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By Terry Tang | AP
The space is almost ready to display the return of Willem de Kooning’s “Woman-Ochre” next week at the University of Arizona Museum of Art, in Tucson, Ariz., Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022. The painting will soon be displayed again at the museum where it was stolen from 37 years ago. (Kelly Presnell/Arizona Daily Star via AP) | 2022-09-29T01:03:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Arizona museum exhibit marks end to de Kooning painting saga - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/arizona-museum-exhibit-marks-end-to-de-kooning-painting-saga/2022/09/28/0f0bd100-3f90-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/arizona-museum-exhibit-marks-end-to-de-kooning-painting-saga/2022/09/28/0f0bd100-3f90-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
By Jonathan Landrum Jr. and Andrew Dalton | AP
FILE - Coolio performs during the “I Love The 90’s” tour on Aug. 7, 2022, at RiverEdge Park in Aurora, Ill. Coolio, the rapper who was among hip-hop’s biggest names of the 1990s with hits including “Gangsta’s Paradise” and “Fantastic Voyage,” died Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022, at age 59, his manager said. (Rob Grabowski/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-09-29T02:34:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Gangsta's Paradise' rapper Coolio dies at age 59 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/gangstas-paradise-rapper-coolio-dies-at-age-59/2022/09/28/de979646-3f97-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/gangstas-paradise-rapper-coolio-dies-at-age-59/2022/09/28/de979646-3f97-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
A view from South Tampa on Tuesday ahead of Hurricane Ian's landfall in Southwest Florida. (Octavio Jones for The Washington Post)
As Hurricane Ian neared on Monday, employees of a Clearwater, Fla., marketing firm gathered in a conference room to watch their CEO on a large screen.
Hurricane Ian, then a Category 1 storm that was expected to grow, was a “nothingburger” that was overplayed by the media, said PostcardMania CEO Joy Gendusa, who addressed workers remotely from the passenger seat of a car. Then she asked those who were afraid of the storm to raise their hands.
“It’s not going to be that bad,” Gendusa said in a video recording of the meeting obtained by The Washington Post.
“Obviously, you feeling safe and comfortable is of the utmost importance, but I honestly want to continue to deliver and I want to have a good end of quarter,” Gendusa said. “And when it turns into nothing I don’t want it to be like, ‘Great, we all stopped producing because of the media and [thought] maybe that it was going to be terrible.'”
By Monday morning, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) had already warned that by midweek the hurricane would pose a “significant risk of life-threatening storm surge, hurricane-force winds and heavy rainfall” to the state’s west coast and the Panhandle. Multiple schools and colleges had already shut their doors in preparation for Ian.
Several PostcardMania employees, who spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation, said Gendusa’s comments made them feel underappreciated and exploited.
Her remarks come as the pandemic and burnout have led many to reevaluate their work conditions, giving rise to conversations about the Great Resignation and quiet quitting.
Hours later, Gendusa’s remarks sparked a barrage of social media comments criticizing the company for urging staffers to work.
The company has since announced its offices will not open on Wednesday and Thursday, adding it would also offer two days of paid time off for those working remotely or volunteering at a shelter, PostcardMania spokeswoman Jessica Lalau told The Post in an email.
Gendusa did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post.
Hurricane Ian makes landfall in Florida as Category 4
Ian made landfall in Southwest Florida on Wednesday afternoon as a Category 4 hurricane with winds up to 150 mph. It tied the fifth-strongest hurricane to hit the United States. Its winds and flooding would continue as the storm makes its way inland, the National Hurricane Center reported. By Wednesday afternoon, more than 1 million customers in southwestern Florida had lost power.
Several employees present at the Monday meeting told The Post that Gendusa’s remarks made them feel as if their safety was less important than the company making a profit. Even when officials were ordering some to evacuate their homes, management expected them to work from the office, employees said.
“She is in her car driving away from us and telling us to keep working,” one employee told The Post. “It just felt wrong. I’m going to have to work and you’re driving in your SUV, taking off.”
Another worker added: “There was a huge disconnect between her and her employees. Not everybody lives in a nice place or in a safe place like her.”
After Monday’s meeting, some employees took to private platforms to vent over Gendusa’s remarks. Others, though, were so upset that they shared their discontent with other colleagues from their desks.
It wasn’t until Tuesday when the company sent a message telling employees that the offices would be closed on Wednesday and Thursday, staffers told The Post. But management told workers they must work 40 hours this week. If power went out and they couldn’t work Wednesday or Thursday, they must make up their hours before the end of the week, according to some workers. In response to a question about the 40-hour work requirement, the PostcardMania spokeswoman shared Gendusa’s Wednesday message.
On Wednesday, following the backlash on social media, the company announced it was giving workers paid time off.
In a Wednesday email sent by company spokeswoman Lalau and shared with The Post, employees were told that Gendusa’s remarks at the meeting were her “personal opinion” and “not an official PostcardMania position in any way.”
“Following Joy’s remarks, PostcardMania’s president Melissa Bradshaw took the meeting over and reiterated that making sure everyone was safe was our #1 priority,” Lalau said in the email.
But some employees were not buying Gendusa’s attempt to reverse course, calling her statement disingenuous.
“She speaks for the company,” one worker told The Post. “She is the company. She is the boss.”
Even before the company agreed to give them paid time off, workers told The Post, most of them had already decided they were not going to go into the office on Wednesday and Thursday.
One worker attempted to work from home on Wednesday but faced internet issues.
“Even if I wanted to work I couldn’t,” the worker told The Post. For now, they were staying put at home, waiting for whatever Ian would bring.
“There is no company worth sacrificing for,” the worker said. “I wouldn’t give my life [or my belongings] for any company.” | 2022-09-29T02:34:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Florida CEO asked staff to work through Ian. She took it back. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/28/florida-ceo-postcardmania-hurricane-ian/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/28/florida-ceo-postcardmania-hurricane-ian/ |
Organizers and guests participate in a ribbon-cutting ceremony during the annual Japan-China Exchange Festival at Tokyo’s Yoyogi Park in Tokyo on Saturday, Sept. 24, 2022, marking the opening of the two-day friendship event and also marking the 50th anniversary of the Sept. 29, 1972, normalization of the ties between the two countries. The festival, after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was back last weekend ahead of this week’s 50th anniversary of the normalizing of relations between the two Asian neighbors and economic powerhouses. (AP Photo/Mari Yamaguchi) | 2022-09-29T02:34:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Friend or foe? Japan-China ties complicated after 50 years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/friend-or-foe-japan-china-ties-complicated-after-50-years/2022/09/28/aa19feca-3f99-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/friend-or-foe-japan-china-ties-complicated-after-50-years/2022/09/28/aa19feca-3f99-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
It’s similar to the Tampa-to-Miami-area relocation by the NFL's Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who practiced Wednesday at the Dolphins’ facility in Miami Gardens. The Bucs are scheduled to host Kansas City on Sunday, but the NFL said that game may get moved to Minneapolis if Tampa cannot host because of storm-related issues. | 2022-09-29T02:34:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Magic set to lose a 2nd consecutive practice day to storm - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/magic-set-to-lose-a-2nd-consecutive-practice-day-to-storm/2022/09/28/f6500050-3f94-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/magic-set-to-lose-a-2nd-consecutive-practice-day-to-storm/2022/09/28/f6500050-3f94-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
CJ Abrams gets showered in Gatorade in the aftermath of his walk-off hit Wednesday following a 3-2 win at Nationals Park. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
CJ Abrams capped a three-hit night Wednesday with a walk-off single into right field, scoring Alex Call and lifting the Washington Nationals to a 3-2 win over the Atlanta Braves. It was the first walk-off hit for the rookie, whose night was one of peaks and valleys.
Just two innings earlier, in a 2-2 game, the shortstop committed a cardinal baseball sin: He failed to run out a groundball leading off the bottom of the eighth. And even when the throw pulled first baseman Matt Olson off the bag, Abrams was still out after Olson lunged for the base and beat Abrams by a half-step. Had Abrams been running at full speed, he would have easily beaten A.J. Minter’s throw.
“That can’t happen,” Abrams said. “I talked to Davey [Martinez] about it. Won’t happen again, for sure.”
He redeemed himself in extra innings, however, and put a dent in the Braves’ push for the NL East title in the process. With two outs and runners on second and third, Abrams pounced on a change-up from Braves reliever Jackson Stephens and punched it through the hole to right. Soon after, he received the requisite Gatorade bath as he gave a postgame interview.
Svrluga: The Nationals and their fans know the bottom. This isn't it.
“What I loved is that he was very poised,” Manager Dave Martinez said. “He took his swings and then, all of a sudden, a guy makes a good pitch. And he stayed down, stayed with it, was able to get good wood on it and put it in the hole.”
