
And Congress is unlikely to take action to update the pertinent 1991 law, which doesn’t reflect today’s technology. "Politicians themselves want to be able to send these texts without fear of being sued," Margot Saunders, senior counsel to the National Consumer Law Center, told Axios.
Watchdog dings IRS for vendor security lapses (FCW)
U.S. State Department says Putin could send Snowden to war (the Daily Beast)
How 'China coup' tweets went viral, and what it says about the rapid spread of disinformation (CyberScoop)
Viasat hack "did not" have huge impact on Ukrainian military communications, official says (Zero Day)
Cyberattack on InterContinental Hotels disrupts business at franchisees (the Wall Street Journal)
US arm of Israeli defense giant Elbit Systems says it was hacked (TechCrunch)
The only people now afraid of the Russian military are Russian men of military age. | 2022-09-27T12:25:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The U.S. lags on happiness, health, but it tops the list for cyber power - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/us-lags-happiness-health-it-tops-list-cyber-power/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/us-lags-happiness-health-it-tops-list-cyber-power/ |
U.S. bishops’ report to Vatican shows a Catholic Church split by politics
A mass is held in Damascus, Md., last year, when Pope Francis launched a global discussion about issues facing the Catholic Church. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
VATICAN CITY — Catholics in the United States are deeply divided over issues as disparate as LGBTQ inclusion, clerical sexual abuse and celebrating the liturgy, according to a summary of consultations across the country ordered by Pope Francis.
“Participants felt this division as a profound sense of pain and anxiety,” U.S. bishops wrote in a summary of the findings, released to the public last week after being sent to the Vatican last month.
Francis launched a global discussion in 2021, requiring parish churches and a host of other religious organizations to gather their congregations to talk about how they view the hierarchy and issues facing the church. The discussion would inform a summit of bishops at the Vatican scheduled for October 2023.
Is Pope Francis nearing the end of his pontificate?
Bishops’ conferences were tasked with collecting comments made at the parish level and sending them to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which produced a report for the Vatican.
In a section titled “Enduring wounds,” the bishops wrote that Catholics have brought divisions born in the political arena into the pews. A controversy about whether President Biden and other Catholic, pro-abortion-rights politicians should be allowed to receive Communion at Mass, for instance, has fractured Catholic communities in recent years and led U.S. bishops to launch a three-year, $28 million process to “restore” and “revive” the Eucharist.
And Francis’s decision last year to strongly restrict the celebration of the Latin Mass, which the pontiff believed had become a rallying cause for conservative dissent, has led some Catholics to lament “the level of animosity” and “feeling judged” in the church, the USCCB report said.
These Americans are devoted to the old Latin Mass. They are also at odds with Pope Francis.
The polarization also has affected the church hierarchy, with the divisions among bishops — and sometimes between bishops and the pope — becoming “a source of grave scandal,” it stated. “This perceived lack of unity within the hierarchy seems to, in turn, justify division at the local level.”
The report emphasized calls by many Catholics for the church to become a more welcoming and open space. Among the groups most marginalized, it suggested, were migrants, ethnic minorities, the unborn, the poor, members of the LGBTQ community, divorced and civilly remarried couples, and women, whose voices it called “frequently marginalized in the decision-making processes of the Church.”
Catholic bishops spent big on Kansas abortion vote — and maybe lost bigger
“Concerns about how to respond to the needs of these diverse groups surfaced in every synthesis,” the report said.
The question of LGBTQ Catholics was especially troubling, with “practically all” consultations stating that the lack of welcome was at least in part responsible for the hemorrhage of young people from the church. The church condemns homosexual acts as a sin and considers gay individuals “intrinsically disordered.”
“The hope for a welcoming Church expressed itself clearly with the desire to accompany with authenticity LGBTQ+ persons and their families,” the summary stated.
With Francis’s blessing, an Italian church transforms a trans community
American Catholics additionally asked for a greater involvement of lay people, again singling out women. Catholic teaching forbids women from becoming deacons, priests, bishops, cardinals or popes and limits their role in the liturgy, interpreting Jesus’ and his disciples’ masculinity as sanctioning an all-male liturgy and clergy.
The divisions and politics tearing at the Catholic Church in the United States are taking place against the backdrop of “the still unfolding effects of the sexual abuse crisis,” the report said. “The sin and crime of sexual abuse has eroded not only trust in the hierarchy and the moral integrity of the Church, but also created a culture of fear that keeps people from entering into relationship with one another and thus from experiencing the sense of belonging and connectedness for which they yearn.”
Despite these challenges, the bishops said, Catholics shared a desire for more church activities, especially for families, to be experienced together and demanded better formation of seminarians and a greater focus on how to translate homilies into action.
The report relayed to the Vatican the “skepticism and suspicion” that hung over the synodal discussions as the process got underway. But once the faithful embraced the listening spirit of the discussions, the bishops said, the meetings were embraced as a means to mend the fractures in the community.
“The synodal consultations around the enduring wounds caused by the clergy sexual abuse scandal, the pandemic, polarization, and marginalization have exposed a deep hunger for healing and the strong desire for communion, community, and a sense of belonging and being united,” the bishops wrote.
The U.S. bishops’ summary, along with those of hundreds of bishops’ conferences around the world, are being studied at the Vatican, which will release a document in the coming weeks to guide the discussions of faith groups and organizations divided into seven “continental groups.”
Nation’s largest interdenominational seminary picks first Black president | 2022-09-27T12:25:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Report shows US Catholics divided on LGBTQ issues, Latin Mass, abuse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/09/27/catholic-church-lgbtq-women-report/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/09/27/catholic-church-lgbtq-women-report/ |
The British pound just plummeted: What it means for the U.K., tourists
The facade of the Bank of England this month. (Jose Sarmento Matos/Bloomberg News)
The British pound plunged to a record low against the soaring dollar on Monday, spurring concerns of even higher inflation and prompting social media users to share defeatist memes about the world’s fifth-largest economy.
The country, already reeling from the death of its longest-ruling monarch and the recent ousting of Boris Johnson as prime minister, is in the throes of an “even more severe cost-of-living crisis” due to the plummeting pound, said Barry Eichengreen, a professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley. “Recovery is not on the horizon” for the foreseeable future, he added.
The pound has been on a downward trajectory against the dollar since Britain voted to exit the European Union in 2016. But it is not the only currency to have shed value recently: The South Korean won tumbled to a 13-year low against the dollar this month, while the Japanese yen fell to a 24-year low. In July, the euro sank to even with the dollar for the first time in nearly two decades.
Why did the British pound fall sharply over the past week?
What does a falling pound mean for Britain’s cost-for-living crisis?
How will the weak pound affect people visiting the U.K.? | 2022-09-27T12:25:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Here’s why the pound dropped and what it means for the U.S., U.K. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/27/british-pound-drop-dollar-us-impact/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/27/british-pound-drop-dollar-us-impact/ |
FILE - Shakira poses for photographers upon arrival at the premiere of the film ‘Elvis’ at the 75th international film festival, Cannes, southern France, Wednesday, May 25, 2022. A Spanish judge on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022 approved a trial for Colombian pop singer Shakira on charges of tax fraud. Spanish prosecutors accused the entertainer in 2018 of failing to pay 14.5 million euros ($13.9) in taxes on income earned between 2012 and 2014. (AP Photo/Daniel Cole, file) | 2022-09-27T12:25:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pop singer Shakira to face trial over tax fraud in Spain - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/shakira-to-face-trial-for-tax-fraud-in-spain/2022/09/27/7d6242ae-3e52-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/shakira-to-face-trial-for-tax-fraud-in-spain/2022/09/27/7d6242ae-3e52-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
The accounts posed as liberal Americans on Facebook and Instagram to comment on Republicans, Meta said
(Ben Margot/AP)
Facebook’s parent company Meta disrupted a China-based network of accounts that was seeking to influence U.S. politics ahead of the 2022 midterms, the company reported Tuesday.
The covert influence operation used accounts on Facebook and Instagram posing as Americans to post opinions about hot-button issues such as abortion, gun control and high-profile politicians such as President Biden and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). The network, which focused on the United States and the Czech Republic, posted from the fall of 2021 through the summer of 2022, the company said. Facebook renamed itself Meta last year.
Ben Nimmo, Meta’s global threat intelligence lead, told reporters that the network was unusual because unlike previous China-based influence operations that focused on promoting narratives about America to the rest of the world, this network was intended to influence U.S. users abut Americans topics months ahead of the 2022 contests.
“This operation we have taken down now was the first one that focused on both sides of U.S. hot-button issues,” he said. “While it failed, it’s important because it’s a new direction for Chinese influence operations.”
China has emerged as a potent outlet for disinformation and propaganda on social media in recent months, including promoting pro-Kremlin messages about the war in Ukraine. Official Chinese social media channels have shared false claims about neo-Nazi control of the Ukrainian government.
China is Russia’s most powerful weapon for information warfare
In the network Meta took down, China-based accounts posed as liberal Americans living in Florida, Texas and California while posting criticism of the Republican Party. The network also zeroed in on individual politicians including Rubio, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), Meta said in a report.
The network didn’t appear to gain much traction or user engagement. The influence operation often posted content in low volumes during working hours in China rather than at times when their target audiences would be awake, according to the report. The network included at least 81 Facebook accounts and two accounts on Instagram as well as pages and groups, the report said.
Separately, Meta said it disrupted the largest Russia-based influence operation it’s taken down since the start of the war in Ukraine. That operation used a network of over 60 websites impersonating legitimate news organizations in Europe to promote articles that criticized Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees and argued that Western sanctions on Russia would backfire.
The operation posted these narratives across multiple social media channels including Telegram, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, as well as websites such as Change.org and Avaaz.com, according to the report. The network originated in Russia and targeted users in Germany, France, Italy, Ukraine and the United Kingdom, the report said.
Meta began its investigation into that operation after reviewing public reporting on some of the network’s activity by investigative journalists in Germany, according to the report. | 2022-09-27T12:32:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inauthentic Facebook, Instagram accounts posed as liberal Americans to influence midterms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/27/meta-takes-down-china-operation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/27/meta-takes-down-china-operation/ |
Final Score: Earth 1, Asteroid 0
We hit the asteroid. We really hit it. Watching the live feed of the impact, I admit that I tingled. But does the success of the Double Asteroid Redirection Test — DART, for short — mean that the planet is safe from major asteroid strikes?
Not by a long shot. (Sorry.)
Yes, a spacecraft that lifted off 11 months ago to find out whether we could strike and potentially divert an asteroid in outer space performed as designed. It struck Dimorphos, a 170-meter asteroid that’s in a binary orbit with the larger Didymos. But as one Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer said on the live feed immediately after impact, “Now is when the science starts.”
In particular, researchers will need time to measure the changes in Dimorphos’s orbit, and to correlate them with the extensive theories about the utility of “kinetic impactors” in protecting the planet against asteroid strikes.
Planetary defense, as it’s come to be called, has received increasing attention in recent years. Advocates for interception technology tell us that asteroid strikes are the only disaster that we possess the technology to both predict and avoid. Economists argue that it’s a public good. Legal scholars suggest that governments possessing the capacity to shoot down asteroids might have a duty under international law to target those headed toward nations unable to protect themselves.
Maybe so. But first we have to prove that the capacity exists.
Which is why the success of the DART mission matters. That we hit the target is a reason to celebrate. But will it work when space debris is actually headed our way? We’ll never know for sure until we’re forced to try.
NASA leads a biennial Planetary Defense Conference Exercise, which brings agencies from around the world together to prevent a simulated asteroid strike. In the 2019 version, scientists were tasked with deflecting an asteroid heading for Denver. They succeeded, by hitting it with six “kinetic impactors” (like DART) — only to discover, to their dismay, that the impact sheared off a large chunk that would strike Manhattan with 1,000 times the energy of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
The simulated disaster was hardly a first. In past exercises, we’ve lost Dhaka and the French Riviera. In 2019, we’d have lost Tokyo too, but the participants used simulated nuclear weapons to destroy the simulated threat. (In the 2021 version, politics got in the way of this solution.)
Hollywood loves hurtling extinction-level objects toward earth, and the results can be great popcorn movies. But the risk far more likely to materialize involves “smaller” asteroids like the one that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013 with a force of over 400 kilotons — more than 20 times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb.
The Chelyabinsk asteroid was only about 20 meters in diameter, and its impact wasn’t predicted. What’s the annual probability that an object this size will intercept the Earth? Most calculations suggest that the likelihood is small, but nobody really knows.
For one thing, predicting the long-term paths of less-than-moon-sized bodies presents enormous difficulty. (We didn’t even have high-resolution images of Dimorphos until minutes before impact.) For another, though only 500 or so small asteroids in orbits near ours have been catalogued, researchers estimate that the true number is well up in the millions. On the plus side, this is precisely the range where we can expect kinetic impacts to do the most good, even with short warning.
If we can hit them.
Which it now seems we can — but!
The DART mission cost over $300 million, and involved sending a spacecraft 34 million miles to strike an asteroid whose motion is well understood. We had, in effect, all the time in the world to plan the experiment and carry it out.
When the real-life threat arises — and it will — we don’t know how much time we’ll have. Although we’d likely to have years of warning for larger asteroids, with the smaller ones the time involved might be weeks or days. If we’re serious about planetary defense, we’ll need interceptors, plural, ready to go.
And eventually we’ll face a large asteroid. Maybe not as big as the meteor (possibly a comet) estimated at 50 meters that exploded over Tunguska, Russia, in 1908, with a force of 10 megatons; but a 20-meter asteroid would destroy most of a fair-sized city. That’s why we have to learn how to nudge.
NASA’s biennial simulations remind us that no matter how easily a rogue asteroid is blown to pieces in the nick of time in the movies, in the real universe the threatening asteroid often must be met early or not at all. The earlier the kinetic impact, the more easily the object can be deflected. The 2019 simulation posited an asteroid that began with a 1% chance of striking the earth in eight years. As fictional years passed, the probability grew. Eventually it reached 100%. If the world’s (simulated) space agencies had waited to act until the threat was certain, they would have acted too late.
Supporters of space exploration like to argue that everyone benefits. At times, they’re expressing the techno-optimism that supplies the premise for the Apple+ hit “For All Mankind” — a show bold enough to suggest that if humans had been wise enough to keep going to the moon, we’d have had both cell phones and a female president by the 1990s.
But forget optimism. We can also support space exploration for entirely reasons related to the survival of the species: We’re going to need the technical knowledge that the space program generates. Because the day will come, in a century or three, when a huge celestial object will hurtle our way. If the human race hopes to survive when that happens, now is the time to be practicing.
• A US-China Battle on the Moon Is Possible, and Avoidable: Adam Minter
• Behind the Amazing Photo of the Milky Way’s Very Own Black Hole: Faye Flam
• Space Junk Is Our New Tragedy of the Commons: Andreas Kluth | 2022-09-27T13:55:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Final Score: Earth 1, Asteroid 0 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/final-score-earth-1-asteroid-0/2022/09/27/9dac8ec0-3e61-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/final-score-earth-1-asteroid-0/2022/09/27/9dac8ec0-3e61-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Finally worth saving. (Photographer: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images)
If a long, ugly recession is in fact going to happen later this year, many investors will want to shift some additional money into cash. There’s good news: In July, yields on many cash-like investments, which means they’re virtually risk-free and liquid, started soaring.
The best play right now may be short-term US Treasury bills, or T-bills, which have been touted by the likes of Warren Buffett and Bill Gross. They’re government bonds that mature in a year or less and are auctioned off periodically by the Department of Treasury. You can buy them directly at TreasuryDirect.gov, through a bank or broker, or you can invest in them more broadly using an ETF, such as the iShares Short Treasury Bond ETF.
The shortest-term T-bill lasts just a month and is offering a rate of 2.6%, according to Bloomberg data. Three-month bills are paying 3.2% and one-year bills a generous 4.1%. It was 0.04% on a one-month T-bill just a year ago, 0.02% on a three-month and 0.07% on a one-year.
Overall, T-bill yields are likely to respond faster to rate increases by the Federal Reserve compared to online savings accounts or CDs.
Notably, the yield on a one-year T-bill is higher than the yield on a 10-year Treasury note, which is 3.9%. That means investors are getting paid more interest for locking up their money for a much shorter period of time.
Remember, T-bills work differently than traditional bonds with longer maturities that pay interest semi-annually. With T-bills, an investor gets a discount upfront on the face value of the note and then receives the full amount of the bill when it matures. The difference between what you paid initially and what you get at the end of maturity is considered to be the interest.
For example, if a one-year T-bill has a rate of 4%, that means if you were to buy a $1,000 bill, you would pay $960 upfront and then get $1,000 at the end of the year — the $40 is the interest you receive for loaning the US government money.
A side benefit of T-bills is that you don’t have to pay state and local income tax on the interest you earn. If you’re a high-income taxpayer in a high-tax state such as New York or California, that can be particularly attractive.
For investors worried about not being able to access their money right away like they can with a savings account, David Enna of TipsWatch.com offers a helpful strategy. He suggests scheduling and staggering purchases of 13-week and 26-week T-bills on TreasuryDirect.gov. That way you can benefit from rising rates, but still have access to your money within four weeks.
It may seem like little consolation when 30-year mortgage rates are above 6% and credit-card rates are close to 17%, but the tradeoff with the Federal Reserve hiking rates is that you can finally get a somewhat heftier payout for stockpiling cash.
While traditional banks are still offering 0.01% interest rates on cash savings, online banks are averaging close to 2% now and are expected to rise above 3% soon. For those willing to lock up their money for 12 months, rates on one-year certificates of deposit are attractive too, with an average yield of 2.86%, according to DepositAccounts.com.
But short-term T-bills offer even better rates right now, with more flexibility. Of course, yields will only climb for so long — whether for T-bills or any other cash-like investment. Once it seems as though inflation has topped out and the Fed starts to ease up on rates will be the time to be a little less boring. Until then, you might as well maximize what your cash can do for you.
• Savers, It’s Time to Choose an Online Bank: Alexis Leondis
• CEOs Can’t Fix Our Biggest Problem With RTO: Commuting: Sarah Green Carmichael | 2022-09-27T13:56:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lowly T-Bills Are Suddenly Sexy. Yes, Treasury Bills! - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/lowly-t-bills-are-suddenly-sexy-yes-treasury-bills/2022/09/27/4e108e22-3e69-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/lowly-t-bills-are-suddenly-sexy-yes-treasury-bills/2022/09/27/4e108e22-3e69-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
One US military estimate says that up to a third of Mexico is “ungoverned space,” largely controlled by criminal organizations. López Obrador disputes that figure — and yet by most every measure, drug cartels have grown in number, potency and riches, buoyed by demand for illegal drugs in the US. Mexico is the dominant source of illegal fentanyl transported to the US, with cartels increasingly manufacturing and distributing their own versions of the drug.
Although López Obrador has long criticized the perceived excesses of Mexico’s drug war, his policies have proved no more effective. To fight corruption, in 2019 he replaced the federal police with a new, 115,000-person national guard, made up largely of former soldiers who lack experience in investigating crimes and enforcing the law. Even worse, he has scaled back counter-narcotics cooperation with the US, in retaliation for Washington’s efforts to prosecute high-ranking Mexican officials suspected of colluding with the cartels. Among other things, the government has placed limits on the operations of US drug-enforcement agents and disbanded an elite intelligence unit that worked closely with the US to apprehend prominent kingpins.
Mexico’s inability to quell surging drug violence threatens civilians on both sides of the border. In recent weeks, Mexican legislators have approved a request from López Obrador to put the army in charge of the national guard and authorized the military to handle public safety duties through 2028. While these moves aim to reassure the public, they won’t be enough to break the power of the cartels. The government needs to devote more intelligence resources and personnel to identifying and dismantling opioid-production labs and strengthen the ability of customs and port-security officials to interdict precursor materials used to make synthetic drugs. Mexico also should address the weakness of its criminal-justice system, which by some accounts lets more than 90% of crimes go unpunished. That will require funding to recruit and equip police, increased pay for prosecutors and judges, and building out the capacity of law-enforcement bodies to investigate and prosecute complex criminal cases.
Most important, Mexico should reinvigorate security cooperation with the US and ease restrictions on American anti-drug operations. The two countries should work together to root out any current and former officials who’ve abetted the drug trade and hold them accountable. For its part, President Joe Biden’s administration should take more aggressive action to stop the flow of guns from the US into Mexico — by intensifying anti-trafficking operations and requiring that law-enforcement agencies improve their collection of data on the sources of firearms seized in Mexico. It should work with Congress to increase funding for border security, essential to curbing the smuggling of fentanyl into the US — much of which is carried by vehicles traveling through legal ports of entry. Curbing demand for drugs in the US through education and addiction-treatment programs — an admittedly long and costly endeavor — is also essential to saving lives in both countries.
The US and Mexico have a shared interest in combating drug trafficking and removing the impunity that criminal networks enjoy. A planned security dialogue in Washington next month would be a good place to start. Renewed commitment by both governments is a necessary step toward breaking the grip of drug cartels and the suffering they inflict on innocent people.
• More Soldiers Won’t Solve Mexico’s Crime Problem: Shannon O’Neil
• AMLO’s Oil Politics Reveal His Obsession with the Past: Eduardo Porter
• Why Mexico Could Be the Next Denmark: Tyler Cowen | 2022-09-27T13:56:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mexico Is Losing the Fight Against Drug Violence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/mexico-is-losing-thefight-against-drug-violence/2022/09/27/68dff846-3e64-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/mexico-is-losing-thefight-against-drug-violence/2022/09/27/68dff846-3e64-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Can this quirky Naval poetry tradition make a comeback?
By Danny Freedman
Tara Anand for The Washington Post (Tara Anand/For The Washington Post)
It was during the Vietnam War, on the South China Sea in the waning days of 1968. Aboard the transport ship USS Weiss, Lt. Grant Telfer, the operations officer, was eyeing the rotation schedule for the watch shift from midnight to 4 a.m., known as the midwatch, for New Year’s Day.
“You’re scheduled for the midwatch,” Telfer recalls telling a junior officer. “How are you at poetry?”
“Oh god, no — do I have to do that?” came the officer’s response.
It was exactly what Telfer wanted to hear: It meant that he could take the shift — and write a poem — himself.
On every Naval watch shift, an officer records the workaday vital signs of the ship, which might include a chronology of the ship’s movements or particulars of its anchorage, the status of its power systems, vessels spotted nearby, and absentees or injuries onboard. For many ships, logs are held by the Navy for 30 years before moving to the National Archives. It’s generally a dry administrative document.
But a long-standing Navy tradition holds that the first deck-log entry of the new year may be written in verse. It’s unclear when or why this tradition began; the earliest mentions date to 1926, according to the Navy, and seem to indicate the tradition was already established. The practice continued during subsequent decades: The New Year’s verse was once a popular enough element of Navy life that the official All Hands magazine and the independent Navy Times held annual contests to decide the best poems, and a Navy-trained astronaut even carried it to the International Space Station’s ship log in the first hours of 2001.
Lately, the practice has faded. In the 1960s, there were hundreds of poems annually; in the past six years, that number has been counted by the dozen, with just 44 this year. Last year, however, the Navy relaunched a New Year’s deck-log competition — raising the possibility that this endangered tradition might be saved and even reinvigorated.
Over the decades, the Navy’s ship-log poems have ranged from rhyming couplets to one that’s set to the tune of Petula Clark’s “Downtown,” and from those that were inked while placidly at port to those recorded amid battle. (“Commenced fire main battery turret two / And a happy new year Victor Charlie to you,” reads an entry from the USS New Jersey.) They describe foes as varied as Axis powers, homesickness, covid-19 — and even the New Year’s midwatch itself, as a writer lamented in 1966:
With parties going, gay horns blowing
Here sits sunken, gloomy me
Athirst for wine, in life’s full prime
Writing third-rate poetry.
“It’s like a lot of traditions. They’ll ebb and flow over time, and some will fade away completely,” says retired Rear Adm. Samuel J. Cox, director of the Naval History and Heritage Command, which runs the new contest. But Navy leaders “thought this one merited an opportunity to continue.”
Traditions like this connect sailors to past valor, he told me, and remind them “that they’re part of something bigger than themselves.” That goes for Cox, as well, who took the lyrical route on a New Year’s midwatch in the 1980s while serving at an onshore installation in D.C. He doesn’t remember much about the experience, except to say his poetry was “lousy.”
Submissions to the contest are initially judged by deck-log program manager Alexis Van Pool, who selects 10 to forward to a committee of current and former sailors that chooses three finalists. Cox then determines first, second and third place. The winner receives a piece of copper from the USS Constitution, the still-afloat Navy ship launched in 1797. All three finalists receive a small medallion, known as a challenge coin, and a framed print of their poem.
The mandate to still provide all the necessary details of the watch — a ragout of numbers, abbreviations and surnames — requires some contortions. “That part was a little bit challenging,” says Lt. j.g. Sarah Weinstein, 24, who wrote this year’s winner with her late-night-watch colleagues on the USS Lake Champlain. Needing to describe the ship’s use of power and its general direction that night, they found the coupling: “2B engine online, starboard side trailing / 1 and 2 GTG [gas turbine generators] turning so we can keep sailing.”
More than 50 years earlier on the South China Sea, it was Telfer’s last New Year’s Day on a ship, and he’d long wanted to be part of the poetry tradition. Having taken over the midwatch from the reluctant junior officer, he wrote eloquently in the deck log of the ship’s passage toward Subic Bay, in the Philippines, and the recent firing of its weapons for the first time since the Korean War. It read in part:
Through restless seas we steam with ease
As phosphorescence glows
In eerie swirls midst foamy curls
And ever sternward flows.
A white-gold moon shows fullness soon
Through a veil of clouds
That mask the night from starry light
With rolling, coursing shrouds. …
The silent guns with tompions
Fixed tight against salt spray
Belie the roar they lashed ashore
In many a recent day.
Telfer spiced the challenge by modeling his poem on the structure of “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert W. Service, which caught his fascination after his father read it to him as a child. “I took three days to write this thing,” says Telfer, who went on to be the commanding officer of a Navy SEAL team, then spent two decades as a lawyer and now lives in Coronado, Calif. “I remember when the captain saw it, [he] said, ‘Man, you’re in the wrong profession.’ ”
It’s an extremely rare dose of voice for an official Navy document, and Telfer, now 81, says he took that responsibility seriously. Deck-log poets don’t speak for themselves, but for the entire ship. “I did not have an ego that thought that the world was waiting for a message from me,” Telfer recalls. The closest he feels that it comes to offering a message, one felt roundly by those aboard the USS Weiss, is in the last stanza:
While shipmates sleep the watch we keep
And ask with silent prayer
That fighting cease, this new year bring peace
And freedom everywhere.
Danny Freedman is a writer in Memphis. | 2022-09-27T13:56:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Navy's once-a-year poets are making a comeback - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/27/navy-poetry-comeback/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/27/navy-poetry-comeback/ |
Transcript: ‘Capehart’ with Steve Phillips
MR. CAPEHART: Good afternoon, and welcome to the ‘Capehart’ podcast on Washington Post Live. I am Jonathan Capehart, associate editor at The Washington Post.
Conventional wisdom and a healthy helping of gerrymandering says the upcoming November midterm elections are supposed to be a boon for Republicans. The Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade has upended that conventional wisdom, but my guest today argues that that conventional wisdom ignores a major factor: race.
Steve Phillips first came to the podcast in 2018 with his New York Times best‑selling book, "Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority." Today he's out with a new book, "How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good."
Steve Phillips, welcome back to "Capehart."
MR. CAPEHART: I can't hear you. You have to unmute yourself, Steve.
MR. PHILLIPS: Am I‑‑
MR. CAPEHART: There you are. Are you there?
MR. PHILLIPS: Yeah. They said it was on your end.
MR. CAPEHART: Oh, okay.
MR. CAPEHART: All right. My bad. Sorry, Steve.
MR. PHILLIPS: No worries.
MR. CAPEHART: Well, come back to "Capehart."
MR. PHILLIPS: Thanks for having me. Good to be here.
MR. CAPEHART: All right. Before we dive deep into the book, let's just start at the 35,000‑foot level. You argue that race is more central to politics today than ever before. Why?
MR. PHILLIPS: So the country has undergone a demographic revolution in that the country used to be 12 percent people of color in 1965 and it's 40 percent today. So that has revolutionary implications for how politics is conducted for electoral outcomes, for electoral strategy and results.
Historically, politics in this country has been a contest among White people, and so you had liberal Whites competing with conservative Whites to try to get the Whites in the middle, and that's how politics functioned for centuries and up until '65 when the Voting Rights Act was passed and the Immigration Reform Act was passed under LBJ. And that transformed both the composition of the country and the composition of the electorate, and so now people of color are of a sizeable enough population that people of color aligned with that liberal progressive White population are a majority of the people. And that's what I laid out in my first book, "Brown Is the New White."
The election of a Black president, the reelection of a Black president, people of‑‑the vast majority of people of color, the meaningful minority of Whites who are progressive was 51 percent in 2016, and it's growing today.
But too few people look at elections through that lens. They still think it's a contest among White people. They discount the salience and significance of people of color in politics, despite the dramatic statistical relevance. Nearly 90 percent of Black people vote Democratic compared to 44 percent of Whites, and that's a pretty strong datapoint but does not get looked at by most people within politics.
MR. CAPEHART: Okay. There are a couple of things I want to touch on from your answer. One, your book, "Brown Is the New White," as you well know, but also folks who had been reading me since then know that that book became a bible for me after it came out, because of the argument you were making, but the second part that I want to touch on in your response there is the demographic changes in the country. One big mantra to come out of certainly the 2016 election, but also in elections since then, is that demography isn't destiny. So talk to people who think that simply because the nation is getting browner and Blacker that that automatically means that progressive candidates or Democratic candidates are going to win elections.
MR. PHILLIPS: Well, fundamentally, it's a question of turnout, and so it's funny because people thought‑‑say this thing a lot about, you know, demography isn't destiny, and it's not it can happy automatically. And I'm like, who actually says that and thinks that?
I spend most of my time trying to argue with Democrats and progressives to see the significance of demography and to invest in it in a significant way.
Joe Biden said on Election Night 2016‑‑says, "We're ahead in Georgia. That's not one we expected," and the reason‑‑he didn't expect it because they didn't invest, and so if you don't invest in the demographic revolution, then it's not going to bring about electoral outcomes. But it's a very incontrovertible datapoint that people of color are overwhelmingly progressive in terms of how they‑‑how they vote, 90 percent of African Americans every election since 1976 when they started tracking this on exit polls, roughly two‑thirds of all people of color, sometimes up to three‑quarters, vote Democratic and progressive, which is not surprising in a country where the other party is predicated upon White racial resentment. So it really shouldn't be shocking people.
But the failure to understand and invest and lean into and lift up the leaders and move resources to the groups trying to get people of color to the polls will result in the demography not transforming elections, but where you do do that, as Stacey Abrams and Raphael Warnock in the Georgia Project and others did in Georgia, you will win a state that the president‑elect did not think he was going to win, and you will transform the entire United States Senate by winning those two Senate seats if you invest, and that's a fundamental argument that I've been trying to make these past several years.
MR. CAPEHART: Right. And it's an investment because I was sitting here scribbling myself a note because, you know, you make the point that overwhelmingly, African American voters and people of color will vote for progressive candidates. But then it becomes an issue of, well, sure, 90 percent of a thousand people voting is big, but in some elections, it's 90 percent of 100 people voting in an election.
MR. PHILLIPS: Right.
MR. CAPEHART: So is it the investment in reaching out to those communities? Is that what makes the difference between 90 out of 100 versus 90 out of 1,000 showing up to vote on Election Day?
MR. PHILLIPS: Right. It's a combination of the dollars that go to the groups who are doing the voter mobilization work, and that in my new book, I lift up case studies of examples of groups who are doing the day‑to‑day, nitty‑gritty work of getting people of color to surmount the obstacles that are put in their way to actually cast ballots. So that's a part of it.
Then there's also a question of having candidates who inspire and connect with and resonate with the constituency and the community that move people to actually turn out, and that's a lot of what you saw in 2018 with Stacey Abrams' dramatic voter turnout increase, what you saw with Obama. And it's also public policies to the extent that you're going to fight for issues that the community cares about, and that's what I was actually quite pleasantly surprised to see about the Biden administration. Part of what moved them on the student debt relief is that they were actually saying we have to offer something to young people and people of color to motivate them to see the significance of what we're actually doing. So it's all three of those: the money, the message or the policy, and then the people who were actually put forward as the leaders. That combination is what has historically produced the largest turnout that then results in winning elections.
MR. CAPEHART: So I can imagine that some people listening to this conversation, particularly Black voters, are probably thinking, "Yeah. Well, turnout is one thing, but you've got all these voter restrictions out there and all these efforts to keep us from voting." Can all the‑‑can Black voters, can progressive organizations out‑organize efforts to suppress the vote?
MR. PHILLIPS: Well, I mean, that's been the 157‑year challenge, right? I mean, after the end of the Civil‑‑this is what I lay out in my new book, talking about this Confederate battle plan that is very consistent, and part of it is ruthlessly rewriting the laws to prevent people from participating.
The majority of people in South Carolina and Mississippi after the Civil War were Black. So, of course, they certainly could not have them voting, and so you had all of these things get created, grandfather clauses and all these different manipulations, to keep people from voting, but that's been the history of this country ever since then, fighting against that work. Martin Luther King said, "Give us the ballot. We will transform the South." Jesse Jackson's campaigns came out of that effort, doubled the turnout of people of color. So it's an ongoing fundamental struggle, which would be better served if the people at the top level of the party and the people who spend the most money would invest in the groups and the people and the leaders and the work required to get people to overcome those obstacles.
MR. CAPEHART: I'm sitting here struggling where to go next in the questioning because there's so much here between the book and your New Majority Index. So I'm going to‑‑let's go to the New Majority Index, Steve. This is an index that you've developed, and I'm wondering, how does it differ from other indices like the Cook Political Report or Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball, where, you know, those are the two‑‑the two reports that people look at when they're trying to decide, you know, which races are the ones to watch, or which way, you know, the midterm elections are going to go.
Your index actually is‑‑well, one, talk about it, and then I'll ask you my follow‑up question.
MR. PHILLIPS: So it goes to what I was saying originally that people have historically seen politics as a contest between White people, and so they had not focused on people of color. And so, again, from simply a statistical standpoint, to be able to look at elections and not take race into account means that at a given, your analysis is thinner and less elaborate and less comprehensive.
So Cook's report is good in terms of looking at presidential past results and look at a congressional district, how did the Democrat and Republican do in that congressional district, and how does that compare to the national average. And that gives you some sense of the relative partisan lean of that district, so that's useful. FiveThirtyEight, for example, they just use polling data, and that's largely the essence of what their analysis is. But neither of them look at racial data, and so that's what we do.
We take the same data that Cook looks at in terms of presidential results. We add in racial data. What is the racial diversity of that district, and then what is the difference in voter turnout by racial group? And almost all the districts, Whites voted a higher level than people of color. Lots of reasons for that.
But the failure to account for that when people of color are so overwhelmingly Democratic in their voting preference leads your analysis to be less rigorous and less elaborate, and so that's the contribution that we have made is to build upon the same dataset that Cook has used and add in a richer, fuller, more robust dataset by looking at the racial demographics and then the racial participation rates by each racial group.
MR. CAPEHART: So then given what you just said, it seemed like everybody was surprised by the results out of the special‑‑the election in the 19th congressional district of New York. Given the New Majority Index, would you have been surprised by that, by the result?
MR. PHILLIPS: Well, no. I mean, that's an interesting district, and it's interesting because it's also not fully reflective. And it's also quite interesting because, you know, Antonio Delgado represented the African American man in an almost 90 percent White district, and so you already had a very interesting dynamic going on there in terms of a Black candidate doing better.
But that's the other overarching piece around the midterm elections, right? Even after redistricting, all the way that the seats have been carved up, Biden won the most votes in 226 of these seats, and so 218 is what you need for a majority. So then it becomes a question of turnout, and that's what gets lost in a lot of this analysis as well. People think that it's the same voters, and they're just flipping back and forth based upon inflation rates and the stock market and whatnot, but that's not what happens. It's a question of turnout.
And so the New York 19 seat is a Biden seat, and so if those voters were to come back out in larger numbers, then it shouldn't be surprising at all. But that's, I think, on the other aspect. We're looking at race, but we're also looking at turnout, which is a very missing element of electoral analysis.
MR. CAPEHART: Right, turnout. Everything comes back, comes back to turnout.
I do want to talk about issues and how that impacts turnout and how that impacts enthusiasm. The latest Washington Post poll shows that 56 percent of registered voters surveyed trusted Republicans on the issue of crime, and that's the highest of all the issues listed. Meanwhile, there's a front‑page story in The Washington Post today‑‑excuse me‑‑on how increase‑‑on how Republicans are increasingly centering their pitch to voters on crime, which has prompted accusations of racism from many Democrats and the fear that it might work. Is that fear justified?
MR. PHILLIPS: No, because people continue to feel like that whatever issue you're putting forward is going to cause this very fluid electorate to shift its allegiances back and forth, and that's not what's happening. And that does get to the fundamental point that led me to write the second book is that we are still engaged in a fundamental battle in this country over is this going to be primarily a White country or is it going to be a multiracial democracy, and that's largely how elections play themselves out.
And so the failure of Democrats and progressives is to define the race in those terms and to challenge and summon people to a higher level of standing unapologetically for the fact that this isn't a multiracial nation or at least should be, and so Biden's Philadelphia speech was a good step in that direction. But that's the much more fundamental dynamic in elections rather than an ad that's tweaking this particular issue, because "crime" is just a code word for people of color and an attempt to scare white people. And so, to the extent that we don't understand that that's the underlying reality of almost all of these elections, our analysis and our strategies are not as effective as they could be.
MR. CAPEHART: And so then the president and the Democratic Party and candidates around the country talking about MAGA Republicans, ultra‑MAGA Republicans is‑‑if I heard your last answer right‑‑is getting to that higher, that higher issue about the democracy and freedom and who we are as a nation.
MR. PHILLIPS: Yes. In a lot of ways, it's probably‑‑you know, Biden is kind of that Nixon going to China thing, the person who can make that argument even more. Obama couldn't even say that a distinguished Black professor shouldn't be arrested in his own house, that question what happened with Skip Gates, right, that whole beer summit. He had the backtrack of all of that.
So a White president can do a more forceful job of challenging White people to rise to their highest and best selves, and hopefully, the advisors and the pollsters around him would see that that is, in fact, a winning‑in‑a‑majority strategy. And that's really the fundamental struggle that we're engaged in, both writ large as well as within the progressive movement.
MR. CAPEHART: Mm‑hmm. Well, let's talk more about your book, "How We Win the Civil War," and what I find interesting about the title, Steve, is that it gives the impression that we're either currently in a new civil war, or we're still fighting the one that ended in 1965, or am I overinterpreting this?
MR. PHILLIPS: No. That's exactly the point. My fundamental point in the whole first half of the book is an attempt to have people appreciate the ferocity of the fight we are currently in because it is a direct continuation of the original Civil War, and so the whole first half of the book is I'm trying to explain that the Confederates have never stopped fighting. Five days after supposedly surrendering in Appomattox, they shot the president in the back of the head and assassinated him. One day after, John Wilkes Booth said‑‑heard Lincoln's speech and said that means N‑word citizenship--that's the last speech he'll ever give, and so they have never stopped fighting from that point to overthrowing reconstruction, reinstating legalized apartheid in this country, all the way up to 1965, all the way up to storming the Capitol on January 6th, carrying the Confederate flag and wearing T‑shirts saying "MAGA Civil War."
So, when I say winning the Civil War, I mean the original one from 1860s, because the folks who waged that have not stopped fighting.
