text stringlengths 237 126k | date_download stringdate 2022-01-01 00:32:20 2023-01-01 00:02:37 ⌀ | source_domain stringclasses 60 values | title stringlengths 4 31.5k ⌀ | url stringlengths 24 617 ⌀ | id stringlengths 24 617 ⌀ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Marijuana’s last taboo: Parents who get stoned
Some parents say using cannabis helps them relax and connect with their kids. But it’s dicey to talk about.
By Ellen McCarthy
(Keith Negley for The Washington Post)
When Suzy found out she was pregnant with her first child, she stopped smoking pot immediately. She had used cannabis recreationally, on weekends, since her early 20s, but didn’t want to do anything that might harm the baby.
After giving birth, Suzy fell into postpartum depression. She loved her baby, but she couldn’t figure out how to love herself. Relief was hard to come by; she was scared to take antidepressants while breastfeeding. She considered turning back to cannabis, but worried that doctors might detect it in her baby’s bloodstream and take the child away.
After her newborn’s six-week checkup, Suzy allowed herself to take a hit when she knew she wouldn’t be nursing for a while. She could feel her shoulders release tension they had been holding for over a month. It was as if she was coming back to life. “I’m not proud I did that,” says Suzy — who, like nearly every parent interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition that her full name not be used for fear of judgment or more formal consequences. “But I’m not sure I would have survived if I wouldn’t have done that.”
She now consumes cannabis most days, always out of sight of her children, who are now 1 and 3, and her fiance’s 8-year-old son. She believes it makes her a better, calmer parent. Her attitude as she helps them build the Lego tower, destroy it and then build it again is leisurely. Because you know what? Those dishes in the sink can wait. “I am so much more playful and able to just ignore everything else that I’m dealing with in my head,” she says.
And yet Suzy, now 28, still feels the need to hide her habit not only from her children but also from her peers. Only her closest friends and family know about it, she says. She especially worries that if word got out, it could jeopardize her fiance’s custody of his firstborn.
Parents getting high. It is, perhaps, the last taboo in the places where cannabis use has otherwise lost its stigma.
It’s been a decade since cannabis first became legal for recreational use in Colorado. It’s now legal for medical use in 38 states, including 19 where it’s also legal recreationally. Ladies at canasta tables now compare notes on their favorite cannabis tinctures. Baby boomers openly smoke pot with their adult children. Colleges offer courses on “green entrepreneurship.” A recent Gallup poll found that more Americans are now smoking marijuana than cigarettes. It’s a habit that can be divisive when it comes to parents, especially with the proliferation of edible cannabis products that might be mistaken for regular candy.
James Kahn works in the industry that has grown up as legalization widened. He writes articles and hosts lectures about cannabis, and he’s the go-to guy for any friend of a friend who’s trying to figure out exactly which cannabis product might be right for them.
Kahn is about as open as one could be about his personal relationship with pot, which he’s used since high school. His spouse, his family, his employer, his friends and anyone who cares to look up his writings online all know that he gets high. But when the 43-year-old father of two first meets a fellow parent, he still feels awkward discussing it. “When I’m talking about cannabis,” he says, “it feels like a confession instead of a conversation.” He worries a little that he could be perceived negatively, and that it could cost his children friendships with kids whose parents disapprove of his cannabis use.
Culturally, “the war on drugs was pretty damn effective,” says Kahn, a Gen Xer who came up in the era of “Just Say No.” “It’s impacting my own self-judgment — even now.”
He’s sitting in a private room at the back of Liberty Cannabis, a brightly lit, Instagram-ready Rockville dispensary run by Holistic Industries, where he serves as the head of corporate responsibility. “As a White male, I have privilege, and I think there is a lot of normalization that’s happening, but it’s not happening across the board. People are still quite judgmental.”
In recent years, Kahn, who is also a rabbi, has regularly been invited to talk about cannabis at synagogues and senior centers. He sees normalization of cannabis as part of his rabbinical mission. But Kahn says he’s not getting any invites to speak to parenting groups.
“The one group I think where it still feels most uncomfortable,” he says, “is parents.”
Parenting — have you heard? — is stressful. And though some parental vices have been widely sanctioned by lighthearted internet memes and jokey doormats (Boy Mom lives here, hope you brought wine) marijuana is not yet one of them.
Moms and dads do get stoned, though some say they still sneak around like rule-breaking teenagers to avoid the disapproval of neighbors and family members. A Columbia University analysis of U.S. government data on drug use found that in 2015, 7 percent of parents with children in the home used marijuana, up from 5 percent in 2002. That number is almost certainly higher today, as more states have continued to legalize cannabis. But even in states where it’s legal, cannabis use doesn’t necessarily feel as socially acceptable among parents as, say, drinking alcohol.
“I just went camping this weekend, and I watched people get drunk off their butts in front of their children,” says Suzy, who lives in the Midwest, “but me taking a couple of hits back at the cabin away from the kids is totally not okay? That’s crazy to me.”
Katie, 31, doesn’t consider cannabis a drug, instead seeing it as a plant with the ability to make her a more patient parent. Her older child just started pre-K at a Christian school, and as much as she wants to make friends with other parents who toke, she says, “obviously we’re not trying to be, like, waving the Bob Marley flag at school.” She’s been trying to draw out like-minded parents in slightly more subtle ways. “If I catch a whiff of somebody at the park who’s been smoking, I’ll be like, ‘Smells good!’ ” she says.
Before having their two children, Katie and her husband moved from Indiana to Colorado in 2014 expressly to be in a place where marijuana was legal, so that they didn’t have to regularly break the law. But the pull to be near family brought them back to Indiana this summer, and Katie misses Colorado’s culture of acceptance. She and her husband still get high, but now the whole endeavor feels clandestine.
“Instead of going to the store, now we have to call up ‘a buddy,’ or make a 45-minute trip into town,” she says. “It’s just a lot of time wasted on acquiring it, which is stupid.”
Another mom, a 35-year-old with two kids, says the stigma she feels as a woman of color makes it hard for her to be open about her cannabis use. She works as an emergency medical technician, and “If I take a Black person to the hospital, and they say they smoke marijuana, that’s all [the doctors] focus on,” she says. “They don’t hear all the symptoms.” She fears she would be viewed the same way if White people found out she consumes cannabis — no matter that she does so legally, out of eyeshot of her children, and that it calms her without the heaviness of Xanax or the hangovers of alcohol.
“If you’re a Black mom, it just makes you a bad parent,” she says, summarizing the views of others. “As a Black parent I must be substance abusing or I can’t take care of my child and smoke.”
At a federal level, marijuana is still classified as a controlled substance. Cannabis consumption can be used as grounds for eviction or termination of employment. It can spark investigations by child protective services or show up as a red flag in the medical chart of a pregnant woman who tests positive for cannabis — especially among non-White parents, advocates say.
“No matter what the statute may say, smoking marijuana while you’re a parent is not a right,” says Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform. “It is a privilege reserved exclusively for the White, middle class — because of the same class bias and racism that pervades every other aspect of our society.”
Social media groups where cannabis-consuming parents can trade notes without fear of judgment are full of funny weed memes and short videos on topics such as “How to turn a pumpkin into a bowl.” But they also reveal the secret fears parents have about the risks that might come with keeping up their habits.
One recent poster asked if any fellow pot-using parents had lost custody of a newborn who tested positive for traces of marijuana after birth. Others asked about drug tests at workplaces and the impact of cannabis use on custody cases.
Sandra Guzman-Salvado, a divorce lawyer in Maryland, says that marijuana use among parents isn’t automatic grounds to lose custody these days, but it also doesn’t work in anyone’s favor. “I don’t see the courts making as much of a big deal anymore, but it’s definitely not helpful,” she says. “Your fitness as a parent also includes what your habits are: Are you healthy? Are you a good role model? It’s still not a positive thing.”
Legal or not, keeping mind-altering substances around the house can come with complications. A few weeks ago, Emily’s beloved 13-year-old dog began acting strangely. “She was swaying her head side to side, and her eyes were super glassy,” the mother of two teenagers recalls. “She was walking kind of funny, almost like she was doing the robot. I said to my husband, ‘I think she had a stroke.’ ”
The couple rushed to an emergency veterinary clinic with their younger child in tow. After asking some very specific questions, the vet ventured a diagnosis of what was ailing the dog: “I think she’s high.”
Emily flashed back to the previous night, when she had cleaned out her pipe on the back deck. The dog, she surmised, must have licked the ashes.
“They gave her some fluids,” she says, “and $250 later, we left.”
Obviously, the anecdotes are a lot less amusing when it’s kids rather than pets who get into a parent’s stash. And it’s happening with increasing frequency, says Sarah Combs, an emergency-room doctor at Children’s National Hospital, especially with cannabis edibles that look like average gummy bears or other candies. In August, an Upstate New York poison control center warned parents of a sixfold increase in calls about children consuming foods with cannabis.
“I don’t like to judge or be harsh or spread fear or guilt,” Combs says, “but the prevalence of gummies and spread of gummies needs to be curtailed.” She has treated several children who ate their parents’ edibles — often 3-to-5-year-olds who ate a whole pack, far more than an adult dose. In children the substance can cause fast or slow heart rates and low blood pressure — and, Combs says, “in worst-case scenarios, you can end up with seizures and potentially even coma.”
She wishes federal regulations would be applied to edibles so that they would be packaged in a way that’s less appealing and less accessible to children. But for now, she just warns parents to keep cannabis locked up and out of sight of kids, like any other controlled substance. Because when kids who’ve consumed cannabis wind up in her emergency room, Combs usually feels required to do something she never likes having to do: report the parents to child protective services.
A New Hampshire woman never imagined herself becoming a pot smoker. But it’s become a source of stress relief, she says — and also something deeper. At night, after the mom has smoked a little bit of marijuana and climbed into bed, her 8-year-old will sometimes climb in with her.
“This is when we’ll have our best hangouts,” she says. “He’ll come in and say, ‘Hey, do you want to do cuddles?’ And then, I don’t know, it’s just super easy. We laugh and tell jokes, and it’s hilarious, and I honestly feel like I’m connecting with him.”
The mom, who is 40, can’t wrap her head around how cannabis became so taboo in the first place. She spent much of her childhood in Russia, where all drug use was considered abhorrent. But after injuring her shoulder four years ago, a massage therapist suggested she try cannabis for pain management. It didn’t really cut the pain, but for the first time since having kids she started getting a good night’s sleep. “I really don’t know why people are so negative about the whole thing,” she says.
Suzy, the 28-year-old mother of two, still feels sad looking back on her first weeks as a mother, when she didn’t feel safe consuming cannabis. “I missed the first six weeks of my child’s life,” she says. Suzy is hoping that marijuana use among parents will become normalized, so that others in her position can talk openly with their doctors about whether it could be beneficial.
Until then, she’ll keep sneaking around. Because regardless of what others might think, she feels sure that her use of pot is a good thing for her and her kids.
“I think I’m my best mom self when I’m smoking,” she says. “I’m just calm. I can relax. We have a blast because I can just let go a little bit more and follow their rules.” | 2022-09-28T09:28:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Parents using cannabis: The last taboo of marijuana's golden age? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/28/parents-cannabis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/28/parents-cannabis/ |
Report exposes U.N. camp abuses, but research shows justice is elusive
Analysis of U.N. peacekeeping missions highlights the obstacles to justice facing sexual abuse victims
Analysis by Audrey L. Comstock
A U.N. armored vehicle passes displaced people walking toward the U.N. Protection of Civilians camp in Malakal, South Sudan, in 2013. (Ben Curtis/AP)
A new investigative report highlights allegations of sex abuse in a U.N.-led camp in Malakal, South Sudan. The report alleges that international aid workers from organizations such as Doctors Without Borders, the World Food Program and World Vision committed of a range of sexual abuses. And camp residents interviewed for the report claim U.N. peacekeepers bribed camp workers for access to women to abuse.
The report described allegations of rape, sexual exploitation, coercion of civilians — and children born of the rapes committed. Will anyone be held accountable? My research examining U.N. agreements on abuse and victims finds that punishment for those committing sexual exploitation and abuse within U.N.-sponsored missions is rare.
U.N. peacekeeping missions have fielded many allegations
My work focuses on U.N. peacekeepers — international aid workers are not covered by the same impunity, which may allow for more flexibility in prosecuting those found guilty of these abuses. Initiatives working toward accountability like Interpol’s Project Soteria rely on aid workers’ countries of origin to cooperate, however, which may limit chances of punishment.
These types of allegations are not uncommon. Since 2010, there have been more than 1,200 reported allegations of sexual abuse in U.N. peacekeeping missions. Over 30 missions reported at least some cases between 2010 and 2022. The highest counts were in missions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Haiti and Liberia. The patterns of alleged abuse tend to reflect the number of peacekeeping troops and prevalence of sexual violence in the conflict.
The U.N. suffers from a lack of accountability
It’s difficult to hold alleged perpetrators accountable in conflict and humanitarian settings, in part because of limitations on U.N. jurisdiction. And the United Nations does not have its own standing army — which means U.N. peacekeeping forces rely on military personnel from U.N. troop-contributing countries.
In their agreements guiding troop contributions, countries make arrangements to remove their troops from potential U.N. and/or local prosecution. The U.N.’s reliance on national governments to send troops often means impunity for peacekeepers. Advocacy groups have widely criticized the United Nations for these arrangements, and for failing to prevent abuse.
What punishment options are available?
Punishment for sexual exploitation and abuse within U.N. missions can take many forms, including repatriation, fines, administrative leave, demotion and dismissal, as well as the prospect of prison time in the perpetrator’s home country.
Most of these punishments rely on troop-contributing countries to act. The U.N.’s only recourse is to repatriate peacekeepers accused of these abuses. The U.N. repatriated all 200 military peacekeeping personnel involved in substantiated allegations 2010-2019.
Troop-contributing countries have more punishment options available. The figure below shows the punishments they enacted in response to sexual abuse and exploitation allegations. Though many cases remained pending, the majority of completed investigations resulted in jail time.
How common is punishment?
Human rights abuse, especially sexual abuse, is likely to be underreported. Though the United Nations adopted a victim-centered approach to addressing allegations of sexual abuse and exploitation, the process generally relies on direct reporting at the U.N. mission or through online forms. Both routes are difficult for victims to navigate.
Once submitted, only about 16 percent of allegations filed in reports ended up resulting in punishments for alleged perpetrators.
What explains these punishment trends?
Who the victim is can affect the allegation credibility and chances of punishment. My research examining 33 peacekeeping missions found that the U.N. and the troop-contributing countries were more likely to issue punishments when children were victims of reported sexual abuse allegations. The United Nations punished 46 percent of perpetrators involved in allegations with identified child victims while troop-contributing countries punished 33 percent. This compares with an overall average punishment rate of about 16 percent for allegations involving victims of all ages.
WHO workers are accused of sexual exploitation and abuse. That hurts everything the U.N. does.
That’s because the narratives frame children as innocent and vulnerable victims — and the media are likely to sensationalize heinous crimes against children. Research on how media and human rights agencies report abuses highlights how extreme cases draw in readers, for instance.
Children have special protection under international law. The 1959 U.N. Declaration of the Rights of the Child instructs that children “be among the first to receive protection and relief” because “mankind owes to the child the best it has to give.” The United States, notably, is the only country that hasn’t ratified the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child — there’s near-universal treaty commitment from the rest of the world. In domestic and international settings, juries are more likely to decide on harsher punishments when the victim is a child.
However, even for cases involving child victims, legal prosecution can be difficult. When a French court heard the case of French soldiers accused of sexually abusing children in Central African Republic, the judges decided not to bring charges, citing a lack of credible evidence.
Children often find reporting and navigating the investigation and legal proceedings more difficult than adults. In fact, 80 percent of the allegations of peacekeeper abuses against child victims that were deemed “unsubstantiated” received that ruling due to a lack of evidence needed for the investigation to move forward.
So even with the increased chance that abuse of children will be punished, most reported abuse cases are deemed unsubstantiated and most alleged peacekeeping perpetrators go unpunished.
While factors like mission training and increasing women in the peacekeeping mission can reduce overall incidents of sexual abuse and exploitation, without greater accountability these heinous rights violations likely will persist despite international condemnation.
In South Sudan, reports of abuse persisted for almost a decade, despite complaints filed with the United Nations and humanitarian agencies. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres called for an “urgent report” into the abuse. A big question now is whether the increased attention will pressure the United Nations and others to hold their personnel accountable and stop abuse.
Audrey L. Comstock is an assistant professor of political science at Arizona State University, Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University, and author of “Committed to Rights: UN Human Rights Treaties and Legal Paths for Commitment and Compliance” (Cambridge University Press, 2021). | 2022-09-28T09:45:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lack of accountability over abuses in U.N. camps, research suggests - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/un-camp-south-sudan-abuse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/un-camp-south-sudan-abuse/ |
President Biden supports a waiver to allow the shipment, an official says, but the administration faces bureaucratic hurdles and political pressures
Toluse Olorunnipa
A house lies in the mud in the aftermath of Hurricane Fiona in Salinas, Puerto Rico. (Alejandro Granadillo/AP)
As Puerto Rico reels from Hurricane Fiona and the administration faces continued blowback over the issue, President Biden is personally tracking the matter and supports granting the waiver, according to the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private discussions.
Biden faces a mounting clamor from Congress as well as Puerto Rican leaders to provide an exemption that would let the BP tanker carrying the fuel access to an island port. The ship cannot do so because of the Jones Act, a shipping law that requires goods shipped between points in the United States be carried on U.S.-flagged ships, in an effort to support U.S. shipping and labor.
The ship, called GH Parks, is flagged to the Marshall Islands and departed from Texas.
Administration officials say they have no legal authority to provide a blanket one-year waiver to the Jones Act, as a group of House Democrats demanded in a letter last week. Instead, White House aides are pushing the Homeland Security and Transportation departments to expedite a review that would allow them to grant a one-time exemption for this particular vessel.
A spokesman for BP said a waiver request had been submitted last week.
Biden faces growing pressure to grant waiver for diesel shipment
Images of the ship idling outside the island circulated on social media this week as Puerto Rico’s governor demanded action and expressed alarm about the impact of the delay on critical facilities damaged by Hurricane Fiona, including wastewater treatment plants, public hospitals and emergency centers. Many of these facilities, lacking electricity in the storm’s aftermath, need fuel for generators that provide an alternate power source.
Island advocates have emphasized that the administration granted a waiver to the Jones Act after a colonial pipeline ransomware attack led to outages in May, saying there is no reason a similar waiver could not be granted in this case.
“It’s a political decision. … This is such an emergency they should be able to find a justification pretty quickly,” said Federico A. de Jesús, a senior adviser for the Power 4 Puerto Rico coalition who served in the Obama administration. “The lawyers can justify it in many ways, as they did for these other two cases. It does not hold water to just blame the bureaucrats.”
To comply with federal law, the DHS secretary must ensure Jones Act waivers meet specific legal criteria before granting the reprieve. First, DHS must determine that waiving the Jones Act is necessary “in the interest of national defense,” though the law does not define the term. Second, the federal government must determine that no available domestic vessel could meet the same need as the foreign vessel requesting the waiver.
When DHS receives a request for a Jones Act waiver, it must consult with the Energy and Defense departments to determine whether the “national defense” requirement can be met, an administration official said. The need to provide fuel for an island where thousands of Americans remain in the dark could be a priority for maintaining order, which could be considered in the interest of national defense, the official said.
DHS must also consult with the maritime administrator in the Transportation Department to ensure no U.S.-owned vessels could make the delivery. In general, such waivers can only last for 10 days or less.
“We have under this administration developed a process by which to try to expedite the decision-making here,” said the administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal processes. “But it’s really an interagency process.”
Even if DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas decides to grant the waiver, the White House would still need to sign off as a final step. The administration has said in the past that it would try to process such waivers within two days, but the complexities of a hurricane response could make the review process take longer, the official said.
While the sight of a fuel tanker idling off the coast is infuriating to many on Puerto Rico and in Congress, the administration faces complex political crosscurrents. The American Maritime Partnership — a coalition that represents operators of U.S.-flagged vessels and unions covered by the Jones Act — said Monday that domestic ships were continuing to provide fuel to the island, making a waiver unnecessary.
Officials from the group on Tuesday highlighted a radio interview by the executive director of the Puerto Rico Ports Authority in which he said there is enough diesel fuel on the island. Biden, who in the past has declared “unwavering support” for the Jones Act and pledged to be the most pro-union president in history, has won plaudits from labor leaders for defending the century-old law and the U.S. jobs it supports.
Hurricane Fiona slammed into Puerto Rico on Sept. 18, knocking out power across the U.S. territory and leaving more than 3 million residents in the dark. The Energy Department released an update on Tuesday reporting that a third of Puerto Rico was still experiencing power outages, a number that represents 491,000 customers.
While the department’s Monday update specified that “currently there are no reports of liquid fuel supply shortages on the island,” that line was not included in the update released Tuesday. “As of September 22, long lines have been reported at some retail fuel stations due to high-demand for gasoline and diesel,” the update read.
A DHS spokesman Monday did not provide a timeline for any decision on the waiver. “The Department of Homeland Security will continue to examine individual requests for Jones Act waivers on a case-by-case basis and in consultation with the Maritime Administration, Departments of Defense, and Energy,” the spokesman said.
Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.), who signed the letter demanding the Jones Act waiver, said he is pushing for the administration to act in part because Congress will not be able to do so as it tries to head off a government shutdown.
“Realistically, I don’t think that’s a real possibility this week,” Espaillat said in an interview. “With everything else on the table, it’s a big lift. It requires some action from the administration. Right now, it’s an emergency. … This is a humanitarian matter at this point.”
Other administration allies have also stepped up their criticisms in recent days. Jason Furman, who served as a top economist in the Obama administration, said it “made my blood boil” that the White House would delay the granting of the waiver.
“In the best of times, the Jones Act reduces resilience and raises prices,” Furman said. “At a time like this, it can be especially harmful to the most vulnerable people who are suffering from the aftermath of the hurricane.”
Arelis R. Hernández contributed to this report. | 2022-09-28T09:46:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | White House pushing agencies on diesel for Puerto Rico - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/09/28/white-house-diesel-puerto-rico/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/09/28/white-house-diesel-puerto-rico/ |
Tom Brady and other NFL quarterbacks are getting more pushback this season from defenses leaguewide, with scoring numbers down. (Jason Behnken/AP)
NFL defenses are making a comeback, albeit somewhat modestly and perhaps temporarily.
When quarterbacking legends Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers got together Sunday in Tampa, they produced a tense game that came down to a failed two-point conversion attempt by Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers with 14 seconds remaining. But it wasn’t, say, a 37-35 loss to Rodgers’s Green Bay Packers. It was Packers 14, Bucs 12.
Then, Sunday night in Denver, the Broncos beat the San Francisco 49ers, 11-10.
11-10?!
In a golden age for quarterbacks, with dazzling passing numbers and scoring totals, defenses suddenly are taking a stand.
Scoring is down in the early stages of this season, to an average of 42.1 combined points per game from 47.1 last season through Week 3. There also has been a dip in passing yards per game, to 462.1 this season from 490 through three weeks last season.
It’s not a major issue yet. Games have been competitive and close — the 18 decided by three or fewer points and 25 decided by six or fewer points are the most in NFL history through three weeks of a season — and TV viewership has been strong.
But the league and the rulemaking competition committee track the scoring figure closely, on the premise that wide-open and high-scoring games are good for fan interest. NFL defensive players constantly bemoan — with plenty of justification — the advantages rule changes and interpretations give to offensive players. Even this season, illegal contact by defensive backs on receivers is a point of clarification (formerly called a point of emphasis) for NFL game officials.
The drops in passing and scoring are not attributable to inexperienced quarterbacks; no team entered this season with a rookie as its starter. But there was plenty of quarterback reshuffling in the offseason, leading to a learning curve for some veterans in new spots. Coaches, meanwhile, have become increasingly wary of playing their starting quarterbacks and other key players in preseason games, making the early weeks of the regular season more akin to a modern-day preseason. Offenses must play their way into peak precision and efficiency.
League leaders and competition committee members seem to be taking a wait-and-see approach; they traditionally resist drawing conclusions from small sample sizes. But the points-per-game figure is certainly worth monitoring as the season progresses.
Will they be the NFL’s best team over the course of the entire season? Probably not. But they’ve earned the No. 1 spot at this point.
The offense wasn’t as high-powered this time. But the Dolphins found a way to beat the Bills, who had looked unbeatable for two games.
There were plenty of excuses for the Bills in Miami: the heat, the short week, the injuries on defense. If they want to be a Super Bowl winner, they’ll have to win games like that.
They have steadied themselves with two victories since the opening-night loss to the Bills.
Aaron Rodgers can beat Tom Brady, after all, and the Packers quickly have rebounded from a season-opening defeat for a second straight year.
Tampa contingencies
On Tuesday, the Buccaneers moved their operations to South Florida because of the threat of Hurricane Ian, and they plan to practice this week at the Dolphins’ facility. (The Dolphins play Thursday night at Cincinnati.) The Buccaneers are scheduled to play the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday night in Tampa.
The game, for now, remains unchanged. But the teams and the league are considering contingencies and are expected to make a decision — perhaps as late as Friday — about potentially rescheduling or relocating the game. The NFL and the Buccaneers seemingly would prefer to keep the game in Tampa, even if that means playing on a different day, based on conditions in the area.
If the game cannot be played in Tampa, it probably wouldn’t be moved elsewhere in Florida, with resources throughout the state being devoted to hurricane-related efforts. The available NFL sites include Minneapolis and New Orleans, with the Vikings and Saints facing off Sunday in London.
QB angst for Patriots
The New England Patriots probably will have to turn to Brian Hoyer, their veteran backup quarterback, or rookie Bailey Zappe this week as they attempt to keep their season from unraveling.
Starter Mac Jones is believed to have suffered a high ankle sprain late in Sunday’s loss to the Baltimore Ravens. It’s not clear exactly how long Jones will be sidelined, but he will probably miss multiple games.
The Patriots take a 1-2 record into Sunday’s game at Green Bay as they attempt to keep the Dolphins and Bills from leaving them behind in the AFC East race. There have been early-season questions as to whether Jones is failing to make progress in his second NFL season amid the murky play-calling situation that exists for the Patriots following the offseason departure of offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels. Now those questions are on hold.
Patriots QB update. pic.twitter.com/SwLBqzZPVM
Hoyer last made an NFL start in 2020 for the Patriots. He last orchestrated a victory as an NFL starter in 2016 with the Chicago Bears.
“Brian’s got a lot of experience in the offense,” Coach Bill Belichick said at his news conference Monday.
Belichick was equally brief in his praise of Zappe, a fourth-round draft choice from Western Kentucky.
“He’s gotten a lot better,” Belichick said.
The Patriots have to hope they have the same save-the-season success with a backup quarterback that the Dallas Cowboys and Cleveland Browns are experiencing.
The situation seemed dire for the Cowboys when they began the season with a listless loss at Tampa Bay and quarterback Dak Prescott suffered a fractured right thumb that required surgery. Enter Cooper Rush, who had made only one start over four NFL seasons. He has engineered two straight victories, including Monday night’s 23-16 triumph over the New York Giants at the Meadowlands.
“He’s certainly playing as well as anybody could have expected. … There’s no question he understands this offense,” Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said Tuesday in his weekly radio appearance on 105.3 the Fan. “He has got the makeup for a top quarterback. … We’re very fortunate.”
Prescott is said to be healing well and had the stitches removed from his thumb Monday. There is speculation that he might play Sunday against the Washington Commanders. More likely, he’ll miss that game but perhaps return the following weekend against the Los Angeles Rams in Inglewood, Calif., or Oct. 16 at Philadelphia. Never mind Jones’s previous talk about welcoming a potential quarterback dilemma if Rush played well. This is Prescott’s team and Prescott’s job. But Rush’s play has been an unexpected salvation for the Cowboys.
The Browns, meanwhile, are 2-1 with Jacoby Brissett starting while Deshaun Watson serves his 11-game suspension. Brissett threw two touchdown passes in Thursday night’s 29-17 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers. It’s a long time until Watson is eligible to play Dec. 4 at Houston. But for now, Brissett is keeping the Browns competitive.
It didn’t go as well for the 49ers in Jimmy Garoppolo’s first start since Trey Lance’s season-ending ankle injury. He threw an interception as the offense sputtered in Denver. He also handed the Broncos a safety by inadvertently stepping out of the back of the end zone. That led former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky, now an analyst for ESPN, to express his sense of vindication on Twitter after his infamous running-out-of-bounds blunder in 2008 while with the Detroit Lions.
Zach Wilson is set to return. That’s good news, right?
There are reasons why Carson Wentz has been traded twice.
So much for that feel-good victory over Russell Wilson and the Broncos in the opener.
Josh McDaniels’s coaching tenure with the Raiders looks too much — so far — like his coaching tenure with the Broncos.
When the highlight of the season is a tie, things are not going well.
Owners seek resolution of Kroenke dispute
A top priority for NFL team owners as their regularly scheduled October meeting nears is to resolve their dispute over payment of the $790 million settlement reached last year with St. Louis in the city’s lawsuit over the Rams’ relocation to Los Angeles in 2016.
The owners regard that as their most pressing issue, according to a person familiar with the league’s inner workings.
Rams owner Stan Kroenke was required to sign an indemnification agreement as part of the relocation. But Kroenke reportedly contends that he should not be responsible for paying the entire amount, drawing a distinction between legal fees and settlement costs while maintaining that information derived from other NFL franchises bolstered St. Louis’s lawsuit.
The owners discussed the matter at previous league meetings this year but have been unable to reach an agreement. They’re scheduled to meet again on Oct. 18 and 19 in New York. | 2022-09-28T11:08:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL power rankings, defense is king, Bucs' hurricane planning - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/28/defense-bucs-hurricane-nfl-rankings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/28/defense-bucs-hurricane-nfl-rankings/ |
It's been a long, long season for Victor Robles and the Nationals. (Lynne Sladky/AP)
On the last day of the 2008 season, the Washington Nationals, managed by Manny Acta, fielded a lineup that featured Odalis Perez and Luke Montz as the battery. Emilio Bonifacio and Anderson Hernandez served as the double play combination. Kory Casto hit third and Ryan Langerhans cleanup. Ryan Zimmerman, the lone can’t-miss piece of a brighter-but-still-distant future, got the day off and was replaced at third base by Alberto Gonzalez.
Which is a long-winded way of saying: It has been worse. Much worse.
A night after they lost their 100th game for the third time since moving to Washington from Montreal 17 years ago, Dave Martinez’s ragtag Nationals hosted the defending World Series champion Atlanta Braves, against whom they are overmatched.They lost, 8-2, their 14th loss in 18 games against the Braves — with another chance to enhance that number Wednesday.
“The losing part of it,” Martinez said, “it’s hard to accept. It really is.”
Especially when for so long it wasn’t accepted here. At some point over the next week, these Nationals are likely to surpass the 2009 version, which lost 103 games in all shape, manner and size — including when the team issued two of its best players jerseys that read “Natinals.”
The pit was bottomless in those days. Those Nats were one game worse than the 2008 group, which went 59-102 — and didn’t play a rained-out 162nd game because, well, who wanted to watch that?
So, yeah, with series to complete against the Braves, the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Mets — all National League East foes jockeying for postseason position — these Nats are almost certain to finish with the worst Washington baseball record since the 1963 Senators went 56-106. (Claude Osteen and Don Lock, anyone?) These Nationals have given up the second-most runs in all of baseball, scored the fifth fewest and made the third-most errors. Yeah, smells like 100-plus losses.
“Everything aside,” Martinez said, “I’ve had a lot of fun with this group because they’re into it.”
Now, it’s hard to put everything aside, because this season involved the gut-punch trade of Juan Soto and the bizarre feeling that a World Series parade staged less than three years ago somehow feels a decade in arrears. There is work to be done, and the Lerner family’s exploration of a sale of the franchise — a process that is ongoing and has an unclear end point — clouds everything about the future.
But the record doesn’t always display exactly where a franchise is in its development. Yes, from this perch, 2019 seems so long ago. But not as long ago as 2008 — which was the absolute depths.
That group most frequently threw out Aaron Boone at first, Felipe Lopez at second, Cristian Guzman at short with Zimmerman at third. An outfield of Willie Harris, Lastings Milledge and Austin Kearns was most common. And the rotation featured Tim Redding, John Lannan and Perez — who you may remember threw the pitch that opened Nationals Park — along with some hodgepodge of Jason Bergman, Collin Balester and Shawn Hill piecing together the rest of the starts.
Sift through that group — both in real time back then and with the wisdom provided by history — and find pieces that might have contributed to something that could become a winner. There was Zimmerman, becoming a veteran. There was hope for Milledge, once a prized prospect. Lannan became a serviceable pitcher.
Beyond that? Hill was injured too frequently. Balester was a first-round pick who didn’t pan out.
The present was bleak. The future could only be seen with a NASA-issued telescope.
Which is why, by the time the 2009 season concluded, it was a small-but-clear step ahead of its predecessor. Zimmerman became an all-star for the first time. Ian Desmond finished the season as the shortstop. Jordan Zimmermann made his major league debut. Michael Morse arrived in a trade with Seattle. Craig Stammen appeared in the rotation, Tyler Clippard out of the bullpen. And the club selected Stephen Strasburg with the first pick in the draft. The 2009 team lost one more game than the ’08 squad. It was in demonstrably better position.
Which brings us to this difficult summer, at times unsightly.
“A lot has changed, obviously, since I first came here,” said lefty Patrick Corbin, one of the characters who embodies this deterioration. (Corbin in 2019, when he helped win that World Series: 14-7, 3.25 ERA over 202 effective innings. Corbin in 2022: 6-18, 6.08 ERA with more hits and earned runs allowed than anyone in the league.)
So yes, Patrick, a lot has changed. But this isn’t the bottom. Man, it felt like it, both before the Soto trade when players who had neither a past nor a future here — Maikel Franco, César Hernández, Alcides Escobar, Dee Strange-Gordon, Lucius Fox, etc. — threw the ball around the yard with alarming regularity.
But as this season draws to a close, two things are true: The Nationals play a more palatable brand of baseball than they did when the season began, and they’re doing it with more players who might positively impact their future. Record-wise, they’re nowhere near the 2010 group that went 69-93 — a small step toward contention. Roster-wise, they’re better off, because that group was littered with veterans who were hanging on: Pudge Rodriguez, Adam Dunn, Adam Kennedy, Josh Willingham.
Here and now, the Nationals may have both the shortstop and the catcher on a contender in CJ Abrams and Keibert Ruiz. Abrams’s arrival has allowed Luis Garcia to move to second, which instantly makes his future brighter. Josiah Gray has struggled — allowing more homers and walks than anyone in the league — but if he goes on to a successful career as a starter, he won’t be the first one who looks back on a rookie year such as that.
Cade Cavalli and MacKenzie Gore conclude the year being handled with white gloves, but at some point they’ll pitch and develop. Plus, it’s not hard to envision two or more of an effective group of relievers — Kyle Finnegan, Hunter Harvey, Mason Thompson and the injured Tanner Rainey — being useful in the future.
And that doesn’t touch on a farm system that still has holes but also has new life.
“These guys, if you watch them play, you couldn’t tell me they thought they were out of it or they thought they lost 100 games,” Martinez said. “They play hard every day and every inning. …
“They want to make sure that when we get new players, we establish something here right now, so when players come in they can say, ‘Hey, look, we’re here to freakin’ compete and win.’ I like that about them, because they talk about it. I hear them talk about it.”
It is, of course, talk. But as a lousy year draws to a close, it’s important to notice that it hasn’t been lost. The Nationals, and their fans, know lost seasons. The bottom for baseball in Washington was when the Senators left — twice — or the ugly summer of 2008. It wasn’t this year, as bad as it has been. | 2022-09-28T11:08:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is this the worst Washington Nationals team? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/28/worst-washington-nationals-team/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/28/worst-washington-nationals-team/ |
Why a 12-year-old is the most pivotal character in ‘Handmaid’s Tale’
Jordana Blake, left, as Hannah, opposite Yvonne Strahovski as Serena in “The Handmaid’s Tale.” (Sophie Giraud/Hulu)
Does she know her first name is Hannah? That she is a battle flag? That she is the daughter of freedom fighter June Osborne (formerly known as the handmaid Offred), who is the forever thorn in the side of a repressive male-dominated theocracy called Gilead? Does Hannah know she is one of the most interesting and enigmatic characters on television?
No, no, of course not. But maybe?
In the ongoing (and often exhausting) power struggle of “The Handmaid’s Tale” political sphere, 12-year-old Hannah (Jordana Blake), who has been renamed Agnes by her adoptive parents in Gilead, is the ultimate pawn. Gilead and its proxy, Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski), use the child they stole from June (Elisabeth Moss) to keep her in check. But the hope of Hannah — the dream of saving her — is also what keeps June in fighting shape and is the thread pulling her back to the nation she escaped. It makes sense that in a world where children (or the lack thereof) can make or break an entire nation, just one little girl could keep the fires of resurrection burning. Hannah is the infinity stone and the iron throne rolled into one: Whoever has her, has the power.
So, it also makes sense to give Hannah more to do. For a character that represents so much, she has done little more than simply exist for the past four seasons. But the script might be flipping.
In its fifth season, Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” based on Margaret Atwood’s classic feminist tome, seems to be over its own shock value. Audiences have seen Gilead at its worst again and again — the ritualized rape, waterboarding, poisoning, tearing people apart with your bare hands — and crafting new ways to physically brutalize women on screen is neither revolutionary nor enlightening. So instead of watching conflicting ideologies duke it out in the arena, the show has switched to chess.
“Season 5 is all about that gamesmanship,” executive producer Warren Littlefield told TVLine.
The two main players are clear: June vs. Serena Joy. Most allegiances are murky in “The Handmaid’s Tale,” but for these two women who’ve traveled through the multiverse together in the last five years, it’s all hate. And at the center of the tug of war between them is Hannah. Always Hannah.
“I’m sorry I don’t have her,” June tells her husband, Luke (O-T Fagbenle), when the couple is finally reunited after her rescue in Season 4. “I’m sorry it’s just me.”
In Season 5, June grapples with those last three words — “it’s just me” — and finds that they won’t do. Even after suffering no criminal consequences for murdering her rapist (and Serena’s husband), Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes), June still can’t shake Gilead and forget the child left behind. Who could? Her younger daughter, Nichole — whom she had with Nick (Max Minghella), the Waterfords’ former driver — is being raised safely in Canada by Luke and Moira (Samira Wiley), two of the most well-adjusted co-parents suffering from PTSD on the planet. But June can’t feel settled or get free. Hannah won’t let her — and neither will Serena.
‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ used to feel provocative. In Season 4, it’s just exhausting.
Wednesday’s episode, “Dear Offred,” begins with a stranger approaching June and Nichole at the park. It’s a happy mother-daughter day until it isn’t — June never really gets those. The woman, who appears childless, tells June, “You’re so lucky you were in Gilead. Now you have this beautiful, precious, healthy, little angel.” Unsurprisingly, the rest of their exchange does not go well. It’s an example of how June’s identity as a mother will never be divorced from the trauma she experienced in Gilead, whether it stems from the daughter the country gave her (forced upon her, really) and the daughter it stole.
In the season’s second episode, “Ballet,” we finally got a glimpse of what has become of Hannah. June hasn’t seen since her eldest since Gilead used the preteen to force June to disclose the secret location of her fellow runaway handmaids. In that scene, Hannah, trapped in a glass box with the Gilead eye stamped into the concrete floor and dressed in a soft pink shift, plays with a doll and even laughs, seemingly unconcerned with her stark accommodations. She is only outwardly frightened when a torture-weary June approaches the cage. Fast forward a year and Hannah no longer appears to be afraid of anything.
On-screen for less than a minute, “Ballet” is Hannah’s coming out.
During an expertly choreographed funeral ceremony, Serena marches through the streets of Gilead dressed like a mafia widow. A group of young girls joins the parade in a tableau ripped from the pages of the “Madeline” children’s books — little girls in two straight lines. The group parts and there she is: Hannah. Her natural curls combed back to fit under a useless pillbox hat with her body completely shrouded in a wool coat, she stares straight forward like a child soldier on the front lines. Hannah turns to face the camera, and the world and her parents, watching from a public square in Canada, see her clear as day. But is she going through the motions, or does she know more? Will we ever know?
Fans of Atwood have by now read “The Testaments,” the 2019 sequel to “The Handmaid’s Tale” that was more than three decades in the making. There is a main character/narrator in that book that could provide more backstory to Hannah’s life in Gilead, and the team behind the Hulu series has said Atwood’s second work would be a road map for where the show goes from here. But the series and Atwood have diverged in necessary ways. If the June of TV can be closer to superhero, then who’s to say her daughter wouldn’t follow suit?
In each season, we get a glimpse of how life has changed for Hannah over the years. She goes from the girl who was ripped from June’s arms as the pair tried to escape to Canada in the early days of the military coup, to the young woman (if you can call a 12-year-old that) who appears to be Gilead’s. In a world that seems so bleak and unchanging, Hannah has marked the passage of time.
“What was she wearing? What the f--- was that color?” asks June in the episode “Border,” because she knows how important symbols are in Gilead, a place that seems drained of all color but yet revels in categorizing its women with it. Moira is not sure, maybe “plum” or “purple.”
“It’s not pink, though. She’s not a little girl anymore,” Moira adds unhelpfully. Later, June’s former lover and man on the inside, Nick, confirms that it’s purple and that “it means she’s ready.” There’s a new school for high commanders’ daughters who are training to be wives. Despite delivering that gut punch, Nick claims that Hannah will be safe and that she’s “tough” like June. What good is that supposed to do in Gilead? When have women there ever been rewarded for their tenacity?
As a character, Hannah is fascinating because she represents so much. Is she happy as Nick would have June believe, safely ensconced in Gilead’s upper class with a family that really loves her? Or is she a ticking bomb — a girl who knows more than she lets on, like the kid from seasons past who remembered June and asked why she didn’t try harder to find her, fight for her?
The battle of wills between Serena and June, two trauma-bonded women with the power to end one another, certainly makes for good TV. Women going head-to-head is at least a break from watching more men do what men with absolute power do. But it’s the war raging inside Hannah that deserves the most attention as the series hopefully spends less time showing us how the adults love to carve each other up and more on the children they claim to care about. | 2022-09-28T11:17:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why a 12-year-old is the most pivotal character in ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/28/handmaids-tale-hannah/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/28/handmaids-tale-hannah/ |
The movie, which explores the darker side of the entertainment icon, caps off a year of homages to the star who died 60 years ago
Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in a scene from “Blonde.” (Netflix/AP)
For a moment there this spring, she was inescapable.
In late April, Marilyn Monroe’s life and death were the subject of the Netflix documentary “The Mystery of Marilyn Monroe: The Unheard Tapes,” which explored a handful of conspiracy theories regarding her relationships with President John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. The following week, Kim Kardashian made headlines around the world when she arrived at the Met Gala — so fashionably late as to be the very last guest on the scene — wearing the very dress Monroe wore to sing “Happy Birthday” to Kennedy in 1962. The week after that, the famed Andy Warhol portrait of Monroe sold for a record-shattering $195 million at a Christie’s auction.
With the addition of “Blonde,” the new Andrew Dominik film (based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates) that arrives Wednesday on Netflix, it would now be hard to refute: We’re in a Year of Marilyn. With her cotton candy puff of golden-white hair unmistakable on the streamer’s home screens and her enigmatic, sleepy gaze peeking out from our entertainment news pages, fascination with her is peaking once again.
Monroe “represents a lot of things to a lot of people,” says Lucy Bolton, who teaches language, literature and film at Queen Mary University of London and guest-edited the 2015 “#Marilyneveryday: The Persistence of Marilyn Monroe as a Cultural Icon” issue of the journal Film, Fashion and Consumption. Her image has “come to stand for the very essence of glamour and beauty,” Bolton says, while her life story “stands for the classic hard-luck, rags-to-riches” tale of making it big in Hollywood.
Indeed, the sale of Monroe’s portrait and the controversial use of her gown at the Met Gala celebrated the former aspect of Monroe’s fame — which suddenly feels in step once again, with the ultrafeminine aesthetic that’s lately become trendy among some younger Americans. But none of this year’s moments of Marilyn fixation have engaged quite as directly with the latter as “Blonde,” which focuses on Norma Jeane Baker, the woman who became Marilyn Monroe.
Netflix's "Blonde," starring Ana de Armas, focuses on the tragedies of Marilyn Monroe's life. (Video: Allie Caren/The Washington Post)
A few forces have converged this year to create a period of renewed fascination with Monroe — or perhaps more accurately, with Monroe iconography. For starters, 2022 marks the 60th anniversary of Monroe’s death at the age of 36. In August, a memorial service was held in her honor in Los Angeles, timed to the day of her death; tributes and remembrances cropped up all over the internet. Her death in its own right, Bolton notes — its apparently accidental nature coupled with its untimeliness — accounts for a lot of her enduring mystique. “She’s got a victim narrative,” Bolton says, “which, like Judy Garland or Princess Diana, has its own aura of tragedy. And people are attracted to that.”
And while certain aspects of her iconic image have come and gone — her pointy bras and her Middy haircut among them — several routinely come back into style, and have once again this year. “I have noticed once again that clothing is coming around to the ’60s,” says Donelle Dadigan, president and founder of the Hollywood Museum in California (where interest in the Monroe items spikes yearly in June around her birthday). Indeed, while many of today’s most fashionable looks are 1990s- and 2000s-inspired, late-’50s and early-’60s Monroe-era staples such as winged eyeliner, midi skirts and colorful matching two-piece outfits are going strong. (Of course, much of Monroe’s signature look has never gone out of style. “We can pick up pretty much any magazine — particularly a fashion magazine like Elle, Vogue or Harper’s [Bazaar],” Bolton says, “and there is nearly always, somewhere in that magazine, a picture of Marilyn.”)
Additionally, Bolton notes, Monroe today “stands for a sort of irresistible, undeniable femininity and beauty” — and in 2022, after several years of dormancy thanks to Americans’ modest, androgynous post-#MeToo styles and the sweatpants era of the coronavirus pandemic, undeniable femininity is back. Vogue recently heralded “Barbiecore” as the hottest trend of summertime, and a TikTok genre known as “BimboTok” was the subject of many a concerned-but-fascinated trend story in 2022. On it are several content creators who are cheekily reclaiming the idea that being overtly hot on purpose is fine — and doesn’t need further justification.
Which is not to say that was true of Marilyn Monroe; in fact, as Bolton and Dadigan both point out, Monroe herself was ambitious about her acting career and actively pursued non-“bombshell” roles. But the genre does seem to take cues from Monroe’s bubbly public persona — and her apparent enjoyment of being a beautiful, hyperfeminine woman.
Chrissy Chlapecka, 22, is one of the most prominent TikTokers associated with BimboTok, and she names Monroe among her lifelong inspirations. Growing up in the 2000s, though, Chlapecka saw what became of women who dared to enjoy womanhood in the public eye. “The way [Marilyn] was talked about back in the early 2000s … the media would take any woman and spit on them. Like Britney Spears, like Janet Jackson,” she says. So it was confusing, growing up and feeling a connection to a figure such as Monroe. Her teachers and even a few family members, she says, were “weird” about it.
“Everybody knew she was iconic. But it was a little taboo in a way, you know?” Chlapecka remembers. “And I was like, ‘Why?’ ”
“Blonde,” however clumsily, attempts to answer that question, as it’s the rare Monroe tribute that looks closely at the mortal person behind the immortal image. It is also, to be clear, based on a work of fiction: Oates’s book, published in 2000, sits firmly in the genre of biographical fiction as it imagines the life of the woman formerly known as Norma Jeane.
Still, “Blonde” the movie covers many of the major known tragedies and trials of Monroe’s real life, such as her mother’s mental illness as well as her own, her failed marriages, her substance-abuse issues and her unrealized desire to become a parent. In its storytelling, it deftly separates Norma Jeane from Marilyn, the former repeatedly abused and antagonized, the latter celebrated and adored to an oppressive degree. (It skips over a few famous beats, too, such as Monroe’s early marriage in her teenage years to a policeman — as well as the fact that she had half-siblings, one of whom she reconnected with later in life. In 1994, her half sister Berniece Baker Miracle wrote “My Sister Marilyn,” and it remains one of the few definitive behind-the-scenes nonfiction books about the actress’s life.)
“Blonde,” you could say, applies the very 2020s practice of re-examining female fame in hindsight (see: “Framing Britney Spears,” “Malfunction: The Dressing Down of Janet Jackson,” “Slow Burn: The Clinton Impeachment” and “Gaslit”) to one of the most famous women of all time, full stop. And of course, it comes to the now-familiar conclusion that there was much more to the story than was apparent at the time.
Bolton, speaking in August, was hopeful that “Blonde” would “present an experience of Monroe’s life that is not too melodramatic or sensationalist for the sake of it — because it doesn’t need to be.” Certainly, some critics have cringed or recoiled from the close-up brutality of its depictions of sexual assault, physical violence and abortion. But Dominik’s film certainly meets Bolton’s other expectation: “Respect and fidelity to the complexity of the person.” | 2022-09-28T11:17:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | America is obsessed with Marilyn Monroe. ‘Blonde’ is about Norma Jeane. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/28/marilyn-monroe-blonde-obsession/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/28/marilyn-monroe-blonde-obsession/ |
FORT LAUDERDALE, FLORIDA - JULY 16: An American Airlines plane lands on a runway near a parked JetBlue plane at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on July 16, 2020 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. JetBlue Airways and American Airlines Group announced they will be creating an alliance between the two companies. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) (Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America)
There is little evidence that the alliance is hurting competition and driving up fares, and in fact it may be strengthening options in the Northeast. The case is largely a distraction, and the government should be focused instead on actual consolidation that hurts consumers, like the Spirit Airlines deal.
Airline alliances work because carriers save money by sharing facilities such as ticket counters or maintenance. Flyers benefit from easier ticketing and the ability to earn miles with one airline’s loyalty program even when another carrier operates the flight.
These arrangements started as early as the 1930s and mostly involved two airlines sharing flights. That changed in 1997 when United Airlines Holding Inc., Deutsche Lufthansa AG and three others teamed up to form Star Alliance. Two years later, American Airlines, British Airways and three other airlines created Oneworld. Not wanting to be left out, Delta Air Lines Inc. cobbled together SkyTeam in 2000 with Air France-KLM and other partners.
The three big alliances now have just fewer than 60 members with varying degrees of cooperation. Other direct alliances and code-sharing agreements abound among the world’s air carriers. In other words, airlines have been tangled together for decades even though they are owned and operated separately.
JetBlue doesn’t belong to one of the three big alliances, so in early 2021 it started operating the Northeast Alliance, or NEA, with American, which provides JetBlue’s customers with more destinations from the four participating airports: John F. Kennedy International Airport, LaGuardia Airport, Newark Liberty International Airport and Boston Logan International Airport. JetBlue expects to leverage American’s network to capture more business passengers and bolster revenue from its Mint premium travel product, which trumpets lie-flat seats and suites.
For American, it fills a gap where its network lags behind the main competitors, United and Delta. In the New York area, which includes Newark, American carried just shy of 10 million domestic passengers in the 12 months ended in June, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics. Delta flew more than 18 million people, and United had 15 million. JetBlue flew 13.7 million domestic passengers.
“If you say no to it, you basically hand the keys over to Delta and United,” said Conor Cunningham, an analyst with Melius Research. “From a competitive standpoint, it is better for consumers to have a stronger third competitor” in the Northeast region. That balance would change, though, if JetBlue is allowed to acquire Spirit, he said.
The NEA already has some competitive safeguards. It has to report operating details to the Department of Transportation, and if the two airlines don’t meet escalating targets that culminate in a 15% increase of seat capacity by 2025 at JFK and LaGuardia, the two airlines will have to give up take-off and landing slots at these two key airports.
Already as part of approving the NEA deal, the Transportation Department forced the two airlines to give up a combined seven slot pairs at JFK and six pairs at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. That’s no small concession. Reagan National, along with the two New York City airports, are the only three where the Federal Aviation Administration controls the slots because the airports are deemed capacity constrained.
This isn’t the first domestic alliance that American has formed to plug a hole in its network. The Fort Worth, Texas-based airline struck a similar deal, minus the revenue sharing, with Alaska Air Group Inc. in February 2020. That deal gives American access to Alaska’s Seattle hub and a jumping off point to and from Asia. Alaska also joined American’s Oneworld alliance.
Don’t be surprised if JetBlue ends up on American’s Oneworld team at some point. The move would line up with JetBlue’s eagerness to expand international flights. The Long Island City, New York-based airline last year expanded a partnership with Qatar Airways, which is a member of Oneworld, and will terminate in October a code-sharing agreement with Emirates Airlines, which just agreed to an alliance with United.
The point is alliances aren’t eliminating competition, and they bring some benefits to passengers. The government should certainly block an American-JetBlue merger, but that’s not on the table. It should scrutinize consolidation that pushes up fares or reduces flight options for passengers. The Justice Department is pursuing the wrong JetBlue deal. | 2022-09-28T11:17:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Wrong JetBlue Deal Gets the Antitrust Treatment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-wrong-jetblue-deal-gets-the-antitrust-treatment/2022/09/28/81c4aa96-3f1d-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-wrong-jetblue-deal-gets-the-antitrust-treatment/2022/09/28/81c4aa96-3f1d-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Far-right views in law enforcement are not new
65 years ago this week, Edwin Walker helped enforce Little Rock integration. Then he devoted himself to segregation.
Perspective by Anna Duensing
Anna Duensing is a historian, educator and postdoctoral fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia.
Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, speaks during a rally outside the White House in Washington on June 25, 2017. A new report says that the names of hundreds of U.S. law enforcement officers, elected officials and military members appear on the leaked membership rolls of a far-right extremist group that's accused of playing a key role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. (Susan Walsh/AP)
Recent analysis of leaked Oath Keepers membership rolls by the Anti-Defamation League indicates the growing presence of law enforcement, military and elected officials within militia movements.
This report is the latest in an alarming volume of evidence of a militant, conspiratorial vanguard building institutional power on the right. In forging direct links between vigilantism, law enforcement and elected office, this movement aims to consolidate control over what law and order means and to whom it applies.
Such a development is not surprising. Decades of scholarship on groups as wide ranging as the Ku Klux Klan, the Texas Rangers, lynch mobs, strikebreakers and veterans’ organizations indicate that the United States has always blurred the lines between political mainstream and extremist fringe. While this reality has been missing from popular memory, one particularly disturbing example stands at the forefront of one of the most iconic events in U.S. history: that of Edwin Walker, the decorated military officer charged with integrating Central High School in Little Rock in 1957.
As a figure like Walker shows, the mid-century triumphs of civil rights activists did force lawmakers to disavow white supremacy’s most militant defenders, ostensibly driving a greater wedge between mainstream and fringe. At the same time, mainstream and fringe figures continued to organize around kindred white supremacist policies and cultivate common enemies, even as their methods and rhetoric diverged.
Sixty-five years ago this week, the Little Rock School Integration Crisis reached its climax. After the Supreme Court’s ruling against school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, segregationist lawmakers in the South laid siege to the decision in united opposition to constitutional rights for Black people.
On Sept. 25, 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and deployed an additional 1,000 troops under Walker’s command to address flagrant White defiance of an integration order by a U.S. District Court judge. Only under military guard and intense media scrutiny were the Black students known as the Little Rock Nine able to safely attend classes, even as Central High remained a snake pit of white supremacist antagonism.
Walker, who served in World War II and the Korean War, oversaw integration in his capacity as commander of the Arkansas military district in Little Rock. “We are all subject to all the laws,” he told an assembly of White students upon his arrival, “whether we approve of them personally or not, and as law-abiding citizens, have an obligation of conscience to obey them. There can be no exceptions; if it were otherwise, we would not be a strong nation but merely an unruly mob.”
The press lauded Walker as a “model of aloof correctness” for his role in quelling the unrest. However, his detachment masked a personal repugnance for his orders. Walker was born and raised in Texas and was a staunch conservative, segregationist and militant anti-communist. His fierce attachment to states’ rights doctrine, coupled with his anticommunism, brought him into close contact with a burgeoning far-right movement that believed federal intervention in Little Rock was part of a global communist conspiracy to destroy the United States.
After Little Rock, Walker immersed himself in a movement of segregationists and conspiratorial anticommunists that was highly organized, well-funded and committed to the political long game.
In 1961, a tabloid sensationalized elements of his anti-communist training program for U.S. soldiers, including his use of literature from the ultra right-wing political advocacy group the John Birch Society and his suggestion that prominent liberals, including Eleanor Roosevelt, were “definitely pink.” The revelation prompted admonishment from his superiors and fueled fears over right-wing radicalization among military leadership. Walker resigned in protest of this minor rebuke, becoming a martyr in far-right circles and a national cause celebre.