The Nationals’ win, coupled with the Mets’ rally to beat Miami, left New York with a one-game lead in the NL East as the season enters its final week.
Abrams (3-for-5 with an RBI and a run scored) is starting to show the hitting prowess that made him such a coveted prospect in the return for Juan Soto and Josh Bell at the trade deadline Aug 2. Martinez moved him up to second in the lineup, something he said he wanted to do earlier in the season.
Abrams and starter Josiah Gray — two key prospects that came to the Nationals at the past two deadlines — were crucial to Wednesday’s win. Gray, in perhaps his final start of 2022, delivered six strong innings, allowing just two hits and two walks on 85 pitches, 55 for strikes.
Aaron Judge hits HR No. 61, tying Roger Maris's AL mark
Washington scored a run in the first on a Luke Voit sacrifice fly but Gray gave the run right back when he allowed a solo shot to Olson in the second. Gray jumped ahead 0-2 against Olson, then threw an outside fastball that caught too much of the plate and Olson took the ball to the opposite field.
Gray uses his fastball more than any pitch (40 percent of the time) and it can be effective for setting up the rest of his pitches. But when he relies on it too heavily, hitters have taken advantage. Statcast, an all-encompassing metric, considers his fastball a well-below average pitch whereas his slider rates as above-average. Opponents have a .725 slugging percentage against Gray’s fastball and have hit 24 of a league-leading 38 homers allowed by Gray off the pitch.
Gray threw seven fastballs in the first inning, then two in his first at-bat to Olson. Following the homer, he threw fastballs just four more times the rest of the outing and completely abandoned the pitch in the fourth and sixth innings. He relied primarily on his slider, his curveball and his sinker — which he debuted in his previous outing in Miami and prefers to throw to right-handed hitters.
The results were effective; he didn’t allow a hit after the second inning and retired 12 of the final 14 batters he faced.
“With us, a lot of us being young and the young core, there’s going to be ebbs and flows in a season,” Gray said. “So understanding that, but also thinking of, ‘How are we going to look two years from now, three years from now?’ … As long as the team is willing to ride with us and let us fail, let us succeed, it’s going to be really fun.”
If Wednesday was his final outing, it was a solid finish to an up-and-down year for Gray, whose progression this season and in the future could mirror the Nationals’ trajectory in the future. The night started with a young pitcher in Gray and it ended with Abrams, whose success could have an effect on turning the tides for this ballclub as well.
How could Hurricane Ian affect this weekend’s series against the Philadelphia Phillies? Martinez said early Wednesday that he hadn’t heard about any concrete plans to move this weekend’s games, but had been told about potential contingency plans. He also hasn’t set their starting rotation yet because of potential changes.
Right now, there are four games scheduled with a Saturday doubleheader. The implications for this series are important for Philadelphia, who lead the Milwaukee Brewers by one game for the final NL wild card spot.
The Nationals could play a split doubleheader Friday, followed by single games Saturday and Sunday. If the teams are unable to play because of expected rain on Saturday and Sunday, the Phillies could come back on Oct. 6 to make up the remaining games before the playoffs. | 2022-09-29T03:30:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | CJ Abrams’s up-and-down night ends with a walk-off hit and a Nats win - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/28/nationals-braves-cj-abrams/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/28/nationals-braves-cj-abrams/ |
Kwasi Kwarteng and the ideology behind the British pound’s collapse
Britain is staring down the barrel of a self-inflected economic catastrophe. This week saw the pound fall to an all-time low against the dollar amid a mass sell-off of U.K. bonds. Analysts are laying the blame on just one man.
Kwasi Kwarteng, 47, has been chancellor of the exchequer, Britain’s top economic position, for less than a month, but he’s hardly inexperienced. Before he became a member of Parliament in 2010, he had worked at investment banks and hedge funds. He studied at Eton College, earned a doctorate from Cambridge and was a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard. An economic historian by training, he’s written several well-received books and won numerous scholarships.
And yet, within weeks of entering new prime minister Liz Truss’s government, this economic expert appears to have tanked the British economy.
On the surface, the story seems simple. On Friday, Kwarteng announced a “mini-budget.” In fact, it contained major moves such as 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.
These moves were expected to dramatically decrease government income. But at the same time, Truss’s government planned to spend enormous sums of money to insulate consumers from soaring energy bills that are partly the result of the war in Ukraine. This means that it is borrowing a large amount of money amid rapidly rising prices.
It doesn’t take a doctorate from Cambridge to see that those sums simply don’t add up.
The markets’ reaction? Panic. On Monday, the pound fell to the equivalent of $1.03 — a 22 percent decline from six months before. Inflation, already high, is expected to soar as interest rates rise, adding to what has been dubbed the “cost-of-living crisis” in Britain. Two days later, the Bank of England stepped in with an emergency pledge to buy unlimited bonds in a desperate bid to shore up the British economy.
The International Monetary Fund — one of the world’s top financial institutions — weighed in with the sort of rebuke usually reserved for tinpot dictatorships and banana republics. “The nature of the UK measures will likely increase inequality,” the U.N.-backed fund said in a deeply critical note published Tuesday.
The mini-budget looks to be a bigger disaster for the British economy scale than Brexit, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. So, why did Truss’s government do it?
Analysts have been left scratching their heads, particularly as Truss’s government flouted requirements for the budget to be appraised by Office for Budget Responsibility.
But many believe that clues can be found in Kwarteng’s writings on economics, which detail a disputed — arguably, radical — view of the benefits of extremely free trade. Most notable is a book written by Kwarteng, Truss and other Conservative MPs that was published in 2012, titled Britannia Unchained.
That book argues that Britain had become a “bloated state” with “high taxes” and “excessive regulation” and that only by taking an aggressively free-market, libertarian stance would shake the country into powerful economic growth. In this view, Britain looks particularly terrible when compared with fast-growing Asian economies.
“Whereas Indian children aspire to be doctors or businessmen, the British are more interested in football and pop music,” the book wrote.
The authors of Britannia Unchained were, at the time, accused of chasing headlines. But as the Financial Times noted this week, Kwarteng’s other work on economic history shows an embedded distrust of financial markets and bankers that is newly relevant.
His doctoral thesis — focused on the less-than-headline-grabbing topic of William III’s decision to reissue England’s coinage in 1695-96 — argued that “the interest of the goldsmith and banker was anything but inimical to the wider good of the nation.”
Few would argue against the idea that Britain’s economy needs some sort of shake-up. The economy has slumped since the financial crash of 14 years ago, with a mean growth rate of just 1 percent for the years since compared with 2.7 percent between 1948 and 2008.
Kwarteng’s mini-budget appears to be creating a kind of supply-side economics shock therapy for Britain. The inspiration may come from America and, in particular, the U.S. counterpart to the British chancellor’s idol, Margaret Thatcher: President Reagan, who was said to be “starving the beast” when cutting back on state funding by diminishing government income.
As Adam Tooze, a Columbia University economist, put it for the Guardian this week, the market chaos could theoretically aid this idea: “Cut taxes and, as public revenues contract, this will create irresistible pressure for spending cuts. The argument is all the more urgent if you can invoke pressure from the financial markets.”
But Britain is not America. “Reaganomics” had the backing of not only the world’s strongest economy but also its preeminent currency, the mighty U.S. dollar.
The Britain that Truss and Kwarteng are leading has neither. Some of their keenest supporters have yet to admit that Britain is a fading power, increasingly irrelevant economically as its growth stagnates. The Financial Times’s Janan Ganesh wrote this week that “so much of what Britain has done and thought in recent years makes sense if you assume it is a country” of 330 million people with $20 trillion annual output.
Judging by the reaction to the mini-budget, the markets just don’t buy it. Bankers do not believe that the cuts will lead to growth. Some appear genuinely shocked that the British government would make a choice to boost its deficit by so much at this time — and do so not because of economic hardship, but because of political choices.
“It’s not so much that the package is large, but that the government doesn’t seem to mind — and at times seems to welcome the controversy of a strategy that rebels against orthodoxy,” J.P. Morgan wrote in a note to clients later republished by the Wall Street Journal.
Kwarteng and his allies appear to have been taken by surprise by the market reaction. But they have offered little public comment to reassure bankers, let alone the country. “He doesn’t seem very focused on or politically very sensitized to the impact of interest rates going up on mortgages,” one unnamed member of Parliament told the Economist.
Tony Travers, a politics professor at the London School of Economics, told The Washington Post, “They are prepared to risk unpopularity because they think it will work in the long term.”