MR. CAPEHART: And so, you know, you open‑‑the opening pages of your book are about January 6th. Take us back to that day, and tell us how you were processing what was happening here in D.C., because I remember Michael Steele and I, the former chair of the RNC, we were doing a virtual event with the John Adams Society based in Amsterdam, and we were both watching‑‑and the folks in Amsterdam were watching too, in real times, folks run up the steps of the Capitol. And we were all just sort of dumbfounded by what we were seeing.
MR. PHILLIPS: Absolutely. And we shouldn't forget that January 6th‑‑I mean, it's not super to say it, but it was the day after January 5th, which was the day where the literal heir to Martin King Luther Jr. was elected to the United States Senate. Raphael Warnock preaches from the pulpit where Dr. King preached, was elected to the Senate, and the next day, people carrying the Confederate flag stormed the Capitol to say, "We are not going to stand for this. We are not going to have our country be like this."
So I titled the intro to my book, the introductory chapter, "A Choice Between Democracy and Whiteness," and that's a line that Taylor Branch, the historian who wrote "Parting the Waters," said to Isabel White‑‑Isabel Wilkerson, as they were talking about the rise of White domestic terrorism within the country and that how people were not going to stand for this diversification and the transformation as not being a White country. And Taylor Branch posed the question if people were given a choice between democracy and whiteness, how many would choose whiteness? And Wilkerson says, "We let that hang in the air, neither of us willing to hazard a guess as to that one."
And so on January 6th, you had people literally trying to stop democracy, and what I talk about in the book, the examples of chanting racist phrases at the police officers there, as I was saying, carrying the Confederate flag, wearing Civil War T‑shirts, all to keep in power this man who's the proudest pro‑white nationalist presidents that we've ever had.
So we had a chance to choose between democracy and whiteness, and a whole lot of people did choose whiteness, and a whole lot of people still want the man who was the personification of that to lead this nation and to lead this nation in a whole Make America White Again movement that he's been championing.
MR. CAPEHART: And, you know, we as a nation have been through these turbulent times before. I mean, Civil War was fought. You know, as you argue, it's still going on, but now we're in a situation, at least in recent memory and modern times and present day, what you're talking about is not only being led and run by a former president of the United States and was being led by a president of the United States when he was in the Oval Office, but he's being aided and abetted by a lot of people who technically know better, but because they have their own‑‑their own personal or political goals turned a blind eye or don't speak up and push back against this. Is there any way for the country to get past this moment, this very rough moment that we're in, without Republicans joining Democrats in their calls on leaders to pull the Republican Party and to pull the nation back from the brink?
MR. PHILLIPS: Well, that's the moment that we're in when you talk about this country being at an inflection point, right, in that there are these‑‑I forget who wrote this, and I apologize to the person not saying it. But a lot of the conservatives and like the Republican writers were saying that don't take Trump literally‑‑
MR. CAPEHART: Yeah.
MR. PHILLIPS: ‑‑but take him seriously, and they were saying on January 6th, those who took him literally, those who took him seriously collided in the halls of the Capitol, as those who took him literally came to hang Mike Pence. And so the others went fleeing for their lives.
So I just don't think fundamentally and even if you look throughout history that that's where and how change comes from. Change comes from the people who are bearing the brunt of the inequality and injustice, pushing to make society better and more just and more equal, right? It wasn't‑‑there were sympathetic and supportive White Southerners in Montgomery, Alabama, but they didn't lead the fight. It took Rosa Parks and Montgomery Improvement Association and all of the organizers to organize a bus boycott that then others could support, and so it's a question of which comes first and what's the driving force. And that's one of the things that I talk about in my book. I say there's a liberation battle plan of the places that have actually transformed, Georgia and Arizona and Harris County, Texas, and Virginia and San Diego.
And one of the core elements is that there is a strong leader there, and then there's also a strong civic engagement organization that can transform the composition of that electorate.
So to the extent that we can really bring actual multiracial democracy and then govern in the interest that improves people's lives, that's going to be the driving force, and then, hopefully, some of the more, you know, open‑minded Republicans will say, "Yeah, that's actually a good thing for us to pass the first climate change legislation in the history of this country."
MR. CAPEHART: Two questions in the little bit of time that we have left. One is more on this point. I've been making the argument that it doesn't matter whether Donald Trump runs for president in 2024. Trumpism is abroad in the land, and that you've got plenty of people who are‑‑you know, Governor DeSantis in Florida, Governor Abbott in Texas‑‑doing all sorts of things that are Trump‑like, and yet they could run for president and could possibly win. How concerned should folks be that‑‑or let me rephrase that, not how concerned folks should be. Talk about how mindful people should be that they don't need Donald Trump in order to carry out the policies that Donald Trump was trying to implement or was doing when he was president.
MR. PHILLIPS: Exactly. And the other part of that is Trump was not powerful and Trump was not popular until he started championing whiteness and attacking people of color. He was at 4 percent in the polls and among Republicans in May of 2015 until he started calling Mexicans "rapists" and "murderers," and then he zoomed up in the polls and was‑‑he took first place within a matter of weeks. And that's when he was all like I can shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and get away with it, because he saw the power of whiteness. But he's not the first person to do that, and this has been the consistent theme. That's what I'm talking about that Civil War never ended, that modern‑day Confederates‑‑George Wallace had a similar quote. He's like, I used to talk about roads and bridges and schools, and nobody listened. Then I started talking about the N‑words, and they stopped the floor. And this is what Trump has found, and then he went on to win 13 percent of the vote in the 1968 presidential election.
So this movement to define this country as a White nation literally goes back to the Civil War, and it continues up to this day. And if it's not Trump, somebody else will be championing that fight in 2024 and beyond.
MR. CAPEHART: And George Wallace ran and got double‑digit percentage support, as you just said, but didn't win, and what Trump was able to do was to ride that wave of resentment into the Oval Office.
Last question, and it made me think of this as you were talking before. I'm wondering the role of abortion and the Dobbs decision in how we should be looking at the midterm elections and also whether that upends or changes in some way your New Majority Index. Has it had any kind of impact? Because the Dobbs decision was an earthquake. Then the Kansas referendum vote was an earthquake, and we're seeing with voter registration numbers coming out of key states like Ohio and Michigan and Pennsylvania, the new registrants of women is going through the roof.
MR. PHILLIPS: Right. Well, part of it is that saying about first they came for this group and I had said nothing and then they came for me, right? So this country was created quite explicitly and unapologetically as a straight White male Christian nation, and so anything who was not that has had to fight and struggle for equality. And then now we have these leaders who are trying to take us backwards in that direction. So Dobbs is part of that reality around trying to move us back towards a country fundamentally for straight White male Christians, as Clarence Thomas previewed and he's coming for the LBGTQ communities next in terms of where they actually want to go.
But what happened with Dobbs is they overstepped, and so they stepped over into, I think, some of the women who may not be as clear necessarily on all of the racial dynamics and issues themselves, but then they were coming for them. And that's a different piece, and people have responded in ways that have been surprising to many people in politics. And Kansas is a great example. Kansas is not on the cutting edge of the revolution in the Rainbow Coalition in this country, but clearly, there was a backlash there.
MR. CAPEHART: Steve Phillips, author of "How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good," thank you so much for coming back to 'Capehart.'
MR. PHILLIPS: Thanks for having me, Jonathan. I really enjoyed it.
MR. CAPEHART: Thank you.
And thank you for joining us. Head to WashingtonPostLive.com to check out more interviews and to register.
Once again, I'm Jonathan Capehart, associate editor at The Washington Post. Thank you for watching 'Capehart' on Washington Post Live. | 2022-09-27T13:57:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: ‘Capehart’ with Steve Phillips - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/09/27/transcript-capehart-with-steve-phillips/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/09/27/transcript-capehart-with-steve-phillips/ |
King Charles III makes his mark (literally) with new royal insignia
Britain’s King Charles III consults government documents contained within the official royal red dispatch box in the Eighteenth Century Room at Buckingham Palace, London. (Victoria Jones/AP)
LONDON — From mailboxes to money, Queen Elizabeth II’s royal insignia was ubiquitous across the United Kingdom for 70 years.
Now, King Charles III is making his own mark — literally — by unveiling his own royal cipher on Tuesday. Five characters, “CRIII,” will soon appear across the realm.
Those are the initials of his name and title — Charles and Rex (Latin for king) — intertwined with the Roman numeral for three. They will appear alongside a representation of the crown and will soon decorate government buildings, state documents and royal household mail.
Charles’s official insignia, known as a cipher, “was selected by His Majesty from a series of designs,” according to a statement from Buckingham Palace.
The personalized sovereign seal was prepared by the College of Arms, established in 1484, an ancient body responsible for managing official registers of coats of arms and pedigrees.
Since the death of the queen earlier this month, no formal time frame has been announced for the replacement of royal insignia. However, the palace said Tuesday that “the process will be gradual,” and that it would leave the decision to replace ciphers “at the discretion of individual organisations.”
A spokesperson for the government’s cabinet office told The Washington Post on Tuesday: “Where changes can be made easily, such as digital branding, they can be made immediately. Physical items such as signage or stationery will be replaced gradually over time as the need arises.”
On Tuesday, the Court Post Office at Buckingham Palace “franked,” or stamped, the first items of mail with the new monarch’s cipher using black ink in a historic first.
Invitations, responses to public letters, state business and, famously, telegrams to Britons who celebrate the milestone of their 100th birthday are among the average 200,000 items of mail handled each year by Buckingham Palace’s post room.
The use of ciphers can be traced back to Tudor times, according to the Royal Mint, which is responsible for making Britain’s coins. From the reign of Henry VIII onward the letter “R” was added to the monarch’s first initial as a prestigious identifying mark.
The queen’s well-known cipher “EiiR” which stands for Elizabeth Regina (Latin for queen) remains a common sight in many places. However, in Scotland, the adoption of her cipher in public spaces has been resisted at times, with mailboxes occasionally vandalized. Queen Elizabeth I never technically ruled Scotland, leading some to argue the late Elizabeth could not be the second queen of Scotland — and rejecting her insignia. A Scottish version of Charles’s cipher will also differ slightly and feature a Scottish crown, the palace said.
“The Monarch is allowed to choose the crown in the cypher. King Charles III appears to have chosen what’s known as the Imperial State Crown, as George VI, George V and Edward VII did before him,” Chris Taft, head of collections at the Postal Museum, told The Post, using the British spelling for cipher. “There are no strict rules in cypher design so the crown’s design can be tweaked. Queen Elizabeth II selected the St. Edwards Crown,” he added.
The Royal Mint said in a statement on Tuesday that coins featuring the portrait of King Charles III will enter circulation but that coins “bearing the effigy of Her Late Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will also remain legal tender and in active circulation.” Coins featuring different monarchs historically “co-circulate,” it added, ensuring a “smooth transition, with minimal environmental impact and cost.”
It gave no date for the release of a new coin but said further details would be unveiled over “the coming weeks.”
“As official coin maker to the U.K., we have told the story of each monarch since Alfred the Great and are now preparing for the biggest change in British coinage for several decades,” said Anne Jessopp, head of the Royal Mint. “The first coins bearing the effigy of His Majesty King Charles III will enter circulation in line with demand from banks and post offices.”
The Bank of England also said Tuesday that it would reveal images of updated bank notes featuring a portrait of King Charles III “by the end of this year,” with the notes expected to enter circulation by mid-2024.
Elizabeth still appears on all coins and bank notes, in portraits updated five times during her reign. There are approximately 27 billion coins circulating in the U.K. bearing the late queen’s portrait. Images of the monarch on bank notes are a more recent invention — only since 1960 has the British sovereign featured on them, giving the queen a “unique distinction,” according to the palace.
In a quirky tradition that has endured over 300 years on coins, each new monarch flips to face the opposite direction to their predecessor. The only exception to this was during the brief reign of Edward VIII, who preferred portraits of himself facing left.
The queen’s father George VI faced left on his coins, Elizabeth faces right and it is expected that Charles will face left.
The queen also features on British stamps. On Tuesday, the Royal Mail is releasing four new stamps in memory of the former monarch to go on sale from Nov. 10.
“Today we are unveiling these stamps, the first to be approved by His Majesty The King, in tribute to a woman whose commitment to public service and duty was unparalleled in the history of this country,” said Simon Thompson, chief executive of Royal Mail.
Their ancestor, Charles I, was the first to open the royal postal service to public use in 1635 to raise funds. The postal system rapidly expanded during Queen Victoria’s reign with the introduction of cheap stamps leading to the “penny post.” The iconic bright red pillar boxes bearing Elizabeth’s royal cipher will probably remain for decades to come, with new post boxes bearing Charles’s cipher being rolled out alongside. | 2022-09-27T13:57:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | King Charles III reveals royal cipher with coins, money to follow - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/27/king-charles-iii-royal-cypher/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/27/king-charles-iii-royal-cypher/ |
Roger Stone wants to have his tough-guy bluster and deny it, too
Roger Stone attends a news conference during the Conservative Political Action Conference, Feb. 25, 2022 in Orlando. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
At a glance, the video was startling: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) appearing with an effusive Donald Trump at some sort of rally? Speaking from behind a lectern adorned with a “TRUMP” placard, Sinema offered words of bipartisanship in her own voice as Trump preened behind her. Had Sinema’s embrace of centrism gone that far?
Of course not. The video was a fake, shared over Twitter on Monday by a now-suspended user. Those who track false claims in the political conversation quickly flagged it. It was a “deep fake,” a digitally manipulated video aimed at tricking people into thinking it was real. Here, the intent seems to have been ostensibly satirical, but there have been occasions when faked videos have been used in an effort to actually fool viewers. Earlier this year, one purported to show Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urging Ukrainians to lay down their arms.
The rise of this technology has spurred concern about the extent to which viewers might someday soon have to regularly adjudicate whether they can believe what’s being presented to them, they way we now do with certain visual images. The emergence of deep fakes introduces a new skepticism.
But even before the spread of convincing, faked video becomes a real problem, the existence of such videos presents an opportunity for misinformation and deceit. You can still spot an obvious deep fake — weirdness at boundaries, unusual movements, odd situations — but it’s useful for people who want to cast doubt on real videos to pretend that fakes are indistinguishable from the real thing. Why wait for a time when every video is suspect when it’s useful to pretend they all are now?
Enter longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone.
The Washington Post reported Monday that footage of Stone captured while a documentary film crew traveled with him in 2020 and 2021 would be shown this week at a hearing held by the House select committee investigating the Capitol riot. CNN obtained some of the video, in which Stone is shown repeatedly suggesting that Trump and his allies simply reject the results of the election and block any effort to enforce a loss. At another point, he scoffs at the process of actually voting, saying, “Let’s get right to the violence.”
We’ve known that footage of Stone existed for some time. The Post first reported on the documentary in March, detailing some of what was captured by the filmmakers. Responding to questions from The Post, Stone offered a remarkable defense: “The video clips of him reviewed by The Post could be ‘deep fakes.’ ”
He repeated this claim Monday afternoon on Telegram after CNN first aired snippets of what it had obtained.
“CNN airs fraudulent deep fake videos and expects anyone to believe them,” he wrote.
Of course, there’s no evidence at all that the videos were manipulated; in fact, the claim makes no sense. Not only are there no obvious signs of the video being manipulated, there’s no reason to think that Stone wouldn’t have said the things he’s shown saying in the clips. What made the Sinema fake suspect was, in part, that it seemed unlikely she would appear at a Trump event with Trump heaping praise on her. What makes the Stone clips not suspicious is that tough-guy bluster and huffy machismo is very much in line with his persona.
It’s odd for Stone to disparage the reliability of the filmmakers because they provide his alibi for Jan. 6. On that day, he was holed up in a hotel in Washington, having been unable to get to Trump’s rally outside the White House. (He had been relegated to speaking at an event on the evening of Jan. 5.) As the violence unfolded, Stone was watching on the TV in his room.
But this is how it works. Stone has been an ally and adviser to Trump for a long time, and the two share an enthusiasm for creating a miasma of uncertainty that gives them space in which to maneuver. If Stone gets someone to think that these comments might be faked, it gives him deniability — and introduces new skepticism about CNN and the Jan. 6 committee.
In other contexts, though, Stone embraces proximity to violence and threats. He has been tied to the extremist group the Proud Boys, even telling journalist Andy Campbell that he had served as something of an adviser to the group’s leader, Enrique Tarrio. On Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, he had members of the Oath Keepers serving as his security detail. Stone was indicted in 2019 for witness tampering, among other things. According to federal investigators, Stone repeatedly berated a potential witness, notably suggesting that he “prepare to die.” Trump pardoned him.
This persona of toughness and power is obviously something Stone relishes, but it is also utilitarian, as were Trump’s angry claims that the 2020 election was stolen. Say something angrily enough, loudly enough and long enough, and other people will cross the line for you. Trump didn’t have to break windows at the Capitol to scare Congress away on Jan. 6; he had already set the conditions for his supporters to do so. Stone doesn’t have to go out and attack “antifa,” as the documentarians filmed him espousing; his allies in the Proud Boys are more than happy to do so.
Stone’s efforts to back away from his filmed comments now appear to mirror his quick departure from Washington on Jan. 6: Suddenly the bluster looks like it might suggest he was more involved than he wants to be. On Jan. 6, he stopped to pose for a photo with the television on, a picture that his bodyguard insisted “proves we had nothing to do with this today.” Now, perhaps uncertain about where the Jan. 6 committee is headed, he wants to introduce doubt about the provenance of the video.
Here, Stone may be following Trump, not leading. After all, remember the reporting from late 2017: Trump had begun telling people that the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape might itself have been faked.
It wasn’t, quite obviously, but what’s the harm for Trump in maybe convincing someone, somewhere, that it had been?
On our radar: Khanna and Omar’s offices are next up for congressional staff unions | 2022-09-27T14:34:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Roger Stone wants to have his tough-guy bluster and deny it, too - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/trump-roger-stone-jan-6-video/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/trump-roger-stone-jan-6-video/ |
The Office Chili
Total time:1 hour, 10 mins
Servings:8 to 10 (makes 14 cups)
Every once in a while, we can pinpoint a pivotal moment that alters our lives. Actor Brian Baumgartner does just that in his new “Seriously Good Chili Cookbook.” He writes: “On April 30, 2009, at roughly 9:02 p.m., my life changed forever. I became known as the chili guy.”
Baumgartner, who played accountant and chili aficionado Kevin Malone on NBC’s “The Office,” captured hearts and spawned a multitude of memes in Season 5 when his character magnificently spills a giant pot of his precious chili on the gray carpet at Dunder Mifflin.
Recipe: A chili pasta casserole that’s great for game night — or any night
“I’m serious about this stuff,” his character says in a voice-over just before spilling a giant pot of his treasured creation.
In 2009, when the scene was filmed (in one take, by the way), Baumgartner, an avid cook, had never made a pot.
“That was Kevin who was serious at that time, but now Brian has definitely developed an appreciation,” he said by telephone from Scranton, Penn., where he was signing his new cookbook.
In that book, he, of course, shares “Brian’s Seriously Good Chili Recipe,” which we have dubbed “The Office Chili,” along with 176 other recipes from the International Chili Society’s collection of cook-off winners, chefs, bloggers and fans of the show. The book also includes fun facts about the dish, a “hot pepper heat scale” and a smattering of QR codes that take you to videos, including one of him making his chili.
“They wanted 100 recipes,” he said of his publisher. “I thought, ‘Can we find 100? I don’t know.’ Once they started coming in, it was just incredible. The variety … vegetarian, vegan, poultry, beef. All the different kinds of flavors, chili verde, homestyle chili, Texas chili.”
Baumgartner’s foray into chili proficiency began innocently enough. About five years after the hit sitcom finished its nine-season run, he decided to make a pot of chili. He posted it on social media and fans of “The Office” responded enthusiastically.
That whetted his appetite for the stuff, and he began doing what many home cooks do: tweaking, adding a bit of this, dropping in some of that, and adjusting cooking times until he got to the thick, meaty, bean-filled chili he calls his own.
In the process of developing his own recipe, writing the cookbook and judging chili cook-offs around the country, Baumgartner learned a lot not just about how to make chili but also of its lore and appeal.
Here are a few of his tips:
That trick with the onions? If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll know that one of the first questions he had to answer was whether he discovered if it is true that “the trick is to undercook the onions.”
“The onion bit is true,” he said.
“We’re not looking for caramelization. I caramelize onions for a lot of different things, but not chili. It really changes the flavor. I’m attempting to get the onions translucent and then start adding stuff.”
Layer your flavors. He recommends that when cooking a hearty chili like his, the vegetables get a light saute (getting those onions translucent), then the meat goes in with the tomato paste and cooks until the meat is brown and the paste darkens. The diced tomatoes and sauce go in for a long simmer, with occasional stirring, until about 20 minutes before you’re ready to serve. That’s when the beans get added.
The result: A rich, meaty sauce with intact, whole beans.
Lean into convenience. Unlike Kevin, who roasts his own ancho chiles for his fictional family’s generations-old recipe, Baumgartner uses ancho chile powder. He isn’t up the night before dicing fresh tomatoes, like Kevin, either. He uses canned diced ones, as well as canned sauce and paste. And, for a flavor boost, he adds two cans of beans in a mild chili sauce.
Enjoy the journey. His chili takes him about an hour to make. Other recipes in the cookbook that he has tested take as long as four hours.
“I like preparing dishes that take a long time. I find it therapeutic in a way. I’ve been likening it to golf, which I do a lot of. It’s kind of the only time that my mind goes away and I just focus on one single thing for an extended period of time. Everything else kind of goes away.”
(Baumgartner may not be looking for a one-and-done chili, but if you are, check out this Chili Pasta Casserole from the cookbook, which can be made ahead and requires just 20 minutes of hands-on time.)
Never stop tweaking. “I love the exploring of it,” Baumgartner said of developing a chili recipe. “If you take the golf analogy, there’s no such thing as a perfect round of golf. It truly doesn’t exist. I don’t think my recipe is done. I don’t think it is ever done. I will continue to change it and tweak.”
6 hearty chili recipes to warm you up or feed a crowd this winter
Eat lots of chili. Baumgartner spent eight months trying and testing submitted and selected chili recipes. It is how he filled the pages of his book, but it also helped him improve his game dramatically.
“That’s what I liked about going to the world championship chili cook-off. They had all won a competition, and they explained what they do,” he said. “I picked up lots of tips along the way.”
He encourages others to do the same and to share their results. He describes the chili world as having a “culture of sharing” and the chili competitors as “his people.”
“Why do you want it to be good? You want it to be good because you want people to like it, to enjoy it, to get together and eat it,” he said. “Chili, I view as very communal. It’s about friends and family.”
“I don’t know exactly, but I know that time and time and time again, I am told that ‘The Office’ brings people comfort.” (Video: Washington Post Live)
Last weekend, Baumgartner wrapped up the main leg of his book-signing tour at the 55th annual World Championship Chili Cook-off in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Now, it is back to his “Off the Beat” podcast in which he talks to people about moments in their lives that helped make them what they are today.
It’s something he understands well. He, at first, sought to distance himself from Kevin Malone, not wanting to be typecast, but once the show began to stream on Netflix, it developed a cultlike following, especially during the pandemic. (It is now available on NBC’s Peacock streaming service, and you’ll find Kevin Malone’s chili recipe embedded in the service’s user agreement.)
‘The Office’ was always popular. But Netflix made it a phenomenon.
“When they started releasing the streaming numbers with ‘The Office’ on Netflix and, by any metric you could reasonably calculate, more people were watching ‘The Office’ than any show on television. It turned that spotlight back onto us individually.
“I realized a palpable change once again, walking through an airport, sitting in a restaurant. The show was bigger than when it was NBC’s No. 1 show. It became: ‘You can’t just ignore this. It’s not going away.’”
And he realized he really didn’t want to. In 2021, he wrote the best-selling “Welcome to Dunder Mifflin: The Ultimate Oral History of The Office.”
“I really enjoy this,” he said of fans’ enthusiasm for “The Office” and his chili. “It means a lot to me.”
Baumgartner 's topping suggestions are: shredded cheese, sour cream, pickled jalapeños, avocado mash and crumbled tortilla chips. We liked it with chopped red onion, too.
Storage: Refrigerate for up to 4 days or freeze in an airtight container for up to 3 months.
1 tablespoon grapeseed oil, canola or other neutral oil
1 medium yellow onion (8 ounces), chopped
1 large green bell pepper (7 ounces), seeded and chopped
2 pounds lean ground turkey or ground beef (90 percent lean or higher)
One (6-ounce) can no-salt-added tomato paste
One (24-ounce) can no-salt-added diced tomatoes
1/2 cup water, plus more as needed (optional)
2 teaspoons fine salt, plus more as needed
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper, plus more as needed
One (16-ounce) can Bush’s Pinto Beans in Mild Chili Sauce, undrained
One (16-ounce) can Bush’s Kidney Beans in Mild Chili Sauce, undrained
Shredded cheddar cheese, avocado chunks, chopped red onion and/or pickled jalapeños and sour cream, for serving (optional)
In a large pot over medium-high heat, heat the oil until shimmering. Add the onions, green bell pepper and garlic and cook, stirring, until the onions are just translucent, about 3 minutes.
Add the meat and cook, stirring and breaking up any clumps, until still slightly pink, 3 to 5 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste and cook until the meat is cooked through and the paste darkens a bit, about 5 minutes.
Stir in the diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, water, if using, chili powder, oregano, ancho chile powder, salt, sugar and black pepper until well combined, and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the beans, cover and simmer for another 20 minutes, or until heated through and at the desired consistency. Taste and add more salt and pepper, as needed. Also, you can add more water, 1/4 cup at a time, if you think the chili is too thick.
Spoon into bowls and sprinkle with your choices of cheddar cheese, avocado, chopped red onion, pickled jalapeños and/or sour cream and serve.
Per serving (1 1/3 cups) based on 10 | 2022-09-27T14:47:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'The Office' chili recipe from Brian Baumgartner who played Kevin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/09/27/the-office-chili-recipe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/09/27/the-office-chili-recipe/ |
Ludwig knows his streaming career won’t last, so he’s starting an agency
Offbrand will share the live-streaming mogul’s secret sauce with other creators
(Washington Post illustration; Offbrand)
Ludwig Ahgren knows a thing or two about events. Between a 31-day marathon stream in 2021 that broke Twitch’s all-time subscriber record and a live game show this year that blew the doors off YouTube, Ahgren has demonstrated an undeniable knack for eyeball-grabbing spectacle. Every year since he began streaming full-time in 2019, it’s propelled him to new heights.
Now, Ahgren, 27, is launching a creative agency called Offbrand to share that secret sauce with other creators. This might sound like a plan to chop off the leg up he currently has on everybody else, but that’s kind of the idea: Ahgren knows his career as a content creator isn’t built to last. Instead of fearing that inevitability, he’s embracing it.
“I’ve always accepted the fact that there will be a point where my career ends,” Ahgren told The Washington Post. “When I’m 45 years old, certainly I will be [too] out of touch to have that on Twitch or YouTube. … Rather than fear that and try to maintain success for as long as possible, I love the idea of helping other creators make things that I think are cool.”
Offbrand, co-founded by Ahgren alongside longtime collaborator and manager Nick Allen, content creator Nathan Stanz and former Nvidia and Twitch marketing specialist Brandon Ewing, is an agency and studio that will help creators with their own events and series from basically all angles: ideas, production and funding. The latter is key because events — even more so than a video game live stream with a top-of-the-line PC and high-end broadcasting equipment — are expensive. In July, Ahgren said his popular Mogul Money Live game show on YouTube lost him and his team $149,500. That in mind, Allen explained that Offbrand does the work of seeking partnerships and sponsorships that make sense for each event or series it helps create.
“We don’t look for any upfront investment from the creators we’re working with,” said Allen. “We want to take that on and help them benefit not only in making good content, but also in not having a heavy lift either through the actual work or monetary means.”
The unique, unlikely celebrity of Tfue, 'Fortnite' standout and Twitch star
Already, Offbrand has developed one series for another creator, North American Twitch king Félix “xQc” Lengyel. On Sept. 30, Lengyel will premiere the fruits of that labor: a six-part live game show called “Juiced” that sees teams of two compete against each other in real-life physical and trivia competitions. It’s inspired by Nickelodeon game shows from the ’90s, up to and including the part where losers get doused with green slime — only in this case, it’s called getting “juiced,” and the viscous substance in question emerges from an enormous re-creation of Lengyel’s nose.
Lengyel is not a streamer you’d typically associate with a planned and rehearsed production like this. He’s the kind of creator who prefers to broadcast from his own room for well over 10 hours per day, playing video games, reacting to YouTube videos and, until a recent crackdown from Twitch, gambling. But Twitch is a platform where top creators regularly interact, and even though Ahgren moved to YouTube late last year, he’s still very much embedded in the Twitch community. He knows everybody, and he’s one of them. That gives Offbrand pull other agencies and studios can’t match.
“I think it would be extremely difficult for another group of people to go to xQc even with the best show in the world and say, ‘You should do this,’ ” said Stanz.
But Lengyel, in particular, is a prime representative of the downside of trying to turn streamers into polished, brand-friendly performers: Some are messy. Lengyel has spent the past handful of weeks embroiled in numerous personal conflicts turned public controversies stemming from his relationship, a gathering of popular streamers he was supposed to attend earlier this month and streamers airing each others’ dirty laundry in response to calls for gambling to be banned on the platform.
Still, Stanz pointed out that while Hollywood stars keep the closet shut a little tighter on their skeletons, it’s not like their personal lives don’t regularly bleed into their work as well.
“This is something that happens in media a ton, but because [xQc] is a Twitch streamer, it’s something that is a little more public facing,” said Stanz. “I think we’re not the first people to have to work with talent that is going through something, and we are not the first people that are going to help them — whether it’s through the show or other ways.”
To Ahgren, pivoting to events makes sense in a time when more and more big streamers are starting to realize that broadcasting for 200+ hours per month leads to burnout.
“If you are live ten hours a day, you’re a zombie after that because you put everything you have into that period of trying to entertain the viewers watching,” said Ahgren. “It’s much better to think about what you’re going to stream for 80 hours and then to stream for 80 hours in a month — after a certain viewership point — than to just stream 160 hours with no plan.”
Even before his biggest successes, Ahgren’s approach was predicated on planning. Not long after he first started streaming, he realized simply going live on Twitch and waiting for viewers to show up was no longer enough. Instead, he considered how concepts — like the aforementioned month-long subscription marathon or a recurring segment where he let his Twitch chat spend his real money on Amazon — would play in discrete, well-packaged videos on YouTube. Now, with even top Twitch creators like Tyler “Ninja” Blevins and Imane “Pokimane” Anys growing increasingly platform agnostic, Ahgren believes this approach makes more sense than ever.
“There’s creators who, all they do is stream, and if they just put in a few hours a week, I think they could make the biggest thing they do that year or maybe in their streaming career,” Ahgren said. “Part of the idea is, let’s not just make an event that gets good views on the live stream. Let’s make an event that will be watched on YouTube. Let’s make an event where clips will explode on TikTok, Instagram and Twitter. Let’s make more a piece of culture than just good live-streaming numbers.”
“It might not be less stress,” he added, noting that there’s still anxiety and pressure that go into planning, scheduling and hosting, “but it certainly will make sure that your career lasts longer. I think it’s a more sustainable way to stream.”
Up all night with a Twitch millionaire: The loneliness and rage of the Internet’s new rock stars
That’s not to say, however, that this option is available to all creators — or even most of them. Offbrand isn’t ruling out the idea of working with smaller creators, but they bring with them their own host of challenges.
“I’ve been working with a creator for about six months now,” said Ahgren. “He started with an average of about ten viewers, and the goal was to see if I could mentor this creator to become as large as possible. What I noticed in the process is that there’s a lot of finding your own voice as a creator, in the early stages, that would make it difficult to create a show or event [around].”
After “Juiced,” Offbrand plans to produce and co-produce a couple more events for Ahgren, including a “Chessboxing” championship in December that will iterate on and parody the influencer boxing trend that’s caught fire over the past few years thanks to YouTubers like Jake Paul. After that, the company will base event frequency on demand from creators.
As for Ahgren, he’s not planning to wind down his streaming career quite yet, but he knows the time is coming.
“When I first started streaming, I said that I would do it for five years and then I would quit,” said Ahgren. “I’m at the four-year mark right now. I don’t think I’m going to end at the five-year mark, but I certainly think there’s a point where I will transition away from being a front-facing creator, and Offbrand is my way of still being able to create and make things I think are cool … of still getting that same joy of making something I’m proud of.” | 2022-09-27T15:22:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ludwig's Offbrand agency will create content for xQc, other streamers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/09/27/ludwig-youtube-twitch-offbrand-agency-xqc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/09/27/ludwig-youtube-twitch-offbrand-agency-xqc/ |
(Hailey Haymond for The Washington Post illustration)
Lydia Millet’s most recent novel was a polished rapier called “A Children’s Bible.” One of the best books of 2020, it begins with the tipsy tedium of a summer vacation involving several families. But then it quickly slips into a national apocalypse fueled by climate change and anarchy.
Millet’s new novel, “Dinosaurs,” is surprising in an entirely different way. The plot is laced with trace elements of foreboding, but danger never reaches concentrations that produce actual drama. Indeed, the story is so gentle that it’s a safe choice for any reader with a heightened startle reflex.
There is actual tragedy in “Dinosaurs,” but most of it takes place before the book opens — so long ago, in fact, that the central character, Gil, can barely remember it. As we learn through a few brief references, when he was a child, Gil lost both his parents in a car accident. His severe grandmother cared for him for several years, but then she died, too. He remained in her house, where a series of well-paid guardians looked after him “like a fly trapped in amber.” And when he finally turned 18, Gil came into possession of a trust fund so vast that it could never be depleted.
Lydia Millet’s ‘A Children’s Bible’ is a blistering classic
“Dinosaurs,” then, is a story about an extraordinarily wealthy White man struggling to make his way in the modern world. You may be under the impression that there are more urgent stories being told these days. This novel will confirm that suspicion. I kept expecting to feel the deadly edge of Millet’s satirical wit, but Gil is allowed to luxuriate in his gold-plated self-pity largely unscathed.
The opening pages present Gil reeling from a bad breakup with his girlfriend. From the depth of this existential crisis, he becomes convinced that he needs a change of life and venue, so he decides to walk from Manhattan to Phoenix, where he’s bought a house off the internet. At 25 miles a day, that trek takes him about five months. “Time moved so slowly that he ceased to measure it,” Millet writes. “The slowness seemed like grace.”
We’ll have to take her word for it.
Soon after Gil moves into his new house in the desert, he notices movement next door. It’s a striking modern building walled entirely with glass. The new owners are an attractive young couple and their two children, a teenage girl and a little boy. “It was hard not to look at them,” Millet writes. “At first they seemed like a group of mannequins to him, in a high-end department store window. Say Bloomingdale’s. Or Saks.”
You’re probably already thinking about Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window” or A.J. Finn’s recent knockoff “The Woman in the Window,” or even Netflix’s delicious satire “The Woman in the House Across the Street From the Girl in the Window.” Or maybe the more suspicious readers among you are worried about Gil’s interest in his new neighbors’ little boy.
I’m telling you: Put all those concerns out of your mind.
As this tale unfolds, the neighbors and Gil become fast friends. The wife is delightful; the husband amiable. Gil waters their plants when they go on vacation. And with lots of free time, he becomes their son’s go-to babysitter. Though he has no experience with children, he’s naturally kind and encouraging in just the ways this kid needs.
“Dinosaurs” is not without some emotional tension, but that tension is tempered, almost subterranean. Freed by his immense inheritance from any responsibilities or burdens, Gil is a melancholy, lonely man struggling to find some reason for existing. “I’m just a parasite,” he says. “I have time for everything.” He worries that he’s merely “occupying space, a slot in the world, for no good reason.”
Commendably, he wants to do something that matters. Like all of us, he craves some proof of his real worth.
And so, the novel offers a series of well-crafted incidents that present Gil learning to assert his values. In his most determined mode, he volunteers as an attendant at a women’s shelter. He comforts the widow of a close friend; he keeps a bully from picking on the neighbors’ son; and he develops an interest in protecting native birds, those distant relatives of the dinosaurs.
In such passages, Millet confirms that she’s a master of poignant moments. These scenes are charming, often witty, sometimes moving. And I have no doubt that fabulously wealthy folks in the prime of their lives with nothing to do endure the dark of the soul along with the rest of us — just on better sheets.
But do you want to read about how woeful that is?
Millet has explored this species of existential despair more powerfully before. For instance, “How the Dead Dream” followed a rich real estate developer who suddenly began communing with animals hurtling toward extinction. That novel came out 15 years ago, but I can still recall its haunting sense of longing and dread spun through a story that was persistently unnerving.
Such poignancy and quirkiness have been effectively domesticated in “Dinosaurs,” which asks us to care but doesn’t give us much reason to.
By Lydia Millet
W.W. Norton. 230 pp. $26.95 | 2022-09-27T15:27:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dinosaurs by Lydia Millet book review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/27/lydia-millet-dinosaurs-novel-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/27/lydia-millet-dinosaurs-novel-review/ |
‘Young Plato’: An educator uses old philosophy to inspire young minds
Documentary looks at the powerful curriculum, inspired by critical thinking, of Belfast’s Holy Cross Boys’ Primary School
Kevin McArevey with students of Holy Cross Boys' Primary School in the documentary “Young Plato.” (Soilsiu Films)
The documentary filmmaker Neasa Ni Chianain seems to have, in recent years, made eccentric Irish pedagogy the exclusive focus of her interest. Co-directed with her partner David Rane, her charming 2017 film “School Life” looked at Headfort in County Meath, the only primary-age boarding school in Ireland, and one that seems designed to encourage a bit of healthy wildness in its students.
Her latest film, “Young Plato” — directed with Declan McGrath, with Rane turning to producing duties — focuses on Holy Cross Boys’ Primary School in the Ardoyne district of Belfast, a private Catholic institution with a distinctive focus on philosophy to help guide its young pupils in matters of conflict, both external and internal. (The film’s title name-checks only one of several ancient Greek philosophers mentioned in the film. Heraclitus’s famous dictum, “No man ever steps in the same river twice,” is cited, but so are more modern thinkers.)
Just as “School Life” focused on two members of Headfort’s teaching staff, “Plato” centers on Kevin McArevey, Holy Cross’s charismatic principal, an Elvis Presley-obsessed leader with a shaved head, seemingly boundless energy and a remarkable ability to inspire. As much a portrait of an educational maverick as it is of his school — located in a neighborhood struggling with poverty, drugs and the still-not-fully-healed scars of the sectarian strife depicted in last year’s Oscar-winning “Belfast” — “Young Plato” is a fascinating, sometimes funny and often touching film. It’s easy to see why the directors were drawn to McArevey and his school.
“Plato” revolves mostly around the headmaster’s interactions with students — both in groups and one on one — and somewhat less around the day-to-day work of his staff, who can be almost preternaturally patient as they deal with some challenging problems, ranging from petty disagreements to physical fights to feelings of depression. McArevey’s laserlike focus is on critical thinking and open-ended inquiry; the kids all seem hip to the program, but some scenes show McArevey attempting to bring parents, some of whom seen skeptical, on board too. One wonders just how much of Holy Cross’s curriculum bleeds into its students’ home lives. But the impact we’re shown on-screen seems profound.
In a sense, we members of the audience are McArevey’s students as well. His approach is actually less Platonic than Socratic, emphasizing nonjudgmental inquiry, listening and admitting that you don’t have all the answers. In these polarized times, these are lessons that we could all stand to learn.