Walker, now an open opponent of civil rights, linked White resentment of Black protest to White anxiety over communist subversion. His infamy peaked in September 1962, when he escalated White violence against the enrollment of Black student James Meredith at the University of Mississippi. In a theatrical public reversal, Walker declared that he had been on the “wrong side” in Little Rock and called for White people to defend themselves against “the conspiracy from within.”
The Ole Miss Riot that followed left two dead and hundreds injured.
National media panned Walker as an “eccentric” whose “paranoid mental disturbance” signaled “the dying gasps of a passing breed in whom hate has ruled over reason.”
By contrast, Black commentators saw Walker as a feature, not a blemish. “General Walker’s leadership would have fizzled out if there were not already an obsessive racist strain in the students to which he appealed,” observed one columnist in the Black press.
Indeed, Walker continued to enjoy support throughout the country. He was celebrated by white supremacist and anti-communist organizations that purported to reject extremism, including the Citizens’ Council, the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade and Americans for the Preservation of the White Race. Openly fascist and white nationalist political parties, such as the National States’ Rights Party and the American Nazi Party, exalted Walker as a “brave patriot” and called for him to run for — and win — the presidency.
Walker, for his part, backed Alabama Gov. George Wallace (“segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever”) in his 1964 primary challenge to President Lyndon B. Johnson. He then retreated to Dallas, where he continued to seize headlines throughout the 1960s and 1970s.
A special Army review board quietly restored his pension in 1982 after nearly a decade of appeals from Walker, though it denied him back pay. In its approval decision, the board refurbished his image as “a truly dedicated American soldier who firmly believed that insufficient action was being taken within the military establishment to combat the threat of Communism.”
Walker’s trajectory reminds us how White backlash and its reliance on collaboration between mob terror and state power are fundamental to the perpetuation of racism in the United States. Segregationist lawmakers mobilized in lockstep after Brown v. Board of Education. They passed hundreds of state laws and policies designed to defy the Supreme Court’s desegregation order. They galvanized grass-roots White revolts and dismissed subsequent attacks on civil rights activists and Black communities. Their efforts precipitated more sophisticated campaigns to erode movements for racial and education justice nationwide, including White opposition to court-ordered busing throughout the 1970s and 1980s, history curriculum wars past and present and assaults on public education outright.
Centering Walker’s experience in the story of Little Rock emphasizes the degree of political will and federal force necessary to curb white supremacist revolt. Understanding Walker’s broader career also reinforces the fortitude of the Little Rock Nine and the organizers who helped to land this decisive blow against Jim Crow in the South. Walker was ordered to protect them and to uphold the law. His rage over those orders casts light on the fuller extent of what they struggled against.
Protection before the law was not enough when law enforcement resented protecting the basic rights of Black children. The idea that the law is enough remains a fallacy when its enforcers resist deploying their enormous resources to mitigate and discipline White violence. Instead, civil rights activists were organizing to dismantle the vast system that made and lionized a figure like Walker.
The Oath Keepers membership leak is the latest reminder that Walker was not merely overzealous. Nor is his kind a dying breed. The ongoing struggle for real and living democracy in the United States necessitates clear-eyed acceptance of that fact. | 2022-09-28T11:17:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Far-right views in law enforcement are not new - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/28/edwin-walker-oath-keepers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/28/edwin-walker-oath-keepers/ |
Dark money in politics is a problem. History points to a solution.
Everyone would benefit from new rules forcing greater transparency in political donations
Perspective by Bo Blew
Bo Blew is a PhD candidate in history at Purdue University, his research explores the influence of private foundations in modern American political history.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and his fellow Republicans blocked Democrats’ efforts to reform campaign financing laws. (Michael Reynolds/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Despite pleas from President Biden, Senate Republicans blocked the Disclose Act, legislation that would require advocacy groups to provide names of donors who give $10,000 or more if they advocate for particular candidates or issues.
Biden stressed the need for such legislation by pointing to last month’s stunning revelation that Barre Seid, founder of the electronics company Tripp Lite, had sold his firm and donated $1.6 billion to nonprofit groups led by conservative operative and former vice president of the Federalist Society Leonard Leo. Biden called this move “one of the biggest dark money transfers in our history” — one that came to light only through the work of reporters.
Biden tried to paint the cause as bipartisan, recalling the late GOP Sen. John McCain’s efforts to increase transparency in political advertising through his work on the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002.
Yet the better example of how to address the flood of dark money in politics may come from before the fight over modern campaign finance laws. In 1969, President Richard M. Nixon signed legislation that set rules to bring transparency and order to private giving in the name of safeguarding the public interest. The bill was more than a half-century in the making and showed that legislators in both parties could come together to ensure that the tax code encouraged charity without allowing for chicanery that starved the public of critical tax dollars.
As Congress debated enacting the income tax in 1910, oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller Sr. made an unprecedented offer. Rockefeller wanted a federal charter to permit the creation of a philanthropic corporation that he said would promote the welfare of the entire country. In return, he wanted the money given to this new foundation to be exempt from personal property taxes. In a period marked by staggering income inequality, Gilded Age business magnates like Rockefeller had served the nation’s patrons, but in the face of progressive taxation, they wanted special exemptions like this to continue their philanthropic endeavors.
Many in Congress feared that writing such an organization into law would open avenues for abuse and corporate misdeeds and could eventually become a platform from which Rockefeller could wield undue influence over public affairs.
But Rockefeller made major concessions, and the House eventually passed a bill with a two-thirds margin that gave Congress tremendous influence over the operation of the proposed foundation, including the power to dissolve it. The bill also created a system for appointing trustees that required input from public figures, including the president.
But a small group of senators rebelled, blocking the bill’s passage in the Senate, despite a favorable recommendation from a bipartisan committee. So Rockefeller pivoted and convinced the New York legislature to pass a state-level version of his original proposal with none of the concessions he had made to try to secure passage at the federal level.
Over the next few decades, foundations became the preferred vehicle for large private giving as the post-war economic boom buoyed the wealth of America’s richest families. Foundations multiplied throughout the nation as philanthropists sought ways to minimize tax burdens and retain familial control of assets. Figures like Henry Ford II and Eli Lilly Jr. became the faces of a new generation of philanthropy, launching projects to fund universities, investing in community programs and creating institutions that still shape the arts, education and policy conversations.
However, because Congress never passed national legislation setting rules for foundations, states began rapidly issuing charters with few explicit guardrails. Philanthropy was so inconsistently regulated at the state level that by 1961, the IRS could not even say with certainty how many foundations existed in the country.
In the 1960s, Rep. Wright Patman (D-Tex.) launched a decade-long study to bring oversight and accountability to the foundation world. First elected to the House in 1928 and a committed populist, Patman maintained an early-New Deal suspicion of economic concentration. He soon found that some of the nation’s largest foundations were also some of its largest shareholders. A survey of 534 foundations showed that 111 of them owned more than 10 percent of a single company’s stock. This included the Ford Foundation, which held 100 percent of the Ford Motor Company’s class A nonvoting stock, making the nonprofit organization the largest stockholder of one of the country’s most important corporations — and leaving a staggering amount of wealth beyond the reach of taxation. And while organizations like the Ford Foundation spent millions of dollars on programs that developed public educational television, among other charitable endeavors, the Treasury Department estimated that 10 percent of foundations merely functioned as tax shelters to promote private profit.
Patman’s investigation brought these stark cases of abuse to light, including that of Americans Building Constitutionally, an organization designed to help the moderately wealthy create foundations with the sole purpose of avoiding taxation. Taking advantage of a growing movement pushing for “tax equity,” Patman used the results of his investigation to urge his colleagues to eliminate these “tax dodges” that the wealthy were disproportionately able to utilize.
This push for change and oversight led to the passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1969. The legislation included a mandatory payout provision that forced foundations to donate a minimum percentage of their assets each year. It also forced them to be more transparent about their expenditures and holdings, set limits on family involvement on foundation boards and limited the amount of shares foundations could hold of a single company. Notably, by a narrow margin, the final bill eliminated plans for a foundation “death sentence,” which would have forced foundations to disburse their funds in a set number of years.
The act passed with overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate. Support came from a diverse coalition that included Southern segregationists, liberals seeking “tax fairness” and politicians from both parties who saw the tax code being exploited for political gain. While not all of these supporters agreed on the extent of the regulations on foundations, Congress implemented recommendations from Patman’s study and from officials from the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations.
By the mid-1970s, the legislation had forced foundations to become more professional because it required more transparency, higher levels of compliance and more stringent oversight of grants. These regulations also helped foundations gain legitimacy as respected centers of philanthropy and knowledge production rather than avenues for corruption and tax avoidance.
While the world of large foundations may appear somewhat different from the advocacy organizations and super PACs blitzing the airwaves in 2022 with political ads, as they professionalized, foundations became intertwined in the policy process by funding the briefs and analyses lawmakers rely on. Foundation staffers began to staff presidential administrations, and foundation leaders became pundits shaping media conversations about issues like energy and health care in the burgeoning 24-hour news cycle.
At the core of the debate that produced the 1969 bill was the question of the proper level of influence for the wealthy in public affairs. By working together, presidents and legislators from both parties, along with federal agencies, created institutions with greater oversight that garnered greater public acceptance.
Something like that is possible, maybe even necessary, again today as the wealthiest donors exert increasing amounts of political influence through ever larger gifts. Advocating for new regulations on private giving, Biden argued that the problem with dark money goes beyond a monetary arms race to influence elections. It also “erodes public trust” — just like the situation with foundations in the 1960s.
At a time when democratic institutions and norms face repeated attack and challenges, restoring trust in the political system is critical. The Tax Reform Act of 1969 provides a template for how to do that. That law indicates that while partisan divisions thwarted passage of the Disclose Act again, everyone would benefit from finding a way to legislate greater transparency. | 2022-09-28T11:18:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The solution to our dark money problem - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/28/solution-dark-money-problem/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/28/solution-dark-money-problem/ |
Filmmaker Abigail Disney, great-niece of Walt Disney, uses the power of documentary to shame the company into treating its workers better
Disneyland employees seeking higher wages are shown at a protest in the documentary “The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales.” (Fork Films)
“The American Dream and Other Fairy Tales” begins like a personal essay. Co-directed by producer, philanthropist and social activist Abigail Disney and filmmaker Kathleen Hughes (“The Armor of Light”), the documentary is guided by the deeply felt, even passionate narration of Disney, who is the great-niece of Walt Disney and the granddaughter of his brother, and Walt Disney Co. co-founder, Roy Disney.
Abigail Disney has made no secret of her mission to shame the Disney company into treating its workers better, writing op-eds in The Washington Post that make her position clear: The company has gotten rich off the backs of its theme park employees, some of whom, it’s asserted in “Dream,” are living below the poverty level. This film, she admits toward the end, is part and parcel of that quest.
But economic inequality is not solely a Disney problem, as “American Dream” quickly acknowledges. Rather, as the essay tone of the film gradually shifts to that of a case study with society-wide implications, the Disney company is held up as an exemplar: a corporate role model that could lead other businesses to follow if it chose to make concessions to its workers. The filmmakers focus on a handful of struggling Disney employees, including married custodial workers at Disneyland in Anaheim, a city that is described in the film as “ground zero for widening economic inequality in America.”
The filmmakers’ focus-shifting approach to telling this story is smart and effective.
But its true power lies in the history lesson it eventually segues to, landing with a gut punch. Disney and Hughes offer compelling evidence that a long-standing economic social contract has been broken. The first mission statement of the Harvard Business School, the film notes, was to educate leaders who would “make a decent profit decently” — an ideal that “American Dream” argues has been betrayed by the “greed is good” philosophy championed most notably by the economist Milton Friedman (and, of course, in the 1987 movie “Wall Street”). In other words, the once mutually beneficial relationship between business and its workers — a formerly symbiotic relationship that built and nurtured the middle class it has now come to feed on — has been replaced by a parasitic form of capitalism.
One talking head quoted in “Dream” refers to this transformation as the jerk-ification of America (using a more anatomical, and less printable, word than “jerk”). It’s a pungent moment in a pungent — albeit also depressing — film.
Abigail Disney, however, seems only momentarily demoralized. “What am I going to do about it?” she asks — to which her interlocutor reminds her: “Make a movie.”
Unrated. At Landmark’s Bethesda Row Cinema. Contains brief strong language. 87 minutes. | 2022-09-28T11:18:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Disney scion takes on the Mouse House in ‘The American Dream' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/28/the-american-dream-and-other-fairy-tales/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/28/the-american-dream-and-other-fairy-tales/ |
Mitski is one of the headliners at All Things Go. (Ebru Yildiz)
All Things Go is returning to Merriweather Post Pavilion with its most stacked lineup yet. The eighth edition of the blog turned promoter’s female-focused fall festival features 16 artists across two stages that provide a snapshot of where pop music is and perhaps where it’s going. Mitski returns to the D.C. area in support of “Laurel Hell,” an album that sees the artist’s heartbreak unspooled under the light of a disco ball. Lorde is back, too, with the subdued “Solar Power,” which was written and produced with pop hitmaker Jack Antonoff, whose band Bleachers also headlines. Appearing earlier in the day is D.C.-based artist Bartees Strange, who has quickly established himself as a singer-songwriter-producer in Antonoff’s mold. Meanwhile, Faye Webster croons from country music’s alternative, introspective edge. Oct. 1 at noon at Merriweather Post Pavilion, 10475 Little Patuxent Pkwy., Columbia. allthingsgofestival.com. Sold out.
Pop music is cyclical, a fact most obvious on the dance floor, where a DJ can seamlessly mix between 1992, 2002, 2012 and 2022 without missing a beat. Marc Kinchen, a.k.a. MK, is one of the rare selectors who can do it with his own songs. Kinchen’s remix of Nightcrawlers’ disco-inspired “Push the Feeling On” became such an iconic house track that the group deleted the original from its catalogue and changed its sound to match his; the song has since served as the basis for hits by Pitbull and Riton. Far from a one-trick pony, the Detroit-born talent has scored his own bright and bouncy house hits and has worked with and remixed pop’s biggest names. Oct. 1 at 9 p.m. at Echostage, 2135 Queens Chapel Rd. NE. echostage.com. $25-$35.
As L’Rain, Taja Cheek makes music that defies genre, classification and easy comprehension. The multi-instrumentalist and singer cuts and pastes layers of music — guitar and bass, synths and samples, vocals and percussion — into collages that grapple with art’s purpose and possibilities amid the vagaries of life. “This album is an exploration of the simultaneity of human emotions,” she wrote of last year’s “Fatigue,” “the audacity of joy in the wake of grief, disappointment in the face of accomplishment.” For listeners, the juxtapositions and cognitive dissonance can be intoxicating. Oct. 2 at 7 p.m. at Songbyrd, 540 Penn St. NE. songbyrddc.com. $15-$17.
In the same way that the Mars Volta rose from the ashes of At the Drive-In at the turn of the millennium, the former’s new album was a response to the art of the latter. After touring with a reunited ATDI for three years, guitarist Omar Rodríguez-López needed relief from frantic tempos and timbres. When it was time for the Mars Volta to return from its own hiatus, Rodríguez-López and company wanted to change tack. “For me, the most exciting new direction is something we haven’t done: to cut things down, to do our version of pop,” he told the New York Times. The resulting self-titled album has stripped back the band’s maximalist prog-rock tunes to craft songs more focused and concise. But longtime fans shouldn’t fret: Recent sets have relied heavily on the freakouts of debut album “De‐Loused in the Comatorium.” Oct. 3 at 8 p.m. at the Anthem, 901 Wharf St. SW. theanthemdc.com. $55. | 2022-09-28T11:18:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 4 concerts to catch in the D.C. area: Sept. 30-Oct. 6 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/28/concerts-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/28/concerts-dc/ |
The U.S. and China are headed for a showdown at the U.N.
Activists at a park in Jakarta, Indonesia, protest China's treatment of the ethnic Uyghur people on Jan. 4. (Willy Kurniawan/Reuters)
The United States and some of its European partners have decided to force a vote at the United Nations next week on whether to debate China’s atrocities against Uyghur Muslims and other ethnic minorities — acts the United Nations’ own human rights commissioner has said may constitute “crimes against humanity.” But Beijing is working overtime to prevent the debate from ever taking place. This is a crucial test for both the United Nations’ and the Biden administration’s commitments on human rights.
On Monday, the United States filed a resolution, formally known as a “draft decision,” that — if passed — would add China to the agenda of the ongoing session at the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva. President Biden decided that the United States would rejoin the council when his administration took office. The Trump administration had withdrawn from the council because of its inclusion of several human rights abusers and its overall lack of substantive action. China’s human rights abuses have never been debated there before.
The debate would address the report on China’s abuses released by U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Aug. 31, her last day in that post. The Chinese government had tried to thwart the release of the report and afterward called it “wholly illegal and invalid.” Now, Beijing is working to strong-arm countries that sit on the council, threatening them with economic and other punishments if they don’t vote to bury the Bachelet report, several officials and diplomats told me.
The 47-member body will vote before the current session ends Oct. 7. A simple majority is needed for the measure to pass. Although the Biden administration has declared that China’s abuses in Xinjiang constitute an ongoing genocide, the United States and its partners wrote the resolution as a simple call for debate over the Bachelet report, hoping to make it easier for squeamish governments to vote yes.
“We are taking this step deliberately, given an assessment that it is achievable," a senior administration official told me. "The goal is to put the issue on the agenda and pave the way for further action down the line.”
The Biden administration will reach out to any and all council members that it believes can be recruited to the cause over the next few days, both from the U.S. mission in Geneva and including senior officials in Washington, the official said. There’s no preliminary vote count, but the administration believes it’s going to be close.
“We are going to engage on a full-court press,” the official said.
Uyghur activists told me that this resolution represents their only hope that the United Nations might act on the plight of their family members in Xinjiang. The Uyghur American Association held a hunger strike in front of the White House last week to plead for the U.S. and other governments to introduce and pass this resolution.
“Free and civilized nations have come together to support Ukraine in order to defend the international world order. We believe it is the responsibility of those free and civilized nations to support Uyghurs in international forums to defend the same international order,” association President Elfidar Iltebir told me.
Many Uyghur activists are frustrated by what they see as the Biden administration’s lack of attention on this issue. In Biden’s defense, he did mention Xinjiang (briefly) in his speech to the General Assembly; a senior U.S. official spoke at an Atlantic Council event on the U.N. meeting’s sidelines last week. It’s also true that the administration pushed hard for the Bachelet report to be released in the first place.
But the Biden team erred by not introducing this resolution two weeks ago, when the Human Rights Council session opened, said former deputy U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Kelley Currie. This gave Beijing a head start on the diplomacy, she said, and wasted the opportunity for senior U.S. officials to press the issue last week, when dozens of world leaders convened in New York for the General Assembly’s main events.
“Better late than never, and we all want this resolution to succeed. But this inexplicable delay was a totally avoidable misstep,” Currie told me. “Meanwhile, China has been aggressively lobbying against the resolution since August 31.”
To be successful, she said, the Biden team will need to deploy diplomatic resources to match or exceed China’s level of effort, with the understanding that many of the tools China uses — bribery, coercion and vote trading — are off the table for the United States.
This could be the last chance for the U.N. Human Rights Council to demonstrate its reason for being. If China’s genocide is not even worthy of a debate there, the council’s credibility will be unsalvageable, all those who criticized Biden’s decision to rejoin the body will be vindicated, and the Uyghurs’ cries for help will be muffled. | 2022-09-28T11:18:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The U.S. and China are headed for a showdown at the U.N. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/biden-administration-uyghur-vote-un-china/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/biden-administration-uyghur-vote-un-china/ |
You deserve the right to have an independent auto shop fix your car
Ray Magliozzi is one half of NPR’s show “Car Talk,” a longtime independent repair-shop owner, a Dear Car Talk columnist and a car reviewer on CarTalk.com.
When your car breaks, what do you do? Okay, after you utter a certain word? You have to decide where to take the car to get it fixed, right?
You really have two choices. You can go to the dealership or an independent repair shop. However, some car manufacturers don’t want to share key information for diagnosing and fixing cars with independent shops — and that’s something that’s not only bad for repair shops but also bad for you.
As a radio host who has advised thousands on their car problems and as an independent shop owner myself, I know all too well that car owners benefit when they have more choices. Congress is considering a national “right-to-repair” law, and lawmakers need to pass it to protect your rights as a consumer.
Back in the old days, when people were still switching over from traveling by mastodon, you repaired cars with your eyes, ears, nose and hands — and, if you were desperate, a Chilton repair manual. Now, you often repair a car by first plugging a computer into the on-board-diagnostics port and seeing what the computer tells you is broken. So, what’s the problem? Carmakers and their dealerships want to maintain control of modern diagnostic tools, which forces customers to come to them for repairs. Even though independents are willing to pay to license these tools, dealers see an advantage in exclusivity.
Dealerships have always had certain advantages. They have better coffee in their waiting rooms. Heck, they have waiting rooms. They have clean restrooms that don’t double as auxiliary air-filter storage. They also work on your particular make of car all day, every day. So they might be familiar with an oddball problem because they’ve worked on 4,000 Camrys. Independent shops are small businesses, run by individuals — some of whom are terrific people and mechanics and some of whom will blame your car troubles on demonic possession and give you essential oils to fix it.
But independent shops have their own advantage: price. Their labor and parts costs are usually much lower — hey, who do you think is ultimately paying for the dealerships’ coffee and fancy couches? Some research has found that dealers, on average, charged as much as 20 percent more than independent shops for the same repairs.
There’s also the matter of distance. Not every town in the United States has a stop light, let alone a dealership for every car brand. There are 16,752 franchised car dealers in the United States, according to the National Automobile Dealers Association, but there are nearly 240,000 repair shops — meaning that for a lot of people, an independent shop is the only nearby option.
At Car Talk, there are times we’ll strongly recommend an independent shop for standard work like brakes, shocks, the engine and regular service. And there are times we’ll recommend going to the dealership, like when you have a particularly rare problem that might be unique to your make and model. But at the end of the day, you should take your car to the dealer to be fixed because you want to not because dealers have hoarded all the key information. Beyond the information needed to diagnose and fix your car, dealerships also want to maintain control of your car’s telematics. What are telematics? Well, now that everything is connected to the internet, your car can notify your dealer when your car needs an oil change or has a blown sensor. Using the software they’re denying to independent shops, the dealer can then diagnose the trouble code, call you and schedule a repair. Most modern cars already have this ability.
Car manufacturers point to the importance of keeping your car’s data safe — including your location, say — as a reason to deny independent shops access to these tools and codes. They are right about the need for data security, but part of privacy is that you should be the one to decide who has access to your data.
At least 17 states have laws on the books stating that your vehicle’s data belongs to you. Many independent repair shops will need to invest in tools to keep customer data secure, but just because they’ll need to invest doesn’t mean they can’t compete with dealers. Lack of choice — and competition — is never good for the consumer. So consumer groups and independent shops are promoting what they call right-to-repair legislation, guaranteeing consumers more choice by requiring automakers to license their data with independent repair shops. The voters in my fair state of Massachusetts approved just such a law in 2020. In 2021, 27 states introduced or passed similar legislation. Beyond those state laws, there’s a national push to protect consumers and independent shops. H.R. 6570, a national right-to-repair bill, has been sitting with the House Energy and Commerce Committee for months.
My Car Talk colleagues and I know not everyone will support right-to-repair laws. Dealerships won’t like the level playing field. Mechanics might not like how much work they’ll actually have to do. Still, this is an issue everyone else can get behind. If you own something, you should be able to choose where to repair it. | 2022-09-28T11:18:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | ‘Car Talk’ host Ray Magliozzi: ‘Right to repair’ law must pass - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/car-talk-ray-magliozzi-right-to-repair-law/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/car-talk-ray-magliozzi-right-to-repair-law/ |
Chess has a cheating problem. It might need a vigilante, too.
Magnus Carlsen competes at the World Chess Championship tournament in December 2021. (Jon Gambrell/AP)
The reigning world champion of chess thinks that American teenager Hans Niemann is a cheat. After Niemann won a match against Magnus Carlsen at the Sinquefield Cup this month, Carlsen abruptly withdrew from the tournament, with a cryptic tweet that slyly suggested malfeasance. When the two were matched again in an online tournament on Sept. 19, Carlsen resigned after one move. And on Monday, he released a statement that doesn’t quite come out and say Niemann cheated in their match — but might as well have.
“I believe that Niemann has cheated more, and more recently, than he has publicly admitted,” he said. “His over the board progress has been unusual, and throughout our game … I had the impression that he wasn’t tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me.”
I don’t know enough about chess to say for sure whether Niemann is cheating. Even the chess world remains divided, with some experts saying Niemann’s games look clean, and others pointing to suspicious win patterns. But Carlsen is obviously right about one thing: Cheating has become an enormous problem for chess, and the anti-cheating measures in place are not enough to maintain faith in the integrity of the sport.
Twenty-five years after a supercomputer first beat a human grand master, computers are thoroughly dominant; with a variety of widely available chess programs, you can reliably outplay Carlsen or any of the world’s top players. This has created an irresistible temptation for some players; Niemann himself has admitted to cheating in online games when he was younger, though he vehemently denies doing so recently, either online or in person.
Over the long run, such cheating poses a potentially existential threat to the game. No player wants to face off against artificial intelligence they can’t possibly beat, and few humans want to watch computers go head-to-head.
Unfortunately, it’s very hard to stop entirely, because all a cheater needs is the name of a piece and a chess square, which an accomplice could transmit any number of ways, from a spectator’s body language to a vibrating transmitter tucked into a shoe.
That leaves three options. Either authorities make cheating harder, they catch cheaters more reliably — or players take matters into their own hands.
One can imagine measures that would make cheating effectively impossible. Think players sitting down alone in a windowless Faraday cage, wearing nothing but hospital gowns after their thorough strip search. But this would be impractically expensive and hardly appealing.
Short of that, styles of chess where it’s harder to cheat — such as ultrafast blitz games that leave little time to feed moves into a computer — might become more dominant. Alternatively, authorities could put more effort into catching cheaters. The problem is that without clear procedures for conducting those kinds of investigations, authorities will end up mired in accusations of favoritism, discrimination and so on; but if you do specify the rules, cheaters will figure out how to evade them. For example, cheaters can use computers for only a handful of critical moves, to avoid creating an undeniable pattern.
Thus, there will probably always be ambiguous cases such as Niemann’s. The man is by all accounts a genuinely very good player — he’s done pretty well in blitz, for example — but some of his wins are statistically odd. It’s hard for authorities to do anything in such instances without a smoking gun to point to. Yet if they let such cases pass, they might find players increasingly resorting to the rougher justice of social sanction: Carlsen’s statement ended, “I am not willing to play chess with Niemann.” Chess.com banned Niemann from its site shortly after he beat Carlsen.
All systems of justice face a trade-off between accidentally punishing the innocent and inadvertently overlooking the guilty. In modern society, formal structures tend to err on the side of letting the guilty walk. The court of public opinion, on the other hand, is willing to convict on much looser evidence — like the sense that a match just doesn’t feel right, even if they can’t prove that something was wrong.
That doesn’t mean it’s a better setup; such verdicts too often hinge on the winsomeness of the defendant or the popularity of the accuser, rather than the plain facts of the case. Nonetheless, expect more such vigilante actions in the future if chess authorities can’t credibly guarantee honest matches. Those kinds of intuitive judgments and informal social norms might have their drawbacks compared with clearer, more calculated moves of a formal system — but they are the one thing we’re still better at than computers. | 2022-09-28T11:18:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The chess cheating scandal might need a vigilante, too - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/chess-cheating-scandal-niemann-carlsen/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/chess-cheating-scandal-niemann-carlsen/ |
This obscure election will decide the fate of the open internet
By Michael Morell
Members of the Russian Federation delegation attend the opening session of the ITU Plenipotentiary Conference at the Parliament Palace, in Bucharest, Romania, on Monday. (Robert Ghement/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Michael Morell was deputy director of the CIA from 2010 to 2013 and twice its acting director during that period. He is co-chair of the American Edge Project’s National Security Advisory Board.
The United States is engaged in a high stakes battle with Russia and China for global technological dominance. The winner will determine whether the future of the internet will be free and open or characterized by censorship and government control.
A little-known election will be held Thursday for the top post at the International Telecommunication Union — the U.N. agency that facilitates international connectivity in communications networks and is responsible for setting standards for emerging technology.
The candidates represent two very different visions for the future of our global internet. The election pits Doreen Bogdan-Martin, a veteran U.S. diplomat with a track record of expanding internet access, against Rashid Ismailov, a Putin-backed former Russian deputy minister of telecommunications and mass communications and former Huawei Technologies executive. Should Ismailov win, he would serve as a conduit for the government of Russia’s internet policy goals, which historically have included censoring dissent.
The internet has remained largely open and free because of deliberate policy choices by the United States, our allies and multilateral standard-setting bodies that value free speech.
Our adversaries are eager to dismantle this model. Just last year, Russia and China signed a joint statement committing to preserve “the sovereign right of States to regulate the national segment of the internet”— in other words, the right of states to censor political dissidents. Last year, at least 48 countries pursued new restrictions on content, data and technology, in many cases attempting to subdue free expression and gain greater access to private data.
This is the vision Russia and China are trying to bring to the internet. One of China’s Huawei-supported proposals for the International Telecommunication Union would fundamentally redesign internet protocol (IP) addresses into a less secure, state-controlled model. Since its invasion of Ukraine last year, Russia has significantly tightened its digital information space by blocking more than 2,384 websites and passing a law punishing citizens who spread “false information.”
As we look to the future, the United States must partner with our allies to set standards for emerging tech such as 5G, artificial intelligence, data surveillance and patent reform. And our leaders must ensure that Russia and China play by the same rules.
Today, the U.S. tech sector leads the way in exporting technology abroad that embodies a commitment to a free and open internet. If we cede this leadership and hand the keys to the internet to Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, we risk jeopardizing our economic and national security as well as freedom across the globe. | 2022-09-28T11:18:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A free and open internet could hinge on this obscure election - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/un-international-telecommunication-union-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/un-international-telecommunication-union-election/ |
What the U.S. must do to help the next wave of Iran protesters
A young Iranian walks next to a wall adorned with Iran's national flag in Tehran on Sept. 27. (Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Iranians’ protests over the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini — detained for improperly wearing her headscarf — have barreled into their second week. Women and now an increasing number of men are bravely defying a political order that has denied them their basic rights since its inception.
It’s a pivotal moment for Iran. It also ought to be one for the United States — an inflection point in how the country deals with a regime that consistently flouts international norms.
The rejection of the Islamic republic’s rule is not a new phenomenon, but the fearlessness of protesters and their willingness to call for the downfall of the political establishment and its leaders signals a new era of dissent that will not fade.
Yet as unflinching as these protesters are, it’s very likely that this particular uprising will be put down, given the regime’s record. President Ebrahim Raisi, who was implicated in the execution of thousands of dissidents, is responding just as you would expect: Deny the unrest, block its dissemination, arrest and kill demonstrators, blame foreign powers. Raisi all but ignored the protests during his time at the U.N. General Assembly last week in New York.
In attempting to obscure the turmoil back home, though, Raisi inadvertently dealt a death blow to whatever credibility the putrid system he fronts still held in the eyes of the world. Perhaps the most clarifying moment of his visit to New York was his refusal to appear for a scheduled interview with journalist Christiane Amanpour because she refused to wear hijab; comparing that stunt with the current protests over head coverings in Iran should disabuse anyone who still thinks the Islamic republic and its values are compatible with life in the modern world.
But with the very real possibility that this wave of resistance will be put down, the United States needs to be ready to help the next one — and the one after that.
First, it’s time to reimagine the role of special presidential envoy for Iranian affairs. This is a high-level position that President Donald Trump created and that President Biden chose to maintain, but it has never been well utilized. The Trump administration used it to punish Iran and attempt to sow discord. Biden aimed it almost exclusively at reinvigorating the nuclear deal.
Both missed the point. The envoy should be the nerve center for all issues related to Iran — engaging with national security, yes, but also with the Iranian diaspora community, a powerful constituency and source of the kind of granular human intelligence that is lacking after 43 years without U.S.-Iran diplomatic ties.
Next, Biden should continue easing sanctions against Iran on communications tools. Last week, the Treasury Department allowed technology firms to start selling to Iranians many long-restricted services and software in the name of helping people there resist “repressive internet censorship and surveillance tools deployed by the Iranian regime.” Right now, Iran’s government is routinely throttling connection speeds, filtering social media sites and messaging apps, and cutting off connectivity entirely at certain times of day.
This easing of sanctions will help with that, and more should be in order; these communications sanctions are part of a myopic approach that filters all Iran issues through the lens of countering nuclear development and other potential military threats through economic sanctions. Invariably, though, ordinary people and civil society end up suffering many of the severest impacts.
Finally, allowing for a flow of dissidents to resettle in the United States and streamlining the process for them to continue their work would be an easy and effective way to dramatically increase our understanding of the issues facing in-country Iranians. Few made it here following prolonged protests in 2017 and 2019 because Trump’s travel ban barred entry to all Iranians. For years before that, though, Iranians fled persecution in their homeland, usually with the goal of landing in this country.
Most leading Iran voices in the U.S. government and analyst world, however, haven’t been to the country in years — or ever. There is a fountain of knowledge from people with on-the-ground experience that will go untapped if new arrivals are too busy battling the bureaucracy and backlog standing between them and a simple work authorization. And that pool of knowledgeable dissidents will only grow: Following antigovernment protests in 2009, many exiled residents sought refuge in the United States, and that is likely happen again in the weeks and months ahead.
And once dissidents settle here, the government and policy institutions should convene them to help establish a course for the future of our Iran policy. This is one national security discussion that would benefit tremendously from honest public discourse. Besides, there is no longer any need to be covert about an attempt to destabilize Iran. Just look at the country now: It’s already happening. | 2022-09-28T11:19:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | To help the next Iran protests, the U.S. should change these policies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/us-iran-policy-next-wave-protests/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/us-iran-policy-next-wave-protests/ |
A 14-year-old’s behavior makes a parent feel like giving up
Q: My 14-year-old son has begun to set a precedent of lying, drug use and abusive speech toward teachers (primarily female, in my observation). I’m horrified. He just started high school last week. He failed most of his eighth-grade classes because he did almost no work. Last year was abysmal, and I can see this year may not be better. I’ve found evidence that he’s sexually active, though he insists he is not. I have forbidden him and his partner from spending anymore time in his room with his door shut, not just because of his age but because the partner is not even allowed to date. I’ve explained this to my son, the amount of trouble they could end up in and that I’m not into keeping this secret from their guardian (grandparent). Now he spends almost all of his time away from home, which I’d honestly be okay with if I knew he was doing his schoolwork, etc. I enjoy not being a target of his teenage hormones and bad behavior! It’s so nice!
My question is, how can I deal with him nicely and neutrally, while still enforcing boundaries and rules? His behavior has kind of made me start to really dislike him as a person. At this point, I’m assuming he’s always lying to us and up to something devious. And when I’ve given him the benefit of the doubt, I’ve always felt stupid afterward, as most often, he was lying. I’ve talked to him about this and tried to open discussions on all of these topics, but nothing changes. He refuses to see a therapist, even after he’s asked twice for one and I’ve found them. (I think he was just trying to get medication and be done with it, which didn’t happen.) I love him so much, but I don’t like him right now, and I need to save my sanity and hopefully get us all out of this unscathed! He’s my youngest out of three, but the others are much older than him, and I guess I forgot how hard the teen years are (plus I’m so much older now, too). I’ve always been a free-range type parent and honestly wouldn’t focus so much on the bad stuff (except the woman/teacher/me treatment) if he kept up with his responsibilities!
A: Thanks for writing in; you have quite a few challenges with your 14-year-old son. You’ve asked a very important question: “How can I deal with him nicely and neutrally, while still enforcing boundaries and rules?” And I’m going to be honest with you: You are past the place of dealing with him “neutrally.” The lying is not great, the drug use is also not ideal, but the abusive speech toward teachers? Your son is not coming home? We are much, much past the “how hard the teen years are,” and I’m concerned that you’d be okay with some of these behaviors if he “kept up with his responsibilities.”
Our culture is a bit confused when it comes to teens and their behavior. We seem to have a collective misunderstanding that our teens are supposed to lie, abuse alcohol and drugs, and become belligerent. We believe that our teens are meant to push us away and become defiant, disobedient and disrespectful, but this isn’t true. Are teens known to push boundaries, have trouble seeing around the corner and engage in some risky behaviors? Yes, but parents don’t have to accept this fatalistic view of teens, and when we do, we don’t give teens enough credit, while also letting ourselves off the parenting hook. For more of this viewpoint, pick up “Brainstorm” by Dan Siegel.
I don’t know why your son is angry (angry enough to threaten women), but he is headed down a very dangerous path. At 14, it’s not too late to make some big changes. I reached out to John Duffy, a psychologist and author of “Parenting the New Teen in the Age of Anxiety.” He specializes in teens, and while some of your son’s behaviors are concerning, there are other behaviors that require immediate attention. “The abusive speech, the drug use, the sexual activity. These are a matter of health and safety, and managing them needs to be nonnegotiable,” Duffy says. This means that even if he cleans his room and throws out the trash, “they won’t get better on their own and are likely to deteriorate quickly.”
It can be difficult to want to help your son when he is so tough to be around, so Duffy recommends thinking of these behaviors “as symptoms of some underlying emotional discomfort your son is suffering, and either not fully aware of, or not sharing with you. With some renewed empathy, you’ll find the energy to act on his behalf.”
Because of your son’s treatment of women, drug use and rampant lying, immediate crisis intervention is needed. Duffy says to get your son to a therapist “to assess the level of care (outpatient therapy, inpatient work, intensive outpatient therapy or day treatment) he needs. So, you need to consider what leverage you have with your son, and be prepared to use it. This may be revoking privileges like curfew or access to WiFi, or your goodwill with him. I know it’s been difficult to get him to see a therapist in the past, and this is tricky for teenagers, especially for boys, many of whom continue to carry the idea that therapy suggests some weakness. So ask him to agree to a limited number of sessions. I usually suggest three. In three hours, a good therapist with experience working with children in his age group should be able to gain buy-in. Talk to the therapist beforehand. Ensure they have experience with your son’s issues, and his resistance to treatment. Then, your job is just to get him in the room.”
I would look at it like this: He is headed down a path of possible violence, jail time or death, and so make it a priority to get him to a (preferably male) therapist who can see him as a young man in pain.
You also should get family counseling. Whatever has led your son to this level of anger needs to be addressed within the entire family, and the support he needs will also need everyone’s cooperation, compassion and attention.
Please do not wait to help your son. He is only 14, and he has the potential to live a happier and more stable life. Get the support you need, stat. Good luck. | 2022-09-28T11:19:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A 14-year-old’s behavior makes a parent feel like giving up - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/09/28/troubled-teen-son-advice/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/09/28/troubled-teen-son-advice/ |
Italy’s new leader faces familiar problems, including fickle voters
Giorgia Meloni’s popularity may not hold — and she doesn’t have much freedom to change policy
Analysis by Mark Gilbert
Giorgia Meloni, leader of the right-wing Brothers of Italy, holds a sign at the party’s election night headquarters in Rome on Monday. (Guglielmo Mangiapane/Reuters)
Few Italians were surprised at who won Italy’s general election on Sunday. The right-wing coalition led by the Brothers of Italy (FdI), a political party descended from neo-fascists, took 44 percent of the vote and will almost certainly be asked to form a government by President Sergio Mattarella, once the new Parliament meets on Oct. 13. After an elaborate series of consultations, Prime Minister Mario Draghi will hand over power to the FdI’s leader, Giorgia Meloni, and her team. That should happen sometime around Oct. 27.
Meloni will be Italy’s first female prime minister. By coincidence, she will probably take office on the centenary of the March on Rome, the coup that brought Benito Mussolini to power in October 1922. So what does it mean that an ex-fascist woman will be in charge of one of Europe’s biggest countries?
Meloni argues that she isn’t a fascist anymore
Meloni argues that her party has turned away from fascism, as she has. However, many Europeans fear that the right’s victory will lead to the “Orbanization” of Italy and its transformation into an illiberal democracy, much like Hungary’s recent path.
Their fears may be exaggerated. Meloni’s popularity may not hold — and she doesn’t have much freedom to change policy.
Over the past two decades, the Italian electorate has been fickle. Parties surge to win 30 to 40 percent of the vote, then fail in government and slump in the next election. Only a couple years ago, people feared that Matteo Salvini, the populist leader of the anti-immigrant Lega party, would transform Italian politics. In Sunday’s voting, the Lega got under 9 percent, half of what it achieved in 2018 and a quarter of its vote in the 2019 European elections.
Meloni now has to govern, not just complain from the opposition bench. She has relatively little experience of government (she was a junior minister in the 2008-2011 Berlusconi administration), and her party has few people of ministerial caliber.
Meloni’s coalition partners, the Lega and Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, can provide experienced ministers, but both parties remain discredited by their previous failures. Meloni will probably fall back on suitably conservative technocrats to fill cabinet positions.
Italy is stagnating
Meloni faces the same problem as her predecessors: Italy’s 30-year stagnation. Public debt is above 150 percent of GDP. Italy is an aging society with big pensions bills. It has many people living at or near the poverty line. Tax rates penalize the middle class, but health-care provision, schools and universities are of mixed quality. In foreign affairs, relations with the European Union are tense — Salvini and Berlusconi are regarded as being too close to Russia. These are difficult policy challenges for any government.
Meloni will have a harder time addressing these hurdles than her predecessor, Mario Draghi, who was trusted by the E.U. But if she fails to deliver quickly, her party’s popularity may evaporate. One of the few hard promises that the right-wing coalition made was to abolish the “Citizenship Wage,” a welfare payment guaranteeing a financial safety net for the unemployed. The wage has been susceptible to fraud, and many Italians believe it leaves young people with less incentive to look for work. It is, however, popular in Italy’s economically deprived south. The Five Star Movement (M5S), which introduced the wage, outpolled the right in Naples and some other parts of southern Italy.
Meloni won’t find it easy to pass policy
Italian voters are transactional, like everybody else. They want to know what the government is going to do for them. But a Meloni government will have little political or economic room to maneuver.
Britain is undergoing its own crisis for just the opposite reason. There was little to prevent Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss from proposing radical tax changes, which quickly led to a big drop in the value of the U.K. pound. Meloni, in contrast, has to confront multiple checks and balances that make it harder for her government to do what it likes, similar to the constraints on U.S. presidential power.
Meloni can’t even appoint her own cabinet. Italy’s president has that role. The current president can and will turn unsuitable ministers down. And Meloni will also have to deal with her coalition partners, who are likely to be fractious. Salvini will be unhappy about the collapse in his party’s support, for instance.
Passing laws in Italy is no small feat — Meloni will have to push legislation through two equal chambers of Parliament, using procedures that offer endless opportunities for obstruction. Meloni’s coalition will have a 35-seat majority in the lower house of Italy’s Parliament and an even smaller one in the Senate.
Meloni would like to amend Italy’s constitution to introduce a directly elected president, but any such move would require a referendum, or a two-thirds majority in both chambers of Parliament. The constitution is popular with voters, and its core values are a legacy of the resistance to fascism. Italy’s E.U. membership and E.U. laws will also constrain the legislative independence of a Meloni government, but leaving the E.U. would be a disaster for Italy and is not in the cards.
Meloni can still frustrate change
Meloni’s victory will not be a new March on Rome. But LGBTQ+ rights and other social issues are not going to rank among Meloni’s priorities. In June, Meloni brought a rally of Vox, the Spanish neofascist party, to its feet with an impassioned speech in which she called for protecting the traditional family from liberals and stopping migration from Africa.
It will be hard for her to act on her beliefs — but Meloni will be able to block her opponents from making progress on theirs. It’s possible that she may move further away from her party’s fascist roots, by turning the Brothers of Italy into a conservative party like Bavaria’s Christian Social Union, the CSU. If she doesn’t, her administration may lose its way in never-ending fights over social issues and immigration and keep international commentators speculating that she is still a fascist.
Mark Gilbert is C. Grove Haines Professor of History at SAIS Europe, the Bologna campus of Johns Hopkins University. | 2022-09-28T11:19:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Giorgia Meloni's election win means for Italy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/italy-meloni-fdi-election-rightwing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/italy-meloni-fdi-election-rightwing/ |
Puerto Rico’s electricity problems go beyond Maria and Fiona
Puerto Ricans face higher electricity bills — but see few improvements that make the power grid more resilient to storms
Analysis by Fernando Tormos-Aponte
Mary Angelica Painter
Sameer H. Shah
The damage after Hurricane Fiona in Salinas, Puerto Rico. (Gabriella N. Baez/Bloomberg News)
Nearly five years after Hurricane Maria slammed Puerto Rico, Hurricane Fiona has brought archipelago-wide flooding and “catastrophic damage.” About 80 percent of the archipelago’s electricity customers were without power last week — raising fears of another extended blackout period. In some regions, flooding was worse than the levels during Maria.
Human-induced climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events. Puerto Rico is particularly vulnerable because of its inability to finance disaster preparedness and climate change adaptation projects. The U.S. government wields political and economic control over Puerto Rico — effectively a form of colonialism, many scholars argue, that helped lay the conditions for Puerto Rico’s $70 billion debt crisis.
U.S. and Puerto Rico government officials relied on neoliberal policy tools to address the debt crisis. But fiscal austerity, divestment of critical public infrastructure and privatization of essential public services have left Puerto Ricans increasingly vulnerable to disasters.
Hurricane Maria caused immense damage to infrastructure, livelihoods and life in Puerto Rico. Gross neglect and discriminatory restrictions on disaster aid spending under the Trump administration exacerbated the losses, damage and trauma. The U.S. government explicitly earmarked $65.7 billion in aid for the 2017 disasters in Puerto Rico but has paid out just $19.3 billion to date. That figure only covers 14 percent of the estimated damage from Maria. Five years on, many of the “fixes” involve temporary, haphazard construction.
Puerto Rico remains ill-prepared
Our research finds that in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, at-risk populations saw their power restored later than less-vulnerable communities. Additionally, supporters of the ruling party — the Partido Nuevo Progresista, or PNP — had their power restored quicker. We find that this preferential treatment helped the PNP sustain electoral support.
Inequalities during the Hurricane Maria recovery, coupled with the inadequate federal government response, left Puerto Ricans ill-prepared for disasters like Hurricane Fiona. While many stopped relying on government aid and instead developed mutual aid projects, local civil society leaders refuse to let elected officials off the hook. However, Puerto Ricans’ efforts to hold their leaders accountable for greater investments in infrastructure and disaster preparedness have yet to bring about transformative changes in political leadership. Federal and territory-wide elected officials continue to follow austerity policies and privatize public services, despite the need for greater investment.
Puerto Ricans voted to become the 51st U.S. state — again
Privatization hasn’t helped
Luma, the company that took over Puerto Rico’s now-privatized energy transmission and distribution services last year, has come under criticism for failing to provide adequate and affordable electricity service. Our interviews in recent months with mayors and emergency management operators found few signs that Luma was communicating effectively with local officials. In fact, local emergency managers shared their concerns that another extreme weather event would have a serious impact, as they believed Luma regional supervisors would be unable to coordinate effectively with municipal emergency management. This week, mayors confirmed the lack of communication with Luma and started hiring their own power restoration crews. Luma then filed a police report against the mayor of the municipality of Isabela. A former attorney general referred to Luma’s report as potentially frivolous.
Press reports detail ongoing complaints about the company’s transparency and accountability. Other reports claim that Luma has made few substantial improvements to the electricity grid. When pushed for answers, Luma officials say that they are all Puerto Ricans and that they are in this together. These appeals to Puerto Rican national identity and a shared discontent with the energy grid have not been well received. In July, Puerto Ricans protested the high rates and electricity disruptions, demanding that the government cancel the Luma contract. The current outages are again prompting protests.
Various reports find that power outages lasted longer under Luma. Indeed, Luma’s 2021 metrics suggest the utility was taking twice as long to resolve an outage than when the grid was under the direction of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA). After Luma failed to comply with orders to provide data on outages and salaries of employees, a Puerto Rican judge last November issued an order for the arrest of the Luma president and chief executive.
Critics say Luma, along with the local and federal government, failed to invest in grid improvements, leaving service unpredictable. Lower-income and vulnerable communities are especially at risk in terms of being able to afford steep electricity rates. Puerto Ricans pay twice the U.S. national average for electricity, and electricity bills keep increasing, despite inconsistent service. Energy poverty forces many Puerto Ricans to decide on whether to pay for energy or food, because they cannot meet both needs.
This disaster is a political one
Politicians and politics are embedded in the creation, preparation and responses to natural hazards — this was true for Hurricane Maria and is for Fiona. On the campaign trail, Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi was critical of the unpopular contract with the private energy company Luma. Once in office, Pierluisi shifted his tone, becoming an advocate for the company. Media reports note Pierluisi has a history of ties with energy companies with poor environmental records, but also has ties to privatization advocates, including the fiscal control board tasked with the implementation of austerity policies and debt restructuring deals.
As public pressure mounted to cancel the Luma contract and protests became more frequent, Pierluisi announced that Luma was under probation — but the probation terms remain unclear. Luma and Pierluisi are also under public scrutiny following allegations that Luma hired PNP supporters to positions of power within the company.
The revolving doors and the use of government resources to rally support for political parties are not new. Local officials participated in corruption schemes with the previous public utility, PREPA. And local officials awarded controversial contracts to newly formed firms to support the post-Maria recovery, and again to privatize energy distribution and transmission. We also found evidence that the recovery after Hurricane Maria was unequal and gave preferential treatment to supporters of the ruling PNP.
After privatization of the electricity utility, bureaucratic barriers stalled recovery and prevented many necessary infrastructure improvements. Relatedly, communities denounced the territorial government’s complicity in the deforestation of Puerto Rico and approval of controversial coastal construction projects, which left the archipelago more vulnerable to flooding.
Of course, everyone hopes that power can be restored as soon as possible in Puerto Rico. But our research suggests that disaster recovery relies on policy decisions, as well as technical fixes. The devastation wrought by Fiona precipitated from the post-Maria crisis and reflects the shortcomings of the disaster management policies of the U.S. government, Puerto Rican authorities and electricity providers.
Fernando Tormos-Aponte (@fernandotormos) is an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh and a Union of Concerned Scientists Fellow.
Mary Angelica Painter (@MaryAPainter) is a postdoctoral research associate for the Natural Hazards Center at the University of Colorado Boulder and a co-director for the Confluence chapter of the Scholars Strategy Network.
Sameer H. Shah (@SameerHShah) is a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Pittsburgh and an incoming assistant professor in the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington. | 2022-09-28T11:19:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Puerto Rico's disaster recovery is hampered by politics. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/puerto-ricos-electricity-problems-go-beyond-mara-fiona/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/puerto-ricos-electricity-problems-go-beyond-mara-fiona/ |
Washington Wizards rookie Johnny Davis is hoping to improve on a subpar Summer League performance. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
While neither new challenge will be easy for Davis, being surrounded by experienced veterans and fathers will make the transition a bit smoother for the 20-year-old. Bradley Beal, who recently had his third child with his wife, Kamiah Adams, understands the dual-responsibility well.
“His life will be a whirlwind, for sure. That’s a part of talks we have because I’m a dad, so I understand what that’s like,” Beal said at media day Friday. “He’s a younger dad than I was, so it’ll be a lot for him to balance. Being a rookie, handling that responsibility as a father and making sure that he’s always available and getting that time too.”
A post shared by Johnny Davis (@johnnydavis)
On the court, Davis continues to grow more comfortable with the NBA game as the Wizards head to Japan for two preseason matchups against the Golden State Warriors. Exiting Summer League in July, the No. 10 overall pick was admittedly unsatisfied with his performance, averaging 8.3 points, 4 rebounds and 1.7 assists in Las Vegas, shooting only 27.6 percent from the field and 33.3 percent from deep before being shut down after three games due to back tightness.
Learning from his experience in Vegas, Davis headed to Los Angeles for open runs with his Wizards teammates. There, his confidence and comfort grew as he applied the lessons he learned, impressing teammates with the talent that made him a lottery pick.
“I wasn’t very satisfied with the way I played in Summer League, so going into L.A., I didn’t put any pressure on myself,” Davis said. As he grew more comfortable, his teammates quickly took note of the rookie’s quick strides and potential.
“I was just happy to see Johnny kind of loosen up a little bit in L.A.,” said second-year forward Corey Kispert. “He looked like he was playing like the kid we saw in Wisconsin. He’s coming into his own.” | 2022-09-28T11:56:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wizards rookie Johnny Davis learning about NBA, fatherhood - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/28/johnny-davis-wizards-new-father/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/28/johnny-davis-wizards-new-father/ |
10 easy (or free!) ways to boost your home value
Whether you’re protecting your investment or looking to sell, here’s what the experts recommend
Some quick upgrades and relatively easy maintenance tasks can make a big difference when it comes to adding value to your home before selling, or protecting the investment you’ve already made. (Elise Vandeplancke For The Washington Post)
Some elements of home value are beyond your control. You can’t pick up your house and move it to a different location, for example. But even if you don’t have a massive budget or a lot of time, you’re not powerless. We asked home appraisers and real estate agents for the quick upgrades and relatively easy maintenance tasks that make the biggest difference when it comes to adding value before selling, or protecting the investment you’ve made in your home.
Many of their recommendations won’t exactly get your blood pumping: “[It’s] definitely more of a checklist of decidedly non-sexy items that folks need to take care of,” says Dana Scanlon, an agent with Keller Williams in Bethesda. On the bright side, some of their suggestions won’t cost you a dime.
Appraisers use six levels to describe the condition of a home, explains Jonathan Montgomery, president of the Real Estate Appraisal Group in D.C. The first level (known as C1) is reserved for houses that are brand new and haven’t been lived in, and the sixth level (C6) signals that a house is basically uninhabitable. Those are set in stone, but it’s in between those two ends of the spectrum that people can level up or down, sometimes based on very simple things like how messy their house is. “If your house is cluttered,” Montgomery says, “then the buyer is going to have the perception that there may be repairs or something that they need to do to improve that home once they buy it.” Clutter also typically makes a space look smaller than it is.
Replace bad gutters
“When you’re buying a home, a single-family home in particular, you need to recognize that moisture is your enemy,” Scanlon says. One of the main ways to fight this foe is by regularly cleaning out your gutters — Scanlon suggests doing it twice in the fall and twice in the spring. But if regular maintenance won’t cut it, and they’re leaky and damaged beyond repair, don’t wait to replace them. Nonfunctional gutters (meaning they don’t properly redirect water away from your house) can lead to much pricier problems, such as foundation and roof damage, and mold.
Maintain your HVAC system
Proper heating and cooling are essential to making your home livable, yet many homeowners don’t think about their HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) until something goes wrong. To avoid a breakdown, change your HVAC filters each season and have a technician out twice a year to give the system a checkup.
Such regular maintenance will hopefully prevent you from having to buy a brand-new system — an investment that appraisers say sellers will not recoup. While a buyer might feel reassured by a new HVAC system, explains Frank John, chief appraiser at D.C.’s Washington Appraisal, they won’t pay a premium for it the way they might for a newly renovated kitchen or bathroom.
9 home maintenance tasks for your October to-do list.
Change cabinet hardware
Even if you can’t afford a full renovation, one simple upgrade that agents say often goes a long way in kitchens and bathrooms is replacing old cabinet hardware with more stylish knobs and drawer pulls. If you can spend a bit more time and money, swap out dingy faucets and shower heads, and outdated towel bars and hooks, too. This will “signal to a buyer that, oh, it’s modern, it’s updated, it’s on trend,” says Amanda Pendleton, a home trends expert for Zillow. It’s that feeling, she says, that can lead to a higher home value.
Upgrade to LED lighting
Replacing incandescent recessed lights with LED versions, which are significantly more efficient, will save you electricity, and also the hassle of frequent bulb changes. Highlighting eco-friendly upgrades like this when you market your home for sale can make a difference, says Craig McCullough, an agent with Compass in D.C. “Also,” he says, “it makes [the home] look more modern, more fresh.”
Get rid of carpet
If you have carpet that’s worn out or not neutral — especially in places other than bedrooms — experts say you really ought to get rid of it if you’re hoping to sell. Some lucky homeowners tear out old carpeting only to discover hardwoods underneath. But if you’re not in that camp, McCullough suggests laminate or vinyl plank flooring as wallet-friendly options. For an ambitious DIY-er, those products are relatively easy to install, because they can be cut with a utility knife and don’t require power tools.
How to find a reliable floor refinisher.
Create usable outdoor space
The pandemic heightened people’s desire for outdoor space, but it wasn’t necessarily about acreage. “What we learned was that they didn’t want more outdoor space — they just wanted a functional outdoor space,” says Zillow’s Pendleton. “They wanted to be able to dine outside. They wanted to be able to lounge and relax outside.” Creating outdoor space can be very costly if you decide to, say, build a deck, but it doesn’t have to be. You could, for example, build a firepit, says Montgomery, the home appraiser, or add outdoor lighting as a way to “give people an idea of a space they could enjoy.”