If it does eventually work, much of the praise will probably go to Kwarteng rather than Truss, whose political and economic views appear to have faltered significantly over time. Kwarteng is seen as a true believer in supply-side economics, one who was described as “essentially an academic” by another MP’s wife. The son of Ghanaian immigrants, he is also the first Black person to hold the position of chancellor of the exchequer.
And if it doesn’t work? There is already speculation that Truss’s government will sink before the next election, which under current rules must be called before January 2025. That would mean the fifth British leader in a decade or less, political instability on top of economic instability.
And Kwarteng, the economic historian, will have earned himself a place in the economic history books: As the chancellor who proved his own ideology didn’t work. | 2022-09-29T04:23:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kwasi Kwarteng and the ideology behind the British pound’s collapse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/29/kwasi-kwarteng-ideology-behind-british-pounds-collapse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/29/kwasi-kwarteng-ideology-behind-british-pounds-collapse/ |
Ask Amy: I’m in financial trouble after constantly giving my son money
He chose to move out a little over a year ago, with no plan and no place to live. He has bounced between friends’ houses, had a short stay at his brother’s house and stayed with a family he met at a church he joined. I’m not sure where he’s living now.
I did this to help him, only to learn (by his admission) that he lied to me about many things, including what the money was for, having a job and letting other people text me from his phone asking for money as if they were him, etc.
There was a brief pause in him asking for money for about six weeks, when he was living with a family from his church and working. Now he’s back to asking for money almost every day.
I promised myself that I would not help him again, but I can’t stand the thought of him being without food or a place to stay. I need your help to figure out how to say no to him without feeling tremendous guilt and constant worry.
I’m concerned that he doesn’t have the skills to make it on his own (he’s on the autism spectrum, high functioning), but then again, I think he is a master at guilt-tripping me to get what he wants.
My fear is that, when I finally say no to one of his requests, that will be the time he actually needs it. No one knows how much I have sacrificed and given up for him — not even my partner. I am too embarrassed to tell anyone.
Poor: You know you should not give your son money, so the next time he asks, you should offer to meet him in person to share a meal with him or give him food.
If he is involved with a church community, you could reach out to the leadership to thank them for how they’ve assisted him in the past and ask what resources might be available to him now.
I may consider you a good friend, but I don’t want to hug you at every (or any) meetup. I especially don’t want to hug during a pandemic! It seems this happens so fast, it’s hard to stop the unwanted physical contact.
Any ideas, short of sending out an email to known huggers that I really don’t like this physical contact? Shouldn’t people consider that others may not welcome physical contact, especially these days?
Hands Off: The pandemic did relieve people of the social pressure to hug and be hugged. Now that our world seems to be opening again, many people are racing headlong into close physical contact.
Use body language (putting both hands out) and say: “Sorry, I’ve stopped hugging. I hope a fist bump will do?”
Dear Amy: “A Concerned Mother” was appalled by the disgusting conditions in her son’s college suite.
I agree that training kids early to clean house is a great idea. But many years ago, my son, who worked summers cleaning houses (and was “the porcelain specialist”), was such a slob in his college dorm that he was threatened with eviction.
I totally agree with your initial comment: Never visit a child’s dorm room.
Frank: It worked for me. | 2022-09-29T04:36:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I'm in financial trouble after constantly giving my son money - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/29/ask-amy-son-money-giving/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/29/ask-amy-son-money-giving/ |
Miss Manners: I’m an editor. Is it rude to correct grammar?
Phew. For a second, Miss Manners was afraid that you were suggesting “than” be changed to “then,” and she was going to have to have a whole other conversation about your professional qualifications. Thankfully that was not the case.
Forgive Miss Manners, but you are going to have to wait for her to catch up, as the answer depends on Friend A’s motivation. | 2022-09-29T04:36:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: I’m an editor. Is it rude to correct grammar? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/29/miss-manners-editor-writer-grammar/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/29/miss-manners-editor-writer-grammar/ |
Coolio attends the Spike TV's Guys Choice Awards at Sony Studios on June 6, 2015, in Culver City, Calif. (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
The award-winning rapper Coolio, who was among hip-hop’s biggest names during the 1990s with his pop-infused style, died Wednesday afternoon at a friend’s Los Angeles home, his manager confirmed. He was 59.
The artist’s cause of death remains unknown.
“He touched the world with the gift of his talent and will be missed profoundly,” Coolio’s manager Sheila Finegan said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Born Artis Leon Ivey Jr. in Monessen, Pa., on Aug. 1, 1963, the rapper grew up in Compton, Ca., and served as a volunteer firefighter before pivoting to a full-time music career. His stint with a firefighting crew in the San Jose area was “a way to clean up,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 1994.
“In firefighting training was discipline I needed. We ran every day. I wasn’t drinking or smoking or doing the stuff I usually did,” Coolio told the newspaper.
His big break would come that year with “Fantastic Voyage,” followed by “Gangsta’s Paradise” — a No. 1 single that was featured in the 1995 movie “Dangerous Minds,” starring Michelle Pfeiffer. The song would eventually earn Coolio a Grammy in 1996 and catapult him to hip-hop’s top ranks.
The rapper’s long career included hits like “C U When U Get There” and “1,2,3,4 (Sumpin’ New),” collaborations with other artists and even a cooking series.
“This is sad news,” fellow rapper Ice Cube wrote on Twitter. “I witness first hand this man’s grind to the top of the industry. Rest In Peace.”
Pfeiffer credited “Gangsta’s Paradise,” which she called “a brilliant song,” for turning “Dangerous Minds” into a smash-box success in 1995.
“I remember him being nothing but gracious. 30 years later I still get chills when I hear the song,” she wrote on Instagram. “Sending love and light to his family.” | 2022-09-29T04:49:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Coolio, ‘Gangsta's Paradise’ hip-hop star, dead at 59 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/coolio-dead-rapper-gangstas-paradise/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/coolio-dead-rapper-gangstas-paradise/ |
This week’s bond meltdown has sent the mean 10-year borrowing cost for Group of Seven countries to its highest in more than a decade, with the average yield surging above 3%. What happens next could set the tone for financial markets and the global economy for years to come. And your guess is as bad as mine as to where fixed-income markets go from here.
It’s not just traders and investors who will feel the pain from the climb in government bond yields. Companies seeking to borrow to invest and house buyers trying to afford a mortgage will all have to cope with interest rates that are far higher than the world has become accustomed to for much of the 21st century.
The 10-year US Treasury yield — the benchmark for global debt markets — rose to its highest level since October 2008 this week. Germany’s 10-year yield, which sets the pace for euro zone fixed-income markets, reached its highest point in more than a decade. Thanks to a push from a giant tax-cut package from a three-week-old government, the 30-year UK gilt yield surged to its highest in almost a quarter of a century before the Bank of England intervened to ease the pressure. The climb in government debt costs has been relentless.
For the G-7 nations, comprising Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US, the average 10-year yield is approaching a key inflection point. At about 3.15%, it’s already well above the mean of 1.3% seen in the past decade. And if the Bank of Japan wasn’t spending billions of yen to keep its benchmark yield below 0.25%, that average would be even higher.
The current elevated level of consumer prices, which has belatedly spurred central banks into raising official interest rates, bodes ill for bond yields. After years of keeping inflation below their 2% targets, the guardians of monetary stability have been caught napping at the wheel. The current G-7 average of 7.2% is way beyond the two-decade mean of 1.7%, the one-decade level of 1.6% or the 2002-2012 average of 1.8%.
Sky-high inflation suggests central banks will need to tighten policy even further in the coming months to subdue consumer prices. The G-7 average official interest rate is at about 1.75% (although, again, Japan’s suppressed borrowing cost distorts the figures somewhat), after hovering around zero in the past two years. That doesn’t seem sufficiently high to bring prices back into line.
We haven’t even begun to address the impact high and rising borrowing costs will have on stocks. While equities floated to records on borrowing costs that were around — and below — zero, the best advice now is probably: “Don’t look down.” The total global equity market capitalization is currently about $90 trillion; while that’s 47% higher than when the pandemic locked down economies in the first quarter of 2020, it’s 25% below its November peak.
“I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the President or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody,” James Carville, a political consultant to President Bill Clinton, told the Wall Street Journal in 1993.
The bond market has certainly been intimidating the world this year. The test in the coming days, weeks and months will be whether that G-7 average breaches the 3.5% mean that prevailed between 2002 and 2012, or declines closer to its two-decade level of about 2.4%. But it seems safe to say that we won’t revisit the 1.3% average of the past decade any time soon.