Unrated. At the Angelika Film Center Mosaic and the Angelika Pop-Up. Contains some strong language. In Irish-accented English with subtitles. 102 minutes. | 2022-09-27T15:28:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Young Plato’: An educator uses old philosophy to inspire young minds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/27/young-plato-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/27/young-plato-movie-review/ |
BOISE, Idaho — Idaho universities are warning staffers not to refer students to abortion providers, and at least one public university is barring employees from telling students how to obtain emergency contraception or birth control as well. It’s the latest restriction in a state that already holds some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation. | 2022-09-27T15:28:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Idaho universities disallow abortion, contraception referral - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/idaho-universities-disallow-abortion-contraception-referral/2022/09/27/18dd33ee-3e6f-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/idaho-universities-disallow-abortion-contraception-referral/2022/09/27/18dd33ee-3e6f-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
FILE - These booking photos released Oct. 9, 2021, by the West Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority show Diana Toebbe, left, and Jonathan Toebbe. A U.S. Navy nuclear engineer and his wife entered new guilty pleas Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022, in a case involving an alleged plot to sell secrets about nuclear-powered warships a month after their previous plea agreements that had called for specific sentencing guidelines were rejected. (West Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority via AP, File) (Uncredited/West Virginia Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority) | 2022-09-27T15:28:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland couple plead guilty in submarine secrets sale case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/maryland-couple-plead-guilty-in-submarine-secrets-sale-case/2022/09/27/aa1f97d8-3e75-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/maryland-couple-plead-guilty-in-submarine-secrets-sale-case/2022/09/27/aa1f97d8-3e75-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
By Jon Super and Jill Lawless | AP
LIVERPOOL, England — The leader of Britain’s main opposition Labour Party accused the governing Conservatives on Tuesday of losing control of the economy, and promised to take the U.K. out of an “endless cycle of crisis” if his party regains power after more than a decade. | 2022-09-27T15:28:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UK Labour leader accuses government of trashing economy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/uk-labour-leader-accuses-government-of-trashing-economy/2022/09/27/de9b7e8a-3e72-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/uk-labour-leader-accuses-government-of-trashing-economy/2022/09/27/de9b7e8a-3e72-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
The start of the of the Oatlands Invitational varsity boys' race was packed, and Charlie Ortmans of Potomac School, right, prevailed. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
“The sheer size of it felt like something out of a movie,” Wootton senior Maya Gottesman said. Her team earned a narrow win for the second straight week, scoring 213 points, just ahead of Western Albemarle (216). W.T. Woodson (243) and Tuscarora (257) finished third and fourth.
Leading up to Flint Hill’s 17th annual Volleyball Invitational Tournament, Mickki Murray was focused on one thing: recognition. Playing on a team with several talented hitters who are committed to Division I schools, it can be hard for players such as Murray, who plays a combination of defensive specialist and outside hitter, to stand out.
Throughout Saturday, the “firecracker” of the team lived up to her nickname as a constant source of energy. “I’m always screaming and yelling loud, because that’s just what brings the energy up,” Murray said. At the end of the day, she received her recognition in the form of the tournament MVP award.
“My older kids on this team, they know I expect more from them every day,” he said. “With the freshmen, you have to coddle them a bit and teach them. … But we’re blessed not just to have talented freshmen but also some great leaders on the roster.”
While playing for the U.S. national indoor team, sophomore Sammie Goin has performed at plenty of major field hockey events. But it wasn’t until this weekend that she did so with her high school.
The Tigers (9-1) defeated Seneca (Tabernacle, N.J.), 6-0, then dropped a tight 4-2 game against Myers Park (Charlotte). | 2022-09-27T15:28:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A crowded field at Oatlands sweetens winning; Flint Hill volleyball dominates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/27/crowded-field-oatlands-sweetens-winning-flint-hill-volleyball-dominates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/27/crowded-field-oatlands-sweetens-winning-flint-hill-volleyball-dominates/ |
A passenger’s video captured the unexplained noises on a recent flight from LAX to Dallas
“I’m Nancy Drewing my way looking for the person who looks thoroughly amused by themselves,” he said. “And, of course, I didn’t see anything.”
An illustrated guide to sleeping on a plane
No, you can't open a plane door
So... We've had a good dig into this.
The A321 passenger announcement system looks to be physically discrete to the interphone and other systems.
We're struggling to see a path. https://t.co/qVdJR6cUm0 | 2022-09-27T15:29:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Video captures strange moans, noises on American Airlines flights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/26/flight-noise-american-airlines-intercom-lax/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/26/flight-noise-american-airlines-intercom-lax/ |
A coronavirus vaccination can change the timing of when you get your period, according to research. For most people, the effect was temporary.
Now, new research shows that many of the complaints were valid. A study of nearly 20,000 people around the world shows that getting vaccinated against covid can change the timing of the menstrual cycle. Overall, vaccinated people experienced, on average, about a one-day delay in getting their periods, compared with those who hadn’t been vaccinated.
The data, published Tuesday in the British Medical Journal, was taken from a popular period tracking app called Natural Cycles and included people from around the world, but most were from North America, Britain and Europe. The researchers used “de-identified” data from the app to compare menstrual cycles among 14,936 participants who were vaccinated and 4,686 who were not.
Because app users tracked their menstrual cycles each month, the researchers were able to analyze three menstrual cycles before vaccination and at least one cycle after, compared with four menstrual cycles in the unvaccinated group.
Any change in getting your period can be stressful, triggering worries about an unplanned pregnancy or a health scare, and people have expressed frustration that public health officials didn’t warn them about a possible side effect or do more research before rolling out the vaccines.
One major limitation of the study is the fact that it included only those who were not on birth control, had regular cycles before they got vaccinated and were between the ages of 18 and 45.
The study also didn’t answer all of the questions raised by people about vaccines and periods. Ever since the vaccines began rolling out, women on social media have complained of longer, heavier and more painful periods after getting vaccinated. This study did not look at the heaviness of periods or other side effects such as cramps, but researchers said it did show that, on average, getting vaccinated did not appear to cause longer periods.
She said she was overwhelmed with anxiety and thought something else might be wrong at the time, but after two cycles, her period returned to normal. When she got a second dose in July 2021, her period worsened again, but she said she felt calmer about it because she had seen similar stories being shared by others online.
Other research has suggested that vaccines have a variety of effects on periods. A survey published last fall collected information about periods and vaccines from 16,000 people — including transgender and postmenopausal people — and found that thousands reported heavier bleeding than usual or breakthrough bleeding.
While these observations aren’t necessarily medically alarming, Katharine Lee, an assistant professor at Tulane University who helped conduct the survey, said the information is important to help trans men plan for additional support if menstruating causes gender dysphoria and also to help people make decisions about stocking up on tampons and pads.
“It wasn’t that the vaccine moved my period early or late — it produced one,” said Grundy, who lives in Somerville, Mass.
If she had been made aware of the side effect, she said, she would have been prepared and brought a pad to work. Her period lasted three or four days — and it came back when she got her second vaccine dose three weeks later. But it didn’t happen again when she got a booster shot last November.
After a first Johnson & Johnson shot in April 2021, nothing changed, but after getting a Moderna booster that October, Beechan noticed that their period started to come every 24 days with more than four days of heavier bleeding, more painful cramps and extreme mood shifts. Doctors have ruled out endometriosis and other potential health conditions as the cause.
The National Institutes of Health has funded at least four other research projects around coronavirus vaccines and menstruation, some of which look at adolescents and people with endometriosis, with the hope of providing better information and increasing public trust in the vaccines.
Olivia Rodriguez, 26, said she doesn’t plan to get her booster shot because she had such a bad experience after her second Moderna shot in March 2021. Despite just having finished her period, she started another period within a few days of getting the shot. It lasted 10 days with heavier bleeding, she said, instead of the normal four or five days she was used to. She also experienced more-painful cramps.
Initially, she panicked, but soon found stories online of other women who had gone through similar situations. It was reassuring, but she still is wary of getting another shot.
Rodriguez, who is a member of the Osage Nation tribe, said medical researchers need to earn the trust of the Indigenous and people of color by providing more information up front about side effects. | 2022-09-27T15:29:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Do covid vaccines affect periods? A new study says they do. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/27/covid-vaccine-period-late/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/09/27/covid-vaccine-period-late/ |
Lawmakers unveil short-term spending bill to avoid partial government shutdown
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) speaks during a news conference in Washington on Sept. 20. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg News)
Top lawmakers have unveiled a short-term spending bill to avoid a partial government shutdown later this week, a sweeping measure that would provide more than $12 billion to Ukraine, steer millions to Jackson, Miss., to deal with its water crisis and deliver billions in domestic disaster aid.
The bill would fund the government through Dec. 16, giving negotiators more time to work out their differences and agree on government spending for the 2023 fiscal year. The bill, known as a continuing resolution and released late Monday, would avert a shutdown that would begin Saturday.
One element of the bill stands as a major obstacle to quick action — permit reform.
A deal to accelerate the approval process for building new energy projects — which Republicans said was necessary to lower rising energy costs — was key to Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) securing the vote of Sen. Joe Manchin III, the centrist Democrat from West Virginia, for the sweeping climate, health-care and deficit-reduction law President Biden signed in August.
But now Republicans are seeking retribution against Manchin for his deal with Schumer.
“Revenge politics,” Manchin said at a Capitol news conference last week. “Republican leadership is upset, and they’re saying, ‘We’re not going to give a victory to Joe Manchin.’ … The bottom line is: How much suffering and how much pain do you want to inflict on the American people?”
Republicans made no effort to hide their effort to punish Manchin.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), a member of GOP leadership, called the Schumer-Manchin permitting deal a “political payoff” to Manchin. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) said the deal and Manchin’s crucial vote for the climate/health-care bill “engendered a lot of bad blood” among Republicans. “There’s not a lot of sympathy on our side to provide Senator Manchin a reward,” he said.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said on the Senate floor last week that Manchin should be supporting legislation from his Republican colleague in West Virginia, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito. That bill “only needs Senator Manchin plus nine more Democrats to clear this chamber,” McConnell said. He added, “Otherwise it would appear the senior senator from West Virginia traded his vote on a massive liberal boondoggle in exchange for nothing.”
A Senate procedural vote to move ahead on the short-term spending bill is scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, with many lawmakers focusing attention on whether to include the permitting process in the legislation.
Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), vice chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee who worked on the spending bill, said in a statement that “we have made significant progress toward a Continuing Resolution that is as clean as possible. But if the Democrats insist on including permitting reform, I will oppose it.”
Some Democrats who also oppose the energy permit provision said they will nonetheless vote for the continuing resolution.
The bill includes a package of aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russian forces, which invaded the country in February but have struggled on the battlefield. Among the funds are $3 billion to provide military assistance, including training, equipment, weapons and logistics support; $1.5 billion to replenish U.S. stocks of equipment provided to Ukraine or to foreign countries that have provided support; and $2.8 billion for continued military, intelligence and other defense support.
An additional $35 million will go to fund responses to “potential nuclear and radiological incidents” in Ukraine, and prevent that material from being stolen.
Domestically, $1 billion will go to help support families struggling with the cost of heating their homes this year and offset the costs of extreme weather events. An additional $20 million will go to water infrastructure projects in Jackson, Miss., whose 160,000 residents no longer have safe drinking water, which was declared an emergency in August by Biden.
The continuing resolution also includes $2 billion to respond to the ongoing effects of disasters this year and last. It also transfers funds from a disaster response program at the Defense Department to a program at the State Department helping resettle Afghans.
There is $112.5 million to improve security at U.S. courthouses and federal facilities, and money to extend the National Flood Insurance Program is also included in the legislation.
Congress has days to work out its differences and get legislation to Biden for his signature. If Republicans and some Democrats succeed in blocking the bill on Tuesday’s procedural vote, it is possible that Schumer will jettison the permit provision and push for another vote on the measure. The House returns Wednesday and could vote on the bill with just hours to spare.
Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, said she is “extremely disappointed” that the permitting deal is attached to the much-needed spending legislation but urged colleagues to support it.
The bill “includes funding to help communities across the United States recover from floods, wildfires, and hurricanes — natural disasters that are becoming more frequent and extreme as the climate crisis worsens. Additionally, with Russia holding fake elections to annex parts of Ukraine, the Ukrainian people urgently need our support to continue protecting their families and defending global democracy,” she said in a statement.
Analysis: States are moving to penalize ‘cyber-flashing’ | 2022-09-27T16:10:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Top lawmakers unveil short-term spending bill to avoid partial government shutdown - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/spending-bill-government-shutdown-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/spending-bill-government-shutdown-ukraine/ |
Hurricane Ian will impact sporting events in the southeastern United States. (AP)
Hurricane Ian is expected to make landfall on Florida’s Gulf Coast late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning, but its effects could be felt in the sports world both before and after the storm comes ashore, and not only in Florida. The storm already has caused several leagues to alter their plans for upcoming events. Here’s a rundown:
The Bucs-Chiefs game still is scheduled to be played Sunday at 8:20 p.m. Eastern, though the NFL is monitoring the situation. The league has had to postpone or relocate several games because of weather over its history, most recently last year when Hurricane Ida forced the cancellation of a preseason game between the Arizona Cardinals and New Orleans Saints, who then had to move their regular season opener to Jacksonville, Fla., because of ongoing cleanup from the storm.
Saturday’s college football game between South Florida and East Carolina in Tampa will be relocated to Florida Atlantic University’s stadium in Boca Raton, on the state’s Atlantic coast. The game will be played at 2:30 p.m. Eastern on Saturday.
Florida State has canceled classes this week and will close its campus Thursday and Friday as a precaution, but its game at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on Saturday against Wake Forest still will be played as scheduled. Tallahassee is scheduled to receive the bulk of its rain Friday.
Central Florida also has canceled classes Wednesday through Friday and will close its Orlando campus on Wednesday and Thursday, though it’s expected to reopen Friday. The Knights’ home game at 3:30 p.m. Eastern against SMU is still scheduled to be played.
South Carolina announced Tuesday that its home game scheduled for noon Saturday against South Carolina State will be moved to Thursday at 7 p.m. Eastern.
North Carolina State at Clemson, 7:30 p.m. | 2022-09-27T16:19:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hurricane Ian impacts NFL, college football schedule - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/27/hurricane-ian-sports-changes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/27/hurricane-ian-sports-changes/ |
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton speaks in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Ernesto Herrera is a process server in the state of Texas. On Monday morning, he went to the house of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) to serve him two subpoenas commanding Paxton to appear in court the following day to offer testimony in relation to a lawsuit filed by abortion rights groups in the state.
According to a statement, Herrera arrived at Paxton’s house at about 8:30 a.m. He knocked and spoke with Paxton’s wife, who said the attorney general was on the phone. Herrera then waited outside. Nearly an hour later, an SUV arrived at the house. When Paxton emerged to get inside, Herrera approached him. Paxton quickly (Herrera says he ran) went back into the house. Ten minutes later, Paxton’s wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton (R), opens the doors to the truck and Paxton hurried (again: “ran”) to get inside. Herrera says he identified himself and served the papers by leaving them near the vehicle.
After the Texas Tribune reported on the events Monday evening, Paxton lashed out on Twitter. The media, he said, was “attacking me for having the audacity to avoid a stranger lingering outside my home and showing concern about the safety and well-being of my family.”
Paxton’s tweet, unlike Herrera’s statement, was not offered under oath. What’s more, there’s no indication that Paxton alerted law enforcement after Herrera’s arrival, suggesting that his safety concerns were perhaps not all that robust in the moment. By all appearances, this was what it looked like: Texas’s chief legal official skirting a lawfully submitted subpoena.
Not really surprising, though, given Paxton’s history of leveraging the law for political ends.
We can begin in 2014, the year Paxton first won election as attorney general. Even before he secured the Republican nomination, questions arose about whether he’d broken the law in work he had done for a financial services firm. He was indicted on three felony charges the next year — after having been seated as attorney general — and pleaded not guilty.
Those charges are pending. Seven years later, there has been no trial. He was narrowly reelected in 2018.
In 2020, Paxton was accused of bribery and abuse of office by seven people on his staff. All seven were fired, put on leave or resigned soon after. The FBI is reportedly investigating the allegations, though he was cleared of wrongdoing … by his own office.
Meanwhile, Paxton, who is up for reelection this year, has often used his position to advocate partisan positions and arguments. He filed a motion aimed at forcing the White House to continue construction of a wall on the border with Mexico. His office announced that some medical care for transgender youths amounted to “child abuse.” He touted an obviously specious claim about rampant illegal voter registrations that the Texas secretary of state soon had to counter.
But that was in keeping with his energetic effort to use the power of his position on behalf of Donald Trump. Paxton made Texas the lead plaintiff in a post-election lawsuit filed in 2020 aimed at overturning the results of the presidential contest in a number of swing states. The lawsuit was dubious in broad strokes and ridiculous in its specific claims of voter fraud. Despite Trump centering it as essential and important, the suit, reportedly drafted by attorneys close to the Trump White House, was thrown out by the Supreme Court.
That advocacy on Trump’s behalf probably helped earn Paxton a speaking spot at Trump’s rally outside the White House on Jan. 6, 2021.
“We’re here. We will not quit fighting,” he told the crowd — some of whom then took the fight to the Capitol. After the violence, though, Paxton claimed on social media that the rioters were “not Trump supporters.” The Texas state bar later sued Paxton for violations of ethical standards over his efforts to reverse the election results. In response, Paxton blocked office attorneys from participating in state bar events.
The attorney general’s embrace of voter fraud conspiracy theories didn’t end with his failed efforts to boost Trump, however. Earlier this year, he hosted a showing of Dinesh D’Souza’s film “2000 Mules,” a movie he called “very compelling.” Documents provided to The Washington Post by the Lone Star Project (obtained under the Texas Public Information Act) show that Paxton’s office encouraged officials to attend the screening.
That the film had already been broadly debunked by the time of the invitation appears not to have influenced the suggestion that the election integrity team attend. “#VoterFraud is real & we must join together to stop it!” Paxton tweeted after the event — a reminder that the point was showing allegiance to the right’s position on election security far more than bolstering “election integrity.”
Earlier this year, Paxton again won the Republican Party’s nomination to serve as state attorney general — albeit only after he was the only incumbent forced into a runoff. Given the politics of the state and of the midterm elections, it’s likely that he’ll win reelection for a second time.
Perhaps by the end of a third term, his 2015 indictment will be resolved. Though who knows what other legal quagmires might arise in the interim.
Noted: Trust in the Jan. 6 committee remains stable | 2022-09-27T16:28:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Exploring Ken Paxton’s idiosyncratic view of the law - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/texas-paxton-attorney-general/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/texas-paxton-attorney-general/ |
The Duke Ellington Bridge over Rock Creek in Northwest Washington in January 2020. (Jeanne McVey/Flickr)
More than 40 years ago, a young woman — she had just graduated from college — jumped 125 feet to her death from the Duke Ellington Bridge over Rock Creek Park in Adams Morgan. Her death spurred her parents to push the city to erect an anti-suicide fence on the span, which was known as a “jumper’s bridge.” Six years later — after a rash of suicides, including four in 5½ months — the city installed eight-foot-tall barriers that have cut the number of suicides from the bridge.
Animating those grieving parents was a desire to spare others the loss of a loved one; it is the same thing now fueling Chelsea Van Thof to get similar lifesaving barriers erected on the William Howard Taft Bridge, the 115-year-old span that carries Connecticut Avenue across Rock Creek Park. On the night of April 13, Ms. Van Thof’s longtime partner, Peter Tripp, jumped to his death from the Taft Bridge; he was 29. Ms. Van Thof had been on the Ellington Bridge when she learned of Mr. Tripp’s death. After she had received a concerning text from him that night, she had gone in search of her partner and was looking through the suicide barrier on the Ellington Bridge when she saw the flashing lights of police cars below the Taft Bridge.
“I was infuriated,” she told The Post’s Theresa Vargas. “I was just infuriated that a bridge right next to an identical bridge didn’t have the same barrier.” Thus was born her public campaign for anti-suicide fencing at the Taft Bridge, and it seems to be working. The D.C. Transportation Department, WAMU’s Martin Austermuhle reported, has started assessing every bridge in the city to determine whether to add barriers. The department had initially said barriers were not under consideration.
Experts in suicide prevention point to research showing that nets and barriers decrease instances of deaths by suicide from bridges, without — as some had predicted — increasing instances at other bridges. Toronto built barriers at a bridge that averaged nine suicides a year; in the decade after barriers were installed, bridge-related suicides dropped to almost zero.
Had barriers been in place, would Mr. Tripp have found another way to die by suicide? There is no way to know. But many who end their lives do so impulsively. Jumping from a bridge requires little preparation — no gun, no pills — so blocking easy access to the edge can save lives. “I know he would be here,” said Ms. Van Thof. “It would have cut through the impulse.”
Proposals for suicide barriers often run into opposition, as critics question their costs and aesthetics. But this should matter most: Over the last 12 years, there have been 13 suicides from the Taft Bridge, accounting for half of all bridge-related suicides in the District for that period. The longer the city waits to erect suicide barriers, the more likely that lives will be lost.
If you or someone you know needs help, call the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988. You can also reach a crisis counselor by messaging the Crisis Text Line at 741741. | 2022-09-27T16:32:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Bridge suicide barriers work. D.C. should install them. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/bridge-suicide-barriers-washington-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/bridge-suicide-barriers-washington-dc/ |
Florida is the most hurricane-ravaged state in the country due to its unique geography
A canal is seen near downtown Fort Lauderdale amid Hurricane Irma's wind and rain. (Andrew Innerarity/For The Washington Post)
Hurricane Ian is expected to barrel into the western coast of Florida by Wednesday, bringing damaging winds and surging floodwaters. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) declared a state of emergency for all 67 counties in Florida on Sunday, while several counties are under mandatory evacuations. Tropical storm conditions could impact southern Florida as early as Tuesday.
“It’s a big storm,” DeSantis said during a news conference on Sunday. “Expect heavy rains, strong winds, flash flooding, storm surge and even isolated tornadoes.” The governor also encouraged residents to stock up on food, water, batteries, medicine and fuel.
Hurricane Ian could be the 121st hurricane to hit the state since 1851 — making Florida the most hurricane-ravaged state in the country. About one-third hit as a Category 3 storm or above.
Here’s a look at what makes the state so vulnerable and some of the most memorable hurricanes in Florida history.
In the middle of traffic
Over 41 percent of all hurricanes in the United States have made some sort of landfall in Florida.
“Our hurricane risk is geographically determined,” said Richard Olson, director of the Extreme Events Institute at Florida International University in Miami.
Florida has the second-longest coastline — 1,350 miles — out of all the country’s states, behind Alaska. The state juts into warm, tropical waters — directly into the paths of hurricanes trekking across the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Activity for Florida tends to pick up in September and October, when storms are more likely to form in the western Caribbean, the Bay of Campeche off the Yucatán Peninsula and the southern Gulf of Mexico, as waters warm later in the season.
“Given that Florida is the peninsula that juts out into that zone, it’s not surprising that we get hit regularly,” said Olson.
Florida’s southeast coast and Panhandle are particularly susceptible to landfalling hurricanes. Ian is aimed at the less-visited western coast of Florida, near Tampa Bay, which hasn’t seen a major storm in more than a century.
Florida also experiences some of the highest financial damages from storms, partly because of the frequency of hurricanes but also rapid urban development. Approximately 15 million Florida residents, or 76 percent of the population, live in coastal portions of the state.
“I’m always pretty confident in Florida that the systems and the public will be able to handle Category 1 and Category 2 [hurricanes] but once you’re looking at a coastal impact of a Category 3 or 4, or, Lord forbid, a Category 5, I do worry that physically and psychologically, we’re not fully prepared for those,” Olson added.
History of hurricanes
Florida has always experienced intense hurricanes since record keeping began more than a 170 years ago. Many early hurricanes still hold the title for some of the most intense and powerful today.
The Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 unleashed one of the most brutal attacks in the state as it made landfall in the Florida Keys as a Category 5 storm in September, killing more than 400 people. It still remains one of the strongest landfalling Atlantic hurricanes with sustained winds at 185 miles per hour, tying with Hurricane Dorian in 2019.
100 years of hurricanes hitting and missing Florida, visualized
Several category three and four storms hit the state in decades following the Labor Day, but catastrophic destruction hit in 1992. In August 1992, Hurricane Andrew made landfall in Elliott Key, Fla. with peak sustained winds at 165 miles per hour. Andrew caused 65 deaths and $27 billion in damages, making it the most expensive hurricane in the country’s history until Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005. Andrew was the second strongest landfalling cyclone in the state, trailing the Labor Day hurricane.
While these two hurricanes remain the strongest in state history, many have the freshest memory of Hurricane Michael, from October 2018. Michael — the first Category 5 hurricane to hit Florida since Andrew — brought winds of 160 miles per hour and obliterated miles of coastline. The hurricane, the third-strongest in state records, killed 49 people and caused more than $25 billion in damage.
While the Category 5 storms may be the most memorable, several other hurricanes have made historic impacts along the Florida coastline. Since 2000, Florida has experienced six noteworthy Category 3 and 4 hurricanes.
One of the most noteworthy was Hurricane Irma. In September 2017, Irma made landfall in the Florida Keys as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 130 mph. Irma crashed into Florida with a deadly mixture of embedded tornadoes, strong gusts and heavy rain. Irma claimed 77 lives in the state with damages totaling over $77 billion, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Over 6 million South Floridians fled a storm surge of up to eight feet when they evacuated. The surge is the rise in ocean water above normally dry land and can be the most destructive part of a hurricane. Hurricane Irma was the first major hurricane to rock Florida since Category 3 Hurricane Wilma in 2005.
Hurricane Ian could be the first significant hurricane to Florida since 2018′s Michael, despite two above average hurricane seasons in 2020 and 2021, which surprisingly left the state unscathed despite Florida sitting in predicated line of fire for multiple major hurricanes.
While some years bring more hurricanes than others, research does not indicate a clear long-term trend in the number of tropical storms. Whether a hurricane makes landfall in Florida depends on a variety of factors from the sea surface to the atmosphere and, to a certain extent, luck.
“Storms like Ida and Dorian could have ended up making landfall in Florida if the steering pattern at the time had been just slightly different,” said Brian McNoldy, who works in cyclone research at the University of Miami and is a hurricane expert with Capital Weather Gang. “I’d say a lot of it comes down to luck … it’s not for a lack of opportunities.”
While frequency of storms hasn’t trended upward, research shows hurricanes in the Atlantic have become more intense, partly driven by increased sea surface temperatures due to human-caused climate change. Warm ocean waters, which can fuel hurricanes, combined with Florida’s extensive coastline makes it a hotbed for natural disasters.
Global sea surface temperatures have increased an average of over 1.1 degrees in the past century. Experts from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warn that temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean could increase by 3.6 degrees in the next 100 years.
Research shows that hurricane hazards and occurrences will increase across Florida’s Panhandle and the western Gulf Coast by 2030, largely driven by increases in sea surface temperature. The study found the most increase in Category 4 hurricanes for the region.
Graphics: What is storm surge?
The effects of the storms are also expected to increase with rising sea levels. With elevated coastal waters, storm surges can bring water further inland and cause more dangerous and widespread flooding. Storm surge can often be the most destructive part of a hurricane, even above wind damage.
In the next three decades, from 2020 to 2050, sea level is expected to rise 14 to 28 inches in the Gulf Coast, according to a report by NOAA. Even slight increases to sea level rise can make the surge more detrimental. | 2022-09-27T16:58:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why is Florida prone to hurricanes like Hurricane Ian - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/27/florida-hurricane-vulnerability-explainer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/27/florida-hurricane-vulnerability-explainer/ |
Think abortion will salvage the midterms for you, Dems? Not a chance.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) speaks to supporters in Toccoa, Ga., on Aug. 4. (Jeff Amy/AP)
Abortion is not going to save Democrats this November. To see why, just look at the Georgia governor’s race.
Georgia is a purple state that handed Joe Biden the presidency and Democrats control of the U.S. Senate in 2020. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization sent abortion decisions back to the states. That put the issue squarely in the hands of governors such as Brian Kemp (R), who signed a 2019 law — which went into effect in July — that bans abortion in Georgia after the sixth week of pregnancy. Since the high court’s ruling, Bloomberg reports, the number of women signing up to vote in Georgia has outpaced men by 6 points, “with Democrats benefiting as the [abortion] issue pushes to the forefront.” That should spell doom for Kemp.
Right now, Republicans enjoy the most promising political environment in decades. Biden is one of the most unpopular presidents at this point in his tenure since Harry S. Truman. On his watch, we have experienced the worst inflation in 40 years, the fastest drop in real wages in four decades, the highest gas prices ever recorded, the biggest rise in food prices since 1979, the worst crime wave in many cites since the 1990s, and the worst border crisis in U.S. history. If Republicans can’t capitalize on that series of fiascos, then they need to take a good hard look in the mirror. | 2022-09-27T16:59:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Abortion isn't going to help Democrats in the midterms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/abortion-midterms-democrats-republicans-red-wave/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/abortion-midterms-democrats-republicans-red-wave/ |
Harris’ trip Asia is a classic of the modern VP genre
Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1779, the Continental Congress named John Adams to negotiate peace and commerce treaties with Britain.
Pageantry and pitfalls for Harris in Japan and South Korea
Cover the White House long enough, and you’ll hear two kinds of rueful jokes from the president and vice president.
The former will complain about being isolated. President Bill Clinton quipped 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was either great public housing or “the crown jewel of the federal penitentiary system,” while Ronald Reagan called it a “gilded cage.”
The latter, meanwhile, will gripe about being a powerless constitutional afterthought. The country’s first vice president, John Adams, wrote his wife Abigail it was “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.”
John Nance Garner, who held the position under Franklin D. Roosevelt, supposedly put it in less elegant but more memorable terms, saying the job was “not worth a bucket of warm spit” — or at least that’s how family-friendly publications put it.
It has few formal constitutional duties, no significant levers of power other than proximity to the president, and it isn’t a reliable springboard to being elected to the top job.
Super-ambassador
But it has changed quite a bit in the modern era, since the middle of the 20th Century to be precise, taking on a bigger national security role and becoming a kind of super-ambassador when the president cannot personally tend to the country’s diplomatic garden.
Vice President Harris’s ongoing trip to Japan and South Korea is a pretty good example.
It marries the symbolism of attending a state funeral for slain former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe with the substance of talks with Japan, South Korea and Australia — key partners in efforts to deal with China’s rise and rein in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.
No one expects a major policy announcement. But the visit aims to lay some of the groundwork for what is expected to be President Biden’s first face-to-face (in person) meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, to be held at the Group of 20 nations summit in Indonesia in November.
And it lets Harris build up her foreign policy experience, a critical portfolio for any aspirant to the White House at a time when uncertainty remains about whether the 79-year-old Biden will run for reelection in 2024.
The trip so far
She has met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-Soo — who revealed before the White House did that Harris on Thursday will visit the demilitarized zone that separates North and South Korea.
The recurring themes of her meetings have been the American commitment to bilateral alliances and regional stability, notably on the issue of Taiwan. But she has also had to manage tensions over a Democratic legislative victory that has roiled relations with key partners.
As Chris Megerian of the Associated Press pointed out on Twitter:
Vice President Harris talked electric cars with South Korea’s prime minister today. It’s a sore spot in Seoul because a new law prevents cars built outside of North America from qualifying for subsidies. https://t.co/QGAEXldCnU
— Chris Megerian (@ChrisMegerian) September 27, 2022
Harris and Han discussed “South Korea’s complaints about the Inflation Reduction Act, which makes electric cars built outside of North America ineligible for government subsidies,” Chris reported.
This is no small thing, though both sides have expressed optimism about resolving the dispute, even as Biden talks up the IRA as a major achievement to boost the American economy as he campaigns ahead of November’s midterm elections.
South Korea has reportedly been working with Japan, Germany, Britain and Sweden on a common response to the IRA, meaning this dispute reaches well beyond relations between Washington and Seoul.
A senior administration official, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity, played down the absence of a breakthrough, according to print pool reporter Tarini Parti of the Wall Street Journal: “The vice president was not there to negotiate an approach to the issue of electric vehicles.”
Otherwise, Harris’s message could hardly be more conventional.
With Kishida, she reaffirmed the “ironclad” U.S. commitment to Japanese security and called the alliance a “cornerstone” of regional stability, and they jointly condemned Beijing’s “aggressive and irresponsible provocations in the Taiwan Strait.”
The two leaders also discussed efforts to rein in North Korea’s nuclear program — Pyongyang fired a short-range missile just before she arrived — and the return of Japanese citizens abducted by Pyonygang, a deeply emotional issue in Japan.
With Albanese, the two celebrated America’s regional commitments as well as cooperation on battling the climate crisis, according to an official White House summary.
Reaffirmed principles and alliances, no breakthroughs, no gaffes (as of this writing, no scheduled Q&A with the traveling press), and a standard trade-and-climate-and-security agenda that sets up Biden’s G-20 trip. There could still be unexpected developments (looking at you, North Korea). But this, so far, is a pretty classic vice-presidential trip. As it should be.
Top lawmakers unveil short-term spending bill to avoid partial government shutdown
“Top lawmakers have unveiled a short-term spending bill to avoid a partial government shutdown later this week, a sweeping measure that would provide more than $12 billion to Ukraine, steer millions to Jackson, Miss., to deal with its water crisis and deliver billions in domestic disaster aid,” Azi Paybarah reports.
“A public interest attorney in Indiana is suing to block President Biden’s plan to cancel some student debt, arguing the policy will force him to pay state taxes on the forgiven amount. The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana Tuesday, is the first significant legal challenge to invalidate Biden’s policy before it takes effect,” Danielle Douglas-Gabriel reports.
“Ian is expected to move into the Gulf of Mexico in the late morning, passing west of the Florida Keys later Tuesday and heading for the west coast of Florida as a major hurricane by Wednesday night, the National Hurricane Center said in its most recent advisory.,” Scott Dance reports.
“There is ‘a realistic possibility’ that Putin will use an address to the Russian parliament, which Russian state media have reported will take place on Friday, to formally announce his intention to absorb the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions of Ukraine, despite international condemnation, the Defense Ministry said in its daily intelligence report on the Ukraine war,” Mary Ilyushina reports.
“Five members of the extremist group Oath Keepers, including leader Stewart Rhodes, face trial for seditious conspiracy next week, in which U.S. prosecutors will try to convince jurors that Rhodes’s call for an armed ‘civil war’ to keep Donald Trump in power on Jan. 6, 2021, was literal — and criminal,” Spencer S. Hsu, Rachel Weiner and Tom Jackman report.
“Facebook’s parent company Meta disrupted a China-based network of accounts that was seeking to influence U.S. politics ahead of the 2022 midterms, the company reported Tuesday,” Naomi Nix reports.
“The covert influence operation used accounts on Facebook and Instagram posing as Americans to post opinions about hot-button issues such as abortion, gun control and high-profile politicians such as President Biden and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). The network, which focused on the United States and the Czech Republic, posted from the fall of 2021 through the summer of 2022, the company said.”
Italy’s hard-right lurch raises new concerns in Washington
“The latest rightward lurch of a European country — two weeks after a far-right party performed startlingly well in Sweden’s elections — is raising concerns in Washington about the continent’s combustible populism and what it could mean for some of President Biden’s foreign policy goals, including confronting Russia and defending democracy against authoritarianism,” the New York Times' Michael Crowley reports.
“When it comes to the newest boosters, so far about 4.4 million people— about 1.5% of those eligible — had opted for the shots through Sept. 21, though reporting lags in some states. This time around, the messaging also needs to overcome the publicly expressed qualms of some notable vaccine experts,” ProPublica's Robin Fields reports.
Biden’s support for Iran protesters comes after bitter lessons of 2009
“The last time waves of protests swept Iran, after the killing of a young woman who was standing on the sidelines of an anti-government rally in 2009, Barack Obama hesitated to back the anti-government movement publicly for fear that Tehran would claim the C.I.A. was secretly sparking the unrest,” the NYT's David E. Sanger reports.
“Thirteen years later, under remarkably similar circumstances, President Biden has taken a dramatically different approach. He publicly sided with the protesters in his speech to the United Nations last week.”
“The move aims to accelerate improvements in public health and ameliorate a problem that is weighing down the nation. More than 73 percent of Americans ages 15 and older are obese, based on body-mass index measurements — the second highest rate among some three dozen countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — and about 1 in 10 U.S. households are food insecure,” Andrew Jeong reports.
“President Biden faced growing pressure Monday to grant a federal waiver and allow a BP ship loaded with diesel fuel to access a port in Puerto Rico, where hundreds of thousands of hurricane-ravaged Americans remain without power,” Toluse Olorunnipa and Jeff Stein report.
“Because the ship is not U.S.-owned, it has been idling off the island’s coast, awaiting a decision by the Biden administration on waiving the Jones Act, a century-old law backed by labor unions and key to the president’s ‘Made in America’ agenda.”
How a storm surge works, visualized
“As a hurricane travels over the open sea, its powerful winds act like a giant bulldozer collecting water and pushing it forward. When this buildup of water runs into land, the sudden rise in sea level above normal tides is called storm surge, and it is sometimes the most deadly and destructive part of a hurricane,” Bonnie Berkowitz and Artur Galocha report.
“In my feature piece on how the Inflation Reduction Act was the result of decades-old policy fights, one set of voices was curiously silent: the think tank leaders, single-issue advocates, and ideological organizations known as ‘the groups.’ The IRA, in the end, was an inside operation that wasn’t penetrated by outside forces,” the American Prospect's David Dayen writes.
“This wasn’t for lack of trying. Enormous resources — hundreds of millions of dollars, but also the mindshare of thousands of people not in the administration or in Congress — were put to work trying to optimize the Biden agenda. With the one partial exception of climate, this effort didn’t succeed in piercing the Capitol Hill bubble. And many group leaders have been left to wonder why.”
“Targeting [Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) ] was part of a larger behind-the-scenes effort by top GOP donors and senior strategists to purge the influence of Republican factions that seek disruption and grandstanding, often at the expense of their GOP colleagues. The political machine around McCarthy has spent millions of dollars this year in a sometimes secretive effort to systematically weed out GOP candidates who could either cause McCarthy trouble if he becomes House speaker or jeopardize GOP victories in districts where more moderate candidate might have a better chance at winning,” Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey, Isaac Arnsdorf and Marianna Sotomayor report.
At 1:15 p.m., Biden will speak about “lowering health care costs and protecting and strengthening Medicare and Social Security.”
ICYMI: NASA crashes spacecraft into asteroid, passing planetary defense test
NASA successfully collided a small spacecraft into an asteroid on Sept. 26 to test its ability to defend Earth from potential asteroids. (Video: Reuters, Photo: AFP Photo/NASA/Reuters)
“NASA managed Monday to crash a small spacecraft directly into an asteroid, a 14,000-mile-per-hour collision designed to test whether such a technology could someday be deployed to protect Earth from a potentially catastrophic impact,” Joel Achenbach reports. | 2022-09-27T16:59:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Harris’ trip Asia is a classic of the modern VP genre - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/harris-trip-asia-is-classic-modern-vp-genre/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/harris-trip-asia-is-classic-modern-vp-genre/ |
At Ford’s Theatre, a director takes a return ‘Trip to Bountiful’
Michael Wilson, known for multiple interpretations of Horton Foote’s 1953 play, is back with a new version
From left: Kimberly Gilbert, Joe Mallon and Nancy Robinette in the Ford’s Theatre production of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful.” (Scott Suchman)
Michael Wilson was a student at the University of North Carolina in the mid-1980s when he visited his sister for a weekly movie night that proved to be anything but routine.
The selection that Friday evening was the 1985 film adaptation of Horton Foote’s 1953 play “The Trip to Bountiful.” The tale follows an elderly Houston woman with a desperate desire to return to her quaint hometown, but Wilson recalls that “every beat in the movie rang true” to his 22-year-old self. So in 1987, when Foote spoke at an event in Wilson’s hometown of Winston-Salem, N.C., the budding director approached his newfound idol with a query.
“I asked him, ‘Do you think I should go into television, film or theater?’ ” Wilson says. “Of course, it’s kind of a ridiculous question. How would he know? He doesn’t know me. And he said, ‘I can’t give you advice, but I can tell you that the work I’ve done in the theater has been, for me, more fulfilling.’ ”
Reflecting on that response from Foote, who died in 2009, Wilson adds: “Horton was one of the slyest, shrewdest writers and artists that I’ve known, and though he said he wasn’t answering, he gave an answer, right?”