Freshen up landscaping
Think of this as decluttering, but for the outdoors: trim overgrown hedges, clean up flower beds, collect loose branches, spread fresh mulch, paint your front door. “Those are going to be relatively inexpensive enhancements that will really improve the look and feel of your home,” says John, of Washington Appraisal. Still, he cautions that they’re harder to quantify. They might attract more buyers and potentially drive up bids, but “an appraiser is not going to say, ‘okay, because of the door, we’re going to add thousands of dollars to the house.’ ”
Let us know your questions about caring for a home.
Don’t stink it up
If a home smells like smoke or pets, “that is a big deterrent in price,” says Emily Lowe, of RE/MAX in Nashville. The cheapest, easiest option, of course, is to ban smoking in your home, and be proactive about cleaning up after your animals (including staying on top of changing the litter box). If it’s too late for prevention, you can do an ozone treatment, which deploys a high concentration of ozone gas to get rid of smells that have already seeped into walls and floors.
Paint!
Painting is “the number one thing you can do to make the biggest impact the quickest,” Lowe says. It’ll make you feel instantly better about living in your space, or if you’re planning to list, it’ll signal to buyers that your home has been well cared for. If selling is your goal, going neutral is key. “What you want to shoot for is that everybody could see themselves moving in,” Montgomery says. | 2022-09-28T12:14:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 10 ways to add value to your home (some of which are free!) - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/09/28/how-to-increase-home-value/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/09/28/how-to-increase-home-value/ |
Residents take pride in Huntington Terrace’s community spirit
The Bethesda, Md., neighborhood’s convenient location and schools are a draw for buyers
Roxanne and Dave Filbeck stand on their front lawn, chatting with their neighbors in Huntington Terrace, a Bethesda, Md., neighborhood. From left, with their backs to the camera, are residents Evan Root, 15, and her mother, Linda Epstein. On the far right is Elizabeth Sherwin, an American University student who grew up in Huntington Terrace. (Maansi Srivastava for The Washington Post)
Five years ago, when John and Maggie Bree set their sights on living in Huntington Terrace, a Bethesda, Md., neighborhood, they never dreamed they would be able to afford to buy in the sought-after area where the lowest-priced house at that time was around $800,000.
Maggie, 36, grew up in Huntington Terrace. She had her heart set on living near her family, who were still there, and helping the community thrive, just as she and her parents had done. When a house came up for sale in 2017, she and John, 37, were outbid. But Maggie refused to give up and wrote a letter to the sellers.
“I shared my experiences growing up here and how much it meant to my husband and I to raise our family in Huntington Terrace,” she said. She also mentioned how Bethesda, like many places around the D.C. area, has seen older homes razed without regard for the charm or the culture of the community. So the Brees pledged not to tear the Cape Cod down and to keep its facade.
Despite offering less money, the couple got the house.
“They wrote us a beautiful letter about how much the house and the neighborhood meant to them, just like my letter to them,” Maggie said.
Obtaining the house fulfilled what Maggie called “a major mission” to maintain the elements that “created a sense of community for me, like keeping an eye on overdevelopment and keeping up our historical properties.” As co-president of the Huntington Terrace Citizens’ Association, she and John, who serves as secretary, have been doing just that since they joined the association in 2018.
Huntington Terrace has neighbors with a mix of ages and varied occupations, Maggie said. “On one corner could be a NASA scientist and on another, a world-renowned author.”
“It comes across mostly as a village,” said Howard Sokolove, who’s been living in Huntington Terrace with his wife for 40 years. “Part of that comes from having an elementary school in the neighborhood, which is a big draw for families.”
Sokolove, 80, is a neighborhood historian. He said the community’s land was part of two large tobacco plantations stretching back to the early 1700s. The area was platted in 1910. According to Sokolove, the west side was developed in the 1920s, with two homes from that era still in existence.
The rest of the area was built in the 1930s. Sokolove said that, like most of the bedroom communities of Washington, at the time, Huntington Terrace probably had racial covenants preventing African Americans and other historically excluded populations from living there.
Sokolove, who worked in industrial design before retiring, points out that Suburban Hospital, where his wife worked for 38 years, is the biggest property owner in the community. He said they’re “good neighbors,” but expansion efforts about 14 years ago threatened to remove 23 houses in Huntington Terrace. After many court battles, the sides settled, and Sokolove and other activists saved 13 houses from destruction.
Now, about 300 homes make up the neighborhood of freshly mowed lawns, neat landscaping and a preponderance of mature trees that gives the area plenty of shade and beautiful greenery.
“There are a lot of kids, dogs and parents on the streets,” said Mark De Ravin, treasurer of the local association. De Ravin likes the neighborhood so much that his family has lived in three different houses on the same street for the past 22 years.
Ron Ziegel, a real estate agent at Long & Foster in Bethesda, said buyers have long been attracted to Huntington Terrace’s convenient location to the National Institutes of Health, downtown Bethesda and the Medical Center Metro stop. Its schools, including Bradley Hills Elementary, located in the heart of the neighborhood, are also a draw.
Association dues are $20 annually and are voluntary. John and Maggie Bree said the money collected goes toward at least three events, including a Memorial Day party and Fourth of July get-together, along with various block parties and maintaining the community’s Triangle Garden.
The Brees are particularly proud of the garden, which features plants native to Maryland. The neighborhood helps cultivate the space on the corner of Roosevelt and Garfield streets with black-eyed Susans, blue wood asters and other flowers that grow naturally in the state. Garden tours from nearby Bradley Hills Village often stop by to admire the greenery, according to John.
John said Halloween is one of the highlights of the neighborhood. Before moving to Huntington Terrace, he said he had seen some terrific Halloween displays and events. “But I was wrong,” he said. “The people who live on Lincoln Street [in Huntington Terrace] go all out.”
One family builds a wooden maze draped in black cloth, with black lights and smoke machines. Family members jump out and scare visitors as they walk through it, he said. Another house has a skeleton-themed safari boat in the front yard.
“It’s just crazy,” John said. “Kids come from all over to see the street.”
He said a lot of younger families have moved into the neighborhood over the past few years, and they’ve built up Halloween and community spirit. “They’re bringing new ideas to elevate the neighborhood and make everyone feel like they’re part of it,” John said.
During the peak of the pandemic, the board members scaled back community events, Maggie said. But they still managed to organize get-togethers, such as Front Porch Fridays, where neighbors gathered for wine, cheese and music.
Maggie said they’ve been slow to ramp activities back up, but they’re planning a fall block party that should kick-start events.
The couple enjoy working on the board and hope to continue in the future.
“We work on it because we want people to respect how much the neighborhood is loved,” Maggie said. “Because we get worried that, as time goes by, that sentiment might go away.”
Living there: Huntington Terrace is a close-knit, walkable community that’s only about a five-minute drive to downtown Bethesda and borders the grounds of Suburban Hospital on Old Georgetown Road.
As the Brees experienced, the neighborhood has become more difficult to buy into. After purchasing their house for $585,000 in 2017, they put more than $100,000 into renovating the three-bedroom, three-bathroom Cape Cod with a finished basement. In the past year, the lowest-priced house sold was $825,000 for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom, according to Ziegel.
The highest-priced home sold was a five-bedroom, five-bathroom renovated house for almost $2 million. The median price the past year was $1.2 million. One home is on the market, an eight-bedroom, seven-bathroom renovated house for $2 million, Ziegel said.
Schools: Bradley Hills Elementary, Pyle Middle and Walt Whitman High.
Transit: The Medical Center Metro station on the Red Line is about two miles away. Metro and Ride On buses serve the neighborhood along Old Georgetown Road. | 2022-09-28T12:18:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Neighborhood profile: Huntington Terrace in Bethesda, Md. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/28/where-we-live-huntington-terrace/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/28/where-we-live-huntington-terrace/ |
In Celeste Ng’s ‘Our Missing Hearts,’ a boy fights for freedom
Review by Diana Abu-Jaber
It’s tempting to imagine that evil is clear and tangible, that it can be easily smothered and the world made safe. Unfortunately, things are rarely so simple. Good and evil can be complicated, even intertwined. As Nietzsche warned, one must be careful when fighting monsters not to become one.
In the world of “Our Missing Hearts,” by “Little Fires Everywhere” author Celeste Ng, America, following some of today’s political inclinations to their most dire ends, has become rigid and paranoid, with those in power frantically attempting to suppress voices of dissent or free thought. But in this novel, as in life, a state of intense repression will lead inexorably to an explosion.
The novel opens several years after Bird Gardner’s mother, Margaret, abruptly walked out of her son’s life. Her departure has haunted Bird ever since. Now living a peaceful, if very cautious existence with his father, 12-year-old Bird receives a mysterious letter: a page covered with cat doodles. He wonders whether it’s from his mother and begins to revisit the questions that once haunted him. With this unexpected summons, Bird begins to realize he is no longer content to follow the careful instructions of his teachers and father: to keep quiet and avoid drawing attention to himself — especially to his face, which echoes that of his Chinese American mother.
The America of “Our Missing Hearts” is obsessively preoccupied with perceived threats from outsiders and “others” — from China in particular. Hypervigilant colleagues and neighbors report each other for supposedly subversive activities. Children are frequently taken from their family and placed with fosters as a form of “protection” and to ensure compliance and silence from terrified parents. Bird’s father, who stopped teaching to take a lower-profile position in a library, lives with the daily fear of losing his son. He will do anything to keep what’s left of his family intact.
Review: Celeste Ng's 'Little Fires Everywhere'
Up to this point, Bird has followed his father’s lead, both of them quietly complying with the authoritarian state, trying to stay under the radar, hoping that by passing as a white-ish child, Bird will be safe. But “Our Missing Hearts” makes clear such a strategy results in a double-betrayal — of one’s community as well as of oneself. Bird witnesses acts of casual, public violence against the vulnerable and elderly, anyone who isn’t able to hide, and he begins to understand the importance of speaking up for those who can’t speak for themselves — that silence is in fact complicity.
Working in the tradition of “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “1984,” “Our Missing Hearts” is at its core a parable about the wages of fear, how it can lead to bigotry, racism and institutionalized hatred. Painted with broad strokes, it’s also reminiscent of works like “The Old Man and the Sea” — with its elevated, mythic quality — and it can seem a little message-driven at times. But this is a function of its oracular style — the broad, slightly abstracted tone of a truth-teller — depicting the workings of control and domination throughout a culture and a nation.
Bird embarks on an epic adventure to hunt for Margaret. The writing tightens with suspense as new questions arise about who he’ll encounter and what he’ll learn about his missing mother. Bits of the mystery are answered through Margaret’s backstory, delivered in the second half of the book, which reveals that not all heroes are born heroic. The daughter of Chinese immigrants, she was instructed by her parents to play it safe through aphorisms like, “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.” Within Margaret’s section is an especially beautiful tribute to the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova whose work was censored and who serves as a source of inspiration to those who never expected to resist. “At dawn she touched a match to the paper and reduced her words to ash,” Margaret says of the poet. “Over the years her words repeated this cycle — resurrection in the darkness, death at first light — until eventually their lives were inscribed in flame.”
An intriguing and multifaceted character, Margaret writes poetry, which inadvertently becomes a touchstone for the resistance movement. The notion of the accidental warrior is one of the many generous and compassionate aspects of Ng’s story — the idea that there is something brave in everyone — if only it can be reached. In this novel, both mother and son are called upon to look within themselves and connect with their deepest reserves of strength.
Bird’s voyage is bold and inspiring as he discovers the possibilities of art. In so doing, he learns unpleasant truths about the nature of the world, but he also comes into his power. Unintentional or deliberate, being a freedom fighter isn’t easy, but Bird perseveres and grows in the process. Faced with the choice between quietude and resistance, he quickly learns that a life of submission is no life at all.
Diana Abu-Jaber is the author of “Birds of Paradise” and “Origin.” Her most recent book is the culinary memoir “Life Without a Recipe.” | 2022-09-28T12:31:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Celeste Ng novel Our Missing Hearts review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/28/celeste-ng-our-missing-hearts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/28/celeste-ng-our-missing-hearts/ |
Robert Crawford’s ‘Eliot After “The Waste Land”’ explores the celebrated poet’s messy, complicated personal life. Does it detract from his work?
T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” to quote the description in Robert Crawford’s mesmerizing new book, was — and is — a poem of “ruin, brokenness, pain and wastage,” but these same words could easily characterize its author’s disastrous marriage. In 1915 Eliot proposed to Vivien Haigh-Wood, partly out of desire for sexual experience, which he was too shy to seek in other ways. Following “the awful daring of a moment’s surrender/Which an age of prudence can never retract,” the young poet found himself shackled to a needy, fragile woman he grew to dislike, then pity and finally loathe. He would turn for love and sympathetic understanding elsewhere.
In “Eliot After ‘The Waste Land’” Crawford details, with remarkable scholarly evenhandedness, a life of almost soap-operatically “complex, contradictory messiness.” It follows “Young Eliot” (2015), which tracked the poet’s upper-middle-class childhood in St. Louis, education at Harvard and European travels as a philosophy student, and closes with the publication of “The Waste Land” in 1922.
T.S. Eliot may have been flawed, but a new book reminds of his greatness on the page
This second half of Crawford’s biography begins with a brief account of Eliot’s short-lived, unsatisfactory affair with the rich, notoriously promiscuous Nancy Cunard. Soon, though, this unhappy husband found his thoughts returning to the girl he had left behind in America, Emily Hale. In due course, Eliot and Hale embarked on an intense correspondence that would continue for more than 20 years. Any guise of mere friendship was soon abandoned: “I would literally give my eyesight to be able to marry you. … If I ever am free I shall ask you to marry me.” Much of Crawford’s narrative relies on this correspondence, which had been under seal until 2020.
Concurrent with epistolary dalliance, Eliot was discovering himself to be “a classicist in literature, royalist in politics, and Anglo-Catholic in religion.” He yearned for what he called, in his great essay on Dante, “a world of dignity, reason and order.” His eventual commitment to an exceptionally austere Anglicanism revolutionized Eliot’s later life but ruined Hale’s. The bonds of matrimony, he repeatedly told her, were sacrosanct. There could be no divorce. Nonetheless, the two would meet occasionally during the interwar years — both in America and in England — for what seem to have been afternoons of decorous yearning. Hale would long cherish the remembrance of their few kisses while Eliot memorialized, in “Burnt Norton,” their walks together and, prophetically, “the passage which we did not take/ Towards the door we never opened/ Into the rose-garden.”
Not even great poets can live off their poetry — “The Waste Land” sold only about 330 copies in its first six months — so Eliot, from the mid-1920s on, worked as a director of a new publishing firm called Faber & Faber. From its offices he would acquire manuscripts, oversee the staid cultural journal the New Criterion, and correspond with leading poets and conservative intellectuals. For the amusement of his godson, Tom Faber, he regularly sent the little boy Edward Learish nonsense verses, later repurposed for 1939’s “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” and, later still, the basis for Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical “Cats.”
Both Vivien and Eliot almost continually suffered from an array of illnesses. Hers included intestinal inflammation, shortness of breath, influenza, shingles, emotional and mental instability, and drastic weight loss — at one point she was down to 80 pounds — while Eliot ran his wife a respectable second with recurrent colds, bronchial trouble, seriously decayed teeth (five were extracted on one dental visit), a hernia that required a truss, surgery on his finger and frequent periods of nervous exhaustion. He also drank impressively, as many as five gin drinks during dinner.
Crawford estimates that in 1925 alone the couple spent a third of their income on doctors, medicines, and stays in hospitals or sanatoria. During the ’30s, Eliot arranged for the increasingly troubled Vivien — at one point he wondered if she might be suffering from “demonic possession” — to be cared for in various rest homes, and in 1938 he signed papers committing her to an asylum. With typical Prufrockian cowardice, he did this by letter while out of the country. He never saw her again.
T.S. Eliot’s American childhood
Eliot’s poetry often reflects these emotional and spiritual upheavals, starting with the desolation of 1925’s “The Hollow Men” (“This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper”), progressing to 1935’s sacred verse-drama about the death of Thomas a Becket, “Murder in the Cathedral” (which its mystery-loving author initially called “The Archbishop Murder Case”) and culminating in the somber, religio-philosophical masterpiece “Four Quartets.” Composed between 1936 and 1942, “Burnt Norton,” “East Coker” (my favorite), “The Dry Salvages” and “Little Gidding” draw heavily, if obliquely, on Eliot’s love for Hale, his family’s past and the poet’s experiences as an air warden during the London Blitz.
And then in 1947, Vivien died. At this point the now-free Eliot suddenly recoiled at the prospect of actually marrying Hale, to whom he wrote, “I cannot, cannot, start life again, and adapt myself (which means not merely one moment, but a perpetual adaptation for the rest of life) to any other person.” Hale was crushed but hoped he’d change his mind. In 1948, Eliot received the Nobel Prize for literature, privately calling the honor “a ticket to one’s funeral. No one has ever done anything after he got it.” He is, fundamentally, quite right. From then on, Eliot would be primarily a smiling public man, giving addresses on Christian humanism and picking up honorary degrees.
Through the late 1940s and mid-’50s, this world-famous poet shared a suite of rooms with the witty, wheelchair-bound bibliophile John Hayward. (I highly recommend John Smart’s biography of Hayward, “Tarantula’s Web.”) Eliot’s bedroom was flamboyantly ascetic: a single bed, an ebony crucifix, a bare lightbulb hanging from a chain. Very early one morning in 1957, though, Hayward’s lodger announced — without warning, through a letter — that he wouldn’t be back the next day or, indeed, ever. The 68-year-old Eliot had proposed — via letter! — to his adoring 30-year-old secretary, Valerie Fletcher, and been accepted. In due course, Hale received her own letter, disclosing this ultimate betrayal. For the final seven years of his life Eliot was soppily besotted with his new young bride, and the two grew inseparable. He died in 1965 at age 76.
Before then, however, Eliot burned Hale’s letters and, learning that she was depositing his own with Princeton, typed a sniveling, churlish note declaring that he’d never loved her, that she was really just a philistine and that marrying her would have killed him as a poet. Maybe that last bit is true, but this note certainly kills one’s respect for Eliot the man.
“After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” However, bear in mind that Crawford’s concentration on Eliot’s private life results in a partial picture, one that shifts the poet’s intellectual and artistic accomplishments to the background. So while these often harrowing revelations do grant us deeper insight into Eliot and consequently into his work, it is ultimately the poetry itself — and the criticism and drama — that we care about. After finishing “Eliot After ‘The Waste Land,’” I took a drive and put on a CD of Jeremy Irons reading “Four Quartets.” As moved and exhilarated as ever, I kept on driving until that final Dantescan line when “the fire and the rose are one.”
Michael Dirda is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for Book World, and the author of the memoir “An Open Book,” the Edgar Award-winning “On Conan Doyle” and five collections of essays: “Readings,” “Bound to Please,” “Book by Book,” “Classics for Pleasure” and “Browsings.” | 2022-09-28T12:31:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Eliot After ‘The Waste Land’ by Robert Crawford, review by Michael Dirda - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/28/eliot-wasteland-private-life/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/28/eliot-wasteland-private-life/ |
Melan is here for you, whether you want to dance or cry
By Briona Butler
Melan is hosting a record release party at the Eaton DC. (@ugly/@kbsnapped)
Melan’s power lies in vulnerability.
“I definitely discovered that it is a superpower,” the 25-year-old singer-songwriter says. “I feel like when we can lean into that vulnerability with strength, it actually dissolves fear. … When we lean into it, it really gives other people permission to be vulnerable, and then it’s this domino effect of healing and open-heartedness.”
Her debut as an R&B songstress was a catalyst for this hard-won revelation. In 2020, Melan beamed into D.C.’s music scene with her first single, “Full Moon,” a twinkling lullaby that doubles as a young girl’s coming home to self and a sleepy ode to another lunation. Her lyricism is distinct and unaffected; she sings, “I don’t wanna make no moves ’cause / I just wanna hold my womb / Bust a little move in my room / A little Frank Ocean and Doom.” She blends melodic flows and upbeat instrumentation, creating lush and spacious soundscapes. Her world, sensual and reflective, is for all those still finding their voice and experimenting with their own definition of “cool.”
Music has always been Melan’s first love. Born in St. Louis, she grew up in a military family, relocating every few years, soft-spoken and socially awkward, freestyling melodies at home alone, or in the woods or a nearby beach during her teenage years in Hawaii. At 15, she began attending writing workshops and competing in local poetry slams. By 18, she had joined American University’s slam team and competed in the College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational (CUPSI) international tournament — her “segue into getting more confidence to do music,” she says.
Melan grew up listening to classic and alternative rock, Southern rap, and experimental artists, but especially gravitated toward neo-soul. “Out of all the genres, [neo-soul] feels like such a safe place for me, emotionally,” she says. “Lauryn Hill, Jill Scott, India.Arie, specifically, was my childhood music. … Regardless of what dysfunction was going on in my childhood, that music was healing.”
Last September, Melan released her debut album, “A Cool Girl Dream,” a 17-minute affirmation of self-respect, femininity, freedom and fun. Whether you want to dance or cry, Melan is here for you. On her single “Soul Stream,” she sings, “Turned L’s into lessons / Rollin’ through my soul stream / I let my soul sing / And I do my own thing,” backed by slow-bouncing, jazzy production.
“I started making music because I felt like I had to make music,” she says. “I was feeling incomplete post-doing some of this healing work and starting to integrate these lessons and these breakthroughs, and I [felt] there’s something missing. [Making music] is a form of therapy for me.”
Of her forthcoming album, “Heart Lessons,” Melan says, “I’m not defining my worth by other people anymore.” She recently released two singles, “Luminary” and “Respect.” In the latter’s vibrant and playful video, Melan invites us into her world on a sunny day as she waits for a lover who never comes. “Not scrapin’ for bare minimum / I want everything,” she realizes as her girlfriends join her for a picnic in the park, where they enjoy Saturn peaches and rose wine, finally linking arms to surround Melan in their embrace. Gentle strings and breezy percussion paint an idyllic world filled with dreams and ruminations.
The album, scheduled to release on Oct. 1, marks a deeper dive into Melan’s interior life as she continues forging her own tools to transmute fear into power. “ ‘Heart Lessons’ gets to the depth of heartache I’ve studied and am studying, and the lessons are embedded specifically within love,” Melan explains. “It orbits around romantic love, but each song somehow returns back to the importance of cultivating love within oneself to truly find wholeness.”
Oct. 1 at 9 p.m. at the Eaton DC, 1201 K St. NW. eventbrite.com. Free. | 2022-09-28T12:31:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Melan is here for you, whether you want to dance or cry - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/28/melan-interview/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/28/melan-interview/ |
Milton Nascimento says goodbye to the stage, but ‘never to the music’
The colossal Brazilian singer-songwriter’s farewell tour comes to the Birchmere
Brazilian singer-songwriter Milton Nascimento. (Marcos Hermes)
Milton Nascimento says he never planned the beautiful zigzags of his musical career, and if you trace the contours of his teeming songbook, you’ll have no choice but to believe him.
In 1972, he quietly etched his greatness in stone with “Clube da Esquina,” a subtle and sumptuous collaborative album with Lô Borges named after the duo’s musical coterie, the “street corner club.” Two years later, Nascimento was singing breathtaking mockingbird duets with Wayne Shorter’s saxophone. By the time the curtain fell on the 1990s, Nascimento’s bright, clarifying voice had won the admiration of Herbie Hancock; Paul Simon; Earth, Wind and Fire; Duran Duran; Pat Metheny; Peter Gabriel; and James Taylor. And he’d recorded with them all, too.
But after six decades of open-minded exploration and big-hearted improvisation, Nascimento had to map his current chapter in advance. “Everything in my life happens naturally, and with music it’s the same,” Nascimento, 79, says in an email from a farewell tour that has already woven its way through Europe and Brazil. “After 60 years of career, the time has come. But as I’ve been saying, I say goodbye to the stages, never to the music.”
It’s hard to imagine saying goodbye to Nascimento’s music. In his prime, his voice seemed to exist in some anti-gravitational state between floating and soaring, and his ability to suspend exquisite melodies over motley song forms led him toward alliances with pop stars of nearly every stripe. Nascimento still speaks of his co-creators with all the warmth you hear in his music, but he’s quick to extend that gratitude to his most loyal collaborators — his listeners.
“I often say without friendship I would be nothing,” Nascimento says. “The most important things on my journey happened because of the great friends who crossed my path. Another thing I always say is this: Without friendship, I don’t even cross the street.”
Oct. 4 at 7:30 p.m. at the Birchmere, 3701 Mount Vernon Ave., Alexandria. birchmere.com. Sold out. | 2022-09-28T12:31:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Milton Nascimento says goodbye to the stage, but ‘never to the music’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/28/milton-nascimento-interview/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/28/milton-nascimento-interview/ |
Will Bolsonaro Leave If He Loses the Presidency?
Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president, center, waves during an Independence Day military parade in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2022. Bolsonaro delivered a relatively moderate first speech during Brazil’s Independence Day celebrations as he seeks the support of undecided voters to boost his flagging campaign less than a month before general elections. (Bloomberg)
For anyone wondering whether Jair Bolsonaro plans to retreat gracefully into the background if he loses Brazil’s presidential election, his latest overseas jaunt offers one answer. Even before Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, he found an opportunity to rouse flag-clad supporters from the London embassy balcony, with dog-whistle references to abortion and “gender ideology,” hints at his opponent’s supposed communist allegiances — and then a guarantee that he would inevitably win, outright, in the first round.
Facts? Who needs them.
In reality, with less than a week to go before Brazilians head to the polls on Sunday, the numbers do not favor the incumbent. An Ipec survey published on Monday suggested opposition leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva could take 52% of valid votes in the first round — enough to win without a run-off, a feat only one past candidate has managed (twice) — while Bolsonaro would take 34%. The gap between them isn’t narrowing. (Ipec interviewed 3,008 people on September 25 and 26, for a survey with a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points and a confidence level of 95%.)
Polls can be imperfect and they underestimate the difference turnout will make. But with time running out and the former congressman for Rio de Janeiro struggling even on his home turf, the chances of an election-day surprise look ever more distant.
Certainly, the return of former president Lula is a troubling prospect for many Brazilians, thanks in large part to the massive corruption scandal that brewed up during his time in office and ultimately resulted in his imprisonment. The Supreme Court annulled his convictions in 2021.
A pragmatist and a shrewd political operator, though, he has built a wide coalition, bringing in business-friendly former Sao Paulo governor Geraldo Alckmin as his vice president, gaining endorsements from other high-profile moderates, like Marina Silva, an erstwhile environment minister who had ruptured ties with his party, and former central bank chief Henrique Meirelles. Lula has also invested in his enduring appeal among poorer households, who remember his housing programs, a groundbreaking cash transfer for low-income families that lifted millions out of poverty and efforts to widen access to education.
With more than 33 million Brazilians going hungry today — and more than half living with some level of food insecurity — no wonder nostalgia is strong. Never mind that the economic backdrop will be very different in 2023, without the spectacular commodity boom that lifted all boats during Lula’s first and second term, and with what is likely to be a far less congenial legislature.
Yet the question staring at Brazil today is not really about who wins the election. The real head-scratcher is what Bolsonaro, a man of openly authoritarian tendencies, will do if and when he loses, as the polls strongly suggest.
The president said on prime-time television last month that he would accept the results of the election, “as long as the vote is clean and transparent.” However, he’s also prepared the way for a tantrum of national proportions. Taking a leaf out of US President Donald Trump’s book, he has repeatedly sought to discredit Brazil’s well-established electoral process, and picked fights with the Supreme Court. He’s wrapped himself in the flag, smeared his opponent and portrayed the race as good against evil.
A former army captain, Bolsonaro has sought to enlist the armed forces (and the police) to his cause — modern coups don’t require tanks, but they do require the military. He’s defended Brazil’s military dictatorship and has steadily expanded the armed forces’ presence in the political sphere. His government demanded a role for them even in overseeing the voting process, a risky, indeed unthinkable move for a credible democracy. His persistent support for weapon ownership has left Brazil awash in guns. The far-right populist has also supercharged disinformation, using his speeches and direct addresses to stoke baseless rumors, then amplified by friendly social media.
Of course, even if Bolsonaro wants to hang on to power whatever happens, that doesn’t mean he can.
For one, Lula looks set to win by a healthy margin if the vote goes to the second round, which will make it far harder for Bolsonaro to cry foul, and will make backing him a far less attractive option for supporters high in the country’s political, military and economic elite.
The president has also proven a good talker but a mediocre operative, even on the backbenches, making it conceivable that if he finds sympathy in some corners of the armed forces or the military police, he will still struggle to bring the rest onside. Levels of empathy with Bolsonaro are not uniform. That’s no protection from troublesome incidents, but it does make an all-out insurrection far more challenging. Crucially, with Trump out of power, he also has no significant international backing for adventurism, as his unimpressive dance card on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly demonstrated. Serbia and Poland will hardly carry him through.
None of that means a sigh of relief is in order. Even in the best case, the two months between the runoff and the inauguration provide plenty of time for Bolsonaro to wreak havoc, say, in the Amazon. More troubling still are the divisions he has sowed, which will remain. Without Bolsonaro, some of the worst traits of Bolsonarismo may well linger, even without a party to nurture it. He’s alienated minorities and deepened the involvement of religion and the armed forces in politics. He’s promoted violence, heightened distrust in the judiciary and in the very act of voting. Whatever happens in October, the world’s fourth-largest democracy has been left dangerously weak.
• Latin America’s ‘Pink Tide’ Can’t Revive Past: Eduardo Porter
• To Woo Voters, Bolsonaro Deploys Wife and Prayers: Clara Ferreira Marques
• Brazil’s Democracy Needs More Friends in High Places: Editorial | 2022-09-28T12:49:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Will Bolsonaro Leave If He Loses the Presidency? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/will-bolsonaro-leave-if-he-loses-the-presidency/2022/09/28/e5207720-3f25-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/will-bolsonaro-leave-if-he-loses-the-presidency/2022/09/28/e5207720-3f25-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Just how racist is the MAGA movement? This survey measures it.
A Trump supporter holds a Confederate flag outside the Senate chamber after rioters breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
It has long been understood that the MAGA movement is heavily dependent on White grievance and straight-up racism. (Hence Donald Trump’s refusal to disavow racist groups and his statement that there were “very fine people on both sides” in the violent clashes at the white-supremacist rally in Charlottesville.)
Now, we have numbers to prove it.
The connection between racism and the right-wing movement is apparent in a new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute. The survey asked respondents about 11 statements designed to probe views on racism. For example: “White Americans today are not responsible for discrimination against Black people in the past.” The pollsters then used their answers to quantify a “structural racism index,” which provides a general score from zero to 1 measuring a person’s attitudes on “white supremacy and racial inequality, the impact of discrimination on African American economic mobility, the treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice system, general perceptions of race, and whether racism is still significant problem today.” Higher scores indicate a more receptive attitude to racist beliefs.
The results shouldn’t surprise anyone paying attention to the MAGA crowd’s rhetoric and veneration of the Confederacy. “Among all Americans, the median value on the structural racism index is 0.45, near the center of the scale,” the poll found. “The median score on the structural racism index for Republicans is 0.67, compared with 0.45 for independents and 0.27 for Democrats.” Put differently, Republicans are much more likely to buy into the notion that Whites are victims.
The poll also found that the religious group that makes up the core of today’s GOP and MAGA movement has the highest structural racism measure among the demographics it surveyed: “White evangelical Protestants have the highest median score, at 0.64, while Latter-day Saints, white Catholics, and white mainline Protestants each have a median of 0.55. By contrast, religiously unaffiliated white Americans score 0.33.” This is true even though Whites report far less discrimination toward them than racial minorities do.
The survey also captured just how popular the “Lost Cause” to rewrite the history of the Civil War and downplay or ignore the evil of slavery is on the right: “Republicans overwhelmingly back efforts to preserve the legacy of the Confederacy (85%), compared with less than half of independents (46%) and only one in four Democrats (26%). The contrast between white Republicans and white Democrats is stark. Nearly nine in 10 white Republicans (87%), compared with 23% of white Democrats, support efforts to preserve the legacy of the Confederacy.”
Americans who fully support reforming Confederate monuments have a much lower structural racism index score, while those who oppose it have a much higher score. The same is true when it comes to renaming schools honoring individuals who supported slavery and racial discrimination or changing racist mascots.
Those who want to keep Confederate monuments and offensive mascots in place might deny that their views have anything to do bigotry, but then again, they often deny the legacy of racism and paint Whites as victims, too. In general, MAGA forces have one goal when they amplify “replacement theory” or fuss over corporations promoting inclusivity: to maximize White anger and resentment.
Robert P. Jones, who leads PRRI, tells me, “While this result may seem surprising or even shocking to many White Christians, it is because we do not know our own history. If we take a clear-eyed look at our history, we see a widespread, centuries-long Christian defense of white supremacy.” He adds, “For example, every major Protestant Christian denomination split over the issue of slavery in the Civil War, with Methodists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Baptists in the South all breaking fellowship with their Northern brethren.” Given that history, Jones says, “it’s hardly a surprise that a denial of systemic racism is a defining feature of White evangelicalism today.”
The PRRI poll shows the MAGA movement has done a solid job convincing the core of the GOP base that they are victims. And let’s be clear: An aggrieved electoral minority that believes it has been victimized and is ready to deploy violence is a serious threat to an inclusive democracy. | 2022-09-28T12:49:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Just how racist is the MAGA movement? This survey measures it. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/racism-survey-prri-maga-republicans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/racism-survey-prri-maga-republicans/ |
Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202! Please vote on which is cooler: the “Matrix” digital rain simulator, or the “Take on Me” filter.
Below: The alleged Optus hacker revokes extortion demands and Meta dismantles China-based network targeting American users. But first:
The White House brought in a big cyber name. Here’s what she wants to do.
Camille Stewart Gloster is one of the newest, big-deal additions to one of the newest parts of the federal government, officially known as the Office of the National Cyber Director but sometimes called the White House “cyber czar.” Two directorates fall under her umbrella: one on technology and one on workforce.
If those sound like two pretty different topics to you, she sees it otherwise.
“Technology is operated by people, created by people, abused by people and used by people,” Stewart Gloster told me in her first interview since her appointment as deputy national cyber director for technology and ecosystem in July. “And understanding the connections there, and how that then connects to your awareness, interest and pursuit of cyber careers or technology careers is really important. So I think there is a big linkage there and an opportunity to really take a fulsome look at the cyber ecosystem.”
Stewart Gloster is a well-known name in the cybersecurity world, and for reasons that match pretty closely to the job she took. She arrives from Google, where she last held the title of global head of product security strategy. She is the co-founder of #ShareTheMicInCyber, a movement to address diversity issues in the cyber profession. And she’s an attorney who served in the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security as a senior policy adviser.
Now, she’s heading a team that, she concedes, many cyber and government officials would be hard-pressed to say what it does. Some of that is merely that it’s new, of course.
What she’s working on
Stewart Gloster’s responsibilities fall under two main categories:
The cyber workforce, education and training.
Technology security: emerging technology, research and development, strengthening the hardware and software supply chain.
In that first category, she’s working on developing a cyber workforce and education strategy. It will follow in the heels of the broader national cyber strategy expected this fall that the overall cyber czar’s office is heading up. The workforce and education strategy will seek to “really get in the weeds and focus on implementation” of that broader national strategy, she said.
Her priorities on education and the workforce include focusing on three different groups: the general public and its awareness of cyber; employees whose work at any given organization touches on cybersecurity; and the people who would be considered true cyber pros. That last group, she said, needs to be “highly skilled and diverse.”
The workforce “is only enhanced by having a variety of lived experiences and backgrounds in the seats that are doing work,” she said.
Her approach is centered on the notion that no one entity can address those issues, so she’ll be seeking to hear from experts at every level: federal, state, local and private sector. And she’ll be able to take some lessons from #ShareTheMicInCyber.
“That individual-action-catalyzing-collective-action piece, I think it'll be something that I can carry with me,” Stewart Gloster said. “‘Share the Mic’ was targeted to a discrete problem area. Now I'm getting to do it all. It will be a piece of a very large pie.”
In the second category, on tech security, her team is collaborating with others in the bureaucracy to make sure cybersecurity is highlighted during implementation of the Chips and Science Act, which will dedicate $52 billion in subsidies to the domestic semiconductor industry.
Her team is also promoting open-source software security, and seeking to ensure that developers take security into account every step of the way.
Her biggest challenge right now is in the number of hands available to her, she said. She currently leads a team of four full-time employees, a number set to jump to approximately 16 by the end of the year.
Exiting #ShareTheMicInCyber
Stewart Gloster co-founded #ShareTheMicInCyber, a campaign to raise awareness of women and racial minorities in the cyber arena. Gloster said she’ll have some “FOMO” over leaving the project she co-founded, but she believes it has made a difference.
“I definitely think it opened the dialogue to have a more candid conversation around the diversity issues,” she said. “Also, I think it elevated the experiences that people of color are having in cybersecurity community and cyber job landscape.”
Lauren Zabierek, who co-founded #ShareTheMicInCyber, and Stewart Gloster have spoken of barriers in the cyber industry they’ve personally experienced as women, and in Stewart Gloster’s case, a Black woman. It’s not a field proportionally populated by either women or those who identify as members of a minority group.
(Future plans for #ShareTheMicInCyber are “TBD,” said Zabierek. But she'd like to see it become a full-fledged nonprofit. It’s developing a fellowship at the New America think tank. And a campaign is scheduled for October on the value of “belonging” in cyber and psychological safety.)
But moving into the government was the right call for Stewart Gloster, she said.
“I have no regrets because I think I am doing exactly what we wanted people to be able to do, right?: Step into leadership roles,” she said. “I'm working on parallel efforts. So I get to attack the cyber workforce education and training challenges more broadly. And it's an opportunity to bring those lessons learned into this space.”
Alleged Optus hacker revokes extortion demands
The hacker who claimed responsibility for last week’s massive Optus data breach abruptly withdrew their extortion demands and apologized to the 10,200 people whose personal information was already leaked, Bleeping Computer’s Bill Toulas reports.
Australia’s second-largest wireless carrier announced last week that data of up to 10 million customers — including their names, dates of birth, physical addresses, driver’s licenses and passport numbers — had been compromised. On Friday, a user going by the alias “optusdata” published a small sample of the stolen data on BreachForums, and threatened to leak the records of 10,000 more Optus customers per day unless the firm paid $1 million in cryptocurrency.
Optus didn’t give into the extortion demands, and instead enlisted the help of law enforcement to investigate the incident. The hacker subsequently posted that the stolen data would no longer be sold or leaked due to increased scrutiny of the data breach, and claimed that the information had been deleted from their device that had held the only copy.
Meta announced Tuesday that it had taken down a small China-based network of fake accounts that was seeking to influence U.S. politics ahead of the 2022 midterm elections, The Post’s Naomi Nix reports.
The covert influence operation used profiles on Facebook and Instagram posing as Americans to post opinions on hot-button issues like abortion, gun control and high-profile politicians on both sides of the political spectrum. The campaign, which primarily targeted audiences in the United States and Czech Republic, posted from the fall of 2021 through the summer of 2022.
According to Ben Nimmo, Meta’s global threat intelligence head, while the network didn’t appear to gain much tractor or user engagement, it was unusual because unlike previous China-based influence operations that focused on promoting narratives about America to the rest of the world, this scheme was intended to influence U.S. users about American topics months ahead of November’s elections.
In a separate incident, Facebook’s parent company said it had disrupted the largest Russia-based influence operation it’s taken down since the start of the war in Ukraine. That operation was vast, comprising over 60 websites impersonating legitimate news organizations in Europe with the aim of promoting pro-Kremlin narratives about the conflict. The network targeted users in Germany, France, Italy, Ukraine and the U.K., according to Meta’s report.
Fast Company was hacked last night
“Hackers breached internal systems at Fast Company magazine Tuesday evening, defacing the company’s main news site and sending racist push notifications through Apple News to iPhone users,” our colleague Joseph Menn reports. "The two-sentence push notifications were attributed to Fast Company and contained the n-word and graphic language, prompting shocked users to post screenshots on Twitter.
The breach was one of the biggest violations of Apple’s “walled garden” in memory, Joe writes. Yet there was nothing to indicate that user security was compromised beyond the upsetting wording.
What's with the UFO on a U.S. intelligence agency seal? (CyberScoop)
Bill to consolidate federal agency software contracts expected to progress in Senate (FedScoop)
International conflicts driving increased strength of DDoS attacks: report (the Record)
Taiwanese citizens prepare for possible cyber war (Axios)
WhatsApp discloses critical vulnerability in older app versions (the Verge)
US expected to publish Privacy Shield executive order next week (POLITICO)
The Global Tech Security Commission hosts Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo for a discussion about implementation of the Chips and Science Act on Thursday at 11:15 a.m. | 2022-09-28T12:49:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Camille Stewart Gloster shares her plans for new White House cyber gig - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/camille-stewart-gloster-shares-her-plans-new-white-house-cyber-gig/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/camille-stewart-gloster-shares-her-plans-new-white-house-cyber-gig/ |
Eagles, Dolphins can start thinking about the playoffs, and so can NFL bett...
Baker Mayfield and the Panthers escaped the Saints to get their first win of the season. (Rusty Jones/AP)
Arizona Cardinals at Carolina Panthers (-1½)
New England Patriots at Green Bay Packers (-10½)
Miami Dolphins at Cincinnati Bengals (-3½)
New Orleans Saints vs. Minnesota Vikings (-2½), in London
Chicago Bears at New York Giants (-3½)
Buffalo Bills (-3½) at Baltimore Ravens
Seattle Seahawks at Detroit Lions (-4½)
New York Jets at Pittsburgh Steelers (-3½)
Jacksonville Jaguars at Philadelphia Eagles (-6½)
Washington Commanders at Dallas Cowboys (-3½)
Cleveland Browns (-1½) at Atlanta Falcons
Kansas City Chiefs (-2½) at Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Los Angeles Rams at San Francisco 49ers (-2½)
Last week’s picks went against two Super Bowl favorites — the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Buffalo Bills — and both picks came out on top.
The Miami Dolphins pulled off an outlandish upset of the Bills, with Miami joining the Philadelphia Eagles as the only remaining undefeated teams in the league. But it wasn’t pretty. The Bills ran 90 plays and had the ball for almost 41 minutes of game clock, while the Dolphins ran just 39 plays, making it the most lopsided advantage in percentage of snaps this century.
Still, the Dolphins didn’t just cover as underdogs; they won the game, providing a hefty boost to the bankrolls of anyone who opted for the +200 moneyline.
Bills offense ran 53 plays and didn't punt in the second half against the Dolphins. They scored 3 points
I’m still not sure what to make of Miami in the short term. Yes, quarterback Tua Tagovailoa is having a stellar season, worthy of MVP buzz, yet you can’t help but wonder what to make of the Dolphins’ net success rate hovering below zero. Success rate is the percentage of plays that result in either a first down or touchdown, and right now Miami’s net success rate — theirs minus that of their opponents — is at minus-3 percent. Only six teams are worse heading into Week 4. Of course, it’s worth noting Miami’s net success rate was already negative before its game against Buffalo. In any case, I am not the only one feeling trepidation about the AFC East leaders. The Dolphins are 3½-point underdogs to the 1-2 Cincinnati Bengals on Thursday night, an interesting number considering this year’s early season results.
Meanwhile, the Green Bay Packers took care of business on the road, defeating Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 14-12. An Aaron Jones fumble at the Tampa 1-yard line made this game closer than it should have been, yet the Packers — like the Dolphins — won outright. That made the three points we got from the spread, which narrowed considerably by kickoff, a non-factor.
Picks were made against the consensus point spreads as of Tuesday afternoon; odds that have since changed have been updated in bold type, but picks are locked in at the earlier odds.
Pick: Carolina Panthers -1½, playable to -2½
It’s hard to trust this Arizona team. They rank third to last in net success rate (minus-7 percent) and have scored almost 27 points fewer than you would expect this season after taking out points off turnovers, according to data from TruMedia. Why take out points scored off turnovers? Turnovers are fluky and not something you can count on week after week. Only the Houston Texans have underwhelmed by more this season — 27 fewer points than expected after adjusting for turnovers. Carolina, meantime, has a net success rate of plus-2 percent, ranking 10th best, with 11 more points scored than expected without turnovers.
Pick: Over 39.5 points, playable to 41. For the game, the pick is New England +10½, but it’s not a best bet.
The Patriots, meanwhile, have gained the sixth-highest net yards per play (0.6) yet are being downgraded by oddsmakers and bettors because of the injury to quarterback Mac Jones, who will likely will miss multiple games with a high ankle sprain. Veteran Brian Hoyer, who appears to be the next man up, probably isn’t going set passing records, but he could very well play about as well as Jones did before the injury. After all, that’s a low bar. Jones is ranked 25th out of 32 passers this season according to ESPN’s Total Quarterback Rating, and 23rd out of 29 passers per the game charters at Pro Football Focus.
Thursday, 8:15 p.m. | Prime Video
Sunday, 9:30 a.m. | NFL Network
Pick: Minnesota Vikings -2½
Pick: Tennessee Titans +3
Pick: Chicago Bears +3½
Pick: Baltimore Ravens +3½
Pick: New York Jets +3½
Pick: Philadelphia Eagles -6½
Pick: Dallas Cowboys -3½
Pick: Atlanta Falcons +1½
Pick: Kansas City Chiefs -2½
Monday, 8:15 p.m. | ESPN, ESPN2
Pick: San Francisco 49ers -2½ | 2022-09-28T12:49:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL Week 4 odds, picks and best bets - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/28/nfl-picks-odds-best-bets-week-4/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/28/nfl-picks-odds-best-bets-week-4/ |
Bank of England moves to stabilize U.K. finances after pound crashes
View of the Bank of England in London, Wednesday after it has launched a temporary bond-buying program as it takes emergency action to prevent “material risk” to U.K. financial stability. (Frank Augstein/AP)
LONDON — The Bank of England on Wednesday announced a highly unusual market intervention in hopes of slowing the rush to dump pounds and U.K. bonds that began after new Prime Minister Liz Truss announced her centerpiece economic plan.
The central bank said that it would temporarily buy British government bonds, a remarkable move that follows the government’s announcement on Friday of its so-called “mini budget.”
“Were dysfunction in this market to continue or worsen, there would be a material risk to U.K. financial stability,” the Bank of England said in a statement.
The bank said that the purchases to “restore orderly market conditions,” would be “carried out on whatever scale is necessary to effect this outcome.” It also said it was time-limited to two weeks.
Truss, who is just three weeks into the job, is trying to change the British economy with bold — some would say risky — actions that have spooked investors. Truss has made no secret of her free-market views. During the leadership campaign to replace Boris Johnson as prime minister, she said that she would be a tax cutter from the get go.
On Friday, she delivered on that promise with the government announced huge tax cuts and a big jump in borrowing. The plans include the abolition of the top income tax rate of 45 percent for people earning more than 150,000 pounds and a scrapping of the cap on banker bonuses.
The markets gave their early verdict: On Monday, the pound sterling fell to an all-time low against the U.S. dollar, slumping to 1.03 at one stage before recovering somewhat. Some economists have said that the pound could drop to parity with the dollar.
On Wednesday morning, the pound slid back to 1.06 after reaching 1.08 on Tuesday.
“This, unlike other fluctuations in the market, is a self-inflicted wound,” said Keir Starmer, leader of the opposition Labour Party, told the BBC on Wednesday morning. His party is up 17 percentage points, according to a recent YouGov poll. This is the party’s biggest lead against the Conservatives since 2001, when the Labour leader Tony Blair won a landslide victory.
Truss will have to call a general election by January 2025 and is keen to put her ideas on the economy into motion.
On Tuesday, the International Monetary Fund issued a rare rebuke of the new British government’s handling of its economic policy.
In an unusually blunt statement, it said that it was “closely monitoring” the situation in the U.K., adding the government’s plans will likely “increase inequality.” Untargeted fiscal packages, it said, were not recommended during a period of high inflation.
Truss and her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, have defended their vision for the economy.
“They are prepared to risk unpopularity because they think it will work in the long-term,” said Tony Travers, a politics professor at the London School of Economics.
He noted that, unlike some of her Conservative Party predecessors, including Johnson and Theresa May, Truss’s free market views were quite straightforward. Her government wants to “move Britain to be a lower tax, more flexible economy which competes head to head with highly paid workers and talent with the E.U. and globally.”
“Whether it works or not, only time will tell,” he said, adding, “whether it survives the short-term, time will tell sooner.” | 2022-09-28T13:50:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bank of England intervenes to stabilize UK finances after Liz Truss budget - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/boe-uk-pound-intervention/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/boe-uk-pound-intervention/ |
A foot soldier in the labor wars of the early 1900s, he created a written record of life in a tumultuous time — then disappeared into the haze of history. What happened to him?
Photo illustration by Dakarai Akil for The Washington Post. Photos: PhotoQuest/Getty Images (men in hats); Alamy Stock Photo (men in car); the Pittsburgh Press (Louis Walsh); national archives (papers); Partha Sarkar/Xinhua/Getty Images (2022 demolition in India)
We often speak of today’s United States as torn by an unprecedented political divide. But however severe that tension may seem, it’s nothing new. Although now almost entirely forgotten, an equally great political chasm, frequently exploding into violence, ran through this country a century ago. In the Americans of that era, it called forth extremes of behavior: of commitment and cruelty, of sacrifice and betrayal.
Sometimes one person’s experience can be a window onto a time of upheaval. This is the tale of one such life — that of a man whose full story would not emerge until decades later. His vantage point was near the bottom of the social ladder, a place where few memoirs, diaries or other written records are produced. Yet he left behind a vivid, extraordinarily detailed, often day-to-day account of the battles that consumed our society 100 years ago, in an America as divided as is our own today.
The battles in which this man fought were between big business and labor. It was not just a philosophical divide, but a near war. Between 1890 and 1910, 75 strikes saw workers killed, for a total toll of 308 deaths. In 1899, hundreds of rebellious Idaho miners fighting police and corporate detectives blew up a company mill, after hijacking a train that became known as the Dynamite Express. In 1913 and 1914, more than 70 people, including women and children, died in battles between Colorado miners and National Guard troops defending a Rockefeller-owned coal mine.
A wild tale of Nazi spies, a Brooklyn brothel and the private life of a senator
I was a ’60s socialist. Today’s progressives are in danger of repeating my generation’s mistakes.
When the United States entered the First World War in April 1917, this long-boiling conflict became intertwined with a new one: between enthusiasts and opponents of the war. Most Americans were eager to see their country join the fighting that had already ravaged Europe for nearly three years, but a significant vocal minority was opposed. This included, among others, most supporters of the Socialist Party, which had drawn 6 percent of the popular vote in the 1912 presidential election.
The left was particularly strong in industrial cities like Pittsburgh, a crucial hub in the manufacturing boom ignited by the war. Smoke billowed from hundreds of the high clustered stacks of the city’s steel mills, from which an endless river of the critical metal flowed out across the country to be made into ship hulls, artillery shells, gun barrels, and weapons and machinery of all kinds.
Industrialists and the government were worried, however, by Pittsburgh’s strong labor movement. Many members of its largely Slavic and Italian working class had brought socialist or anarchist convictions with them when they emigrated from Europe. In 1912, some neighborhoods in the area had given more than 25 percent of the vote to Eugene V. Debs, the Socialist Party candidate for president.
Among the groups eager to establish a foothold in Pittsburgh were the Industrial Workers of the World, the country’s most militant labor union. Known to all as the Wobblies — no one is really certain where the name came from — they never made up more than 5 percent of all American labor unionists, but their rhetoric caught the public imagination and produced impact beyond their numbers.
The Wobblies believed in “One Big Union” that would encompass all occupations, and they welcomed all workers: skilled or unskilled, Black or White, male or female, farm laborers or factory hands, native-born or immigrant. “Tell every slave you see along the line,” ran one Wobbly song, “it makes no difference what your color, creed or sex or kind.” In one IWW strike by Philadelphia longshoremen, Black and Irish American workers walked off the job together — something extremely rare, and threatening to business, in an era when employers routinely played ethnic groups off each other. When Pennsylvania state troopers killed a Wobbly steelworker in 1909, the eulogies at his burial were in 15 languages.
In July 1917, a Wobbly enthusiast arrived in Pittsburgh and introduced himself as an auto mechanic named Louis Walsh. The only known photograph of him from this time shows a man with dark hair, light-colored eyes, a mouth turned down at the corners and a broad, impassive face. A sociable type, Walsh went to left-wing gatherings and spent many evenings in working-class saloons like the Bismarck Café — drinking, talking about socialism and anarchism, and mocking the mainstream American Federation of Labor, which supported the war. Like most American radicals of any stripe, Walsh argued that workers from different countries should fight the capitalists, not be conscripted into vast armies to fight each other. When they formed the IWW’s Pittsburgh chapter a month after his arrival in the city, the members elected Walsh recording and financial secretary.
In the next few years, Walsh would be “shadowed for months by government agents,” according to the Pittsburgh Press; would be described in a headline by the Pittsburgh Gazette Times as an “I. W. W. Plot Leader”; and would give fiery speeches to rally his comrades. The Press called him “a nationally known radical.” Federal authorities apparently considered him highly dangerous. On one occasion when Walsh was arrested, he “was taken despite his own protests and those of his associates,” the paper reported, “and was spirited away by the government agents, who declined to say where he had been incarcerated.” Walsh would be released from this period of detention, but it would not be his only arrest. Indeed, the hounding of Walsh by law enforcement seemed to be a recurring theme of his new life in Pittsburgh.
To be a left-wing activist in this highly repressive era was not just a matter of belonging to one organization; you were part of an entire subculture. Walsh raised money for the IWW by selling “Industrial Freedom Certificates” to better-off supporters, he was active in Pittsburgh’s Radical Library, and he went to Socialist Party picnics and meetings at the Labor Temple and the Jewish Labor Lyceum. Even though it was performed by and for children, he faithfully attended a play put on by local Socialists, “When Peace Comes,” penned by the fiery activist Kate Richards O’Hare, sometimes known as “Red Kate” for her mass of red hair. The play, as Walsh described it, was about an American girl who dreams that she is “visited by characters who represented the children of soldiers in the many belligerent countries.” They blame each other for the war until the girl’s brother appears and “laid all the blame on the Capitalist system.”
For the most part, though, radicalism in the city was an adult and male world of fast friendships and late-night dinners, of long strategy sessions with Wobbly comrades visiting from other cities, trading news and gossip about activists on trial, in jail or on the run. It was also one where people danced, drank and went swimming together on hot summer days. When a Wobbly friend went to New York, he wrote to Walsh about visiting a dance hall in Greenwich Village: “I wish you were here with me. … Together I am sure we could be savages for one night.”
The constant harassment from business and government forged tight bonds among the Wobblies, and those in trouble knew they could turn to Walsh for aid. He was generous with advice and help for fellow radicals who confided in him about their efforts to avoid conscription, either by failing to register, forging draft cards or going underground; one young friend told Walsh he was fleeing Pittsburgh for Colorado Springs. When a veteran Scottish-born organizer named Sam Scarlett lost his job as a machinist, he moved into Walsh’s room at Gibson’s Hotel on the city’s Grant Street.
Walsh attended rallies, distributed IWW literature, went to a lecture by the muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens and was invited to give a speech about unionism to a new group of Hungarian American Wobblies. He strategized with fellow Wobblies about the perennial problems of fundraising and getting publicity for their activities in a hostile press.
Walsh, it appears, found friendship among his comrades in Pittsburgh. “We loafed together until 11:00 P.M. then separated,” he wrote about one evening spent with fellow Wobblies. Another evening he stayed up talking “science and anarchy” in a bar until 5 a.m. He spent many other long evenings drinking with his comrades, often ending the night asleep on the couch or floor of a Wobbly’s room.
Starting in September 1917, a few months after Walsh’s arrival in Pittsburgh, the federal government staged a severe crackdown on the IWW, raiding all of the organization’s 48 field offices across the country and indicting some 300 Wobblies under the Espionage Act. This sweeping new law essentially criminalized any kind of dissent against the war, and before long Debs and hundreds of other war opponents would be imprisoned. Government agents ransacked Walsh’s room in Gibson’s Hotel and quickly seized his former roommate Sam Scarlett.
Several mass trials sent most of the arrested Wobblies to prison. In Pittsburgh, however, Walsh still served as secretary of the local branch.
In November 1917, news flashed around the world that the Bolsheviks, the most militant faction of revolutionaries in Russia, had seized power in that country’s capital, Petrograd (now St. Petersburg). Washington and the Allied powers in Europe were horrified, for the Bolsheviks had sworn to make a separate peace with Germany and to take their country out of the fighting. This would free up half a million German troops to strengthen the forces facing British, French and American soldiers on the front lines in France and Belgium. Furthermore, Western governments and business feared, the Russian Revolution might be contagious.