• Key Takeaways for Powell From Greenspan’s ‘Oasis’ Speech: Daniel Moss
• The Unease You Can Feel Is the Fed Pushing a Recession: John Authers | 2022-09-29T05:37:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bond Markets Are Nearing a Painful Inflection Point - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/bond-markets-are-nearing-a-painful-inflection-point/2022/09/29/66b2e6ae-3fb4-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/bond-markets-are-nearing-a-painful-inflection-point/2022/09/29/66b2e6ae-3fb4-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Analysis by Salma El Wardany | Bloomberg
More than a decade after the US, European and Arab governments helped Libyans to overthrow their tyrannical ruler Moammar Al Qaddafi, the country remains beset by periodic crises and bloodshed. United Nations-backed efforts to reconcile the oil-rich nation’s two competing governments have stalled. And war in Ukraine is pushing Libya’s plight down the international agenda, draining impetus from the peace process. All the while, basic public services are fraying and living standards declining amid galloping inflation.
1. What lies behind the years of turmoil?
Libya’s state institutions crumbled during Qaddafi’s 42-year dictatorship and his overthrow left a vacuum that was filled by myriad militias, many based on tribal affiliations. A division emerged between the country’s wealthier west and the east that’s home to much of Libya’s oil production. Following elections in 2014, Libya was split in half, with a UN-recognized administration based in the capital, Tripoli, clashing with General Khalifa Haftar and a coalition of troops and irregular fighters known as the Libyan National Army in the east. An internationally brokered cease-fire in October 2020 led to a new transitional government under Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, who was supposed to guide the country toward elections in late 2021. But the vote was postponed amid legal disputes and Dbeibah stayed on in the role. This angered parliamentarians in the east, who appointed a rival premier, Fathi Bashagha, based in the central coastal city of Sirte.
2. How unstable is the country?
The 2020 ceasefire led to a period of relative calm. However, in May 2022, Bashagha tried to enter Tripoli and press his claim to lead the country, leading to violent clashes that forced him to withdraw. There were more battles in late August that raised fears of a return to all-out war. Neither of Libya’s governments have managed to fully restore order in their territories or confiscate weapons looted during the overthrow of Qaddafi. In the far south, a power vacuum has allowed fighters aligned with Islamic State to shelter and stage intermittent attacks on security forces. Nonetheless, trade, family life and schooling continue. Government services such as education and transport, while relatively limited, are provided by ministries that are generally above the political fray and are funded by the Tripoli-based administration.
3. Who holds political power now?
Dbeibah, who has vowed not to step down until elections are held, benefits from Turkish backing and has cemented his control of the capital by ousting militias who could threaten his rule. Bashagha, a former security chief, is pressing his own case for domestic and international legitimacy. Haftar still controls eastern Libya and is able to mobilize a sizable fighting force. The eastern area’s parliamentary speaker, Aguila Saleh, has been a vocal opponent of Dbeibah. Finally, the son of Libya’s former autocrat, Saif al-Islam Qaddafi, has his own ambitions to lead the country. He re-emerged in late 2021 to mount a Russian-backed bid for the presidency, though it’s unclear how much public support he has.
4. What role does the international community play?
Libya’s conflict has been, in part, a proxy war between some of the Middle East’s powers. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates back Haftar in the hope he can defeat Islamist groups in Libya, including a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey, which had close ties with the Brotherhood, found common cause with the Tripoli administration. Russia also joined the fray as it tried to challenge Western interests in weak Arab states. The dynamic shifted in the past year, as Saudi Arabia, the UAE and to a lesser extent Egypt patched up their ties with Turkey. As for European nations, Libya’s vast oil reserves -- Africa’s largest -- and its location just across the Mediterranean have given them a stake in the outcome. But they’ve shown little appetite recently for the kind of sustained engagement needed to resolve the crisis. European governments appear most concerned with stopping Libya being used as a stepping-off point for African migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean.
5. What’s happened to energy production?
Libya’s oil reserves give it ample resources to pay for a national reconstruction effort, if only its political squabbles can be resolved. Production is a fraction of what it might be, with militias and political protesters regularly shutting down oil fields, pipelines and ports to push their demands. Output plummeted from April amid the latest power struggle. It later recovered after the state-owned National Oil Corporation’s management was overhauled and an agreement reached to ease tensions between the NOC and the oil ministry. The dysfunction is obstructing efforts to overhaul the country’s antiquated and poorly maintained energy infrastructure. All the same, companies including France’s TotalEnergies SE, Eni SpA of Italy and Royal Dutch Shell Plc stand ready to invest billions of dollars to exploit Libya’s oil and natural gas reserves, as well as its potential for solar power. | 2022-09-29T05:37:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Libya Lurches from One Crisis to The Next - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-libya-lurches-from-one-crisis-to-the-next/2022/09/29/c2183f9a-3fae-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/why-libya-lurches-from-one-crisis-to-the-next/2022/09/29/c2183f9a-3fae-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Journey inside Pakistan’s flood zone reveals how poorest were hit hardest
Local residents wait as aid material is loaded into boats in Dadu, Sindh, Pakistan on Sept. 13. (Saiyna Bashir for The Washington Post)
SUKKUR, Pakistan — By the time Pakistan’s government recognized the severity of the unprecedented floods that struck the country this summer and sounded an alert, it was already too late for millions of families to flee the onrushing waters. And nearly all were among the country’s most vulnerable, trapped by poverty and neglect, their lives and livelihoods already a daily struggle.
Deep inside Pakistan’s disaster zone, the country’s worst floods in recorded history have underscored how the poor, both here and abroad, are often disproportionately exposed to the ravages of climate change.
When the heavy monsoon rains entered their second week in July with no sign of relenting, Amina Gadehi knew the floods would be different this year. She and a group of other villagers approached the village’s elected leader, asking that they be allowed to temporarily camp on a plot of higher ground that he owned.
“He told us: ‘I’m not responsible for you. Find your own shelter,’” Gadehi recalled, clenching her jaw in anger.
She and dozens of others in her village had no savings to pay for travel or to temporarily rent another place. They stayed in their homes, hoping the rains would relent. But as the water began to lap over their windowsills, Gadehi and her family decided it was their last chance to escape. For nearly an hour, Gadehi recounted, she and her husband, their five children and the few cows and buffalo they managed to save waded through waist-high water to a relative’s house in another village on slightly higher land.
Now they are stuck there, surrounded by water. The only boats that can rescue them aren’t large enough for their livestock — too precious to be left behind.
Thousands of families like Gadehi’s have been stranded in villages that turned into islands. The floods have killed about 1,500 people, according to the Pakistani government, and displaced tens of thousands.
Long before the government declared a national emergency in August, people here in Sindh province were begging local officials to act — to help relocate families and livestock and to reinforce levees to divert water — according to dozens who survived the floods.
But they said, in many cases, they were left to fend for themselves until it was too late.
Warnings weren’t enough
Sherry Rehman, Pakistan’s climate change minister, said a national emergency wasn’t declared sooner because officials didn’t know the downpour would continue for so long. “I don’t think any administration or government could have been prepared for a biblical flood like this,” she said in an interview. “There was no modeling for what we saw.”
She said officials in her ministry and other government agencies began to fear unusually severe flooding as early as June, but she added that it wasn’t until August that they realized the magnitude of the crisis. “The meteorological department began telling me, ‘We’ve never seen anything like this,’” she said. “I started getting calls late at night, everyone was saying ‘We are just in shock.’”
Ahsan Iqbal, who heads Pakistan’s national flood response center, said the government could not have been better prepared or acted faster to respond to the crisis once it began to unfold. “The scale of the calamity is so huge, it’s just beyond the administrative and financial resources of a country like Pakistan,” said Iqbal, who is also Pakistan’s planning minister. “There is no way we could have mitigated this level of damage.”
Iqbal said that he believes a series of early evacuation warnings saved thousands of lives. “The death toll could have been at least three to four times more if not for the early weather warning system,” he said.
But for millions, the warnings alone were insufficient.
Subhan Ali Buriro recalled when warnings began to sound in his village. Those residents with means quickly relocated to the provincial capital, Karachi, and other urban areas. But without any savings, Buriro could only afford to move his wife and four children to a nearby relative’s house. “We had nowhere else to go,” he said.
He believed the concrete house would withstand the rains and rapidly rising waters. But within days, the roof collapsed, burying his four children under chunks of cement and other debris. “It was dark, and I couldn’t hear anything over the rain,” he said. “I just began to dig.”
After an hour, he and some neighbors recovered the children and rushed them to the hospital, but the only doctor present was unable to save them. “I saw them take their last breaths,” Buriro said. “It felt like the entire sky had fallen on me.”
Buriro and the neighbors drained part of a nearby graveyard, digging for hours to create shallow burial plots in the waterlogged earth.