That conversation was the start of a decades-long friendship between Foote, a celebrated dramatist known for writing 50-plus plays (and the screenplay for “To Kill a Mockingbird”), and Wilson, now recognized as the foremost interpreter of Foote’s work. After directing a 50th-anniversary production of “The Trip to Bountiful” at Houston’s Alley Theatre in 2003, staging a 2013 Broadway revival starring Cicely Tyson and helming a 2014 TV version, Wilson has returned to “Bountiful” once more — this time to direct a new production running through Oct. 16 at Ford’s Theatre.
“I was surprised that he came aboard, because he’s done it,” says Nancy Robinette, who plays the central role of Carrie Watts. “He just so fully understands the richness of the world of the play and the culture of the play, and the potential in the play to bring out empathy.”
Robinette wasn’t alone in thinking that Wilson wouldn’t be interested; the director also figured his 2014 visit to “Bountiful” was his final one. To sum up his thinking at the time, he quotes a line from Mrs. Watts: “I’ve had my trip. That’s more than enough to keep me happy the rest of my life.”
But when Robinette and Ford’s Theatre Director Paul R. Tetreault — who, as managing director at the Alley, had worked on the 2003 staging of “Bountiful” — approached Wilson about revisiting the play, he embraced the idea. With his mother now in her mid-80s, Wilson says he relates to the character of Ludie, Mrs. Watts’s protective son, in newfound ways. Although the production was originally planned for a 2020 run, he believes “Bountiful” and its themes of longing for a time gone by are all the more compelling amid the pandemic.
“It’s been a solace for me, at this moment, to be working on the play,” Wilson says. “Now, my life situation has helped inform how I can help the actors get inside these characters.”
To avoid re-creating or echoing his previous work, Wilson says he isn’t using his Broadway prompt book — a master script complete with technical cues and actors’ blocking — and decided not to re-watch archival footage of that production or his TV movie. Rui Rita, the lighting designer on the new production, is a veteran of the Broadway run, but Tim Mackabee’s set and Ivania Stack’s mid-century costumes come from fresh perspectives.
The actors bring new insights as well. Robinette, a D.C. theater luminary with four decades of experience on area stages, is joined by local favorites Joe Mallon as Ludie and Kimberly Gilbert as Jessie Mae, Carrie’s overbearing daughter-in-law. Explaining that the three most important words to a director are “I don’t know,” Wilson says he made a conscious effort in the rehearsal hall to let his cast explore their characters and not overshare his own experience with the play.
“He has a wonderful energy and keeps us on our toes, and he seems to enjoy the new things we bring to the play,” Robinette says. “So that’s a nice combination, to have someone who has worked on it, knows it and is still looking for it himself. He’s discovering it anew with us, and that’s kind of thrilling.”
“The Trip to Bountiful” isn’t the only Foote project on Wilson’s plate: He’s working on a stage musical based on Foote’s Oscar-winning screenplay for the 1983 film “Tender Mercies,” with a book by Daisy Foote, the playwright’s daughter, and music by Steve Earle. Wilson also hints that he’d love to adapt the Orphans’ Home Cycle — a trilogy of Foote’s plays that he directed off-Broadway in 2009 and 2010 — for television.
But first: a detour back to “Bountiful,” 35 years after that fateful interaction with Foote in Winston-Salem.
“I had no idea then, in 1987, not only that most of my life would be artistically, professionally and personally defined by my relationship with this writer, but also with this particular piece,” Wilson says. “ ‘The Trip to Bountiful’ is going to be here for a long time to come, and it has truly turned out to be one of Horton Foote’s deserving lasting legacies.”
Ford’s Theatre, 511 10th St NW. 202-347-4833. fords.org. | 2022-09-27T17:00:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At Ford's Theatre, a director takes a return 'Trip to Bountiful' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/09/27/michael-wilson-trip-bountiful-fords-theatre/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/09/27/michael-wilson-trip-bountiful-fords-theatre/ |
“I am focused on moving forward and extremely happy being a part of LIV,” Phil Mickelson said in a statement. (Tannen Maury/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Mickelson formally dismissed his claims against the PGA Tour on Tuesday morning, according to notices filed with the U.S. District Court in Northern California, along with fellow LIV golfers Talor Gooch, Ian Poulter and Hudson Swafford.
“Nothing has changed. The merits of the case — the PGA Tour’s anti-competitive conduct — still stand and will be fully tested in court,” said Jonathan Grella, an LIV Golf spokesman. “And we look forward to that. LIV stands with the players whom the PGA Tour has treated so poorly, but we also recognize that to be successful, we no longer need a wide array of players to be on the suit.”
Two of the players who pulled out of the lawsuit Tuesday — Gooch and Swafford — tried unsuccessfully to gain entry into the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup playoffs by requesting a temporary restraining order in the case. U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman denied their request last month, saying the players failed to demonstrate their exclusion from the tour’s season-ending event amounted to “irreparable harm.”
Four of the plaintiffs from the initial complaint dropped out of the lawsuit: Abraham Ancer, Jason Kokrak, Pat Perez and Carlos Ortiz. | 2022-09-27T17:24:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Phil Mickelson, others pull out of LIV Golf lawsuit against PGA Tour - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/27/phil-mickelson-liv-antitrust-suit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/27/phil-mickelson-liv-antitrust-suit/ |
Fortnite is five years old. It’s still winning the battle royale.
Even if you’ve never played, by now you know of “Fortnite.”
Five years ago the battle royale debuted for millions of people across the world, becoming one of gaming’s biggest titles and even launching some of its top players into new stratospheres of celebrity.
But what’s more interesting is what Fortnite could yet become — and how the game could reshape the internet as we know it.
DrLupo has made millions while streaming to his 4.5 million followers on Twitch and another 1.8 million subscribers on YouTube. He’s used that platform to raise millions in fundraising for St. Jude Children’s Hospital, serving as something of a celebrity to the hospital’s patients, as well as their benefactor. All of this success, he said, can be traced back to five years ago when he decided to start playing a cartoonish shooter game called “Fortnite.”
“It’s the base for a lot of what I’ve been able to do in my career,” Lupo, who’s real name is Ben Lupo, told The Post in August. “It was hands down the most important thing that I ever did with streaming.”
“Fortnite,” the wildly popular battle royale that pits a hundred players against each other in a fight to be the last player or team standing, first released in September of 2017. The game became an instant success, growing to hundreds of millions of players and raking in hundreds of millions in revenue every month despite being free-to-play. In the process, it became much more than a moneymaker, resonating in ways few entertainment products ever have.
For starters, “Fortnite” catapulted a number of Twitch streamers, like Lupo, into a new stratosphere of fame. When Lupo started streaming the game, he played with Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, a friend and fellow streamer who, with his blue hair and knack for winning, became the poster child of “Fortnite’s” early viral success. Over time, Lupo said his Twitch channel grew from a few hundred viewers to more than 10,000 people all simultaneously watching him play “Fortnite” with Blevins and others.
Nowadays, Lupo, 35, has an exclusive streaming deal with YouTube for an undisclosed amount (Lupo said it leaves his family secure for life) and he’s raised more than $10 million for St. Jude from streaming “Fortnite” and other games. Meanwhile, Blevins is streaming everywhere — truly, on all possible platforms — and he’s turned his meteoric rise from “Fortnite” into an apparel line, a cover story in ESPN The Magazine and a gig co-hosting the 2018 New Year’s Eve festivities from Times Square.
Ben “DrLupo” Lupo at an event hosted by St. Jude Children's Research Hospital on Thursday, April 25, 2019. (Ricardo Arduengo/ALSAC)
It hasn’t yet. “Fortnite” is available on any internet-connected PC, console, phone, or tablet near you. Some of the world’s most popular media franchises and sports leagues — from Star Wars and Darth Vader to the NFL — have in-game characters, apparel or set locations for “Fortnite’s” virtual island. The Russo brothers, the Hollywood directors best known for making some of the most ambitious movies in Marvel’s cinematic universe, brought their work into the game when “Fortnite” gave players control of the reality-bending Infinity Gauntlet owned by the Avengers’ nemesis, Thanos.
“As storytellers, we are motivated by our desire to consistently push the envelope of what is achievable,” Joe and Anthony Russo wrote in an email, responding to questions from The Post. “Bringing Thanos to the Fornite Universe in such an authentic way was very gratifying to us and we are extremely interested in finding ways to continue to be a part of the Epic ecosystem.”
“Fortnite” found mass appeal by swapping the hyper-realistic grit found in shooting games like Call of Duty for a bright, cartoonish world that appeals to both adults and kids. As Lupo points out, there’s no blood in “Fortnite.” Other players are just eliminated.
LEFT: RIGHT:
In 2019, Drake and Travis Scott played “Fortnite” with Blevins and NFL wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster, shattering viewership records on Twitch at the time. Since then, the lines between popular music and the game have continued to blur. A year later, popular music producer and DJ Marshmello hosted the first-ever musical performance within the game in a suburban part of the island called Pleasant Park. Travis Scott and Ariana Grande followed up with shows of their own and recently MTV added a new music award to recognize the best such in-game performances. Now, iHeartRadio has created a private island within “Fortnite” to host performances and it’s sponsored by State Farm.
The likeness of Ariana Grande performs during an in-game concert in Fortnite. (Epic Games)
The game’s impact has been felt outside of the entertainment world as well. Last year, “Fortnite” was the focal point in a courtroom battle between Epic and Apple, in which the game developer claimed the iPhone maker was operating as a monopoly by requiring that all purchases for “Fortnite,” and other games on the iPhone, funnel through Apple’s App Store. When a judge ruled that Epic had failed to prove Apple to be a monopoly, it dealt a blow to Epic chief executive Tim Sweeney’s ultimate vision for the game and his company — the creation of the metaverse.
[Silicon Valley is racing to build the next version of the Internet. Fortnite might get there first.]
“It used to be that you would see an update to a game every six months or maybe a year,” said Matthew Ball said, a former Amazon executive and the author of a book on efforts to construct a metaverse. “When Fortnite came out, there weren’t very many other publishers that were making updates of significance every 90 days, but also minor changes three times per week.”
Ball said any notion that Epic’s success with “Fortnite” was a stroke of luck would be a mistake. “Fortnite” was not Epic’s “first or second big hit,” he noted. That honor belongs to “Unreal,” the seminal sci-fi first-person shooter Epic released two decades ago. “Unreal” and its sequel, the enormously influential multiplayer title “Unreal Tournament,” helped make Epic the company it is today.
Unreal’s true legacy came from the game’s engine — a software framework that acts as the foundation and building blocks of a video game. It’s common practice for developers to license a game engine from another creator and the Unreal engine has been used to power hundreds of games today including “Mass Effect,” “BioShock,” “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” and of course, “Fortnite.” More recently, Unreal has found a home in Hollywood, where it’s been used to create virtual sets for Disney’s “The Mandalorian” and HBO’s “Westworld.”
“Epic Games, they own ‘Fortnite’ but, really, their moneymaker is Unreal Engine,” Hassan, AKA SypherPK, said. “Their plan is to give people Unreal Engine tools to customize the ‘Fortnite’ experience and create new game modes.”
If people stop playing the battle royale “Fortnite” is based on, that’s fine, Hassan said. Epic Games wants to host user-generated islands and games that can live on “for years” past the original game. At the start of the year, Hassan announced he’s launching his own production studio in Austin, Texas to support content creators and potentially build maps or new game modes within “Fortnite.”
Ninja plays as himself during a livestream of his Fortnite skin announcement. (Mixer)
“If anything is going to be a separate universe that we hang out in, it would be ‘Fortnite,'” said Kathleen Belsten, a 29-year-old Australian streamer known as “Loserfruit.” Belsten is one of a handful of streamers who have their own likeness in the game, which she describes as “cloning yourself in another universe.”
Kabbani and other streamers said Epic is attempting to turn “Fortnite” into a virtual sandbox. The game’s creative mode already lets players build, share or explore islands created by other players. Kabbani said that when Epic gives people more of the tools to really create entire games within “Fortnite’s” framework, it’ll be “a different ballgame” — less battle royale, more metaverse.
“Maybe we have already seen the peak of ‘Fortnite,’ " he said. “But I think we have yet to see the second peak of ‘Fortnite.’ ” | 2022-09-27T17:37:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fortnite at 5: Can Epic Game's reign push beyond battle royales? - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/interactive/2022/fortnite-anniversary-epic-games/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/interactive/2022/fortnite-anniversary-epic-games/ |
Reliever Sean Doolittle has missed most of the season after injuring his elbow in April. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Within five minutes Monday afternoon, Sean Doolittle chatted with Ryan Zimmerman, received a fist bump from Victor Robles and hugged Nelson Cruz by the cafeteria in the Washington Nationals’ clubhouse. It was, after all, Doolittle’s 36th birthday, but he does have a deep-seated connection with each of those guys. He and Robles both helped the Nationals to a title in 2019. Same with Doolittle and the now-retired Zimmerman, though they also played together at the University of Virginia, back when Doolittle was still a hitter and they each batted in the middle of the order.
And Cruz, now his teammate, is more familiar as a rival in the box. Doolittle set down Cruz for his first career strikeout in 2012. They have squared off 13 times, Doolittle getting the best of Cruz aside from a walk and homer.
These are the details of a life in baseball. This is the life Doolittle, recovering from an internal brace procedure on his left elbow, is not quite ready to give up.
“If this was happening to me when I was 25, 26, whatever, theoretically I’d still be under team control, I’d still know where I was going to be next year,” said Doolittle, who opted for the season-ending surgery in July and will be a free agent this winter. “And you know, that part of it is a little bit nerve-racking. But it just came down to … if I want to continue my career and I want to pitch another two, three, four more years, I think I can do it. I want to do it, at least. I want to try.”
Svrluga: Sean Doolittle and Eireann Dolan are living their D.C. statehood advocacy
Retirement is a scary word, especially in the finite job of throwing a baseball. But after signing a one-year deal with the Nationals last spring — and after retiring all but one of the 17 batters he faced in April — Doolittle feels he has some innings left. He opted for the internal brace procedure over Tommy John surgery because of the speedier recovery. He’s tentatively scheduled to start throwing in the third week of October, slightly ahead of when he would in a normal offseason.
If that goes well, bullpens are penciled in for mid-to-late January. If those go well, he hopes to show teams video and data that illustrates progress. And what he hopes more than anything is that the Nationals call again.
“That would be amazing. That would be best-case scenario, for sure, for so many different reasons,” Doolittle said at his locker Monday. “I love playing for Davey [Martinez]. This is home for us. The medical staff and physical therapists, we put so much effort into this rehab and it’s going really well post-surgery. I kind of want to stick with them and see it through, and we came back here initially cause I wanted to be here and I wanted to see it come full circle, so …
“I really would like a do-over. I realize that there’s a lot that I have to do on my end to even have that be a possibility. But hopefully January or ahead of camp in February, I can show them that I’m healthy and come in and compete for a spot.”
Last March, in the post-lockout scramble for free agents, the Nationals were drawn to an uptick in Doolittle’s four-seam fastball velocity. They thought he could lead an inexperienced bullpen and potentially be flipped at the trade deadline for a prospect or two. In a minuscule sample, then, he was headed toward attracting clubs in need of a left-handed reliever for the stretch run. His arm just didn’t cooperate.
Working with Seth Blee, a physical therapist for the Nationals, Doolittle has advanced to throwing and slamming medicine balls. Soon he will begin single-hand plyometrics, gearing that stage of the rehab process to his pitching motion. Next week he will visit Birmingham, Ala., where he underwent the internal brace procedure, for a scheduled check-in with his surgeon. Then he’ll wait to grip the seams and throw.
“He doesn’t want to finish his career the way this is right now,” said Manager Dave Martinez. “ … Before he got hurt, he was doing unbelievably in a role that was very important to us. So hopefully he can come back and we’ll see what happens next spring.” | 2022-09-27T17:59:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sean Doolittle hopes for Nationals' reunion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/27/sean-doolittle-nationals-future/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/27/sean-doolittle-nationals-future/ |
Geoffrey S. Berman, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, at the Justice Department in Washington in October 2018. (Alex Brandon/AP)
A respected federal prosecutor who once headed a premier U.S. attorney’s office has told his story of how President Donald Trump tried repeatedly to use the Justice Department against his political opponents. The allegations seemed to have caused hardly a ripple. Mr. Trump is arguably the most scandal-ridden president in the country’s history, and the allegations from former Manhattan U.S. attorney Geoffrey S. Berman have been overshadowed by the unfolding investigation into Mr. Trump’s alleged pilfering of classified government documents. It’s imperative, though, to determine exactly what happened and who might be culpable in any efforts to weaponize the Justice Department.
Mr. Berman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York for 2½ years, until Mr. Trump fired him in June 2020, describes in a new memoir efforts by Mr. Trump to use the U.S. Attorney’s Office to support the then-president’s political interests and punish his opponents. In the book, “Holding the Line,” Mr. Berman alleges that Justice Department political appointees pushed him to investigate John F. Kerry after the former secretary of state and Democratic senator criticized Mr. Trump’s decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal. Mr. Trump, Mr. Berman wrote, wanted Mr. Kerry prosecuted for violations of the Logan Act, which forbids private citizens from engaging in unauthorized diplomacy. Mr. Berman writes how he refused because the law is vague and no one has ever been convicted of violating it.
Mr. Berman claims that Trump appointees also pressured him to investigate Gregory B. Craig, a White House counsel under President Barack Obama, for violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. “It’s time for you guys to even things out,” Mr. Berman said a Justice Department official told him after Trump supporters had been indicted just before the 2018 midterm elections. After Mr. Berman refused to charge Mr. Craig, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia charged the former Obama official with making false statements. A jury acquitted Mr. Craig. Some of Mr. Berman’s harshest words are directed at former attorney general William P. Barr, whom he describes as “thuggish” in his alleged meddling in a range of sensitive investigations.
Some of the Justice Department officials against whom Mr. Berman has made allegations have denied his account. Thankfully, the Senate Judiciary Committee announced it will investigate Mr. Berman’s claims. The panel should do so impartially, because more is at stake than history.
If Mr. Berman’s account is true, he and others in the department deserve praise for refusing to bow to political pressure. But more important is determining whether there are vulnerabilities in the Justice Department’s structure and procedures that need to be patched. Mr. Berman, for example, recommends that the department not be allowed to shop around cases to other U.S. attorneys when one has already declined to prosecute someone, as occurred in the case involving Mr. Craig.
We wish Mr. Berman had spoken out earlier and not waited until he had a book to sell. But the warning he sounds — about the fragility of justice and the danger that a second Trump presidency might pose — must not go unnoticed. | 2022-09-27T18:25:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Berman's story of Trump-era DOJ political pressure needs investigation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/berman-justice-department-trump-barr-interference/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/berman-justice-department-trump-barr-interference/ |
Women are leading a revolution in Iran. When will Western feminists help?
By Masih Alinejad
Iranian demonstrators taking to the streets of the capital Tehran during a protest for Mahsa Amini on Sept. 21, days after she died in police custody. (AFP/Getty Images)
A new popular uprising is taking place in Iran, and this time women are in the lead. It’s incredibly inspiring to see — for the first time I can remember — unveiled women marching at the front. They have overcome fear and are challenging one of the main pillars of the Islamic Republic of Iran: compulsory hijab.
Mahsa Amini was only 22 years old. She wasn’t uncovered; only a few strands of her hair showed. And yet she was arrested by the so-called “morality police” and packed off to jail. Three days later she was dead. Many Iranians are convinced she was killed —a belief reinforced by countless individual experiences with the brutality of the security services.
Recent experience has been discouraging. Over the past decade, we’ve seen female politicians from democratic countries — including Ségolène Royal from France, Catherine Ashton from the United Kingdom, and Federica Mogherini from Italy — don hijab on their visits to Iran. All these female politicians are quick to assert their feminist credentials in their own societies — but when it comes to Iran they go out of their way to show deference to the men who have elevated misogyny to a state principle. A regime that abuses and harasses millions of women each year does not deserve our respect. To do so makes a mockery of all our talk of universal human rights.
When the Women’s March took place in Washington, D.C., in 2017, I was happy to join. Along with the rest I chanted: “My body, my choice.” Some women might well choose to veil their faces and bodies in accordance with their religious or cultural beliefs — but that should be a matter of their own choice, not a rule imposed by the whips and clubs of men. Yet Western women seem only too happy to succumb to the standards dictated by the male tyrants in countries such as Afghanistan and Iran.
I don’t consider such feminists to be true advocates of women’s rights. The true feminists and women’s rights activists are those in Afghanistan and Iran who are stepping forward, at great cost, to resist the Taliban and Islamic republic. They are the true feminist leaders of the 21st century, risking their lives by facing guns and bullets. They will go on fighting against the regimes, and we who have the privilege to live in free countries should actively amplify their voices. This is the moment for women in the West to stand with Iran’s mothers, daughters and sisters.
I will not remain silent. I will continue to speak out until compulsory hijab laws are abolished. Like the women now taking to the streets in my home country, I, too, I have been targeted by the regime. I have chosen to speak up despite that regime’s attacks on my family, and its attempts to have me abducted or killed. In this, I feel deep solitary with the thousands of women protesting in Iran. I will continue to do what I can to support their struggle, to help them achieve their rights.
My wish is for all of us to be louder than the tyrants. I call on the free world to join the protesters in calling for an end to the murderous regime of the ayatollahs. Iranian women are fighting to recover our dignity and exercise our personal freedoms — so that, one day, all Iranians can finally choose our government in free and fair elections. We shouldn’t be afraid of the religious fanatics and the jihadists. They are the ones who are frightened. It is why they seek to keep women down. Women in the streets are paying with their lives for change. But too many in the outside world are shaking hands with our murderers.
I am asking all Western feminists to speak up. Join us. Make a video. Cut your hair. Burn a headscarf. Share it on social media and boost Iranian voices. Use your freedom to say her name. Her name is Mahsa Amini. | 2022-09-27T18:25:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Women are leading a revolution in Iran. When will Western feminists help? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/masih-alinejad-west-feminists-support-iranian-women/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/masih-alinejad-west-feminists-support-iranian-women/ |
Putin’s recruits are heading for slaughter
By Mark Hertling
A satellite image shows a traffic jam near Russia's border with Georgia on Sunday. (Maxar Technologies handout/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Retired Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling commanded the 1st Armored Division during the Iraq surge and later commanded U.S. Army Europe.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to activate 300,000 "reservists" — some of whom have previously served, some who have not — to hold the line in Ukraine has led thousands of young Russian men to flee the country. The call-up is an outrage, but not only for the reasons you might imagine. Sending new recruits, poorly trained Russian reservists and untrained civilians into Ukraine is a recipe for slaughter. They will not be prepared for what they will encounter.
Years ago, I was given the command of the organization that oversees all basic training for the Army (what some call “boot camp”), as well as managing the advanced training that follows for every Army trooper. At the time, the United States was recruiting approximately 160,000 soldiers, warrant officers and officers each year.
Most Americans who volunteer to join the Army undergo 10 weeks of basic training, then head to different locations for more training in an assigned specialty. “Basic” is a packed period in which soldiers learn and practice such skills as rifle marksmanship, first aid, map reading, land navigation, and grenade throwing. They also learn about working as part of a team, reacting to various kinds of attacks (artillery, chemical, ambush, etc.), drill and ceremony (how to march, salute, and other elements of discipline), professional ethos and values, and a variety of other skills. It is intense.
The length of the follow-on training depends on the specialty selected by each soldier, but it’s measured in months, not weeks. An intelligence specialist who works as an interpreter spends almost a year learning the trade. Logistics specialists — truck drivers, fuelers, mechanics — spend less, depending on their jobs. Most recruits will spend three or four years in uniform, and a large percentage reenlist and stay in the professional force.
I later became the commander of the U.S. Army in Europe. In that role, I was able to visit Russia several times and observe how another army trained its conscripts and incorporated them into its force.
Russia’s army is mainly a conscript force. Twice a year, Russian men between the ages of 18 and 27 present themselves to their local commissariat. This annual pool is more than 1 million men, from which 120,000-140,000 are deemed qualified and are compelled to serve. Russian conscripts then participate in one to two months of basic training (the exact number of weeks is not defined), followed by three to six months of advanced training in a particular skill set. Graduated soldiers report to their units for a short 12- to 18-month enlistment. Few make the army a career.
It is easy to see why. Russian drill sergeants were unprofessional and continuously harassed and hazed recruits. Marksmanship training was geared toward familiarization with a weapon, but not qualification on it. Soldiers were allocated few rounds for practice on firing ranges. First aid training was rudimentary, map reading and land navigation was nonexistent, soldier initiative was lacking, and discipline was lax.
The barracks were crowded, bunks were close, ventilation was poor. Showers and toilets were gang latrines. Food in the mess halls had small portions, no choices and little nutritional value. I didn’t observe any training on values, soldiers’ ethics, professional behavior, or the teaching of land warfare, all key parts of U.S. basic training. Most training in those areas, I was told by a Russian colonel, is conducted after soldiers leave basic and report to their units. To which I could only conclude: Yeah, right.
Shortly thereafter, I visited a tank regiment. I was ushered to that battalion’s single T-72 tank crew simulator, participated in a drill, and found the device rudimentary and unrealistic. U.S. armor crewmen spend extensive time in tank simulators before firing dozens of live rounds at different types of moving and stationary targets at extended ranges — on multiple types of tank ranges. After experiencing the Russian simulator, I went to their single tank range and was proudly told by the Russian commander that each of his crews was able to fire one live round per year. I tried to keep my jaw from dropping.
Having watched the Russian army during the first seven months of its campaign in Ukraine, I cannot say I’m surprised by any of their setbacks. The Russians performed as their training would have suggested: poorly. The casualty counts reflect this. It is no wonder so many young Russians are fleeing the country.
Which brings us back to how Putin’s 300,000 “reservists” will fare against Ukraine’s NATO-trained army. It is likely those recruits will join units that have recently been traumatized after seven months of combat, and already suffer from poor morale. It won’t help that those units have recently been reinforced with prison parolees, ragtag militias from false “peoples’ republics,” and recruited guns from private armies.
The results will be predictable. Putin might continue to send unwilling Russian men to an ill-conceived and illegal invasion for which they are not trained or prepared. But it’s not warfare. It’s just more murder — this time of its own citizens. | 2022-09-27T18:25:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Poor Russian training means certain slaughter for Putin's recruits - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/putin-recruits-flee-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/putin-recruits-flee-russia/ |
Putin’s chaotic mobilization reveals the weakness of his dictatorship
Police detain demonstrators at an unauthorized protest against Russia's partial military mobilization on Saturday in St. Petersburg. (Anatoly Maltsev/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
It turns out there’s a good reason Russian dictator Vladimir Putin waited so long — nearly seven months — after launching his failing war of aggression against Ukraine before beginning even a partial mobilization of military manpower. The mobilization, announced last week, was intended to showcase Russian strength. Instead, it is revealing the hidden weakness of Putin’s kleptocratic rule.
Like many dictators, Putin is good at staying in power and looting the treasury — but little else. He might strut like a strongman, but when push comes to shove, he is revealed as a miserable coward presiding over the empty husk of a petro-state.
The internet is awash in images of antiwar protests in Russia, of men being rounded up against their will, of arson attacks and even armed attacks on recruiting offices, and of military-age men fleeing the country by car or airplane. While the mobilization was supposed to apply only to 300,000 personnel with prior military experience, there are reports of men with no military background — some with serious medical conditions — being drafted and sent to the front with little or no training. It remains unclear whether this is due to central directives from the Kremlin. It might simply be the work of overeager draft boards trying to show, like collective farmers in Soviet times, that they are exceeding the nonsensical quotas dictated by distant masters in Moscow.
This shambolic process will not produce well-disciplined and well-armed soldiers. It will produce cannon fodder. That might serve Putin’s purposes for the time being — even untrained recruits can thicken the lines and prevent a collapse of Russian positions — but it will come at a heavy cost of stoking internal unrest and opposition.
Most Russians were willing to acquiesce in the war as long as they didn’t have to sacrifice for it. Now that men are being press-ganged into service, Putin is bringing the war home in ways that are risky for a despot with little legitimacy.
Putin came to power after the chaotic post-Soviet period of the 1990s when crime and corruption were rampant and the state barely functioned. He stabilized the country for a time, but now he is generating unprecedented instability and demanding unprecedented sacrifice. There is no reason to think Putin’s cruel reign will end anytime soon, but he has definitely taken the riskiest gamble of his more than two decades in power.
Putin has staked everything on a war that he is losing. Instead of looking for a way out, he keeps doubling down in ways that prove counterproductive. He is doing what dictators high on their own supply so often do, which is to assume they know better than the professionals how to run complex undertakings such as military campaigns.
The New York Times reports that, at the beginning of the conflict, Putin overrode the concerns of Russian officers who said — correctly — that he “was going to war with insufficient troops and weaponry.” Now, the Times says, Putin is again injecting himself into tactical decision-making by refusing permission to evacuate troops from the southern city of Kherson, where they are in danger of being encircled by a Ukrainian counteroffensive.
Like Hitler refusing his army permission to retreat from Stalingrad, Putin might be leading his own soldiers to slaughter. If the Ukrainians manage to trap and cut off an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 Russian troops on the west bank of the Dnieper, it will be the costliest calamity yet for the Putin regime.
With the Russian army’s tactical situation deteriorating, the Kremlin keeps threatening to use nuclear weapons. But it is far from clear that Putin could achieve his objectives even by going nuclear. This desperate gambit could backfire, assuming the Biden administration makes good on its threats of “grave consequences.” That is admittedly speculative, but we do know that the threat of nuclear annihilation has not cowed Ukraine into submission.
While we should be concerned about Russia’s possible use of nuclear weapons, we should also be concerned about the costs of letting Putin get away with this evil war of aggression. If he can successfully carve up Ukraine, he could keep going, just as Hitler did after the invasion of Poland.
“Politicians are right to be fearful of a weakened and humiliated Russia,” writes James Nixey of the Chatham House think tank in London. “But logic suggests they should be even more wary of a strong and emboldened one.” Sooner or later, this monster must be stopped. The Ukrainians are willing to pay the high price of stopping him. They deserve our gratitude and support.
It is still impossible to know, more than half a year in, how this conflict will end. Putin is counting on the coalition against him to crack. But support for Ukraine remains strong in both Europe and the United States. Because they are grounded in popular support, democracies show a resiliency that many dictatorships lack. At this point, it appears that the Russian state might crack first. | 2022-09-27T18:25:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Putin’s mobilization reveals the weakness of his dictatorship - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/russian-mobilization-weakness-putin-regime/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/russian-mobilization-weakness-putin-regime/ |
Audit of charter school program finds big problems
In this Aug. 9, 2017, photo, flags decorate a space outside the office of then-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos at the Education Department in Washington. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
The U.S. Education Department’s Office of Inspector General has released a new audit of the federal Charter School Programs that found some alarming results about how charter school networks have used millions of dollars in funding. Among other things, the audit found that charter school networks and for-profit charter management organizations did not open anywhere near the number of charters they promised to open with federal funding. This piece looks at the new audit and what it tells us
The reason this is not surprising is that investigations into the Charter School Programs by the Network for Public Education, an advocacy group that opposes the growth of charter schools, found that same problem, as well as others and reported it a few years ago. You can read my stories about their “Asleep at the Wheel” reports here and here. (The second report noted that the state with the most charter schools that never opened was Michigan, home to former education secretary Betsy DeVos, who has pushed to expand charter schools for decades.)
Report: U.S. government wasted up to $1 billion on charter schools and still fails to adequately monitor grants
Report: Federal government wasted millions of dollars on charter schools that never opened
Charter schools are publicly funded but privately managed. The federal charter program, which began in 1994 with the aim of expanding high-quality charters, had bipartisan support for years, but many Democrats have pulled back from the movement, citing the fiscal impact on school districts and repeated scandals in the sector. The Biden administration is making some changes to the program in an effort to stop waste and fraud and provide more transparency to the operation of charters.
What the Biden administration’s new rules for charter schools say
This piece was written by Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education and a former award-winning principal in New York. She has been chronicling the charter school movement and the standardized-test-based accountability movement on this blog for years. The Network for Public Education is an alliance of organizations that advocates for the improvement of public education and sees charter schools as part of a movement to privatize public education.
A new report issued by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) entitled “The Effectiveness of Charter School Programs in Increasing the Number of Charter Schools” documents how states, charter management organizations, and charter developers often make wildly exaggerated claims regarding the number of charter schools they will open or expand to secure large grants.
The OIG, an independent watchdog of the U.S. Department of Education (the Department), found that for grants issued between 2013 and 2016, only 51 percent of the schools promised by Charter School Programs (CSP) recipients opened or expanded.
The OIG audit also exposed the sloppy record keeping and weak oversight that characterize CSP operations. Since 2006, the department has paid a private corporation, WestEd, millions of dollars to compile, check and update CSP records. WestEd’s present CSP contract exceeds $12 million. In total, WestEd has active contracts with the U.S. Department of Education worth more than $27.6 million. Yet an alarming number of grant records could not be found when requested by the OIG auditors. And while the Biden administration is attempting to clean up and reform the CSP, according to the independent OIG, more work needs to be done.
What did the Office of the Inspector General audit?
The audit had three goals. The first was to describe how the department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education tracked and reported the number of charter schools that opened and expanded using Charter School Program funds. A second goal was to determine whether CSP grant recipients actually delivered the number of charter schools they promised when they applied for their often multimillion dollar awards. Finally, the audit sought to determine how many schools were still open two years after CSP funding ended.
As its title stated, the audit was an attempt to measure the program’s effectiveness in fulfilling its mission. To conduct the audit, the OIG examined 2013 through 2016 CSP grant records. During that period, the department awarded 103 CSP grants to states, charter management organizations, or individual charter developers. Ninety-four were closely investigated by the OIG. The likely reason these years were chosen was that most grants are for five years. The auditors also found that the department often extends them further when grantees have not spent all of their money. Therefore, more recent grants were excluded because records were likely to be incomplete.
Incomplete and inaccurate records
The auditors noted that while the department, through WestEd, tracked spending and schools while grants were open, the tracking stopped as soon as the grant was complete. Therefore, the department had no way of knowing whether schools remained open beyond the years federal funds propped them up. This speaks to the purpose of the program — to open and expand high-quality charter schools.
When auditors asked the department to define the term high-quality, the department responded that the “CSP office does not determine whether a charter school is high-quality because state rules for determining high quality vary.”
“Additionally,” it said, “the determination of whether a charter school is a high quality is often the responsibility of charter school authorizers.” The department also told auditors that tracking a school’s existence after all money was doled out was not its job.
Even if the department wanted to do a quality check of schools as they were funding and expanding, the OIG found that there was no accurate base of information that they could rely on to determine whether they should continue what was often a multimillion-dollar grant. From the audit:
Although the CSP office created processes for tracking and reporting on charter schools that opened and expanded and charter schools that remained open through the grant performance period end date, those processes did not result in CSP grant recipients reporting precise, reliable, and timely information in their FPRs [final performance reports], APRs [annual performance reports], and data collection forms. The processes also did not result in the CSP office receiving all the necessary information to assess grant recipients’ performance or evaluate the overall effectiveness of the CSP.
Specifically, the department could not produce 13 percent of the required final reports from grantees and 43 percent of the required final data collection sheets. Auditors noted that grantees would report different numbers of schools opened or expanded among required collection forms and final reports. The accuracy of the final documents prepared by WestEd for the department was beyond the scope of the audit.
During our research for our second Asleep at the Wheel report, we found that the data collection sheets produced by WestEd and published in 2019 by then Education Secretary Betsy De Vos were replete with errors. Schools that had closed or never opened were reported as open or future. We also noted inaccuracies in recently submitted sheets we received from a Freedom of Information Act request, especially relating to the for-profit management status of the awardee.
But the OIG discovered a far worse problem yet. More than half of the schools that grantees committed to opening or expanding did not open or expand at all.
Charter schools are publicly funded — but there’s big money in selling them
CSP grantees failed to meet commitments
Grant applicants asked for and received millions of dollars based on their promises to open and expand charter schools. However, when the auditors examined 94 grantee applications, they found that many grantees fell far short of their commitments.
The OIG determined that based on the commitments made in the 94 applications, state education agencies, CMOs, and developers promised to open or expand 1,570 charter schools using CSP funds.
As of July 2021, approximately 75 percent of the grant funding had been spent, yet grantees had only opened or expanded 51 percent of the charters they had promised.
This begs the question, where did millions of tax dollars go? I identified grantees by matching applications on the department website along with numbers in the data set with grant codes in the OIG report.
In its 2016 CSP application, the Florida Department of Education put forth what it called a “bold and ambitious plan to … develop a high-impact system to dramatically improve the opportunities of educationally disadvantaged students. The department said that it would use the grant to “support the creation of 200 new high-quality charter schools over the next five years.”
Florida received $70.7 million to achieve its “bold and ambitious” plan. According to the OIG report, it had only opened 33 percent — or 66 — of the schools it promised to open as of July 2021, although it had spent over 51 percent of the CSP funds.
Colorado’s 2015 application promised that it would open 72 charter schools with its over 24.2 million dollar grant. In the end, it opened fewer than half — just 33 — and expanded three schools. Nevertheless, it spent 87.5 percent of its funds.
Tennessee ambitiously promised to open 114 charter schools. It opened just 16, though it managed to spend 63 percent of its grant. These states are not outliers. The report shows a pattern.
And CMOs also failed to deliver. The KIPP charter network promised 65 schools for its jumbo $48,750,000 grant, one that well exceeded most states. It delivered 34 schools and expanded one.
Finally, there are grants to developers that the department directly provides. The Innovation Development Corporation received a $405,730 CSP grant to open The Delaware Met. It was open for just a few months before it was shut down. It also received and spent $72,000 to open DE Stem. That school was shut down before it even opened. Willow Public School, a Washington charter school, took and spent a $602,875 grant, opened, ran into trouble, changed its name, and then shut down.
The department and the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools attribute the problem to authorizer reluctance and state caps on the number of schools that can open. Really? Every state that got a grant has a state board that can override local rejections of applications. State applicants and the department are also well aware of caps. Take the case of the 2018 $78,888,888 CSP grant to the New York State Department of Education, which was outside the scope of the OIG audit.
In the New York State application review, which you can find here, raters acknowledge that New York State had not even used up its previous grant which was open beyond its terms and that charter expansion would be limited by the state cap on the number of charters. Yet they gave the application high scores, and it was approved. Where did that 2018 money go? Over $10 million went to provide staff development in technology for charter schools.
Jumbo grants
Why do states and charter management organizations ask for jumbo grants knowing they cannot deliver? Because they want the money to fund their charter school operations.
States and charter management organizations get to keep 10 percent of the cut for grant administration and technical assistance to charter schools. The bigger the grant, the bigger the cut. Therefore, KIPP was allowed to keep nearly $5 million for its charter management organization, even though it fell way short of its commitment. The Florida Department of Education secured over $7 million for administrative services on its grant.
Second, there are no guidelines about how much an individual charter school can get. We have seen grants as low as $250,000 and grants to schools of $1.5 million. When a state realizes it cannot or will not meet its commitment, it just doles out larger amounts.
Third, until President Biden, no prior administration did anything about it over the Charter School Program’s existence. Therefore, states, CMOs, and individual schools realized pretty quickly that they could create grandiose applications, sometimes including falsehoods, and there would be no real consequences if commitments were never met.
The present department has taken a terrible beating for creating modest CSP reform regulations which are still being fought by the charter trade organizations and their proxies, including the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a charter school authorizer. Challenges include both a lawsuit and a Republican-sponsored bill to overturn the new rules.
But as the OIG audit shows, reforms are desperately needed.
Is the Charter Schools Program financing white-flight academies?