In 1918, Walsh was arrested in dramatic fashion: Three federal agents seized him in front of 50 people attending a Socialist Party meeting. Pittsburgh’s Gazette Times noted that, with Walsh’s arrest, “agents of the Department of Justice believe they have broken the backbone of a conspiracy, with headquarters in Pittsburgh and extending across the country. … According to the Federal operatives, Walsh is one of the big men of the I. W. W. … He has been traced from coast to coast, always leaving a trail of sedition and labor unrest behind him.”
The First World War ended in November 1918, but the fear of revolution remained. Throughout the United States, tensions were exacerbated by severe inflation that left the wages of millions lagging behind rising prices. On top of this, some 4 million men were released from the armed forces in 1919, to compete for jobs that were suddenly scarce, for no longer were factories hiring workers to turn out rifles, tanks and artillery.
The constant harassment from business and government forged tight bonds among the Wobblies, and those in trouble knew they could turn to Walsh for aid.
These stresses produced the greatest strike wave the country had ever seen. Four million people, 1 out of every 5 American workers, would walk off the job in 1919. They would include telephone operators in New England, blacksmiths in Ohio, cigarmakers in Baltimore, even actors on Broadway and, most shocking of all, more than 70 percent of the Boston police force. The police, after all, had for decades been used to suppress strikes. In Portland, Ore., and Tacoma, Wash., socialists, radical labor unionists and discharged soldiers borrowed a word from the Russians and formed groups they called soviets. A thousand people came to the first meeting of the Portland soviet.
On May Day 1919, the traditional international workers’ holiday, radical fervor was stronger than ever around Pittsburgh. Walsh’s Wobbly comrades asked him to give one of the speeches at an open-air rally in the nearby coal-mining town of Bentleyville, where there were many Italian and Russian American miners. It was preceded by a parade where, he wrote, “each one of the marchers wore a red ribbon on the lapel of his coat, and about one-half of the marchers wore red neck-ties.” Leading the parade was a 12-piece band, “which was followed by the principal speakers and a soldier in overseas uniform with an I. W. W. button prominently displayed in his cap.” The crowd carried banners urging the release of Debs and the hundreds of other Americans imprisoned under the Espionage Act, which continued to be wielded against outspoken radicals long after the war that occasioned it was over. In his 25-minute speech to a crowd of some 1,400, which Walsh was pleased to find “well received,” he urged people to contribute cash and war bonds to a bail fund for the prisoners, estimating later that they raised $1,200.
That same spring, Walsh loyally attended “a two act playlet” put on by a Russian American labor group, which he couldn’t understand because it was in Russian. But it was clear to him that the first act “depicted the oppression under the old regime in Russia” and the second the triumph of the new. In these stormy times, it was easy to believe that a similar upheaval might be coming in the United States.
Violence closer to home than the Russian Revolution exploded late on the evening of June 2, 1919, when the unusually hot night air of eight cities in the Northeast was torn by almost simultaneous bomb blasts. One, in New York City, missed the judge who was apparently its object but killed a night watchman. Most of the other victims targeted were prominent business or political figures, including the country’s attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer. None were hurt, but the bombs severely damaged several homes and the country was shocked by the evidence of a coordinated conspiracy. At most of the bomb sites investigators found leaflets on pink paper proclaiming that “class war is on and can not cease but with a complete victory for the international proletariat.”
Pittsburgh was the only city to see two explosions, which came within five minutes of each other from pipe bombs filled with dynamite and shrapnel. Both were aimed at men involved in deportation cases against radicals — a federal judge and an immigration official. The authorities everywhere were taken by surprise, but the bombings provided the perfect excuse to once again crack down on the usual suspects. Jailing Wobblies was always a dependable way for police to show that they were on the job. “Wholesale Arrests After Blasts Wreck Homes,” read the headline in the Pittsburgh Press. It reported the arrest of “L.M. Walsh,” along with more than a dozen other local men, and quoted the city’s police chief promising that “every hangout of the I. W. W. and Bolsheviki will be cleaned out.”
The next day mug shots of Walsh and two comrades appeared on the newspaper’s front page, along with photos of bomb fragments. “Walsh,” another paper declared, was “regarded by government officials as one of the most dangerous labor propagandists in the country.”
The bombings were never solved and today are widely believed to have been the work of a tiny group of Italian American anarchists, with only a few dozen members in the entire country. But Wobblies numbered in the tens of thousands, supporters of the Socialist Party in the hundreds of thousands, and participants in the great strikes that were shaking the country in the millions. These were the people whom the authorities used the bombings as an excuse to go after.
Several months after Walsh’s latest arrest, the country’s steelworkers went on strike. In Pittsburgh, three-quarters of steel plants had come to a halt and the companies rushed to surround their mills with rifle-carrying guards and to press sheriffs’ departments to swear in thousands of new deputies. Bitter clashes here and elsewhere left a mounting number of deaths and injuries. Still working with the Wobblies, Walsh was eager to enlist as a supporter of any strike in the region and, it appears, was elected to the steelworkers’ strike committee in the city, for he would later write blow-by-blow accounts of its meetings — including one noting that “there is a great deal of dissention among” strike organizers.
Yet another strike hit in 1919 when Pittsburgh streetcar workers demanded higher wages. The large car barn on the city’s Craft Avenue filled with bedding and mattresses, sleeping quarters for strikebreakers brought in from Philadelphia and New York after Pittsburgh’s drivers and ticket takers walked off the job. Cars that set off down the tracks from the barn carried armed guards. Protesters halted one streetcar by yanking its pole from the power line overhead and throwing bricks, stones, bottles and horseshoes at the strikebreakers. Mounted police had to push through the crowd to rescue the out-of-town crew. At least four of the imported strikebreakers were injured, as well as three police officers, and several streetcars were wrecked.
In the thick of the fighting was Walsh. He later jubilantly described how he had “assisted” a Wobbly companion in breaking into one car with a switch iron, the metal bar used to adjust track switches. The two of them “knocked the motorman and another strike breaker unconscious” while other leftists “were busily engaged breaking windows, beating strike breakers and finally in taking the oily waste from the journal boxes and setting it on fire, in an attempt to burn up the car.”
Curiously, none of Walsh’s IWW friends ever seemed puzzled that this man — repeatedly described in the press as dangerous — was always released within a few days of being arrested. They would have been dismayed if they had known why: “Walsh” was Agent 836 of the Justice Department’s Bureau of Investigation. On one occasion when newspapers reported him in jail he was not behind bars at all but visiting his pregnant girlfriend in Ohio. His real name was Leo M. Wendell.
Back in 1917, the bureau had heard rumors that the IWW was planning to organize in Pittsburgh and an official reported to his superiors that it could be “an easy matter for a clever person to rope in with this outfit” — but that it ought to be someone unknown, from out of town. “Roper” was detective slang for an undercover informer, and the 32-year-old Wendell was the roper chosen. Like many undercover men for the Bureau of Investigation (which would add “Federal” to its name some years later), he had been a private detective.
Despite countless films and novels to the contrary, such detectives were not hard-boiled private eyes with hearts of gold who solved mysterious murders and rescued grateful heiresses from kidnappers. They were foot soldiers in the long-simmering war American business waged on labor. In the early 20th century, theirs was a booming trade: The three largest detective firms alone employed 135,000 agents, and smaller ones many more.
Corporate undercover surveillance had been a profitable business for decades. But American entry into the First World War suddenly created a demand for such operatives from the government. Not only did many liberals and radicals oppose the war, but more than 3 million Americans failed to register for the draft or did not show up when called. Government agencies began worrying about subversives. The previously small Bureau of Investigation expanded dramatically, the Army started a military intelligence branch to spy on civilians, and local police departments began forming red squads and state governments their own leftist-hunting units.
The confidential reports of these thousands of undercover operatives are now often available in archives, but nearly all the agents signed their reports only with code numbers, and we do not know who they were. Leo Wendell was a rare exception, for historian Charles H. McCormick discovered some years ago that for several months at the beginning of Wendell’s Bureau of Investigation career, he signed his reports with his real name, before switching to “836.”
From the moment of his arrival in Pittsburgh, Wendell filed a steady blizzard of reports to his bureau superiors about the Wobblies and other labor and leftist figures of all kinds. Since he left few written traces beyond these documents, we can only guess at what motivated him, leading him not just to infiltrate the IWW but to organize demonstrations and give speeches.
Did he believe that he was defending his country against dangerous threats? Unlikely, for there are no statements of fervent patriotism in the thousands of pages he wrote for the bureau. Was he driven by money? Also improbable, for there were surely more lucrative and less risky ways of earning a living than as an undercover agent making $4 or $5 a day. As with many other spies throughout history, it was more likely the enjoyment of successfully playing a role, with a secret no one around him knew.
Walsh, wrote Pittsburgh’s Gazette Times, “has been traced from coast to coast, always leaving a trail of sedition and labor unrest behind him.”
Sometimes, as if flaunting that role, he writes a report from “836” describing a meeting where “Walsh” was one of the speakers. Wendell took a professional’s pride in how much his IWW friends trusted him. He transcribed for his bureau superiors that handwritten personal letter to him from the comrade who went to New York. When he dutifully sold Industrial Freedom Certificates to raise money for the IWW, he passed the names of the buyers on to the bureau. When his onetime roommate Sam Scarlett was arrested, it was because Wendell told the bureau where to find him in Ohio, where he was by then organizing under another name.
Playing the role of the ultraradical, Wendell did his best to disrupt the activities of every organization he joined. When he became active in the local branch of a national antiwar coalition, the People’s Council of America for Democracy and Peace, he proudly reported starting a “factional fight” with the aim “to break up the Peoples Council.” When there was a proposal to bring the local tailors union into the IWW fold, Wendell told the bureau, “I have discouraged [this] as much as possible without creating suspicion” because “practically all of these Tailors are foreigners and over fifty per cent Italian … and could do great harm” if their numbers augmented the Wobblies. He evidently succeeded, for a few days later the group dropped the plan to include the tailors. “Attended a meeting of the Socialist Party,” he also boasted, “and started another fight within the party by having an Anarchist elected to membership.”
In the months following the Russian Revolution, many of Wendell’s reports concerned Jacob Margolis, a left-wing Pittsburgh lawyer he had befriended. Margolis knew leading radicals all over the country, including Emma Goldman, perhaps the most famous of them all, who corresponded with him from the prison cell where she was serving a two-year sentence for organizing against the draft. Wendell was dismayed, however, when Margolis, a foe of autocracy of all kinds, began denouncing the Russian Bolsheviks, thereby alienating sympathizers of theirs in Pittsburgh whom Wendell was eager to monitor. The life of an undercover agent can be difficult when someone you’re spying on is not as subversive as you want him to be.
Wendell’s hundreds of reports to the bureau — sometimes several pages long and often produced at the rate of a few per week — were all neatly typed on special forms with his code number, 836, in a box in the upper left-hand corner. Where did he type them? He would not have risked doing so in his room at Gibson’s Hotel, or taken the chance of being noticed entering the local Bureau of Investigation office. Most likely the bureau maintained an inconspicuous safe house in some neighborhood where Wendell would not be suspected by his comrades if he were seen.
Bureau officials kept his identity a tightly held secret. At least three other undercover operatives filed reports mentioning the activities of “Walsh,” seemingly convinced they were providing information about a dangerous subversive. Another possibility, however, is that this was a deliberate effort by the bureau to maintain Wendell’s cover, since the bureau shared these reports with other agencies and didn’t want word leaking out that the notorious Walsh was really its own man.
The bureau considered Wendell’s intelligence so valuable that several times he was summoned to Washington or New York to give briefings to a fast-rising young official who had begun his career in the Justice Department the same month Wendell arrived in Pittsburgh: J. Edgar Hoover, impressed with Wendell’s sleuthing, “examined him at great length and had him remain over,” according to Hoover’s record, in 1919, of what was apparently the first meeting between the two men. “I believe there is no better confidential informant in the service,” Hoover wrote the following year.
Evidently the bureau asked Wendell to provoke violence that the public would then blame on radicals, especially the IWW. As Wendell’s role-playing reached new heights, he could barely contain his pleasure. The second paragraph of his report on his 1919 attack on the strikebreakers manning a Pittsburgh streetcar begins: “The day was filled with excitement.” Given his background as a private detective working for corporations, he had most likely fought such battles before — on the side of strikebreakers. But for him the thrill seemed to be in the fighting itself.
That year was filled with other kinds of excitement for Wendell. Hoover was so impressed with his work that he sent him to New York, to see what information he could gather about Emma Goldman. Hoover was readying a deportation case against the anarchist firebrand, who had just been released from prison and whom he would succeed in expelling from the country at the year’s end. Apparently still posing as a Pittsburgh Wobbly, Wendell attended a party for Goldman organized by her niece. He reported that she and her colleague Alexander Berkman were “very much dissatisfied with their attorney, Mr. Harry Weinberger, whom they think has taken all of their money and has not been able to produce any results.” (Wendell may have been manufacturing news he thought would please Hoover, for in Goldman’s autobiography, which does not stint on sharp judgments, she has nothing but praise for Weinberger.)
Wendell was soon busy on another front as well. By now American supporters of the Russian Bolsheviks had formed themselves into two rival Communist parties. Wendell joined the Pittsburgh branch of one and, he reported happily, sowed discord and confusion by telling a party meeting that it “was only a rendezvous for temperamental, hysterical radicals” and that members should leave and join the IWW instead. He then urged both Wobblies and Communists to wrest a local left-wing meeting hall out of the control of the “reactionary” Socialists. Soon afterward, perhaps to allay any suspicions that he was an agent provocateur, the authorities seized him yet again — supposedly for helping foment a strike of railway workers. To the pleasure of his handlers, no doubt, this “well known I. W. W. agitator” once more made the front pages of Pittsburgh’s newspapers.
In 1920, Hoover sent Wendell on another mission to New York to socialize with radical activists there. It appears to have been on this trip that Wendell investigated the American Civil Liberties Union, which had been operating for several years but had recently adopted a new name. He informed Hoover that the group had “unlimited financial backing” — news that might have surprised its tiny staff — and that it was determined to support “free speech, free press, etcetera” for everybody, “no matter whether they be anarchists, IWW, Communists or whatever.”
As the 1920s continued, some of the country’s tensions subsided. Despite the fears of the authorities, the Russian Revolution did not spread to the United States. Weakened by several years of harsh repression that began in 1917, the labor movement shrank; even the resolutely moderate American Federation of Labor lost a million members. The Socialist Party and the Wobblies, after seeing so many of their leaders jailed and their newspapers and magazines forced to cease publishing, would never regain their former influence. The vast number of union-busting private detectives in the United States appears to have somewhat diminished.
Leo Wendell, meanwhile, enjoyed playing roles so much that he finally played too many. After he worked undercover in a new job with the Employers’ Association of Pittsburgh, in 1924, a labor newspaper discovered who he was and blew his cover. He then moved to Detroit and started an aboveground life, launching a detective and public relations agency, which he called, with a triumphant flourish invoking his Pittsburgh alias, Wendell, Walsh and Brown. There is no clue who Brown was — or if he even existed.
Wendell did not lose the love of violence that had been so visible when he beat senseless those strikebreakers on a Pittsburgh streetcar. He now worked for a time as a grand jury investigator but lost one such job when, according to an account of the case, “the special prosecutor learned that [Wendell’s] methods of acquiring information included dangling recalcitrant witnesses by their heels from upper story hotel windows.”
Such practices did not prevent Wendell from winning a commission in the intelligence branch of the Michigan State Troops, predecessor to the Michigan National Guard, where he rose to lieutenant colonel before pneumonia and heart troubles ended his life in 1945. He left a house in Michigan, vacation homes in Canada and Florida, no will and some angry creditors; untangling these matters kept lawyers busy for years.
He also left four children born to three women, only one of whom he was married to at the time of the child’s birth. Did he deploy some of his con artist’s skills in these relationships, promising eternal love to one woman while having his eye on the next? We cannot tell. One of the few things we know is that his legal widow managed to seize from a safe-deposit box money he had set aside for his last lover, the mother of one of his children. The widow left her rival a taunting note in the empty box: “Find what you were looking for?”
Several obituaries, presumably based on an account left by Wendell or told by him to family members, declared that it was he who made the famous seizure of an attache’s briefcase on a New York City elevated train in 1915 that helped unravel Germany’s First World War American spy network. It made for a great story. All historians, however, credit another agent. Evidence suggests that Wendell was a private detective in Cleveland at that time, having nothing to do with pursuing German spies. Yet none of the newspapers published retractions. Leo Wendell had successfully pulled off one last, posthumous con job.
Adam Hochschild is the author of 11 books. This article is adapted from his latest, to be published this week by Mariner Books, “American Midnight: The Great War, a Violent Peace, and Democracy’s Forgotten Crisis.” | 2022-09-28T14:07:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The zeal and fate of Louis Walsh, a foot soldier in the early 1900s labor wars - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/28/louis-walsh-labor-wars/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/09/28/louis-walsh-labor-wars/ |
But what’s healthy is a fraught topic — and the federal government has a spotty record
A nutrition label on the side of a cereal box in January 2014. (J. David Ake/AP)
The agency is also in the process of developing a symbol that companies can voluntarily use to label food products that meet federal guidelines for that term.
The announcement comes ahead of Wednesday’s White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health. The conference is the first of its kind since 1969, when a summit hosted by the Nixon administration led to major expansions of food stamps, school lunches and other programs that have been credited with reducing hunger nationally and providing a critical safety net during the pandemic.
Once finalized, the FDA’s new system will “quickly and easily communicate nutrition information” through a system such as “star ratings or traffic light schemes to promote equitable access to nutrition information and healthier choices,” the White House said in a statement earlier this week. The system “can also prompt industry to reformulate their products to be healthier,” it said.
Obesity among children ages 5 to 11 rises during the pandemic
Six in 10 American adults have chronic lifestyle-related diseases, often stemming from obesity and poor diet, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC says these diseases are the leading cause of death and disability and a leading driver in the nation’s $4.1 trillion in annual health-care costs.
And the obesity epidemic is not moving in the right direction: Studies show obesity, especially among children, rose significantly during the pandemic, with the greatest change among children ages 5 to 11, who gained an average of more than five pounds. Before the pandemic, about 36 percent of 5-to-11-year-olds were considered overweight or obese; during the pandemic, that increased to 45.7 percent.
Latin America’s war on obesity could be a model for U.S.
Groups such as the Center for Science in the Public Interest have long petitioned the agency to adopt mandatory, standardized and evidence-based front-of-package labeling. Front-of-package nutrition labeling, they say, will reach more consumers than the “Nutrition Facts” on the backs of packages, helping them quickly choose healthier foods and spurring companies to reformulate products in a more healthful direction. According to nutrition experts, Americans generally consume too much sodium, added sugars and saturated fat in their packaged foods, so to be able to quickly identify foods that are high or low in those nutrients would be a significant public health benefit.
The Biden administration has endorsed the FDA’s efforts to crack down on sodium intake, strengthening the agency’s announcement last year that it would have food companies and restaurants reduce sodium in the foods they make by about 12 percent over the next 2½ years. In a parallel effort, it suggests the FDA reduce Americans’ sugar consumption by “including potential voluntary targets” for food manufacturers’ sugar content.
New labeling language is sure to be controversial among food manufacturers that have sought to capitalize on Americans’ interest in healthier food.
“The FDA’s ‘healthy’ definition can succeed only if it is clear and consistent for manufacturers and understood by consumers,” Roberta Wagner, a spokeswoman for the industry organization Consumer Brands Association, said Tuesday.
But what constitutes “healthy” food is a thorny topic among nutrition experts. Would foods high in what many nutrition scientists call “good fats,” such as almonds or avocados, be deemed “unhealthy,” whereas artificially sweetened fruit snacks or reduced-fat sugary yogurts might be considered “healthy”?
How the Trump administration limited the scope of the USDA’s 2020 dietary guidelines
The FDA started a public process to update the “healthy” nutrient content claim for food labeling in 2016. But critics have said that the dietary guidelines have often failed to focus on the right things: During the Trump administration, for instance, the 2020 dietary guidelines committee was forbidden from considering the health effects of consuming red meat, ultra-processed foods and sodium.
Federal nutrition guidance has experienced some significant pendulum swings. For many years, recommendations were based upon intuitive, but wrong, thinking: Eating fat makes us fat. Eating too much cholesterol gives us high cholesterol.
Newer guidelines put an emphasis on eating a plant-based diet, including vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds. They maintain a hard line about limiting your salt and saturated fat intake, but state simply that cholesterol is “not a nutrient of concern,” doing away with the long-standing 300-milligram-per-day limit. | 2022-09-28T14:16:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The FDA will issue new front-of-package labeling guidance for American food manufacturers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/28/white-house-conference-food-labels-healthy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/28/white-house-conference-food-labels-healthy/ |
This combination of photos shows, from left, Tom Llamas, host of “Top Story with Tom Llamas,” Linsey Davis on the set of “ABC News Live Prime with Linsey Davis,” and John Dickerson, host of “CBS News Prime Time with John Dickerson.” (NBC/ABC/CBS via AP) (Uncredited/NBC/ABC/CBS)
The launch of John Dickerson's “CBS News Prime Time” in September means that all three news divisions have unique streaming newscasts at night, a nod to the future and bid to reach young people who aren’t watching television at dinnertime.
Dickerson’s newscast debuted nearly a year after NBC's “Top Story” with Tom Llamas. ABC's “Live Prime” with Linsey Davis started in February 2020. Each streams live for at least an hour starting at 7 p.m. Eastern and are repeated later in the evening. All can be seen for free. | 2022-09-28T14:21:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Network nightly newscasts morph, adapt for the streaming age - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/network-nightly-newscasts-morph-adapt-for-the-streaming-age/2022/09/28/8db2ac14-3f35-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/network-nightly-newscasts-morph-adapt-for-the-streaming-age/2022/09/28/8db2ac14-3f35-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
2 LUCY BY THE SEA (Random House, $28.) By Elizabeth Strout. Lucy Barton and her ex-husband, William, hunker down in small-town Maine as the pandemic sends the world into lockdown.
3 THE BULLET THAT MISSED (Pamela Dorman, $27.) By Richard Osman. In the most recent Thursday Murder Club novel, four senior citizens investigate a cold case involving a reporter who disappeared while working on a dangerous story.
4 THE MARRIAGE PORTRAIT (Knopf, $28). By Maggie O’Farrell. In 16th-century Italy, young Lucrezia de’ Medici fears that her new husband, Duke Alfonso II, wants to murder her.
5 CARRIE SOTO IS BACK (Ballantine, $28). By Taylor Jenkins Reid. A once world-ranked tennis player attempts a comeback after having retired.
6 NONA THE NINTH (Tordotcom, $28.99.) By Tamsyn Muir. The third novel in the fantastical Locked Tomb series follows Nona after she wakes up in someone else’s body with no memory of her past.
7 LESS IS LOST (Little, Brown, $29.) By Andrew Sean Greer. In this sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Less,” a financial crisis sends a hapless author around the country in search of money.
10 TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW, AND TOMORROW (Knopf, $28). By Gabrielle Zevin. Two friends run a successful video design company while testing the boundaries of their relationship.
1 I’M GLAD MY MOM DIED (Simon & Schuster, $27.99). By Jennette McCurdy. The former Nickelodeon actor details her dysfunctional childhood and the resulting psychological distress she faced as an adult.
2 THE DIVIDER: TRUMP IN THE WHITE HOUSE, 2017-2021 (Doubleday, $32.) By Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. Two political journalists chronicle the crises that plagued Donald Trump’s presidency.
3 WHAT IF? 2: ADDITIONAL SERIOUS SCIENTIFIC ANSWERS TO ABSURD HYPOTHETICAL QUESTIONS (Riverhead, $30.) By Randall Munroe. Munroe, a former NASA roboticist and creator of the webcomic “xkcd,” responds to ludicrous questions using research and science.
4 DINNERS WITH RUTH: A MEMOIR ON THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIPS (Simon & Schuster, $27.99.) By Nina Totenberg. The NPR correspondent delves into her 50-year friendship with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as well as other formative relationships that shaped her.
5 STARRY MESSENGER: COSMIC PERSPECTIVES ON CIVILIZATION (Henry Holt and Co., $28.99.) By Neil deGrasse Tyson. The astrophysicist considers contemporary issues driving people apart through the lens of science.
8 THE MOSQUITO BOWL: A GAME OF LIFE AND DEATH IN WORLD WAR II (Harper, $32.50.) By Buzz Bissinger. The “Friday Night Lights” author revisits a 1944 football game between two Marine regiments on Guadalcanal and explores what became of the players destined for Okinawa.
9 PROFILES IN IGNORANCE: HOW AMERICA’S POLITICIANS GOT DUMB AND DUMBER (Avid Reader/Simon & Schuster, $28.99.) By Andy Borowitz. The New Yorker satirist posits that mass media has encouraged the American electorate to vote for politicians with stage presence instead of brain power.
10 DINNER IN ONE: EXCEPTIONAL & EASY ONE-PAN MEALS (Clarkson Potter, $29.99). By Melissa Clark. Recipes using a single pan and minimal time. | 2022-09-28T14:21:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Post hardcover bestsellers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/washington-post-hardcover-bestsellers/2022/09/28/04fd4bd2-3e67-11ed-b420-0e634b26f676_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/washington-post-hardcover-bestsellers/2022/09/28/04fd4bd2-3e67-11ed-b420-0e634b26f676_story.html |
Sophia Lillis shifts from scary movies to the panic of live theater
With Studio Theatre’s ‘Heroes of the Fourth Turning,’ the 20-year-old star of the ‘It’ films and ‘I Am Not Okay With This’ takes on a new terror: Acting in front of an audience
Sophia Lillis, left, with Laura C. Harris in “Heroes of the Fourth Turning” at Studio Theatre. (Margot Schulman)
Sophia Lillis is no stranger to the realm of make-believe terror. For a 20-year-old actress who has already filmed not one but two projects that involved being drenched from head to toe in fake blood — the horror blockbuster “It” and Netflix’s supernatural series “I Am Not Okay With This” — trafficking in fear is all in a day’s work.
So after trotting the globe from one sprawling film set to another, Lillis decided to face down some real-life anxiety by pursuing work onstage. Having met writer Will Arbery at an industry party a few months ago and subsequently devoured his play “Heroes of the Fourth Turning,” Lillis auditioned for and booked a production of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize finalist at D.C.’s Studio Theatre that runs through Oct. 23.
Sure, Lillis shot the fantasy epic “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” last year in Northern Ireland, as well as Wes Anderson’s star-studded “Asteroid City” in Spain. But stepping onstage in Studio’s 218-seat Mead Theatre eight times a week? That’s a nerve-rattling endeavor for one of Hollywood’s most magnetic rising talents.
“It’s very, very, very, very different,” Lillis says during an interview earlier this month at Studio’s 14th Street space. “I don’t know why I do this to myself. I’m like, ‘Okay, so I did this thing. Now let me try to do something completely different in a totally different environment and be completely frazzled.’ Because apparently I like that? I don’t know, maybe this is my way of being a thrill seeker.”
Set around a fire pit in a Wyoming backyard, where a late-night celebration among a group of conservative millennials grows combative, “Heroes” makes for a piercing deconstruction of evangelical ideals, right-wing moralism and intergenerational politics. Lillis plays the chronically ill Emily, the youngest, most open-minded member of the four friends on hand and the daughter of the local Catholic college’s newly appointed president.
“She is an exquisite and absolutely riveting performer,” director Sivan Battat says of Lillis. “It’s a really challenging play — politically, spiritually. The text of it is really intellectual, and she has brought a lot of wisdom and a lot of really interesting reflections on the character and on the world of the play into the rehearsal room.”
Lillis isn’t entirely new to theater: As a child studying at the Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute in Manhattan, she played Winthrop Paroo in “The Music Man.” (“Could not sing at all,” she recalls. “But it doesn’t matter when you’re 8 and playing a little boy — the voice cracks are an acting choice!”) After she spent her teenage years jumping from one on-screen project to another, her desire to circle back to the stage only grew.
“I love TV, and I love film,” says Lillis, who earned plaudits for her leading roles in the 2019 movie “Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase” and 2020’s “Uncle Frank.” “But I felt like in order to broaden and get better at acting, you have to learn how to do theater. It’s kind of really scary.”
Lillis chuckles, lets that remark sit for a beat, then blurts out “oops” and continues: “I don’t know why I keep saying things that are probably going to sound bad. But it’s kind of an intimidating leap, to go into the theater world after being so accustomed to just being in front of [a] camera.”
The endearingly unassuming mind-set is a constant throughout the interview. “Sorry if I’m mumbling a lot — I have a very limited vocabulary,” Lillis says, through nervous laughter. After another answer, she apologizes: “This is very, very vague and not helpful to you at all.”
It’s that refreshing lack of ego that Lillis’s collaborators say carries over to the rehearsal hall, where the actress has eagerly learned the ins and outs of performing onstage while still bringing experience and maturity that belie her youthful exuberance.
“She doesn’t need you to know she’s in the room,” co-star Laura C. Harris says. “But she’s always listening, she’s always observing, and then she will make her point with just incredibly well-thought-out and incisive and emotionally intelligent insights. And there’s a worldliness there that you might not find with all people her age.”
That aids Lillis in her portrayal of Emily, who, at age 25, is five years older than the actress. Lillis says she was drawn to the character by her inherent empathy, and the implication that Emily’s desire to understand others’ anguish is fueled by — and possibly fuels — her own unnamed illness. To better comprehend Emily’s conservative ideology and medical condition, Lillis pored over various texts sent by the Studio staff and perused Dupont Circle’s Second Story Books for further resources. Lillis’s Catholic upbringing offered a window in Emily’s deep faith as well.
“She tries to understand what other people are thinking and tries to empathize with them and tries to feel for them, and I think she does it so much that it hurts her,” Lillis says. “Each character has their own ways of dealing with their inner turmoil and their faith and their views and how they rationalize them. But Emily has her own way of dealing with it, also having all of this pain and using that pain to connect with other people. And I just thought that was such a beautiful thing.”
When it comes to channeling such suffering, Battat praises Lillis for being able “to convey this complex and often painful interior of a character while also staying present in the scene.” It’s a raw vulnerability Lillis has tapped into before: She played an abuse victim in the “It” films, a teen struggling with self-harm in the 2018 HBO limited series “Sharp Objects” and an outcast working through adolescent anxiety in 2020’s “I Am Not Okay With This.”
“I think those are the most interesting characters to play,” Lillis explains. “I mean, to have a character that doesn’t have any inner turmoil or trauma to go through, it’s kind of unrealistic. Everyone is going through something. To really try to be these characters and understand them and love them … it’s more fun, it’s more realistic, and I think you learn a lot.”
After completing “Heroes,” Lillis figures she’ll end the year by heading back to Brooklyn — she has moved into her own place, four blocks from her family home — and taking some time off. Asked what kind of stage roles she’d like to play going forward, Lillis demurs: “I don’t know. Who can I play? Let’s see how well this goes.”
She then catches herself one last time. “That was a joke,” she exclaims. Lowering her eyes, she speaks directly to the voice recorder in front of her and reasserts: “That was a joke.”
Whatever comes next, Lillis feels “Heroes” will leave her better equipped as an actress — not just to work onstage, but to take on more mature characters, after making a name for herself as a teenage scream queen and coming-of-age heroine.
“With film, I look pretty young,” Lillis says. “But with theater, I think there’s a bit of a flexibility in being able to take the next step into playing actually, you know, an adult. It feels a little intimidating — just slightly. But I’m happy about this next step.”
Studio Theatre, 1501 14th St NW. 202-332-3300. studiotheatre.org. | 2022-09-28T14:22:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sophia Lillis shifts from movies to live theater with D.C. stage role - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/09/28/sophia-lillis-heroes-fourth-turning/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/09/28/sophia-lillis-heroes-fourth-turning/ |
How Lizzo came to play a president’s crystal flute on a D.C. stage
A day before Lizzo’s public performance, she spent a private afternoon at the Library of Congress, playing several flutes from its impressive collection.
Pop star Lizzo played various collectible flutes in the Reading Room and flute vault at the Library of Congress's Great Hall on Sept. 27 in Washington, D.C. (Video: The Washington Post)
But before that public performance came a series of private moments at the Library of Congress that proved powerful for those who witnessed them and led to that flute ending up in the singer’s hands at the concert. On a day when the Library was closed to the public, Lizzo spent an afternoon exploring its massive flute collection and trying out several of the historic instruments.
“She is amazingly talented,” said Carol Lynn Ward-Bamford, who serves as the curator for the flute collection. She said she handed Lizzo more than a half dozen different types of flutes and she could play them all.
At times that day, as Lizzo played, some of the people who came with her sang and danced.
The Library has nearly 2,000 flutes, which make up the largest collection in the world. Most of those flutes were collected by physicist Dayton C. Miller and were left to the Library through his will.
One of the flutes in the collection belonged to Frederick the Great, the king of Prussia. Another was made by Miller out of 22 carat gold. He crafted its keys from 18 carat gold. But his collection didn’t only include instruments. It also included about 3,000 rare books on the flute and 10,000 pieces of music for the instrument.
Lizzo’s tour took her into the “flute vault” where she would have seen flutes made of wood, jade, ivory and other material. One of the flutes she played that day is made of plexiglass and was created at a time when that material was first invented. There is only one other flute like it in the world.
She also played the Madison flute that day for the first time. Ward-Bamford described its history “as really fascinating in and of itself.”
It was made by Claude Laurent in Paris in 1813. That date and his name is engraved on the flute. Ward-Bamford said that technology has allowed researchers to discover that some of Laurent’s crystal flutes weren’t actually made of crystal, but the one he made for Madison was. A letter written by Laurent to Madison also revealed that he personally sent the flute to the president — and that the president failed to say thank you.
“Mr. President, I took the liberty of sending to you about three years ago, a crystal flute of my invention,” a translation of the letter reads. “Please allow me to express to you the desire that I would have to learn if it has reached you and if this feeble homage of my industry has been agreeable to you. I beg you to please accept the homage of the most distinguished respect with which I have the honor of being, Mr. President, your very humble and obedient.”
There is also evidence that Dolley Madison saved the flute as the British attempted to burn Washington.
We wouldn’t, of course, be talking about any of this if it weren’t for Lizzo. If you are a fan of hers, it’s easy to appreciate the significance of seeing her use her flute skills to revive a part of forgotten history. But even if you’re not, it’s hard to deny that what she achieved this week is impressive — she made going to the library cool.
She united self-described band nerds, history buffs and librarians, all by accepting an invite from the 14th Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden to check out the flute collection. The invite came in the form of a tweet.
“The @librarycongress has the largest flute collection in the world with more than 1,800,” Hayden tweeted on Sept 23. “It incl Pres James Madison’s 1813 crystal flute. @lizzo we would love for you to come see it and even play a couple when you are in DC next week. Like your song they are ‘Good as hell.’”
Brett Zongker, a spokesman for the Library of Congress, was there the day Lizzo played that flute and others. He said Hayden has talked about “opening up the treasure chest that is the Library of Congress and just sharing all that’s here with more people” and Lizzo helped make that happen.
When Lizzo asked if she could play the flute at her concert, Zongker said the Library’s collection, preservation and security teams were up to the challenge. It was placed in a customized protective container and accompanied to the arena by Ward-Bamford and a security officer.
The moment when Ward-Bamford walked the instrument onstage and handed it to Lizzo marked just the most visible step in the security process, he said.
“I want everybody to make some noise for James Madison’s crystal flute, y’all!” Lizzo shouted before playing a few notes.
They made noise in that moment and in the hours that followed as people online continued to talk about a flute many didn’t know existed a week ago.
“We just made history tonight!” she said. “Thank you to the Library of Congress for preserving our history and making history freaking cool!” | 2022-09-28T15:04:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Lizzo came to play a president’s crystal flute on a D.C. stage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/28/lizzo-concert-madison-president-flute-library-congress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/28/lizzo-concert-madison-president-flute-library-congress/ |
Kyiv slams staged referendum as Russian ‘propaganda show,’ vows retribution
Denis Pushilin, head of the separatist self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, left, and the secretary of the United Russia party's General Council, Andrey Turchak, spoke at a news conference in Moscow on Sept. 28 to promote Russia's plans to annex occupied areas of Ukraine. (Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters)
The Ukrainian government on Wednesday denounced Russia’s staged referendums in four partially occupied regions as “a propaganda show” and vowed to track down and punish the organizers, including any Ukrainian citizens, while Moscow proclaimed the votes a major success and basis for annexation.
“The Russian Federation organized a propaganda show,” the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “Forcing people in these territories to fill out some papers at the barrel of a gun is yet another Russian crime in the course of its aggression against Ukraine.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pledged to “defend” the citizens of the four regions — Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia — where the Kremlin and its proxies claim residents have voted in favor of joining Russia by absurd margins, in some cases, of more than 90 percent.
On Wednesday, the two leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s republics, Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, traveled to Moscow and appealed to Russian President Vladimir Putin to officially absorb their areas into Russia.
Such a step would require Putin’s approval and, technically, a vote by the Russian parliament, although the ultimate outcome is not in any doubt.
Vyacheslav Volodin, the speaker of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament, announced that he had called an extraordinary session on Monday, signaling that the formal ratification of annexation could occur within matter of a few days.
Western governments have denounced the process as a “sham” and have said they will not recognize Russia’s seizure of sovereign Ukrainian territory.
Russian state media have reported that Putin is expected to deliver a state of the union speech Friday, during which he could declare Russia’s annexation of the four regions — although Moscow does not fully control any of them, either militarily or politically. Putin could also simultaneously call for a drastic escalation of the war in Ukraine.
The Kremlin has yet to confirm when, or if, Putin might make a public appearance.
The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said the results of Russia’s performative referendums, as well as annexation procedures, would not change Kyiv’s military objective, which is to reclaim all occupied lands, including Crimea, which Russia invaded and annexed illegally in 2014.
Ukrainian forces, capitalizing on their recent successful counteroffensive in northeast Ukraine, have been making further advances, including northwest of Lyman in the eastern Donetsk region, which has been at the center of intense fighting in recent days.
The Russian Defense Ministry, in its daily briefing on the war, claimed that a Ukrainian attack had been repelled, but pro-Russian military bloggers said the situation in the area was “tense.”
“The situation on this front is becoming tenser every day,” war correspondent Semyon Pegov, whose WarGonzo Telegram channel has more than a million followers, said.
Pegov added that Ukrainian artillery fire was disrupting the Russian forces’ last logistical supply route to Lyman and that Ukrainian reconnaissance and sabotage groups had been spotted just a few miles away from the town.
If Ukraine captures Lyman, Russian units there risk being surrounded, in what could be another serious blow to Putin’s flagging campaign.
The Kremlin, meanwhile, is scrambling to portray its “special military operation” as a success to a Russian public highly unsettled by Putin’s declaration last week of a “partial” mobilization intended to call up hundreds of thousands of reservists as reinforcements.
Thousands of men as well as some women working in health care have been called up, while a comparable stream of people continues to flee the country to avoid conscription.
There have been widespread reports in Russian media of men in their 50s and 60s receiving military summonses, along with fighting-age men who are unfit for service due to health conditions or should otherwise be legally exempt.
With entry to Europe severely limited, caravans of vehicles and people have been lining up at the borders of Georgia and Kazakhstan, which have emerged as two main transit hubs. Russians have reported spending days trying to reach border checkpoints, in some cases running out of gas, food and water in the process. Those who cross into neighboring countries are confronting a lack of accommodation or transport in border towns now overflowing with new Russian migrants.
“It’s just hell there,” said Yana, a 28-year-old woman from Moscow who crossed into Georgia by bicycle on Tuesday night with her boyfriend, who is also 28. They had waited for three days near the Verkhniy Lars checkpoint. The couple spoke to The Washington Post and asked to be identified only with Yana’s first name for fear of reprisal.
With few, if any seats, available on commercial flights out of Russia in coming days, the U.S. Embassy in Moscow on Wednesday repeated a previous warning that all American citizens should leave the country immediately.
“U.S. citizens should not travel to Russia and those residing or traveling in Russia should depart Russia immediately while limited commercial travel options remain,” the embassy said in a statement. “The U.S. Embassy has severe limitations on its ability to assist U.S. citizens, and conditions, including transportation options, may suddenly become even more limited.”
The U.S. Embassy also issued a reminder to citizens with dual U.S.-Russian citizenship that they could be conscripted. “Russia may refuse to acknowledge dual nationals’ U.S. citizenship, deny their access to U.S. consular assistance, prevent their departure from Russia, and conscript dual nationals for military service,” the embassy said.
In Washington, the Biden administration was reportedly working to agree on a new package of nearly $12 billion in additional military and financial aid to Ukraine.
The United States on Tuesday evening also said it introduced a resolution at the U.N. Security Council calling on its members to condemn the staged referendums and call on Russia to withdraw its troops. | 2022-09-28T15:21:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kyiv slams staged votes as ‘propaganda show’ and vows to punish Russians occupiers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/kyiv-slams-staged-votes-propaganda-show-vows-punish-occupiers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/kyiv-slams-staged-votes-propaganda-show-vows-punish-occupiers/ |
As protests rage on, Iran carries out strikes against Kurds in Iraq
By Mustafa Salim
Fighters with the Kurdish Komala Party inspect damage Wednesday after an attack on their headquarters in Iraq's Sulaymaniyah province. (Gailan Haji/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
BAGHDAD — Iran carried out deadly cross-border attacks Wednesday in northern Iraq, targeting the headquarters of three Iranian Kurdish opposition parties who support the ongoing demonstrations inside Iran.
The missile and drone strikes killed at least nine people and wounded more than 30, including civilians and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Saman Barzanji, the health minister, said ambulances have struggled to reach some of the affected areas, which are in remote, mountainous regions, and the death toll is expected to rise.
The Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran confirmed the deaths of two of its members, while the leader of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, Hussein Yazdanpanah, told Kurdish media his group had endured “heavy losses.”
One of the strikes hit a civilian area, close to an elementary school. Footage circulating on social media showed children screaming and running for shelter behind rocky outcroppings.
“It was a quiet morning until the sound of bombing shook our house,” said Salar Ali, a 47-year-old farmer from Koysanjak. He immediately rushed toward the school, where he was reunited with his 10-year-old son.
“We are a quiet, peaceful village and we don’t deserve what is happening to us,” he said.
The Iranian Revolutionary Guard claimed responsibility for the attacks against what it called “bases operated by separatist terrorists,” and vowed to continue targeting Kurdish groups. The Iranian military, meanwhile, carried out artillery attacks for a fifth day on several areas bordering Irbil province. Those attacks have not resulted in any casualties.
But the strikes underscore the unease in the Iranian government over the protests that have rocked the country for nearly two weeks. They began after Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, fell into a coma and died after being detained by the country’s “morality police.” Dozens of protesters have been killed and hundreds injured in the ensuing crackdown, according to rights groups.
The protests began in Iran’s predominantly Kurdish west, where Amini was from, and which shares a border with Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region.
“The Iranian ambassador in Baghdad will be summoned urgently to hand him a strongly worded protest note as a result of the ongoing bombing operations,” Iraq’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ahmed Al-Sahaf, said in a statement.
The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq also condemned the attacks, saying, “The bombing of opposition headquarters with missiles by the Islamic Republic of Iran, under any pretext, is an incorrect behavior, a distortion of the course of events, and a source of astonishment.”
It was the first Iranian attack inside Iraq since March, when the Revolutionary Guard claimed a missile strike on an empty villa in Irbil owned by a Kurdish oil tycoon, who was apparently targeted for being involved in energy talks with Israel. In July, at least eight Iraqi tourists were killed in the north when Turkish artillery strikes against alleged Kurdish militants hit a crowded resort area. | 2022-09-28T15:26:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As protests rage on, Iran carries out strikes against Kurds in Iraq - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/iraq-iran-strikes-protests-kurdistan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/iraq-iran-strikes-protests-kurdistan/ |
The Cavaliers take on the Blue Devils at 7:30 p.m. Saturday
Virginia running back Perris Jones (2) had 76 yards and a touchdown on 11 carries in the second half of last week's loss to Syracuse. (AP Photo/Adrian Kraus)
The Virginia football team had failed to accomplish much offensively during the first half of its most recent game last week, compelling first-year coach Tony Elliott to issue a stern challenge to his players in the subdued locker room.
The message focused on not simply reducing but eliminating self-inflicted errors such as false starts and holding penalties that plagued the Cavaliers to that point in their ACC opener against Syracuse and had them trailing, 16-0, Friday night at JMA Wireless Dome.
With a rejuvenated attitude and far cleaner execution, Virginia stormed back to claim a one-point lead late in the fourth quarter before the Orange kicked a field goal for a 22-20 triumph that became certain when Syracuse batted down quarterback Brennan Armstrong’s fourth-down pass with 27 seconds to play.
Still, without drawing any satisfaction in a moral victory, the Cavaliers (2-2, 0-1 ACC), who face Duke Saturday night in Durham, N.C., acknowledged they are moving closer to resembling the prolific attack for which Armstrong, a fifth-year senior, set program records in total offense and passing last year.
“It’s an excellent show as to what we can be as a group, the kind of pressure that we can apply to defenses and to carry that forward and not just make it a second-half display but a four-quarter display,” Virginia running back Perris Jones said. “I think if we can do that and help our defense out, then it would be beneficial for us.”
For the stagnant offense that meant getting the running game in gear after amassing only 43 yards during the first half, allowing Syracuse’s defense to concentrate almost exclusively on limiting Armstrong’s bids to jump-start the passing game.
The Cavaliers amassed 106 rushing yards in the second half, primarily between the tackles. Syracuse, according to Elliott, had placed a premium on not allowing runners to turn the corner on the perimeter, so he and offensive coordinator Des Kitchings modified their tactics.
Jones thrived the most thereafter, providing the vast majority of the pop up the middle for 77 yards and one touchdown on 10 carries in the second half. The senior from Alexandria who was a standout at Episcopal High School scored on a four-yard run with 9:26 to go in the third quarter to draw Virginia within 16-13.
Jones had just three carries for 11 yards before halftime in the Cavaliers’ first game without a point in the first half since they lost to Notre Dame, 28-3, Nov. 13, 2021, in Charlottesville. Armstrong, then nursing sore ribs, did not play against the Fighting Irish.
“Offensively another situation early in the game [when] guys started to panic and go away from the things that we’ve been teaching them to do and just trying to play ball,” Elliott said. “That’s just not who I am. That’s not who we are as a program, and because of that we’re not playing complementary football.
“Defense gave us some short fields. We couldn’t capitalize. As soon as we hit a big play, then we have a mental mistake. You know, we have a holding call, a false start, something that gets us behind the chains, and we knew going in there’s going to be a lot of junk going on in the interior with their multiple fronts, but I give the guys credit. They fought back.”
A defensive gaffe on the part of the Cavaliers, however, led to the decisive points on kicker Andre Szmyt’s 31-yard field goal, his fifth of the game, with 1:14 to play in the fourth quarter.
Early in the series on third and seven from the Orange 41, linebacker Hunter Stewart sacked quarterback Garrett Shrader for a six-yard loss but was called for a deflating face mask penalty. An offside infraction on Virginia moments later moved the ball to its 13-yard line.
The promising second half nonetheless has buoyed spirits this week during practice ahead of a showdown against an opponent the Cavaliers have beaten seven consecutive times but ranks third in the ACC in total offense (461 yards per game), including fourth in rushing (188.5 yards per game).
The memory of last year’s 48-0 thumping of the Blue Devils (3-1, 0-0) also engenders confidence an upswing might be at hand. In that game at Scott Stadium, Armstrong threw for 364 yards and two touchdowns, and the defense yielded 325 total yards and collected two interceptions.
“Nobody likes to lose, but we’ve seen the potential we have if we start fast and start out the right way rather than having to worry about trying to pick it up on the back side,” Cavaliers senior linebacker Chico Bennett said. “No one wants to do that, but it’s life. It’s the game of football. I think we’re going to be all right.” | 2022-09-28T15:48:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia hopes last week’s second-half surge ignites winning stretch - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/28/virginia-football-offense-struggles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/28/virginia-football-offense-struggles/ |
Katie Couric, cancer-screening advocate, announces her own diagnosis
Katie Couric, seen this month at the Global Citizen Festival in New York, announced Wednesday that she was diagnosed with breast cancer and has undergone surgery and radiation. (Caitlin Ochs/Reuters)
Katie Couric announced Wednesday that she was diagnosed with breast cancer in June and has undergone surgery and radiation treatment. In a first-person essay posted to her website, the news media personality, 65, said she received the Stage 1 diagnosis after missing an annual mammogram.
Couric has been a public advocate for preventive screenings since her first husband, Jay Monahan, died of colon cancer in 1998, when he was 42 years old. In 2000, while working for the “Today” show, Couric got a colonoscopy on air to encourage viewers to do so as well. Studies found that the segment led to a considerable rise in colonoscopies; in Wednesday’s post, Couric said the rate rose by 20 percent.
More than a decade ago, Couric co-founded the organization Stand Up to Cancer. In 2018, she accompanied television host Jimmy Kimmel to his first colonoscopy, which he also aired on his late-night show.
In addition to Monahan, Couric’s sister Emily and mother-in-law Carol died of different cancers. Couric stated that “there were better outcomes for others in my family,” including her mother, who kept non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma “at bay for a decade,” and her father, who had prostate cancer. Couric’s current husband, John Molner, had a tumor removed from his liver shortly before their wedding in 2014.
“But breast cancer — that was a new one; I had practically become an expert on colon and pancreatic cancers, but no one in my family had ever had breast cancer,” she recalled of her response to her diagnosis. “During that 24-hour whirlwind, I found out that 85 percent of the 264,000 American women who are diagnosed every year in this country have no family history. I clearly had a lot to learn.”
Couric said she had a tumor removed from her breast in mid-July and began radiation a few weeks ago. Tuesday marked her final round: “I was warned that I may be fatigued and my skin may turn a little pink. … My left breast does look like I’ve been sunbathing topless, but other than that, I’ve felt fine,” she wrote.
Striking a similar tone to when actress Jane Fonda announced her non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma diagnosis this month, Couric noted how “lucky” she felt to have access to quality care. She felt “grateful and guilty — and angry that there’s a de facto caste system when it comes to healthcare in America.”
She concluded the post by urging readers to schedule their annual mammograms, which she missed by just six months, and to find out if they might need to get additional screenings.
“To reap the benefits of modern medicine,” she wrote, “we need to stay on top of our screenings, advocate for ourselves, and make sure everyone has access to the diagnostic tools that could very well save their life.” | 2022-09-28T15:52:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Katie Couric announces breast cancer diagnosis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/28/katie-couric-breast-cancer-diagnosis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/28/katie-couric-breast-cancer-diagnosis/ |
Trump-backed candidate courts Black voters at Maryland’s largest HBCU
Del. Dan Cox, a Maryland state legislator who is the Republican nominee for governor of Maryland, talks to reporters in Annapolis, Md., on June 30, 2022, while he was preparing for the GOP primary. Cox was endorsed by former president Donald Trump in the primary. (Brian Witte/AP)
From the little information that Charles Ederson, a young Black senior majoring in political science, had gleaned about Del. Dan Cox (R-Frederick), Maryland’s Republican nominee for governor, he knew their politics did not align.
But Ederson was open-minded, he said, so he planted himself near the front of the nearly empty student center theater at Morgan State University, Maryland’s largest historically Black university, on Tuesday night to see if the Trump-endorsed Republican candidate could “really influence how I feel about the Maryland gubernatorial race.”
Cox was asked about a dozen questions on abortion access, election integrity, critical race theory and gender identity, the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and on funding for HBCUs. Cox, who has described the 2020 presidential election as “stolen,” would not commit to accepting the results of his own contest in November.
He denied “co-hosting” buses transporting Trump supporters to the Jan. 6 rally in Washington that preceded the attack on the Capitol, even after a student journalist read from a tweet he posted with a hashtag StoptheSteal. Instead he insisted that he bought tickets only for himself and seven of his children.
After the forum, Ederson approached Cox to ask him about his plans to address homelessness. He ultimately decided he could not vote for Cox, citing a “lack of accountability regarding Jan. 6 that he refuses to accept … and his [nonacceptance of] trans people as citizens, referring to them as biological men or women.”
But the 22-year-old college student said he wasn’t sure about Moore either: “Neither candidate currently has really done enough to get my vote.”
Cox, who was buoyed in the primary by an endorsement from former president Donald Trump, has focused on “restoring freedom to Maryland,” attacking vaccine mandates and school curriculum on race and gender identity. As a state lawmaker, he has introduced 14 bills that would restrict or roll back access to abortion.
Moore’s platform centers on a promise to “leave no one behind,” with investments in education, job creation and the environment. Moore, a best-selling author and Army veteran, most recently worked as head of one of the country’s largest poverty-fighting organizations.
The candidates have only one debate scheduled. The Oct. 12 event is sponsored by Maryland Public Television. Both candidates say they want the opportunity to present voters their platforms and to show how vastly differently they would serve if elected.
Cox has repeatedly bashed Moore for declining the Morgan State students’ invitation. He has accused Moore of refusing to share a stage with him and has called on the Democratic nominee and political newcomer to “step up, don’t run away.”
Carter Elliott IV, a spokesman for Moore, said Moore looks forward to debating Cox next month. | 2022-09-28T15:52:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Morgan State students invited Cox and Wes Moore; Moore declined - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/28/dan-cox-morgan-state-hbcu/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/28/dan-cox-morgan-state-hbcu/ |
Son arrested in killing of 82-year-old father, Fairfax police say
A man was arrested and charged with killing his 82-year-old father in the Rose Hill area, Fairfax County police announced Wednesday.
Samy Hassanein, 36, was charged with second-degree murder in the death of his father, Talat Hassanein, police said. Police said Samy Hassanein had “fatally assaulted ” the older man.
Police said officers responded to a home Tuesday in the 5500 block of Justis Place, where Talat Hassanein lived with his adult sons. Police found Talat Hassanein unconscious at the bottom of the basement stairs. He was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
Detectives found significant trauma to Hassanein’s upper body, and evidence to indicate the death was not accidental, police said. They did not specify what that evidence was.
Samy Hassanein was taken to the Adult Detention Center and held without bond, police said. Efforts to reach family members were not successful Wednesday. | 2022-09-28T15:52:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Son arrested in killing of 82-year-old father, Fairfax police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/28/son-arrested-father-murder-fairfax/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/28/son-arrested-father-murder-fairfax/ |
Biden is mending ties with our oppressors. He should listen to us instead.
(Washington Post staff illustration; Biden photo by Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post, other images by iStock)
Lina al-Hathloul is head of monitoring and communications for ALQST, a nonprofit organization promoting human rights in Saudi Arabia. Khalid Aljabri is a health-tech entrepreneur and cardiologist based in the United States. Abdullah Alaoudh is research director for the Gulf region at Democracy for the Arab World Now and general secretary of the National Assembly Party.
The three of us grew up in the same neighborhood in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, but until recently, that’s where any similarity ended. Our backgrounds could hardly be more different: Abdullah was raised in a religious household, his father an acclaimed scholar; Khalid’s father sat at the highest level of the Saudi government; Lina’s family paved the way for progressive reforms.
If not for the whims of a tyrannical ruler, it is unlikely that our paths would ever have crossed. But like thousands of Saudis since Mohammed bin Salman became crown prince, each of us has been deeply affected by a level of cruelty that has no place in the 21st century.
Read this piece in Arabic.
Abdullah’s father, Salman Alodah, remains behind bars in inhumane conditions five years after he was detained for one innocuous tweet, while 19 members of his family are prohibited from leaving the kingdom. Two of Khalid’s siblings, Sarah and Omar, have been held hostage by MBS, as the crown prince is known, and tortured because of their father’s affiliation with MBS’s rival. Lina’s sister, Loujain, was tortured and remains under travel ban after helping to lead the campaign for Saudi women’s right to drive. Lina’s relatives also face stringent travel restrictions.
It has been four years since the regime’s murder of Saudi activist and Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi, but MBS’s sweeping crackdown against Saudi detractors domestically and abroad has only accelerated. Now, as Saudi exiles, and driven by the fate of our families and Saudi citizens like Khashoggi, we are united in a mission to stand up to repression. We represent a new generation determined to build a better future for all Saudis — a dynamic and engaged cohort that has experienced the consequences of rule by an insulated and enormously privileged few. And we call on the West, and particularly the U.S. administration, to join us in our cause.
In comments by President Biden and other Western leaders about their commitment to fostering a healthier partnership with Saudi Arabia, we see both hope and peril. U.S.-Saudi relations could be a positive force, but only if they extend beyond unlimited arms sales and vague human rights rhetoric.
By engaging directly with dissident voices, including many who live in the United States, the administration could not only get a clearer picture of a geopolitical partner but also strengthen the forces of democracy that the president so often praises.