“If I had more resources, of course we would have moved right away to a safer place,” Buriro said. “If we weren’t poor, my children would still be alive.”
Allegations of empty promises
The worst-hit parts of Pakistan are also some of its poorest. Rural Sindh province has some of the lowest literacy rates in the country, severely limited access to health care, and minimal infrastructure.
Political power in the province has been dominated for generations by its largest landowners. In many areas, the landowners are not only the main sources of employment but also the elected leaders.
“We can’t oppose our leaders because we are dependent on them for everything,” Gadehi said. “They visit us during elections and make promises, but we get nothing in return.”
Sindh’s chief minister, Syed Murad Ali Shah, dismissed complaints from those affected by the floods as “innuendos and petty, politically-charged narratives.”
In a written statement, he said the “government of Sindh is solely focused on providing rescue and relief to the people of Sindh without any prejudice.” He blamed “factions with malicious intent” for spreading “misinformation.”
But he said when a “legitimate complaint is received,” officials are faced with “strict actions,” and “a number” of irrigation, health and other government officials have been suspended.
The deprivation that left many Pakistanis especially vulnerable to the flooding continues to plague them in its aftermath. At Dadu’s overwhelmed central hospital, the wards are overflowing, and patients desperate for medical attention crowd the hallways. Doctors who struggled to provide health care even before the floods now turn away hundreds of people each day because of inadequate space.
“The children we are seeing now were already sick before they were displaced,” said Faram Gohar Lashari, a pediatrician at Dadu central hospital. “Now, this suffering will only increase.” He spoke in a clipped fashion as he attended to the stream of sick children brought into his office. Malaria and other waterborne diseases are spiking, as are skin and chest infections from poor sanitation at makeshift displacement camps.
“Nearly all these children are malnourished, and that makes them more vulnerable to other illnesses,” Lashari said. He predicted that those who die from disease and infection in the weeks ahead will overtake the number killed by the floodwaters.
In one hallway, a woman lay on a bench drifting in and out of consciousness, in need of emergency care. Doctors said they couldn’t help her. They were too busy grappling with dozens of other patients.
Doctors and nurses at the hospital said they have repeatedly asked for more supplies and staff from provincial authorities, but have yet to receive any. Shah, the chief minister in Sindh, denied claims that health-care workers are not getting the support they need.
Growing desperation
At a camp outside Dadu city, Saima Lund said she struggled to keep her children healthy even before the floods. Her husband, a day laborer, could barely afford to feed his family. All five of her children suffered from malnutrition as infants. Only three have survived.
Lund’s youngest, Shifa was born just as the monsoon rains began to batter their village. By the time her family fled their home, the waters had washed away all the grain they had stockpiled for the year. At the camp, Shifa’s health began to quickly deteriorate. “All I have to feed my family is one bag of cooked rice a day,” Lund said, referring to government handouts.
When Shifa began to run a high fever and refused to eat, Lund walked with her nearly an hour to the closest hospital but was turned away. Doctors had run out of supplies, she said.
“I fear I’m going to lose my daughter,” Lund said, fanning the child to try to keep her temperature down. “We lacked health care in my village, and now the hospitals in town have nothing.”
Many parts of Sindh are expected to remain underwater for months to come, and desperation is growing among the hundreds of thousands who have been displaced.
During a recent delivery by boat of emergency food supplies to a village outside the city of Khairpur Nathan Shah, a handful of people gathered at the water’s edge. Within minutes, a few patiently waiting families turned into an angry throng.
Humanitarian workers with Global Empowerment Mission — one of the few international groups operating deep inside the flood zone — tried to pull up close enough to hand over bags of rice, cooking oil, sugar and tea, but the scene grew violent. Men, women and children jostled for the goods. Some fell into the swampy muck. Police escorts tried to calm the crowd, but it had grown too big and pushed the police back.
Emily Fullmer, who leads aid distribution for the group, said the reaction was not a surprise. While making deliveries in different areas, her group had been repeatedly told that it was the first to show up. No government officials or other aid groups had preceded them.
“Like any human being on the planet, when you haven’t seen food or water or medical attention for weeks, things become very desperate, very quickly,” Fullmer said.
And levels of desperation rise faster in places that were suffering from high poverty rates before being hit by a natural disaster, she continued.
“Communities that are already struggling are the ones that get hit the hardest with climate disasters,” Fullmer said. “It’s unfair and unfortunate, but we really see it all around the world.”
Shaiq Hussain in Islamabad, Pakistan and Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan contributed to this report. | 2022-09-29T06:29:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pakistan's epic floods show climate change often hits the poor hardest - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/29/pakistan-floods-climate-change-poverty/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/29/pakistan-floods-climate-change-poverty/ |
(John Bazemore/AP)
“I have never denied that I lost. I don’t live in the governor’s mansion; I would have noticed.”
— Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, interview on “The View,” Sept. 14, 2022
“We had this little election back in 2018. And despite the final tally and the inauguration and the situation we find ourselves in, I do have one very affirmative statement to make. We won.”
— Abrams, speech at the National Action Network convention, April 4, 2019
In 2018, Abrams lost a bitter election to become Georgia’s governor to Brian Kemp, then the state’s secretary of state, and refused to concede after suggesting that Kemp used his position to manipulate his way to victory.
Now, Abrams is in a rematch with Kemp, fending off questions from reporters that she’s little different from former president Donald Trump, who has falsely claimed election fraud led to his defeat by Joe Biden. In recent weeks she has subtly adjusted language to argue that, unlike Trump, she “never denied the election” and “never denied that I lost.”
“The difference [with Trump] is very stark when I did not win my election in 2018,” she told Yahoo News in August. “The first thing I said was that I acknowledged the outcome — that the new governor was Brian Kemp. I was not the governor, but I did say the system was broken.”
In an interview with the 19th this month, Abrams said: “My point was that the access to the election was flawed, and I refuse to concede a system that permits citizens to be denied access. That is very different than someone claiming fraudulent outcome.”
For instance, Abrams at various times has said the election was “stolen” and even, in a New York Times interview, that “I won.” She suggested that election laws were “rigged” and that it was “not a free or fair election.” She also claimed that voter suppression was to blame for her loss, even though she admitted she could not “empirically” prove that. While she did acknowledged Kemp was the governor, she refused to say he was the “legitimate” governor.
Abrams made these claims while often leaving herself a rhetorical exit. When she said the election was stolen, she often hastened to add it was “stolen from the people of Georgia.” Moreover, unlike Trump, Abrams has not attempted to rile supporters to violence or call into question the outcome of the election before it takes place. Instead, she has encouraged more people to register to vote and filed successful lawsuits that made voting easier and many experts believe helped Democrats win in 2020. Earlier this month, her spokesman told The Washington Post that she “will acknowledge the victor of the 2022 election.”
“She never failed to acknowledge the legal outcome of an election,” a campaign spokesman said in a lengthy statement to the Fact Checker. “Over the last few years, she has used different frames to describe what took place in 2018 but the sentiment remains the same: she acknowledged that Brian Kemp was the victor in the race and also acknowledged that many Georgians were denied the opportunity to make their voices heard due to voter suppression.”
Abrams repeatedly questioned the integrity of Kemp’s victory as her rising stardom in the national Democratic Party in 2019 prompted widespread speculation that she might run for president.
But what might have appeared at the time as a savvy appeal to voters who felt disenfranchised looks different now that Trump and his GOP allies have taken election denialism to a dangerous new level. Today, the Republican Party is dominated by candidates who echo Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, a trend that has undermined faith in election outcomes and destabilized American democracy.
Abrams played up claims the election was stolen until such tactics became untenable for anyone who claims to be an advocate for American democratic norms and values.
The debate over the election
Before we review how Abrams has discussed the election, it is helpful to understand the context.
Kemp beat Abrams, who had been the Democratic leader in the Georgia House of Representatives, by 1.4 percentage points, or about 55,000 votes. Kemp, who as secretary of state at the time was Georgia’s top elections official, refused to recuse himself from overseeing the election — a potential conflict of interest criticized by Abrams and others, such as former president Jimmy Carter.
Democrats often cite this litany as examples of possible voter suppression.
Kemp oversaw an aggressive effort as secretary of state to update eligible voter lists before the 2018 election. Nearly 700,000 names, or 10 percent, were removed from the rolls in the year before the election. “For an estimated 107,000 of those people, their removal from the voter rolls was triggered not because they moved or died or went to prison, but rather because they had decided not to vote in prior elections,” according to a report by American Public Media.
Kemp’s office placed 53,000 voter registrations in electoral limbo in October, with the Associated Press estimating that 70 percent were Black voters. The move was the result of an “exact match” policy in which even a single digit or a misplaced hyphen could derail the registration. No one knows how many of those voters turned up to vote.