Here’s the full audit:
Charter School Audit by Valerie Strauss | 2022-09-27T18:30:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Audit of charter school program finds big problems - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/27/audit-charter-school-program-big-problems/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/27/audit-charter-school-program-big-problems/ |
Penny Hardaway's Memphis team was placed on three years of probation but avoided an NCAA tournament ban. (Patrick Lantrip/Daily Memphian/AP)
Memphis was placed on three years of probation and publicly reprimanded Tuesday by the NCAA’s Independent Accountability Resolution Process, which declined to punish men’s basketball coach Penny Hardaway or issue an NCAA tournament ban.
Among other potential infractions, Memphis had been accused by the NCAA of four Level I violations and two Level II violations of NCAA policy after an 18-month investigation, including a lack of institutional control.
The IARP determined Memphis failed to monitor Hardaway as an athletics booster and provided extra impermissible benefits and other benefits to recruits. It also ruled that Memphis failed to cooperate with the investigation when it delayed turning over requested documents.
The IARP placed the Tigers on probation through Sept. 26, 2025. They were fined $5,000, plus 0.25 percent of their men’s basketball budget. Under IARP rules, Memphis cannot appeal. It is significant for the school that there was no tournament ban or suspension for Hardaway, whose team advanced to the NCAA tournament in March for the first time since 2014.
From March: Memphis basketball charged with multiple NCAA violations
Memphis also must send at least one member of its Office of Legal Counsel to two NCAA Regional Rules Seminars and inform prospective men’s basketball recruits in writing that the Tigers are on probation.
Some of the issues that triggered the investigation were rooted in the case of James Wiseman, a former Memphis player who became the No. 2 pick in the 2020 NBA draft. His eligibility complicated the 2019-20 season because of Hardaway’s $11,500 payment to Wiseman’s family in 2017 while Hardaway was coaching youth basketball in both AAU and high school programs but was also deemed a Memphis booster.
In March 2018, Hardaway became the coach at Memphis, where he played college ball, and Wiseman signed with the team in November of that year. Wiseman played the first game of the 2019-20 season before the NCAA ruled him ineligible. He played two more games before leaving school to prepare for the draft.
Hardaway has an 85-43 record in four seasons at the school, which advanced to the second round of the NCAA tournament in March.
In its ruling, the IARP stated that Hardaway’s “long-standing philanthropic commitment, particularly to youth in the economically disadvantaged Memphis community, even prior to becoming an athletics booster,” was a factor in its decision. | 2022-09-27T18:31:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Memphis receives three years of probation, avoids NCAA tournament ban - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/27/memphis-basketball-punishment-penny-hardaway/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/27/memphis-basketball-punishment-penny-hardaway/ |
Skipping your home airport could score you a better deal, a study from Scott’s Cheap Flights shows
Washington Dulles International Airport. (Skyhobo/Getty Images)
New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, Washington Dulles International Airport and Chicago O’Hare International Airport saw the most discounts on international flights out of the United States over the last year, according to an analysis by Scott’s Cheap Flights.
The company, known for sending its members insider tips on flight deals, analyzed 182 U.S. airports to determine where it shared the most and least discounts on economy-class fares, compiling them into a report released late last month. From August 2021 to August 2022, some airports averaged more than one deal per day, making them ideal for travelers who do not have a particular destination in mind. Others saw only a few discounted fares each month.
Even if your home airport is among the worst for cheap flights abroad, you’re probably not more than a short flight away from one of the top 10, the report notes. Consider driving or booking the domestic leg separately to take advantage of a deal.
With countries like Japan and Canada dropping coronavirus restrictions and a busy holiday season ahead, here’s where the experts say you should look for the cheapest international flights.
Best airports for cheap international flights
The analysis from Scott’s found that JFK sees far and away the most international flight deals, with 475 in the last year, nearly 10 percent higher than Scott’s shared from the No. 2 airport on its list.
An American and Delta hub, JFK is the U.S.’s busiest international airport, with more than 70 airlines serving 110 foreign cities, Scott’s said. That plethora of flights drives down prices, with the average round trip over the last year coming in at $413, according to Scott’s.
Taking second was Dulles, the D.C. area’s primary international gateway ahead of Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport. The report found 433 deals at Dulles in the last year, with an average round trip costing $449. The United hub offers flights to 53 international destinations, Scott’s said, and will soon be linked by train to downtown D.C. by the Silver Line extension.
O’Hare came in third place with 423 deals in the last year and an average round trip cost of $429. Rounding out the top 10 are: Newark Liberty International at 415 deals, Los Angeles International at 409 deals, Boston Logan International at 389 deals, San Francisco International at 380 deals, Miami International at 375 deals, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International at 299 deals and Philadelphia International at 289 deals.
With the exception of Chicago and Atlanta, the top 10 airports are on the coasts. But all are hubs for major U.S. airlines, the report notes, making them easy to access from almost anywhere.
Worst airports for international flight deals
The report also analyzed which airports are least likely to have a deal on an international flight. Passengers who fly out of these airports might consider traveling to a hub or booking early because some of these see as few as one flight deal a week on average.
The worst airport in the report for international travel deals was Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport, serving Panama City, Fla. It lacks any direct international connections, and only saw 62 deals in the last year, according to the report. As an alternative, airports in Atlanta, Orlando and Tampa are about five or six hours away by car and see many more deals.
Why the founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights wants you to take more vacations
The report examined airports in metro areas with more than 700,000 people, meaning many of the worst airports for international deals were small regional airports, such as Columbia, S.C., and Fresno, Calif. Still, several major airports made the list, such as Honolulu and Salt Lake City.
Honolulu, the report notes, tends to see deals to Asia and Oceania, but many of those destinations have been closed to Americans due to coronavirus restrictions over the last year, leaving HNL with only 65 deals over that period. Salt Lake City is a Delta hub, but primarily caters to domestic traffic, so it only saw 98 international deals in the last year.
Other medium-sized airports where passengers might want to avoid for international flights are Oakland, Sacramento and Oklahoma City, according to Scott’s.
Best flight deals for fall
Looking for a last-minute foreign getaway this fall? Your best options for a deal in October are Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; Toronto and Montreal; and Lisbon, according to Hayley Berg, an economist at the travel-booking app Hopper.
Prices for October flights to Ho Chi Minh City from Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego are down more than 50 percent from 2021, with average fares around $700, Berg said.
For travelers departing in October from New York City, Boston and Miami, flights to Montreal and Toronto are more than 30 percent cheaper than last year, costing just over $200. Lisbon flights are cheapest from San Francisco and Chicago, costing as low as $391 round trip.
Other destinations seeing steep drops in fares compared to last year are Ponce, Puerto Rico; Monterrey, Mexico; and Tahiti, according to Berg. | 2022-09-27T18:32:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The best airports for cheap flights abroad, according to new data - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/27/airports-cheap-flights-abroad/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/27/airports-cheap-flights-abroad/ |
Chewing over chutzpah with two ace practitioners of the craft
Elliott Jaffa, left, and Mason Harris at the Chutzpah Deli in Fairfax. Jaffa is a marketing psychologist who has taught people his brand of chutzpah since the 1980s. Harris is the author of “The Chutzpah Advantage.” (John Kelly/The Washington Post)
We’re at the Chutzpah Deli in Fairfax Towne Center and the chutzpah is so thick you could cut it with a knife then smear it on a bagel.
In one corner is Elliott Jaffa, 78, a marketing psychologist from Arlington who once taught an adult education class called “Chutzpa 101.” In the other is Mason Harris, 66, a motivational speaker from Gaithersburg who last year published a paperback called “The Chutzpah Advantage.”
Will the sparks fly over the chopped liver as each tries to out-chutzpah the other?
Well, no. I’ve surprised the pair by bringing them together for lunch, but it turns out they are brothers in chutzpah, eager to share their stories of a personality trait that, like a superpower, can be used for good or evil.
“My best story?” says Jaffa. “You know what the White House News Photographers dinner is? Reagan was president. This was before he got shot; security was different. It starts at 8 or 7:30. At 9 I leave my house in a tuxedo.”
Jaffa goes to the hotel, picks up a tray with an empty glass, puts a napkin over his arm, walks right into the ballroom.
“I had no interest in Reagan,” he says. “The speeches were over with. Half the people leave.”
Up next is the entertainment, the Statler Brothers.
“I’m a big Statlers fan,” Jaffa says. “I say, ‘Is this chair taken?’ I'm 15 feet from the stage. I'm in heaven!”
“That’s what I call ‘Oy Vey Chutzpah,’ ” says Harris. “It’s funny. It’s chutzpah that doesn’t hurt anybody.”
In his book, Harris attempts to codify chutzpah, parse it, structure it so it can be used by entrepreneurs and C-suite executives. He provides a mnemonic, with each of the word’s eight letters standing for a tip: C is for Carpe Diem; H is for Handling Objections; U is for Uncovering Need, etc.
“Is chutzpah good or bad?” Harris muses. “There are people who say chutzpah is definitely bad. It’s not respectful, it's arrogant, it's egotistical. My premise is you can use it for good or bad. For me, it’s a skill set.”
Jaffa started teaching his “Chutzpa 101” class at the Open University in the District in 1982, using examples from his own life, such as how he got into concerts (scan album liner notes for the manager’s name, then call the hotel, ask for the road manager and say you’re the manager’s nephew and need a ticket).
“When I started teaching the class, I had these made,” Jaffa says, pulling out a brass keychain engraved with “All good things come to those who ask.”
This is a man who trains people for trade shows and twice rented a baby elephant to draw traffic to a trade show booth.
To research his book, Harris interviewed people across the country, asking them to define chutzpah. In one Midwestern state — far from the nearest bowl of matzoh ball soup — someone said it sounded like another word: “gumption.” Harris met a Finn who said it reminded him of the Finnish word sisu, which means “strength or perseverance.”
“I found in my interviews over 40 different synonyms or descriptions of chutzpah,” says Harris, who grew up in New York City, the son of Holocaust survivors. His father came to America and became a baker. He was not overly-endowed with chutzpah.
Neither was Jaffa’s father, whose colorful career included running an adult bookstore on Baltimore’s Block. This made Jaffa popular with his high school buddies. Jaffa is not someone who gets embarrassed. He doesn’t mind pushing the envelope.
His motto: “No one ever died from the word no.”
Harris says: “I don’t know that I have the range of stories Elliott has, but remember Mike Schmidt?”
Harris was in Florida when he saw Schmidt. He figured if he approached the Phillies player like a fawning fanboy — “Mike, you’re great. I’m such a big fan” — Schmidt would blow him off.
“I went up to him and said, ‘Mike, I think I have to apologize to you,' ” Harris says.
Jaffa sits up, game recognizing game. “There you go! That’s judo. You knocked him over.”
Harris says: “He looked up at me and said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘I may have said some unkind things about you after you hit a home run against my favorite team, the Mets.’ And he just started laughing.”
Jaffa is delighted. “See, that’s what you get.”
“It’s just how you approach people,” Harris says. “We're not afraid to stretch boundaries.”
“We have two different projects,” Jaffa says. “I'm doing the absurd. He’s got the eight letters.”
The world is big enough for all flavors of chutzpah.
Lunch over, Jaffa walks toward his Toyota Prius, the one with the personalized license plate that reads CHUTZPA.
“What bothers me most,” he says, “is when someone comes up to me and says ‘Where’s Chutz, Pennsylvania?’ ” | 2022-09-27T19:48:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What is chutzpah? Two experts contemplate its complexities. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/27/chutzpah-for-dummies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/27/chutzpah-for-dummies/ |
Sarah Matthews, former deputy White House press secretary, and Matthew Pottinger, former National Security Council official, take their seats as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol holds a prime-time hearing on Capitol Hill on July 21 in Washington, D.C. (Tom Brenner for The Washington Post)
The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is postponing its highly anticipated hearing because of Hurricane Ian, which is expected to barrel into the western coast of Florida on Wednesday, committee leaders announced Tuesday.
“In light of Hurricane Ian bearing down on parts of Florida, we have decided to postpone tomorrow’s proceedings,” chairman Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.) and vice-chair Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) wrote in a joint statement. “We’re praying for the safety of all those in the storm’s path.”
It’s unclear when the daytime hearing, which seeks to recapture the nation’s attention with what is likely to be the panel’s final public hearing before the release of a final report, will be rescheduled. Thompson and Cheney’s statement noted, “The Select Committee’s investigation goes forward and we will soon announce a date for the postponed proceedings.”
The hearing follows eight highly produced, news-making hearings that aired over June and July, featuring blockbuster testimony from former White House officials, poll workers and law enforcement officers. During the committee’s August hiatus, staff doubled back to their investigative work to follow new leads and answer unresolved questions.
The final hearing is expected in part to focus on how associates of former president Donald Trump planned to declare victory regardless of the outcome of the 2020 election, according to people familiar with hearing planning.
The Washington Post reported Monday that the committee intends to show video of Roger Stone recorded by Danish filmmakers during the weeks before the violence in which Stone predicted violent clashes with left-wing activists and forecast months before Election Day that Trump would use armed guards and loyal judges to stay in power. | 2022-09-27T19:49:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jan. 6 hearing postponed due to Hurricane Ian - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/27/jan-6-committee-postpones-planned-hearing-hurricane-ian-advances/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/27/jan-6-committee-postpones-planned-hearing-hurricane-ian-advances/ |
Boxing’s governing body nixes new election, jeopardizing Olympic future
Russia's Umar Kremlev remains president of the International Boxing Association. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
Boxing’s Olympic future remains very much in doubt after members of the sport’s governing body, the International Boxing Association (IBA) voted against holding a presidential election last weekend, reaffirming the leadership of its controversial president, Umar Kremlev.
Concerned about allegations of corruption inside the IBA and a match-fixing scandal at the 2016 Rio Olympics, the International Olympic Committee has left boxing off the initial program for the 2028 Los Angeles Games. IOC officials have left open the possibility of restoring boxing when the final L.A. program is completed next September or October, but have repeated concerns about the way Kremlev, a Russian sports executive, is leading the IBA.
The IOC oversaw the boxing competition at the Tokyo Olympics and announced earlier this year that it would do so again for Paris 2024 after the IBA disqualified Dutch boxing official Boris van der Vorst from a previous presidential election that Kremlev then won unopposed. The Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) later ruled that van der Vorst shouldn’t have been disqualified, setting up Sunday’s vote, which many saw as perhaps a last chance for boxing to remain in the Olympics after Paris.
Though Kremlev has promised to reform the IBA, he has alarmed IOC officials by moving much of the organization’s operations from Lausanne, Switzerland to Russia, has spent heavily on marketing that appeared to promote himself and has resisted calls for an outside organization to handle the assignment of judges and referees at events. The IOC has also expressed worry that the IBA’s lone sponsor is Russian energy company Gazprom, which has supported Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. | 2022-09-27T19:53:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia's Umar Kremlev remains IBA president after new election nixed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/09/27/umar-kremlev-russia-olympic-boxing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/olympics/2022/09/27/umar-kremlev-russia-olympic-boxing/ |
McConnell endorses bill to prevent efforts to subvert presidential election results
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), talks with reporters after a weekly policy luncheon, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has endorsed a bipartisan electoral count reform bill in the Senate, giving the legislation a key boost over a similar bill the House passed last week. Both bills seek to prevent future presidents from trying to overturn election results through Congress, and were directly prompted by the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob seeking to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s electoral win.
The Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, sponsored by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), would amend the Electoral Count Act of 1887 and reaffirm that the vice president has only a ministerial role at the joint session of Congress to count electoral votes, as well as raise the threshold necessary for members of Congress to object to a state’s electors.
Speaking on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon, McConnell said he would “strongly support” the legislation, saying it did not “rashly replace current law with something untested.”
Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) is also likely to back the bill. Both Schumer and McConnell sit on the Senate Rules Committee, which will meet Tuesday afternoon to vote on the legislation.
Their votes would all but cement the bill’s likelihood of passing the Senate. The bill already enjoyed strong bipartisan support, with 11 Democratic and 11 Republican senators signing on to co-sponsor it last week.
After the 2020 election, President Donald Trump had falsely told his supporters that Vice President Mike Pence had the power to reject electoral votes already certified by the states. Pence did not do so — and has repeatedly emphasized that the Constitution provides the vice president with no such authority. But on Jan. 6, many in the pro-Trump mob that overran the Capitol began chanting, “Hang Mike Pence!” on the misguided belief that the vice president could have stopped Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
The House last week passed the similar Presidential Election Reform Act, written by Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), on a 229-203 vote. Cheney and Lofgren argued that the risk of another effort to steal a presidential election remains high, as Trump continues to spread baseless claims of widespread election fraud, and as pro-Trump candidates in state and local elections around the country have embraced those falsehoods.
The Senate and House bills differ chiefly in how much they would change the threshold necessary for members of both chambers to object to a state’s results. Currently only one member each from the House and Senate are required to object to a state’s electors. The House electoral reform bill would raise that threshold to at least one-third of the members of both the House and the Senate, while the Senate version would raise that threshold to at least one-fifth of the members of both the House and the Senate.
Schumer had withheld his support because he preferred Democrats’ sweeping voting bill that also addressed access to the polls. But after that bill failed in the Senate due to a lack of Republican support earlier this year, the bipartisan working group forged ahead on a narrower bill that would implement guardrails and clarifications regarding how presidential electors are appointed, submitted and approved.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), a member of the Rules panel who worked on his own electoral bill, said Monday that it was “critical” they pass legislation as soon as possible.
“This isn’t comprehensive voting rights reforms but it is important because of the danger that we experienced on Jan. 6,” King told The Washington Post. “It’s critical we do this before next year when we are in the throes of the presidential election.”
Unlike the Senate bill, the House bill saw little support from GOP lawmakers. Only nine Republicans broke ranks and joined Democrats in supporting the measure, and none of those nine will be members of Congress next year — either because they lost their primaries or chose to retire. Several of the House Republicans who opposed the bill, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), criticized it as unconstitutional.
“Americans deserve greater clarity in the process by which their votes will result in the election of a President and Vice President,” the Office of Management and Budget said. “As [the Presidential Election Reform Act] proceeds through the legislative process, the Administration looks forward to working with the Congress to ensure lasting reform consistent with Congress’ constitutional authority to protect voting rights, tally electoral votes, and strengthen our democracy.”
Leigh Ann Caldwell contributed to this report.
Noted: Mastriano, in 2019, said women who violated his proposed abortion ban should be charged with murder | 2022-09-27T20:01:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | McConnell endorses bill to prevent efforts to subvert presidential election results - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/mcconnell-schumer-electoral-reform/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/mcconnell-schumer-electoral-reform/ |
All About Saudi Arabia’s Controversial Crown Prince Mohammed
Analysis by Mark Williams | Bloomberg
Mohammed bin Salman during a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, not pictured, in the Oval Office of the White House in 2018. (Bloomberg)
Not since the reign of the country’s founder, Abdulaziz Al Saud, has so much power been concentrated in one man’s hands in Saudi Arabia. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman isn’t king, yet. But the 37-year-old royal essentially runs the country for his father, King Salman bin Abdulaziz, who is 86. The prince, who replaced his father as prime minister in late September, leapfrogged a generation of older uncles and cousins to become heir to the throne in one of the world’s last remaining absolute monarchies. He’s overseen changes that have shaken the kingdom to its core, loosening the religious restrictions that shaped the conservative Islamic society for decades. He’s also attempted to reduce the crude exporter’s dependence on oil and redefine its place in the world -- pushing for development in new sectors like tourism -- while increasing political repression. His supporters say his bold ambition and iron fist is what’s needed to salvage an unsustainable economy. His critics say he’s dictatorial, power-hungry and reckless.
When Joe Biden took office as US president in 2021, he avoided dealing with Prince Mohammed. In his election campaign, Biden had vowed to make Saudi Arabia a global “pariah” over the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi agents inside the country’s consulate in Istanbul. A US intelligence assessment concluded Prince Mohammed had likely approved an operation to capture or kill Khashoggi, a citizen of Saudi Arabia who was critical of its government. MBS has denied any involvement while accepting symbolic responsibility as the kingdom’s de facto ruler. Biden never went so far as to shun the Saudis entirely, but his administration insisted that the president would only engage with his “counterpart,” King Salman. By mid-2022, however, rising oil prices had put Biden under pressure to bring down inflation -- and thus to repair ties with Saudi Arabia, a swing producer that can ramp oil exports up or down. In mid-July, Biden met with MBS, the two men bumping fists for the camera and marking the end of the cold spell.
Born in 1985, MBS sees himself as part of the first generation to grow up in the digital age. One of thousands of princes in the Saudi royal family, he graduated with a law degree from King Saud University and began a tumultuous career in government, clashing with some officials while maintaining close ties to his father -- the longtime governor of Riyadh. When King Salman ascended the throne in 2015, he named MBS defense minister, and the prince’s star rose swiftly. By 2017, he had pushed aside his older cousin to become heir to the throne and de facto ruler, overseeing all of the kingdom’s key portfolios from oil to foreign policy. MBS has loosened many social restrictions, ending a prohibition on female drivers, curbing the power of the religious police, and allowing gender mixing and public concerts. Those changes are in line with the prince’s plan for the future, Vision 2030, which foresees a more open society and a diversified economy. However, under the prince’s leadership, Saudi authorities have also cracked down on domestic dissent, imprisoning businessmen, religious clerics, activists, writers and scholars across the political spectrum. In 2020, authorities detained the former crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, along with the king’s own brother, Prince Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, and accused them of undermining the state. MBS has adopted a more assertive foreign policy than other Saudi leaders, entering and then resolving a rift with neighboring Qatar. He also began a bombing campaign in 2015 in Yemen, where a civil war has since devolved into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Skeptics worry the prince is too inexperienced and willful -- and that his autocratic style will ensure there’s no one left to check his authority or question his plans. His monopolization of power and repressive tendencies have already antagonized some potential allies, including some members of the royal family as well as Saudi intellectuals and activists who called for many of the same changes he’s instituted. His rapid overhaul of life in the kingdom has unsettled some ordinary Saudis who are troubled by the social changes or struggling to keep up with the rising cost of living. Yet many other Saudis are avid supporters of the prince and his plans, saying he’s revitalized their country, unleashed its potential for growth and change and given them basic social freedoms they had long been denied. His advocates see his youthful energy as an advantage in a country where more than half the citizenry is under 30. Either way, the prince is likely here to stay; barring an unforeseen event, he will ascend the throne after his father’s death. His young age could give him many decades to pursue his agenda and cement his final legacy.
The Reference Shelf
• QuickTakes on the US-Saudi reset, Saudi Aramco, the murdered Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, the Yemen war, and the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.
• A Congressional Research Service report on US-Saudi relations.
• A transcript of a wide-ranging Bloomberg interview with the prince. | 2022-09-27T20:01:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | All About Saudi Arabia’s Controversial Crown Prince Mohammed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/all-about-saudi-arabias-controversial-crown-prince-mohammed/2022/09/27/c163399a-3e98-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/all-about-saudi-arabias-controversial-crown-prince-mohammed/2022/09/27/c163399a-3e98-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Impacts may also be felt outside the state, including Atlanta, Charleston and Raleigh
This National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration satellite image shows tropical Hurricane Ian over Cuba on Tuesday. (AFP/Getty Images)
Hurricane Ian, a Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 115 mph, made landfall in western Cuba around 4:30 a.m. Tuesday, lashing the southwestern part of the island with heavy rains, fierce winds and life-threatening storm surge.
On Sept. 27, FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell urged residents to take potential Hurricane Ian impacts “seriously.” (Video: The Washington Post)
While the core of the storm is expected to pass to the west and north, Miami has been put under a tropical storm watch for the possibility of sustained winds climbing to tropical storm force. Regardless of how windy it gets, the city is already seeing impacts from Ian; a flood watch and tornado watch are posted. One to 3 inches of rain have already fallen across much of southern Florida, and an additional 4 to 6 inches, with the potential for nearly double that, will be possible in and around the Miami area.
9/27 at 7am - Heavy squalls associated with the outer bands of Hurricane Ian will continue to move across our area this morning. Be sure to remain weather aware today and be sure to have a reliable way to receive severe weather alerts and warnings. Stay tuned for more updates! pic.twitter.com/jhj93XmWE8
As Ian draws closer to Florida Tuesday evening, winds will begin to pick up in Miami, with sustained winds over 20 mph likely. By Wednesday, winds could gust as high as 45 mph. The National Hurricane Center gives Miami about a 50 percent chance of seeing sustained tropical storm conditions. A modest storm surge of up to one foot is also possible.
The city on Florida’s southern Gulf Coast is under a storm surge warning and a hurricane warning, with a flood watch also in effect until Thursday night. Tropical-storm-force winds are expected to last from early Tuesday evening until Thursday evening, with hurricane-force wind gusts up to 85 mph. Sustained hurricane-force winds are possible, though unlikely.
Still, those in Tampa should be ready for the worst, and the National Hurricane Center is forecasting up to 5 to 8 feet of surge.
Tropical storm conditions will begin Wednesday morning, with hurricane-force winds expected to begin Wednesday afternoon and not abating until Thursday afternoon. Tropical storm conditions could persist through Friday. Sustained winds could possibly climb as high as 115 mph, equivalent to the strength of a Category 3 hurricane. Some locations in and around Tampa could see winds gust up to 145 mph.
Between the wind and storm surge, the National Hurricane Center has warned that “locations may be uninhabitable for weeks or months.”
Extraordinary amounts of rainfall are also forecast, with the storm expected to slow to a crawl near or around Tampa. The National Hurricane Center is calling for 12 to 18 inches of rainfall, with locally higher amounts possible — more than enough to cause widespread urban and freshwater flooding. Tornadoes will also be possible as the storm tracks closer to the city.
While Tampa may be spared Ian’s crosshairs, several weather models have Sarasota as a potential landfall location, with the most recent forecast from the National Weather Center putting the landfall south of the city, near Venice, Fla. Regardless, Sarasota is expected to take a severe punch from the storm, with hurricane and storm surge warnings issued, as well as a flood watch.
Sarasota is forecast to start seeing tropical storm-force conditions this evening, with hurricane-force winds expected to begin by Wednesday morning. Sustained wind speeds are expected to climb to Category 2 strength, maxing out at 110 mph, with localized gusts to 140 mph possible. Uncertainty in the exact track and strength of the storm has the National Hurricane Center asking locals to be prepared for Category 3 hurricane winds or higher, though.
A “devastating to catastrophic” and potentially historic storm surge of 8 to 12 feet is possible in and around Sarasota, in addition to at least 6 to 10 inches of rainfall. All told, like in Tampa, the National Hurricane Center is warning that Ian could render parts of Sarasota uninhabitable for weeks or months.
Orlando is inland, and thus not at risk of seeing any storm surge, though Ian’s path will take it inland and close to the Central Florida city, possibly at hurricane strength. A hurricane watch has been issued for the city, which may eventually replace a tropical storm warning that has also been issued. A flood watch has also been posted for Orlando, which is expected to start seeing tropical storm conditions by Wednesday morning.
The National Hurricane Center is warning that the wind threat to Orlando is increasing, with sustained winds of 74 to 110 mph possible, with residents asked to prepare for winds up to Category 2 force.
The National Hurricane Center is warning residents to be prepared for wind speeds up to that of a Category 2 hurricane, as there remains considerable uncertainty in Ian’s eventual track, size and strength as it passes near Jacksonville. At the moment, though, the peak winds forecast are just 25-35 mph, with gusts up to 60.
Atlanta is unlikely to see significant impacts, though it is likely to bring rain and gusty winds to the city beginning on Friday. The National Hurricane Center is forecasting 2 to 4 inches of rain and a 10 to 20 percent chance of tropical storm conditions.
If the storm tracks inland, it is likely that Ian will have weakened into a tropical depression by the time the storm’s center would pass close to the city.
⚠Friendly reminder to NOT focus on the exact forecast track/intensity but rather the IMPACTS which will be well outside the cone and possibly quite significant across SE SC/GA from not only #Ian but also other weather systems. https://t.co/ILhreodwt7 #scwx #gawx #chswx #savwx pic.twitter.com/H1mazZigxj
Tropical storm conditions are possible in Charleston on Friday, and a tropical storm watch and a storm surge watch have been hoisted for the city. While winds below tropical storm force are currently forecast, the National Weather Service is warning that the forecast could change to feature sustained winds at tropical storm strength.
A storm surge of 2 to 4 feet is also expected in storm-surge-prone areas, with inundation possible starting Wednesday morning.
No watches or warnings of any kind have been posted for Raleigh, though Ian is expected to bring heavy rainfall to as far north as the North Carolina capital — and possibly as far north as the District of Columbia — Friday night into the weekend. | 2022-09-27T20:02:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Where will Hurricane Ian hit? Here’s the outlook for 6 Florida cities. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/27/hurricane-ian-forecast-florida-southeast-cities/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/27/hurricane-ian-forecast-florida-southeast-cities/ |
Michael Mallory is president and CEO of the Ron Brown Scholar Program. (Ron Brown Scholar Fund)
As president and CEO of the Ron Brown Scholar Program, Michael Mallory tends to favor a particular kind of applicant: The intellectually gifted and socially conscious Black high school sophomore from a low-income household.
Such a student may be unimaginable for some. But in the 25 years since the program was founded, at the University of Virginia, Mallory has met thousands of young people who fit that profile.
Each year, the program selects 40 to 50 scholars and gives them a $40,000 college scholarship and membership in a lifelong network of career and personal support. “We pick them because they are smart, but also because they have a lot of drive and because they know what it takes to overcome obstacles,” Mallory said. “In our program, we talk a lot about doing well to do good — doing well for yourself while doing good for others. They are the ones most likely to buy into that concept.”
But there is another reason that Mallory has been able to see the potential in poor kids that so many others too often miss. He used to be one of those kids.
Mallory, 65, had grown up in Madison County, Va., one of 10 children living in a two-room house in a rural area about 30 miles north of Charlottesville. “We didn’t have running water until I was 13,” he recalled.
His father drank too much alcohol, he said, adding, “You know what can happen after that.” But he also had an older sister, Connie, “my protector,” he called her, who encouraged him to take his education seriously.
“She was on track to become the first person in our family to go to college,” Mallory recalled. “I wasn’t thinking about that at all. I just wanted to play ball.”
Connie was killed in a car accident in 1970, just after her 18th birthday. Mallory was 15. He and Connie had argued earlier in the day. “I felt so much guilt,” he recalled. “I said to myself, ‘Look how selfish and mean I was to her and now she is gone.’ ”
He had no one to lean on and his story could have ended poorly. But he began to pray, he said: “I asked for all of my sister’s finest qualities so that I could use them to honor her.”
Along with lettering in three varsity sports at Madison County High School, Mallory went on to become the school’s junior class president and, during his senior year, president of the student council. After graduation, he was accepted at the University of Virginia — honoring Connie by becoming the first in the family to go to college.
He eventually became an admissions officer at U-Va., and later the assistant dean for minority recruitment.
“What I saw over and over was how certain students were able to insulate and isolate,” Mallory recalled. “Those students who were poor but brilliant were especially good at it. When things got rough — and when you’re poor, things get rough a lot — they’d just zoom in on their schoolwork and block everything else out.”
The program is named for Ron Brown, who became the nation’s first Black secretary of commerce during the Clinton administration in 1993. Three years later, Brown was killed in a plane crash while on a mission in Croatia for the Commerce Department. A close friend, billionaire Anthony M. Pilaro, proposed a Ron Brown scholarship program and chose another close friend, Mike Mallory, to run it.
From homeless child to star student
Brown scholars include Carmelle Norice-Tra, who was recently appointed director of clinical research at Merck. Before that she was a medical officer at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda.
When she was 17, her father was sentenced to 99 years in prison for a crime in which no one was hurt. They were recently reunited, after 25 years. Norice-Tra had pressed on in the meantime — receiving both an MD and PhD from Columbia, supported by her fellow Ron Brown scholars and serving on the board of the Frederick Douglass Project for Justice along the way.
The scholars program encourages students to think not only about social justice but also about creating generational wealth. However difficult the journey may have been for the alumni, the route for the next generation of scholars will be a lot smoother.
“Sometimes a student will complain about how hard schoolwork can be,” Mallory recalled. “I’ll ask what do they think their great-great-great-grandparents were doing at their age? I tell them I don’t think they could last a day doing that kind of work. And what they need to do is go work harder at school. Now that they have the opportunity, I tell them to start creating generational wealth.”
Indeed, there are several multimillionaires among the Ron Brown alumni, and they are showing impressive willingness to give back to the program.
With generational wealth, perhaps the great-grandchildren of today’s Ron Brown scholars won’t have to work so hard, Mallory said.
But there will still be others who have to rely on grit and intellect. Hopefully there will be others like Mallory around who can recognize their talents and still do well by doing good. | 2022-09-27T20:02:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Ron Brown Scholar Program helps poor kids become stars - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/27/ron-brown-scholar-program-helping-poor-kids/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/27/ron-brown-scholar-program-helping-poor-kids/ |
Shakira ordered to stand trial for alleged tax fraud in Spain
Singer Shakira will face trial in Spain, where she's accused of failing to pay nearly $14 million in taxes between 2012 and 2014. (Daniel Cole/AP)
The Colombian pop star known for hits like “Hips Don’t Lie” and “Waka Waka” is accused of defrauding the Spanish government between 2012 and 2014 by failing to pay 14.5 million euros ($13.9 million). Spanish prosecutors have claimed they have “sufficient evidence” to prove that the singer lived in the country during the three-year-stretch.
“It is well known that the Spanish tax authorities do this often not only with celebrities like me (or [soccer stars Cristiano] Ronaldo, Neymar, [Xabi] Alonso, and many more), it also happens unjustly to the regular taxpayer,” Shakira told Elle. “But I’m confident that I have enough proof to support my case and that justice will prevail in my favor.”
Shakira faces over 8 years in prison if convicted of tax fraud in Spain
The accusations date to 2018, when Spanish prosecutors first accused the Grammy-winning artist of evading millions in taxes. According to prosecutors, Shakira spent more than 200 days in Spain in each of those years. If an individual spends more than 183 days in the country in a year, they are considered a Spanish resident for tax purposes, the country’s law states. The singer claimed Bahamas as her tax residency until 2015, when she relocated to Barcelona with FC Barcelona soccer player Gerard Piqué, her then-partner. They have two children together and recently ended their 11-year relationship.
Shakira told Elle magazine she rejected the proposal because she has proof to support her claims, adding that going to court is a “matter of principle.”
Amy Cheng contributed to this report. | 2022-09-27T20:02:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Shakira ordered to stand trial on tax fraud charges in Spain - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/27/shakira-trial-tax-fraud-spain/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/27/shakira-trial-tax-fraud-spain/ |
That Giorgia Meloni speech captivating the U.S. right doesn’t make sense
Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Brothers of Italy party, reacts at the party's general election night event in Rome on Sept. 26. (Alessia Pierdomenico/Bloomberg)
Thanks to a viral video, the American right has an unexpected new crush.
Clipped by a YouTube channel that specializes in sharing content from far-right politicians, the video features Giorgia Meloni, expected to become Italy’s next prime minister. Meloni is shown speaking at the World Congress of Families gathering in 2019, a right-wing conference brought to Italy that year by sympathetic politicians. After her party, Brothers of Italy, secured the most seats in last weekend’s parliamentary contest, paving the way for the right-wing coalition of which it is a part to assume control of the country’s leadership, interest in Meloni spiked — and the 2019 speech began to circulate.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) declared it to be “spectacular.” A writer for the Federalist fawned. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) marveled at how “beautifully said” Meloni’s argument was. A cadre of allies of Donald Trump were similarly energetic.
The speech is, in fact, well presented. It also doesn’t really make any sense.
I will admit that I do not speak Italian and am relying for this analysis on the subtitles added to the snippet. But then, I suspect that Cruz and Greene are similarly ignorant of the language and are similarly basing their evaluations on what the video itself presents as Meloni’s argument. The enthusiasm on the right, in other words, is based on the translation, so parsing the translation seems like a perfectly fair way of evaluating that enthusiasm.
Before doing so, it’s worth understanding the importance of the format. The medium is the message, as the saying has it, and that’s certainly true here: Meloni hits robust emotional notes, assuring the audience (in 2019 and now) that they are on the right side of history. By the time she arrives at the quote from British author G.K. Chesterton that serves as capstone, she’s carried the emotional rhythm perfectly, validating her claims in the gut even as she fails to do so in the brain.
Here is the bulk of the content of her transcribed speech, presented in the flattening format of printed text.
“Why is the family an enemy? Why is the family so frightening? There is a single answer to all these questions.
"Because it defines us. Because it is our identity. Because everything that defines us is now an enemy for those who would like us to no longer have an identity and to simply be perfect consumer slaves.
"And so they attack national identity, they attack religious identity, they attack gender identity, they attack family identity.
"I can’t define myself as Italian, Christian, woman, mother. No. I must be Citizen X, Gender X, Parent 1, Parent 2. I must be a number.
"Because when I am only a number, when I no longer have an identity or roots, then I will be the perfect slave at the mercy of financial speculators. The perfect consumer.
"That’s why we inspire so much fear. That’s why this event inspires so much fear. Because we do not want to be numbers. We will defend the value of the human being.
"Every single human being. Because each of us has a unique genetic code that is unrepeatable. And, like it or not, that is sacred. We will defend it. We will defend God, country and family.
It’s important to understand that this came at the end of a longer speech. If you are perplexed at the use of “all of these questions” after only two were asked, for example, that’s not a function of mistranslation. It’s because the snippet quoted above comes after a much longer list of questions. The one that immediately preceded this but didn’t make the cut for inclusion in the viral clip was: “Why do we spend our time fighting all types of discrimination but we pretend not to see the greatest ongoing persecution, the genocide of the world’s Christians?”
So Meloni had also offered various anecdotes meant to bolster the idea that families are “an enemy.” But that’s accepted by the American right in the viral clip even without Meloni’s putative evidence. Forcing us to ask, then, who considers family to be an enemy or frightening, and in what way? Similarly, we can ask how it is that “everything that defines us” is an enemy to those people looking for “perfect consumer slaves.”
I am not some dewy-eyed naif, so I know what the expected answer is, of course. Attacks on national/religious/gender/family identity, as presented here, is an excoriation of what the right now likes to summarize as “wokeism.” This is the idea that adjusting cultural expectations to not exclude particular people is an affront to those around whom expectations have long been centered. That even small accommodations for people who aren’t Christian or aren’t straight or weren’t born in Italy/the U.S. is an attack on those who are any or all of those things.
This is manifested regularly in our domestic political conversation. Not just through the conservative media’s constant elevation of “woke” as an evil force eroding the foundations of America but through lesser measures. At about the time Meloni was speaking, for example, I was writing about how White Republicans are about as likely to say that Whites face discrimination as they are to say Blacks and Hispanics do, and that White Republicans are as likely to say that evangelical Christians face discrimination as they are to say that Muslims do. This pattern of belief has continued.
“When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression,” the old saying goes, and it certainly applies broadly in the context Meloni seeks to invoke.
But what Meloni does is something different, at least to this American’s ears. Normally, complaints focused on being “woke” are criticized on their own merits, as purported constraints on those not included among the supplicating groups. Here, though, Meloni seems to suggest that all of this is an attempt to sell stuff. It’s semi-Trumpian in the sense that it attempts to intertwine cultural insecurity with economic dissatisfaction, but does so clumsily.
There have long been complaints on the right about how corporations try to leverage calls for diversity as marketing or employee retention ploys. (There have been similar complaints on the left, in fact!) But Meloni reverses this, suggesting that corporations and financial speculators — somehow not winking while she uses that term — are promoting “wokeism” to somehow make money. That she is now “Citizen X” is a transition left unexplained, as is the path from that anonymization to profit.
It’s inscrutable — unless, perhaps, you assume that there is a powerful global financial elite that controls everything and that must necessarily therefore be orchestrating “wokeism.”