Leading up to Biden’s July meeting with MBS, we were hopeful that the president would publicly raise our families’ cases — and those of many other Saudi victims — and meet with representatives from civil society. Instead, Biden’s embrace of the crown prince, sealed with one-sided concessions, has seemingly only fueled the regime’s repressiveness. In recent weeks, the kingdom imposed draconian prison sentences on two women, Salma al-Shehab and Nourah bint Saeed al-Qahtani, for expressing support for basic rights. This latest crackdown on peaceful critics came right after the Biden administration greenlit billions of dollars in arms sales to the kingdom.
Western officials and analysts describe Biden’s reconciliation with MBS as a fait accompli. We live in a time of competition with China and Russia, many argue, and cannot allow Saudi Arabia to drift from the United States' orbit. They point to MBS’s youth and social reforms and insist that maintaining links with him is the cost of ensuring stability.
But those depending on MBS to be a stabilizing figure are sure to be disappointed. This is, after all, the same man who in just a few short years has besieged Qatar; allegedly kidnapped Lebanon’s prime minister; threatened and killed Saudi and Western citizens on Western soil; infiltrated Twitter to surveil perceived political enemies; initiated a catastrophic war and the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in Yemen; and unleashed a wave of domestic and international repression. Fooling ourselves into thinking that MBS’s cosmetic liberalization, such as allowing Saudis to attend music festivals, is a sign of real progress is misguided.
Those of us farther from MBS’s reach are demonstrating that Saudi civil society is prepared to participate in our country’s affairs. Our generation has surpassed the governing elite in experience and education, and many of us have embraced universal values while maintaining pride in our heritage. Now, we seek a voice in our nation’s doings. We seek to build a society that grants basic liberties to everyone, and a future in which self-determination and the rule of law, rather than nepotism, rule the day.
Recent U.S. administrations, both Republican and Democratic, have expressed support for civil societies worldwide and held meetings with groups from repressive nations. The Biden administration’s unwillingness to do the same is disappointing. Directly interfacing with segments of Saudi society more representative than the ruling class would be both smart policy and smart politics.
People around the world have taken note of Biden’s lofty human rights rhetoric and its disconnect from the current path of U.S.-Saudi reconciliation. This has dealt a blow to U.S. credibility. Biden can begin to restore it by engaging with Saudi exiles, promoting congressional funding for civil society initiatives in the kingdom, and refusing to spoil the regime with blanket military support — especially when MBS offers no reciprocal cooperation.
The Biden administration is fixated on repairing relations with our oppressors — but where has that gotten us? To chart a healthier and more sustainable path forward, it’s time for Western leaders to hear from the oppressed. | 2022-09-28T15:53:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden's pursuit of U.S.-Saudi ties should include dissidents - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/biden-saudi-arabia-dissident-voices/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/biden-saudi-arabia-dissident-voices/ |
4 years after Khashoggi’s murder, assaults on press freedom are getting worse
A person holds a banner of Jamal Khashoggi during a symbolic funeral prayer for the slain Saudi journalist in 2018. (Bulent Kilic/AFP via Getty Images)
On the fourth anniversary of Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, we should demand accountability from Saudi Arabia, louder than ever. But we should also denounce, as Khashoggi would have, the assaults against press freedom in so many other countries that continue unabated — and often go unremarked.
Khashoggi’s last column, received by The Post the day after he went missing, was about the need for “free expression,” not just in Saudi Arabia but everywhere that authorities try to suppress and intimidate journalists. He called for “a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events.” How right he was. This is a global problem, and it’s getting worse.
After Khashoggi’s killing, many governments tried to pretend they were friends of the press by denouncing the Saudis who murdered him. They wrapped themselves in the cloak of his martyrdom. But these leaders should be accountable for their countries’ crimes against the media, too — just as we demand justice from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who authorized the operation that led to Khashoggi’s death.
The global assault on journalists is a pervasive fact of modern life. According to data compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists, 1,455 journalists have been killed around the world since 1992; 1,979 have been imprisoned; 69 have gone missing. Even as they attack reporters, many of these countries profess support for United Nations norms and offer pledges of human rights.
Read Jamal Khashoggi's columns for The Washington Post
High on the list of press hypocrites, alas, is Turkey — the nation where Khashoggi was killed. Turkey made a show of prosecuting the murder, including welcoming The Post’s owner, Jeff Bezos, to Istanbul in 2019 to mark the first anniversary of Khashoggi’s slaying. Turkish prosecutors were the stars of documentaries about the case. But Turkey dropped the prosecution this year when it became politically inconvenient after President Recep Tayyip Erdogan decided to mend fences with MBS, as the Saudi leader is known.
Turkey was an especially unlikely defender of press freedom anyway, given its abysmal record at home. Since 1992, according to the CPJ statistics, 378 journalists in Turkey have been killed or imprisoned or have gone missing.
Iran is another country that ruthlessly suppresses journalists and gets away with it. Of the 170 journalists that have been killed or imprisoned or have gone missing in Iran since 1992, CPJ reports, 112 were jailed for supposed “anti-state” comments and 13 were imprisoned for alleged “religious insults.” The recent death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after she was arrested for allegedly violating rules mandating headscarves has triggered nationwide protests. Iran’s response as it tried to beat demonstrators into submission: Turn off the internet and suppress public discussion.
Iran is one of scores of countries where telling the truth can get a journalist thrown in jail. At The Post, we remember the outrageous imprisonment for 544 days of our colleague Jason Rezaian. He’s now a leading voice in the campaign for press freedom everywhere.
The global anger at MBS for the Khashoggi killing has been inspiring, but in focusing on him, we shouldn’t overlook all the other countries that scorn freedom of the press. The roll of shame includes China, where 229 journalists have been killed or imprisoned or have gone missing since 1992; Ethiopia, with 134 such attacks; Egypt, with 112, Russia, with 97; Mexico, with 85, according to CPJ’s count.
Global Opinion: Women are leading a revolution in Iran. Will Western feminists help?
Press freedom is indivisible. It’s a basic human right. U.S. journalists have a stake in the safety of their colleagues in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and China because we all live in the same world of information. News and commentary should move as freely about the planet as air and water. That’s what Khashoggi came to believe; it’s what he died for.
Khashoggi’s writing reminds us that truth-telling has an impact, even when it seems like a lost cause. When Khashoggi dared to speak out as a Post contributor about a country that historically has suppressed journalists, he became a powerful voice. When he kept telling the truth, even when threatened back home, he became a hero and ultimately a martyr.
Khashoggi wrote in that last piece that the Arab world was confronting “an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power.” Friends advised him to stop pushing so hard, to compromise with MBS, to accept limits on his own freedom of expression.
But Khashoggi wouldn’t. He walked into the Saudi consulate in Istanbul four years ago determined to write the truth as he saw it and to hold powerful people accountable for their lies. His death galvanized anger against MBS and the murderous Saudi regime. But Jamal would be the first to tell us that press freedom is a global problem — and that truth-tellers everywhere need our support.
Opinion|Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia erodes our moral authority | 2022-09-28T15:53:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Jamal Khashoggi knew press freedom is a global problem - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/khashoggi-murder-anniversary-media-attacks-continue/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/khashoggi-murder-anniversary-media-attacks-continue/ |
Photographers come together to raise funds for Ukrainians in this book
Front cover. From “To Hope,” published by Nighted Life.
Although it seems like far more time has passed by since Russia began its assault on Ukraine, it has been only a few months. What feels like a years-long ordeal began back in February. Time has a tendency to warp and elongate and sludge its way on in times of utter despair and disaster.
Back in the early days of the war, photographer Grant Lewandowski was on his way to the Polish-Ukrainian border to work with Wide Awake International, a nongovernmental organization that helped Ukrainian orphans with disabilities. Once he arrived in the area, he would spend the next few days navigating the hellscape wrought by the war.
Lewandowski recounts what his initial experience was like in “To Hope,” just published by Nighted Life. He says:
“There were many bizarre moments during my twenty-plus hour journey from Warsaw to Zhytomyr: What it was like to travel in the middle of the night across the Polish/Ukrainian border. How it felt pulling up to my first, of many, Ukrainian military checkpoints and hearing distant gunshots. Hitchhiking my way east through Ukraine. Witnessing the military or civilians courageously ready to defend their land from Russian invaders. These experiences opened my eyes and my heart to the Ukrainian people who are resilient and devoted to defend their people, culture, and land.”
As the machinations of war increased, security became a chief concern, and after only five days on the ground, Lewandowski’s group decided it was time to leave. But that would not be the end of thoughts roiling through his head about how to continue to help Ukrainians.
Lewandowski says:
“I thought about how I could use photography to highlight, aid, and give voice to the struggle I witness every day and the national photographers I admire. I dreamt of curating a publication which would comprise all of that is complicated and beautiful and hope to place this paltry, but ambitious book into the world, since I believe photography has the possibility to give space for reflection in a world violently divided.”
And this is how “To Hope” was birthed. It brings together the work of mostly Ukrainian photographers, alongside a few very well known non-Ukrainian photographers. The book brings photography and text together and constructs a picture that “contrasts the current reality of chaos, tragedy and war with the anticipation of a peaceful, beautiful post-war Ukraine.”
All of the profits from the sale of the book will be given to two organizations, Kyiv Angels and Livyi Bereh, that provide support to Ukrainians affected by the war and those in desperate need on the eastern front lines.
You can find out more about the book and buy it here. | 2022-09-28T15:53:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photos of Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/09/28/photographers-come-together-raise-funds-ukrainians-this-book/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/09/28/photographers-come-together-raise-funds-ukrainians-this-book/ |
Cybersecurity thought leaders on internet security
Washington Post technology policy reporter Cat Zakrzewski speaks with Bret Arsenault, Corporate Vice President & Chief Information Security Officer at Microsoft, about strategies to succeed in the cloud, guard against cyber intrusions and technological advances that could reshape the digital infrastructure of businesses in the coming decades.
Washington Post global economics correspondent David J. Lynch speaks with Raphael W. Bostic, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, about the causes and impact of such persistent economic inequality. Conversation recorded on Monday, Sept. 26, 2022. | 2022-09-28T15:53:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cybersecurity thought leaders on internet security - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-live/cybersecurity-thought-leaders-on-internet-security/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-live/cybersecurity-thought-leaders-on-internet-security/ |
Tucker Carlson, left, talks with former president Donald Trump during the final round of the Bedminster Invitational LIV Golf tournament in Bedminster, N.J., in July. (Seth Wenig/AP)
Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s long-running quest to blame the Biden administration for the war in Ukraine hasn’t borne much fruit, despite his prominent perch on the most-watched cable news channel.
But it’s not for lack of trying. And on Tuesday night, Carlson broke out his latest shoddily constructed theory: He strongly suggested the United States is responsible for explosions that damaged the Nord Stream pipelines — and at times, seemed to more explicitly blame it.
We know very little about what happened to the pipelines, which carry natural gas from Russia to Europe, or who was responsible if the explosions were due to sabotage, which authorities say is likely. Anything seems possible at this point.
But Carlson’s supposed evidence for this being a U.S. operation is decidedly weak.
Carlson began his monologue by seeking to knock down the idea that Russia itself could have been responsible, which is the theory favored by some Western leaders. (Russia has denied responsibility.) He argued that cutting off its ability to supply energy to Europe would deprive it of leverage. “If you are Vladimir Putin, you would have to be a suicidal moron to blow up your own energy pipeline,” Carlson argued. “That’s the one thing you would never do.”
Nonetheless, Carlson continued, that’s where some people are pointing. “The Washington Post got right to it,” Carlson said. “Putin, they declared, is now weaponizing the Nord Stream pipelines.”
In fact, the piece he cited was an analysis from Bloomberg News, which The Post also ran on its website. And the piece didn’t outright say Putin had done this; it only raised the possibility. “Is Putin Fully Weaponizing the Nord Stream Pipelines?” the headline reads. That is a question, not an assertion of fact.
But it wasn’t the only source for Carlson’s theory which wasn’t entitled to nuance.
Perhaps the most prominent quote Carlson used was from President Biden in February: Biden had said that, if Russia invaded Ukraine, “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”
Carlson treated this as no less than a smoking gun. He cast Biden’s comments as him saying “that he might take out these pipelines.” Despite often casting Biden as a doddering old fool, Carlson assured that in this instance, the president must have chosen his words carefully: “He said there won’t be a Nord Stream 2. We’ll put an end to it. We will take it out. We will blow it up.”
You begin to see the rhetorical trick here. Biden did not say we would “blow it up,” unless you’re using that phrase metaphorically. (At the time, the pipeline’s construction was complete but it was not operational, awaiting approval from Germany and the European Union; a few weeks later, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Berlin would stop the pipeline’s certification.) But Carlson’s aim is clearly to make people think about it literally.
Carlson then turned to another Biden administration official who he suggested publicly previewed just such a potential strike. It was top State Department official Victoria Nuland, who said in January, “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”
Carlson highlighted the “one way or another” as being a potential threat to use sabotage — similar to Biden’s “bring an end to it.”
But there is a very readily available, alternate explanation for these veiled and unspecific promises to halt Nord Stream 2: The fact that it wasn’t at all clear how the United States could actually achieve its goal of shutting it down if Russia invaded. After all, Europe would be giving up a key energy source, and the decision largely rested with Germany.
Indeed, we wrote about exactly that just a day after Biden’s February comments. The administration kept saying it would halt Nord Stream 2, but Germany was publicly noncommittal. Harder commitments might have been made behind closed doors, but this was sensitive diplomacy that made it difficult for the Biden administration to say exactly how it would make good on its promise (which it ultimately did).
Beyond that, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of the notion of the United States conducting sabotage. High on that list is that such an action would strain relations with European allies who would like to have access to that pipeline at some future date, even as they’re currently forgoing Russian energy in solidarity with Ukraine. (An official told The Post’s John Hudson that the idea of U.S. involvement in the attack on the pipeline is “preposterous.”)
The last source Carlson cited was not a U.S. politician, but a European one. Radek Sikorski is a member of European Parliament representing Poland and is the country’s former defense and foreign minister. His Twitter account on Tuesday featured a photo of gas bubbling up to the top of the Baltic Sea, with the brief message: “Thank you, USA.”
Some reports cast Sikorski’s comments as explicitly blaming the United States for sabotage, and some Polish politicians suggested Sikorski was furthering Russian propaganda efforts. Prominent Russian officials promoted Sikorski’s tweet, but Sikorski is not known as a pro-Russian politician.
But his meaning wasn’t entirely clear; it seems possible he was crediting the United States for rendering the pipelines moot by pressuring Europe not to take Russian natural gas. In later tweets, he seemed to actually point the finger to Russian sabotage, citing a supposed Russian “special maintenance operation” on the pipelines.
(The Washington Post reached out to Sikorski through the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where he holds a nonresident position, but hasn’t received comment from him.)
This is effectively the totality of the supposed hard evidence Carlson had for his theory. Beyond that, it was rank speculation and evaluating the various motives involved — motives which Carlson has long claimed, on the Biden’s administration’s side, include exacerbating the war in Ukraine.
He repeatedly qualified his comments by saying things like, “We don’t know for sure.” But ultimately he delivered his speculation as if it were fact and invited his viewers to do the same.
“What will be the effect of this? Every action has a reaction, equal and opposite. Blow up the Nord Stream pipelines? Okay, we’ve entered a new phase, one in which the United States is directly at war with the largest nuclear power in the world,” Carlson said. “It doesn’t mean it will go nuclear immediately, but it does suggest there could be consequences.”
He added: “Have the people behind this — the geniuses like Toria Nuland — considered the effects? Maybe they have. Maybe that was the point.”
Carlson then invited his guest, former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii), to join in the speculation. But despite Gabbard’s record of more sympathetic comments toward Russia than your average U.S. politician and her skepticism of U.S. foreign policy, she wasn’t going there.
“I don’t have the evidence of who was responsible for this,” Gabbard, before proceeding to speak more generally about the dangers of the situation.
Apparently even she wasn’t swayed by Carlson’s presentation. | 2022-09-28T15:53:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tucker Carlson’s shoddy case linking U.S. to alleged Nord Stream sabotage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/tucker-carlson-nord-stream/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/tucker-carlson-nord-stream/ |
By Tim Rizzo
Vuitsik’s aunt, cousins, and mother-in-law all made the trek across the border. Seeking shelter for them, Vuitsik, a senior artist at video game developer Infinity Ward, heard from his boss, studio head Michal Drobot, that Activision would help with rent and hotel accommodations for a few weeks, until they could find a more permanent solution. But help from the developers at Infinity Ward’s new Krakow studio, opened to aid in the development of the popular war sim franchise Call of Duty, did not end there.
For nearly two decades, the Call of Duty franchise has digitally immersed hundreds of millions of players around the globe into increasingly realistic digital worlds of war. From the cartel-controlled streets of Brazil to the castles of Scotland, the first-person shooter game has featured numerous action-packed settings carefully crafted by the title’s development team. Now, the team in charge of creating some of the largest, most realistic battlefields in the gaming industry weren’t far from a real one, mere miles away.
Back in 2018, Infinity Ward announced the opening of the Krakow studio to focus on research and development for Call of Duty alongside a team based in Los Angeles. Drobot, then a principal rendering engineer, was tapped to lead the new office, which was full of eastern European talent. History has made it more challenging than anticipated. After the team’s early years were disrupted by the covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion presented another challenge: the Poland studio is just over 500 miles from the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.
At the start of the invasion, Infinity Ward engineer Wiktor Czosnowski recalled the narrative being one in which Russia, “the second-greatest army in the world,” would overtake Ukraine in a matter of three days. Seven months later, the fighting continues with an endgame still hard to predict.
Shortly after the invasion began, hoards of scared, displaced Ukrainian refugees flooded across the borders of Poland. Drobot and his team of more than two dozen sprang into action, offering up their homes and resources, including those of the company, to protect people who left nearly everything behind. Drobot has seen blooms of fire from artillery explosions in the distance when working with refugees at the border.
“Big picture-wise, there’s not much I can do, but I can at least help the person that’s sitting across from me, which maybe isn’t much, but it’s something,” Shurney said in a video interview with The Washington Post.
Fleeing the Russian invasion, one Twitch streamer stopped at the border to help other Ukrainians
“[Katya] knew us for two weeks and she had to trust us to take care of her seven-year-old while she was at the hospital giving birth to her daughter,” said Poseukova. “We bonded quite quickly, but by force. It was a major adjustment for everyone.”
After returning with the newest addition to her family, Katya named Shurney and Poseukova the child’s godparents. The couple cracked a smile during a video interview as they shared their new title, given by a woman with whom they had no prior relationship.
Shortly after Katya gave birth, Shurney and Poseukova relocated to a larger apartment with a guest bedroom. Shurney didn’t hesitate inviting Katya’s now family of three to stay with them in their new place until they could get settled more permanently elsewhere.
“The amount they’re having to suffer is so much bigger than anything I can take on,” Shurney said in an interview on Activision’s website last month. “If someone needs something, we’re going to do what we can. We’re giving them a room.”
As Ukrainian pro gamers flee from war, esports community offers aid
Infinity Ward’s Czosnowski has taken comfort in how the people in Poland have responded to their new guests.
“This is the thing that is beautiful in this whole situation,” Czosnowski said. “How naturally two nations merge together from the beginning. From day zero people started helping and maybe there were voices based on some historical issues between our countries, but it was drowned out by people who would like to help.”
“There was a lot of fear and depression when the war started. I was personally afraid how it was going to roll out,” said Czosnowski, whose tone darkened when discussing civilian victims in Mariupol from an attack called a “war crime” by the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe. “Now, six months after, I think there is more anger with how things are going on and how Russia as a country is behaving.”
“A week ago she passed away [while in Ukraine],” Czosnowski said. “And now [her son] cannot even go to her funeral because if you go [back into Ukraine], he cannot come back here [due to a declaration of martial law]. It’s [expletive] horrible. When you see how people’s lives go upside down and it’s a war without any bigger reason from the Russian-side, it makes me angry.”
Read The Washington Post's full coverage of the Russia-Ukraine crisis
Poseukova echoed that sentiment. For her part, she’s trying to offer whatever work she can to help refugees earn money.
“I’m trying to hire Ukrainian people for different types of services, whether it’s tailoring or watching after the dog or cleaning. Every week, I have people who come in to help with cleaning. One individual was a relatively successful travel agent, another one was a manager at a mortgage company and another one is a high school teacher. So it makes you humble to see how life can just crumble.”
“I think it’s just kind of an Eastern European thing,” Drobot said, regarding the views of his employees. “We don’t always take as much pride as we should with things we do.”
Despite the horrors the Infinity Ward team members have seen firsthand or heard by word of mouth, Czosnowski said he’s taken heart in some of the things he’s seen recently at the macro level (he referenced the budding friendship between Poland President Andrzej Duda and Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky) and the societal level. As he walks his dog each day, he said he sees books now being printed in Ukrainian to help those experiencing a language barrier.
“Sasha, the 13-year-old boy who lived with us, goes to the local school now and was invited by the class,” Czosnowski said. “It was very, very lovely. [The students] started to learn a few sentences in Ukrainian before he came. When they knew that he was coming, the kids were waiting for him to help him and to treat him not like someone from the outside, but a real insider.” | 2022-09-28T15:55:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Call of Duty Modern Warfare II' developers shelter Ukrainian refugees - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/09/28/call-duty-ukraine-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/09/28/call-duty-ukraine-war/ |
The geopolitics of natural gas, explained
A photo taken from a Swedish coast guard aircraft on Sept. 27, 2022, shows the release of gas from a leak in a Nord Stream gas pipeline in the Swedish economic zone in the Baltic Sea, near the Danish island of Bornholm. (Swedish Coast Guard/AFP/Getty Images)
Photographs hardly do the situation justice. Still images simply show some sort of disturbance on the surface of the Baltic Sea, a bubbling of unclear scale or origin.
What’s happening beneath the surface, though, is a thoroughly modern crisis. The bubbles are methane gas, escaping from underwater pipelines after an apparent act of sabotage. The mild disturbance shown in the photograph actually captures a complex mix of geopolitical tensions, the back-and-forth of energy markets and, both directly and indirectly, climate change.
It’s probably useful to begin at home. The map below shows the intricate web of natural gas pipelines that weave across the continental United States, giving a sense of the scale of the network domestically.
You’ll notice the complexity shown along the Gulf Coast, from southern Texas across Louisiana. This is largely a function of offshore extraction, as you probably guessed. West Texas and Oklahoma are regions associated with fossil-fuel extraction, so no real surprises.
But then there’s that web of pipelines running from western New York into West Virginia. This is not a region typically understood as a center of drilling operations. And yet it is. That cluster of pipelines overlaps with the Marcellus shale formation, a natural rock formation buried beneath those states.
A little over a decade ago, the U.S. energy industry underwent a revolution. The development of new systems of hydraulic fracturing — using water to break apart shale to allow pockets of natural gas to escape — meant deposits like the Marcellus formation became gold mines. North Dakota spent years at the top of the list of state population growth as people moved there to extract oil and gas from the Bakken formation. The “fracking” boom was born.
This boom overlapped with domestic politics in an important way. Just as new deposits of natural gas were being unlocked, public awareness of climate change began to spike. Activists and then politicians began advocating for phasing out coal-burning power plants — a process made easier by the sudden availability of cheap natural gas, which doesn’t release greenhouse gases when burned. Electricity plants began retrofitting to burn gas instead of coal.
You can see that shift below. In 2005, 60 percent of electricity generation came from burning coal; less than 10 percent was burning gas. By 2021, natural gas had surged to 35 percent of generation, while coal had fallen to about 30 percent.
This transition was theoretically a net benefit for the climate. Burning coal produces carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas present in the world’s atmosphere. (Greenhouse gases are ones that can absorb heat that would otherwise escape the atmosphere into space. Often the captured heat is redirected back to Earth.) But there was a problem: Natural gas is methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas. It is more than 25 times better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide. And extracting methane from the ground often meant that some escaped into the atmosphere, dampening the climate benefit.
As the United States debated the interplay between addressing climate change and energy availability, similar discussions were occurring in Europe. Over the past decade, a number of European nations have implemented plans aimed at phasing out the use of coal in an effort to help reduce global carbon dioxide emissions. But phasing out coal means using something else to produce electricity. Given that there were also calls to end the use of nuclear reactors for production, that meant either rapidly scaling up renewable energy or converting to natural gas.
Over the past 30 years, Western Europe (here meaning members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) has seen an increase in its use of natural gas relative to other energy sources. In many European countries, though, fracking is banned, meaning that there’s a need to import natural gas to meet demand.
Fortunately for Western Europe, there was a nearby nation with abundant natural gas supplies. Unfortunately for Western Europe, that nation was Russia.
As in the United States, there is a web of pipelines crisscrossing Europe. But we have an advantage that they don’t: Nearly all of our pipelines are contained within the same country. In Europe, the web sits on top of the existing web of national boundaries. Meaning that pipelines moving gas from Russia west often have to go through multiple countries — at times subjecting them to geopolitical pressures and varying laws.
In 2011, a pipeline was constructed that avoided much of that problem. Running from Russia in the northeastern corner of the Baltic Sea southwest to Germany, the Nord Stream pipeline allowed for a direct connection between those two countries. Earlier this year, Nord Stream 2 was completed, largely running in parallel to the first iteration, though originating from a different location. Its central advantage was that it doubled the amount of gas that could be carried.
The United States opposed the new pipeline for at least two central reasons.
The first was that it strengthened economic ties between Europe and Russia — and made Europe increasingly dependent on Russia for its energy.
The second was economic: The United States is in the gas-selling business, too, and there’s been a push to build terminals from which liquefied natural gas (LNG) can be shipped. But the infrastructure of transporting gas across the Atlantic Ocean is still largely in development. The pipelines to Russia are already there.
Then Russia invaded Ukraine. Suddenly, Europe’s reliance on Russian gas became a serious problem. The international community imposed severe sanctions on Russia, but the battle over importing Russian oil and gas was much more fraught. Germany froze the Nord Stream 2 project — but Nord Stream 1 was still flowing. Russia has leveraged its control over that pipeline to pressure Western Europe ever since. Several times, Russia has claimed that it had to restrict or stop transmission of gas through the pipeline, notably blaming sanctions for a lack of availability of parts. Earlier this month, Russia shut down Nord Stream 1 entirely.
Which brings us to the past few days. On Monday, Sweden detected a pair of underwater explosions in the region where the leaks in the Nord Stream pipelines began. The implication is that the lines were sabotaged. On Wednesday, German officials expressed concern that the lines could not be repaired, rendering them permanently inoperable.
Over the short term, there’s the climate question. An enormous amount of methane was released when the pipelines were ruptured, perhaps 500 metric tons per hour. More methane release means more warming, however incrementally.
But, of course, there are also pressing geopolitical questions to answer. Who damaged the pipelines? Why? How does this affect natural gas supplies in Europe as winter looms?
All of this — this history, this politics, this science, this conflict — manifesting as the placid popping of bubbles on the surface of the sea. | 2022-09-28T15:56:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The geopolitics of natural gas, explained - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/russia-gas-pipelines-europe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/russia-gas-pipelines-europe/ |
Rob Wittman’s election denialism is really self-preservation
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.). (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
It’s a quiet midterm election in Richmond this election year. There’s no competitive congressional race in the region, with the competitive suburban 7th District shifted to Northern Virginia and replaced with the 1st District and its MAGA-curious incumbent Rep. Rob Wittman (R).
Barring a black swan event, Wittman looks to be cruising to reelection. What, then, are the suburban Richmond voters who just two years ago reelected Democrat Abigail Spanberger getting in their new representative?
As I wrote in July, Wittman’s strategy for winning the redrawn 1st District has been to hope that the same suburban voters who formed Spanberger’s base don’t know much, if anything, about his record.
One part of his record — the election denialist portion, that is — got even weirder with the recent House vote on the Electoral Count Act.
The bill’s broad purpose was to prevent a repeat of the insurrectionist assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Bill co-sponsor Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) framed the vote on the bill this way, as reported by the New York Times:
“If your aim is to prevent future efforts to steal elections, I would respectfully request that conservatives should support this bill,” she said on the House floor. “If instead your aim is to leave open the door for elections to be stolen in the future, you might decide not to support this or any other bill to address the Electoral Count Act."
Wittman, like the other three GOP members of Virginia’s House delegation and most of the Republican caucus, voted against it.
That’s in keeping with Wittman’s other instances of election denialism. The Republican Accountability Project gave Wittman an “F” when it comes to democracy, noting his support for the cockamamie Texas amicus brief challenging the legitimacy of presidential electors in four states, objecting to Pennsylvania’s slate of electors and so on.
But let’s add more context to this. Consider Wittman’s explanation for why he objected to the Pennsylvania electors — hours after the rioters stormed the Capitol Building. It supports the notion that Wittman’s actions, in part, stem from old-fashioned self-preservation:
… the intention is not to overturn the results of the election. And listen, I knew that this wasn’t going to in any way, shape, or form, impact the results of the electoral college. But I do think it’s incredibly important to be able to express everyone’s concerns. I know people are going to disagree with me. But I want to make sure that as we see, in today’s world, people that feel frustrated, because they don’t believe that issues that they see are real, are being addressed. I think that there are issues across the United States with different election systems. I think it’s a great opportunity for Congress to work to address these issues. I don’t want to federalize the election system.
There’s much, much more to this very leafy word salad. But the bottom line is very simple: The objection was a sop to the Trump base back home in the 1st District.
So was the Electoral Count Act vote. It was a free vote for Wittman and his colleagues because Democrats and the handful of Cheney-friendly Republicans still in the House would pass it without them.
This, then, is the quality of representation hundreds of thousands of voters in the Richmond suburbs are almost certain to get after Election Day: a MAGA-curious trimmer who has no qualms about degrading democracy if it means he can avoid a primary challenge from the populist right.
We can only imagine what impossible pretzels Wittman and other Republican careerists will twist themselves into if and when former president Donald Trump becomes the GOP’s 2024 presidential nominee. | 2022-09-28T16:05:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Rob Wittman’s election denialism is really self-preservation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/rob-wittman-election-denialism-self-preservation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/rob-wittman-election-denialism-self-preservation/ |
(Toledo Museum of Art)
Dutch artist Dirck Jacobsz created an uncanny reflection on presence and absence in a painting of his parents
The motives for making a painting can be thumpingly straightforward: You see something, you try to reproduce it.
But they can get complex, too.
This painting, at the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio, is by the Dutch artist Dirck Jacobsz (ca. 1497-1567). You might assume it’s a self-portrait, showing the artist at his easel, putting the finishing touches on a portrait of a woman, perhaps his wife.
That’s already quite “meta,” but paintings of painters painting paintings do at least constitute a familiar genre. In that fiction, you, the viewer, would be in the position of the woman posing for her portrait, admiring, perhaps, the artist’s skill (or wishing you had thought to smile more). But you would also know that, in reality, it must have been the painter who stood where you stand. He painted the picture, after all.
But forget all that, because it is not what’s going on here.
To begin with, it’s not a self-portrait. It’s a portrait of the artist’s father, Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen (ca. 1472-1533), who was also a painter. The picture on the easel is the artist’s mother. So it’s really a picture of the artist’s father painting his wife, the artist’s mother. What’s so disarming about it is the way both subjects — father and mother — stare out at their son, for whom you, the viewer, are now a substitute.
By convention, the image on the easel — a painting within a painting — should be a little less finished than the primary subject, the painter-father, so as to reinforce the overall illusion of a picture within a picture. But here that’s not the case. Jacobsz’s mother is rendered with almost the same painstaking fidelity and finish as her husband even though, in their son’s fiction, he is real and she is just a painting, created out of the sticky, colorful substance on the palette he holds. Both meet their son’s gaze with the same unstinting focus.
It’s tempting at this point to wheel out Sigmund Freud, who had some interesting things to say about uncanniness and about the relationships between children and their parents. I won’t go there. I’ll only say that the artist’s father had died about 17 years earlier. It is believed the artist’s mother was also deceased, though much more recently. So the painting, which is about two feet high, painted in oils on a wooden panel, was really a memorial, a marker of Jacobsz’s filial devotion, probably to be installed above their tomb in a church.
[All-star show at National Gallery of Art doubles down on identity]
But dwelling on historical context and intention may drain this painting of some of its peculiarity. Like so many of its Netherlandish predecessors, the portrait makes you want to match the intensity of the subjects’ gazes with your own prolonged attention. And it inducts you into a set of very sophisticated reflections on presence and absence.
The tight cropping brings the magic of painted representations right up in front of our noses. How alive both mother and father seem! And how severe! Admire the creases in the skin around the father’s chin and cheek, echoed in his twisting neck, and the bony bulge beside his brow. Notice, too, the contrast between the studio interior — bare to the point of desolation — and the extravagant sky and landscape in the portrait on the easel. One could almost be looking at a surrealist concoction, a metaphysical game, by Rene Magritte.
Interestingly (though not unusually), Jacobsz, the son of a painter, had a son who was also a painter. One can only imagine what sort of posthumous intergenerational portrait he might have painted, had he been so inclined.
Jacob Cornelisz van Oostsanen Painting a Portrait of His Wife, about 1550
Dirck Jacobsz (b. 1497). At the Toledo Museum of Art. | 2022-09-28T17:24:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Perspective | Dirck Jacobsz's portrait of his parents is even stranger than it looks - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/interactive/2022/dirck-jacobsz-painting-portrait-wife/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/interactive/2022/dirck-jacobsz-painting-portrait-wife/ |
Cruise LLC is sick of paying through the nose for semiconductors, so the self-driving car division of General Motors Co. decided to start designing chips itself. It’s a bold move, but one that could see the auto company lose direction.
Only 18 months ago semiconductor giant Nvidia Corp. was showing off the Cruise Origin Robotaxi as a case study in the use of graphics processing units in Cruise cars “to process the massive amounts of data its fleet collects on San Francisco’s chaotic streets in real time.”
Now that relationship looks fractured because of the high cost and low wriggle-room in using “a GPU from a famous vendor,” Carl Jenkins, head of hardware at the California-based self-driving car company told Reuters recently. Nvidia wasn’t named directly, but it’s one of only two GPU suppliers and the other, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., isn’t a player in the auto industry.
Cruise isn’t the first car company to use, then dump, Nvidia. Three years ago, Tesla Inc. announced it was going it alone to develop a chip for its full-self driving (FSD) computer. At the time, Nvidia followed up with a detailed blog post explaining why chief Elon Musk was wrong in his assessment of the differences in performance.
In reality, Cruise, Tesla and Nvidia all have solid arguments for why their chip is superior. And it’s understandable that car makers are frustrated at paying high costs for chips when they have little ability to customize the product or negotiate price. But auto-industry executives need to assess their core competence and make tough decisions before they embark on the path of independence.
For that, they can take guidance from Jeff Bezos and the Luxembourg beer industry. According to a now-famous speech by the Amazon.com Inc. founder, brewers in the European nation once produced their own electricity because it was a needed input in the beer-making process, and they couldn’t get it from a centralized power grid.
Unfortunately for brewers, as he pointed out in a 2008 speech, this heavy-lifting was undifferentiated — all electricity is the same — yet needed to be done at a world-class level. The quicker they could outsource electricity generation, the quicker they could get back to focusing on brewing.
“The fact that they generated their own power did not make their beer taste better,” Bezos said. His exhortation continues to ring loud today: Focus on what makes your beer taste better.(1)
Carmakers need to make that same calculation, and it’s becoming an increasingly expensive one. The price of developing a new chip climbed 10-fold in the past decade as semiconductor manufacturing gets more advanced. Before it is even sent for production each component needs to be designed, verified, tested and prototyped. That upfront cost now stands at $540 million for the latest 5-nanometer fabrication node, compared to $50 million for the older 28-nanometer technology that was first available 11 years ago, according to analysis from McKinsey & Co.(2)
A major reason why Nvidia can wear these costs is because it makes $27 billion in revenue per year selling chips for use in computer graphics cards, artificial intelligence servers, data-processing centers, and autonomous cars. Designing chips is what Nvidia does, and so semiconductors are Nvidia’s beer.
Tesla and Cruise, and every other auto maker, need to ask what differentiates their product from competitors. There are many factors on which drivers make their choice, including engine power and performance, exterior look, interior design, safety, and accessories. In the future, FSD will be just another feature for buyers to consider.
Designing their own chips won’t solve the current short-term supply shortage, though it will allow carmakers to better customize components for their own needs instead of buying off-the-shelf products. It’s quite likely performance will be superior to what third-party vendors can offer, but that doesn’t mean the final product they sell — cars — will be substantially better. Alphabet Inc’s Google went down the independence route many years ago, betting that the benefit of designing customized chips for its vast data centers — and moving away from Intel Corp. — would make the investment pay off. The difference here is that data stored and pumped out from Google’s servers is what the world’s largest search engine buys and sells.
For automakers to be sure that their semiconductor bets are worthwhile, they need to not only believe that self-driving features will be a major factor in a customer’s purchasing decision, but that their own internally developed chips are the key to that differentiation. That’s a tall order.
After years of development, and grappling with ever higher costs, there’s a good chance carmakers will end up finding that while their own chips are superior, they don’t make the beer taste better.
• China Painted Itself Into a Semiconductor Corner: Tim Culpan
• A New Normal Is Dividing the Global Chip Industry: Tim Culpan
• Big Data’s Past Is Messing With Our Future: Allison Schrager
(1) Bezos is often cited as saying “Focus on what makes your beer taste better,” but that exact phrase wasn’t uttered in his 2008 speech
(2) These figures are disputed by renowned chip industry analyst Dylan Patel, but the broader problem of escalating costs stands. | 2022-09-28T17:24:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Bezos Rule on Making Beer Applies to Carmakers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-bezos-rule-on-making-beer-applies-to-carmakers/2022/09/28/6fda7f5a-3f4e-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/the-bezos-rule-on-making-beer-applies-to-carmakers/2022/09/28/6fda7f5a-3f4e-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
New Alzheimer’s Drug From Biogen and Eisai Is Just the Beginning
Biogen Inc. headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., on Monday, June 7, 2021. Biogen Inc. shares soared after its controversial Alzheimer’s disease therapy was approved by U.S. regulators, a landmark decision that stands to dramatically change treatment for the debilitating brain condition. (Photographer: Bloomberg)
A drug developed by Biogen Inc. and Eisai Co. has achieved a first in Alzheimer’s research: In a large, late-stage trial, lecanemab slowed down the cognitive decline in people with early disease.
The therapy’s effect was modest. But given the litany of failures in Alzheimer’s drug development, it’s a stunning turn for the field. And while skepticism about the true meaning of these results — for patients, for the fate of similar drugs, for our understanding of the disease — is warranted, the result is meaningful enough to let the Alzheimer’s community celebrate a possible win.
Biogen and Eisai’s drug slowed cognitive decline by 27% over 18 months compared to a placebo in a large trial with nearly 1,800 people with early Alzheimer’s. Those data make it the first to show a clinical benefit in a late-stage study, but it won’t be the first amyloid-targeting drug to reach the market.
That milestone last year went to Aduhelm, also developed by Biogen and Eisai. But that controversial regulatory nod was based on Aduhelm’s ability to get rid of amyloid plaques, which some scientists think are a major cause of Alzheimer’s, not on its ability to slow down the cognitive decline in the disease. As a consequence, Medicare decided not to pay for the drug unless it was being given in the context of a trial that could confirm its benefits. Without a commercial market, Biogen essentially stopped trying to sell it.
The companies have already asked the Food and Drug Administration to grant lecanemab so-called “accelerated approval” based on its ability to clear amyloid — that should come by early 2023. This new data should support a full approval, one that would convince insurers to cover it, by the second half of 2023. The clear win for a drug that enters a multi-billion-dollar market lifted Biogen’s stock as much as 44% this morning.
But the results come with many caveats. The companies provided the data in a press release, not a paper. The full details will be presented at a conference in late November, and neurologists will pore over them to ensure the drug’s already modest benefits haven’t been oversold.
Lecanemab, like other amyloid-targeting antibodies, also has safety issue — swelling and bleeding of the brain. Although for most people in the study, these side effects were mild, the frequency with which they occurred could have made it easy for doctors to know which patients in the trial were getting the drug versus placebo, a situation that may have biased the results.
The biggest asterisk is that lecanemab is not a cure — unfortunately, it’s not even close to one. We don’t know how much a modest slowdown in the disease will have on the lives of people with Alzheimer’s and their families. And any impact the drug might have would be blunted if the price puts it out of reach.
Another thing the results don’t do is, as Eisai’s chief executive officer Haruo Naito claimed in a press release, “prove the amyloid hypothesis,” the theory that Alzheimer’s is driven by the protein that clumps together to form plaques on the brains of people with the disease.
But the results also aren’t the death knell for the theory that many, myself included, expected.
In the last two decades, companies have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on drug after drug intended to reduce those plaques. All of those efforts failed, causing skeptics to ask whether amyloid buildup was a consequence rather than a driver of the disease.
With each fresh failure, proponents of the amyloid hypothesis broke out a few standard explanations: The trial didn’t enroll the right patients; it was tested too late in the disease to make a difference; the drug didn’t quite work in the right way.
And it’s true that older studies sometimes were deeply flawed. But it was hard not to see these as excuses to keep the focus on amyloid. Many critics (again, myself included) felt it was long past time for the pharma industry to move on — or at the very least to devote a much larger portion of research dollars to other ideas.
The truth now seems somewhere between these extremes. Amyloid isn’t the only driver of the disease, but Biogen and Eisai’s data confirm that targeting it is worthwhile.
What’s more exciting is the idea that this first success could accelerate other efforts — efforts that could have a more profound impact on patients’ lives. Alzheimer’s experts have long acknowledged that altering the course of the disease will take more than one drug. Perhaps an amyloid therapy should be paired with, for example, one targeting tau tangles or adding in a treatment that can keep neurons from dying.
But getting to drug combinations has been challenging to impossible without first having at least one treatment with a proven clinical benefit. Results from studies of two experimental drugs would be too hard to parse. If a trial failed or succeeded, it would be hard to tell if the benefit was because of one drug, the other, or the combination. If a safety issue emerged, which drug would be to blame?
Academic researchers recently launched the first such trial, which studies the effect of combining lecanemab with a tau-targeted drug (also made by Eisai). It took years to get off the ground, and because of its meticulous design, it’ll take years to run.
Now, these types of studies should be easier to get up and running, particularly if lecanemab or one of the other amyloid-targeting drugs in the last stages of development become a routine part of Alzheimer’s care.
The good news on lecanemab shouldn’t further entrench the Alzheimer’s field in amyloid research, but instead should inspire a range of creative trials that could help bring more substantive change to the lives of people with the disease.
Experts will and should go over the new data with a fine-toothed comb to understand the true value of the new treatment. The field should also embrace the idea that successes are possible — and start pushing hard on ways to improve upon this one.
• The FDA Is Rushing a New and Unproven ALS Drug: Lisa Jarvis
• Here’s Who Really Needs the New Covid Booster: Faye Flam | 2022-09-28T17:24:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New Alzheimer’s Drug From Biogen and Eisai Is Just the Beginning - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/new-alzheimers-drug-from-biogen-and-eisai-is-just-the-beginning/2022/09/28/36e7880e-3f4a-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/new-alzheimers-drug-from-biogen-and-eisai-is-just-the-beginning/2022/09/28/36e7880e-3f4a-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Precipitation forecast for Ian and Ian remnants over the next several days. (weatherbell.com)
Hurricane Ian is making a devastating landfall in southwest Florida on Wednesday. Over the next few days, it will take a winding path toward the D.C. region as it transforms. For the most part, we’re on the cool side of the storm, but that still portends a prolonged soggy forecast.
Rainfall odds are up as soon as Friday night as the remnant Ian circulation throws rain this way. By the time raindrops wind down Tuesday or even Wednesday, several inches of rain are possible.
The duration of the event may help lessen the risk of flooding, but that is still far from guaranteed. It also keeps the forecast a little uncertain.
What Ian is most likely to throw at us
The basic process behind our heavy rain forecast is the transition of purely tropical Hurricane Ian to an extratropical storm that will drift north to around the North Carolina-Virginia border over the weekend, before slowly exiting into the Atlantic around Tuesday. This setup favors a prolonged period of rain over the Southeast into parts of the Mid-Atlantic.
As shown in the graphic above, Ian will begin interacting with a stationary front draped across Florida later today, as part of its landfall. While the storm moves across the peninsula, its wind circulation will draw in very warm and humid air off the Gulf Stream toward the Carolina coast, further enhancing a warm front.
On the back side of the storm, cooler and drier air will circulate down from the north, generating a cold front. This is the opening act of the extratropical transition phase that is in full swing early Friday morning.
To the north, a sprawling high-pressure area parked over the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic will keep Ian’s remnants from moving too far or too easily north. The combination of the low to the south and high to the north will draw in a very moist airstream off the Atlantic, allowing periodic rain to develop and spread north of the warm front. For much of this region, the rainfall will act more like a prolonged nor’easter than a tropical rainstorm.
How much rain in total?
With rainfall potential lasting from roughly Friday night through Tuesday, the potential to pile up totals is certainly there. The long duration will make or break the forecast, in more ways than one.
The National Weather Service is forecasting 2.5 to 5.5 inches of rain across the broader area, from the low end in northern Maryland to the high end in southern parts of that state. Around Washington, D.C., the forecast is for about 3 inches.
Recent weather model run details through the weekend (and total for the storm), below:
American GFS: 0.5-1.5 inches (0.5-2.5 inches total)
European ECMWF: 1-2 inches (1-3 inches total)
British UKMET: 1.5-3 inches (doesn’t run to end of storm)
ICON: 2-4 inches (doesn’t run to end of storm)
Flood risk isn’t extreme
Given that it has been relatively dry in recent weeks, flash flood risk is not extremely high, but some localized flooding is possible. It would require 3 to 4 inches or more in six hours to cause flash flooding over most of the region, with values closer to 2 inches in the urban centers (as more water runs off than seeps into soils).
It’s improbable but not out of the question we see rainfall rates that high.
Although flooding does not appear to be a significant widespread risk locally, it would not be surprising to see flood watches issued and some small streams approach flood stage. Some minor coastal flooding could also be an issue along parts of the Tidal Potomac and Chesapeake Bay, given prolonged winds from the same direction.
We’ve mentioned it already, but a primary devil in the forecast is the storm’s slow speed. Rain may not begin in earnest for another 72 hours, and then periodic drops could fall through at least Tuesday.
There will also probably be a sharp cutoff in heavy rain, seemingly north of the Mason-Dixon Line, due to the very dry air mass associated with the high-pressure area to the north. The exact placement of that cutoff cannot be determined yet and is part of the uncertainty in predicting rainfall amounts, as it could sink southward.
The sluggish movement of the post-Ian vortex is due to slack “steering” winds, as shown above. The vortex is labeled with a red “L” and remains cut off from fast jet stream flow well to the north over eastern Canada. In fact, the jet stream is contorted into a large ridge, with the vortex literally floundering in an overall weak flow pattern.
This type of extratropical transition pattern is notably different from many other landfalling U.S. storms, in which the jet stream typically dips far enough south to “pick up” the tropical remnant and scoot it rapidly toward the northeast. | 2022-09-28T17:24:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hurricane Ian’s remnants will douse parts of the Mid-Atlantic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/28/hurricane-ian-rain-dc-midatlantic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/28/hurricane-ian-rain-dc-midatlantic/ |
Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine will be in ‘Deadpool 3.’ Here’s why that’s a big deal.
Analysis by David Betancourt
Hugh Jackman attends the premiere of “The Son” at the Toronto International Film Festival Sept. 12. (Evan Agostini/Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
Ryan Reynolds has some big news: His Deadpool is not the only X-Man set to enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Wolverine is coming with him. And not just any Wolverine. The Wolverine. Hugh Jackman.
Fans were wondering how Reynolds would make a splash as he brought his R-rated mouth into the primarily PG-13 MCU for the first time with “Deadpool 3,” and the answer is now simple: with Adamantium claws.
In a social media video Tuesday, Reynolds made the announcement of Jackman’s return to the X-Men movie world — which was especially shocking considering the character had died in 2017’s “Logan.” Reynolds proclaims a case of extreme writers block while preparing for “Deadpool 3,” which is set to arrive in theaters Sept. 6, 2024. He realizes he’s now in the superhero movie big leagues at Marvel Studios, and maybe not quite ready for the moment, but he says he did have one idea. And that’s when Jackman walks by in the background.
“Yeah, sure, Ryan,” Jackman responds while walking up a flight of stairs and directly into the consciousness of geek fandom for the next two years.
Cue the Whitney Houston music. Yes, Reynolds always has a way of throwing in songs you’d never expect to hear in a superhero setting. Remember how important Wham!’s “Careless Whisper” was in the “Deadpool” movies? It’s surprising Reynolds didn’t get Kevin Costner to show up when the video ends with Houston’s classic rendition of “I Will Always Love You,” but if you listen hard enough, it almost sounds like “I will always love, Hugh,” which is Reynolds at maximum comedic power.
This is a homecoming of sorts. Reynolds made his debut as Wade Wilson (the man who eventually turns into Deadpool) in 2009 in Jackman’s first solo Wolverine outing, “X-Men: Origins Wolverine,” a movie just good enough to barely remember. He then spun off into his own “Deadpool” movie in 2016, creating a bloody and R-rated corner of superhero cinema, which was unheard of at the time. By the time “Deadpool 2” came along in 2018, Reynolds had separated himself from an X-Men movie franchise that was withering in the shadows of what Marvel Studios was accomplishing with the Avengers. Disney’s Marvel Studios had become the dominant creator of movies based on Marvel comics characters, and Reynolds’s “Deadpool” movies over at Fox were the only thing that could stand up to their might.
Fast forward to 2019 and Disney’s purchase of Fox (which owned the rights to X-Men movies before Marvel Studios was a thing), which created a gateway for Reynolds’s Deadpool and Jackman’s Wolverine to finally appear in a Marvel Studios production, under the oversight of its president Kevin Feige.
We, of course, should not be here. Jackman’s Wolverine died very dramatically and in R-rated fashion in James Mangold’s “Logan,” a movie meant to be a swan song for a beloved portrayal of one of the most popular comic book characters ever. Reynolds and Jackman alluded to this issue — but didn’t give away any secrets — in a tweet and a video posted Wednesday morning. It should be no surprise that Wham! was involved.
Let’s not forget that in 2018’s “Deadpool 2,” a post-credits scene featured Deadpool getting his hands on time travel technology. He goes back in time and kills the very lame, mouth-sewn-shut version of himself that appears at the end of “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” — essentially saying sorry to fans for the horrible idea of closing the mouth of a guy whose main superpower is his sense of humor. And then he gives Wolverine a message that now seems like a much bigger hint than anyone previously realized.
“Look, eventually you’re going to hang up the claws,” Deadpool says in the scene. “And it’s going to make a lot of people very sad. But one day, your old pal Wade’s gonna ask you to get back in the saddle again. And when he does, say yes.”
Is that the loophole that will bring Jackman to the MCU? Maybe. Maybe not. This is the multiverse era at Marvel Studios right now, where alternate universes and alternate versions of heroes is a thing. There are plenty of options to justify Jackman’s Wolverine now walking in the land of the Avengers.
DMX’s ‘X Gon’ Give It to Ya’ gave life to ‘Deadpool’ and the X-Men when they needed it most
Jackman signing off as Wolverine in 2017 after almost two decades on film felt like a geek Greek tragedy. The big bang of the last two decades of superhero dominance at movie theaters was when a little-known Jackman blew fans away with his performance in 2000’s “X-Men” despite being too tall and too handsome for the role. He didn’t play Wolverine. He was Wolverine. The hair. The grit. The growling. The claws. The only thing that was ever missing was his classic superhero suits (one brown, one yellow and blue), an accessory hopefully Marvel Studios can now add. It would be a crime not to. There wouldn’t be three “Ant-Man” movies without what Jackman accomplished in that first “X-Men” movie, let alone three “Deadpool” movies.
Which is why Jackman coming over to Marvel Studios feels so right. It was almost unfair that such a universally praised comic book inspired performance couldn’t breathe in the air of Marvel Studios because of executives’ decisions. There aren’t too many things from Fox’s X-Men movie era worth keeping alive at Marvel Studios, but if ever there was an exception, it’s Reynolds’s Deadpool and Jackman’s Wolverine.
And if Reynolds sitting on a toilet in his video reveal while reading “Wolverine” No. 21 is any indication, this Marvel team-up is in the right hands. | 2022-09-28T17:25:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine will be in ‘Deadpool 3.’ Here’s why that’s a big deal. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/09/28/hugh-jackman-wolverine-deadpool-ryan-reynolds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/09/28/hugh-jackman-wolverine-deadpool-ryan-reynolds/ |
Justice Dept. secures $13 million redlining settlement with N.J. bank
Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Kristen Clarke speaks at a news conference at the Justice Department on Aug. 5, 2021. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
The Justice Department on Wednesday announced a $13 million settlement with a New Jersey bank that failed to provide loans and other services in predominantly Black and Hispanic communities in the Newark area.
As part of the agreement, Lakeland Bank has agreed to create a $12 million loan subsidy fund that will help provide access to credit for borrowers, federal authorities said. The bank will also invest $1 million in outreach, advertising and education and open two new branches in the affected counties.
The settlement demonstrates the Justice Department’s “commitment to holding banks accountable when they deny people of color an equal opportunity,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who oversees the civil rights division, said in a video call with reporters. “We hope this sends a strong message to the financial industry that we will not stand for discriminatory and unlawful barriers.”
Lakeland Bank declined to comment.
Redlining was banned 50 years ago. It's still hurting minorities today.
The bank engaged in redlining practices from 2015 to 2021, with none of its 40 branches located in predominantly Black or Hispanic neighborhoods, said Philip Sellinger, U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey. Other banks generated about five times more mortgages in those neighborhoods than did Lakeland, he said, adding that his office estimated that $120 million in loans would have been distributed by the bank if it had actively sought out borrowers.
“There were qualified borrowers, but Lakeland just didn’t service them,” Sellinger said. “Lakeland knew about the redlining conduct in 2015 but did nothing meaningful to stop it. This kind of systemic discrimination will not be tolerated. Redlining is racist, pure and simple. It has no place in this country.”
Clarke said the federal case against Lakeland was the fourth major settlement in the past year in a broader Justice Department push to combat redlining across the country. The other settlement agreements, in Houston, Memphis and Philadelphia, netted $25 million in loan subsidy funds.
On Tuesday, Provident Financial Services and Lakeland Bank announced a $1.3 billion merger agreement. Federal authorities said the new entity would be bound by the terms of the settlement agreement. | 2022-09-28T17:25:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lakeland Bank signs $13 million redlining settlement with Justice Dept. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/28/lakeland-redlining-new-jersey-settlement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/28/lakeland-redlining-new-jersey-settlement/ |
Maryland telephone users may have to grapple with the new area code “227” as early as next year because available numbers with familiar area codes like “301” and “240” and are running out, officials said Wednesday.
In a statement, the Maryland Public Service Commission said “227” will serve the same geographic area as “301” and “240” after it approved a request from the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA) last month.
In a June letter to the commission, NANPA — a third party entity that decides what numbers go where — said “the need for relief … is imminent.” The supply of available “301” and “240” telephone numbers is estimated to be exhausted in the second quarter of 2023, according to the commission’s statement.
No changes in dialing are required, the commission said, and existing phone numbers will not change.
“While residents in the 240/301/227 area will continue to dial calls the same way they have for more than 20 years, the [commission] urges consumers and businesses to be aware of the upcoming addition of a new area code,” the statement said.
Seven-seven-what? After 74 years, D.C. braces for a new area code.
The “240/301” calling area serves residents and businesses in Allegany, Charles, Garrett, Montgomery, Prince George’s, St. Mary’s and Washington counties, the commission said. Frederick, Howard, Carroll and Anne Arundel will also be affected by the change.
The “301” area code was created in 1947, according to NANPA, and served all of Maryland for 44 years before the state was split to create Baltimore’s “410” in 1991. These area codes’ siblings “240” and “443” followed in 1997.
Meanwhile, D.C.’s new area code, “771,” is already here.
The commission urged all residents to check their devices, including alarms and medical alert systems, to ensure that all numbers are correctly saved with area codes. | 2022-09-28T18:16:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New Md. area code ‘227’ may premiere in 2023 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/28/md-new-area-code-227/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/28/md-new-area-code-227/ |
Should you take a green cruise?
An increasing number of cruise lines are marketing themselves as environmentally conscious. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)
The small cruise ships of the Hurtigruten fleet, which serve Norway’s picturesque coastal routes, are painted red and black. But on the inside, they are green, according to the company.
A decade ago, the cruise line ditched heavy fuel oil in favor of cleaner-burning marine gas oil. More recently, it stripped all single-use plastics from its fleet. It added three new hybrid ships that partially use battery power, cutting emissions by 20 percent. And this year, it announced it would introduce its first zero-emission ship by 2030.