More than 200 polling places across the state were closed, primarily in poor and minority neighborhoods. Voters reported long lines, malfunctioning voting machines and other problems that delayed or thwarted voting in those areas. The Atlanta Journal Constitution found that precinct closures and longer distances likely prevented an estimated 54,000 to 85,000 voters from casting ballots on Election Day.
But there’s also a compelling counterargument.
Even if every provisional ballot not counted and every rejected absentee ballot had been awarded to Abrams, it would not have necessitated a runoff, much less overcome Abrams’s vote deficit.
The 2018 turnout was far greater than any previous midterm, according to FiveThirtyEight, and more African Americans voted in 2018 than in 2016.
Even if 54,000 to 84,000 had not voted because of precinct closings, “Abrams would have had to have won between 82% and 100% of those additional votes to close the gap,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution said.
Georgia purges lots of voters because of death, moving or not voting in recent elections, but it also makes it very easy to register because of automatic voter registration (AVR) when people obtain driver’s licenses. Registration has grown 94 percent in Georgia because of automatic voter registration, according to the Brennan Center.
Abrams in 2018
Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams (D) accepted an electoral loss to Republican Brian Kemp during remarks to supporters on Nov. 16, 2018. (Video: Reuters)
Ten days after the election, on Nov. 16, Abrams declared: “I acknowledge that Secretary of State Brian Kemp will be certified as the victor of the 2018 gubernatorial election …. But let’s be clear, this is not a speech of concession because concession means to acknowledge an action is right, true or proper.”
When asked a couple of days later by CNN’s Jake Tapper if Kemp was the “legitimate governor-elect of Georgia,” Abrams dodged. “He is the person who won an adequate number of votes to become the governor,” she replied. When Tapper noted she refused to use the word “legitimate,” Abrams answered: “He is the legal governor of Georgia.”
The next day, on MSNBC, Abrams said “it was not a free and fair election,” citing what she regarded as voter purges. “Brian Kemp oversaw for eight years the systematic and systemic dismantling of our democracy and that means there could not be free and fair elections in Georgia this year.”
The following year, when Abrams was mentioned as a possible presidential candidate, Abrams began to assert that she had “won” the election. Sometimes this was carefully couched, but at other times, it was not.
In a March conversation with Rashad Robinson, the president of the Color of Change advocacy group, Abrams spoke about what attributes she would bring to the presidential race, including: “I did win my election, I just didn’t get to have the job.”
A few days later, on “The View,” Abrams put it this way: “I can’t say that empirically I won, but I will never know because we did not have a fair fight. And my responsibility was to acknowledge that he had the numbers, but to call out the fact that the process was wrong.”
Also in March, she told the Grio: “I may not have won this election, or at least, but I didn’t lose, I got the votes. But we won’t know exactly how many because of how they cheated.” In an appearance in London, she declared: Kemp “got to be the contestant, the referee and the scorekeeper — and shockingly, he won. Or at least that’s what he tells us. But I know in my heart of hearts, we won.”
Her most emphatic statement came at the National Action Network convention in April: “We had this little election back in 2018. And despite the final tally and the inauguration and the situation we find ourselves in, I do have one very affirmative statement to make. We won.”
Recently, in a September interview with “The View,” Abrams tried to explain away this declaration. “There’s this clip that’s going around and it shows me saying that we won, and what I was referring to was that we won in terms of communities that were long left out of the electoral process,” she said. But a review of the full speech shows she did not immediately make that point, and only 14 minutes later did she offer a caveat: “I cannot prove empirically that I would have won, but we’ll never know.”
At the NAN convention, Abrams even suggested the election was stolen: “So in response to what I believe was a stolen election — and I’m not saying they stole it from me, they stole it from the voters of Georgia.”
A few days later, on MSNBC, Abrams elaborated on the “stolen” theme. “I use the word ‘stolen.’ I’m not saying I absolutely know I would have won, but we know that thousands of Georgians had their voices stolen because they were not able to cast ballots, and they cannot be guaranteed that their votes will be counted in 2020 if we don’t do this right.”
At a town hall in Seattle that month, Abrams said her race “transformed the electorate of Georgia,” in part because of “presidential level” turnout. “The only definitive difference that we can find is that not every vote that was cast got counted and that every person eligible to vote was allowed to do so,” she said. “That means I can’t know for a fact that I would be the governor of Georgia but for the malfeasance and the mismanagement of Brian Kemp, but I know it’s a pretty good guess.”
Asked at the Chicago Humanities Festival on April 27 about the biggest lesson she learned from the election, Abrams said: “I still fundamentally believed it could be fair, and that’s just not how life works. If it looks like it’s cheating, it probably is. If it looks like it’s rigged, it probably is. That does not mean that you don’t try anyway, but I wasn’t prepared to lose in that way.”
In a New York Times Magazine article titled “Why Stacey Abrams is still saying she won,” published April 28, she once again said it was not a fair election and said she was comfortable using the word “won.”
“Now, I cannot say that everybody who tried to cast a ballot would’ve voted for me, but if you look at the totality of the information, it is sufficient to demonstrate that so many people were disenfranchised and disengaged by the very act of the person who won the election that I feel comfortable now saying, ‘I won,’” she told the Times. “My larger point is, look, I won because we transformed the electorate, we turned out people who had never voted, we outmatched every Democrat in Georgia history.”
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) questioned Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams’s past election comments during an April 2021 Senate Judiciary hearing on voting rights. (Video: C-Span)
Abrams continued to suggest the election was stolen through 2019 and even as recently as 2021.
“Brian Kemp won under the rules that were in place. What I object to are rules that permitted thousands of Georgia voters to be denied their participation in this election or to have their votes cast out,” she said, when questioned by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) before the Senate Judiciary Committee on April 20, 2021. “My full language was that it was stolen from the voters of Georgia. We do not know what they would have done, because not every eligible Georgian was permitted to participate fully in the election.” | 2022-09-29T07:09:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stacey Abrams’s rhetorical twist on being an election denier - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/stacey-abramss-rhetorical-twist-being-an-election-denier/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/stacey-abramss-rhetorical-twist-being-an-election-denier/ |
Ukraine live briefing: U.S. to ramp up weapons production for Kyiv; Russia ...
Ukrainian servicemen prepare to fire at Russian positions from a U.S.-supplied M777 howitzer in Kharkiv region, Ukraine, July 14, 2022. (Evgeniy Maloletka/AP)
The United States is preparing for a protracted conflict in Ukraine, ramping up weapons production and more than doubling its commitment of powerful long-range rocket artillery systems, according to senior U.S. defense officials.
The new plans to arm Kyiv over the long term come as Russia is set to formally annex swaths of Ukrainian territory. Moscow this week concluded staged referendums in four Ukrainian regions under its control — votes widely denounced as illegal under international law.
A new U.S. weapons package for Ukraine, worth $1.1 billion, will include 18 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launchers, a “core component of Ukraine’s fighting force in the future,” a senior U.S. defense official told reporters Wednesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the Pentagon.
The package is part of a more forward-looking strategy by the United States and its partners to sustain Ukraine’s military over 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.
European countries and companies said they were increasing security around oil and gas infrastructure after apparent explosions targeted pipelines that once carried Russian natural gas to Germany. Norway, Europe’s largest gas supplier, said it would deploy its military to protect the pipelines. “These incidents show that energy infrastructure is not safe,” Viktorija Cmilyte-Nielsen, speaker of Lithuania’s Parliament, said Wednesday of the apparent attacks.
As Moscow is set to annex four occupied regions of Ukraine, the White House said Wednesday that it was working with “allies and partners to impose additional economic costs on Russia” and others that supported the staged referendums in those areas. “You can expect additional measures from us in the coming days,” State Department spokesman Ned Price also said Wednesday.
The damage to the Nord Stream pipelines could result in the largest-ever single release of methane into the atmosphere, experts said. The Danish Energy Agency said that sections of the damaged pipe contained 778 million cubic meters of natural gas, which, if it reached the atmosphere, would be equivalent to about 1/1000th of estimated annual global methane emissions, according to calculations by scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Gas Hydrates Project.
Serbia, which has close ties to Moscow, won’t recognize the results of the staged referendums in four regions of Ukraine, President Aleksandar Vucic said Wednesday, Reuters reported. In an apparent reference to Kosovo, a former province of Serbia that gained independence, Vucic said: “We are protecting our own territorial integrity and it is in our best interest to protect the territorial integrity of other internationally recognized countries.”