But we’re getting away from the other odd claim, that people find her identity as a mother, Christian or Italian “disgusting.” Who does, exactly? Setting aside the idea that Nike might make an ad targeting women who don’t have kids or that PepsiCo might do a promotion for Ramadan, what’s the driving force that casts her life as abhorrent? There are domestic debates over the interplay of religion and public life, certainly, but it’s obviously ridiculous to say that being asked to, say, bake a cake for a same-sex wedding is equivalent to being made into a number. Much less with the express intent that you’ll buy more San Pellegrino.
There’s an enormous pull to believing that you are fighting nefarious forces bent on making the world worse. We will defend God, country and family! Yes! Sign me up! But against who? How? On what battlefields? Listening to the speech, you get caught up in the emotion, by design. Upon reflection, though, you notice that, for those questions, there isn’t a great answer.
Meloni’s rise in Italy has drawn comparisons to Benito Mussolini, in part because of her politics and in part because she has in the past praised the fascist leader. The speech above checks a number of the identifiers of fascism delineated by Italian author and commentator Umberto Eco, who grew up during Mussolini’s regime. But perhaps the most potent link to the dictator represented in the video being shared on the right is precisely that it’s a speech, an emotional call to arms.
And as a speech targeting a particular ideology, it appears to be an effective one. | 2022-09-27T20:06:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | That Giorgia Meloni speech captivating the U.S. right doesn’t make sense - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/meloni-italy-united-states-far-right/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/meloni-italy-united-states-far-right/ |
Montgomery County is violating the spirit of Anton’s Law
The Chief J. Thomas Manger Public Safety Headquarters, where the Montgomery County Police Department's 1st District is based, on Sept. 2 in Gaithersburg. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
The Sept. 20 editorial “Honor — and follow — Anton’s Law” was correct that Maryland police should provide the transparency that Anton’s Law requires. But it is not “too soon to reach a final verdict on Montgomery County’s arrangement.” Montgomery gives its police union and individual officers 10 business days to seek a court injunction to prevent the county from releasing police misconduct records under the Maryland Public Information Act (MPIA).
The General Assembly passed Anton’s Law to ensure transparency and accountability in policing by granting the public the right to timely access of police misconduct records with very narrow exceptions. Montgomery County’s agreement with Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 35 (FOP) undermines this intent and is in direct conflict with Anton’s Law which specifies that notice is to be given to an officer “when the record is inspected,” not in advance of such inspection.
The county’s assertion that the a memorandum of agreement is needed to “help prevent mistakes” is not credible. If county officials cannot follow the MPIA when determining what records to disclose, the county should train them to do their jobs correctly rather than give the police union and officers special powers not granted by state law.
The FOP has already taken advantage of the rights afforded it by the agreement, raising frivolous arguments in a recent case that seeks to use the county as the test case to narrow the scope of Anton’s Law. Montgomery’s agreement is operating exactly as the FOP intended it to and contrary to the interests of the residents of the county.
Yanet Amanuel, Baltimore
The writer is public policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maryland.
Joanna Silver, Silver Spring
The writer is policy committee co-chair of the Silver Spring Justice Coalition. | 2022-09-27T20:54:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Montgomery County is violating the spirit of Anton’s Law - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/montgomery-county-is-violating-spirit-antons-law/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/montgomery-county-is-violating-spirit-antons-law/ |
‘I hope you suffer’: Ex-D.C. officer confronts Jan. 6 attacker in court
Kyle Young was sentenced to seven years and two months in prison for the attack on police officer Michael Fanone, who was dragged into the mob and beaten
D.C. police officer Michael Fanone is swarmed by pro-Trump rioters on Jan. 6, 2021. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
A member of the mob that launched a series of violent attacks on police — including D.C. officer Michael Fanone — in a tunnel under the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, apologized Tuesday as a judge sentenced him to seven years and two months in prison.
Fanone resigned from the D.C. police late last year, saying fellow officers turned on him for speaking so publicly about the Capitol attack and former president Donald Trump’s role in it. In court Tuesday, Fanone confronted his attacker directly, telling Young, “I hope you suffer.”
“The assault on me by Mr. Young cost me my career,” Fanone said. “It cost me my faith in law enforcement and many of the institutions I dedicated two decades of my life to serving.”
In a letter to the court, Young said he cried on the phone with his wife as he left D.C.
“I was a nervous wreck and highly ashamed of myself,” he wrote. “I do not condone this and do not promote this like others have done. Violence isn’t the answer.”
In court, he apologized to Fanone, saying, “I hope someday you forgive me. … I am so, so sorry. If I could take it back, I would.”
Young has a long criminal history. While in prison for producing meth, he was repeatedly sanctioned for violence. His attorney said that after a difficult childhood, Young had straightened out his life, gotten married, raised four children and started working in HVAC installation. Until Jan. 6, he hadn’t been arrested in a dozen years, his attorney said.
His “conduct on January 6 is isolated to a unique set of circumstances that unfolded that are not likely to be replicated,” wrote his attorney, Samuel Moore.
Jackson said she believed Young had become a good husband and father. But she noted the continued possibility of political violence, with Trump and his allies responding to possible prosecution by “cagily predicting or even outright calling for violence in the streets.”
The sentence she gave Young is close to the eight-year statutory maximum for assaulting a police officer.
Two of the other men accused of involvement in the attack on Fanone have pleaded not guilty. One has admitted dragging Fanone down the Capitol steps; he is set to be sentenced in October. | 2022-09-27T21:15:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kyle Young sentenced for Jan. 6 attack on D.C. officer Michael Fanone - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/27/kyle-young-jan6-fanone-sentence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/27/kyle-young-jan6-fanone-sentence/ |
The ‘Red Vest Retreat’ comes as major Republican donors search for alternatives to former president Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2024
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) delivers remarks at Colonial Forge High School in Stafford, Va., on Sept. 1. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who has been raising his national profile ahead of a possible presidential campaign, has invited top Republican donors from around the country for a two-day event this week, according to people familiar with the proceedings.
The “Red Vest Retreat” at Keswick Hall, a luxury resort outside Charlottesville, will take place Thursday and Friday, with panel discussions on topics like education, an address by former House speaker Newt Gingrich and a private dinner at a nearby residence, the people said. The title refers to the fleece vests that Youngkin regularly wears.
“He is clearly a national star with a great future,” Gingrich said, when asked about his appearance at the event. “It could be president, vice president, Cabinet or senator. He is fairly young, and over the next several years, many opportunities will show up.”
But others said the primary purpose of the event, which does not require a donation to attend, is to evaluate Youngkin’s capacity to mount a presidential campaign, as major Republican donors around the country continue to search for alternatives to former president Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Youngkin eying national politics, while Va. business remains delayed
About 30 to 40 couples are expected to attend, including people who were not deeply involved in his 2021 gubernatorial campaign.
“This is 100 percent, ‘Is Glenn of presidential timber? Does he have it?’ ” said one of the Republicans involved in the effort, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private event. “This isn’t an announcement deal. There is a lot of tire-kicking going on.”
Youngkin has been traveling the country in recent weeks, speaking at the Texas Tribune Festival and at a recent private donor gathering hosted by the American Opportunity Alliance, a group organized by billionaire hedge fund investor Paul Singer.
He is scheduled to campaign for Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) on Wednesday and will stump for Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake in Arizona. He has also campaigned for Republican governors in Nebraska, Michigan, Maine, Nevada and Kansas.
He has so far he has not made any decision on a 2024 campaign, while stopping short of denying interest in the Oval Office.
“I think that I have to be the best governor I can possibly be,” Youngkin said at the Tribune festival last week, when asked about his ambitions. “I think I have to demonstrate that what we’re doing is a winning way. It’s a winning way, not just a winning way we win campaigns, but it’s a winning way to serve a state with 8.6 million people.”
Youngkin added: “2024 is a long way off.”
More than a dozen potential Republican candidates for president have been taking steps in recent weeks to prepare for a possible presidential campaign, as Trump continues to signal both publicly and privately that he plans to run again. Former vice president Mike Pence has held donor events under the umbrella of his new group, Advancing American Freedom. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) has planned a November event in Annapolis for his group, An America United.
Youngkin’s supporters have made the case that he stands out among the potential Republican candidates in that he can harness enthusiasm both from Trump’s base of voters and a broader community of Republicans.
“He is uniquely in high demand in blue states, red states and swing states,” a person close to Youngkin said. “This event serves as an annual report to future donors and previous investors.”
Youngkin is facing an uproar over new state guidelines restricting the rights of transgender students, prompting widespread walkouts Tuesday across the commonwealth.
Virginia governors can only serve a single consecutive term in office, giving Youngkin a short timeline to decide his next steps. But one Republican involved in the event said a possible campaign for Senate in 2026 would not be enough to draw the donors to Charlottesville this year.
“If you are running for Senate, you go see them,” the person said. “They don’t come to see you.” | 2022-09-27T21:15:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Glenn Youngkin hosts donor retreat amid presidential speculation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/youngkin-retreat-2024/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/youngkin-retreat-2024/ |
LONDON — The British pound has stabilized as U.K. authorities tried to ease investor concerns after the biggest tax cuts in 50 years sent the currency tumbling to a record low. Some businesses are predicting a devastating combination of a weak currency and rising interest rates. The turmoil is already having real-world effects, with British mortgage lenders pulling hundreds of offers from the market. That’s because there are expectations the Bank of England will sharply boost interest rates to offset the inflationary impact of the pound’s recent slide. The Wine and Spirit Trade Association says the sterling crash is set to raise prices for consumers and threaten hundreds of British jobs in bottling plants.
MENLO PARK — Facebook says it has identified and stopped a sprawling network of fake accounts that spread Russian propaganda about the invasion of Ukraine throughout Western Europe. Facebook parent company Meta says the network created more than 60 websites that mimicked legitimate news organizations but parroted Russian talking points about Ukraine. More than 1,600 fake Facebook accounts were used to spread the propaganda to audiences in Germany, Italy, France, the United Kingdom and Ukraine. Meta says it was the largest and most complex network linked to Russia that the California-based company has identified since the Ukraine invasion began. The Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., hasn’t responded to a request for comment.
WASHINGTON — All 50 states have received final approval to begin construction on a first nationwide network of electric vehicle charging stations that places one roughly every 50 miles along interstate highways. It’s part of the Biden administration’s plan to spur widespread adoption of zero-emission cars. The Transportation Department approved plans Tuesday for the last set of 17 states that will install or upgrade fast chargers along 75,000 miles of highway, coast to coast. By year’s end, drivers could start seeing shiny upgrades to existing highway EV stations in states including California, Colorado, Florida and Pennsylvania.
NEW YORK — Walmart is teaming up with a fertility startup to offer benefits under its insurance plan that will help its workers expand their families. The nation’s largest retailer and private employer said Tuesday it’s partnering with New York-based Kindbody to offer benefits such as in vitro fertilization as well as fertility testing regardless of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or marital status. Walmart’s employees will get access to more than 30 fertility clinics and in vitro fertilization labs across the U.S. Kindbody’s clinics will be available to help eligible workers access Walmart’s surrogacy and adoption benefits, as well.
BOSTON — A trial is underway in the federal government’s lawsuit aiming to kill a partnership between American Airlines and JetBlue Airways in the Northeast. The government says the deal is, in effect, a merger that will cost consumers $700 million a year in higher fares. But the airlines say the pact — which has been in place for 18 months — is already letting them open new routes that are good for travelers. They say the deal boosts competition by helping American and JetBlue compete with Delta and United, especially in the New York area.
DOVER, Del. — A Delaware judge is hearing arguments over the exchange of information by lawyers in Twitter’s lawsuit seeking to force billionaire Elon Musk to carry through with his $44 billion acquisition of the social media giant. Tuesday’s hearing comes three weeks before a scheduled trial in the dispute. Musk agreed in April to buy Twitter and take it private, offering $54.20 a share and vowing to loosen the company’s policing of content and to root out fake accounts. He later indicated that he wanted to back away from the deal, claiming that Twitter had failed to provide him enough information about the number of fake accounts on its platform. | 2022-09-27T21:33:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: UK economic turmoil, Russian propaganda - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-uk-economic-turmoil-russian-propaganda/2022/09/27/8bec4aa2-3ea9-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-uk-economic-turmoil-russian-propaganda/2022/09/27/8bec4aa2-3ea9-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
D.C. court asked to decide if Trump denied rape claim as part of job
The decision will affect whether columnist E. Jean Carroll can pursue a defamation suit against the former president
E. Jean Carroll in New York in 2020. (Seth Wenig/AP)
A federal appeals court panel on Tuesday asked D.C.’s highest court to decide whether Donald Trump was acting within the scope of his job as president when he denied a rape allegation dating back to the 1990s — a pivotal question that will determine whether the woman can keep pursuing a defamation lawsuit against him.
In a partial victory for Trump, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit overturned portions of a federal judge’s previous ruling allowing columnist E. Jean Carroll to pursue a defamation case against Trump over his denials of her rape allegation.
But the panel punted on the key question of whether the denials were made as part of Trump’s official duties, asking the local court in the nation’s capital to make that decision. If the D.C. Appeals Court agrees that the denials were part of Trump’s job, that will probably end the litigation, because the U.S. government cannot be targeted by defamation lawsuits.
The case at issue stems from a public back-and-forth between Carroll and Trump when Trump was still president.
Carroll wrote in 2019 that Trump had forced himself on her in a Bergdorf Goodman’s dressing room in New York in late 1995 or early 1996. She is one of many women who have accused the former president of sexual assault. Trump responded to the allegation by saying that Carroll was “totally lying” and “not my type.” He also has denied the other women’s allegations.
Carroll sued Trump for defamation in New York state court. The case initially proceeded slowly, as Trump argued that he was engaged in free speech, that he couldn’t be sued in New York, that Carroll defamed him and that he had presidential immunity. Then, in September 2020, the Justice Department under then-Attorney General William P. Barr intervened in the case, writing that Trump was “acting within the scope of his office as President of the United States,” and thus the suit was not against him but against the United States.
The move threatened to short-circuit the entire suit. But a federal judge in 2020 rejected the Justice Department’s position, ruling that the president “is not an ‘employee of the Government’ within the meaning of the relevant statutes” and that “even if he were such an ‘employee,’ President Trump’s allegedly defamatory statements concerning Ms. Carroll would not have been within the scope of his employment.”
The Biden administration maintained its predecessors’ position, fighting the case in the appeals court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled Tuesday that Trump was, in fact, a government employee under the law, breaking with the federal district court judge. But on the question of whether his denial of Carroll’s claims was part of his job as president, the 2nd Circuit decided not to make a decision, asking instead that the D.C. Court of Appeals weigh the question with an eye on local employment law.
“Getting the law of the local jurisdiction right is … of crucial importance, and only the highest local court is capable of making such a determination,” the judges wrote.
Judges on the D.C. Court of Appeals are appointed by the president but decide cases based on local, not federal, law.
Greg Lipper, a criminal and civil lawyer in D.C., said past cases in the D.C. Court of Appeals don’t shed much light on what the court might decide.
“Even though it is strictly speaking a question of D.C. employment law … what’s particularly tricky here is that because he’s the president, the politics and personal reputation are entwined with the job of the presidency,” he said.
The D.C. court does not have to accept the case, and it is unclear what would happen in that instance. But both sides expressed confidence that the court would rule in their favor.
“This decision will protect the ability of all future Presidents to effectively govern without hindrance,” Trump attorney Alina Habba said in a statement.
Roberta Kaplan, who represents Carroll, countered that Trump “was not serving any purpose of the federal government.”
“The comment ‘she’s not my type’ is not something one would expect the President of the United States to say in the course of his duties,” she said.
One of the three judges agreed, writing in dissent that “Carroll’s allegations plausibly paint a picture of a man pursuing a personal vendetta against an accuser, not the United States’ ‘chief constitutional officer.’”
Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas Law School who studies federal courts, said the decision to consider Trump a federal employee makes sense “in the abstract,” but the federal appeals court was “not treating the issue holistically.” In other contexts, he said, Trump has argued that he is not bound by the rules that apply to federal employees.
A spokeswoman for the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Carroll also plans to sue Trump under a recently passed New York law allowing suits in rape cases that took place too long ago for criminal charges, Kaplan said. | 2022-09-27T21:33:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. court asked to decide if Trump denied rape claim as part of job - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/27/trump-carroll-defamation-appeals-decision/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/27/trump-carroll-defamation-appeals-decision/ |
This Sept. 26, 2022, satellite image released by NASA shows Hurricane Ian growing stronger as it barreled toward Cuba. Ian was forecast to hit the western tip of Cuba as a major hurricane and then become an even stronger Category 4 with top winds of 140 mph (225 km/h) over warm Gulf of Mexico waters before striking Florida. (NASA Worldview/Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) via AP) (Uncredited/NASA) | 2022-09-27T21:34:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tampa's Phoenix simulation anticipated Category 5 hurricane - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/tampas-phoenix-simulation-anticipated-category-5-hurricane/2022/09/27/146a2a3a-3ea4-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/tampas-phoenix-simulation-anticipated-category-5-hurricane/2022/09/27/146a2a3a-3ea4-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Giorgia Meloni holds a sign at the party's election night headquarters in Rome. (Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters)
This week Italian voters sided with the far-right party Fratelli d’Italia, also known as the Brothers of Italy. The election results could also mean the country gets its first female prime minister, Giorgia Meloni.
On today’s “Post Reports,” Rome bureau chief Chico Harlan dives into Meloni’s history, how she rose to prominence in Italian politics and her party’s proposals — including stricter limits on migration. And though the Brothers of Italy may not stay in control for long, Harlan says that in Europe the “signs to suggest that momentum has returned for nationalist parties” are piling up. | 2022-09-27T21:34:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The woman leading Italy’s far-right - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/the-woman-leading-italys-farright/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/the-woman-leading-italys-farright/ |
We know free school lunches help. What else would end hunger?
The White House is looking for solutions with this week’s Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health
Analysis by Clare Brock
Bagged lunches await stapling before being distributed on March 3, 2021, in Fayette, Miss. (Rogelio V. Solis/AP)
The White House is holding a Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health this week, the first in more than 50 years. Biden announced the conference in May, giving the administration just three months to plan the event. Hopes are high, in spite of the short notice. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), one of the leading organizers, announced that the conference aims to end hunger in America by 2030.
President Richard Nixon in 1969 hosted the last White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health. The final report from that event contained more than 1,800 recommendations and helped launch pivotal federal programs, including major expansions of the Food Stamp program and the National School Lunch Program, and authorization of the Supplemental Feeding Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC).
Food and nutrition questions are high on the congressional agenda
Can we expect a similar outcome from this year’s conference? This historic event will occur while members of Congress are ramping up for the 2023 Farm Bill. Every five years, this legislation lays out the federal government’s primary agriculture, conservation, and food policy priorities. As the White House held listening sessions about the conference with a variety of stakeholders, representatives and staff have been holding similar sessions nationwide in preparation for drafting the legislation.
Congressional listening sessions are separate from the White House sessions and more oriented around constituency concerns and agricultural challenges. For instance, Sen. Michael F. Bennet (D-Colo.) and staff are holding sessions in Colorado, which is facing a record drought. This means lawmakers may not be hearing from the same groups or addressing the same issues as the White House — though the Farm Bill is likely to include suggestions coming out of the conference.
Some concerns will no doubt be areas of overlap for both the White House and members of Congress. U.S. crop yields are lower than usual this year, because of drought and extreme weather conditions. And U.S. consumers are feeling economic pain, with inflation driving grocery prices up in recent months.
An added stress for low-income and middle-class Americans is the end of universal free school lunches. The federal program has recently reverted back to the previous tiered program structure of full-price, reduced-price and free lunches. Lawmakers claimed that the nationwide universal free lunch program was intended to be a short-term response to the coronavirus pandemic, but research suggests this approach has important impacts on students, increasing test scores by as much as 11 percentage points, a potentially important consideration in the face of significant post-pandemic learning loss reports.
Together, extreme weather conditions, inflation and the abrupt reduction the school lunch program set a broader environment of economic scarcity for the conference and for lawmakers crafting the Farm Bill.
Hunger is getting worse, not better, around the globe. The pandemic didn’t help.
Anti-hunger groups and food companies are weighing in
One guaranteed constant between the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health and the process of crafting the Farm Bill will be the presence of advocacy groups (also known as lobbyists). Advocacy groups — anti-hunger groups and various trade associations, in particular — have been submitting comments to the White House in advance of the conference. But the presence of interest groups does not mean they will determine the event outcomes.
There is not much evidence that money buys policy, according to research. Large interest group mobilization efforts tend to generate counter-mobilization, and many interest groups and stakeholders are already involved in this event.
Fissures between groups can mean no one gets what they want, since the status quo is easier to maintain. Sometimes long-standing conflicts between groups can hinder progress.
Anti-hunger groups have historically made “unholy alliances” with “big food.” Those decisions often rubbed nutrition advocates the wrong way — and, at times, prevented these groups from engaging in unified advocacy. We may expect this to be the case at the White House conference, where nutrition advocates are reportedly concerned that the conference will do little to address the epidemic of diet-related diseases.
Free school lunches may be one program everyone agrees on
Unified advocacy on free school lunches could have a widespread impact. My research on interest groups suggests they matter most when they either swim with the tide or support the status quo — and when they create coalitions of unlikely bedfellows. If they avoid getting caught up in partisan battles, these groups can provide useful information to lawmakers.
The Biden administration has indicated it will recommend healthy free lunches for all. But even with the support of broad interest group coalitions, making progress on actual food and nutrition outcomes could still be an uphill battle. Many of the next steps will require congressional action, and final conference recommendations will come just before midterm elections.
If Democrats retain the House and solidify their hold on the Senate, we could see significant movement on nutrition-related recommendations. That’s because many consider Biden an “above average” lawmaker and bipartisan coalition builder, and bipartisanship remains a necessary element of lawmaking, especially in a polarized era.
However, if Republicans win the House or the Senate, we may see Biden’s agenda come to a screeching halt, as Republicans have been obstructionist when it comes to Democratic agendas.
Policy recommendations aren’t “now or never” opportunities for change
Legislating is a long game. In the short term, interest groups and motivated companies can use the recommendations as a source of positive press if they make voluntary changes, and the administration is already encouraging stakeholders to make those types of commitments.
Lobbyists, activists and other stakeholders all seek to influence policy but can also simultaneously pursue change in other venues — including at the state level, where they are already advocating for universal free lunches. State and local-level advocacy may not be as satisfyingly big-picture as congressional action, but it can be effective. Research shows that health advocates can influence public support for public health measures through the right kind of messaging. Small steps can ultimately lead to big gains.
Clare Brock (@clare_brock) is an assistant professor in political science at Texas Woman’s University and the author of “Farmed Out: Agricultural Lobbying in a Polarized Congress” (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). | 2022-09-27T21:34:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Biden administration wants to end hunger in America by 2030. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/biden-hunger-nutrition-conference-white-house/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/27/biden-hunger-nutrition-conference-white-house/ |
Erik Gustafsson, left, vies for the puck during the first round of the International Ice Hockey Federation World Championship earlier this year. (Heikki Saukkomaa/Lehtikuva/AFP via Getty Images)
After losing Justin Schultz to Seattle in free agency, Washington found itself in need of a third-pair defenseman to skate alongside Trevor van Riemsdyk. With few internal candidates, the Washington Capitals signed defenseman Erik Gustafsson, a 30-year-old Swede who is suiting up for his fifth team in four seasons.
Gustafsson, who signed a one-year, $800,000 contract in July, recorded 18 points last season with Chicago and looks to bring the same production to Washington. The defenseman will still need to prove himself throughout the duration of camp, but he appears to be a lock for the third-pair role.
Gustafsson occupied that spot for the entire first week of camp and played there during Washington’s preseason opener Sunday against the Buffalo Sabres. There are a handful of names that could be in the mix, including veteran Matt Irwin and some younger prospects, but it appears Gustafsson is ready to take advantage of the opportunity.
With Nicklas Backstrom out, Caps’ Connor McMichael has a ‘great opportunity’
Gustafsson joins a Washington blue line that has five returning defensemen — van Riemsdyk, John Carlson, Martin Fehervary, Nick Jensen and Dmitry Orlov. Gustafsson would be the final piece of the puzzle.
“I really like the way our ‘D’ played last year,” Capitals Coach Peter Laviolette said. “There was a lot of stability with it. There was a lot of stability with the pairings, and I think that they played really well together.”
Gustafsson takes pride in his offensive production for a defenseman, and he is willing to join the rush and produce scoring chances for himself and his teammates.
Gustafsson said his timing wasn’t quite right in Sunday’s preseason opener, which led to atypical mistakes. He also had a costly holding penalty late that allowed Buffalo to score the equalizer. The Sabres won in overtime.
“When a player comes into a new organization … I think there’s always a learning curve,” Laviolette said. “I thought there were some really good things that he did [Sunday] and then there’s some things that we talked to him about and showed him.” I think it’s just the early part of camp and a new player and a new system, but he’ll be fine.”
Gustafsson said he started learning Washington’s systems a few days after he signed with the Capitals in the offseason. Assistant coach Kevin McCarthy, who runs the defense, sent Gustafsson videos leading up to training camp.
“I’ve been looking over some clips a lot, but it’s a little different when you’re on the ice,” Gustafsson said. “I’m getting there, and it’s some small stuff that I have to learn. That’s what the games are for, but practice-wise I feel confident.”
Van Riemsdyk, Gustafsson’s projected defensive partner, is also helping with the transition. Gustafsson played with van Riemsdyk in Chicago. They weren’t long-term defensive partners but often found themselves playing shifts together during games.
Carlson, who sits next to Gustafsson in the locker room, has also been an asset to him.. . Gustafsson had a similar mentor in Duncan Keith when he was in Chicago.
“I think [Gustafsson] is going to be great; he’s a real skilled guy, he sees the ice well and a guy we kind of heard rumblings about leading up to him being here,” Carlson said. | 2022-09-27T21:35:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Erik Gustafsson could become Capitals' third-pair defenseman - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/27/erik-gustafsson-capitals-defenseman/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/27/erik-gustafsson-capitals-defenseman/ |
Man charged with murder in June shooting, Pr. George’s police say
A 24-year-old man has been arrested and charged with murder in a shooting in the Clinton area in June, Prince George’s County police said.
Travon Marquis Ingram, of Washington is charged with second-degree murder and related counts in the killing of Deangelo Deonte Johnson, 29, of Clinton, according to police. He is being held without bond at the county jail.
On June 19, officers found Johnson outside with gunshot wounds about 9:05 p.m. in the 8200 block of Bellefonte Lane, police said. He was taken to a hospital, where he died.
Police said Ingram and Johnson knew each other, according to an initial investigation. Detectives are investigating a motive.
It was not immediately clear whether Ingram has an attorney. | 2022-09-27T22:29:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Travon Marquis Ingram charged with murder in June killing, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/27/man-charged-murder-clinton-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/27/man-charged-murder-clinton-shooting/ |
Mike Causey, ‘Federal Diary’ columnist for three decades, dies at 82
He was a well-read mainstay of The Washington Post, covering news affecting millions in the federal workforce
Mike Causey in his Washington Post office in 1997. (Dan Murano/The Washington Post)
Mike Causey, who wrote The Washington Post’s federal-workforce column six days a week for more than 30 years, popularized the term “Inside the Beltway” and saw himself as a watchdog against ill-considered judgments of political appointees, died Sept. 26 at 82.
He had retired from The Post in 2000 and had spent most of the last two decades as a host and columnist for the news outlet Federal News Network, in whose Chevy Chase, Md., offices he was found unresponsive soon after filing his latest column. His son Michael Causey confirmed the death but said the cause was not yet known.
After early stints working in a Kentucky tobacco warehouse and a New York print shop — and almost getting a tryout with the Cleveland Indians — Mr. Causey drifted into journalism. It was, he recalled, a bygone era, when those with a measure of street smarts but few formal credentials could still land a job at a metropolitan newspaper. Throughout his career, he delighted in being a newsroom scamp.
Contrary to rumors he spread of being the “copy boy who took the telegraph report of the Custer massacre,” he eventually admitted to a less glorified start at The Post in 1957 as a “buck-an-hour” messenger for the advertising department, he once wrote in an internal newspaper bio. He soon moved to the newsroom, writing stories about police, the Postal Service and a slew of what he called “the sky-isn’t-falling” features that plugged in empty space on the page.
A strapping 6-footer with a trim Clark Gable-style mustache, Mr. Causey was enlisted in 1964 to help protect “a more experienced and (fragile) reporter” assigned to write about the first Beatles concert in Washington, he wrote. With a staff photographer, Mr. Causey also was among the first to drive the entire 64-mile length of the not-yet-officially opened Beltway encircling Washington.
Quick and dependable, he became an apprentice to Federal Diary columnist Jerry Kluttz. The column, launched in 1932, was devoted to federal-workforce issues such as pay raises, changes to benefits and telecommuting policy, and other rules and regulations affecting millions of employees. After six years assisting Kluttz and briefly another more-senior writer, Mr. Causey carried the mantle himself in 1969.
By Mr. Causey’s own account, the task carried little visible prestige inside the newspaper, where national and international coverage made reputations, but the Federal Diary became a vital part of the The Post’s daily report and a must-read for generations of federal workers. (The column, running Sunday through Friday, bounced around many sections over the decades including the comics page, leading Mr. Causey to crow at his good fortune, “Heck, I’d rather be there than on Page 1.”)
Broadly and deeply sourced, as much as any seasoned political reporter, Mr. Causey chronicled how public money is spent or misspent on various initiatives. One story in 1981 about former president Ronald Reagan’s proposal to increase top federal pay by 4.8 percent led Mr. Causey to write: “That will be considered too little inside the Beltway and too much by taxpayers outside of Washington.”
Although there has reportedly been at least one earlier known use of the expression, Mr. Causey was credited with placing it more broadly in use. The term became shorthand language often applied to self-absorbed journalists and politicians who have lost touch with Americans in the “Heartland” far beyond the symbolic Beltway that forms a ring around the center of government power.
As a reporter, he saw himself as an advocate for often underappreciated multitudes who constituted his core readership and bore the workaday consequences of imperfect laws approved on Capitol Hill and carried out by political appointees named by the president.
“People, no matter who they are, have to pay the rent,” he told the Chicago Tribune. “They have to get the kids’ teeth fixed. A husband or mother worries about health insurance. CIA agents, in the Sinai or Northern Ireland, doing life-threatening things, have called about their insurance.”
A key mission of the column, he added, was to inform “the grunts what’s being done to them — not just their pay, but everything” and to act as a trusted source of information for high-level supervisors far removed from the front line trenches. If morale seemed curiously low a few floors down, he suggested in the Tribune interview, maybe it was because of “an underling firing everybody while the boss thought they were just all leaving to write novels.”
He scorned the trope of the lazy bureaucrat and saw, instead of faceless hordes, men and women, mothers and fathers, even grandparents who were dedicated to their jobs and might lead fascinating interior lives. At the Office of Personnel Management, “which sounds like the dullest thing going,” Mr. Causey told the Tribune, he befriended a man — the “brilliant manager was president of the Lone Ranger Club of America and an authority on old-time radio.”
He distrusted politicians of both parties who trumpeted their efforts to eliminate thousands of federal jobs by trying to persuade voters it would make government better and more efficient. Such talk, he said, was misleading as the contracting industry boomed and carried with it many fresh problems and concerns.
The CIA, he told Washingtonian magazine in 2000, has no “counterpart in the private sector. Folks in Langley tell me the number of contractors out there has skyrocketed. It seems half the people there now are contractors. I’m not sure that’s a good idea, because contractors don’t take the oath. They don’t make the same commitments of devotion and patriotism as CIA employees must.”
In one of Mr. Causey’s final columns for The Post, he directed his sarcasm at politicians who invoked imagery of Nazi stormtroopers by describing federal employees carrying out their jobs as “jackbooted thugs.”
“I had lunch the other day with a ‘jackbooted thug,’ a.k.a. a retired federal law enforcement officer,” Mr. Causey wrote. “He now works as a volunteer with disabled children. He could have made more in corporate security but said he decided to spend his retirement — ‘giving something back.’
“He’s a disgrace to thugs everywhere.”
A distinctive personality
Norman Michael Causey was born on Feb. 12, 1940, in Indianapolis to parents, he often joked, who fled the Depression in Kentucky for the Depression in Indiana. He described his father to Washingtonian magazine as a meat cutter who mostly was “kind of a drifter.” After his parents divorced, he grew up with his mother, who worked as a secretary. He also was raised partly by his aunt and uncle.
His marriage to Betty Lou Adams Dunn, who later went by Elizabeth Adams, ended in divorce. His son Steven Causey died in January. In addition to his son Michael, of Washington, survivors include two daughters, Libby Causey-Hicks of Mechanicsville, Va., and Jocelyn Causey of Silver Spring, Md.; a half sister; three half-brothers; and eight grandchildren.
For Mr. Causey, the attraction to journalism was that it was justification for never having to grow up and for exploring “how things work, or are supposed to, or don’t.”
He cut a distinctive personality in a newsroom filled with eager strivers seeking front-page stories that would get them on Sunday talk shows. Mr. Causey, by all accounts, cared little for sleek appearances that would move him up a predictable career ladder. He was an idiosyncratic combination of unprintable humor and unexpected interests, including hot British dance bands of the 1930s.
His office grew to immense levels of hoarding and hazards. Executive editor Benjamin Bradlee made annual threats to call the fire marshal on him if he did not throw away some of the manuals, newspapers and press releases that created near-impassible clutter.
Regardless, Mr. Causey churned out articles at a pace unmatched by most. Amid the junk, he kept a T-shirt with a front reading “Anyone can be a daily columnist.” On the back was printed: “For two weeks.” (The column, since renamed Federal Insider, runs in print once a week and is handled by Joe Davidson.)
Former Metro editor Jo-Ann Armao, now an editorial writer, noted after Mr. Causey’s death: “He clearly had the reporting and writing chops to do other things, but Mike knew just how important the federal government workforce is. Tens of thousands of government employees hung on his words, they knew they could trust him and no amount of page-one bylines could substitute for that.”
Despite his loyal following, Mr. Causey was less earnest about his own standing with peers and the public.
“I never claimed to have six good ideas a week, just to write six columns a week,” he told Washingtonian. “Many of my columns had breaking news — the type The Post news section wouldn’t have for two weeks. That became an inside joke. I’d write some news, and the paper would feature it on the front page a week later. I wouldn’t nominate all of my columns for a Pulitzer Prize, but most did contain sound information. People think that my type of information is dull — until it applies to their agency. Then it becomes riveting.” | 2022-09-27T22:55:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mike Causey, ‘Federal Diary’ columnist for three decades, dies at 82 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/27/mike-causey-journalist-federal-diary-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/27/mike-causey-journalist-federal-diary-dead/ |
Thailand’s Big Verdict Answers Only One Question
Bangkok loves intrigue, and rumors are swirling ahead of a Constitutional Court decision this week on the fate of Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha — who may or may not have exceeded his eight-year limit at the helm, depending on when judges decide the counting should start.
If the opposition gets its way, the decision will force a rushed exit for the coup-leader-turned-premier. More likely, given the court’s record, it will be a compromise, allowing Prayuth to remain in place until the 2023 election. Neither option would mark the end of Prayuth’s problems, or of Thailand’s — from allegiance-shifting ahead of next year, to the struggle to rev up Southeast Asia’s most sluggish recovery.
Even a miracle may come too late for Prayuth. On the streets, he is hugely unpopular with Thais as they grapple with a weak currency, high inflation, ballooning household debt and the consequences of China’s Covid-Zero policies, which have slowed the large-scale return of tourists. In polls, he trails behind Paetongtarn Shinawatra, of the Pheu Thai party, who is the daughter of exiled former leader Thaksin Shinawatra.
Worse, after his policy failures, the last few weeks can be read as evidence of weakened support for the former army chief among the conservative establishment. As an opposition win in 2023 begins to look likely, the elite may well want to back a different kind of potential prime minister — one who’s in with a chance.
At the heart of the court case is the opposition parties’ contention that the period Prayuth spent leading the country as head of a military junta after a coup in 2014 should count toward the total. Given the constitution limits the prime minister to eight years in office, they posit, he’s already overstayed. Surprising many, the nine-member court said last month it would suspend him while judges deliberated. (He has stayed in the cabinet, but as defense minister.)
It’s tempting to see the opposition gambit as just another challenge for Prayuth. He’s survived multiple missteps during Covid-19, large student-led street protests and four no-confidence votes, the latest in July. But it’s a body blow, all the more painful because it’s been dealt by opponents using a provision the establishment had inserted in the constitution to contain its own adversaries, specifically Thaksin.
The worst outcome for Prayuth personally would be for the court to set the clock ticking in 2014. He’d need to step down immediately and be replaced with a military- and monarchy-friendly alternative. That’s not a threat to the system — the ruling here is on one man, and an unloved one at that — but it would be a scramble. Obvious names like Deputy Prime Minister Prawit Wongsuwan, power broker, head of the ruling party and currently standing in for the premier, look like a hard sell. He’s a military man, already 77, famously enamored of luxury watches and not suffering from a surfeit of popularity — all too similar to Prayuth. That leaves some of the younger alternatives, around whom consensus would have to be built, like the well-connected Anutin Charnvirakul, also a deputy prime minister.
Far more likely, given the court’s track record of siding with the Prayuth government, is a fudge that agrees to start the timer in April 2017, the date at which the military-backed constitution (with its time limits) took effect. That’s not as generous as picking 2019 — when he was elected prime minister — but would be a far more palatable outcome. He’ll struggle to attempt to stay on past 2023, but that would buy him some time.
Nothing is guaranteed, of course. The court is unquestionably conservative, but as Khemthong Tonsakulrungruang of Chulalongkorn University pointed out to me, these are not Prayuth’s men, and they will not be doing his bidding. They have been partners with the leadership, but are not beholden to him. The court, widely distrusted, has its own tarnished reputation to attempt to salvage.
And Prayuth, after all, is no longer the elite’s standard bearer.
• Thai Leaders Can’t Afford Confrontation: Clara Ferreira Marques
• Thai Corporate VCs Are Sucking Up All the Oxygen: Tim Culpan
• George Soros, Mahathir and the Legacy of 1997: Daniel Moss | 2022-09-27T23:04:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Thailand’s Big Verdict Answers Only One Question - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/thailands-big-verdict-answers-only-one-question/2022/09/27/bc572c74-3eb4-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/thailands-big-verdict-answers-only-one-question/2022/09/27/bc572c74-3eb4-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
FILE - Sen. Alan Clark, R-Lonsdale, speaks during a news conference at the Arkansas state Capitol in Little Rock, Ark., Aug. 10, 2015. On Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022, the majority-Republican Arkansas Senate approved its ethics committee’s recommendation to suspend Clark for the rest of the 93rd General Assembly, which ends on Jan. 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Danny Johnston, File)
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — An Arkansas state senator won’t have access to Senate offices and can’t participate in legislative meetings after the Senate on Tuesday ruled he made a frivolous ethics complaint against a fellow lawmaker in retaliation for sanctions he received earlier this year. | 2022-09-27T23:04:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Arkansas senator suspended over filing frivolous complaint - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/arkansas-senator-suspended-over-filing-frivolous-complaint/2022/09/27/b1c40dd4-3eb1-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/arkansas-senator-suspended-over-filing-frivolous-complaint/2022/09/27/b1c40dd4-3eb1-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Billy Eichner poses for a portrait at the Crosby Street Hotel to promote his film “Bros” on Monday, Sept. 19, 2022 in New York. (Charles Sykes/Invision/AP)
Some have suggested Eichner has overplayed the historical nature of “Bros.” A Gawker headline read: “Billy Eichner is the first gay man ever." There have been some recent films that centered on gay romance, like the more dramatic “Love, Simon” (2018), and streaming releases like Netflix’s “Happiest Season” (2020) and Hulu’s “Fire Island” from earlier this year. | 2022-09-27T23:04:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Billy Eichner made a great rom-com. Now its audiences' turn. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/billy-eichner-made-a-great-rom-com-now-its-audiences-turn/2022/09/27/b400cf30-3eb4-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/billy-eichner-made-a-great-rom-com-now-its-audiences-turn/2022/09/27/b400cf30-3eb4-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
WAUKESHA, Wis. — A Wisconsin judge deferred a decision Tuesday on whether a man accused of killing six people and injuring dozens more when he allegedly drove his SUV through a Christmas parade can represent himself at trial, after the suspect said he doesn’t understand the charges against him or how the state can prosecute him. | 2022-09-27T23:05:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge delays ruling on parade suspect's self-representation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/judge-delays-ruling-on-parade-suspects-self-representation/2022/09/27/2b07365e-3eac-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/judge-delays-ruling-on-parade-suspects-self-representation/2022/09/27/2b07365e-3eac-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Hurricanes I have known
A Florida resident and dog walk past building that is boarded up for the possible arrival of Hurricane Ian on Sept. 27, in St. Petersburg, Fla. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
If it wasn’t the hurricanes, it was the Soviets. Or the gators cruising along the lake shores or water moccasins coiled and sunbathing around cypress trees. Growing up in Florida in the 1960s, there was always something poised to pounce.