"Sustainability isn't a marketing exercise for us," says Daniel Skjeldam, CEO of Hurtigruten Group. "It's a core part of our business."
Historically, cruise lines haven’t exactly been model citizens when it comes to environmental protection. So when a cruise ship claims to be green, travelers have every reason to be skeptical. With consumer interest in green travel on the rise, many cruise lines are making bold environmental claims and hoping to get your business.
Question is, do they deserve it?
Most do not, to hear environmental advocacy groups talk about it. The latest cruise ship report card issued by Friends of the Earth gives most major cruise lines failing grades for inadequate sewage treatment, air pollution and lack of transparency. The highest-scoring cruise line was Regent Seven Seas, with a C+. (Hurtigruten did not receive a rating from the organization, which graded only major cruise lines.)
Marcie Keever, the oceans and vessels program director with Friends of the Earth, said cruising remains “one of the dirtiest vacation choices.”
Still, cruise lines are trying to be greener. Among the major cruise lines, MSC Cruises, which received a D+, is among those talking the loudest about sustainability. It introduced low-emissions exhaust gas cleaning systems last year, which it says reduces sulfur dioxide emissions by 98 percent. It also fitted its fleet with certified ballast water treatment systems and announced plans to reduce onboard water demand by three percent per year for each ship by monitoring usage, installing water-saving technologies and training crew members.
The riverboat cruise line Uniworld is also one of the most vocal when it comes to the environment. (The company, like Hurtigruten, did not receive a Friends of the Earth rating.) This year it introduced an environmental impact report, detailing progress against 11 sustainability goals. They include reducing food waste by 50 percent across all ships by 2025 and building sustainable ships that run on cleaner fuels.
On Hurtigruten’s ships, an oversized, four-bin recycling sorter with the words “you are the difference — reduce, reuse & recycle” emblazoned on it, greets passengers as they check in. Small shampoo and conditioner bottles and soaps have been replaced with large dispensers in the cabins. In its onboard lectures, the crew also discusses the fragile marine ecosystem and the company’s responsibility to preserve it.
As with other travel industry companies, there’s no universally accepted green certification for cruise lines. The Green Marine certification is a voluntary environmental certification program for North America’s maritime industry.
The certification guarantees "that the operator has undergone a rigorous vetting process of their sustainability practices and has agreed to do so on a regular basis,” says Jeremy Clubb, owner of Rainforest Cruises, a tour operator that specializes in riverboat and small ship cruise packages in the Amazon and Southeast Asia.
No certification is required or has risen to the level of a universally accepted guarantee of good environmental citizenship.
Confusing, isn’t it? James Newcombe, CEO of the tour operator French Waterways, says travel advisers do their best to differentiate between truly green businesses and those that are all talk. When he vets a cruise partner, he always looks for conscious environmental choices, such as reducing energy consumption and waste or securing a Blue Flag marina certification. The Blue Flag, a certification by the Foundation for Environmental Education, certifies the environmental commitment of cruise companies, marinas and beaches.
Lately, Newcombe has been recommending Avalon Waterways, a riverboat cruise operator, to his clients with green concerns. The cruise line last year pledged to introduce a fully electric river cruise boat by 2027. “A real green pledge can be evidenced by a company’s visible efforts to strive toward a greener future,” he says.
There are no recent studies that suggest customers are demanding more environmentally conscious cruises. After conversations with several cruise passengers, I concluded that having a fleet of sustainable and less wasteful ships is a selling point, but not a primary consideration.
For example, Blake Brossman, a frequent cruiser who owns a small business in Lynbrook, N.Y., recently took a cruise from Miami to the Bahamas that promoted itself as green.
“All I cared about was that it was affordable, and it was going straight to the Bahamas,” he says. “It was just a bonus for me that it also happened to be a green cruise.” | 2022-09-28T18:20:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cruise lines make claims on environmental friendliness - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/28/green-cruises-environment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/28/green-cruises-environment/ |
In chess, a long history of cheating, chicanery and Cold War shenanigans
American chess champion Bobby Fischer (center, seated) competes against Soviet Tigran Petrosian in the chess “Match of the Century” in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, on March 30, 1970. (Authenticated News/Getty Images)
A lauded Scandinavian chess player was so angered by an opponent’s behavior during a game that he took drastic action.
King Cnut, who ruled England, Denmark and Norway in the 11th century, was playing against an earl named Ulf in Roskilde when he made a move that broke the rules — prompting his noble opponent to overturn the chessboard and leave the room.
“Ulf, you coward, are you running away?” Cnut called out, according to Snorri Sturluson, the great Icelandic poet and chronicler of the era.
“You would have taken a longer flight in the river Helga, if I did not help you when the Swedes beat you like a dog; then you did not then call me ‘Ulf the coward,’” Ulf, the husband of Cnut’s sister and an important military ally, responded.
Ulf was murdered the following day.
A millennium later, chess games are still ending abruptly and in controversy, but with less bloodshed and more gossip on Twitter and Twitch.
Last week, Norwegian world chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen withdrew from an online tournament match after making just one move against a 19-year-old American, Hans Niemann.
The resignation came shortly after Carlsen, considered by many to be the greatest chess player of all time, unexpectedly lost to Niemann in another tournament game, ending a 53-game winning streak.
On Tuesday, Carlsen issued a statement, which included accusations that Niemann, who has acknowledged cheating in previous online games when he was younger, had “cheated more — and more recently — than he has publicly admitted.”
“I believe that cheating in chess is a big deal and an existential threat to the game,” the 31-year-old wrote.
Carlsen also said that Niemann, who has denied the allegations, received mentorship from player Maxim Dlugy, who was suspended from Chess.com in 2017 over supposed cheating.
Carlsen’s accusations shook the chess world, but they were nothing new: Chess has long been a game rife with allegations of chicanery and skullduggery. Cheating at chess is as old as the game itself. But as King Cnut demonstrated, the consequences of such accusations can be severe — with implications that can extend even to international politics.
Ancient rivalries
The full origins of chess are not known for sure, but it has roots in the Gupta Empire, in what is now India, where a game called chaturanga flourished in the 6th century.
Like modern chess, it involved a black and white checkered board. It was modeled on warfare, with pieces representing infantry, as well as chariots and elephants.
The game soon spread, along trade roots and by wars of conquest. It went east, where it was adapted to the modern game of xiangqi or Chinese chess, as well as east to Persia and the Arab world.
Cnut led an Anglo-Scandinavian empire that was built on centuries of Viking trade and raids, likely bringing the game back.
But it was likely known in Europe at least a century or two before the murder of poor Ulf. Historian H.J.R. Murray suggested in his 1913 book “A History of Chess” that the game was probably introduced to Spain or Italy via Muslim traders.
Even in these early stages, the game is known to have caused conflict. Murray’s book contains multiple instances of disputes among the royals, nobles and clergy who played.
Some, like Cnut, were believed to have cheated (in the account of Cnut’s game offered by Icelandic historian and poet Sturluson, the king made a poor move and then demanded to replay it, in what would be considered cheating under modern “touch-move” rules).
Others were simply poor losers. William the Conqueror, who became the first Norman king of England in the 11th century, was said to have broken a chess board over the prince of France’s head after a loss.
Despite the risk of violence at the hands of a royal, chess enjoyed continued popularity among the elites of Europe. Napoleon Bonaparte was one well-known player, even in exile.
The rules were standardized over the centuries — and with that, more opportunities for cheating arose.
One of the most notorious examples of chess-based trickery was that of the “Mechanical Turk,” a late 17th-century contraption that claimed to be an automated chess player. In fact, a human player was hiding inside. Somehow, both Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin were reported to have been taken in by the ruse.
As chess tournaments proliferated, another tactic became common: collusion, whereby players would withdraw or deliberately lose to help others progress.
The issue gained attention after the creation of the International Chess Federation, known by its French acronym FIDE, and the increasingly high-stakes spectacle of the World Chess Championship, which became the site of Cold War chess battles — and accusations of cheating.
In a 1962 Sports Illustrated article, U.S. prodigy Bobby Fischer accused Soviet players of deliberately drawing their games to preserve their energy for games against him. Four decades later, the former head of the Soviet team that year admitted the allegations were true.
Fischer would go on to win the 1972 World Chess Championship, beating the Soviet player Boris Spassky.
The U.S. victory was short-lived: Fischer would refuse to defend his title in 1975 and entered a long period of decline. In 1992, he won an unofficial rematch against Spassky but ended up facing an arrest warrant for breaking U.N. sanctions on Yugoslavia, where the match was held.
Modern methods
The end of the Cold War might have temporarily cooled the geopolitics of chess. But changes to technology soon meant there were far more opportunities for foul play.
In the 1993 World Open in New York, an unrated player who was able to force a draw against a grandmaster was accused of using technology to cheat. The player reportedly wore headphones, had a pulsing bulge in his pocket and appeared to not fully understand the basic rules of chess.
Since then, the risk of technological cheating has affected chess at all levels. Three top French players were suspended for allegedly cheating via coded text message in 2011. Four years later, a Georgian champion was found to have an iPhone hidden in a bathroom during the 17th annual Dubai Open Chess Tournament.
In modern chess, even the best players are no match for chess programs that can run on a phone. Garry Kasparov, the legendary Russian player, was able to beat IBM’s supercomputer Deep Blue in 1996, but he became the first world champion to lose a match to a computer the following year, when Deep Blue won a rematch.
As Nigel Short, an English chess grandmaster, put it to The Washington Post in 2015: “My microwave could beat Magnus Carlsen.”
Aside from the frontier of cheating enabled by technological advances, politics has continued to contaminate chess. Critics say that FIDE is effectively controlled by Russia.
From 1995 to 2018, it was led by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, a former president of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia, whom the United States placed under sanctions in 2015 for supporting financially the Assad regime in Syria. Arkady Dvorkovich, a former Russian deputy prime minister, succeeded Ilyumzhinov.
Despite controversy over the war in Ukraine, Dvorkovich was reelected for a second term last month, beating Carlsen’s Danish coach, Peter Heine Nielsen, and Ukrainian grandmaster Andrii Baryshpolets.
With a game so suffused with distrust at a fundamental level, perhaps Carlsen can’t be blamed for being suspicious.
Niemann has offered to play the game naked to dispel his doubters. That, to be fair, is an offer with which King Cnut never had to contend. | 2022-09-28T18:25:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Magnus Carlsen, Hans Niemann and the long history of chess cheating - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/long-history-chess-cheating-carlsen-neimann/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/long-history-chess-cheating-carlsen-neimann/ |
Children receive a free lunch at the Phoenix Day @ Central Park Youth Program in downtown Phoenix in 2014. (Matt York/AP)
A new study from the New York Times and research group Child Trends suggests that child poverty has plummeted in the United States, dropping 59 percent between 1993 and 2019. But the job is not finished; some 11 percent of children remained poor in 2019. That number is higher depending on which child poverty measure one uses. Which is why it is inexcusable that Congress recently let expire one of the most potent programs the nation has to lift children out of poverty: a generous child tax credit.
Unbridgeable ideological divides are not to blame; both Democrats and Republicans favor beefing up the credit. The outlines of a deal are obvious.
There also is no uncertainty about what expanding the child tax credit would accomplish. Lawmakers temporarily enhanced the support in 2021, giving the neediest families reliable monthly payments according to how many children they had. Along with making the maximum per-child payment more generous, they fixed a kink in the law that funneled more money to those with higher incomes than to the poorest, which had shortchanged some 27 million children. The result: Child poverty dropped by nearly half in 2021, to a record low of 5.2 percent.
The Post's View: The hidden lesson from Mississippi’s welfare fraud scandal
Democrats sought to extend this expansion in a big party-line spending bill, but senators failed to agree on the plan. Instead, they let the single-year expansion expire. This year’s child poverty rate is no doubt heading back toward 2019’s level in response.
Critics worry that expanding the tax credit discouraged work, because families could claim the maximum amount regardless of their income. If they paid less in federal income taxes than the amount they would get in aid, the government gave them the balance. This could really add up; Congress boosted the maximum credit to $3,600 per 0-to-5-year-old and to $3,000 per 6-to-17-year-old. This might have made it more attractive for some parents to stay home rather than continue working for little money.
Initial studies have found that these employment effects were actually pretty small, possibly in part because the expansion was temporary. Making it permanent might cause some families to make more substantial life changes. But the trade-off would be acceptable, because the employment effects are still likely to be tiny relative to the policy’s benefits.
A robust child tax credit would be an investment in society’s future. Research suggests that topping up family income helps children on a variety of long-term measures, such as educational attainment, lifetime income and health. Surveys indicate that families used their tax credit money on healthier food, tutoring and child activities.
Yet there is one more catch: paying for it. Congress’s one-year enhancement cost some $110 billion. Lawmakers could roll back some of the GOP’s gratuitous 2017 tax cuts, but Republicans would resist. Their alternative is to take money from other important anti-poverty programs. The obvious deal is for Republicans to agree to some tax hikes and Democrats to offer other program cuts that would do minimal harm to the anti-poverty effort.
Congress has a knack for allowing partisanship to derail opportunities to make obvious deals that could make a big difference. This should not be one of them. | 2022-09-28T18:29:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How to stamp out child poverty - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/childhood-poverty-tax-credit-congress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/childhood-poverty-tax-credit-congress/ |
Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, left, and Mississippi State Auditor Shad White speak with the media last week outside the Hinds County Courthouse in Jackson, Miss., and discuss the case of John Davis, former director of Mississippi's welfare agency, who pleaded guilty to federal and state charges in a conspiracy to misspend tens of millions of dollars that were intended to help needy families. (Rogelio V. Solis/AP)
Nearly 1 in 5 people live in poverty in Mississippi, the poorest state in the nation. So it’s unpardonable that state officials largely failed to support low-income families, and instead doled out tens of millions in welfare funding to promote well-heeled interests. The sprawling scandal has embroiled a number of government and nonprofit leaders — as well as Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre.
Mr. Favre, who earned nearly $140 million from his playing career alone, has been accused of playing a role in the misappropriation of $8 million from a program for needy families. Among other activities under scrutiny, he reportedly pressed state officials for millions to help construct a stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi, where his daughter played volleyball. He does not face criminal charges and has denied wrongdoing. But Mr. Favre’s case is just one part of a larger, shameful story. Six people have been charged in connection with the misallocated funds, at least four of whom have pleaded guilty. Mississippi has also filed a civil suit against 38 people and organizations to recoup misspent funds.
The sordid saga should do more than tarnish reputations. It should also cast a spotlight on the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, where much of the money came from. Established to support poor families, it has too often degenerated into an opaque slush fund for states.
The Post's View: One way to stamp out child poverty
TANF was created as part of the 1996 welfare reform package, replacing a cash aid program with block grants to states to use at their discretion. By most metrics, it has underperformed: Studies have shown that it did not significantly increase recipients’ income levels, and a recent analysis from the New York Times and research group Child Trends concluded that it was the “rare program whose anti-poverty effect seemingly declined.”
The program’s diminishing reach stems, in part, from complex work and eligibility requirements and a shrinking budget in real terms. But TANF has also been plagued by a lack of oversight and clear standards. States are allowed to use the grants for several purposes, including promoting “two-parent families” and reducing “out-of-wedlock pregnancies.” That has led to states slashing cash assistance to poor families and instead investing in tangential initiatives, such as early child care and college scholarships. Some have even used TANF dollars to fund antiabortion centers and pro-marriage campaigns. As we have seen in Mississippi, this flexible framework offers ample opportunity for grift.
TANF would clearly benefit from more oversight and accountability. The Department of Health and Human Services could, for example, define “needy” families and set standards for what types of programs meet the stated goals. Congress should also consider ways to update the program, which is based on archaic ideas about welfare. That process could involve narrowing its goals, bolstering federal reporting requirements and finding ways to ensure funds reach the neediest households.
More broadly, it is time for deeper thinking about the country’s welfare programs, many of which are outdated, unresponsive and labyrinthine. Evidence, as the Editorial Board has noted, suggests that a robust, extended child tax credit could do much more to help the neediest families. That — not poorly supervised funding to states — should be the centerpiece of whatever anti-poverty effort comes next. | 2022-09-28T18:30:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The hidden lesson from Mississippi’s welfare fraud scandal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/mississippi-welfare-fraud-scandal-lessons-tanf/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/mississippi-welfare-fraud-scandal-lessons-tanf/ |
I don’t want my rich uncle’s money. Carolyn Hax readers give advice.
Dear Carolyn: My uncle is the most difficult person I’ve ever known. We all fully believe he has narcissistic and histrionic personality disorder and he makes himself the victim in every situation ever. In recent years I don’t respond to calls or texts from him, but I have to see him at holidays and such because my mom can’t handle not seeing family and I won’t miss the time with my mom.
He is also an actual billionaire.
He can be very “generous” to all of us, who are not at all wealthy, but he then loves to throw his gifts in people’s faces saying that everyone only cares about him for his money. He also makes AS BIG A PROBLEM if anyone does not take his money, saying that no one thinks of him or values him to ask for help. He recently found out about a big trip my fiance and I took and acted hurt and angry that we didn’t get financial help from him for the trip.
He wants to give us a big sum of money for our wedding, and keeps asking for our new address so he can mail the check because we aren’t in the area. I would like to either ignore or decline this gift, but my fiance and my mom think that he’s going to have a fit at some point about it either way, so why not have him whine about us taking the gift instead of not taking it? Is it better to keep the higher ground by letting him be mad that we wouldn’t accept his money, or is it the same for him to be mad either way and worth it to have less of a financial burden?
— Not-Wealthy Niece
Not-Wealthy Niece: I’d like to point something out that I think your mom and fiance may be seeing: You’re the one concocting the “higher ground” here. Your uncle isn’t going to see you as taking the higher ground, and you’re not winning in some way by not cashing his check. You’re creating a “nose-face” situation for yourself. Look at it this way: He can write you a check that is a nice sum of money for you and your partner, while in relation to his net worth it will be akin to the loose change he found under the sofa.
It’s no material difference to him at all if you refuse what (to him) is going to feel like handing you $5. But in your mind you’re currently seeing this as: I took a stand! I’m gonna show him!
But in real life? You’re really not. It’s just $5 to him.
What you can do is stop attaching so much meaning to something that is materially and literally quite meaningless to him. Accept the gift, smile broadly, write a nice thank you note, and then … ? Drop it from your inner dialogue forever. If he goes on and on about it the next time you see him? Smile and thank him, and then you can note inwardly that what he’s doing by going on about it is about him, not about you. Drop your end of the rope, graciously accept what is pocket change to him and move on.
— Kate
Not-Wealthy Niece: I had a mother-in-law who, though not a billionaire, loved to give generous gifts. Later on, she would try to use her history of gift-giving as leverage to establish control over nearly all my choices. She even suggested I was greedy and grasping. I finally banned all gifts from her, and told her anything else she insisted on sending would go directly to my husband or kids. I would not touch it. She was very distressed over losing her means of manipulation. But for me, it was amazingly freeing.
She still sent checks for my birthday and holidays and such. I gave them all to her son for about five years. Leave the money on the table: It is not worth the stress and dehumanization. Recently, I allowed her to give me a couple of small gifts on special occasions. She has never again tried to use it to manipulate me. It was a long lesson, but greed is your own worst enemy in these situations. Money is only power if you give it power.
Not-Wealthy Niece: I took the money.
My “gifter” wasn’t a billionaire or quite as much of a jerk, but not a great person.
Did I feel that I sold out? Nope, because it was a gift, not the purchase of my soul or my silence. I still was me around him, objectionable as that was to him in many respects. I actually kind of respected him more for actually respecting THAT.
I considered then, and still do, that it was a lovely gift, and it gave me opportunities in life that I otherwise would not have had.
I know there are folks who would just tell me I am rationalizing a craven decision, but I sleep better at night now than before. When he passed away, the estate went to philanthropic causes, so at least the punishment/reward game was not in play, as it so often is.
Principles are awesome. So is not having a mortgage or student loans.
— Just Me
Not-Wealthy Niece: My father has a habit of acting like your uncle. He is well-off (not a billionaire), but he attaches self-worth to his ability to provide. When he visits, I return home every day to the list of “improvements” he has done to my house while I was at work. I don’t always want those things done, but it’s his way of trying to make my life better. I often joke with others that his love language is praise and adoration. You won’t hear a “good job” from him no matter how hard you try, but he expresses his love to other people through gifts and financial help. I often find myself annoyed by his obsession over how great he is and his lack of ability to provide emotional support.
I find it helps to step back and remind myself that he is an inherently flawed human who loves me unconditionally on his own terms, not my terms. Your uncle sees this gift as a way to show his love. Perhaps he can’t be your emotional rock or your support, but he is showing you his love the way he knows. Take the gift as an expression of love and support from your uncle.
— Accept Their Love | 2022-09-28T18:30:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | I don’t want my rich uncle’s money. Carolyn Hax readers give advice. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/28/carolyn-hax-uncle-rich-money/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/28/carolyn-hax-uncle-rich-money/ |
By Simon Ducroquet
Exurban
No development
Source: Map uses analysis by Stephen Strader, Geography and the Environment, Villanova University, with data from the Spatially Explicit Regional Growth Model (SERGoM)
As Stephen Strader has watched Hurricane Ian barreling toward Florida’s west coast, he cannot stop thinking about all that lies in its path.
“What if Hurricane Ian had occurred in 1950? How many people would be affected?” said Strader, a hazards geographer and professor at Villanova University. “Not nearly as many as now. Our built environment is expanding and growing.”
Florida’s allure has been a constant for generations. But recent decades have brought more transplants — and more development — than ever. In few places is that more apparent than along the swath of coastline facing disastrous impacts from Ian, from the Tampa Bay area south to Fort Myers and Naples.
From 1970 to 2020, Census records show, the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area grew an astounding 623 percent, to more than 760,000 people. Over that same period, the North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton area grew to 283 percent to nearly 834,000 residents. Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater saw growth of more than 187 percent and is now home to more than 3.1 million people.
Cape Coral–Fort Myers metro area had a
620% increase in population since 1970
North Port-Sarasota–Bradenton +280%
Tampa Bay–St. Petersburg–Clearwater
Cape Coral–Fort Myers metro area had a 620%
increase in population since 1970
Tampa Bay–St. Petersburg–Clearwater +190%
Cape Coral–Fort Myers metro area had a 620% increase in population since 1970
North Port–Sarasota–Bradenton +280% since 1970
Tampa Bay–St. Petersburg–Clearwater +190% since 1970
Strader said the population surge in Florida in recent decades — along with the building boom that has accompanied it — has put exponentially more assets and more people in harm’s way.
“People want to live near the coasts and live near the beach, but that comes with a cost. Unfortunately, we have to bear the brunt of that risk,” Strader said. “There are more people than ever before in the path of these storms. Plus, a lot of people are going to be experiencing a hurricane for the first time.”
Development in harm’s way
National Hurricane Center forecast as of 5 a.m. Eastern Wednesday, Sept. 28
Strader and fellow researchers refer to such looming risks as the “expanding bull’s eye” effect — the notion that as more humans populate and build in an area, it creates an ever-larger opportunity for a weather-related disaster to wreak havoc.
“Then throw on sea level rise and climate change on top of that, and you are looking at a multi-headed monster,” Strader said.
Cities in Florida are well aware of the risks. The Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council, for instance, has simulated what the damage and recovery might look like from a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane, in hopes of helping local leaders plan for the scenarios that might unfold.
But even those efforts have done little to stop the feverish development in the state — a reality that persists in many coastal regions around the country.
“Everybody in the room agrees this is a major problem that we still haven’t come to grips with,” said Rob Young, a professor of geology at Western Carolina University and director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines. “This is a national problem. But Florida has been particularly good at putting more things in harm’s way.”
Karen Clark’s Boston-based firm, which models the potential impacts of disasters, has estimated that a direct hit on Florida’s coast could cost many billions of dollars in losses, in part because the population and housing growth that has defined recent decades. But where a storm ultimately comes ashore and how it behaves afterward are key.
“Hurricanes are like real estate. The three most important things are location, location, location,” Clark said, adding, “Very slight shifts in the path of this storm could mean that the losses change by a factor. That’s what we are watching.”
This much is certain: Almost anywhere Ian could have made landfall is home to far more people and many more assets than only a generation ago.
“It’s going to affect more people than ever before,” Strader said. “We really haven’t done much to check this growth … What we are finding out is that is not sustainable.”
Naema Ahmed contributed to this report. | 2022-09-28T18:56:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maps show how millions of new residents have moved into Hurricane Ian’s path - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/28/florida-population-growth-hurricane-ian-path/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/28/florida-population-growth-hurricane-ian-path/ |
The mixed-bag bill would have expanded power lines crucial for clean energy
Wind turbines and solar panels line a renewable energy facility in Lexington, Ore., in May. (Sarah Hamaker/Portland General Electric/AP)
On Tuesday, when Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) announced he was pulling his proposal to expand energy development across the country from a must-pass government operations bill, many environmental groups celebrated. “This is a good day for the climate and the environment,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
But the bill also included a provision to rapidly expand transmission lines across the country. Without those lines, the United States is in danger of missing its climate targets entirely, limiting the impact of the massive climate bill passed last month by Congress.
What was in the bill?
Manchin’s bill, known as the Energy Independence and Security Act, included provisions to speed up the development of both clean and fossil-fuel energy across the country. (The bill is also known in congressional jargon as “permitting reform.”) It would have expedited the approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (a natural gas pipeline through West Virginia that has long been a priority for Manchin). It also would have set a two-year target for environmental reviews of energy projects and expanded the federal government’s authority to permit transmission lines nationwide.
That last point is most important for attempts to wean the country off fossil fuels. Renewables, such as wind and solar, don’t produce power all the time and in every place. To switch the U.S. grid over to renewables, huge, high-powered transmission lines are needed to bring electricity from sunny and windy areas of the country to its urban centers.
According to one analysis from energy modelers at Princeton University, the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate bill passed in August, is expected to cut U.S. emissions 40 percent by 2030, compared to 2005 levels. But that’s only if the United States increases transmission by 2.3 percent per year — a rate that is more than double historical averages. If transmission grows at only 1 percent per year, the modelers estimate that 80 percent of the bill’s benefits could be lost.
Why was it so divisive?
Opponents and supporters of the bill quarreled over one crucial question: Is it more important to build clean energy fast, or to stop the continued build-out of fossil fuels?
Many environmentalists argued that the bill included too many giveaways to the oil and gas industry and that the provisions to speed up clean energy would also accelerate fossil fuel production. Activists fighting the Mountain Valley Pipeline marched in D.C. to oppose the legislation.
“We’re in a full-blown climate emergency,” said Abigail Dillen, president of the environmental organization Earthjustice. “This deal was predicated on an all-of-the-above approach that advanced fossil fuels.” Dillen says that provisions in the bill — like the two-year target for environmental reviews — would further harm communities that are living near fossil fuel infrastructure. Existing laws could help to build transmission lines faster, she says.
But others have argued that the increased oil and gas infrastructure is a small price to pay for expediting the transition to clean energy. “If we have to build a few natural gas pipelines to have the largest clean-energy build-out in world history, I’ll make that deal,” said Paul Bledsoe, a strategic adviser at the Progressive Policy Institute and a former climate adviser to President Bill Clinton.
Ultimately, the bill failed because Manchin couldn’t get 60 votes in the Senate; Republicans refused to get onboard and offered their own (even more fossil-fuel-friendly) proposal in response. Some Democrats also refused to support it, citing concerns for the environment.
That leaves two options going forward: The bill could be attached to a must-pass defense bill, or Manchin could wait until after the midterms — during what is often called a “lame-duck” session — and try to attract greater support then.
Regardless, most agree that some form of permitting reform that accelerates clean energy and builds out huge transmission lines is needed to meet the country’s climate goals. “We need fast, dynamic construction of clean energy,” Bledsoe said. “And that’s being held back by our sclerotic permitting system.” | 2022-09-28T18:56:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why the defeat of Manchin’s permitting reform bill could be a loss for the climate - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/28/manchin-permitting-reform-climate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/28/manchin-permitting-reform-climate/ |
Jared Leone
Alphonso Poole prunes the garden in front of his home, just a few blocks from McKay Bay in Tampa, ahead of Hurricane Ian on Tuesday. (Octavio Jones for The Washington Post)
Some don’t have the means: Leaving is a privilege.
“You know how many times I heard them say evacuate?” said Alphonso Poole, 47, who has lived in his single-story house on Harper Street for about five years. “And guess what I do: Look at them like they’ve lost their mind.”
Harper runs through the heart of Palmetto Beach, one of the city’s oldest neighborhoods, east of downtown. It is a majority-Hispanic community of low-slung houses and bungalows clustered along a spit of land that juts into McKay Bay, bordered to the north by a snarl of highways. Despite its name, there’s not much of a beach here — only a sea wall, which lesser storms have mounted easily, driving water into the yards of nearby homes. And unlike in tonier waterfront areas, many residents may not have the resources to rebuild after the sort of flooding that Ian could bring. Households in Palmetto Beach’s Zip code earn about $24,000 a year, less than half of Tampa’s average.
“I ain’t running from no damn storm,” he said. His house, with its chain-link fence and wide porch, had no boards over its windows or doors — if God wants the water and wind to get in, Poole said, plywood and nails won’t help. But still, he was confident he was ready. A chef whose family has farmland near Ocala in central Florida, Poole listed his supplies: freezers stocked with food, plenty of reusable ice packs, tanks of potable water, flashlights, first-aid kits and two radios. Gesturing to the truck in his driveway, he added, “Four-wheel-drive.”
“You know what people don’t understand is wherever you choose to live, that’s how you have to live. Like all these rich folks want their Benzes and Bentleys but want to stay around water,” Poole said, referring to the area’s many gulf and bayside mansions.
A decade ago, Palmetto Beach was added to the National Register of Historic Places, recognizing its legacy as an early industrial center, home to four cigar factories in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Workers built cottages near the plants, and a school soon followed. The neighborhood’s roads, especially Harper Street, are narrow, the multicolored houses built close together and near the curb. Today, it’s home to many young families, and a few kids played in the street as the storm rolled in.
Half a block from Poole’s house, closer to the water, Rafael Baca was helping his family drill plywood over the windows of their home. Plastic covered another opening, and sandbags were piled on the curb. Baca has lived in the corner house his whole life and it has only ever seen minor water damage, he said. He was hoping that streak continued, but he was nervous.
“With a little bit of rain, all this street gets flooded. It gets bad,” said Baca, 27, pointing to the road that leads to the bay, where water from earlier showers still pooled. “Now with this big storm coming, who knows how deep it might get.”
Photos from Florida as Hurricane Ian nears Category 5
The family felt its only option was to prepare and pray. Baca, who is riding out the storm with his in-laws, wife and her brothers, said they talked about leaving but decided they couldn’t afford it.
“We don’t have the money for it now, to just leave,” he said. Hotel stays, gas and meals can easily top $1,000 and could be much steeper if evacuees can’t return home for several days.
“They ask for so much money for a night,” Baca said of the hotels, which are in high demand during storms. “So we try to prepare here and hope for the best.”
Near the other end of Harper, Rene Rivera and Judy Herrera sat on their porch. They were looking at Ian’s predicted path again, and they were starting to worry — but not enough to leave. Rivera, 28, was born in Miami and grew up in Tampa. He was practically raised under a hurricane warning.
Rivera weathered Hurricane Irma in the Harper Street house, which he has rented for about seven years, and he said he’s never seen flooding that would put it at risk.
“The way they make it seem on the news — you know 10, 15 feet — I’ve never seen that,” he said. “Even when it was predicted in the past.”
His home has been standing for nearly 100 years — constructed not long after a Category 3 storm hit the city in 1921, the last major hurricane to hit here. If it has lasted this long, Rivera said, he has “faith that everything’s going to be all right.” The neighborhood was in the first zone to come under mandatory evacuation, but the pair chose to stay.
“We’ve done it in the past. We’ve evacuated for some hurricanes,” Rivera said. “But the amount of time it took, the money spent” wasn’t worth it, he said.
The cost is a big factor, he said, but so is a feeling that can’t be quantified: “It’s just hard to leave your home when you’re worrying about coming back to nothing.”
Just as they do before every hurricane, Florida officials in the days leading up to Ian’s predicted landfall pleaded with residents to evacuate, directing them to seek refuge with family, with friends, at hotels or, as a last resort, at shelters. But authorities aren’t forcing people to leave. So in the days ahead, the focus will move from preparation to rescue.
“I think most people heeded the warnings of doing the evacuations in those very sensitive locations, but not everyone may have done that,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said at a briefing early Wednesday. “And so we understand that a storm of this magnitude, there is going to be a need to begin those rescue efforts.”
Local leaders are particularly worried about those choosing to stay in mobile-home parks, such as Lake Haven in Dunedin, a city north of Clearwater positioned along the Gulf Coast. Mobile homes often aren’t sturdily anchored into the ground and can be uprooted in a flood. Roofs and walls can cave in. But at Lake Haven, a few residents were unyielding.
Ron Thomas, for one, isn’t going anywhere.
“I’m not afraid of hurricanes,” said Thomas, 83. “I’m not afraid of anything.”
He has resided in his home there for some 15 years and tallied more than a dozen hurricanes survived throughout this life. This one, he said, won’t be any different. He’ll stay with his dog, Teddy. On Tuesday, after spending much of the day working in the yard outside his house, Thomas reclined in a chair on the driveway, listening to the temporary quiet. It wasn’t just the absence of evacuated neighbors, he said. Usually, his wife, Helen Annette, would be inside singing, cooking or playing computer games. But she died about two weeks ago, he said.
“Without her, I don’t care if a hurricane takes me or not,” Thomas said.
“If it lands south of Tampa I’m going to stay,” Harris said. “Otherwise I’ll go. I don’t want to be in a trailer with 180-mile-per-hour wind.”
“I think they’re exaggerating, but maybe not,” he said. “If I hear it’s coming through, I’m leaving.”
Back in Tampa, other hurricane-resisters flocked to county sites to shovel sand into any receptacle they could find — trash can liners, buckets, Ikea bags. At a park in West Tampa, Aurelio Ramos, 81, piled bags into the bed of his pickup. Ramos’s home in Town ’n’ Country, a suburb northwest of the city center, backs up to a creek, and he was told to evacuate. But for him, he said, that would mean staying in a shelter. And he’d rather be at home.
“Maybe it’ll come straight through here, maybe not, but we gotta do this,” he said, gesturing at his truckload of sand.
Aigul Ahmed, 45, filled 10 bags and had already boarded up her home, which also sits in an evacuation zone. She was more nervous about the flooding than the wind, she said, and is comforted by Tampa’s long history of avoiding direct hits.
Others have attributed it to more than luck, citing an old tale about Indigenous people blessing the land to protect it from storms. And indeed, as the storm moved closer to land, its predicted track moved farther south, possibly reducing the risk of catastrophic flooding in Tampa. Yet officials have stressed that the deluge could still inundate low-lying communities — places like Palmetto Beach.
Leone reported from Dunedin. Ellen Francis contributed to this report. | 2022-09-28T18:56:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why these Florida residents ignored Hurricane Ian evacuation orders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/28/hurricane-ian-florida-evacuations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/28/hurricane-ian-florida-evacuations/ |
FILE - Randy Halprin, who was part of the so-called “Texas 7” gang who escaped from prison in 2000 and was convicted in the murder of an Irving police officer, enters the 283rd Judicial District Court on July 14, 2021, at Frank Crowley Courthouse in Dallas. Tarrant County District Attorney Sharen Wilson’s office said Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022, it agrees with lawyers for Halprin that former Judge Vickers Cunningham was biased against the inmate because he is Jewish. Halprin’s case will now be sent to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which will make the final decision on whether he gets a new trial. (Juan Figueroa/The Dallas Morning News via AP) | 2022-09-28T18:57:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DA: Death row inmate should get new trial over judge's bias - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/da-death-row-inmate-should-get-new-trial-over-judges-bias/2022/09/28/92c38af4-3f56-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/da-death-row-inmate-should-get-new-trial-over-judges-bias/2022/09/28/92c38af4-3f56-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Transcript: The Cloud & Digital Transformation
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Cat Zakrzewski, a tech policy reporter here at The Washington Post.
I'm joined today by Bret Arsenault, a corporate vice president and chief information security officer at Microsoft.
Bret, thank you so much for joining us.
MR. ARSENAULT: Thank you for having me, Cat. I really appreciate it.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Well, and so I want to begin today with a primer for our audience because we've been hearing about the cloud for more than a decade from business leaders but it at times can still feel like a murky tech buzzword. So, just to kick things off, what is the cloud?
MR. ARSENAULT: [Laughs] That's a really good question, and I appreciate the opportunity to continue to clarify and simplify. Really, when I think about the cloud, if we think about, you know, historically you had data centers and consumer applications, now instead of the cloud being a privately owned entity, you have cloud service providers who now provide capabilities for compute, storage, and network to be able to run your applications, and they're distributed around the world. And I think the way to think about it is there's three primary types of cloud services. There's what's known as infrastructure as a service, where you basically take whatever you'd run in your data center, virtualized or not, and then move it into one of these cloud centers. There's platform as a service where you can natively write applications to that cloud service that I think has some big benefits in that, and then there's software as a service, which are applications that are just full runtime. So, if you think of Office 365 as a software as a service or Salesforce as software as a service, those are really the ways I think about cloud services.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Thank you so much.
And, yeah, I think it's helpful to lay out how this impacts so many different parts of Microsoft's business, as you laid out, that you can provide computing power to other companies, perhaps a social network or the apps we access on our phones, but also at the same time provide your own software, so the idea that I can access something in my OneDrive from my phone, tablet, or computer.
And just given the broad range of applications and software that the cloud touches today, I mean, at this point, what critical data isn't in the cloud?
MR. ARSENAULT: Yeah. It's interesting. More and more data continues to move to the cloud. There's cost efficiencies. There's agility. There's performance, and there's elasticity. So imagine some applications if you're thinking from a business perspective that you only run like some companies run surveys and they run once a year or twice a year. You don't have to have all that capacity that's sitting there unused.
And so, to be honest, I think about 90‑‑oh, I think 98 percent right now of the portfolio of the things we run here are actually in the cloud today.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And are you seeing a similar shift among other businesses, especially with the pandemic?
MR. ARSENAULT: Yeah, I think we saw two things. I think you're seeing it shift as a general part of the digital transformation. Most companies are becoming software companies that maybe traditionally weren't, and then, certainly, the pandemic accelerated a lot of that work. So, because of the fact that you had people working remotely, the ability to access a cloud service from anywhere, anytime, on any device really became an important part of how people were working, and so it accelerated a lot of the work that people are already doing. It pressurized that system, absolutely.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And we saw that the pandemic created a big boom in business for companies like Microsoft. More recently, the company reported a bit of a slowdown in cloud computing revenue. Do you think this aspect of the business is recession‑proof?
MR. ARSENAULT: Yeah, it's an interesting question. I mean, I'm not the financial person, here. I'm just the person who operates and protects Microsoft. I'm not on the selling side, but obviously, I care about the business and running it.
I can tell you what the customers I meet with‑‑you know, I think the idea of having a compute experience and that's cost effective that you can continue to scale and that can for me provide continuity and possess recovery capabilities doesn't really change, and I think that more and more or at least the trend I'm seeing is what vendors can provide most of the services that I need, because we see so much complexity in that space today. So the more that people can provide, I think, the better off you are to be in the headwinds of recession. The companies that can provide the most capability will be the best served.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And, Bret, because you mentioned your role is really protecting Microsoft, I wanted to bring in a question we got from a viewer about security.
MR. ARSENAULT: Okay.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Beverly Baxter from the United States asks, given the history of security breaches involving the cloud, why should we trust cloud security in the future?
MR. ARSENAULT: Yeah. I'm not sure of the specific instance that we're referencing here, but I think if we look at‑‑if I look at sort of what I see in the threat landscape and the types of things we see, most of the things that I'm seeing happening are really identity‑based attacks that are happening in this space.
And it's funny. On the intro reel, I saw the comment about 6.3 trillion events a day. I think that was probably 18 months ago, and today we're at 43 trillion events per day. And so one of the best tools, one of the best tools you have to protect yourself is to have really good fidelity in intelligence that lets you see the trends and patterns that are happening. So we continue to see this identity‑based attack, regardless of where--location it's at, and so you'll see‑‑like in the last year alone, we've seen a 60 percent increase, where we're seeing over 920 password attacks per second, where we saw just under 600 last year. And so you want to be able to have the signal that you see, predict, and protect you from those kinds of situations.
That honestly can really only be done at cloud scale, and so I think that ability to have signal and then to act on that signal‑‑and I see it repeatedly in our environment‑‑is really changing the game for us.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: What do you think is driving that massive increase in threats that you just laid out?
MR. ARSENAULT: Well, I think there's a couple of things. I think that we've seen basically the pace and the sophistication of the attack vectors and the financial models continue to evolve, and so there's just opportunity for bad people to continue to do bad things and end up having reward at their reputations, but more importantly, financially, the actual‑‑if you look at, you know, identity, as I mentioned, or the ransomware attack models and the financial models that are trending for that, it has a pretty big growth trajectory. It's an economy all of its own, and so while there's opportunity for that to happen, you'll continue to see that threat landscape evolve.
And this has been going on long before. I mean, to be honest, when we created the mail system, mail fraud came about. When we, you know, created the telecommunications system, telecommunications fraud came about. So it's not surprising that when you have internet and internet services, you would see bad things happen, and the question is, how do you anticipate, predict, and protect yourself from those?
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: It's interesting you mention the sophistication of actors because we often hear victims of cyberattacks talk about that, but recently, there have also been some breaches again and again where we've seen actually teenagers being able to breach major companies. I'm thinking of Uber and Twitter and others. So why do you think these less sophisticated attackers are still able to break through?
MR. ARSENAULT: It's a really good question, and I have a teenager, and I still think she's more sophisticated than I am. So I won't use ageism in the response.
But I will say, interestingly, you still see a massive attack surface of people not doing the brilliant basics, and so when you think about those types of scenarios, like I mentioned in the password scenario and even in the cases you just mentioned, the ability to engineer or get someone's password makes it reasonably a straightforward model to go do. And so it's an enterprise. The question is, you know, why are you having any passwords at all? Why are you not using 2FA? Because that's like the fundamental thing.
You're 20 times, 20 times more likely to be compromised if you use password versus multifactor authentication, and so it's abundantly available. We continue as an industry‑‑this isn't a Microsoft statement. And so we were on the journey to get rid of passwords years ago, and so you still see a lot of entities coming on board and doing those things and just doing the brilliant basics. Make sure you have multifactor authentication. Only allow access from certifiably healthy devices, and ensure you're collecting the telemetry that lets you look for anomalies and/or detect these things as they happen at cloud scale.
And so I think that, you know, the whole industry has to evolve into that model, but there's some basics that I think we still aren't getting right as an industry.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And you've previously said‑‑Microsoft has said that all employees would be password‑less by 2021. So how many Microsoft employees are still using passwords today?
MR. ARSENAULT: Nobody.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Wow. And so when you say that using multifactor‑‑
MR. ARSENAULT: Something I should‑‑
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
MR. ARSENAULT: Let me clarify it. So the first thing we do is get rid of the users to ever have to know anything about a password in the system, and that anything in application you talk to requires multifactor authentication.
And so we're at 100 percent of that for the systems today, and we'll continue to evolve that journey and evolve that journey on the back end as well. But, yeah, today I have no idea. Like we don't‑‑I have no idea what my password would be.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And what does multifactor authentication look like at Microsoft? I know different companies use different techniques to verify.
MR. ARSENAULT: Yeah. That's a really good point, and for us, you know, we sort of‑‑you know, a little bit of maybe sharing our journey and our learning‑‑and it's not saying it's the right one, but it's the journey we use‑‑as the person who ran around saying 2FA everywhere, which was the previous way we'd say two‑factor authentication‑‑and originally, like many companies, we only use 2FA for our VPN perimeter outside‑in access, and we sort of flipped it on our head and said instead of saying 2FA everywhere, which meant having a smartcard or some other component, we said what if we could just get rid of passwords, and that became a design change principle for the way we did things.
And for one, it wasn't like me forcing 2FA on people. Our users actually loved it. So I created a system that users loved and the IT department trusted, and so getting to that model, it seemed simple in words, but it was a big mindset shift‑‑a mindset shift for us. And the important thing on 2FA was not to be so prescriptive that you would only allow one type of multifactor authentication. It's not a very inclusive way to go do something.
So we built native capabilities in Windows Hello that could be fingerprint sensing, iris, facial, because remember a doctor is in a different scenario, as an example. With a face mask, glasses, and gloves, what are you going to go do? And there's lots of other biometric cryptographically secure ways to go do that.
And so for us, we use Windows Hello as an integrated part of what we go do, and so I just walk up to my PC. It recognizes. In this particular case, the one I have here is based on facial. It recognizes me. It logs‑‑logs up, comes in, and it's running. It's secure. It's a faster login. It's a great experience.
I don't run all Windows. I think people are confused. I'm like the fifth largest Mac shop in the world. So I have Mac, Linux, iOS, and Android. So, for that platform, we use the Microsoft as your authenticator, which is a Autobahn multifactor authenticator we use from your mobile device. And so the key was go from know something, know something, password, password, to not know something, have something, which is 2FA and a smartcard. It was know something, be something, right, some part of you that you're the key. And so that was really‑‑that's what we did for us inside at Microsoft, if that makes sense.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I wanted to ask, do you see in the future us going completely password‑less, even for consumers of technology, too, outside of business?
MR. ARSENAULT: Yeah. I think this is a‑‑sorry to be so personal. This the‑‑this is the‑‑my wife asked me why I can't do the same thing for our house that I can do for work, and so, you know, why do I go to my TV and need to login to an internet streaming service, and I can't just have it auto‑do that, that component.
So, yeah, I believe there's a lot of great work we can do with the identity capabilities we're building, but it will take a little bit longer to do it in the consumer space. It absolutely will.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I wanted to ask you. I recently‑‑
MR. ARSENAULT: I'm confident we can do it now. Sorry. I am confident we can do it.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I recently heard the term "MFA fatigue," which I had previously heard in the context of passwords, and we've seen this with some breaches like the Uber breach we referenced earlier where, you know, the hackers just send so many, you know, MFA notifications that a person gets overwhelmed and might click okay to one of them. How are you thinking about that threat in designing this approach for Microsoft?
MR. ARSENAULT: Yeah. It's a really good‑‑it's a really good point, and it's a real issue. I mean, it is‑‑you know, like I said, everything will evolve. You do passwords. Then you do MFA, and then someone will figure out how to get someone to do something around MFA. So there's a number of things we're working on in that space.
One is to actually create the‑‑it's called "token binding," which is a really good thing to do go, where even if someone was to get your MFA credential, which is the software component of it, it can only be replayed from the same device. It's not exportable. It can't be played from any other device. So, even if someone could do it, they can't run it from anywhere else. So that's work we've been working on, that we're actually talking to our partner
groups today here in Redmond about that.
Additionally, it's to create better processes for in‑person proofing and confirmation of who you are so that you don't get the fatigue process, so that you remove the social engineering, because it's really a social engineering experiment in what they're doing. And so how do you make it simpler but not allow people to go do that and that we can start filtering out? There's capabilities in our cloud service, again, where we can see multiple attempts to MFA from a specific area. We can actually suppress those and put that in as a high‑risk action and take automatic action for you on that, which is a very amazing thing to go do. It's an adaptive risk model we have.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And I wanted to go back to in our intro video. We showed a quote of yours saying, "Businesses are grappling with the most complex and fast‑paced threat landscape we've ever seen." Microsoft hasn't been immune to those threats. Microsoft itself was hit by the SolarWinds gang, which has been attributed to Russian foreign intelligence, and yet the company initially said it didn't see an impact. Why did it take so long to find out or admit that they had removed source code?
MR. ARSENAULT: Well, I think that's a different‑‑that means you have to rephrase the question because I think I may be misunderstanding what you're saying.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: So I just wanted to understand basically in the aftermath of the SolarWinds attack, there was kind of a delay between when we learned of SolarWinds and then learning that, you know, the gang had actually accessed Microsoft source code. Why did it take so long to find out?
MR. ARSENAULT: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So two things we should comments. So, one, most of these investigations are always really long running, right, because you have a massive system you're looking through, and as soon as we understand and note and understand something, we share that immediately when we understand what the impact has been, including, well, a lot of the work you did with Mandiant and other companies to share the IOCs that will let other people detect and find out if they had those things. So we're always proactively and transparently communicating when we know things.
In the fog of war while you're looking for it, though, it doesn't mean you necessarily see it right away. So that was just‑‑as soon as we were able to confirm and understand what was there, we did notify people that happened. I don't feel great about it. But I think it's another thing that's really important to be kept here, which is we don't believe in‑‑today it's our view that the ability to read source code‑‑like, I run the transparency centers where customers can come look at our source code, including governments and enterprise customers. We don't believe in a security obscurity model around source code. So the fact that they had it, I don't like it because it's not what I want them to go do, but it's not, from my perspective, the thing I'd be most worried about in that scenario, right, because we have this model about allowing people to look at source and the things that we do in that space.
But it's totally a fair question. You know, I'd love to have said we could have done it sooner.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And on that point, I mean, SolarWinds, then the exchange hack, all the wakeup calls for industry, how did it change security practices at Microsoft?
MR. ARSENAULT: Yeah, I think it changed for us many things, like it changed other companies in this space. I think the examples you allude‑‑you're using are this example of how vulnerable are you to your supply chain and how do you entrance‑‑how do you ensure‑‑I refer to sort of the five things I'm thinking about right now are ransomware regulations, Russia remote work, and supply‑‑supply chain, and how do you ensure that your supply chain is consistent? And I think there's a lot of things going on with regulation around this, like the SBOM, for the software bill of materials and other things, that help provide a level of transparency in the components you take in.
But just‑‑and then also, frankly, thinking about how I see a massive trend, I have 140 top security officers coming here that I'm hosting from 30 countries for a few days where we're talking about trends and patterns. One of the biggest things we're seeing is the complexity of the security space and how do you simplify all the security solutions you have, reduce the footprint so that you have less seam so you can, one, act more effectively, more quickly, and more importantly take advantage of the skill shortages that we're all facing. And so we see that as a really important part, and that's some of the learnings we took out of this is how do you think about supply chain, how do you think about your workforce, and how do you think about being not just effective but being efficient, particularly now with the recessionary headwinds we're talking about.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And we just have a minute before our break, but I wanted to ask you, you know, given those supply chain challenges that you laid out and the fact that you're going up in some of these instances against nation state actors, I mean, what do you think the most effective thing the federal government‑‑what is the most effective move the federal government could make to help companies like Microsoft facing these threats?
MR. ARSENAULT: Well, I think it‑‑to be honest, I think the work we're doing, you know, with both DHS and CISA and the sharing that we're doing, like even in the scenario where we talked about the defending Ukraine and the early lessons from the cyberwar, I think the transparent sharing of what we're seeing from an industry perspective across not just government but also with financial services, health care, retail, being able to share the intelligence, both on actor intelligence and signal intelligence, and then providing that as guidance to customers to go implement and do is awesome.
The more, though, that I can do that automatically in the cloud as opposed to saying here's guidance, go implement this, as opposed to I can just protect you from this, like in the exchange scenario, if it's in our cloud service, it was not impacted at all. It was on‑prem systems.
So our ability to actually take that and go implement that right away, it would be great, and then I think the government's role in this‑‑and I think CISA has done a good job in this‑‑is continue to provide guidance on the areas that we're seeing the largest footprints, and what are the protected actions and protective actions you can take relative to that? I think that relationship and the work we're doing there is much improved in the last five years based on a lot of work between the entities working on that today.
And not just the‑‑by the way, it's not just the U.S. government. Like we have to think about this globally. We have the same issue around the world.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Well, and on that point, I'm looking to dig into some of the more global and international questions in just a few minutes. Thank you so much. We have lots more to discuss, and we'll be back in a moment with more from Bret Arsenault. Stay with us.
MS. KELLY: Hello and welcome. I'm Cipher Brief's CEO and publisher, Suzanne Kelly. The Cipher Brief is a media organization that puts issues vital to national security and cybersecurity in the forefront, and I'm delighted today to be talking about how cloud computing is really reshaping the way that companies around the world are both operating and innovating.
And joining me to talk about this are Ragu Rajaram, global cloud consulting leader, and Andrew Lowe, technology transformation leader, both with the EY organization. Gentlemen, welcome.
MR. LOWE: Thank you.
MS. KELLY: I think it's safe to say that more businesses are coming to the realization that the cloud really is the future. Ragu, I'm curious. As you work with your clients on their business transformation objectives, what are they most looking to accomplish?
MR. RAJARAM: Well, the key exam questions our clients ask are how do we launch new products in weeks instead of months, how do we innovate through new business models, and how do we fundamentally change the customer and employee experience.
Our clients are finding ways to solve for these questions, while at the same time addressing their ability pressures or the threats from the competition. These drivers require them to ID, enable, and operate at speed. This is where they're embarking on business transformations through cloud and looking for the positive value outcomes.
The results they are looking for has fundamentally changed from a traditional cost take‑out function to more into agility, ability to innovate, and resiliency in whatever they do.
MS. KELLY: I'm really interested as well to kind of understand what some of the core tenets are when it comes to successful cloud transformation.
MR. RAJARAM: The core tenets that we practice in driving transformative value through cloud are by putting humans at center, technology at speed, and innovation at scale.
Let me explain to you what that means. First to start developing a human‑centered mindset and a culture that we put our customers and people first, right from ambition to market impact. This is what we call as putting humans at center. Next to move from a highly customized monolithic architecture to a cloud linked to composable business capability and thereby creating and curating experience as part of our customers, which we call this "technology at speed." And finally to develop an ecosystem‑based mindset that crosses organizational boundaries when delivering value to our customers and employees, which we call this "innovation at scale." We believe these three core tenets will drive true value through cloud.
MS. KELLY: You mentioned something there, an ecosystem‑based mindset, that I want to touch on just a little bit more. I think it's important.
Andrew, let's talk about the concept of ecosystems. What are they, and how are they driving innovation?
MR. LOWE: I mean, for us, ecosystems expand both on the go‑to‑market side of an organization, the inside of an organization, across the organizational boundaries, and into the supply chain on the back end of an organization in terms of how they deliver with their delivery partners.
But executing a significant business transformation through the cloud is a complex undertaking. Particularly in the context when uncertainty is high, business needs are continuously changing, and organizations are becoming multi‑cloud. It's nearly impossible for any organization to have everything that's required to successfully deliver transformation all by themselves and realize the positive outcomes from the cloud.
This is where ecosystem business models are becoming ubiquitous in terms of companies seeking to optimize the capital they deploy and create new forms of value at a much higher pace.
MS. KELLY: So let me ask you, then, how does ecosystem integration really help drive value in business transformation in the cloud?
MR. LOWE: So to set up and succeed an ecosystem business model and using that to transform through the cloud, organizations need to put the customer at the center, adopt that infinite mindset that extends beyond their organizational boundaries and co‑creating, fulfilling customer and employee experiences through integrated ecosystems.
These integrated ecosystems for cloud transformation will drive through new joint propositions, access to new geographies, proactively address regulatory changes, and challenge sets of boundaries while helping deliver an optimal cost proposition.
In addition, from a talent and skill set perspective, ecosystems provide access to the right assets, talent, and expertise that can be flexed at any time. EY teams believe having a solid cloud ecosystem integration will drive successful business transformation, then enhance its performance, accelerates innovation, and mitigates those unforeseen circumstances, and drives that transformational growth organizations are looking for.
MS. KELLY: I think as we're better understanding how technology is going to impact our future, your concept of putting the human at the center is critically important. So I'm glad both of you talked about that.
I'm wondering if you have any closing thoughts on what leaders can do maybe today to help move toward this model. Ragu, can I start with you?
MR. RAJARAM: Absolutely. I would wrap up by saying if you are now embarking on a cloud transformation project, define your business outcomes. Stick to it. Drive your program through it. Go cloud and make‑‑and think ecosystems.
MS. KELLY: Excellent. Andrew, what are your thoughts on what we can do maybe today to start moving closer to this model?
MR. LOWE: I think collaboration, collaboration with the ecosystem, collaboration with your partners, and more importantly, put in the humans and employees at the center of what you're trying to achieve, and therefore being mindful and purposeful in both the technology and the way in which you go about your transformation. Those are going to be clear differentiators in most organizations.
MS. KELLY: Yeah. And a lot of common sense there. I really appreciate your time today, gentlemen. Ragu Rajaram is global cloud consulting leader and Andrew Lowe is technology transformation leader with EY organization. Thank you so much for your time.
MR. RAJARAM: Thank you.
MS. KELLY: I'm Cipher Brief CEO and publisher, Suzanne Kelly. Now back to my colleagues at The Washington Post.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Hello again. I'm Cat Zakrzewski, a tech policy reporter here at the Post, and I'm joined by Bret Arsenault, a corporate vice president and chief information security officer at Microsoft.