In his nightly address, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Kyiv was coordinating with its Western partners and allies to push back against Russia’s attempt to seize more Ukrainian land. He said he spoke with leaders in Canada, Germany, Turkey and the United Kingdom, as well as with United Nations Secretary General António Guterres and European Council President Charles Michel. “If someone in Russia thinks they can ‘get away’ with everything they are doing in the occupied territory … they in Russia are wrong,” Zelensky said. “Each escalation by the occupier only confirms the fact that the world must act even tougher.”
The latest tranche of U.S. military aid highlights efforts to meet Ukraine’s most urgent military needs, while also providing for its defense infrastructure in the longer term. The HIMARS being sent to Ukraine will represent a “core component of Ukraine’s fighting force in the future,” and will take “a few years” to build and deliver, according to a senior U.S. defense official.
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, The Washington Post’s Alex Horton reports. | 2022-09-29T07:10:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia-Ukraine war latest updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/29/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/29/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ |
Harris visits DMZ after North Korean missile launches
Michelle Ye Hee Lee
U.S. Vice President Harris greets soldiers at Camp Bonifas as she visits the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, in Panmunjom, South Korea, on Thursday. (Leah Millis/AP)
CAMP BONIFAS, South Korea — Vice President Harris toured the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea on Thursday, becoming the most senior Biden administration official to inspect the demarcation line during a four-day trip to Asia that has been dominated by Indo-Pacific security concerns.
Harris traveled to Asia to attend the state funeral of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who was assassinated in July. But she also sat for a trio of bilateral talks that highlighted common economic interests and delved into the potential dangers posed by North Korea and China.
Underscoring the threat, North Korea conducted a ballistic missile test a day before Harris arrived in Asia, and followed that up with two more launches before she landed in South Korea. The militaries of the United States and South Korea are conducting joint exercises off the eastern coast of the peninsula. The DMZ is the 2.5-mile-wide buffer zone that runs about 160 miles across the peninsula and has separated the two Koreas since the 1953 armistice in the Korean War.
This thin ribbon of land separates North and South Korea
Harris’s visit comes as North Korea barrels ahead with its nuclear and weapons program. With denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang stalled since 2019, the prospect for reengaging North Korea remains further out of reach than ever.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s new conservative president aims to work more closely with Washington to show a harder line toward the North. The allies are leaving the door open to dialogue with North Korea but are in no rush to force a breakthrough.
The strengthening of ties between the United States and South Korea was on display Thursday during Harris’s trip to the DMZ. South Korea is protected under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, which guarantees that the United States would use its nuclear weapons to defend South Korea if needed.
“I’m here for a day in South Korea to reinforce the relationship we have with you in the United States,” Harris told U.S. Army soldiers and their families stationed at Camp Bonifas, a United Nations command post in the DMZ. She thanked the service members for following through “on the commitment that we as a nation make based on the principles we hold dear.”
She then visited an observation post to survey the demarcation zone and look into North Korea using binoculars. When a South Korean soldier said she may be able to view North Korean soldiers looking back at her, she replied: “I had no doubt that would happen.”
“It’s so close,” she said, referring to the North Korean side of the DMZ.
South Koreans overwhelmingly want nuclear weapons to confront China and North Korea, poll finds
North Korea’s recent missile launches were the first such tests since June, and the vice president’s visit to the DMZ is likely to spark even more saber-rattling from Pyongyang, as previous visits from U.S. dignitaries have done. Still, Harris has gone out of her way to highlight America’s commitment to its allies in the pivotal Indo-Pacific.
In a speech on the USS Howard destroyer on Wednesday, Harris pledged to intensify “unofficial ties” with Taiwan, days after the Biden administration said his administration would use its armed forces to defend the island if China invades in an “unprecedented attack.”
“China has flexed its military and economic might to coerce and intimidate its neighbors,” Harris said on the deck of the destroyer, during a visit to the largest U.S. Navy installation outside of the United States. “And we have witnessed disturbing behavior in the East China Sea and in the South China Sea, and most recently, provocations across the Taiwan Strait.”
Harris’s trip was built around Abe’s state funeral on Tuesday, and her plans to visit the DMZ had been kept under wraps by her team. The visit was unexpectedly revealed during Tuesday’s bilateral meeting with South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-Soo, who praised her pending trip to the demilitarized zone and her commitment to security on the Korean Peninsula. White House officials scrambled to confirm details of her trip afterward. Typically, official plans to visit the DMZ are announced shortly before the trip because of security concerns.
Several former presidents have visited the DMZ since it was established some seven decades ago. In 2019, then-President Donald Trump met with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un at the DMZ in an unsuccessful attempt to get Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear program.
More recently, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited in August, talking with South Korean leaders about nuclear deterrence. Afterward, North Korea said Pelosi’s visit showed the Biden administration’s open hostility toward North Korea, and called her “the worst destroyer of international peace and stability.”
President Biden visited the DMZ as vice president, but he did not venture to the border during his May trip to Japan and South Korea. North Korea fired an intercontinental ballistic missile, according to the South Korean military, and two other missiles a day after Biden left the region.
Lee reported from Tokyo. | 2022-09-29T08:32:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kamala Harris visits DMZ after North Korean missile tests - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/29/kamala-harris-dmz-south-korea/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/29/kamala-harris-dmz-south-korea/ |
Top Justice Dept. official visits to launch an anti-hate crime initiative as community weighs punishment for alleged Tops market shooter
Attorney General Merrick Garland visits the Tops Friendly Markets grocery store in Buffalo on June 15, the site of a May 14 mass shooting in which 10 Black people were killed. Garland was in Buffalo to announce federal hate crime charges against Payton Gendron. (AP Photo/Carolyn Thompson)
“Some days, I want him killed in the most painful way — take it back to Genghis Khan’s time, give him as much pain as possible,” Talley said in a telephone interview this week. But in other moments of reflection, Talley, who recently launched a nonprofit community organization called “Agents for Advocacy,” has another view: “I don’t want death. I want him to suffer in jail” for the rest of his life.
Garland weighs racial equity as he considers death penalty in Buffalo
Over the summer, the families of Gendron’s victims met with representatives from the office of Trini E. Ross, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of New York, and the Justice Department in Washington. Federal authorities emphasized that the case might be years away from trial, and they offered no timeline for when Attorney General Merrick Garland — who will receive recommendations from within the Justice Department — would decide whether to seek the death penalty.
Such debates in capital punishment-eligible cases are not uncommon. The community was divided in the federal cases of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Dylann Roof — sentenced to death for, respectively, the bombing at the Boston Marathon in 2013 and the fatal shootings of nine Black parishioners at a church in Charleston, S.C., in 2016. Families also have disagreed over the fate of Nikolas Cruz, who faces a potential death sentence in Florida state court after being convicted of fatally shooting 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018.
In an interview with ABC News last month, Wayne Jones and Garnell Whitfield Jr. — whose mothers, Celestine Chaney and Ruth Whitfield, respectively, were among those killed — said they were not advocating for the death penalty. | 2022-09-29T09:24:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DOJ's Clarke in still-grieving Buffalo to launch anti-hate-crime effort - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/29/buffalo-hate-crimes-gendron/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/29/buffalo-hate-crimes-gendron/ |
Mortgage rates near 7 percent as housing market keeps cooling
Federal data to be released Thursday could show the effects of the Federal Reserve’s latest interest-rate hike
A man walks his dog past a “for sale” sign outside a house in Los Angeles this month. The U.S. housing market is slowing as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates. (Allison Dinner/Getty Images)
Becky Enrico-Crum spent much of the pandemic racing to keep up as aspiring homeowners flocked to Idaho. But toward the end of this summer, the president of Boise Regional Realtors felt the frenzy finally ease up.
Prices in the area dropped 4.4 percent between July and August, though they were up 6.6 percent from 2021. Homes now last weeks on the market, as opposed to days. Her clients don’t have to duke it out in fierce bidding wars or scramble to put in all-cash offers.
“We aren’t crashing; we’re leveling out,” Enrico-Crum said. “We’re just trying to find out what that level price is. That’s what everybody is trying to figure out.”
The long-awaited shift — from white-hot housing market to something more normal — is playing out across the country as mortgage rates escalate to the highest levels in 20 years, pushed along partly by the Federal Reserve’s moves to slow down the economy and bring down inflation. The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage, the most popular home-loan product, has more than doubled in a year, and many lenders are quoting over 7 percent for such loans. Data to be released Thursday morning by Freddie Mac could also show mortgage rates cresting above 7 percent for the first time since April 2002. A year ago, it was 3.01 percent.