But hurricanes were, and remain, a constant threat to Floridians. Hurricane Ian promises to bring massive destruction to the Sunshine State as you’re reading this. Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has ordered 2.5 million people to evacuate — and good luck with that, since most of the state is under a hurricane warning. Barring providential interferences, damages likely will be catastrophic for millions of people, wildlife, agriculture and, surely, the state’s chief economic driver, tourism.
As a native Floridian, I’m well-seasoned and knowledgeable about tropical storms and the places that get walloped by them.
Even now, my childhood hometown of Winter Haven, located between Tampa and Orlando, is under a hurricane “warning,” meaning sustained winds could reach at least 74 mph following a direct hit on Tampa. My high school classmates who still live there have not forgotten a 1960 hurricane named Donna, considered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to be “one of the all-time great hurricanes.”
Donna came straight across the peninsula and hovered over our little town, a “city of 100 lakes” and home to Cypress Gardens, water ski capital of the world. Memorable is the word for it: What started as a tropical wave off the African Coast on Aug. 29, 1960, Donna is the only hurricane on record to produce hurricane-force winds all the way from Florida, through the mid-Atlantic states and into New England. Fifty people died in the United States alone.
Donna was quite an initiation for our family, which had settled in Florida 10 years earlier and assumed, living so far inland, that we could ride it out. The uninitiated always think it would be cool to “batten down the hatches,” (a popular phrase among some people in Charleston, S.C., right up until the moment Hurricane Hugo devastated their city in 1989). But it is certainly not cool, and most swear off such boasts thereafter.
In any case, it’s best to have a survivalist in the house. My Midwestern father became one after Donna showed him what for, plowing as it did through our taped-up windows, tearing off the sheets of plywood covering the windows and flooding the house. No matter how many mops and towels we threw at Donna, she threw them right back. All the while, our hurricane house guest, an elderly widow from across the street I called Mrs. Harry G. Brown, sobbed incessantly.
Sometime after midnight, the eye settled over the landscape, and all became quiet. Some of the grown-ups wandered out to examine the damage before all hell broke loose again. A large cedar tree was nearly on its side, but its roots still clung stubbornly to the earth. The next morning, the tree was upright. (Reason: A hurricane’s wind changes directions from one side of the eye to the other.)
For the next two weeks, we all made do without electricity. The heat was no worse than usual because our family had not yet been spoiled by air conditioning. We ate lots of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Mrs. Harry G. Brown returned home to minimal damage and her nerves in better shape than my father’s.
We’d learned our lesson. By the time the Cuban missile crisis rolled around two years later, we had a fully operational bomb shelter and, no kidding, drills — which included a three-minute sprint to change the air filter outside. My father, a lawyer by trade, became an expert on civil defense, which, as he told Floridians, was “a joke.” He took to the road to lecture others and discuss his “survival kit.” What I wouldn’t give to have one of those back.
Fortunately, the Soviets backed down before delivering their nuclear missiles to Cuba, but not before I learned a harsh lesson from my father about survival in our bomb shelter: If the Russians had launched its missiles, he told me, our widow neighbor would not be joining us in the shelter.
Suffice to say, parents didn’t coddle their children in those days, and we survived. I pray we all survive Ian, whose harshest lessons will soon be ours. | 2022-09-27T23:05:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | My family tried to ride out Hurricane Donna. Big mistake. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/hurricane-ian-florida-donna/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/27/hurricane-ian-florida-donna/ |
FILE - Rep. Michael Myers, second from left, holds an envelope containing $50,000 he just received from undercover FBI Agent Anthony Amoroso, left, in this videotape played at the first Abscam trial, Oct. 14, 1980. Myers, the former congressman from Philadelphia who went to prison in the Abscam scandal in the 1970s, was sent back to prison Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022, at age 79, in a ballot stuffing case. (AP Photo/File) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-09-27T23:05:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Abscam figure sent back to prison in ballot stuffing case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/abscam-figure-sent-back-to-prison-in-ballot-stuffing-case/2022/09/27/7f82a948-3eac-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/abscam-figure-sent-back-to-prison-in-ballot-stuffing-case/2022/09/27/7f82a948-3eac-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Prosecutor quits case of 43 missing Mexican students amid new turmoil
Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul
People march to mark the eighth anniversary of the disappearance of the 43 students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers' College on Monday in Mexico City. (Toya Sarno Jordan/Reuters)
MEXICO CITY — The prosecutor in charge of Mexico’s most notorious human rights case has quit, throwing into disarray the eight-year-old investigation into the disappearance of 43 students while raising questions about the authorities’ willingness to take on politicians and the military.
Omar Gómez Trejo had spent more than three years on the investigation, seen as a crucial test of Mexico’s ability to unravel a case allegedly involving drug traffickers and their ties to politicians and security forces. The veteran human rights lawyer was appointed just months after President Andrés Manuel López Obrador took office in December 2018, vowing to secure justice for the families of the missing students from the teachers’ college in the town of Ayotzinapa.
The prosecutor won judicial approval last month for 83 arrest warrants, including one for a retired army general — a rare indictment of a senior military figure. But the Mexican Attorney General’s Office recently persuaded a judge to vacate 21 of the arrest warrants; 16 of which were for military officials.
Kate Doyle, a senior analyst at the Washington-based National Security Archive who had contributed research to Gómez Trejo’s investigation, said the resignation reflected disarray in the government and the sensitivity of charging the military with human-rights violations.
“I would be very surprised if the military remains a target of this investigation,” she said.
The 43 students vanished on Sept. 26, 2014, after commandeering several buses to go to a protest rally — a common practice. They were last seen in custody of local police. The case unleashed a storm of protest in Mexico and abroad, as signs emerged that politicians, the police, the military and a local drug-trafficking gang were involved in the crime or a subsequent coverup. No one has been convicted.
The focus on the military’s role in the disappearances comes at a particularly charged moment. López Obrador recently moved the civilian-led National Guard under formal army command. He is also pushing Mexico’s congress to extend the military’s mandate to do law enforcement until 2028.
López Obrador’s reliance on the military for everything from arresting drug traffickers to building airports and operating seaports has raised fears that Mexico’s democracy is slipping away from civilian control.
The president says that the military is needed to fight heavily armed organized-crime groups. On Tuesday, he said that Gómez Trejo resigned “because he didn’t agree with the procedures followed to approve the arrest warrants.” The president added that he was in favor of the warrants.
Mexican government control threatened by crime groups
As a special prosecutor, Gómez Trejo enjoyed unusual autonomy, able to order wiretaps and investigate a wide range of crimes. Yet the attorney general’s office — his employer — seemed to be quietly running a parallel investigation. Recently, while Gómez Trejo was abroad, other prosecutors secured an arrest warrant for the former attorney general, Jesús Murillo Karam, for alleged involvement in the Ayotzinapa case. (He has pleaded innocent).
The Miguel Agustín Pro Juárez Centre for Human Rights, which has represented the families of the 43 students, called the latest developments “extremely worrying.”
Stephanie Brewer, who formerly worked at the center and is now at the Washington Office on Latin America, said Gómez Trejo’s resignation was “clearly a reaction to the fact that his office has been sidelined.”
There was no response to requests for comment sent to Gómez Trejo and the attorney general’s office.
The Mexican government initially blamed the students’ disappearance on local police and politicians allegedly tied to a drug gang, Guerreros Unidos. Authorities said the traffickers apparently mistook the students for members of a rival group, killed them and burned their bodies in a garbage dump.
Independent experts have since debunked many of those conclusions. A recent report from a government truth commission stated that federal and state officials — including army officers — were aware of the kidnappings and took no action. The report accused the military and police of later participating in a coverup. It raised the possibility that the students were targeted because they unwittingly seized a U.S.-bound bus carrying drugs for the Guerreros Unidos.
Lawyers for four military officers charged in the case said this week that the allegations were based on uncorroborated testimony from a protected witness and that their clients were innocent.
So far, remains of only three of the 43 students have been found. | 2022-09-27T23:06:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Prosecutor quits case of 43 missing Mexican students amid new turmoil - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/27/mexico-ayotzinapa-missing-students-prosecutor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/27/mexico-ayotzinapa-missing-students-prosecutor/ |
Of course LinkedIn is experimenting on you
The logo for Linkedin Corp. on an iPhone. (Jason Alden/Bloomberg News)
There’s an aphorism about social-media sites that warns consumers that they’re not consumers after all — they’re the product. True enough, but there’s more: They’re also test subjects.
A study in the journal Science by researchers at LinkedIn, MIT, Stanford University and Harvard Business School reveals that the professional networking platform conducted experiments on more than 20 million users over five years. The idea was simple: Harness the power of big data to confirm the sociological hypothesis that not-so-close acquaintances are more helpful for finding employment than the closest of friends.
The attempt to prove the theory worked, apparently too well. Now, some critics are claiming that LinkedIn gave some users a leg up while leaving others to languish — carefully improving their product but carelessly playing with people’s livelihoods. Maybe so, though LinkedIn was ostensibly trying to help everyone get jobs more efficiently in the long run. But the study’s existence is the furthest thing from surprising.
LinkedIn assessed what’s known as the “strength of weak ties” by tweaking its “People You May Know” algorithm so that it recommended more weak contacts (say, your college roommate’s golf buddy’s boss) to some and more strong contacts (say, your college roommate) to others. This is called A/B testing, and it’s a whole lot less controversial when someone else does it.
The Post A/B tests headlines, for example, showing some readers a version of one with “Donald Trump” in it and others a version without it to see which attracts more clicks. Fast-food restaurants A/B test hamburgers, for example showing some eaters a version of a digital menu that puts Big Mac combo meals smack in the middle of the screen and others a version that promotes Quarter Pounders without the soda and fries. Is Ronald McDonald experimenting on us?
The difference is, as important as lunch (and even breakfast) may be, caloric intake doesn’t seem as personal as job prospects, or, in the case of Facebook, as intimate as the photographs and musings of family and acquaintances.
That explains why a 2012 Facebook A/B test unveiled in 2014 inspired ire similar to today’s — but greater: The platform had served some users more positive posts and some more negative posts to ascertain whether the change altered their moods — which, spoiler alert, it did. Mark Zuckerberg was manipulating our emotions to make money!
Well, yeah. That’s the whole point.
Surely there are ethical questions about the implications of big-data research. And surely we feel violated when a study that we were involved in — but had no earthly idea about — is published. We aren’t lab mice. But on the other hand, we sort of are — even when there’s no official scientific study taking place, and even when all of us rather than a preselected subset or two are affected by social-media sites’ decisions. Every tweak, every step in product development does something to every one of us.
YouTube adjusts its artificial intelligence to recommend more extreme versions of what we’ve already watched so that we’ll keep watching and sends those attracted to conspiracy theories down a rabbit hole they can’t climb out of. YouTube readjusts the algorithm to prevent the spread of harmful misinformation. That’s not exactly an experiment, but it is a mode of influencing human behavior with implications for the whole of society. Twitter raises its character limit from 140 to 280, and our political discourse transforms.
The aphorism declaring us these sites’ product comes from the basics of online advertising: Facebook is “free” only because the platform markets users’ attention to businesses trying to sell us stuff. As long as sites are aiming to win from us something as wrapped up in our minds as attention, we’re going to continue to feel like test subjects, too.
Either this is all a moral disaster, or it’s exactly what we signed up for. We’re on Twitter, and YouTube, and Facebook, and even LinkedIn because we want them to do something to our lives more significant than a burger and fries do: to connect us, or inform us, or make or break our professional futures. We’re on them because they’re personal, not in spite of it — and it’s only because we’re attached to them that many of us find it so difficult to give them up even when we know full well we’re their lab mice.
The options are to log off or to keep running through the labyrinth. | 2022-09-27T23:35:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Of course LinkedIn is experimenting on you with 'weak ties' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/linkedin-experiment-weak-ties-inevitable/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/linkedin-experiment-weak-ties-inevitable/ |
People gather Tuesday in Southeast Washington for the grand opening of a Lidl, the first full-service supermarket to open east of the Anacostia River in 15 years. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
D.C. residents on Tuesday celebrated the opening of a new supermarket east of the Anacostia River for the first time in 15 years — offering a much-needed grocer in a sector of the city that contains the highest concentration of food deserts.
The District’s first-ever Lidl food market opens this week at Skyland Town Center, an 18.5-acre mixed-use development that city officials broke ground on in 2014, though they are quick to note that plans to redevelop the site have been in the works for 30 years because of a litany of obstacles and legal delays — so long that five D.C. mayors have touched the project.
In the past 15 months, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) has welcomed several amenities to Skyland: In January, she unveiled D.C.’s first drive-through Starbucks; last year, a similar group of officials celebrated the first residential building to open at the site, the Crest. But she was particularly animated at Lidl’s unveiling Tuesday, reiterating that while many city leaders helped shepherd the development over the years, she will be the one to see it through.
“Thirty years ago, residents of this community weren’t satisfied with what was happening; they went to their elected officials and said: ‘We want to transform this. We’re tired of having to always cross the bridge, and we’re tired of having to always go to Maryland,’” Bowser said. “We want every family to have a quality grocery store near their home.”
Before Lidl, there were four full-service grocery stores in Wards 7 and 8 — a paltry amount compared with the dozens of groceries found west of the Anacostia River, a natural dividing line that has separated some of the city’s poorest and historically underserved neighborhoods from the most affluent.
“Now this is becoming less of a food desert,” said Donna Morrow, 75, who lives in the nearby Fairlawn community. “Fresh food and vegetables — and deals.”
Officials said they hope Lidl will attract people from all over, but they also discussed its importance as a community pillar: Of 45 jobs filled at the store so far, 90 percent of the positions have gone to residents of Wards 7 and 8, officials said. Some of those who gathered Tuesday drove over from Maryland and other corners of the city to get a glimpse at the store, which opens to customers Wednesday morning.
“A new store for our community will help out a lot, especially for the Black community,” said Ryan Powell, a 48-year-old Anacostia resident who showed up at Lidl on Tuesday to apply for a position as a cashier. “Hopefully I can get hired here, too.”
Bowser becomes latest D.C. mayor to break ground on long-stalled Skyland project
On Tuesday afternoon, Bowser toured Lidl as residents perused options and tasted free samples. Among them was longtime Ward 7 resident Deborah Mack, who said more options for produce and vegetables were sorely needed in the community.
“It means a lot to me not to have to go across the bridge, to have this right in my backyard,” Mack said as she examined Lidl’s selections of spices and condiments. “It’s nice to have another option, another store.”
Among those who have waited decades for the store to finally arrive: Ward 7 D.C. Council member Vincent C. Gray (D), who stood proudly in front of Lidl on Tuesday, despite being one month removed from having surgery on a torn Achilles’ tendon.
“I don’t know if we ever thought this was really going to happen,” said Gray, a former mayor. He rattled off some of the stores and amenities that have cropped up at Skyland over the course of its development: a barbershop, a bank and several restaurants.
“We didn’t give up, we never gave up,” he added. “And now, we have a Lidl.” | 2022-09-28T00:23:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | First D.C. Lidl grocery store opens east of the Anacostia River - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/27/dc-lidl-grocery-store-southeast/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/27/dc-lidl-grocery-store-southeast/ |
In Italy and beyond, packaging toxic populism
Giorgia Meloni is likely Italy's next prime minister, the first woman to hold the title and leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy. (Ettore Ferrari/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
The kind of far-right populism that has been winning votes has been packaged in ways that put an approachable, almost amiable, cover on a philosophy that is wholly the opposite.
The populists speak about the rights of the common man even as they hold themselves above the rules, even as they clamor for power over the people. They use language that exhorts turning a blind eye to the rights and sensitivities of transgender individuals, same-sex couples and women in general, and make believe that they’re just speaking up to protect innocent children when it’s their own stubborn selfishness and vision of the culture that they’re safeguarding. They demonize migrants, even though those men and women are just trying to make their ways in a brutal world the same as everyone else. And what could be more universal, more popular, than that?
The packaging of Giorgia Meloni, the rising far-right leader in Italy, puts a soft glow on her intolerance on topics such as immigration and LGBTQ rights. She elides discrimination and cruelty with national security and righteous traditions. On the road to her party’s recent electoral victory, she’s made plain her desire to protect Italian identity. And that identity, as she and her supporters have defined it, does not include the folks arriving on Italian shores from Africa and the Middle East.
Meloni leads the Brothers of Italy party, which is a descendant of post-World War II fascism. But even without the shadow of Mussolini, Meloni’s nationalistic view would be cause for alarm. It echoes the far-right rhetoric in France and Hungary. It reflects much of what the Republican Party here has come to espouse. Their way is, if not ordained by an almighty Christian God, the closest thing to a holy mandate. That is their reading of Scripture, their interpretation of a sermon, their utter self-regard.
Meloni, 45, is casual. Her campaign photography casts her as friendly, warm and a little bit glamorous. She wears pastel colors, jeans and khakis, sneakers and dangling earrings. She doesn’t look like the Establishment, which is to say she isn’t a man in a dark suit with all of the sharp angles and constrictions. She is not Silvio Berlusconi with his self-satisfied countenance. She isn’t any of the countless less-complicated men who’ve served as prime minister in the past decade.
One might say that Meloni leans into her femininity. A refrain of hers has been: “I am a woman. I am a mother.” But that doesn’t mean that her stance on issues is particularly maternal or nurturing. She is antagonism with a smile.
These leaders who define themselves by what they are not have subverted the usual political costuming. Britain’s former prime minister Boris Johnson, who took on the task of Brexit, was essentially a giant mop of mussed blond hair. It was his defining aesthetic gesture. It was his self-created synecdoche. The hair was a mess. The hair was out of control. The hair was unruly. The hair was eventually pushed out of office in a swirl of anger and disgust stirred in part by a failure to abide by the government’s covid-19 rules.
For four years, Americans had a president whose essence could be caricatured as a few rivulets of yellow hair and a Scotch-taped tie that drooped down to his knees. Here was the barest exoskeleton of structure and order. Here was a symbol of the wretched disregard for pesky norms and traditions and, according to the Jan. 6 committee, the Constitution itself.
Meloni isn’t messy or unruly like Trump or Johnson. But her rhetoric can be just as bilious, if not more so. She isn’t ready to welcome outsiders with open arms; frankly, she would prefer to slam the door in the face of strangers. She portends heartache for the LGBTQ community in Italy. She is on the verge of making history. A far-right populist with an affection for sneakers, jeans, bohemian accessories and a toxic brand of nationalism. | 2022-09-28T00:36:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Giorgia Meloni's packaging of toxic populism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/27/italy-beyond-packaging-toxic-populism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/27/italy-beyond-packaging-toxic-populism/ |
UNITED NATIONS — A senior U.N. official warned Tuesday of a possible internal conflict and worsening poverty in Afghanistan if the Taliban don’t respond quickly to the needs of all elements of society, saying their crackdown on the rights of girls and women signals indifference to over 50% of Afghanistan’s population and a willingness to risk international isolation. | 2022-09-28T00:37:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UN official warns of conflict, more poverty in Afghanistan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-official-warns-of-conflict-more-poverty-in-afghanistan/2022/09/27/5d5031c0-3ec4-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-official-warns-of-conflict-more-poverty-in-afghanistan/2022/09/27/5d5031c0-3ec4-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
A self-described ‘secular in my head and Muslim in my heart,’ she founded an organization that helped thousands of unwed mothers and their babies overcome stigma and build new lives
Aicha Ech-Channa, an internationally known Moroccan women's rights activist, in Casablanca in 2015. (Abdeljalil Bounhar/AP)
Over time, she gradually won support in Morocco, including from King Mohammed VI, who announced her death, according to MAP, Morocco’s state news agency.
Working with a Catholic nun and a Jewish humanitarian volunteer, she established ASF to help unmarried mothers build sustainable lives. From modest beginnings in a basement, the organization grew to provide women with child care, counseling and medical services, and vocational training in fields such as cooking, sewing and accounting.
For children labeled “illegitimate,” ASF sought to obtain the documentation necessary for them to go to school. The organization also helped push for legal changes, winning some concessions with revisions to the “moudawana,” or family code, that gave women greater rights in divorce, marriage and child custody.
“They can neither read nor write, and have no idea about sexuality. These girls are often harassed as they go about their work, and even raped. Or they fall for men who promise them the world. If they get pregnant, they are then rejected by society. I found this hypocrisy unbearable.” | 2022-09-28T01:24:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Aicha Ech-Channa, Moroccan women's rights activist, dies at 81 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/27/aicha-ech-channa-morocco-women-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/27/aicha-ech-channa-morocco-women-dead/ |
Man is killed on Amtrak tracks in Prince George’s, county police say
The incident occurred near New Carrollton
An Amtrak car and train set on the Alstom test track in Hornell, N.Y., on July 27. (Heather Ainsworth for The Washington Post)
A man was struck and killed by an Amtrak train in Prince George’s County on Tuesday evening, according to official accounts.
The incident occurred about 5 p.m. near the New Carrollton station, according to Cpl. Unique Jones, a county police spokeswoman. She said it was reported near the 5100 block of 85th Avenue. The train carried 209 passengers, and there were no injuries reported. The train was delayed by about three hours.
The site is between the station and the Capital Beltway.
Amtrak said an Acela train headed toward Philadelphia and New York “made contact” with someone described as a trespasser. | 2022-09-28T01:54:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man is killed by Amtrak train near New Carrollton - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/27/man-killed-amtrak-prince-george/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/27/man-killed-amtrak-prince-george/ |
She spent decades promoting the work of bassist and composer Charles Mingus, who died in 1979
Sue Mingus and her husband, Charles, in the late 1970s at their apartment in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan. (Sy Johnson/The Charles Mingus Institute)
Sue Mingus, who founded jazz ensembles, published music books and produced Grammy-nominated albums as part of a resolute four-decade campaign to promote the legacy of her late husband, the brilliant and mercurial composer, bandleader and double bass virtuoso Charles Mingus, died Sept. 24 at a hospital in Manhattan. She was 92.
Her death was confirmed by her son, Roberto Ungaro, who said she had been in declining health but did not give a specific cause. She died 15 years to the day after her brother Richard A. Graham, a founder of the National Organization for Women and an inaugural member of the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
A former Midwestern debutante who rebelled against her conventional upbringing — her friends included poet Allen Ginsberg as well as literary critic Harold Bloom — Ms. Mingus often downplayed the impact of her years championing her husband’s music and image. “Charles’s music is Charles’s music,” she told The Washington Post in 1999, two decades after he died of a heart attack at age 56. “I may have speeded the process up,” she continued, referring to a composer whose songs were recorded by artists including Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Keith Richards, “but that’s all.”
Yet to many jazz historians and musicians, she played a crucial role in shaping the legacy of her husband, whose music combined traditional blues and gospel with complex harmonies, free-ranging melodies and an abiding love of collective improvisation. His popularity rose and fell during his lifetime as he battled depression, alienated audiences and collaborators with his fits of rage, and struggled with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.
“If it hadn’t been for Sue Mingus, his music would not be as revered as it is today,” journalist and critic Nat Hentoff once told The Post. “What she has done is keep Mingus’s music alive, literally.”
As Ms. Mingus told it, she knew virtually nothing about jazz when she met her husband in 1964 while seeing him in concert for the first time. She was acting in an underground film directed by Robert Frank, “O.K. End Here,” which was supposed to feature a soundtrack from saxophonist Ornette Coleman. A friend working on the film decided to introduce her to the city’s jazz scene and brought her to the Five Spot in Lower Manhattan, where she took a seat at the bar during intermission and sipped a gin and tonic while watching as Mingus ate alone at his table, “as intense and private as a holy man meditating on his chakra.”
“I liked him immediately,” she wrote in “Tonight at Noon: A Love Story” (2002), a memoir about their relationship. “I liked his aloneness in the tumultuous room, his concentration on the outsized beef bone at hand.”
When Mingus came over to grab a bottle of wine, she asked him whether he had seen Coleman, and then explained that the musician was writing music for a movie she was in. “You in a movie?” Charles replied with surprise. “With those teeth?”
They soon struck up a relationship. After a few years, she recalled, they were “married” by Ginsberg, a Buddhist who presided over an impromptu ceremony by chanting at the couple for more than an hour. They were legally married in 1975 — it was Charles’s fourth marriage and Ms. Mingus’s second — this time by a justice of the peace.
Collaborating with musicologist Andrew Homzy and the composer and conductor Gunther Schuller, she produced the 1989 Lincoln Center premiere of Charles’s monumental composition “Epitaph,” using a 500-page, 15-pound score that was located and stitched together after his death. Musicians from Mingus Dynasty and the “Epitaph” orchestra were then chosen for the Mingus Big Band, a 14-piece ensemble that she created to ensure his music was regularly performed.
To Ms. Mingus’s surprise, the group became a New York institution, initially playing weekly gigs at Fez Under Time Cafe, a nightclub where the seats were often filled by 20-somethings born after Charles’s death. “There’s really no explaining the popularity,” she told the Times in 1994, three years after forming the group. “But I think Charles would be tickled.”
Somewhat like her husband, Ms. Mingus could be testy toward the group’s musicians, teasing them at times for playing too loudly or soloing too long. But in general, “she treated her musicians as her extended family,” her son said in a phone interview, and drew praise from music critics for the lineups she assembled and the albums she produced, including the Mingus Big Band’s Grammy-winning “Live at Jazz Standard” (2010).
“When someone like Glenn Miller or Artie Shaw dies and a sideman takes over the band, it’s called a ghost band because it just isn’t the same,” Hentoff told The Post in 1999. “But with the Mingus Big Band — and I’m not exaggerating — you can feel Mingus. It’s because of Sue. She knows what musicians to choose, she knows who understands the music.”
After Charles Mingus’s death, Ms. Mingus helped organize his papers and donated his archives to the Library of Congress. She also published books including “Charles Mingus: More Than a Fake Book” (1991), which included 55 of his original scores; produced a documentary, “Charles Mingus: Triumph of the Underdog” (1998); and campaigned against bootleggers who released pirated recordings of her husband’s concerts. At times she stole bootleg albums from record stores, eventually launching her own music company, Revenge Records, to reissue recordings of his concerts.
Ms. Mingus started a nonprofit organization, Let My Children Hear Music, to promote her educational efforts, which grew to include an annual festival and high school jazz competition. This year, coinciding with the centennial of Mingus’s birth, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded her its 2023 A.B. Spellman NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship for Jazz Advocacy.
Survivors include two children from her first marriage, Robert and Susanna Ungaro; four grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren. Her son described her as “a fireball” who “didn’t care what other people thought,” recalling that for a time Ms. Mingus spent her summers in the Hamptons on an old house boat, which sank in a hurricane, and drove to the beach “with a clam rake sticking out of the sun roof” of her Bentley automobile, which she bought secondhand.
Ms. Mingus continued working until five years ago, although she had started ceding control of her husband’s tribute groups in her late 70s. | 2022-09-28T02:07:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sue Mingus, who championed her husband’s jazz legacy, dies at 92 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/27/jazz-champion-sue-mingus-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/27/jazz-champion-sue-mingus-dead/ |
Paolo Espino allowed four runs on five hits in five innings Tuesday against the Braves. He remains winless. (Jess Rapfogel/AP)
More significant than what Paolo Espino did on the mound Tuesday night — five innings, four earned runs, a performance good for the wrong end of an 8-2 loss to the Atlanta Braves — was why he started again in the first place.
In the home stretch of this season, the Washington Nationals have way more rotation questions than answers. Josiah Gray will pitch what could be his final outing of the year Wednesday, though the Nationals keep pushing him despite a month-long insistence to limit his September innings. After that, Aníbal Sánchez, Erick Fedde and Cory Abbott are the only definitive options for four games in three days against the Philadelphia Phillies.
Patrick Corbin is dealing with back spasms. MacKenzie Gore, fresh off a rough rehab appearance in Rochester, will either debut for the Nationals in the next week or in April. Cade Cavalli, 4⅓ major league innings to his name, has only thrown lightly in his recovery from shoulder inflammation.
So that’s how Espino, 35, wound up with his 18th start of the season. Flexibility born of uncertainty has defined his entire time with the Nationals (53-101). After he retired the first 10 batters he faced — and after Atlanta beat him with Michael Harris II’s two-run triple in the fourth and solo homers in the fifth from Orlando Arcia and Ronald Acuña Jr. — the Braves tacked on against Washington’s bullpen and defense.
Jordan Weems was burned on Eddie Rosario’s two-run double in the sixth, which came after César Hernández couldn’t retire William Contreras on a routine grounder to the right side, delaying his throw just long enough for Contreras to beat it by a step. In the seventh, Acuña punched his second homer of the night, rocking a solo shot off Mason Thompson. Then in the eighth, CJ Abrams’s error allowed Harris to reach, and he scored on Erasmo Ramírez’s wild pitch with two outs.
The Nationals scored on the first of Luke Voit’s two doubles and then on a solo homer for Victor Robles.
With the New York Mets losing in Miami, the Braves (97-58) pulled into a tie with the Mets atop the National League East. And while Espino (0-8) is now 5⅔ innings away from setting the record for most in a season without a win, the Nationals, at the very least, know what they’ll get with the right-handed journeyman.
Espino’s numbers in 2021: 109⅔ innings, 4.27 ERA, 19 homers, 108 hits, 25 walks, 92 strikeouts.
Espino’s numbers in 2022: 113 innings, 4.30 ERA, 21 homers, 126 hits, 22 walks, 92 strikeouts.
Could Gore start for the Nationals in 2022? Tuesday afternoon, Manager Dave Martinez seemed less confident than he did with previous answers to the same question. This version — “I think he can, but I want to make sure he throws his bullpen” — is predicated on an extended bullpen session that could total between 45 and 50 pitches. In theory, Gore lines up for a doubleheader with the Phillies on Saturday, which is convenient because Washington is already short on arms for those games. But his participation in the twin bill is far from a guarantee.
The latest on Cavalli? “He threw the other day and he’s supposed to go out there and play catch again today,” Martinez said before his club fell to Atlanta again. “... If he can finish up continuing to throw and build him and everything feels good, I feel pretty good going into this winter and getting ready for spring training.”
Is Nelson Cruz out for the season? While Martinez didn’t officially shut down Cruz, the outlook isn’t promising. Cruz, 42, is still dealing with the left eye inflammation that has sidelined him for the past two weeks. He has taken batting practice, felt fine, then had blurry vision return, making Martinez extra cautious. So if Cruz is finished for the year, his tenure here will include 10 homers, a team-best 64 RBI and a disappointing on-base-plus-slugging percentage of .651.
Cruz signed a one-year, $15 million deal in the spring, with the Nationals hoping he could be flipped at the deadline for at least one prospect. That plan never came to fruition. | 2022-09-28T02:25:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Paolo Espino’s reliability endures, but Nats’ pitcher remains winless - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/27/nationals-braves-paolo-espino/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/27/nationals-braves-paolo-espino/ |
Cuba suffers total electrical outage as Hurricane Ian knocks out power
Ana Vanessa Herrero
A family in El Cafetal, Cuba, speaks Tuesday in front of their home, destroyed by Hurricane Ian. (Alexandre Meneghini/Reuters)
Government work crews in Cuba were laboring to restore electricity Tuesday night after the entire island lost power in the wake of Hurricane Ian, authorities said.
Ian slammed into Cuba’s western province of Pinar del Rio as a Category 3 hurricane at about 4:30 a.m. Tuesday. The U.S. National Hurricane Center said Cuba suffered “significant wind and storm surge impacts” with top sustained winds of 125 mph.
Authorities initially reported 1 million people without power. Later Tuesday, they said the entire Caribbean island of 11 million was out.
“The SEN has an exceptional condition, 0 electricity generation (the country without electrical service), associated with the complex weather system,” the Ministry of Energy and Mines tweeted at 8:42 p.m., using the Spanish acronym for the national power grid.
The Electrical Union of Cuba said crews would work through the night to restore power. Failures appeared in the western, central and eastern links.
“It’s a process that is going to take a while,” Union head Lázaro Guerra Hernández told state television.
Before Ian made landfall, officials in Pinar del Rio set up 55 shelters, evacuated 50,000 people, and took steps to protect crops in the nation’s main tobacco-growing region.
Cuba has long experience preparing for hurricanes, but it’s also suffering food and electricity shortages. The economy has been hobbled in part by the lingering effects of the coronavirus pandemic and in part by new U.S. sanctions imposed by the Trump administration and partially maintained by the Biden administration. | 2022-09-28T02:59:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cuba suffers total electrical outage after Hurricane Ian - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/27/cuba-electrical-outage-hurricane-ian-damage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/27/cuba-electrical-outage-hurricane-ian-damage/ |
By Chisato Tanaka | AP
Shigeru Imaizumi, a 96-year old graduate from Kenkoku University, points to himself in a school photo, Sept. 16, 2022, in Toyokawa, Aichi prefecture, Japan. Kenkoku University was established in northern China in 1938 as a grand piece of imperial propaganda meant to celebrate Japan’s prewar colonization of large swaths of Asia, but in recent years, the dwindling number of surviving students, their families and those who have researched its history have come to share a sense of cross-national unity. (Kenkoku University via AP) (Chisato Tanaka/AP)
TOKYO — Growing up, Fumina Oka knew little about the mysterious university her Taiwanese grandfather attended in northern China’s Manchuria during Japan’s occupation in the early 20th century. | 2022-09-28T03:39:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Imperial Japan university unites graduates decades after war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/imperial-japan-university-unites-graduates-decades-after-war/2022/09/27/a6a3a1b4-3ed2-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/imperial-japan-university-unites-graduates-decades-after-war/2022/09/27/a6a3a1b4-3ed2-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
U.S. ski-climber Hilaree Nelson missing after fall on Himalayan peak
Rescuers are searching the world's eighth-highest mountain for Hilaree Nelson, a U.S. ski mountaineer, after she fell near the summit. (Niranjan Shrestha/AP)
A helicopter search will resume Wednesday for a renowned U.S. ski mountaineer who is missing after she fell near the summit while descending from the world’s eighth highest peak in Nepal.
Hilaree Nelson, 49, was skiing down from the 26,781-foot summit of Manaslu in the Nepalese Himalayas, with her partner Jim Morrison when she fell, according to a local guide company. A helicopter search Tuesday failed to find her in the mountainous terrain, after earlier efforts Monday were hampered by bad weather.
“We are flying to look for her today,” Jiban Ghimire of Kathmandu-based Shangri-La Nepal Trek, which organized and outfitted Nelson’s expedition, said early Wednesday. He said searchers will have more information in a few hours.
Nelson, who has undertaken around 40 expeditions in the past two decades, is billed as the "most prolific ski mountaineer of her generation,” by one of her sponsors, North Face.
A resident of Telluride, Colo., Nelson grew up in Seattle and spent weekends at Stevens Pass in Washington’s Cascades. North Face says she became hooked on ski mountaineering after visiting Chamonix, a French town at the foot of the highest mountain in Europe, Mont Blanc, after college.
In 2012, she became the first woman to climb two of the world’s tallest mountains, Mount Everest and neighboring Mount Lhotse, in the same 24 hour period. In 2018, she and Morrison returned to the area and became the first to ski down from the 27,940-foot summit of Lhotse — the fourth tallest mountain in the world, exploits she details on her website.
“It’s hard to summit a 28,000 foot mountain, let alone get your skis up there, have the right conditions and be able to make the ascent,” she said in a 2019 video about that feat.
“I haven’t felt as sure-footed on Manaslu as I have on past adventure into the thin atmosphere of the high Himalaya. These past weeks have tested my resilience in new ways,” she wrote. “The constant monsoon with its incessant rain and humidity has made me hopelessly homesick.”
How one of the ‘best’ trails in the Himalayas killed up to 29 hikers
Nelson and her partner abandoned one attempt to reach the summit when it became too dangerous to move between two camps. “We went up high and tried hard but the mountain said no,” Morrison wrote on Instagram four days ago. “Tails between our legs we bailed from camp 3 and headed down.”
In a statement posted on Twitter Tuesday, North Face said it was “in touch with Hilaree’s family and supporting search and rescue efforts in every way we can see.”
Climbers in the area regularly grapple with changing weather and avalanches. On Monday, an avalanche further down the mountain killed a Nepali guide and injured several other climbers, the Associated Press reported.
Local sherpas and climbers described the tough conditions on social media, as climbers braved bad weather to beat the crowds vying to make it to the summit during the peak fall climbing season.
The Nepalese government issued 504 permits to foreigners wanting to climb in the Himalayan mountains this season, most of them for Manaslu, the AP reported. The tourism board didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. | 2022-09-28T04:31:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. ski-mountaineer Hilaree Nelson missing on Nepal’s Manaslu peak - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/ski-mountaineer-missing-nepal-hilaree-nelson/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/ski-mountaineer-missing-nepal-hilaree-nelson/ |
Dear Amy: I’m 32 years old. For a multitude of reasons, my personal growth was stunted after high school, and it took me twice as long to finish college than planned.
In that time, circumstances (like the pandemic), led to my parents’ premature retirement and prompt move to The Villages, Florida, from northern New Jersey. Having not gotten my career off the ground, I was forced to leave with them. Shortly after, I was able to find a job I can perform remotely, and I’m getting paid well.
Early: My advice? Get thee out of The Villages, stat.
I’d put in a bid for college towns, which tend to offer lively cultural events and volunteer opportunities. If you are willing to move back north, Philadelphia is a great city for people your age. Moving will not magically solve your social isolation, but it’s a start.
It’s also a brave and positive choice to make. Once you arrive, you will have to continue to bravely step out into the world — joining a gym or clubs, volunteering, and (ideally) finding fulfilling work that you can enjoy in person.
Dear Amy: My younger sister and I have a rocky relationship. She and our dad are currently feuding and because I didn’t side with her at our grandma’s funeral, she has cut me from her life.
It doesn’t bother me, but my 13-year-old daughter has only one cousin — my sister’s toddler. We live far away from my sister, but are planning to visit other relatives in her town soon.
I really don’t want to let my sister know that we will be in town, but because of my daughter wanting to see her cousin, I feel like I should. What do you think?
Iowa: If your daughter wants to connect with her toddler cousin, then you would be setting a good example for her by reaching out to your sister.
If your sister is determined to continue this feud, she will do so. This is truly a case where you might be “damned if you do, damned if you don't.”
Coached: Many readers have suggested this, and yes — video evidence could be a wake-up call. | 2022-09-28T04:31:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I’m 32 years old and don’t know how to make friends - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/28/ask-amy-move-out-friends/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/28/ask-amy-move-out-friends/ |
“Russia is most likely the first and only country in the world,” tweeted the exiled Russian dissident and oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, “where people flee not because someone invaded their country, but because they invaded another country.”
That’s not quite true, of course. Some 40,000 American dissenters trying to evade being drafted into the Vietnam War crossed the border to Canada half a century ago. But their flight took place over the span of a decade. What has happened in Russia in less than a week since President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilization to bolster a flagging war effort in Ukraine is of an incomparable scale.