So, Bret, where we just left off, we were talking about some of the global challenges with cybersecurity. As far back as 2017, you detected attacks on Ukraine and told your team, quote, "Shut the networks down. I want Ukraine completely isolated from everything we do." Can you walk us through what it was like to make that decision and what you learned from it that's informing how Microsoft is approaching the threats we're seeing today amid the war there?
MR. ARSENAULT: Yeah. And so one for context for everyone who is aware, this was the shutdown for our internal use and the internal systems that we run, which is where my‑‑so I didn't‑‑it wasn't impacting customers or any of that component.
But, yeah, I remember painfully well that evening when that happened, and it was just, you know, one of our alerting systems. And, at that time, I mean, my eventing was in the billions, not trillions. But we had got good eventing, had suggested there may be something nefarious happening, and the team just was calling to give me a heads‑up in case there was a problem. And then I said okay. It was four‑something in the morning. I was sleeping on my phone. My daughter couldn't sleep at that time. So I was in her room just trying to help her be able to sleep, and then I thought about it for a second, judging on what the indicators or compromise might have been‑‑they weren't confirmed at that time‑‑and then called back and just did an analysis in my head of what business did we run there, how much business do you run there, where were we in terms of, you know, processing, selling, and closing components of the system.
And then, you know, this is about informed intuition. This isn't a pure hundred‑‑there was data to drive the suspicion, but it was an informed intuition discussion. This is the downside of the CISO role. I mean, I made the call and said we should shut it down, and it's one of those things if I impact business, then I'm probably looking for a new job the next day, and if I don't, then‑‑and in this case, it protected us from a pretty bad attack that we saw happen to, you know, Merck and some other people. And then you just get a "Yeah, you did your job."
And so it was a set of here's the data, here's the informed intuition, here's the risk analysis, and based on that, shut it down, and then if it plays out in the next four hours, it was just deciding to take the more cautious path in the fog of war in that scenario.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: That makes sense. Obvious‑‑
MR. ARSENAULT: And so I'm sorry. You asked‑‑go ahead.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Oh, no, I was just going to follow up. I mean, obviously, it underscored, you know, some of the geopolitical risks that you race as a company like Microsoft, so just curious, you know. Were there any lessons from that experience that have informed how you're thinking about cybersecurity now amid the war?
MR. ARSENAULT: Yeah. And, at that time, we weren't thinking of it as a testing ground for some other attack that might happen years later. At that time, we were just looking purely at the impact, and frankly, it was back to supply chain. You're going after a required taxation piece of software to operate in that company you have to run with, and so it gave you a wonderful footprint into anything running in the area.
It did change a bunch of things, though, from my perspective in that, one, what kind of signals do we need to have them look at? So you go from data driven to, you know, this informed intuition. How do you drive more and more data into that process, number one?
Number two, in my space, I'm responsible for crisis management and disaster recovery inside of the organization, and so we started doing tabletop drills around that to ensure that we had the legal teams involved, the financial teams because we did do financial reporting there, as well as the engineering and operational teams, continue to‑‑to continue to test and understand what we would do in the scenario if it was worse and it would happen in this case or if the learning is post that event, because that's one of the biggest things we learned from other companies that are impacted. What would you do? How do you isolate? How do you isolate in a way that doesn't impact your operations but more importantly that doesn't impact our customers?
And so we have a pretty simple crisis plan that has three simple principles: number one, life safety first; number two, customer; number three, Microsoft. And so those three things always have to be in the process of everything we do, whether it's a hurricane, whether it's an earthquake, whether it's a cyberattack, whether it's a pandemic. Those same principles apply in every type of response we ever do.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And think about that response, I also wanted to ask you‑‑you know, I was one of the reporters along with Joe Menn and Elizabeth Dwoskin who wrote about the recent security problems at Twitter, and, you know, one of the things that has come up in our reporting there was around the former chief security officer‑‑the former security leads' allegations that the company had foreign agents on its payroll and that the engineers at the company didn't have the tools and policies necessary to track them effectively.
I wanted to ask, you know, given your global footprint, how is Microsoft, you know, keeping track of such insider threats and monitoring internal access to its code base and other sensitive data?
MR. ARSENAULT: I'm just trying to parse through everything you just said, actually. You're referring to Mudge, I assume, in this scenario?
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Yes. That's correct. Peiter Zatko.
MR. ARSENAULT: Yeah. Yeah. So I think it's a different‑‑I think the question was‑‑if I understood, was what do we do to ensure we're doing the right processes and we have a check‑and‑balances system for insider threats, and then how do we make sure that we have all the right programs and tools and space that we're‑‑you know, we're not in the same situation that they found themselves in. Is that correct?
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Correct.
MR. ARSENAULT: Yeah, yeah. So, luckily, you know, this is part of a‑‑this is part of our reporting process and what we do. So we have a‑‑we have a very interesting insider threat program, I think a good insider threat program. We have‑‑you know, there are always‑‑always things you want to do more of and everything else we all want to go do, but the inside threat program that I built here and then becoming a product, which is our insider threat product that customers can go use as well to track insider threat scenarios, but between that and our research teams‑‑so we have an amazing research team‑‑actually two, two research teams now, one that does all the human intelligence and then the disinformation group we just acquired that's doing that work, so that we actually have cards for all the actors. We've shared those. Like, this is the MSTIC blogs and things that people have seen before, and then my team has a signal intelligence. How do we then go distribute all that intelligence across all of our systems?
And so from a perspective of‑‑you know, we always are looking and tracking those systems as part of that and getting notifications and working with both HR and [unclear] that's in every area we work, and they operate differently.
Then we also do a regular review with the leadership team on where we are with our programs and processes. Do we feel‑‑I mean, that's part of the responsibility and what we report to the leadership team and the board, like where are we in terms of our investments relative to the things we're trying to go do.
So I feel like we have a good check‑and‑balance system. Our chief auditor does an amazing job as well at validating anything that I'm doing to make sure it's on task, and like I said, I think that's‑‑I feel good about the Insider Risk program, and I'm always adding more and more capability to the risk program because the risks keep changing every week.
This is where, again, having the signal is super helpful, right, because we have profiles, and we've been very public about the profiles on, I think, 43 actors that we're tracking and monitoring at all times on what the IOCs are and what their behavioral patterns are. And when we see anything come up from that, we actually can apply that not just to protect ourselves but also to immediately protect our customers.
We just had a situation like that that recently happened with a piece of software called the Raccoon Stealer.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And it's interesting you mentioned so many checks and balances, because in our reporting, we didn't find that those were in place at Twitter. It seemed, you know, there were allegations that the company was misleading the board and regulators about these types of issues. I mean, as someone who is a security professional, what was your reaction to the allegations about Twitter and the internal chaos at the company?
MR. ARSENAULT: Yeah. You know, it would probably be better for me not to comment on other people's business. You know, I think it's been an interesting year regarding those kinds of things, and we just continue to do the best work we can and continue to look for the right checks and balances.
I think professionally this is a comment that's‑‑I know this is going to be a topic of discussion this week with a lot of the CISOs around what does that mean and how does that work, but do our best work, make sure we have check and balance. And, you know, like I said, I can't comment on what happened there. That's their issue, not that I'm not‑‑
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: I'm wondering‑‑
MR. ARSENAULT: ‑‑empathetic, and I can appreciate the issue. I just don't‑‑it's not my space.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Got it. And, you know, we just have time for one more question, and I wanted to go back to the topic of the cloud broadly. UK regulators recently opened an investigation into Microsoft, Amazon, and Google saying these three companies make up 80 percent of the public cloud market in the country. Should we be worried that just a handful of companies have so much power over the cloud?
MR. ARSENAULT: Yeah. [Laughs] I'm not actually even familiar with that issue. I'm sorry. I'm not trying to deflect that. I'm just not‑‑not even familiar with the issue. I think, honestly, though, Dan Geer wrote a paper like this 20 years ago around mono--monoculture.
So I would just say that‑‑that, you know, the entities‑‑in many ways, I think the entities that have the capability, the telemetry, and the systems and people‑‑most importantly the people to help protect people on other people's behalf is actually, in my opinion, a good thing. I feel good about that. I feel great that there's 8,500 people trying to protect everyone who don't have the staffs that are fortunate enough like myself to have a security team, and so I think we can continue to help many entities in that space use that, and I‑‑and so I think that's probably the way I would think about it.
Then I'd comment on one last thing because it's probably just more near and dear to my heart. Part of the thing about companies like this and the thing I love about it is we just have this massive shortage of talent, right? If for every three jobs, one security job is left open, that means somebody is not able to go protect themselves. So how do we make sure we have the right security people, not just in cloud providers but also like the work that we're doing to go make sure we are doing like we've committed to having 250,000 skilled people by 2025? I'm so proud of the work we're doing there, and the fact that we're not making it part of prestigious university foo or bar, it's actually, you know, go through the community colleges. Get people engaged. 180 community colleges are on board. The--using policy‑‑you know, you mentioned about government and private sector. Using the policies that were just released last week around helping this cyber skill shortage through community colleges, which by the way is also for me personally helpful because not everyone has the opportunity to go to great schools. And so you create a much more diverse and inclusive workforce and create a supply chain of these people at the same time as you're‑‑you know, you're creating a big skills gap problem, which I think is an awesome opportunity.
So, for me, that's a part of things that are amazing about these companies, and we work together and try to make those things happen along with governments around the world.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: We have time for just one last question, and so I wanted to ask you, you know, on that topic of the cyber skills shortage, what's one thing that the United States could do in the next 10 years to really boost the workforce?
MR. ARSENAULT: Yeah. I think the things we were just talking about regarding this, this new bill that we‑‑you know, we just‑‑it just got released this week‑‑around trying to create this shortage‑‑2.5 million jobs will go vacant in the U.S., and I think you can't just assume, one, it's all engineering people, two, that it all is coming from four‑year programs and institutions, and three, that you have a model that doesn't just work on that‑‑like use the community colleges and the big colleges and continue to make the content available.
So when you look at these institutions that are accredited to teach teachers how to do cyber, keep making that material available. And so we continue to invest in that, and then working with other companies and the government, provide scholarships for kids to get into these programs. And so, again, you create content, you create capability in the teachers, and then you create opportunity for students so that you can get the whole flywheel spinning.
And I love your comment. It's a 10‑year thing. Like, getting the 250,000 skilled people by 2025 is a big goal. You're asking about, you know, 20‑‑what year is it now? 2032. So just imagine if we had millions of people by that time. It would be just fantastic.
So I think that work in the U.S. would be the first place I would start, and then outside the U.S., I think of working with NGOs and I think of working, like, with WiCyS, which is the, you know, women in cybersecurity stuff. There's a bunch of efforts we're doing there that I think will really help us in that space, because it's not just creating talent for me. It's creating opportunity for a more diverse, inclusive workforce. I really believe we can do that by changing where we do it.
Like, I‑‑to be honest, I go all the way back to high school and before high school, but, you know, [unclear] still talking about that, but we still‑‑I'll start with community college and be happy that's a good beginning place.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: Well, we'll have to have you back in a couple years to see where we are and where we need to go on that front. Unfortunately, we're out of time. So we'll have to leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us, Bret Arsenault.
MR. ARSENAULT: Thanks so much, Cat. Have a great day.
MS. ZAKRZEWSKI: And thanks to all of you for joining us. To check out what interviews we have coming up, please head to WashingtonPostLive.com to find out more information about our upcoming programs.
I'm Cat Zakrzewski, and again, thanks for watching. | 2022-09-28T18:58:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: The Cloud & Digital Transformation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/09/28/transcript-cloud-digital-transformation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/09/28/transcript-cloud-digital-transformation/ |
Denmark’s World Cup jerseys protest labor practices in Qatar
Denmark will compete in the World Cup later this year. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
As November’s World Cup in Qatar nears, calls to draw more attention to the treatment of migrant workers who constructed the stadiums and infrastructure that will be used to host the tournament have continued.
Human rights advocacy organizations last week urged World Cup sponsors to push FIFA and the Qatari government to compensate those workers, thousands of whom were made to work in conditions “amounting to forced labor” according to Amnesty International.
Danish sportswear company Hummel has taken its own stance on the issue. On Wednesday it announced the jersey designs for Denmark’s national team, which the company said are meant to protest Qatar and its human rights record.
“While we support the Danish national team all the way, this shouldn’t be confused with support for a tournament that has cost thousands of people their lives,” the company said on Instagram, highlighting an all-black jersey meant to represent “mourning.”
Denmark’s new uniform set is meant to pay homage in addition to raising awareness.
Hummel said it is paying tribute to Denmark’s 1992 team, which won the European Championship, securing the country’s first international soccer trophy. The designs, which also include all-white and all-red ensembles, also serve as “a protest against Qatar and its human rights record.
“That’s why we’ve toned down all the details for Denmark’s new World Cup jerseys, including our logo and iconic chevrons,” it said. “We don’t wish to be visible during a tournament that has cost thousands of people their lives. We support the Danish national team all the way, but that isn’t the same as supporting Qatar as a host nation.”
Since awarding the soccer spectacle to Qatar in 2010, FIFA has faced consistent criticism for selecting a nation with a checkered human-rights record and for locating the tournament in a region where triple-digit summer heat prompted an unprecedented move from the summer to winter months. In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice accused Qatar of bribing top officials to secure hosting rights to the World Cup, an allegation which FIFA officials and Qatari organizers have denied.
In preparation to host the Middle East’s first World Cup, Qatar has modernized its infrastructure, expanding its main airport and public transportation systems and building stadiums and hotels.
Foreign workers flocked to the country to build those infrastructure projects but human rights groups have since alleged abuses of those workers, which groups such as Amnesty say includes injuries, deaths and wage theft. The Guardian reported last year that 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka died in Qatar from late 2010 through 2020.
Hummel’s announcement comes as human rights organizations continue to push sponsors to advocate for migrant worker compensation. Minky Worden, the director of global initiatives at Human Rights Watch, told Reuters last Tuesday that sponsors should pressure FIFA and Qatar to fulfill their responsibilities to workers.
“Brands buy rights to sponsor the World Cup because they want to be associated with joy, fair competition and spectacular human achievement on the field — not rampant wage theft and the deaths of workers who made the World Cup possible,” Worden said.
Aces cash in with their first WNBA title, topping the Sun in four games | 2022-09-28T19:48:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Denmark's World Cup uniforms protest labor practices in Qatar - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/28/denmark-world-cup-jerseys-qatar/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/28/denmark-world-cup-jerseys-qatar/ |
Pedestrian fatally struck while walking in Manassas road, police say
Police said the driver provided first aid until rescue personnel arrived
A 63-year-old man was fatally struck by a driver late Tuesday evening while walking in a roadway in Manassas, police said.
Crash Investigation Unit investigators responded just after 8 p.m. to the area of Balls Ford Road near Coppermine Drive to investigate a crash involving a pedestrian, police said. The driver was traveling east on Balls Ford Road and approaching Coppermine Drive, and struck a pedestrian who was walking in the road, police said.
Police said the driver, a 39-year-old woman from Cherry Valley, N.Y., remained at the scene and provided first aid until rescue personnel arrived. The man was pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
Neither the victim nor driver’s names have been released. Police said that speed, drugs or alcohol were not factors in the collision. | 2022-09-28T19:52:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pedestrian fatally struck while walking in Manassas road, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/28/manassas-fatal-collision-pedestrian/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/28/manassas-fatal-collision-pedestrian/ |
After Roe, what we can learn from the female lawyers who took on Trump
Review by Jill Filipovic
Becca Heller of the International Refugee Assistance Project organized other lawyers to go to airports in 2017 to help people affected by President Donald Trump's ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
When I first cracked open Dahlia Lithwick’s “Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America,” I wasn’t sure if it was coming out at the worst possible time, or the best. Lithwick, the senior legal correspondent for Slate, is arguably the most influential and thought-provoking legal journalist in progressive circles, and “Lady Justice” is a retrospective look at the power of female lawyers during the Trump administration. In the midst of one of the darkest times in modern American history, the book essentially says, women stepped up, used the law to fight back and saved our collective bacon. Which at just about any point in the last two years would have been a welcome reminder of all the good that can happen in the face of extreme adversity, and a crucial contribution to our understanding of the Trump administration and how Americans behaved in response to its sins.
Except, of course, that this book is being published in September 2022 and went to press just after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, which set into motion a cascade of laws criminalizing abortion, stripping from many American women sovereignty over our bodies and our most intimate choices, and by extension the ability to fully determine our own futures. A half-century of progress was undone the moment the opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization was published, along with decades of feminist legal advocacy. As I turned Lithwick’s pink-covered book over in my hands and read the text on the back (which at least on my advance copy promised a “gripping and heroic story of the women lawyers who fought the racism, sexism, and xenophobia of Donald Trump’s presidency — and won”), I felt my chest deflate. But we just lost, I thought.
Fortunately, I had the good sense (and the professional obligation) to actually read “Lady Justice.” And while I suspect that having this book come out just as American women have had a fundamental civil right stripped from them by a cabal of anti-feminist reactionary judges is not the timing Lithwick would have chosen, by the time I got to the end of the book, I was sufficiently convinced that it isn’t just an important historical document but a necessary guide right now to at least some of the paths forward post-Dobbs. Lithwick’s book insists that there’s simply no time for the sense of helplessness currently felt by so many pro-choicers, feminists and those who don’t believe that a fetus should have more rights than a woman.
In other words, “Lady Justice” is right on time.
Abortion rights cases bookend Lithwick’s argument, and although she wrote the bulk of the book before the Dobbs decision, the despair and urgency of this moment infuses the text. The 2016 oral argument in Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, after which the Supreme Court issued an opinion upholding and reaffirming Roe v. Wade, was, Lithwick writes in the opening line of the book, “the last truly great day for women and the legal system in America.” And this is the core of her argument: that if a legal system is not one that treats women fairly and equally, and that women participate equally in, then it is not a legal system that is fair or equal; that female lawyers, by nature of our history as outsiders and frankly often victims of a male-run legal system, are uniquely suited to harness the power of the law for good; and that there is no justice without gender equality, and there is no one who understands just how important legal protections are — and the limits of those protections — as much as American women and the other groups that have found themselves outside the law’s promise of liberty and justice for all.
If this book had come out six months ago, it would have been easy to read it as a look back, a kind of essential history of four chaotic years that felt like a thousand, and how so many women came to our collective rescue — while others participated in the nation’s imperilment. But coming as it does in this particular moment, when any semblance of normalcy brought on by the refreshingly boring Biden administration has been shattered by an unprecedented rollback of rights and progress, “Lady Justice” is less rosy historical overview and more stirring strategy doc.
While Lithwick keeps a tight focus on female lawyers and their accomplishments, how those lawyers do their work varies widely, opening up a vast landscape of potential actions — and making clear that the most important battles are won by attacks on multiple fronts. There are the quiet institutionalists whose fealty to the rule of law calls them to improbable heroism; there are the rule-breakers who do not venerate the justice system but make it their mission to bend unequal laws toward justice; there are the visionaries who, instead of responding to what is, get to work building what could be.
There is, in other words, no single prescription for the Lady Lawyer in “Lady Justice.” But there is an invitation: While each of the women Lithwick profiles has done extraordinary things, not one of them is venerated as a superhero She-Hulk; each is written as a human being, her work put into context and made something like attainable. The throughline of all their labor is less the law itself and more a talent for organizing others to stand as a collective force, with the power, Lithwick writes, of “first principles and lofty ideas” behind them. Each of these women, Lithwick writes, needed other women behind her to accomplish what she did. And each of them, Lithwick hints, could be you, too — if you follow your gut, have a sharp moral conscience and put in the work.
Some of the women profiled in “Lady Justice” are names you’ve heard: Sally Yates, Stacey Abrams, Christine Blasey Ford. Others, though, fomented mass movements and set major change into motion without ever becoming the public face of their victories. Remember when lawyers swarmed U.S. airports to provide emergency legal advice to travelers arriving from the majority-Muslim countries listed in what came to be known as the Trump Muslim ban? For that, you can thank Becca Heller, a young Yale law grad who has made a career out of seeing holes in the system, filling them and bending the rules where needed. (“I think a lot of the law is completely ridiculous,” Heller tells Lithwick. “I mean, to me, getting a law degree is just about using the master’s tools to destroy the master’s house.”) Heller, who founded an organization that helps law students use their budding skills to assist refugees, was tipped off that the Muslim ban was coming. And then she rallied the troops, making Google docs of every major airport and asking lawyers to show up. “The lawyers on the list could have been tax attorneys or real estate lawyers, Heller didn’t care,” Lithwick writes.
And then, a bunch of older, more experienced, mostly male lawyers and advocates told her to stand down, that a compromise was coming and that amassing lawyers at the airport would anger the government. Heller told her people to hit pause. But it turned out she had been right all along: The government was not allowing valid visa-holders from the targeted countries to enter, and folks who were stuck at airports and being ordered back on airplanes out of the United States needed lawyers, stat.
Heller and her comrades kept a whole lot of folks from being improperly deported. They also fought the government in court, and while the Trump Muslim ban never fully went away during his administration, some of the worst aspects of the law were eventually stripped out. And the legal battles opened up valuable windows for travelers to enter the United States legally.
Lithwick, like Heller, is not starry-eyed about the law nor ignorant of its limitations. But she is a keen observer of those who wield it — the ones who use it for good, but also the ones they are fighting against, who have also worked (mostly) within the bounds of the legal system to muscle outcomes in their own ideological favor. Some of those people, she notes, are women too — this is a sharply feminist story, but it is not one of feel-good Girl Power sloganeering.
By the end of “Lady Justice,” and in the context of a Supreme Court dead set on rolling back women’s rights and freedoms, Lithwick writes that “we have a long way to go, the road will be bumpy, and the destination still feels less than clear.” She’s right. But lucky for us, she’s drawn an excellent map.
Jill Filipovic is a journalist, a lawyer and the author of “OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind.”
Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America | 2022-09-28T20:01:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of Lady Justice: Women, the Law, and the Battle to Save America by Dahlia Lithwick - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/28/after-roe-what-we-can-learn-female-lawyers-who-took-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/28/after-roe-what-we-can-learn-female-lawyers-who-took-trump/ |
White House, questioned on the slip, said the late Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) was ‘top of mind’ because of upcoming visit by her family, role in combating hunger
President Biden delivers remarks at the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health on Wednesday at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington. (Yuri Gripas/Pool/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
In his remarks Wednesday at a White House hunger conference, President Biden searched the audience for former congresswoman Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.).
“Jackie, are you here? Where’s Jackie?” Biden said, looking out into the crowd and expressing uncertainty over whether she planned to be there.
Walorski died in a car crash in early August.
She was one of four lawmakers who sponsored bipartisan legislation to hold the conference, the first of its kind in more than 50 years. Before inquiring about Walorski, Biden had referenced the other three: Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and Rep. James P. McGovern (D-Mass.).
Asked later about Biden’s comments, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Walorski had been “top of mind” for Biden because he is planning to see her family Friday at a signing ceremony for a bill that renames a veterans clinic after her.
In August following Walorski’s death, Biden and first lady Jill Biden issued a statement extending their condolences, saying they “appreciated her partnership” on facilitating the conference on hunger.
Two members of Walorski’s staff, along with another motorist, also died in the accident in Indiana.
Fielding questions at a White House briefing, Jean-Pierre would not explicitly say that Biden had made a mistake or had perhaps forgotten about Walorski’s death.
“The president was naming the congressional champions on this issue and was acknowledging her incredible work,” Jean-Pierre said. “He had already planned to welcome the congresswoman’s family to the White House on Friday. … She was top of mind.”
Jean-Pierre was pressed at several other points about the episode, including by a reporter who said John Lennon was “top of mind” for him but that he is not “looking around” for the late Beatles member. Lennon was killed in 1980.
Jean-Pierre responded that when the reporter is president and signing a bill for Lennon, “then we can have this conversation.”
Later, Jean-Pierre said she wasn’t going to answer the question any differently just because it was asked multiple times.
“All of you may have views on how I’m answering it, but I’m answering the question to the way that he saw it,” she said, referring to Biden. “Again, she was at the top of mind. He is going to be seeing her family in two days to honor her, to honor the work that she has done.” | 2022-09-28T20:10:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden mistakenly asks if deceased congresswoman is in audience - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/biden-walorski-hunger-conference/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/biden-walorski-hunger-conference/ |
Bitten by fox, Rep. Bera introduces bill to reduce cost of rabies vaccine
Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), alongside Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) left, speaks in Washington, D.C., on May 18, 2022. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.) has introduced legislation aimed at reducing the cost of the rabies vaccine for uninsured Americans months after a fox bit him as he was walking on Capitol Hill.
“Despite being a fatal disease, rabies is preventable if treated quickly,” Bera said in a statement Wednesday, which is World Rabies Day. “After being bit by a rabid fox, I was fortunate to have access to readily available and low-cost vaccines. But for too many Americans, the costs of treatment would break their banks.”
Bera, a physician, received a regimen of immunoglobulin and rabies shots in April after a fox bit him while he was walking near the Russell Senate Office Building. The lawmaker expected to see a small dog after feeling something lunge at the back of his leg. But when he noticed that it was a fox, he began attacking the animal with an umbrella before it fled in the direction of other Senate buildings.
Fox caught on Capitol grounds and euthanized tests positive for rabies
Animal control officials later caught a fox on the U.S. Capitol grounds after several people, including a Politico journalist, reported sightings, with some saying they’d also been bitten by the animal. It was not immediately known whether the fox that was caught was the one that attacked Bera.
Rabies can be a life-threatening disease. The Affordable Rabies Treatment for Uninsured Act would establish a program to reimburse health-care providers for providing post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) to uninsured individuals.
The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 60,000 Americans receive PEP each year after possibly being exposed to rabies. Vaccine costs for the disease can range from $1,200 to $6,500.
Bera’s bill would allow for program-registered providers to submit claims to the secretary of Health and Human Services that would allow providers to be repaid an amount deemed appropriate for providing post-exposure prophylaxis to uninsured people subject to the availability of appropriations.
“My legislation would seek to reduce the high costs of treatment for uninsured Americans, ensuring that no one has to choose between receiving treatment or not because of high costs,” Bera said. “I encourage all Americans to remain vigilant around wild animals and to seek medical attention if bitten or scratched. Costs should never be a barrier for individuals seeking life-saving treatment.” | 2022-09-28T20:10:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bitten by a fox, Rep. Bera introduces bill to reduce the cost of rabies vaccine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/capitol-fox-bera-rabies-vaccine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/capitol-fox-bera-rabies-vaccine/ |
The crumbling GOP opposition to electoral count reform bill
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) was the only committee member to vote against it Tuesday. Here’s why his and others’ arguments against it — insofar as they’ve existed — have apparently fallen flat.
In 2020, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) listen as President Donald Trump speaks. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The effort to reform the way the United States certifies its presidential election results — an implicit rebuke of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election that attempts to avoid a repeat — appears well on its way to passage, after what existed of the opposition crumbled Tuesday.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) came out in favor of the Electoral Count Reform and Presidential Transition Improvement Act, sending a strong signal about its prospects. And shortly thereafter, he joined with nearly all Republican members of the Senate Rules Committee to advance the bill to the full Senate.
The 14-to-1 committee vote suggests the final vote could also be lopsided. Even Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), one of eight senators who voted against certifying Arizona’s and/or Pennsylvania’s results after the 2020 election, voted for it.
But there was one vote against advancing the bill, from a perhaps-not-surprising source: Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.). In voting no, he offered a case against the bill that has been largely absent — and conspicuously so.
Indeed, whatever opposition existed, it has generally only reared its head when votes were forced. To the extent anyone wanted to defeat the bill, they didn’t lodge their case too loudly.
In comments to the committee Tuesday, Cruz indicated his case against the bill largely revolved around a few things: that it would diminish Congress’s authority to root out voter fraud, that it would “intrude” on the constitutional authority of states to cast their electors as they see fit, and that it would be a step toward “the federalization of elections.”
The first claim — on voter fraud — references the bill raising the threshold for Congress to challenge a given state’s election results. Currently, only one senator and one House member are required to officially object. The Senate bill requires one-fifth of members of both the House and Senate, while a version that passed in the House would increase it to one-third. (If the electoral count reform bill passes in the Senate, the two versions will have to be negotiated between chambers.)
In Cruz’s telling, this “reduces the ability of Congress to respond to the very serious problem of voter fraud.” Of course, there is no evidence that fraud was actually a serious problem in the 2020 election, nor is there evidence of widespread fraud being a problem in any recent American election. What there is evidence of is members of Congress latching on to false claims of fraud as a pretext, and attempting to use such a process to overturn an election.
Beyond that, there are other methods for rooting out fraud, including through the courts. And the one-fifth threshold would notably allow even a minority of members from one party to band together to object. (Indeed, the Senate’s threshold wouldn’t even have stopped the 2020 challenges, though the House’s would; 24 percent objected to Arizona’s results, while 27 percent objected to Pennsylvania’s.)
As for the claim that this intrudes on the Constitution or needlessly federalizes elections? Article Two of the Constitution states that, “Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors ...” This places the authority for selecting electors in the hands of the states.
Under this legislation, those states would still be free to select those electors by the popular vote or any other method, including by vote of the state legislature or other, far less democratic means. It just requires them to be selected “on election day, in accordance with the laws of the State enacted prior to election day.” The idea is to prevent the rules from being changed after the fact, if certain leaders don’t like what result their process produced.
This argument is tied to the alleged “federalization of elections,” which has been raised by some who have warned about these reform efforts. But notably, in a statement last week, one such group warned against not what was actually in the Senate bill, but what Democrats could do if the bill clears a filibuster and can be amended.
The Election Transparency Initiative, which is run by former Virginia attorney general and Trump administration official Ken Cuccinelli, suggested Democrats might force votes on items from their more expansive, failed election reform efforts.
“ … Republicans should take every precaution to ensure that the failed measures contained in H.R. 1 and H.R. 4 cannot hitch a ride between now and the end of the year,” Cuccinelli said.
As the libertarian Cato Institute’s Andy Craig has noted, though, the constitutional restrictions on Congress’s role in presidential elections — as opposed to congressional elections — make it much more difficult to go far in federalizing elections, even if Democrats could somehow get the votes and decided to jeopardize this bill by trying to jam through other changes.
Craig also argued that Republican complaints about the federalization of the process were pretty rich, given that the efforts to overturn the 2020 election relied upon federal process, while seeking to override the wills of the states. The most far-fetched effort, he noted, involved the state of Texas trying to get the Supreme Court to throw out the results of other states.
“If there has been anybody advocating an unconstitutional federal takeover of the electoral college process, it was those urging federal courts and Congress to throw out the duly cast electoral votes certified by the states in 2020,” Craig argued.
The man leading both of those efforts? Ted Cruz, who offered to argue for the Texas lawsuit in front of the Supreme Court and later rallied support for objecting to the election results on Jan. 6. | 2022-09-28T20:10:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ted Cruz, and the crumbling opposition to the Electoral Count Reform act - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/ted-cruz-electoral-count-reform/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/ted-cruz-electoral-count-reform/ |
Nina and Ruth: The friendship between a journalist and a justice
Review by Eleanor Clift
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, right, with Nina Totenberg during an appearance in New York in 2018. The Supreme Court justice and the journalist became friends before either was well known. (Albin Lohr-Jones/Sipa USA/AP)
Nina Totenberg is the voice of authority on all things related to the U.S. Supreme Court. Her 1991 NPR scoop on Anita Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment by Clarence Thomas made history, and her insightful reporting has earned her numerous awards.
She knew from an early age that she wanted to be a reporter, she writes in “Dinners With Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships”: “I was much more interested in watching what went on and telling people about it than I was in fighting for any cause.” Bored with her studies at Boston University, she dropped out after not quite three years to enter the workplace, and she was fired from an early journalism job for plagiarism after she lifted quotes for a profile about Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill without crediting the source, a rookie mistake.
It was the 1970s and Totenberg was in a hurry. She didn’t want children because it was too hard for career-minded women to manage a family. She consciously transformed herself from a “nobody” — her word — into one of the most consequential Supreme Court reporters of her generation.
But that’s only part of the story, and not the most important part. “Dinners With Ruth” is about the evolution of the author, who started out “fiercely independent and doggedly focused” and became “humbled by events and challenges beyond my control.”
Totenberg met Ruth Bader Ginsburg — the Ruth of the title — early on, decades before either had a public profile, and their friendship is the core of the book. It began with a phone call in 1971 when Totenberg, a fledging legal reporter not yet with public radio, called Ginsburg, a volunteer lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, about a case in which she was arguing that the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause applied not just to race but to gender as well. The case, Reed v. Reed, overturned the automatic preference for men in some court proceedings, and it was Ginsburg’s first win at the Supreme Court. After that, Totenberg writes, she called Ginsburg regularly, and she “became one of my first translators of the finer points of law.”
They finally met in person at a legal conference in New York that was “unbelievably boring,” so they ducked out and went shopping. Totenberg is a connoisseur of clothes as an extension of personality, and it turns out so was Ginsburg, whose colorful scarves and embroidered lace collars became her signature on the court.
The two women had a lot in common as striving pioneers in their chosen fields, and when President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 1980, they lived in the same city, and their friendship intensified. Totenberg, by now in her mid-30s, had recently married Floyd Haskell, a senator from Colorado, who had just lost his bid for reelection. He was 26 years her senior, and as a couple they socialized with Ruth and her husband, Marty, until one of those life-changing moments when Haskell, 15 years into their marriage, slipped on the ice in a Washington winter and suffered neurological damage.
“Where once the phone had been a professional bond between us, now it was a personal lifeline,” Totenberg writes. Ginsburg’s friendship was essential to bolstering her spirits and helping her reclaim her professional life in the five very long years when her husband needed intense care. This cannot be done alone, and Totenberg credits her female friends with coming to her rescue at what was dubbed “the fallopian jungle” at NPR — especially Cokie Roberts, whose devotion made her the “Mother Superior” of the group.
A relatively young widow at 58, Totenberg recalls sitting in the Supreme Court chamber and looking around and not seeing any man that she would want to date, much less kiss. Then a chance encounter while visiting family in Boston brought physician David Reines into her life. Her mother, a real estate agent, had sold him a house when his wife was battling cancer. He was recently widowed too.
Totenberg invited him to a concert, where he met her father, Roman Totenberg, a renowned concert violinist until his death at age 101 in 2012. Other than Anita Hill, the story that Totenberg is most known for is her recounting of the recovery after 35 years of a Stradivarius violin stolen from her father by a disgruntled student.
After a whirlwind romance in which two people in their 50s discovered that falling in love is not just for the young, Nina and David married, and RBG performed the ceremony. Totenberg learned later that the justice almost didn’t make it. She’d been in the hospital the day before. In the book, as in their lives, the scene foreshadows what’s to come, with the death first of Marty Ginsburg in 2010, and then Ruth in September 2020, and the many ways this foursome who had come to love and depend on each other sustained each other through the toughest of times.
Reines, a trauma surgeon, became RBG’s secret lifeline as she struggled to stay alive, ultimately losing her bet that the first female president would appoint her successor. Totenberg writes that she did not know, until it was reported by the New York Times after her death, that President Barack Obama had suggested in a private lunch in July 2013 that Ginsburg step down to allow him to choose her replacement. She chose not to take the cue, and the result is a 6-to-3 conservative-majority court.
For readers looking for insights into RBG’s thinking on critical topics, that’s not what this memoir is about. “I never got a scoop from her, and she never volunteered any top-secret anything,” Totenberg writes.
“Dinners With Ruth” acknowledges the conflicts of interest that can arise when journalists get too cozy with the people they cover. Totenberg’s friendship with RBG thrived in part because it predated fame and the justice knew that Totenberg wanted “no piece of her.”
The insularity associated with Washington is evident in a dinner scene in the days following the Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller decision, which extended individual handgun rights for self-defense. With Justice Antonin “Nino” Scalia and his wife among the guests, Totenberg’s husband, David, who treats gunshot victims, placed a plastic squirt gun in everyone’s soup bowl. That got a laugh, but there was more. Writing for the majority, Scalia had opined that among the advantages of a handgun, “it can be pointed at a burglar with one hand while the other hand dials the police.” Pulling out a massive Super Soaker, David pointed it at Scalia and asked, “Should I still call 911 with the other hand?” That brought down the house.
As a reader, I found the hilarity hard to take. At the same time, it’s the job of a journalist to nurture contacts and gain access, and Totenberg knows the boundaries. In 2020, the first year of coronavirus lockdown, Totenberg’s dinner table was the only refuge for Ginsburg in the last months of her life.
The friendships Totenberg describes in her memoir are mainly with justices now gone, and she asks whether, in our current climate, a Ruth and Nino friendship, or a Nina and Nino friendship, could “ever take root and thrive? And what does the answer to that question mean for all of us?” Readers who respect and admire Totenberg’s reporting will understand what is lost and lament what cannot be reclaimed.
Eleanor Clift is a columnist with the Daily Beast.
A Memoir on the Power of Friendships | 2022-09-28T20:27:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of ‘Dinners with Ruth: A Memoir on the Power of Friendships’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/28/nina-ruth-friendship-between-journalist-justice/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/28/nina-ruth-friendship-between-journalist-justice/ |
Flooding could be Ian’s biggest hazard for inland communities
The nearly Category 5 storm will drop more than a foot of rain over Central Florida, which has already seen a lot of rainfall in recent weeks
Debris litters a street in St. Petersburg, Fla., before Hurricane Ian made landfall Wednesday. (Gerardo Mora/Getty Images)
Packing 155 mph winds, Hurricane Ian is expected to bring serious damage to the coastline of Southwest Florida on Wednesday. As the storm moves away from the shore, it could cause an additional life-threatening hazard: inland flooding.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell and National Weather Service Director Ken Graham said Wednesday that flooding is among their top safety concerns. Historically, water has accounted for the vast majority of all deaths during tropical cyclones that have made landfall in the United States: 83 percent of fatalities during storms from 2016 to 2018 were water-related, according to NOAA. Most were from inland flooding; only 4 percent were from storm surge, the agency said.
The National Weather Service predicted Ian would drop more than a foot of rain in areas. Forecasts show the eye of the hurricane looming just south of Tampa Bay, but the entire Florida Peninsula could see excessive rainfall. As of 11 a.m. Wednesday, the Category 4 storm was moving forward at a relatively slow pace of 9 miles per hour, which could lead to greater rainfall totals.
Hurricane Ian nearly Category 5 as it nears Florida; DeSantis warns of ‘nasty’ day
As hurricanes move over land, they usually weaken and lose wind strength, but they can continue to bring torrents of rain, which funnel into streams, rivers and lakes, causing serious flooding.
“Even though a lot of emphasis is on the winds and along the coast, one of the problems with hurricanes is the inland flood threat,” said Jeff Dobur, a senior hydrologic forecaster at the National Weather Service. “It’s far away from the center of attention, even though it’s one of the more serious dangers of a tropical system.”
Dobur said Florida is at even greater risk for flooding right now because its grounds are already saturated. A cold front stalled across Central Florida has been dropping rain for several weeks in the area, soaking soils and elevating many river levels near or above normal. As Ian approaches the region, the storm will meet up with the lingering front to drop even more rain.
Ian is expected to bring “a fairly extraordinary amount of rain on top of already wet ground,” said Dobur. “The combination of those two could cause an extreme event as we go into the latter half of this week, into the weekend.”
Florida’s relatively flat and low-lying terrain also lends itself to flooding from overflowing small creeks and lakes, inundating nearby homes and businesses. Because the land is so flat, Dobur said much of the rain will pond across roads, streets and other urban areas.
Additionally, urban areas are at a higher risk for flash floods due to concrete surfaces that lead to excess runoff. As cities continue to expand, the threat of flooding increases.
“The nature of flash flooding can really catch people off guard,” said Daniel Hawblitzel, the meteorologist-in-charge for The National Weather Service Twin Cities, Minnesota. “Flash flooding by nature can have a rapid onset and can inundate areas that typically do not see flooding and sometimes have never seen much flooding at all.”
While hurricanes are categorized by the ferocity of their winds, flooding often poses the greater impact, even far away from where they make landfall. For instance, more than half of the deaths associated with Hurricane Ida in August 2021 occurred from drowning and flash flooding as its remnants dropped heavy rainfall in the Northeast — more than 1,000 miles away from where the storm initially made landfall. In 2018, Hurricane Florence brought devastating freshwater flooding through coastal Carolina, resulting in nearly two dozen deaths.
“You hide from wind and you run from water, I don’t think we’ve learned that enough,” said Richard Olson, the director of the Extreme Events Institute at Florida International University in Miami. “The coasts of Florida, and basically anywhere that gets hurricanes, have to be focused on the water component of hurricanes.”
Hurricane hazards are expected to increase as global temperatures rise from human-caused climate change. A warmer atmosphere can “hold” more water — approximately 4 percent more water for each degree Fahrenheit of warming — which can leading to more intense deluges. Warmer sea surface temperatures also provide more fuel for hurricanes, which allow them to grow bigger, intensify more and drop more rain.
What is storm surge and what causes it during hurricanes?
Previous research has investigated exactly how much climate change has increased the hurricane rainfall. For instance, Hurricane Harvey in 2017 dropped up to 60 inches of rain in Southeast Texas, a prolific amount that was made more likely to occur because of climate change. During the historically active 2020 hurricane season, climate change increased hourly rainfall rates from tropical storms by 10 percent.
The Weather Service is currently working to improve forecast flood inundation maps to better inform government officials and members of the public of flooding threats. The maps are generated from a computer that takes into account soil moisture, recent rainfall and forecast rainfall. Dobur said the maps will not only show how high a river will get but also the extent of the potential flooded area along rivers. While the maps are available for limited regions, he said the Weather Service is planning a large-scale roll out of the maps for locations across the country in upcoming years.
Even with better forecast maps, however, researchers say communication of the threats may still be an issue.
“People still don’t know what the warnings mean and that’s a problem too,” said Bernhardt, who currently has a paper under review investigating why people don’t take flash flood warnings seriously. The National Hurricane Center is also running several social science projects exploring how to better communicate forecasts with the public.
“Communication is still a huge obstacle and unfortunately if the communication isn’t good, or if people misunderstand the forecast, then even if the forecast is perfect, there’s still going to be a lot of deaths and injuries,” said Bernhardt. | 2022-09-28T20:27:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ian’s biggest hazard could be flooding for inland communities - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/28/hurricane-ian-flooding-inland-florida/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/28/hurricane-ian-flooding-inland-florida/ |
FILE - Actor Lisa Banes poses for photos in Park City, Utah, Jan. 26, 2015. The man charged with fatally striking “Gone Girl” actor Banes with an electric scooter last year in New York City, pleaded guilty to manslaughter, Wednesday, Sept. 28. 2022, and is expected to be sentenced to one to three years in prison. (Victoria Will/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-09-28T20:28:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Guilty plea in hit-run death of 'Gone Girl' actor Lisa Banes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/guilty-plea-in-hit-run-death-of-gone-girl-actor-lisa-banes/2022/09/28/554a7968-3f64-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/guilty-plea-in-hit-run-death-of-gone-girl-actor-lisa-banes/2022/09/28/554a7968-3f64-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
The GOP attack on Biden’s student loan plan is upside-down class war
(Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
It took a month, but the inevitable has happened. Conservatives have filed a lawsuit asking the courts to nullify the Biden administration’s decision to forgive up to $10,000 in student loans (and $20,000 for recipients of Pell Grants for low-income borrowers) for the tens of millions of Americans burdened by education debt.
This is a story about Republicans trying once again to achieve policy victories they can’t obtain by winning votes. But it’s also a story of delicate coalition politics and class warfare.
We knew this lawsuit was coming because Republicans can now be relied on to challenge in court almost every important law passed by a Democratic Congress or policy enacted by a Democratic administration. The hope is that GOP-appointed judges will do what they have shown themselves eager to do: arrive at whatever outcome the Republican Party seeks, no matter what the law dictates.
That’s certainly the case here. But the most significant obstacle conservatives faced was finding a plaintiff with “standing” to sue, since you have to show you were harmed in some way by the measure that you are asking the courts to nullify. Who exactly is harmed by forgiving people’s debt?
The suit was brought by a lawyer named Frank Garrison, who just happens to work for the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative organization that files suits on a range of issues of interest to the right; the foundation is representing him. Why him? Apparently it’s because he hails from Indiana, one of a small number of states that will be taxing the loan forgiveness as income.
Garrison says that since he still has student debt, when it’s discharged he’ll have to pay taxes on it, and therefore he has suffered harm. He says he’s likely to get his entire debt forgiven anyway through another federal program that relieves debts of people working in nonprofits, which wouldn’t be taxed.
The trouble is, even though the policy hasn’t been finalized, it looks as though neither Garrison nor anyone else will have to take this loan forgiveness if they don’t want to. He’ll be free to refuse it, so he’d suffer no “harm” and have no standing to sue.
That fact could end up torpedoing the lawsuit, though one never knows what Trump-appointed judges somewhere along the line of appeals might do. So, the ultimate outcome is uncertain. And public opinion on the plan itself has been mixed; once it became clear this is a partisan issue, Democrats and Republicans generally lined up behind their parties. However, the idea is more popular among younger and lower-income people, which is not surprising.
The GOP has attacked the plan from multiple, sometimes contradictory directions. In one telling, people who need loan forgiveness are contemptible losers; Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) characterized the average recipient as “that slacker barista who wasted seven years in college studying completely useless things, now has loans and can’t get a job.”
Being a barista is, of course, a job, and if Cruz could last an entire shift at a busy Starbucks, it would be a shock. Not to mention that the problem with student loans is that the debt traps tens of millions of working people in financial insecurity, even people who have jobs in areas Cruz would pretend to find admirable, such as nursing or truck driving.
In another telling, the recipients of loan forgiveness are not contemptible losers but contemptible winners. They’re fancy-pants elitists getting money they don’t need, or as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) called them, “elites with higher salaries.”
In both cases, Republicans want people to believe recipients of loan forgiveness must be liberals of one stripe or another, and that’s the most important reason to reject it: People you hate will benefit. Hate them because you think they represent a cultural elite or hate them because you think they represent an economic elite, but just hate them.
And yet, you will probably not be surprised to learn that the billionaire Koch brothers have given millions of dollars to the Pacific Legal Foundation. It’s nothing if not an instrument of America’s actual financial elite, crusading on behalf of the values and goals of its well-heeled donors.
The threat that elites face from student loan forgiveness isn’t immediate; it’s long-term. They might be taxed to pay for it, but, just as important, it reinforces the idea that government should be active and generous, which undermines the case for a limited government that taxes the wealthy as lightly as possible.
There are less ideological reasons one might not favor loan forgiveness. You can argue that it doesn’t address the fundamental problem of overpriced education, or that since it’s a one-time measure, we’ll have to keep doing it again and again.
But let’s not lose sight of what the court case is about: a party that has lost none of its passion for the interests of the wealthy, nurturing the grievances of the working class and pretending there is no contradiction between the two. It’s not a new story, but it’s as important as ever. | 2022-09-28T20:28:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The challenge to Biden's loan forgiveness is an upside-down class war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/challenge-biden-student-loan-forgiveness-class-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/challenge-biden-student-loan-forgiveness-class-war/ |
We have a way to end the opioid epidemic, but not the will
First responders work to revive a 32-year-old man who was found unresponsive and not breathing after an opioid overdose on a sidewalk in the Boston suburb of Everett, Mass., in 2017. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Beth Macy is the author of “Dopesick” and, most recently, “Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis.”
I knew when I was giving a talk about the opioid epidemic to the Indiana Sheriffs’ Association in 2020 that it wasn’t going well. When I suggested that law enforcement officers divert arrestees with substance use disorders to treatment centers instead of jail, the sheriffs looked more disgusted than interested. When I proposed that prisoners be offered medications such as methadone or buprenorphine on-site to treat their opioid dependence — the gold standard of care — one sheriff hissed, “They’re clean when they leave my jail.”
Perhaps, but not for long: People leaving jail are up to 40 times more likely to overdose and die during the first few weeks after release. Suffice it to say that when my talk ended, it was met by the sound of a solitary audience member slow-clapping. I got the message.
But the United States isn’t getting the message that the overdose crisis — the killer of more than 1 million Americans since the OxyContin plague began in the mid-1990s — is far from over. According to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 107,000 Americans died in 2021 from drug overdose, with opioids the primary driver.
What fueled the epidemic is well-known: Pharmaceutical companies’ greed, abetted by the politicians and lobbyists they paid to whittle away regulatory guardrails. That, plus the persistence of a decades-old “war on drugs” mind-set that handles addicted people like criminals instead of human beings with a treatable medical condition.
Even though ending the crisis sometimes seems like a hopeless cause, the solution is strikingly simple: Make treatment easier to obtain than the dope itself.
In other words, offer free treatment on demand for people who can’t afford it. Congress did that for those with HIV/AIDS in 1990, making antiretroviral medicines available at a scale that matched the scale of the crisis. Patients’ newfound ability to manage their illness not only saved millions of lives but also lessened the stigma surrounding the disease.
Methadone and buprenorphine are the antiretrovirals of the overdose crisis. They curb cravings and stave off withdrawal, making individuals 82 percent less likely to die than those not on the medications.
But these medicines are scandalously difficult to obtain; only 5 percent of people with opioid use disorder managed to get them in 2020, the nation’s drug czar, Rahul Gupta, told me recently.
In an era of cheap, high-potency fentanyl, methadone is particularly effective, but it is restricted by policies that were devised half a century ago, after the Nixon administration launched the “war on drugs”. The rules required people addicted to opiates to go to methadone clinics most mornings for their dose. Such regulations were stigmatizing and cumbersome — traveling in the predawn, before work — and yet that approach persists.
Unlike methadone, buprenorphine (often called “bupe”) can be prescribed on an outpatient basis. But since 2000, bupe providers have been required to receive extra training to get a mandated “X-waiver” from the Drug Enforcement Administration. Because of these and other restrictions, only about 6 percent of physicians have become waivered, creating critical access gaps, particularly for rural and Black Americans.
To the degree that waivered providers exist, they are most often found in urban centers. Some rural treatment activists have been forced to take their waivers on the road, to places where ready access to buprenorphine doesn’t exist — under bridges, in McDonald’s parking lots, in homeless encampments.
A striking sign of hope in the struggle to get treatment to those who need it can be found in The Post’s backyard. Sheriff Stacey Ann Kincaid of Fairfax County, has instituted policies that are succeeding in helping addicted people who are booked into the county jail. The policies include screening new inmates for addiction, and both buprenorphine and counseling are offered to those who need it. This, at a time when most jailers tend to regard treating inmates with buprenorphine as “hug-a-thug” coddling.
Kincaid has also opened her doors to vital treatment providers, including peer support specialists whose help includes picking up inmates at the moment of release, when they’re most vulnerable to relapse and a possibly fatal overdose.
More than 7 million Americans now suffer the tortures of opioid addiction, taking an untold toll on their family members. Unless decisive actions are made by policy makers, law enforcement and others, the country stands to lose another million Americans to drug overdose in the next eight years.
An immediate step that Congress could take: Pass the Mainstreaming Addiction Act, removing the X-waiver requirement to prescribe buprenorphine. President Biden could also help by calling for an end to the ban on federal funding of syringes; that would aid harm-reductionists, who provide everything from the overdose reversal drug, naloxone, to clean needles to stem the spread of disease and critical connections to care.
Such frontline heroes fighting the overdose crisis understand that you can’t recover if you’re dead. | 2022-09-28T20:28:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | We have a way to end the opioid epidemic, but not the will - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/opioid-crisis-solution/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/opioid-crisis-solution/ |
President Donald Trump dances with first lady Melania Trump at the Liberty Ball in Washington after his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017. (Alex Brandon/AP)
Each passing day brings the country closer to the midterm elections and, even more significantly, Donald Trump’s almost certain declaration of his candidacy for presidency in 2024. Let’s hope he decides otherwise.
When Trump finally jumped into presidential politics with both feet in 2015 after a couple of earlier half-hearted stabs, I was intrigued. In a column for the local paper in southern Ohio where I was publisher and editor, I questioned Trump’s staying power, but noted, “It’s always fun to watch someone enter the political fray who doesn’t have the typical political background, doesn’t play by the rules, seems to march to his own drummer and rattles the old guard and many in the media.”
But by January 2016, I had recognized Trump’s inevitability as the Republican nominee, writing about a conversation with a friend who, like other old-school conservatives locally and nationally, “could not fathom a GOP presidential ticket led by Donald J. Trump.” My suggestion: “They should start fathoming.”
Nine months later, my newspaper became one of only six in the country to endorse Trump, leading to a rather shocking level of scrutiny for a small newspaper’s two-sentence endorsement. Trump’s world-shaking victory that November was exciting. After years of working in both journalism and politics, I was fascinated by someone breaking all the standard rules and succeeding. I was optimistic about the new kind of president Trump could become.
Think about it. As strange as it might sound now, Trump in 2017 enjoyed a rare chance to usher in a new era of bipartisanship. After all, he had little reason to feel beholden to a GOP establishment that had, in the worst cases, completely repudiated him, and in the best cases only grudgingly supported him. And his background featured close ties to the Democratic Party, ranging from being a registered Democrat to making numerous donations to various Democratic candidates and even having Bill and Hillary Clinton on hand at his 2005 wedding. As The Post summed it up in 2015, “In many ways, he’s been to the left of [Hillary] Clinton and even Bernie Sanders on some issues.”
Seldom had a president-elect been so well positioned to bring a fresh approach. Americans gave Trump a chance despite his drawbacks for one reason — they wanted change. Just a few months before the election, a CBS News-YouGov poll found that in Florida, for example, a majority of respondents said Clinton was better prepared for the presidency, but 65 percent said Trump would bring change, while only 33 percent said the same of Clinton — a sentiment reflected across battleground states.
Despite much media criticism of his positions, Trump’s main issues were important. Finally tackling illegal immigration is a goal supported by most Americans, who welcome migrants but agree they should be vetted. Bolstering U.S. energy independence and reworking trade deals were reasonable goals. Defending the traditional beliefs of Middle America without belittling movements reflective of changing times was a balance Trump seemed poised to achieve. I envisioned Trump first trying to work with GOP leaders in Congress but, failing that, moving effortlessly across the aisle to partner with Democrats to achieve his goals.
What happened? Choose your theory. The groundwork for impeachment was laid by his enemies even before he took office. Trump was hamstrung by endless investigations; almost daily conniptions over his politically incorrect, plain-spoken utterances and tweets; an impeachment over a phone call with the Ukrainian president that should have brought a censure resolution at most; and a final year dominated by a novel coronavirus that was politicized as a weapon against him. | 2022-09-28T20:29:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Trump had his chance and blew it. His supporters deserve better. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/trump-supporter-disappointment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/trump-supporter-disappointment/ |
He became a fixture of American television sets, covering the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and four presidencies
CBS News correspondent Bill Plante in 1989. (CBS Photo Archive)
Mr. Plante joined CBS News as a reporter and assignment editor in 1964 — two years after Walter Cronkite assumed the anchor’s chair on the network’s nightly news — and retired as senior White House correspondent in 2016, having become in his own right one of the most visible newsmen on television.
Having covered the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — a run interrupted by an assignment covering the State Department during George H.W. Bush’s administration — Mr. Plante was one of the longest-tenured White House TV journalists in history, according to CBS.
“Bill was a friendly rival, always willing to share insights,” Tom Brokaw, the longtime former anchor of the “NBC Nightly News” wrote in an email, describing Mr. Plante as “a smart, serious journalist with a droll, self deprecating style.”
Many TV viewers remembered Mr. Plante for his distinctive baritone, a voice that bespoke the gravitas of the “Tiffany Network,” as CBS long was known. Fellow reporters, meanwhile, knew him for his lungs — a pair of organs “often in service” to the entire White House press corps, recalled journalist Lesley Stahl, who covered the White House for CBS with Mr. Plante before becoming a “60 Minutes” correspondent.
Mr. Plante appeared on “CBS This Morning” and the “CBS Evening News,” anchoring the Sunday evening news broadcast from 1988 to 1995. But he was perhaps best known as a White House correspondent, covering events from the Iran-contra scandal during the Reagan administration to the 2008 election of Obama, the nation’s first African American president. | 2022-09-28T20:32:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bill Plante, CBS News correspondent for a half-century, dies at 84 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/28/cbs-correspondent-bill-plante-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/28/cbs-correspondent-bill-plante-dead/ |
Why Hurricane Ian poses a historic threat to Florida
This National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellite handout image shows lightning surrounding Hurricane Ian's eye while approaching Florida, on Wednesday. (Handout/AFP/Getty Images)
Hurricane Ian made landfall on the southwest coast of Florida on Wednesday as a Category 4 storm, but just barely. Its wind speeds were at the upper end of the Saffir-Simpson range, making it one of the most dangerous storms to strike the peninsula in recorded history. It’s not unusual for a hurricane to hit Fl0rida, but it is unusual for one to land where Ian did, particularly at such strength.