When the mobilization was announced last week, the Kremlin hoped to muster an additional 300,000 reservists. Now, perhaps as many as that number of Russian fighting-age men have left the country in a bid to avoid enlisting. They have crammed flights to Turkey, swum over rivers and sat for days at traffic-snarled border crossings. Kazakhstan alone has counted 98,000 Russian arrivals since Sept. 21. Georgian officials say some 10,000 Russians are crossing the border each day. Thousands, too, are arriving in Mongolia.
Social media proliferates with videos that gesture to widespread chaos and confusion within Russia. There are scenes of protest, particularly in impoverished, ethnic minority regions, where locals turn on military recruiters. And there are scenes of despair and incompetence: In one video, an older officer advises newly mobilized recruits to scavenge for their own tourniquets and sleeping bags and to stockpile tampons as improvised bandages. In another, a Russian man is seen deliberately breaking a friend’s leg to help him stay away from the war.
Near the border with Georgia, the line of cars and trucks trying to leave Russia stretched for miles after President Vladimir Putin’s partial mobilization order, satellite images show.https://t.co/RWVDHeIxSJ
What’s clear is that the mobilization has been handled haphazardly and unevenly. Local governments issued enlistment notices to men who fell far outside the Kremlin’s stated criteria, including the elderly, the medically unfit and many without a shred of military training. In their latest bulletin on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, documented protests against the call-ups in at least 35 settlements in Russia on Sunday and at least 10 settlements on Monday. More than 2,300 Russians have been arrested since Wednesday because of these demonstrations.
The speed and scale of the exodus have led to reports that Russia may close its borders to stop the departures of these men, which understandably prompted more people to drop everything and try to leave.
“There are already so many examples of old and unfit men and students receiving summons,” a Russian man named Alexei, 36, told my colleagues over the phone Sunday from Kazakhstan. “It’s not that I am a coward or anything, but nobody is attacking my motherland. On the contrary, my motherland is an aggressor and I don’t want to be part of this aggression and obviously, I do not want to die.”
Authorities in nearby countries with cordial, if complex, relations with Moscow are handling the situation with what care they can. “Most of [the Russians] have been forced to leave because of a hopeless situation that has arisen,” Kazakhstan President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said. “We should show concern for them and assure their security. This is a political and humanitarian matter.”
Kazakhstan has opened up a movie theater to fleeing Russians to spend the night there pic.twitter.com/4EzRQJZbM6
As Putin seeks to rush reinforcements to the Ukrainian front lines, he’s also trying to change the political facts on the ground. It seems that the Kremlin may soon declare the annexation of four “republics” in Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine that staged sham referendums in recent days to join their territories with Russia. Putin’s critics view both the mobilization and the annexation plans as the gambit of a leader desperate to shift the tide of a battle that he was losing.
“He knew that as soon as he ordered mobilization, there would be some upheaval in the country, and we’re seeing the images and scenes of that right now,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” over the weekend. He also added that the referendums in Ukraine are “a sign that he is struggling very badly in Ukraine.”
Bloomberg Opinion’s Leonid Bershidsky wrote, “Having launched the Ukraine invasion for emotional reasons and suffered predictable failures, Putin is compelled to take greater and greater risks.”
The annexation of the Russian-controlled enclaves in Ukraine could lead to Russia interpreting any strikes on these territories as attacks on Russia itself, widening the scope of the conflict and raising the threat of serious escalation. Ukraine and its allies, of course, reject this interpretation and see the referendums as illegal exercises carried out at gunpoint by Russian-armed separatists.
“People understand that everything has been decided,” said a woman living in the city of Luhansk, speaking to my colleagues on the condition of anonymity for her safety about the “referendum” being pushed through in the region. “They think that this will end something because a ‘republic’ is easy to hit with all of the support of NATO. But people think it’ll be different if it’s Russia. I hear people saying that Ukraine doesn’t have nuclear weapons, and Ukraine won’t shell here anymore if we’re part of a country that does have one.”
Russian officials themselves have spoken bluntly about wielding nuclear weapons. “I have to remind you again — for those deaf who hear only themselves. Russia has the right to use nuclear weapons if necessary,” former president Dmitry Medvedev wrote on his Telegram channel.
“We should believe Putin that ‘this is not a bluff,’” explained Joseph Cirincione, a veteran arms control expert, in an op-ed for The Washington Post. “The first use of nuclear weapons in a conflict is an integral part of Russian military doctrine, as it is in U.S. war plans. Unlike the United States, Russia regularly practices for the use of nuclear weapons and integrates them into its conventional military exercises, most recently just before Putin‘s invasion.”
In backchannels, Western diplomats have issued private warnings to Russian counterparts about the costs of a potential nuclear strike on Ukraine. In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his allies argue that the dangers of the moment only underscore the urgent need to support his country as it seeks to press its advantage and repel the Russian invasion through conventional force.
“Prevention is the basis for lasting peace — a measure to cut short any aggression, a measure to save many more lives than by reacting to something that already happened, and it will ensure a lasting peace,” Zelensky said during a virtual address to Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government on Tuesday.
In separate remarks, the Ukrainian president also described the Russian mobilization as a “frank attempt to give commanders on the ground a constant stream of cannon fodder.” | 2022-09-28T04:35:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Putin’s gambles lead to chaos and risk of escalation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/putins-gambles-lead-chaos-risk-escalation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/putins-gambles-lead-chaos-risk-escalation/ |
WASHINGTON — Pakistan’s foreign minister says the international community should work with Afghanistan's ruling Taliban, not against it, when it comes to combatting foreign extremist groups and the economic and humanitarian crises in that country — even as many U.S. officials say the Taliban have proved themselves unworthy of such cooperation. | 2022-09-28T05:11:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Top Pakistan diplomat urges flood aid, patience with Taliban - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-pakistan-diplomat-urges-flood-aid-patience-with-taliban/2022/09/28/4441aa40-3ee4-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/top-pakistan-diplomat-urges-flood-aid-patience-with-taliban/2022/09/28/4441aa40-3ee4-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Truss’s Energy Plan May Be the Least Bad Option
ROCHESTER, ENGLAND - AUGUST 22: The shore line near the Ship-to-shore pipelines, which transfer liquefied natural gas (LNG) from ship to shore, at the National Grid’s import terminal on the Isle of Grain on August 22, 2022 in Rochester, England. The first gas shipment of LNG from Australia to Europe in more than half a decade was set to dock at Grain’s importation terminal today via the tanker Attalos, which has a capacity of 174,000 cubic meters. (Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images) (Photographer: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Europe)
UK Prime Minister Liz Truss’s energy subsidies could cost the country £200 billion or more, depending on the price of energy. Details are scarce, but the goal of the proposal is to limit the average cost of energy for households, give consumers and businesses subsidies to cushion their cost increases, and place price caps on energy, all for the next two years. Some EU nations are following broadly similar paths.
I am skeptical of such plans; all things considered, it would be better to allow energy prices to rise more. Nonetheless, I acknowledge that good solutions are hard to find.
Basic economics suggests that when a good or service becomes more scarce, its price should be allowed to rise. Not only does that encourage conservation, but higher prices also give suppliers a stronger incentive to expand production.
With energy, however, there are (at least) two problems. The first is that supply is often tightly regulated and can take a long time to build. Many countries restrict nuclear power, for example, or ban fracking. Truss has announced plans to deregulate fracking, but more supply will take years to come online. So a true market has not been operating. For that reason, supply incentives — in the form of higher prices — will not work in the short run to solve the energy problem.
The second problem has to do with demand, specifically that of customers who cannot pay their bills: Their supply cannot be simply shut off. If Waterstone’s bookstore in London raises its prices and you don’t buy there, there is no issue. You don’t get the book, and they don’t get your money.
Utility bills do not work the same way. Energy in some form is sent to your home and then you are asked to pay for it. If you don’t, there is the painful question of whether and when service should be cut off.
You might think, as I do, that utilities should take a relatively tough stance on delinquents. Still, the realities of politics can intervene. By one estimate, Truss’s plan would lead to average energy bills of £2,500, compared to £3,548 with no plan.
That is quite a difference, and many people might have trouble paying the higher amount. They might be able to pay more, but at what cost? Fewer pub visits? No satellite TV? Would people in fact choose such austerity? Customers know that if enough of them do not pay their bills, it would be very difficult to cut off service to such a large part of the electorate, especially with winter approaching.
By way of comparison, consider the current water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi. The town’s water utility is undercapitalized, and almost one-third of customers are behind on their bills . About one-sixth of customers are not even receiving bills. Yet it would be politically unfeasible for Jackson’s elected officials to cut off all those users, regardless of whether it would ultimately be more humane.
The fact is, it’s not always possible to increase prices. Especially if you are unable to collect any payment at all from many customers.
The problem is worse yet. Once customers are in the habit of not paying their utility bills, it gets harder to collect payment, even if future prices are much lower. Customers might expect the no-payment-necessary regime to continue, and to organize with that goal in mind. This is a common problem in lesser developed nations.
All of which raises the question of how the Truss regime could improve UK energy policy. One simple change would be to limit the energy subsidy to lower-income groups, rather than making it universal. That would save money and also make it easier to cut off non-payers, who would not be poor.
As for deregulating energy supply, there the Truss plan is very much on the right track.
Then there is the question of whether the fiscal commitment to energy subsidies should be so open-ended. What exactly is the UK government doing to hedge its financial position? And might it be possible to have more details on all these programs? It is not easy to design something so complex so quickly.
In the meantime, if it all looks inefficient, it probably is. But it is also very hard to do better.
• The UK’s Cryptic £40 Billion Bailout for Energy Traders: Javier Blas
• Truss’s Fracking Shakeup Won’t Be Seismic: Therese Raphael | 2022-09-28T06:42:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Truss’s Energy Plan May Be the Least Bad Option - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/trusssenergy-plan-may-be-the-leastbad-option/2022/09/28/452a831c-3eeb-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/trusssenergy-plan-may-be-the-leastbad-option/2022/09/28/452a831c-3eeb-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Iran’s Protesters Need Some More Homegrown Support
As the protests in Iran head toward their third week, the regime’s crackdown is intensifying. Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has been telling his Western counterparts that “there is not a big deal going on in Iran.” But Iran’s communications blackouts have not blinded the US, Canada and Europe’s leading powers to the regime’s escalating brutality, which they have roundly condemned, and in some cases sanctioned. The question now is whether the protesters can persuade other groups within Iran to join their ranks.
Since not even the Islamic Republic can persuade Iranians to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears, the regime is replaying its propaganda greatest hits: The protests are merely “riots,” instigated by the US to “to weaken Iran’s stability and security.”
Iranians aren’t fooled. They are circumventing the regime’s communications blackout to spread the word about the continuing demonstrations. We know that the protesters, who first took to the streets to express disgust at the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a young woman arrested for insufficiently covering her hair, are now calling for the dismantling of the Islamic Republic, root and branch. Their slogans target not only President Ebrahim Raisi but Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and his son Mojtaba, thought by many to be the power behind the scenes.
Fears, mine included, that the wider world might be too distracted by events in Russia and Ukraine to pay attention to Iran have proved unfounded. Western leaders have rounded on the regime in Tehran. The US and Canada have announced sanctions against the morality police and individual officials involved in the crackdown. The Biden administration has also waived sanctions restrictions to allow companies like Elon Musk’s Starlink to offer Iranians internet services.
But if the regime can’t rely on its tools of dissimulation, its fearsome instruments of repression remain reliable. The security forces, ranging from regular police and Basij militia to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, have a history of putting down protest movements. They killed more than 1,000 people in 2019, ending the last major outbreak of demonstrations.
And that was when the regime of President Hassan Rouhani was trying to showcase its supposedly moderate face. The protesters can expect even more cruelty from Raisi, a former hanging judge with an appetite for mass murder.
To keep going, then, the protesters will need more than international attention, important as that is. They will need domestic support, from within the establishment as well as without.
The first seems unlikely, at least in the short term. There are no signs of cracks in the regime. The so-called moderates — men like Rouhani and his then-foreign minister Jawad Zarif — have been mostly mum over the past two weeks. Only one grand ayatollah among dozens has issued a mildly-worded reproach of the crackdown, saying the government ought to listen to the people’s demands. The head of the judiciary has warned that public figures who support the protests must pay for the damage to public property.
The security forces, unlike their counterparts in Tunisia and Egypt during the Arab Spring, have demonstrated little sympathy for the protesters or compunction about battering them. In addition, they have been staging pro-regime demonstrations and using their own medias outlets to amplify regime propaganda.
The next best hope for the protesters is for solidarity from organized labor. Although a number of unions have demonstrated against the regime over the past two years, mostly for better pay amid soaring inflation, they have not yet mobilized behind the women who are at the vanguard of the current protests. One teachers’ union has called for a strike, but it has not had much traction. This may be because the unions, having recently been at the receiving end of the regime’s enforcers, are pessimistic about the chances of the mostly young, unemployed protesters now in the streets. Any regime figures who might disagree with Raisi and the Khameneis are likewise waiting to see if the protesters have more staying power than those who have gone before.
The last time there was a significant rift within the elite of the Islamic Republic was in 2009, when a disputed presidential election led to nationwide rallies by factions collectively known as the Green Movement. It gained massive popular support, but the security forces sided with the Supreme Leader and crushed the protests, killing scores. The movement’s leaders, who had been regime stalwarts, were put under house arrest and have never been allowed back in from the cold.
The current protests, like those of the Arab Spring, are leaderless. This means the regime can’t shut them down simply by arresting individuals. But it also means there is no organization that can appeal to, and negotiate with, other actors and coordinate actions. Spontaneity can be a powerful political force, but it is hard to sustain.
The challenge for the protesters, then, is to brave the truncheons and bullets of the security forces and stay in the streets — and pray that their sheer stamina emboldens first the unions and then voices within the regime to come to their aid.
This task will require endurance of epic proportions. It will be hard to watch, but the world must not look away. | 2022-09-28T06:42:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iran’s Protesters Need Some More Homegrown Support - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/irans-protesters-need-some-more-homegrown-support/2022/09/28/45d4e8ac-3eeb-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/irans-protesters-need-some-more-homegrown-support/2022/09/28/45d4e8ac-3eeb-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
TORONTO — Aaron Judge walked four times and stayed at 60 home runs, one shy of Roger Maris’ American League record, and the New York Yankees won the AL East title by beating Toronto 5-2 on Tuesday night.
MILWAUKEE — Paul Goldschmidt and the St. Louis Cardinals wrapped up the NL Central title by beating Milwaukee 6-2 behind six strong innings from Miles Mikolas.
CLEVELAND — Cleveland Browns star defensive end Myles Garrett suffered a sprained shoulder, strained biceps and minor cuts when he flipped his Porsche in a frightening single-car accident Monday.
ROSEMONT, Ill. — The conference commissioners who manage the College Football Playoff met for almost seven hours to work on expanding the postseason system from four to 12 teams as soon as the 2024 season.
MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The NCAA put Memphis on three years of probation with a public reprimand and a fine, but declined to punish Tigers coach Penny Hardaway or hand down an NCAA Tournament ban.
HARRISON, N.J. — Lionel Messi scored two goals and was twice accosted by fans running on the field as Argentina extended its unbeaten streak to 35 matches by beating Jamaica 3-0 in its next-to-last World Cup warmup match.
MURCIA, Spain — The United States had a scoreless draw against Saudi Arabia in its final World Cup warmup.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — NASCAR docked William Byron 25 points and fined him $50,000 for deliberately spinning championship rival Denny Hamlin in a retaliatory move missed by scoring officials. | 2022-09-28T06:43:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tuesday's Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tuesdays-sports-in-brief/2022/09/28/1d99d15a-3eef-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/tuesdays-sports-in-brief/2022/09/28/1d99d15a-3eef-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Solomon Islands rejects Biden’s Pacific outreach amid China challenge
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare addresses the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly on Sept. 23. (Julia Nikhinson/AP)
SYDNEY — American efforts to rally Pacific island leaders at a White House summit this week were dealt a blow when the Solomon Islands said it would not endorse a joint declaration the Biden administration plans to unveil.
As President Biden prepared to host the leaders of a dozen Pacific countries on Wednesday and Thursday in a first-of-its-kind gathering, the Solomon Islands sent a diplomatic note to other nations in the region saying there was no consensus on the issues and that it needed “time to reflect” on the declaration.
The setback, which was revealed just hours before the start of the summit, is a sign of the challenges Washington faces as it attempts to reassert influence in a region where China has made inroads. It also came as Vice President Harris tours East Asia, where she is emphasizing U.S. commitment to a “free and open Indo-Pacific” during visits to U.S. allies Japan and South Korea. In remarks to U.S. sailors in Japan on Wednesday, Harris condemned China’s “disturbing” actions in the region, including “provocations” against Taiwan.
The Solomon Islands has drifted closer to China since the election of its combative prime minister, Manasseh Sogavare, in 2019. The Solomon Islands switched its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing a few months later and made headlines again earlier this year when it struck a controversial security pact with China that the United States and its allies fear could lead to a Chinese base in the archipelago, roughly 1,000 miles from Australia’s coast. The Solomon Islands and China have denied plans for a base.
Earlier this month, Solomon Islands lawmakers voted to delay national elections from 2023 until 2024 in what critics called a “power grab” and a sign of growing Chinese-style authoritarianism.
In an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week, Sogavare said his nation had been “unfairly targeted” and “vilified” because of its relationship with China.
In the diplomatic note, which was obtained by The Washington Post and is dated Sept. 25, the Solomon Islands Embassy to the United States in New York said the declaration would need “further discussion." The Australian Broadcasting Corp. first reported that the Solomon Islands was refusing to sign the joint statement, which the ABC said has been in the works for weeks.
According to a draft of the declaration reviewed by the ABC, the statement will touch on several issues, from illegal fishing to covid-19 recovery, but will declare climate the “highest priority” and “single greatest existential threat” to the Pacific. But Pacific countries appeared to have removed a reference to the China-Solomon Islands security pact, deleting language emphasizing the need to “consult with one another closely on security decisions with regional impacts,” the ABC reported.
The Solomon Islands’ objection to the White House summit declaration will be seen by some as obstructive and influenced by China, said Anna Powles, senior lecturer with the Center of Defense and Security Studies at New Zealand’s Massey University.
China fails on Pacific pact, but still seeks to boost regional influence
But other Pacific island nations have also expressed concerns about the haste with which the United States convened the summit, she said, noting that the leaders of Vanuatu and Nauru are not attending because of elections. Kiribati will not be represented at the summit, while a few other countries were late invites.
“The United States is strongly welcomed back in the region, but arguably the tempo by which the U.S. has pursued its re-engagement in the Pacific is felt to be too rushed, too hurried,” Powles said.
By initially failing to invite all the members of the Pacific Islands Forum — an important regional body — the United States also risked emulating China, which fell short in its bid for a broad regional security deal in May partly because some Pacific island nations felt rushed to sign the sweeping agreement, she added.
“Absolutely there are parallels in terms of the lack of consultation, the lack of consensus and the circumventing of the Pacific Islands Forum,” Powles said, noting that China’s failed regional security pact was very different than what will likely emerge from the White House summit.
The Biden administration is increasing its diplomatic presence in the Pacific with new embassies planned in the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Kiribati. In July, Harris also announced the administration would ask Congress to triple funding for economic development and ocean resilience in the region to $60 million a year for the next decade.
China signs security deal with Solomon Islands, alarming neighbors
The White House has acknowledged the growing geopolitical stakes in the region, while insisting its efforts are not merely a reaction to China.
“There is an undeniable strategic component,” Kurt Campbell, the National Security Council’s Indo-Pacific coordinator, said at a conference last week. “We’ve seen in the past several years a more ambitious China that seeks to develop a footprint militarily and the like in the Indo-Pacific. I think that has caused some anxiety with partners like Australia, New Zealand, even countries in the region as a whole.”
“There’s also a deeper recognition that in the past we have perhaps paid lesser attention to these critical places than we should have,” he added.
Ellen Nakashima in Washington contributed to this report. | 2022-09-28T07:43:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Solomon Islands rejects Biden’s Pacific outreach amid China challenge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/solomon-islands-us-pacific-biden-china/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/solomon-islands-us-pacific-biden-china/ |
GOP governor nominee once urged murder charges for women getting abortions
Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano speaks ahead of former President Donald Trump at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022. (Mary Altaffer/AP)
NBC News on Tuesday resurfaced a 2019 interview in which Mastriano, speaking to Pennsylvania radio station WITF, spoke about a bill he was sponsoring in the state legislature that would have outlawed abortion as soon as cardiac activity is detected, around six weeks of pregnancy.
Mastriano was asked whether a woman who had an abortion 10 weeks into a pregnancy would be charged with murder under his proposed measure.
“Okay, let’s go back to the basic question there,” Mastriano responded. “Is that a human being? Is that a little boy or girl? If it is, it deserves equal protection under the law.”
Mastriano — who was endorsed by former President Trump in May — is a controversial figure in the state. He has been accused of Islamophobic comments, been photographed wearing a Confederate uniform, and was on the U.S. Capitol grounds on the day of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection by a pro-Trump mob.
He has, however, recently walked a fine line on abortion since he won the gubernatorial primary and the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, making the issue one of the most relevant ahead of the November election. While he has attempted to paint his Democratic opponent Josh Shapiro, the state’s attorney general, as “extreme” on the issue, he has also downplayed his past stances on abortion, saying the issue is up to the state’s voters.
“If Pennsylvanians want exceptions, if they want to limit the number of weeks, it’s going to have to come from your legislative body and then to my desk,” he told a conservative network. | 2022-09-28T08:14:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mastriano in 2019: Women violating abortion ban should get murder charges - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/doug-mastriano-abortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/doug-mastriano-abortion/ |
In an image taken from video, officials remove fallen trees from roads from Typhoon Noru, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022, in Quang Nam province, Vietnam. Typhoon Noru weakened into a tropical storm over central Vietnam on Wednesday, causing blackouts and blowing off roofs and billboards with strong winds and putting Thailand on alert for more floods and downpours. (VTV via AP) (Uncredited/Vietnam TV) | 2022-09-28T08:14:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Typhoon Noru weakens over Vietnam, dumps rain in Thailand - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/typhoon-noru-weakens-over-vietnam-dumps-rain-in-thailand/2022/09/28/a3a9d7e6-3f02-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/typhoon-noru-weakens-over-vietnam-dumps-rain-in-thailand/2022/09/28/a3a9d7e6-3f02-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Ned Fulmer, formerly of the Try Guys, is seen in New York in 2019. (Noam Galai/Getty Images for Shorty Awards)
The Try Guys, a comedy group that skyrocketed to fame on YouTube and created a mini media empire, announced Tuesday that they would stop working with one of their founding members, Ned Fulmer, after he said he had a romantic relationship with an employee.
Fulmer, who is also an executive producer for Try Guys, apologized to his wife and fans on social media on Tuesday and acknowledged having had a “consensual workplace relationship.”
The Try Guys, joined by a wider cast of characters, are known for videos that show them participating in novel activities such as swimming with sharks or being hypnotized on camera. Although their videos are often laced with adult humor, Fulmer has sought to distinguish himself by cultivating a personal brand centered on his image as a doting husband and father. Fan accounts on YouTube have created supercuts of each time Fulmer says “my wife” in Try Guys videos. Fulmer and his spouse, Ariel, also jointly published “The Date Night Cookbook,” a collection of recipes, and launched a parenting podcast.
“It’s almost schadenfreude. … People are incredibly sensitive to irony,” said Colin Campbell, a professor of marketing at the University of San Diego. “By positioning himself in that arena, he has gone against himself and has almost made himself a fantastic target for people making fun of him and sharing memes or any sort of content about him.” | 2022-09-28T08:57:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Try Guys cut ties with Ned Fulmer over workplace affair - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/28/try-guys-ned-fulmer-wife/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/28/try-guys-ned-fulmer-wife/ |
The 607-page ‘Confidence Man,’ from New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, details unusual and erratic interactions between Trump and world leaders, members of Congress and his own aides
Former president Donald Trump rallies with his supporters Friday in Wilmington, N.C. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
The 607-page book, which has long been awaited by many of Trump’s aides, is set to be published Tuesday. A copy was obtained by The Washington Post. The book details unusual and erratic interactions between Trump and world leaders, members of Congress, as well as his own aides, along with behind-the-scenes accounts of his time as a businessman.
Presented with a detailed accounting of the book’s reporting, a Trump spokesman did not directly respond. “While coastal elites obsess over boring books chock full of anonymously-sourced fairytales, America is a nation in decline. President Trump is focused on Saving America, and there’s nothing the Fake News can do about it,” said Taylor Budowich, the spokesman.
Haberman interviewed Trump three times for the book — in which he claimed to not have taken any important documents from the White House, among other statements — and it includes his written answers to her questions. The book delves into some of the most contentious episodes of his presidency, including his impeachment trials, the weeks after the election when he tried to overturn the results and his mishandling of the novel coronavirus, among other topics.
Trump was often crass and profane about world leaders and others in his orbit. He referred to German Prime Minister Angela Merkel as “that b----,” according to the book. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg was dying in 2020, the book says, Trump would sarcastically raise his hands to the sky in prayer and say: “Please God. Please watch over her. Every life is precious,” before asking an aide: “How much longer do you think she has?”
When former New Jersey governor Chris Christie (R) pressed Trump to more forcefully condemn white supremacists, particularly avowed white supremacist David Duke, during his 2016 campaign, Trump said he would — but he was in no rush. “A lot of these people vote,” Trump said, describing some of the white supremacists, before ending the call.
The book shows Trump frequently praising Russia and its president, Vladimir Putin, for his strength and even “laughing” when aides grew mad that he tweeted a proposal for a joint cyber unit with Russia that would have “effectively let the Russians into the U.S. investigations of hacking,” Haberman writes.
In another part of the book, Trump shows his lack of care about classified markings. Aides tried to stop Trump from tweeting a photo of an Iranian facility until they could remove classified details, Haberman writes. But he liked how the image looked and proceeded. “If you take out the classification, that’s the sexy part,” he told aides, she writes.
“Can you believe this happened to me?” he said, fearing the political impact on his presidency.
In detail, Haberman reports how Trump was fearful of dying and how his condition grew worse in the White House. “Deputy chief of staff of operations Tony Ornato warned the president that if he fell into a more dire situation, procedures to ensure the continuity of government would have to be set into motion,” Haberman writes.
Trump was appalled by the sight of protective face masks, telling aides to remove them in his presence throughout 2020. “Get that f---ing thing off,” he said during one meeting, according to Haberman’s book. Trump repeatedly wanted credit for vaccines but told aides he could not get the credit he deserved because of the “radical right,” referring to his own supporters.
He repeatedly encouraged aides to avoid the topic of the coronavirus because he viewed it as a political loser for him. “Don’t talk about it on TV,” he told the Republican National Committee’s chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, according to the book, even as the virus dominated the news. “Don’t make such a big deal out of this,” Trump said of the pandemic in one March 2020 conversation with then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D). “You’re gonna make it a problem.”
“People are tired of the f---ing drama,” Attorney General William P. Barr told him in 2020. Barr was one of a number of aides who urged Trump to dial back his frequent attacks on others.
Trump gave former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) control of his legal team because his other lawyers were not willing to go far enough to overturn the 2020 election, Haberman writes. “Okay, Rudy, you’re in charge. Go wild, do anything you want. I don’t care,” Trump said over the phone, as he pushed him to help overturn the results. “My lawyers are terrible.” He frequently berated White House counsel Pat Cipollone, according to the book.
In the aftermath of the election, Haberman describes a president who increasingly became enamored with conspiracy theories and staying in the White House, bringing in lawyers who his core group of advisers saw as deluded — with some of his longest advisers effectively trying to hide and run out the clock.
And it shows how he relishes his role as a political kingmaker in the GOP. During one of her interviews with Trump, Haberman writes that Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) came in and praised his golf game. “‘The greatest comeback in American history!’ Graham declared. Trump looked at me. ‘You know why Lindsey kisses my ass?’ he asked. ‘So I’ll endorse his friends.’ Graham laughed uproariously.”
More than many tomes about Trump, the book delves into his long history as a developer in New York, where Haberman talks with many of his former friends and executives about his tendency to speak in crass terms about women and skirt financial laws — and how he created a mystique around him that endured to the presidency.
Haberman traces Trump’s political career back to the 1980s, where she reports he frequently made comments that were homophobic, particularly toward gay men, and washed his hands immediately after meetings someone who had AIDS.
She describes Trump’s complicated relationship with his father and the ways they avoided paying taxes over the years. She writes that Trump mused about wanting Black judges for his cases because his late lawyer Roy Cohn said they could be manipulated. Even as a businessman, she said, he was looking at politics, getting polling presentations on his image as early as 1987.
Some of the book’s episodes border on the bizarre.
“During preparations for the third debate in 2016, Hillary Clinton’s team was disrupted by a warning from the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who said he had been told that Russians might try to poison Clinton through a handshake with Trump, to inflict a dramatic health episode during the debate,” Haberman reports.
She says Clinton did not take it seriously, and now-White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, who was helping with debate prep, questioned whether Trump could poison Clinton but not himself. “Her communications director, Jennifer Palmieri, took the prospect seriously enough to check it out; the warning turned out to be mere speculation from a historian with no knowledge of Russian plans,” she says.
Haberman, a longtime Trump chronicler, concludes that Trump often says what he needs to get through the day — and that many people read more deeply into his motivations than he even knows at the time.
When asked if he is glad he ran for the presidency, Haberman suggests the answer reveals his motivations: “The answer is, yeah, I think so. Because here’s the way I look at it. I have so many rich friends and nobody knows who they are.”
In the book’s final pages, Haberman reproduces several pages of Trump’s answers to her questions for the book. He sent back pages in all capital letters, handwritten in marker, “two weeks after the deadline had passed,” Haberman said.
“A FANTASY QUESTION!” he responds to a question about Trump having gold bricks wheeled into his office in the 1990s. “KNOW NOTHING ABOUT IT,” he wrote in response to a question about delaying the transition to the Biden administration. “ACTUALLY THERE IS SOME TRUTH IN THAT,” he said to a question about him describing Melania Trump to others out of “central casting.”
The book closes with Trump, in black all caps, responding to a question: “FAKE NEWS — GOOD NIGHT!” | 2022-09-28T09:15:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump weighed bombing drug labs in Mexico, according to new book - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/trump-book-white-house-bomb-mexico/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/trump-book-white-house-bomb-mexico/ |
Administration officials say they have secured the money from public and private sources to help provide more food and better nutrition by 2030
President Biden greet visitors during an event on health-care costs in the Rose Garden on Sept. 28. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Biden is planning to speak at the conference, which will also feature several members of Congress — including Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.), as well as Reps. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) — and several Cabinet officials. It will also include José Andrés, the chef and founder of World Central Kitchen, and New York Mayor Eric Adams (D).
Among the specific policies Biden has already promised: expanding free school meals to 9 million more children in the next decade; improving transportation options for an estimated 40 million Americans who have low access to grocery stores or farmers markets; reducing food waste (one-third of all food in the United States goes uneaten, the White House says); conducting more screenings for food insecurity; educating health-care providers on nutrition; reducing sodium and sugar in U.S. food products; addressing marketing that promotes fast food, sugary drinks, candy and unhealthy snacks; and building more parks in “nature-deprived communities.”
The $8 billion in funding is one of the more tangible aspects of the administration’s plan. Officials said that they have secured the pledges from more than 100 organizations, ranging from hospitals to restaurants, and that they will use the money to fund a wide variety of initiatives.
Andrew Jeong contributed to this report. | 2022-09-28T09:15:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | White House hosts conference on hunger, with $8B in commitments - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/white-house-hunger-summit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/white-house-hunger-summit/ |
By Gabriela Sá Pessoa
Flags in Salvador, Brazil, promote President Jair Bolsonaro and former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, front-runners in the general election Sunday. (Rodrigo Abd/AP)
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — He’s sowed doubt about electronic voting machines, undermined election officials and dubbed his main challenger a corrupt “thief.” An unabashed fan of the former military dictatorship, he has prodded his adoring base to “go to war” if the election here Sunday is “stolen.”
In the process, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, trailing in the polls for reelection to a second term, has raised fears of the old ghost that still haunts Latin America: a coup. Or, perhaps, a Brazilian take on the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
“There’s a new type of thief, the ones who want to steal our liberty,” Bolsonaro told supporters in June. He added, “If necessary, we will go to war.”
Thirty-seven years after Latin America’s largest nation threw off the military dictatorship, the presidential election is shaping up as a referendum on democracy.
The vote — Sunday is the first round — is pitting Bolsonaro’s supporters, the most radical of whom want a strongman in office, against Brazilians eager to end his Trumpian run. Since taking office in 2019, Bolsonaro has overseen the accelerating destruction of the Amazon rainforest, dismissed the coronavirus pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Brazilians and weathered allegations that he has encouraged excessive use of force by police.
Critics say he has also deeply undermined democracy — filling key positions with present and former military commanders, picking a war with the supreme court and stacking the prosecutor’s office and police with loyalists.
The choice between former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, 76, and Bolsonaro, 67, has put Brazil on the front lines of the global tug of war between democracy and authoritarianism. The contest here is being closely watched in the United States — whose politics and polarization Brazil has seemed to mirror.
Sunday’s vote smacks of the Biden-Trump showdown in 2020. Bolsonaro, who has maintained links with Trump strategists including Stephen K. Bannon, is polling around 10 percentage points behind Lula, a lion of the Latin American left who has moved to the center and cast himself as a defender of Brazil’s young democracy.
When pressed on his plans, Bolsonaro has said he will honor “transparent” election results, and analysts say his appetite for and ability to incite an old-school coup with tanks in the streets probably are very limited. After a supreme court judge warned of the potential for political violence, Bolsonaro pointedly told his supporters to not stage a “new Capitol” invasion.
But given his charged language, which often parrots that of his political lodestar — former U.S. president Donald Trump — critics in Brazil and beyond are still warning of the potential for disruption or violence.
“President Bolsonaro’s reckless and dangerous rhetoric about electoral fraud raise[s] serious fears that he will potentially impede a peaceful transfer of power if he loses,” a group of 39 U.S. lawmakers led by Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) wrote this month to President Biden. “Having personally experienced the horrors of the Jan. 6 insurrection, we know all too well the consequences.”
Polls suggest Lula is in striking distance of 50 percent of the vote — the margin required to avoid an Oct. 30 runoff. Should he win outright, any attempt by Bolsonaro to cling to power would come up against institutions that are weaker than those in the United States — and would be the biggest challenge to democracy here since the end of the dictatorship in 1985. Should he win four more years, critics say, the world’s fourth-largest democracy could suffer a further erosion of institutions. It would also mark another victory for the global far right, after major wins this month in Italy and Sweden.
A peaceful transfer of power after a Bolsonaro loss could be a landmark moment of a different sort. Russian President Vladimir Putin is increasingly isolated in the world and coming under greater criticism at home over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Elected autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey could face a challenging reelection campaign next year, as will Poland’s hard-right government in parliamentary elections. Bolsonaro’s going gently into the political night could signal that the illiberal tide, built on populism, polarization, voter disdain and mis- and disinformation — could be beginning to ebb.
Frederick Wassef, Bolsonaro’s lawyer, told The Washington Post that there had been “flagrant manipulation” of opinion polls and warned that “various national and foreign forces” were organizing a “coup” against his client.
Bolsonaro, he said, will take “all legal measures” to challenge any victory by Lula, and he suggested that the right wing will protest or stage national strikes if its candidate loses.
“I don’t believe in anything serious, in terms of violence,” Wassef said. “But the people are not going to stand by quietly as the chair is stolen from a president who everyone voted for and loved.”
Bolsonaro has for months laid the groundwork to blame a loss on electoral fraud. In July, he called dozens of foreign diplomats to the presidential residence to hear his claims that the electronic voting system, deemed reliable by election specialists, was easily manipulated. He cited a 2018 police investigation into an incident in which a hacker broke into the national electoral authority’s internal system. The authority has said the hacker did not gain access to voting machines or source codes, and could not alter the data or compromise results.
Those alleged electoral vulnerabilities — dismissed by independent experts — have been echoed by members of Brazil’s military. Bolsonaro also has pressed for the military to conduct a vote count in parallel with election officials. A compromise with election officials will allow the military to audit a small sampling of the ballots cast Sunday.
With many military commanders in Bolsonaro’s administration and other government posts, as many as 37 percent of Brazilians believe Bolsonaro might attempt a coup, according to a Datafolha poll in July.
Brazil’s right-wing dictatorship, which controlled the country from 1964 to 1985, tried to maintain a veneer of democracy. During its tenure, at least 434 people were killed or disappeared. Techniques for torturing dissidents included mock crucifixions. Congress remained open, but it operated largely as a rubber stamp. Elections were rigged, and most political parties were abolished.
The military now is seen as lacking the ambition to run the country, and few believe it has the stomach or interest for action that almost surely would lead to swift U.S. and European sanctions.
“They don’t respect democracy, they don’t respect congress, and they don’t respect the judiciary,” said João Roberto Martins Filho, a professor at the Federal University of São Carlos and a former president of the Brazilian Association of Defense Studies. “But they do respect the American generals. So they may have listened to all the messages the U.S. has been sending them. They know that a traditional coup isn’t going to work.”
That has not stopped coup chatter among some Brazilian power players, who worry about a return of the left-wing Workers’ Party, which ran the country for 13 years until 2016 and saw one president impeached, and the other — Lula — jailed for a year and half for alleged corruption (the conviction was overturned eventually and Lula was released).
In August, police acting on warrants issued by the supreme court judge who heads Brazil’s election authority searched the homes of several pro-Bolsonaro business executives who allegedly had mused on a possible overthrow in a private text group.
Analysts say the greater threat is a scenario from the Trump playbook, in which Bolsonaro alleges fraud and refuses to recognize the election result.
“He could summon his supporters to take to the streets and cause turmoil, especially if there’s a second round,” said Guilherme Casarões, a political analyst at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo. “He could try to subvert the results or force a state of emergency so he could postpone the second round until next year.”
Bolsonaro, protected by his attorney general, has sidestepped official investigations of alleged wrongdoing. But various accusations — including a bloated coronavirus vaccine deal at the health ministry — could embroil him once he leaves office. A show of force could serve as a warning to Brazil’s political establishment to back off.
Uncertainty has put the country on edge. Former presidential candidates across the political spectrum have thrown their support behind Lula for the sake of “democracy.” In August, thousands of Brazilians gathered at the University of São Paulo’s law school, site of an anti-dictatorship protest in 1977, to rally for the rule of law. Activists drafted a new “manifesto” decrying the risk of a break with democracy.
“We’ve been through a hard time, very polarized, just like in the U.S.,” said one of the “manifesto” authors, Thiago Pinheiro Lima, a public prosecutor who works with election authorities. “We want to avoid an episode such as the Capitol invasion.”
“I’m afraid,” he added. “We have a fragile democracy, and we have been under strong and aggressive rhetoric of discrediting the institutions and the voting process for some years now. This makes us fear institutional rupture.”
Bolsonaro, who often speaks in contradictions, has sought both to reassure and to threaten.
“If it is God’s will, I will continue,” he said in an interview with a pool of evangelical podcasters this month. “If it is not, we will pass on the sash, and I will retire, because at my age I have nothing more to do here on Earth.” Five days later, he had a very different message, telling a TV reporter during a visit to London for the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II that “if I get less than 60 percent of the vote, something abnormal has happened.”
Some analysts caution that a loss for Bolsonaro should not be read as an endorsement of democracy but rather the rejection of a leader who did not deliver and has left the country with stingingly high inflation and a poverty rate roughly unchanged since the day he took office.
“This not about democracy; it’s about the economy,” said the Brazilian political analyst Matias Spektor, a visiting fellow at Princeton University. “It’s because Bolsonaro failed.” | 2022-09-28T09:15:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brazil election: Bolsonaro vs. Lula is referendum on democracy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/brazil-election-bolsonaro-lula-democracy-authoritarianism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/brazil-election-bolsonaro-lula-democracy-authoritarianism/ |
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