Information on Atlantic hurricanes stretches back further than you might think. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has data on the paths and estimated strength of hurricanes back to the 1850s. While the numbers are necessarily incomplete — we lacked the sort of measurement systems in 1870 that we have now, for example — it still provides a good sense of how often the United States has been hit by large storms.
Hurricane Ian hit Florida on Sept. 28, bringing high winds and heavy flooding to the state. (Video: The Washington Post)
I used that data to make the map below, showing every hurricane (excluding tropical storms) to make landfall (not simply pass close by) in Florida through the end of 2021. There are 99 in total, 13 of which were Category 3 or above.
Ian arrived onshore near Cayo Costa, Fla., a bit past 3 p.m. on Wednesday. That’s near where Hurricane Charley came ashore in 2004, also as a Category 4. The two other hurricanes that made landfall in Florida as Category 4 storms hit the Florida Keys (the string of islands extending from the southern tip of the state) and Miami, not on the state’s western shore.
The reason why should be obvious from the first map. Storms typically emerge in the Atlantic Ocean and head west. Sometimes they originate in the Gulf of Mexico or travel north toward Florida, as Ian did.
Often, though, they approach from the southeast. You can see that on the map of the Category 3 storms that the NOAA identifies as having made landfall in Florida. Most land near Miami or in the Keys.
The NOAA’s data include one Category 5 storm that also made landfall near the Keys. That storm came ashore in early September 1935, before storms regularly had names. It’s simply called the Labor Day hurricane.
After the storm finished its path up the western shore of the state and into the rest of the United States, more than 400 people were dead.
This, of course, is why the NOAA and other governmental agencies invest so much time and energy into understanding hurricanes: the better to predict their emergence and path. Luckily for the residents of Florida, experts saw Ian coming and gave plenty of warning to the growing community near where it landed.
We’ll likely never know how many lives were saved as a result. | 2022-09-28T20:53:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Hurricane Ian poses a historic threat to Florida - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/florida-hurricanes-ian/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/florida-hurricanes-ian/ |
Biden’s student debt plan will likely be defeated in court. Good.
President Biden delivers remarks at the White House on Aug. 24. (Evan Vucci/AP)
Conservatives opposed to President Biden’s student debt relief proposal finally have some good news: It will likely be defeated in court.
The nonprofit Pacific Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit on Tuesday that has a good chance of winning. That’s because the suit will likely be able to overcome the primary obstacle to challenging Biden’s plan: standing. Courts can only hear cases that involve a real dispute between parties who have a real stake in the case’s outcome. The doctrine ensures that purely political matters are decided by the political branches. That is often not a serious barrier to bringing contentious matters before the courts because a government’s act usually disadvantages at least one person who has motive to sue.
The student debt proposal, however, seemed to be an exception. The normal student loan recipient would be made better off by the proposal. And courts have long ruled that taxpayers or members of Congress do not have standing to challenge administrative actions they do not like if they are asserting merely a general interest in the matter. Resolving such disputes is a matter for politics, not law.
The PLF suit, however, features a plaintiff who appears to actually be made worse off by the administration’s scheme: Frank Garrison, a lawyer at PLF, is enrolled in a student loan forgiveness program that will kick in after he works for 10 years at a public interest law firm, which PLF qualifies as. His loans would be canceled anyway if he stays there four more years, which he intends to do. Indiana, where he lives, would not tax that canceled amount as income, but it will tax the administration’s forthcoming loan cancellation. Garrison would thus receive no benefit under the program and would lose around $1,000 in extra state taxes if it is allowed to go forward.
A thousand dollars might not seem like a lot of money, but it should be enough to give him standing to sue. That means the courts will have to decide the case on its merits, which is not good news for the administration.
The administration says it has legal authority to issue the debt relief because of the 2003 Heroes Act. The law, passed during the Iraq War, delegated power to the president to waive or modify student loan obligations when “necessary in connection with a war or other military operation or national emergency” and if the person with the loan “resides or is employed” in an area which a branch of government has declared to be a disaster area in connection with a national emergency. The administration contends that the coronavirus pandemic qualifies as such a national emergency, granting it the power to unilaterally cancel hundreds of billions of dollars in student loans nationwide.
This specious justification flies in the face of the separation of powers. The Constitution grants Congress the power to enact laws and make appropriations. The administration’s action, which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cost the federal government $400 billion, is clearly not the sort of executive power that Constitution grants to the president.
Congress can delegate such power to the executive branch only if it exhibits a specific intent to do so. The Supreme Court held earlier this year that this legal rule, known as the major questions doctrine, applies in “extraordinary cases” that involve a “issue of deep economic or political significance.” The administration’s unprecedented action, which will impact tens of millions of people’s finances and cost the Treasury hundreds of billions of dollars, clearly fits that description. No one seriously suggests that the Heroes Act specifically authorized the president to engage in such a wide-ranging action during a pandemic (which Biden recently said was “over”).
The Supreme Court applied this doctrine in West Virginia v. EPA, one of the most controversial cases from the last term that resulted in curtailing the EPA’s authority to regulate power plants. The 6-3 majority in that case is not likely to let the administration undermine that holding with its fanciful invocation of authority from a law meant to help soldiers and reservists. That means all Garrison needs to do is keep appealing his case until it reaches the Supreme Court.
His matter will likely arrive at the Supreme Court quickly. The suit asks for a preliminary injunction to prevent the proposal from taking effect on Saturday. The district court will have to address the plaintiff’s likelihood of prevailing at trial when assessing this motion, which necessarily implicates the Supreme Court’s reasoning in West Virginia v. EPA. Orders concerning preliminary injunctions are immediately appealable, making it highly likely the court will get involved and defend its ruling within a few days.
Democrats will surely be angry if the conservative court enjoins Biden’s plan, but they could have passed student loan debt relief as part of their omnibus reconciliation bill. They didn’t. As such, they must fight this battle in court, and that’s where conservatives have the clear advantage. | 2022-09-28T21:07:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden’s student debt plan will likely be defeated in court. Good. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/biden-student-debt-forgiveness-supreme-court/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/biden-student-debt-forgiveness-supreme-court/ |
Photo of Catholic nuns at Trump rally was troubling
An audience at Covelli Centre in Youngstown, Ohio, on Sept. 17 to waits to hear former president Donald Trump. (Andrew Spear for The Washington Post)
A photograph with the Sept. 23 news article “Trump’s legal peril grows as he tries to raise 2024 profile” of three Roman Catholic nuns, hands to heart, attending former president Donald Trump’s recent rally in Youngstown, Ohio, was troubling.
After the appointments of two deeply conservative Catholic justices (Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett) to join sitting conservative justices of the same faith (Samuel A. Alito Jr., John G. Roberts Jr. and Clarence Thomas), the Supreme Court will inevitably continue to rail against the supposed vulnerability of religious freedom in a secular society and issue opinions that erode the wall between church and state envisioned by the founding fathers as an indispensable element of a free and pluralistic society.
As the photograph showed, some members of the faith community will applaud that message and praise the efforts of Mr. Trump and his acolytes in the judiciary to limit women’s freedom to control their own bodies, restrict the rights of the LGBT community and fund religious institutions with taxpayer money. Others, however, including me and other ex-Catholics, might view it as yet another reason so many of us have left the faith — because it no longer comports with modern concepts of social justice, equality and respect for human dignity. It is true, of course, that major religions in the United States are shrinking as church attendance declines precipitously. And at least one recent study projected that Christians could make up less than half the U.S. population in a few decades.
The question for me is whether our democracy can survive until then.
John Seymour, Arlington | 2022-09-28T21:07:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Photo of Catholic nuns at Trump rally was troubling - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/intertwining-religion-government/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/intertwining-religion-government/ |
Sen. Joe Manchin III, a Democrat from West Virginia, speaks during a news conference in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 20. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg)
The good news is that the government isn’t shutting down. Congress is on track to pass this week a stopgap spending bill that would keep the lights on past Friday, and it includes some $12 billion in badly needed Ukraine aid. But another critical provision failed to make it into the package: legislation that critics have unfairly characterized as a sop to big oil, but that is, in fact, indispensable in the fight against climate change. This cannot be the last word on the proposal.
To call the plan from Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) “permitting reform” undersells its importance. The United States’ existing energy infrastructure was built to run on fossil fuels. If the country is to transition quickly onto renewables and other nonpolluting sources of energy, it will need to build a lot of new facilities — solar farms, wind turbines, geothermal plants and power lines to connect it all to the grid. Maintaining onerous rules on building energy projects puts renewables at a disadvantage relative to sources that have associated infrastructure already built out.
Mr. Manchin’s legislation would boost the federal government’s authority to approve electricity transmission lines — high-capacity wires that move electricity from producers to cities and towns — that it declares to be in the national interest, and make it easier to pay for them.
A renewables-heavy power grid will require a robust transmission network. The sun does not shine and the wind does not always blow everywhere. Electricity will have to go from the places where conditions are good — wherever that happens to be on a given day — to people’s homes. ZERO Lab, a Princeton outfit that models energy policies, predicts that U.S. climate efforts would fall flat if the country failed to speed transmission buildout. Congress just passed a massive new climate bill, but the lab found that 80 percent of its promised emissions benefits this decade would not occur if the country continued to build new transmission lines at its current slow pace.
Environmentalist opponents of Mr. Manchin’s proposal complain that it would also ease fossil fuel infrastructure permitting — it would specifically approve a West Virginia natural gas pipeline — and that Congress should pass a bill without such baggage. That is another way of arguing to do nothing, because such a package would not pass the Senate, where permitting legislation needs 60 votes. A Democratic aide said Mr. Manchin’s proposal would likely have attracted the support of 48 out of 50 Senate Democrats if it had come to the floor this week, meaning at least 12 Republicans would have needed to support it.
For their part, Republicans have long called for permitting reform because oil and gas companies want it, but they withheld their support for Mr. Manchin’s plan this week to punish the West Virginia senator for backing a big Democratic health and environment bill over the summer. Having their revenge, Republicans should come to the table. President Biden, whose spokeswoman says he is “committed” to Mr. Manchin’s legislation, should lean on his party’s balking lawmakers. Congressional Democratic leaders should aim to attach Mr. Manchin’s legislation to other must-pass bills in the coming months. The opportunity is still there. All sides should seize it. | 2022-09-28T21:07:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Democrats push through Manchin's energy bill to fight climate change - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/manchin-permitting-bill-climate-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/manchin-permitting-bill-climate-change/ |
‘Blackmail’ is too tame a term to describe what the French did to Haiti
Demonstrators protest in Port-au-Prince on Sept. 19 against fuel price hikes and to demand that Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry step down. (Odelyn Joseph/Associated Press)
After reading the Sept. 23 editorial “Haiti’s descent into chaos,” I rushed to my computer to search for the May 22 New York Times article “A Land of Riches, but Not for Its Own People.” The article informed us that in 1825, a squadron of French warships arrived off the coast of Haiti to demand reparations for the descendants of their former enslavers. The New York Times found that if the money Haiti paid out to France and investors had remained in Haiti, “it would have added a staggering $21 billion to Haiti over time, even accounting for its notorious corruption and waste.”
President Jean-Bertrand Aristide demanded reparations from France, which had more than a little to do with the French helping to remove him from power. The occupation of Haiti by the United States was discussed, as was how the United States propped up dictators such as François Duvalier and his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier. The Post’s editorial said that international organizations, the United Nations, the United States and France, among others, need to face Haiti’s collapse squarely and the role they played in it.
“Blackmail” is too tame a term to describe what the French did to Haiti. The debt was paid, of course, by the poor people of Haiti, not the elites. How do you restore a country to what it could have been?
Cortez Austin, Upper Marlboro | 2022-09-28T21:07:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | ‘Blackmail’ is too tame a term to describe what the French did to Haiti - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/tragedy-haiti/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/tragedy-haiti/ |
We must control inflation for the good of the country
A trader works on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange Aug. 26 in New York. (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg News)
Regarding the Sept. 25 Business article “Stocks plunge as Fed’s Powell signals more pain to come”:
Rampant inflation cannot go unchecked for the good of our country.
For reasons that make no sense to me, the proponents of unregulated free-market capitalism think our country would be better off if we left big business alone, if we let it govern itself, no matter how it affects our lives. These folks seem to value fate over cultural self-determination, the interests of the few over the interests of the many, affluence over need.
But it is need, the needs of the many, that is the foundation underlying democracy, all democracies. Serving the few, by empowering them to do what they want regardless of the consequences of their actions, disempowers the rest of us from self-governance. This is a moral hazard of the laissez-faire economic model of many “conservative” politicians today, based, in part, on the ideology of Ayn Rand, rather than on the ideology of a democratic republic and elected representation.
Curbing rampant inflation will do the greatest good for the greatest number of Americans in the long run. Wall Street should stand up for what is financially and morally right and support Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell’s policies.
Maurice F. Baggiano, Jamestown, N.Y.
Opinion|The Fed has no good options now. Especially if it cares about the poor. | 2022-09-28T21:07:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | We must control inflation for the good of the country - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/we-must-control-inflation-good-country/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/we-must-control-inflation-good-country/ |
Purple Line study: Without help, light-rail line will bring gentrification
As major construction resumes, academics and activists say more is needed to preserve small businesses and affordable housing
Gustavo Torres, executive director of the immigrant advocacy group CASA, said residents along the Purple Line corridor are eager for the convenience of the train, but worried they may priced out of the area. (Katherine Shaver/The Washington Post)
Government officials and community groups should protect affordable housing and small businesses to prevent gentrification around Purple Line stations under construction in Maryland, according to a two-year analysis released Wednesday.
The 16-mile light-rail line that will connect Montgomery and Prince George’s counties — the first direct suburb-to-suburb rail line in the Washington region — is designed to help revitalize older, inner-ring suburbs while providing faster, more reliable mass transit. Some local officials and community leaders have long worried that, without attention, rising land values and rents around the 21 stations will price out business and residents, particularly in lower-income communities in Prince George’s international corridor.
Communities most at risk include Long Branch, Langley Park and Riverdale Park, study leaders said.
The study came from the public-private Purple Line Corridor Coalition, a group composed of government officials, community activists, nonprofits, companies and academics. The group organized in 2013 to try to prevent the kind of displacement that has traditionally followed many Metro stations and new transit lines across the country.
“The true test of our work on the Purple Line … is that all of the communities are able to thrive through the construction and afterwards, that we leave no one behind,” said Del. K. Jheanelle Wilkins (D-Montgomery) at an event celebrating the report’s release in downtown Silver Spring.
Among the recommendations: Make the Purple Line stations safer to reach on bicycle and foot, particularly for lower-income transit riders who don’t own vehicles. It suggested providing more funding to preserve affordable housing, making it easier to build homes for lower- and middle-income residents. The report also recommended helping small businesses to survive construction, while working with residents and communities of color to preserve local cultures.
“We have seen that time and time again, light-rail service has not been kind to local, low-income communities, particularly communities of color,” said Prince George’s council member Deni Taveras (D-District 2).
The findings come as major work on the Purple Line resumes this fall under a new construction contractor. Most construction stopped in fall 2020 after the original contractor quit amid a years-long dispute with the Maryland Transit Administration over delay-related costs.
How the new Purple Line contractor plans to get the line open by late 2026
The line, which was originally scheduled to begin carrying passengers in March, is now scheduled to open in fall 2026, more than four years late and $1.46 billion over budget.
While most construction sites lay dormant for the past two years, coalition members said they continued to research and discuss ways to promote equitable development along the Purple Line corridor using a $2 million grant from the Federal Transit Administration. The work was based on technical analysis from the University of Maryland’s National Center For Smart Growth Research.
Gerrit Knaap, the coalition’s founder and the smart growth center’s director, said property values and rents already are rising in the corridor.
“The threat of gentrification and displacement is substantial,” Knaap said, “and it’s already happening.”
In addition to acting quickly to assist small businesses and preserve and create more affordable housing, he said, local officials need to improve sidewalks, add more buffers between pedestrians and traffic, and expand bicycle networks near stations.
“This is a tremendous transit opportunity and investment, but it’s being put in a place that was not meant for that,” Knaap said. “We need to emphasize people over cars.”
Gustavo Torres, executive director of the immigrant advocacy group CASA, said thousands of residents in the corridor are excited about one day riding the Purple Line 15 minutes from Langley Park to jobs in Bethesda — a trip that now takes two hours via bus.
Even so, he said, many are worried they won’t be able to afford to continue living near the stations as economic development follows construction. Some landlords are ending leases knowing they can charge more with the Purple Line on the way, he said.
“Our job,” Torres said, “is to make sure the people fighting for the Purple Line are going to benefit from the Purple Line.” | 2022-09-28T21:46:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Purple Line study: Without help, light-rail line will bring gentrification - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/28/purple-line-maryland-gentrification-study/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/28/purple-line-maryland-gentrification-study/ |
Appeals court debates whether Equal Rights Amendment is really dead
Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), third from left, protests outside a federal courthouse, asking Congress to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
A panel of federal judges expressed skepticism Wednesday about two states’ effort to enshrine gender equality in the U.S. Constitution by getting the federal government to recognize the Equal Rights Amendment decades after it was considered dead.
At a hearing Wednesday before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, Illinois and Nevada sparred with the Justice Department over whether their ratification of the proposed constitutional amendment, long after a congressionally set deadline to do so had passed, should count for something.
The states are arguing that the deadline Congress set for ratification nearly three decades ago is an unconstitutional encroachment on state power. A lawyer for the Justice Department countered that, while the Biden administration agrees with the principles of the Equal Rights Amendment, the executive branch can’t unilaterally decide whether it is part of the Constitution.
“Our ratifications are not being given their intended effect,” said Jane Notz, solicitor general of Illinois.
The three-judge panel on the appeals court appeared open to the idea that states had the legal right to sue to force the U.S. archivist to certify and publish the Equal Rights Amendment. But they seemed less sure that their position was the right one, and that the amendment — which was proposed by Congress but needed ratification from three-quarters of the states — has become part of the U.S. Constitution.
“The legislative history seems to indicate that Congress only passed [the Equal Rights Amendment] because it did have this deadline,” Judge Robert L. Wilkins said. If the deadline wasn’t allowed, he asked, “Wouldn’t then the result be that we invalidate the proposed amendment, as opposed to just striking the deadline?”
The states disagreed, arguing that the deadline in the preamble to the amendment was simply unenforceable.
Judge Neomi Rao suggested that the states’ interpretation “seems to take us way down a slippery slope in terms of undermining Congress’s ability to propose amendments to the Constitution.”
Sarah Harrington, an attorney for the Justice Department, said that “the Biden administration supports the principles that are espoused in the ERA” but opposes the lawsuit.
“The ERA either is or isn’t part of the Constitution today, and nothing the archivist does can affect that,” she said. A person would have to claim that their rights under the ERA were violated to sue for its enforcement, she argued.
“We are obviously considering many parallel options on having this enforced,” Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford (D) said after the hearing.
The ERA was considered moribund when it fell three states short of the threshold required for ratification, failing to meet both the original deadline of 1979 imposed by Congress and a three-year extension. Five states subsequently withdrew their approval.
The House, but not the Senate, has passed legislation to remove the deadline.
Supporters of the amendment now take the view that the deadline and the withdrawals were invalid, because the deadline was not in the amendment itself, and ratifications are final. Inspired by those arguments, three states ratified the amendment in the past five years — ending with Virginia, the crucial 38th state, in early 2020. To supporters, that means it went into effect this January.
But under the Trump administration, the U.S. archivist refused to certify the amendment, leading to a lawsuit by Virginia, Nevada and Illinois. President Biden’s nominee to run the National Archives and Records Administration has said she will stand by that decision unless a court or Congress orders her to do otherwise.
“The 28th Amendment exists,” said Kwame Raoul (D), the attorney general of Illinois. “The challenge is, if you’re putting a protection in our Constitution for discrimination based on sex, like any laws, people look to the books to know that they exist. There is meaning in publication.”
After the election of Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Virginia withdrew from the suit, taking the position that the deadline for ratification has passed.
Douglas Johnson of the antiabortion National Right to Life Committee said he believes the panel “may have the courage to affirm the simple reality that the real ERA died decades ago,” which “would be a good thing for the rule of law.”
Every other constitutional amendment with a deadline has been ratified within the stated time frame. A federal district court judge last year found that while the ratification effort is “[l]audable,” it contradicted a “clear deadline” that “there is no doubt that Congress intended … to be binding.”
While sex discrimination is prohibited under federal law, the ERA would subject laws that differentiate between men and women to greater scrutiny. Both advocates and opponents believe that the ERA would have strengthened the argument for a constitutional right to an abortion, undone by the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year.
Arguments in that case occurred before January, when advocates argue the ERA took effect. Advocates in North Carolina asked for time to argue that “the Court must consider the entire Constitution, which legally includes the 28th Amendment.” They were denied. | 2022-09-28T21:59:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Appeals court debates whether Equal Rights Amendment is really dead - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/28/equal-rights-amendment-appeals-court/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/28/equal-rights-amendment-appeals-court/ |
Politics ain’t beanbag. It isn’t philanthropy, either.
Editorial writer and columnist |
The magnitude — $1.6 billion — of Chicago business executive Barre Seid’s gift of his company’s stock to a new conservative “social welfare” nonprofit, or 501(c)(4), caused jaws to drop when the New York Times brought it to light last month.
Perhaps the only thing more impressive than its size was how this gift to a group that may spend significant sums on political ads sidestepped, perfectly legally, hundreds of millions of dollars in capital gains or gift taxes that might have applied if Seid had disposed of the assets otherwise, according to a recent Wall Street Journal analysis.
Seid’s donation is just an extra-large illustration of an undeniable trend: The tax law’s dividing line between charitable activity and partisan politics — never easy to define or enforce — is breaking down.
There are also loopholes that let charitable organizations that receive tax-deductible donations — or 501(c)(3)s — fund officially nonpartisan voter registration drives, which, in practice, favor one party. Some of these charitable outfits transfer dollars to associated 501(c)(4)s, which are not allowed to collect tax-deductible contributions but have more latitude to spend on politics, including political advertising.
As Craig Kennedy argues in a provocative series of articles at the Philanthropy Daily website, it’s time for “a broad debate about how that boundary can become sharper and less permeable.”
Follow Charles Lane's opinionsFollowAdd
A former president of Chicago’s Joyce Foundation and the German Marshall Fund of the United States, who also advised a Democratic mayor of Chicago during the 1990s, Kennedy knows nonprofits and politics. His proposals for new rules — and tougher enforcement of existing ones by the IRS — would not transform the system but could improve it.
After Seid’s mega-gift leaked to the Times, Democrats focused on the fact that the recipient was not legally required to disclose it, calling this further evidence of the corrosive political influence of “dark money.” They held a Senate vote last week on the Disclose Act, which would make 501(c)(4)s publicly identify donors of $10,000 or more. On a 49-49 party-line vote, Democrats failed to break a Republican filibuster, effectively killing the bill.
Democrats blamed the GOP for obstruction on behalf of wealthy individuals and corporations. In fact, pro-Democratic dark-money groups and mega-donors have gotten pretty good at this game, too; they outspent their Republican counterparts $1.5 billion to $900 million in 2020, according to the Times. There is always the risk that the Supreme Court would strike down the Disclose Act anyway; non-conservative organizations, notably the American Civil Liberties Union, have opposed it as a threat to the donor privacy that enables funding of sometimes unpopular speech.
Kennedy proposes an alternative policy principle: “If the American taxpayer is not directly subsidizing a gift, the donor has the right to privacy. But if a donation is incentivized by avoiding capital-gains taxes or supported by a charitable deduction, we have every right to know the donors and the causes that we are subsidizing.”
A logical move would be to ban transfers from 501(c)(3) organizations, which raise money with the help of tax deductions, to 501(c)(4)s, which do not have to disclose donors. Kennedy tartly labels this widespread practice “the charitable equivalent of transubstantiation, or perhaps money-laundering.”
Another would be to abolish the current law that permits stock or other assets to be donated to a 501(c)(4) without capital gains or gift taxes.
This is the rule that facilitated Seid’s donation in 2020 of his company’s stock to the Marble Freedom Trust, a 501(c)(4) headed by Leonard Leo, best known for promoting conservative judicial nominations as co-chairman of the Federalist Society. The Marble Freedom Trust then sold the shares for $1.6 billion cash in 2021, also a non-taxable transaction because of the trust’s nonprofit status.
In short, while tax savings did not accrue personally to Seid, they greatly magnified the financial benefit to the recipient.
Under Kennedy’s rule, Seid would first have had to convert the assets to cash himself, pay $450 million in taxes (an estimate reported by the Wall Street Journal) and then donate.
Incidentally, Kennedy’s reform would have cost Patagonia’s left-leaning founder, Yvon Chouinard, $700 million in taxes, per estimates in the Journal, on top of the $17.5 million in gift levies his family did pay when he transferred 98 percent of his company, worth about $3 billion, to a 501(c)(4) focused on climate change.
(Making his own disclosure, Kennedy noted in Philanthropy Daily that one of his adult children works for an entity chaired by Leo.)
Since they would directly affect tax law but not campaign finance law, Kennedy’s ideas could obviate a constitutional challenge. By definition, they would leave in place most of the system that allows wealthy people to make huge donations to their pet causes; but at least taxpayers wouldn’t be subsidizing it anymore. | 2022-09-28T22:00:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Politics ain’t beanbag. It isn’t philanthropy, either. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/philanthropic-donations-politics-reform/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/28/philanthropic-donations-politics-reform/ |
Nearly 700 days later, most Republicans still believe Trump’s big lie
They still believe fraud determined the 2020 election. It didn’t.
Trump supporters gathered outside the Maryland State House on Nov. 7, 2020, in Annapolis. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
Here is Sisyphus, hard at work, shoving that boulder up that hill. It is a punishment, yes; he didn’t choose the task. But after a few centuries, he’s learned to appreciate the rhythm. He knows where the rocks jut out. He’s mapped out all the divots. He’s worn smoother paths into dirt. And then there’s always that inextinguishable glimmer that grows within him as he once again nears the top: Maybe this time it will stay in place. Maybe this time, somehow, the rock won’t just roll back down to the bottom.
And then, every time, it rolls back down.
I am not going to say that I can empathize with Sisyphus’s plight, but I feel as though it might be more tangible to me than it is to others. I, too, have spent years engaged in a repetitious task for which I’ve slowly developed systems and shorthands. And I, too, have seen those efforts amount to next to nothing, forcing me to start them over once again.
Sisyphus had his rock. I have reality.
It has been 694 days since Donald Trump lost his reelection bid on Nov. 3, 2020. It took a few days for that to be cemented as fact, days in which states kept counting votes and the final outcome was still a bit hazy. During that time, during those few days and even a week or two after, it was perfectly fair to wonder about how Trump’s loss had unfolded. There were lots of claims of impropriety after all, assertions about suspicious voting or counting activity that demanded an explanation.
Trump himself stoked this idea, of course. There’s a cosmic scorecard on which Trump’s efforts to sow doubt about the 2020 election are compared to his efforts to do all of the other parts of his job as president; I’m confident that the contest was closer than many people might imagine. But once the election happened, his assertions moved from speculative to verifiable. And, over the course of the 700-odd days between then and now, they have not been verified. Over and over and over and over and over and over again, claims about systematic fraud made by Trump and his allies were evaluated by outside observers, experts, the media and the courts and in every case were dismissed or explained.
I’m not going to rehash this here, in part because I wrote a sort of beginner’s guide to debunking claims of fraud a week or so ago. But I’m mostly not going to rehash it here because all that will happen is the rock will just roll down to the bottom of the hill anyway.
Since the election, Monmouth University has asked Americans whether they attribute President Biden’s 2020 victory to his winning fair and square or his winning due to voter fraud. The phrasing there is important: It’s not just that they asked if Biden won thanks to some vaguely articulated disadvantage Trump faced within the modern media and political system. They asked about this specific thing: voter fraud, ballots cast illegally by voters.
And since they started asking that question in November 2020, the percentage of Republicans who claim that Biden only won due to voter fraud has hardly budged at all. On Nov. 18, 2020, 70 percent of Republicans said Biden won only due to voter fraud. This month, 61 percent did. On average, over the course of those nine polls, 64 percent of Republicans have blamed voter fraud — just shy of two-thirds of the total.
You will probably not be surprised by this. It’s sort of understood that Republicans hold this position. And, perhaps, we’ve reached a point where articulating that you think voter fraud gave Biden his victory has been folded into a broader partisan identity. In other words, that being Republican means being receptive to this idea. That Republicans are expected to say this is what happened so they say it, even if they only sort of half-believe it.
But this is my Sisyphean ordeal. I have, in good faith, repeatedly assessed specific claims about voter fraud and, repeatedly, found nothing more than the standard sort of voting-for-a-dead-relative one-offs that occur in every election.
I’ve elevated the work of others that’s done the same thing, from other news outlets to a cadre of Republican officials. I even watched Dinesh D’Souza’s ridiculous movie more than once! The conclusion is as inescapable now as it was by December 2020: There is no evidence of rampant fraud and, more important, no reason to believe that rampant systemic fraud occurred, much less enough to sway the election results.
Yet my efforts and those of others who have addressed the same issue have had no effect at all. All our shoving and sweating and pushing that boulder up the hill and, when it arrives, it simply slips down the opposite side. We’re back where we started.
The pattern is obvious. People who want to believe that voter fraud occurred are almost universally people who do not read evaluations of fraud claims in The Washington Post. They are not people who are looking for information that falsifies their beliefs because, if they did, they would very quickly find it. Vague debunked allegations are made and comport with their sense of what happened, and that’s good enough.
You, being wise, probably have a recommendation: Maybe I should stop pushing this particular rock up this particular hill. And perhaps I should.
But what if, this time, it doesn’t roll down the other side? | 2022-09-28T22:00:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nearly 700 days later, most Republicans still believe Trump’s big lie - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/nearly-700-days-later-most-republicans-still-believe-trumps-big-lie/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/nearly-700-days-later-most-republicans-still-believe-trumps-big-lie/ |
Supreme Court will allow public at arguments, continue live audio
The court’s oral arguments have either been via teleconference or in front of a limited audience since March 2020
The Supreme Court building in Washington. (Sarah Silbiger/For The Washington Post)
The Supreme Court announced Wednesday that the public will be allowed back into the courtroom when the new term begins Monday, for the first time since it imposed pandemic-related restrictions in March 2020.
Since then, the court has heard arguments via teleconference and in-person in front of only court personnel and credentialed journalists. The justices allowed live audio streaming of the arguments and said that will continue even though the sessions will be held in public.
Supreme Court to resume arguments, with all the grandeur of work from home
“Seating for the oral argument sessions will be provided to the public, members of the Supreme Court bar, and press, and Courtroom bar admissions will resume,” the court said in a news release. “Masking in the Courtroom for oral arguments will be optional.”
In addition, “a link to the live audio feed will be available on the homepage of the Court’s website,” supremecourt.gov. “The oral argument audio and a transcript of the oral arguments will be posted … following oral argument each day. The building will otherwise be closed to the public until further notice.”
There has been controversy for years over the court’s decision not to allow cameras in the courtroom, as state supreme courts across the country do. There was also resistance to the live audio feed from some justices.
But it has proved popular, and several justices have said publicly they saw no need to curtail it once the public was allowed to return.
Emboldened Supreme Court majority shows it’s eager for change
The court is behind other Washington governmental institutions in returning to normal. And last spring, after the leak of a draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade’s constitutional right to abortion, a high black fence was erected around the marble building to deter protesters. It was removed during the summer.
In remarks last month, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said it was “gut-wrenching” to see the court fenced off. The court suspended its policy of delivering opinions from the bench, and instead simply posted them on its website.
Still, the opening of the term might be chaotic. Protests over the court’s abortion decision have continued, including in front of the homes of some of the justices in the majority. A California man was arrested and accused of threatening the life of Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh and his family.
And even with the court open, it was not easy for members of the public to see an oral argument. Lines usually form hours before the court’s arguments. And for special cases, people will camp out on the sidewalk in front of the building for days. | 2022-09-28T22:21:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court will allow public at arguments, continue live audio - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/how-to-watch-supreme-court/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/28/how-to-watch-supreme-court/ |
Secretary of State Antony Blinken greets dignitaries from Pacific island countries during a summit at the State Department on Wednesday. (Kevin Wolf/AP)
President Biden this week is welcoming to the White House for the first time more than a dozen Pacific island leaders whose countries are receiving fresh attention and resources as China asserts its own influence in the region.
The high-level wooing — including meetings with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo — coincides with the unveiling of a first-ever Pacific island strategy that is aimed at addressing the nations’ top concerns. Those include climate change, recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, illegal fishing and technology investments.
The engagement is intended to “step up our game” across the Indo-Pacific region, according to a senior administration official who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.
The effort appears already to have paid some dividends. On Wednesday, all of the visiting leaders signed on to an 11-point statement of vision committing to joint endeavors. The signatories notably included Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, whose government had earlier indicated it needed “time to reflect” on the declaration.
Among other steps, Washington will expand diplomatic missions from six to nine among Pacific island nations; create a new ambassador’s post to the Pacific Islands Forum, an international organization of nations akin to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations; and reestablish a U.S. Agency for International Development mission in Fiji.
The summit is an acknowledgment, administration officials said, that the Pacific islands have gotten “short shrift” as the United States has focused its attention elsewhere. “There’s also a deeper recognition that in the past we have perhaps paid lesser attention to these critical places than we should have,” White House Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell said at a discussion last week hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “I think being honest about that is important.”
The administration took advantage of the fact that the leaders were in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, to gather them in Washington. The summit is “symbolically important,” said Gregory Poling, co-director of the Pacific Partners Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It shows that they’re taking it seriously.”
The inclusiveness of the summit is significant, Poling said. The administration included not only the islands that Washington has formal diplomatic relations with but also two French territories and two self-governing countries that are in free association with New Zealand — the Cook Islands and Niue. “The White House went through diplomatic gymnastics to show that they’re respecting the formalities of Pacific regionalism,” he said.
“This is being framed as an initiative where the White House is doing things on the Pacific’s terms — not trying to dictate to smaller states,” Poling said.
The senior administration official Tuesday said that the Pacific strategy, while consistent with the administration’s strategic goals in the Indo-Pacific region, is “specifically aimed” at the Pacific island nations’ concerns.
“The demand signal from the region … it’s louder and clearer than it ever has been,” the official said.
The U.S.-China strategic competition is the context for the initiative, Poling said. “The United States would not be paying this much attention to the Pacific islands if there were not the fear that it’s losing influence to China.”
But that recognition is okay, he said. “The key is that the United States competes best with China by providing public goods to our partners better than China can.”
The summit comes as Vice President Harris tours East Asia, where she is emphasizing U.S. commitment to a “free and open Indo-Pacific” during stops in Japan and South Korea. In remarks in Japan on Wednesday, Harris condemned China’s “disturbing” actions in the region, including “provocations” against Taiwan. | 2022-09-28T23:00:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | White House hosts first Pacific islands summit as China makes inroads - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/28/biden-pacific-islands-china/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/28/biden-pacific-islands-china/ |
The United States and nearly two dozen partner nations said they would accelerate weapons production, expecting a sustained conflict with Russia
A Ukrainian military commander inspects the rockets on HIMARS vehicle in July. (Anastasia Vlasova for The Washington Post)
The United States will more than double its commitment of long-range rocket artillery systems for Ukraine, the Pentagon said Wednesday, part of a long-term strategy by the United States and its partners to ramp up weapons production in response to Russia’s invasion.
The $1.1 billion package will include 18 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers, the weapons that have wreaked havoc on command posts and logistical hubs behind Russian lines. The United States already has delivered 16 of the systems, capable of delivering precision munitions from up to 50 miles away, from existing stocks.
This new tranche will take a “few years” to build and deliver, a senior U.S. defense official told reporters, underscoring efforts to provide for Ukraine’s long-term defense infrastructure while allies and partners speed tailored packages of equipment and ammunition for the most urgent needs. The HIMARS represents a “core component of Ukraine’s fighting force in the future,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon.
Separately, the Pentagon said Wednesday that the United States intends to increase production of “ground-based long range fires, air defense systems, air-to-ground munitions, and other capabilities” needed to sustain Ukraine’s military for the long haul. In a statement, defense officials said that nearly 20 other nations also agreed to expand their industrial base and accelerate the production of arms that can replace Ukraine’s Russian and Soviet-era equipment with modern systems used by NATO.
The announcements come as Russia presses as many as 300,000 conscripts into service to replace and reinforce beleaguered troops driven back by Ukrainian offensives in the east and south. Readying those new troops will be challenging for the Kremlin, a second U.S. official told reporters, given the logistics necessary to supply and train them. Many of the Russian troops who would train conscripts already “are in Ukraine,” the official said.
The most recent arms package includes weapons and equipment that will take between six months and two years to deliver and require defense contractors to restart or intensify manufacturing, the first defense official said.
Ukraine also will receive 150 additional armored Humvees, which will allow troops to transport foot soldiers and maneuver around the battlefield during offensive operations, and more than 200 vehicles that will help them haul heavy equipment, a logistical challenge that comes with supplying large amounts of heavy weapons.
The package also includes systems designed to mitigate weapons the Russians have used effectively, including radars that can detect incoming artillery and drones. | 2022-09-28T23:00:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pentagon will double HIMARS artillery for Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/28/himars-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/28/himars-ukraine/ |
Myanmar beauty queen who decried junta seeks asylum in Canada
Thaw Nandar Aung, also known as Han Lay, a model from Myanmar, speaks to a reporter in Bangkok in March 2021. (Napaxalun Sattayatam/AP)
A Myanmar beauty queen who publicly criticized her country’s military junta, and later became stranded at the Bangkok airport, arrived Wednesday in Canada, where she is seeking asylum.
Thaw Nandar Aung, also known as Han Lay, landed in Toronto and said she was going to live on Prince Edward Island, a province off Canada’s Atlantic coast, Reuters reported. It was unclear what her status was, but Han Lay, 23, told Radio Free Asia she was granted permission to stay with the help of Canadian officials and the U.N. refugee agency.
“Everything happened so fast, and I only have a few pieces of clothing,” she told the broadcaster before departing for Canada. But, she said, “I have spoken out for Myanmar wherever I go. Since Canada is a safe place for me, I will have more opportunities to speak out on the issue.”
Han Lay first garnered worldwide attention last year when, at the Miss Grand International beauty pageant in Thailand, she used her time on the stage to speak out against Myanmar’s military rulers.
At the time, the junta, known as the Tatmadaw, had just seized power and anti-military protests were raging. The military and police confronted demonstrators with deadly force. On one particularly bloody day, March 27, security forces killed over 160 protesters.
How Myanmar's military terrorized its people
That same day, Han Lay was on a stage in Bangkok wearing a traditional white gown as one of 20 finalists in the pageant.
“Today in my country, Myanmar, while I am going to be on this stage, there are so many people dying; more than 100 people died today,” she told the audience and cameras, wiping away tears. “I am deeply sorry for all the people who have lost their lives.”
“Every citizen of the world wants the prosperity of their country and the peaceful environment,” she added. “In doing so, the leaders involved should not use their power and selfishness.”
The speech put Han Lay in the spotlight and also drew condemnation and threats on social media, she said. After the pageant, she stayed in Thailand to avoid potential arrest in her home country, where thousands have been injured or killed since the military takeover. Thousands more are in prison, and in July the military junta executed four pro-democracy activists, including two of the resistance’s most prominent leaders.
But on Sept. 21, after a brief trip to Vietnam, Han Lay was denied entry at Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport. Thai officials said her Myanmar-issued travel documents were invalid, Reuters reported. She wrote on Facebook the next day that Myanmar police officials were also at the airport and had attempted to reach out to her.
“I will refuse to meet with the Myanmar police by using my human right,” she wrote, adding that she had requested help from Thai authorities and the United Nations.
According to Human Rights Watch, the move was “a deliberate political act by the junta to make her stateless.”
“There is no doubt that what transpired was a trap to try to force Han Lay to return to Myanmar, where she would have faced immediate arrest, likely abuse in detention, and imprisonment,” the group’s deputy Asia director, Phil Robertson, said in a statement Wednesday.
He said that governments should be “on guard” against attempts by Myanmar’s military junta to use “similar tactics against overseas dissidents traveling on Myanmar passports in the future.”
“This is hardly the first time repressive Burmese military dictatorships have sought to use their control over Myanmar passports as a weapon against their own people’s rights to travel internationally,” Robertson said. | 2022-09-28T23:00:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Han Lay: Myanmar beauty queen who decried junta seeks asylum in Canada - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/myanmar-beauty-pageant-han-lay-canada/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/myanmar-beauty-pageant-han-lay-canada/ |
Lawmakers, residents blast D.C.’s 911 call center at council hearing
The chairman of the D.C. Council’s public safety committee called for a “fundamental cultural shift” at the city’s 911 call center.
A woman, whose daughter died two years ago after missteps at the 911 center delayed emergency response, described how her 13-year-old granddaughter had tried in vain to perform CPR.
And the councilwoman representing an area where a man died this month after an 11-minute delay in an ambulance said she is at a “loss for words” and “deeply alarmed” by the state of the agency.
Testifying Wednesday at an oversight hearing for the city agency responsible for dispatching emergency responders, the three slammed the District’s Office of Unified Communications (OUC) for delayed and inaccurate dispatches, and failing to take responsibility for breakdowns.
The criticism follows a September report by the city auditor that said OUC officials had only made “minimal progress” on a little more than 75 percent of the 31 recommendations her office had made last year. And it comes as council members will soon consider whether to confirm Karima Holmes, the acting director of the OUC who Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) recently nominated to run the agency in a permanent capacity.
This summer alone, the dispatch center sent firefighters to the wrong address for a newborn in cardiac arrest and made mistakes that delayed the arrival of paramedics trying to reach a 3-month-old boy who had been left in a car.
“Putting it bluntly, we’ve been here before,” said Charles Allen, chair of the committee on the judiciary and public safety, referring to past OUC oversight hearings where lawmakers discussed similar issues. “It’s about leadership and how the government needs to run.”
Billie Shepperd, whose daughter Sheila Shepperd died two years ago, told listeners Wednesday about all that was lost when missteps at the 911 call center delayed an ambulance as her 13-year-old granddaughter, who weighed less than 100 pounds at the time, tried to perform CPR on her mom.
“This has been horrible for me,” she said. “It has affected a whole family and a community and a city because so much more could have been given.”
Shepperd said no one from the city reached out to her to apologize for what happened.
Aujah Griffin, whose dad David Griffin died in March after dispatchers initially classified the 911 call as non-urgent, said she has not received an explanation about why the response was not escalated.
“It’s embarrassing to be a District government official and know that was our response to your father and to you,” said Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At large).
In advance of the hearing, Allen said he asked OUC for timelines, transcripts and additional information for four separate incidents, in addition to the current status of the agency’s progress on each recommendation in the auditor’s report. He said he received no response.
Holmes planned to testify at the oversight hearing but had a family emergency, Allen said.
Multiple people at the oversight hearing, including two with the union representing 911 and 311 call takers, spoke in support of Holmes — describing her leadership as much-needed, crediting her with improving hiring practices, and stressing that many challenges in the District are common across the country.
Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3) questioned if the public witnesses were asked to testify on Holmes’s behalf — an allegation that at least two of those who spoke denied. Allen stressed that the Wednesday hearing was not meant to be about Holmes’s confirmation. | 2022-09-28T23:18:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lawmakers, residents blast D.C.’s 911 call center at council hearing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/28/lawmakers-residents-blast-dcs-911-call-center-council-hearing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/28/lawmakers-residents-blast-dcs-911-call-center-council-hearing/ |
Mike Ross was stunned to see a cat sitting there all alone. He couldn’t fathom leaving it to fend for itself.
Mike Ross trudged through Hurricane Ian's rising floodwaters near Bonita Beach to save a stranded cat. (Marybeth Ross)
A fearful-looking cat with orange and white fur sat hovering atop a mounted air conditioning unit while a steady stream of water rushed beneath it. Mike Ross, 29, spotted the frightened feline from a window, and immediately ran outside.
Ross, who lives in Bonita Springs in southwest Florida, had evacuated to his parents’ place nearby to shelter from the storm. His house was “10 feet underwater,” and his parents have a “fortress” built to weather hurricanes, he said.
“The storm surge had rushed up quite a bit at that point,” Ross recalled, adding that the incident took place Wednesday afternoon around 2 p.m., shortly before the Category 4 hurricane made landfall in southwest Florida with winds of 15o mph.
Having lived in the area all his life, he’s familiar with hurricanes, but said this one is “absolutely terrible.”
Power outages top 1 million as Category 4 storm heads inland | 2022-09-29T00:14:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Florida man saves cat as Hurricane Ian's waters rise - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/28/hurricane-ian-rescue-cat-ross/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/28/hurricane-ian-rescue-cat-ross/ |
Hurricane Ian wallops Florida, leaving at least 1 million without power
Wind gusts blow across the John Ringling Causeway as Hurricane Ian churns to the south on Wednesday in Sarasota, Fla. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
TAMPA — One of the strongest hurricanes ever to strike the United States slammed into southwest Florida on Wednesday afternoon with Category 4-level winds, inundating coastal communities and threatening to besiege the entire peninsula with devastating gusts and flooding as the storm slowly swirled east.
Packing peak winds of 150 mph, Hurricane Ian made landfall just after 3 p.m. near the barrier island of Cayo Costa, west of Cape Coral and Fort Myers, hours after a severe storm surge began turning roads into rivers. After rapidly intensifying overnight Tuesday, Ian tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane to hit the United States, and Gov. Ron DeSantis said he had asked President Biden to free up federal assistance by declaring a major disaster declaration for all 67 Florida counties.
The hurricane was “a ferocious storm coming in, very hazardous, very ominous,” Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Wednesday evening. He warned: “Once the storm goes, once there’s apparent calm, there are still plenty of hazards out there.”
The breadth of Hurricane Ian’s damage to life and property remained unclear Wednesday evening as strong winds prevented first responders in the most-flooded communities from carrying out rescues. Post-storm dangers — such as downed power lines, standing water and misused generators — killed dozens of Floridians after Hurricane Irma in 2017, and they again would present grave danger following Ian, DeSantis said.
Hurricane Ian, which the National Hurricane Center referred to as “extremely dangerous,” shoved water over thresholds, bent some palm trees and plucked others from the ground, and overturned small airplanes with the ease of a giant. By early evening, the storm had knocked out power for more than 1 million Floridians, further darkening a famously sunny state trapped under ominous steel-hued skies.
Forecasts that warned of 12 to 18 feet of storm surge appeared to come to pass around Fort Myers Beach, a barrier island taking the brunt of Hurricane Ian’s strongest winds. Boardwalk cameras and videos captured from high-rises there showed pounding waves carrying large amounts of debris and, in at least one video, the roof of a building. By midafternoon, storm surge had caused water levels in the city of Naples to reach more than six feet above normal high tide, NOAA said. Social media videos showed residents swimming inside their homes.
The National Weather Service, issuing a midafternoon extreme wind warning for a stretch of coastline around Cape Coral, implored residents to treat the impending gusts “as if a tornado was approaching.” The National Hurricane Center, meanwhile, issued hurricane warnings for Florida’s Atlantic coast. Even before landfall, emergency preparedness officials were warning of a “very long road.”
As the hurricane roared toward a stretch of Southwest Florida coastal counties, the stream of evacuations ordered up and down the Gulf Coast slowed, with officials pivoting to the opposite message: Stay put.
“If you are in any of those counties, it is no longer possible to safely evacuate. It’s time to hunker down and prepare for the storm,” DeSantis said Wednesday morning. “Do what you need to do to stay safe. If you are where that storm is approaching, you’re already in hazardous conditions. It’s going to get a lot worse very quickly. So please hunker down.”
People in the Tampa Bay area, who had spent days dreading storm surge projected to cause unprecedented destruction in a dense and vulnerable region, breathed a sigh of relief as Ian shifted Tuesday and directed its fury farther south. Seawater receded from the Tampa shoreline Wednesday morning as Ian grew over- the Gulf of Mexico, pushing water out and eerily emptying the bay.
For locals who had spent the previous days stocking up on supplies and weatherproofing their homes, the barren bay presented a final, if risky, chance to frolic before the storm drove them inside.
Cars lined up along Bayshore Boulevard, a waterfront road in south Tampa, and people braved increasingly strong winds and rain to snap selfies, walk dogs and tromp across the bay. Authorities warned against the bayside gathering, with Tampa police tweeting that “now is NOT the time for sightseeing” and urging revelers to go home.
Siblings Julia and Charlie Allen drove up from Clair-Mel City, a community southeast of downtown Tampa, for what “felt like a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”
“We had to come see the bay without water,” Julia said. “We’re so used to seeing it full.”
But the bay water was expected to forcefully return, and Mayor Jane Castor warned that the city was “not out of danger,” with 18 to 20 inches of rain and high winds expected.
In Tampa’s Ybor City neighborhood, 62-year-old Don Hughes said he had no choice but to stay where he was — flopped on a foldable chair, trying to stay dry under a Burger King awning. Hughes, who has suffered three heart attacks and said he was made homeless after his rent skyrocketed 18 months ago, said he planned to ride out the hurricane huddled next to the building for as long as he could.
“I’m worried about it, but what can I do?” Hughes asked as he pointed to a canvas bag. “This is all I got right there. … I am just sitting here waiting it out, hungry.”
Kevin Guthrie, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, told reporters Wednesday evening that 42,000 “restoration personnel” and 10,000 first responders were ready to deploy in the affected areas by ground, air and sea.
As the storm moves away from the shore, it could cause an additional life-threatening hazard: inland flooding.
Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell and National Weather Service Director Ken Graham said Wednesday that flooding was among their top safety concerns. Water has accounted for the vast majority of all deaths during tropical cyclones that have made landfall in the United States: Eighty-three percent of fatalities during almost all storms from 2016 to 2018 were water-related, according to NOAA. Most were from inland flooding; only 4 percent were from storm surge, the agency said.
Hurricane Ian is expected to bring record-setting rainfall to Central Florida in the coming days, causing potentially catastrophic flooding in a region dotted with thousands of natural lakes, rivers and artificial ponds.
“Localized amounts of rain may reach 24 inches, and that would be historic in such a short time,” said Kole Fehling, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Melbourne, Fla. “Leading up to the hurricane, we had a lot of heavy rain, so that will make flooding an even greater issue.”
Jacksonville, on the Atlantic Coast in northeast Florida, was also bracing for impact. Two days ago, the city — which in 2017 suffered one of its worst floods in more than a century when Hurricane Irma dumped more than 2 trillion gallons of water in the area — thought it might be largely spared. Hurricane Ian then appeared to be heading to the Panhandle.
But now Jacksonville is in Ian’s path. Ian is expected to be a tropical storm by the time it hits Jacksonville late Thursday, but it will still have hurricane-strength gusts. The area remains under a storm-surge warning.
“In large hurricanes, there’s really only so many things you can do, and once the system is overwhelmed, which is going to be the case with this storm, there’s not a lot left to do,” said Ann Shortelle, who led the St. Johns River Water Management District when Irma hit.
Although Key West was spared the worst of Hurricane Ian, the massive storm brought unexpected flooding to parts of the island, prompting some to make last-minute evacuations during the storm. Among those unexpectedly uprooted were 61 Navy personnel and their families, who were living in low-lying parts of Naval Air Station Key West.
Dylon Estevez, 29, a lifelong Key West resident, called the sudden flooding in his apartment Tuesday night “almost like shock and awe.” At first, it was toe deep. Then shin deep. When it reached his knees around 10:30 p.m., he turned off the power and grabbed a pair of sneakers floating in the water. His roommate carried their dog, Rookie. In the street, the water was waist deep and churning.
“I don’t think anyone expected it,” Estevez said. “It just happened so quickly that it came over within the last few hours, and then by that time it was too late.” He returned to his street Wednesday morning, hoping to assess the damage, but he still could not get to his place. The water was too high.
Ian was the latest storm to undergo “rapid intensification,” which scientists say is occurring more often because of human-caused climate change. When Floridians went to bed Tuesday night, the hurricane was a Category 3 storm with 120 mph winds. By morning, it was approaching the coast at a roaring 155 mph — just shy of a Category 5 storm. The storm continued to intensify as it made landfall.
Rapid intensification, defined as wind speeds increasing at least 35 mph within 24 hours, is partially fueled by warmer sea-surface temperatures, which have globally increased 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century. Such intensification usually occurs in major hurricanes, ranking as Category 3 or above. A warmer atmosphere, which can “hold” more water vapor, is also increasing the amount of rainfall during larger storms.
Satellite data shows sea surface temperatures around the Florida coast are slightly warmer than the long-term average. Temperatures are approaching 86 degrees; anything above 82 degrees can sustain and intensify hurricanes.
Thebault and Craig reported from Tampa, Shammas reported from Key West, Fla., and Brulliard reported from Boulder, Colo. Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Lori Rozsa in Orlando and Jason Samenow, Kasha Patel and Scott Dance in D.C. contributed to this report. | 2022-09-29T00:14:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hurricane Ian wallops Florida, leaving at least 1 million without power - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/28/hurricane-ian-florida/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/28/hurricane-ian-florida/ |
Texas man who assaulted police on Jan. 6 sentenced to four years
Lucas Denney, a former military police officer, spent 90 minutes attacking officers, swung a pipe and used chemical spray, prosecutors said
Rioters fight with police at barriers outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Julio Cortez/AP)
A former military police officer from Texas — who excitedly planned for physical violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, engaged in hand-to-hand battle with police there for nearly 90 minutes, then lied about being in Washington when questioned by the FBI — was sentenced Wednesday to slightly more than four years in prison.
Federal prosecutors sought eight years in prison for Lucas Denney, 45, of Mansfield, Tex., arguing that Denney’s helmet, tactical vest and hardened gloves qualified as body armor and therefore should increase his sentencing range by 30 months. But U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss rejected the 30-month enhancement and then issued a sentence of 52 months. That was below the recommended range of 57 to 71 months established by the federal guidelines, which are advisory.
Starting in December 2020, Denney began recruiting members of a newly formed militant group, Patriot Boys of North Texas, to join him in D.C. for the “Stop the Steal” rally — where President Donald Trump whipped supporters into a frenzy with false claims of election fraud — and also to raise funds for weapons, gear and travel, prosecutors said in their sentencing brief. In Facebook messages, Denney wrote that “We are linking up with thousands of Proud Boys and other militia that will be there. This is going to be huge. And it’s going to be a fight.”
Texas man, temporarily lost in system, pleads guilty to assaulting police on Jan. 6
On Jan. 5, 2021, prosecutors said Denney engaged in fighting at Black Lives Matter Plaza in D.C. and posted video of it, saying, “that’s what happens when you get into that warrior mode.” The next day, surveillance video captured Denney and another man from Texas trying to pull barricades away from police and later spraying a substance at Capitol Police officers, prosecutors said.
Denney was later captured on video on the west side of the Capitol, first picking up a long PVC pole that he swung at a D.C. police sergeant, then grabbing a large tube and throwing it at a line of police officers, prosecutors said.
About 30 minutes later, Denney joined the assault on the West Terrace tunnel, leading the mob as it pushed its way into the Capitol, and then swung at D.C. Police Officer Michael Fanone as Fanone was being dragged into the mob, the government alleges. Fanone suffered a heart attack as he was electrically shocked with a Taser by protesters.
When Denney returned to Texas, he posted on Facebook that “It was peaceful. The police even opened up the barricades to let people come closer.” Interviewed by the FBI in February 2021, Denney told agents he didn’t know anyone who had gone to the Capitol that day. Interviewed again in December, “Denney falsely stated that he did not see any fights or riots at the Capitol building and that he could not remember striking or ‘laying a finger’ on anyone,” the prosecution brief states.
Denney was arrested and in March pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement officers with a dangerous weapon. At Denney’s first sentencing hearing in July, the D.C. police sergeant who suffered injuries from the PVC pipe choked up as he recounted the bruises from the pipe and the chemical burns from bear spray in his face. He said his body burned for a week after the riot.
“It’s clear to me he doesn’t understand his actions that day … and he needs some serious self-reflection,” said the sergeant, who testified without giving his name. Denney filed an affidavit with the court that minimized his conduct, said he couldn’t remember certain actions and said the FBI asked him imprecise questions.
Officers describe assault on Jan. 6 in front of accused attacker
Fanone also testified in July, telling Moss: “I was dragged from the front of the police line, pulled into the crowd, and violently beaten and electrocuted with a stun gun. I was eventually dragged to the police line by demonstrators who intervened on my behalf. It is likely that without the intervention of those demonstrators, I would have lost my life.”
The judge did not impose sentence that day because Denney’s sentencing memo conflicted with the facts offered by prosecutors. But Moss said the officers’ statements would “remain with me not just in sentencing but through my remaining days on earth.” | 2022-09-29T00:23:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Texas man who assaulted police on Jan. 6 sentenced to four years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/28/lucas-denney-jan-6-sentencing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/28/lucas-denney-jan-6-sentencing/ |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.