The housing market has been cooling ever since the Fed began raising rates this spring. And it is clearly cooling faster as rates push higher. U.S. home prices slid in July compared to June, marking the first month-to-month decline since January 2019, according to the closely watched S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index. In August, existing-home sales fell for the seventh straight month to the lowest level since early pandemic lockdowns, according to the National Association of Realtors. Sales fell 0.4 percent from July to August and 19.9 percent compared to 2021. There are even early signs that rental prices may be easing.
Fed raises interest rates by 0.75 points to fight inflation
“It’s really important to look at how much a sector like housing, which boomed coming out of the pandemic, is more vulnerable,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG. “It was not only supported by low rates, but it was also supported by the work from home and other shifts. Some of those shifts are not going to go away, but the low rates are.”
Last week, the Federal Reserve hiked rates yet again by 0.75 percentage points, and the bank is expected to hike them twice more before the end of the year. The Fed doesn’t determine mortgage rates specifically, but changes in its benchmark rate — known as the federal funds rate — ripple through the economy and influence all kinds of lending. Since the spring, the Fed has hoisted that rate from near zero to between 3 percent and 3.25 percent, sending mortgage rates on a swift upward streak.
And they might not stop here, especially since the Fed has a long way to go on the inflation fight. Consumer prices unexpectedly rose in August, with rent and food remaining major strains. Stock markets have been tumbling for weeks as policymakers make clear that they are far from seeing the kind of progress they would need to scale their interest rate campaign back, and as central banks around the world hoist rates at the same time.
Many economists predict a recession later this year or in early 2023, especially since rate hikes operate with a lag and may not fully seize on the economy for months. The housing market reacts very closely to any movement in interest rates. But many other parts of the economy do not.
Asked this week about fears that the central bank won’t have enough time to gauge the impact of rate hikes, Charles Evans, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said, “Well, I am a little nervous about exactly that.
“There are lags in monetary policy and we have moved expeditiously,” Evans said. “We have done three 75 basis point increases in a row, and there is a talk of more to get to that 4.25 percent to 4.5 percent by the end of the year. You’re not leaving much time to sort of look at each monthly release.”
The Fed’s rate hikes are designed to cool demand, and in the housing market, that means culling out buyers who, until just a few months ago, were vying for a handful of houses, sending prices to record highs. Fed officials hope that their policies can slow down the housing market without spurring a crash altogether. Demand for mortgages has dropped as swiftly as rates have risen. Total application volume has fallen six of the past seven weeks, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. Refinances are off 84 percent from where they were a year ago.
“The reality that I share with my clients is that people were buying homes when rates reached 7 percent 20 years ago, and they’re going to continue to buy homes when it’s higher or lower,” said Geetesh Kapoor, producing branch manager at Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation. “If the goal is to buy a home, you can always refinance it later when the rates come down.”
But monetary policy can’t solve the housing market’s other major problem: not enough houses. Low inventory continues to plague the housing market. The lack of homes is exacerbated by homeowners who are reluctant to sell because of their low mortgage rate. According to Black Knight, 90 percent of borrowers have a mortgage rate below 5 percent, and two-thirds have one below 4 percent.
“Many would-be sellers are locked into low rates that make a move up to a much costlier mortgage a difficult transition, keeping inventory low,” said Nicole Bachaud, senior economist at Zillow. “This rebalancing is putting more power in the hands of some affluent buyers who can afford to stay active in the for-sale market, with more time to make crucial decisions, less competition, and more negotiating power than at any time in the past several years.”
Estimates for the shortfall in the country’s housing supply range widely from 1.5 million to 5 million. But it’s clear that home and rent prices will stay elevated until there are more places for people to live.
Rate hikes make closing that supply gap even harder. Phil Crone, executive director of the Dallas Builders Association, said higher interest rates are coming on the heels of persistent supply-chain shortages on anything from windows to garage doors. But Crone hopes the Fed will manage to raise rates and quell inflation without triggering other consequences, like causing businesses to lay people off and make worker shortages in the construction industry even worse — or gut the housing market altogether.
Demand for new homes in north Texas is still strong, especially with the area’s solid job growth, Crone said. There is also a generational component: Many millennials have a de facto fear of high interest rates, but Crone’s parents’ generation are used to much higher mortgage costs. If in the future, inflation comes down and rates find some middle ground, the market will be much more sustainable.
“Right now, it’s just a matter of going from this hyper-acceleration to finding our feet again,” Crone said, “which may make for a bumpy six months or so until we find that.” | 2022-09-29T10:12:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mortgage rates to 7 percent as Fed fights inflation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/29/mortgage-rates-fed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/29/mortgage-rates-fed/ |
The NLD won 83% of the parliamentary seats at stake in the vote, an even better performance than its 2015 landslide. The election commission and international observers called the vote fair. But the military alleged that the NLD had interfered in the electoral process. At the time of the coup it said it was seizing power for at least one year. Six months later, it set a new deadline for elections -- August 2023 -- and said army chief Min Aung Hlaing would head a caretaker government in the meantime. In September 2022, the junta dropped the reference to a caretaker government and said it was now a “union government” tasked with carrying out state duties more effectively. A year later it extended the state of emergency until Feburary 2023. | 2022-09-29T10:12:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Myanmar’s Path From Junta Rule to Democracy and Back - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/myanmars-path-from-junta-rule-to-democracy-and-back/2022/09/29/c58ad500-3fd3-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/myanmars-path-from-junta-rule-to-democracy-and-back/2022/09/29/c58ad500-3fd3-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Last month, when the S&P 500 Total Return Index had recovered half its 2022 losses, I highlighted the historical attractiveness of buying stocks in that circumstance. I did warn that past performance does not indicate future results as well as how stocks are essentially a random walk. Nevertheless, stocks do have some momentum and buying with that tailwind, plus valuations still well below peak, with history on your side, seemed easier than buying stocks at other times.
So, unless the S&P 500 has a strong finish to this week, we will have only the second time since 1873 when buying at the halfway recovery point was a mistake -- and I will get some more angry emails. Let’s see if we can figure out how I went wrong.
The table below shows all 24 declines in month-end S&P total return indexes of 15% or more since 1871. The halfway point is the first month end after the 15% loss at which the index had recovered half its value. The column titled “New peak/trough date” is the first month end after the halfway recovery date when the index either set a new all-time peak or went below the crash loss point prior to the recovery. The return measures what an investor earned buying stocks at the halfway recovery date and holding until either a new high or new low was set. Only once — buying at the end of April 1930 — did this strategy lose money. On 22 other occasions, S&P 500 total return indexes hit a new all-time high before going below the crash low.
If September 2022 ends at the current S&P 500 value, we will have our second exception in 151 years. So, what’s different about April 1930 and August 2022 from the other 22 times the S&P 500 recovered halfway crashes?
The first word that comes to mind is “value.” Buying at the halfway recovery point is a momentum strategy, one that bets “the trend is your friend.” Momentum strategies are some of the oldest and most reliable tools used by professional traders and quants. But momentum works best when paired with value, which means buying cheap stuff. If you can find stuff that is cheap and also going up in price, you often have an attractive opportunity. Momentum is great on average but can lead you to buy into bubbles or sell into panics. Value is great in the long-run, but the long-run can be very long. When you get value and momentum both, you’re not sure of making money, but it’s about as good a position as an investor can hope for.
The best common measure of stock market value is Yale University professor Robert Shiller’s cyclically adjusted price-earnings ratio, or CAPE. It has averaged 17 since 1871, meaning the S&P 500 has averaged 17 times the average annual inflation-adjusted earnings over any trailing 10-year period (the more usual price-earnings ratio use trailing 12 months of earnings, predicted future earnings or other short-term measures, and therefore bounce up and down with the business cycle). But CAPEs in the 21st century are higher, averaging 26.
The last column in the table shows the CAPE at the halfway recovery date. The first two entries are NA because there aren’t 10 years of earnings history to compute them, but they would likely be around 15 if we had the data. You can see that 20 of the 22 successes occurred when buying at CAPEs of 20 or less. When CAPE was over 20, there was one failure in 1930, two successes in 2004 and 2020, and one probable failure in 2022.
The scary thing is the last time this happened, it took 16 years, the greatest economic depression in history and the biggest war in history to squeeze CAPE back down to 11 and kick off the next cycle of prosperity. I’m not predicting anything like that, of course, but it seems that the market decline in the first half of 2022 was not enough to clear out economic deadwood and deflate bubbles. There may be more pain ahead.More from Bloomberg Opinion: | 2022-09-29T10:12:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Stock Market Had History on Its Side. Now It Doesn’t. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-stock-market-had-history-on-itsside-now-it-doesnt/2022/09/29/9e0ca544-3fdd-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-stock-market-had-history-on-itsside-now-it-doesnt/2022/09/29/9e0ca544-3fdd-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Crowds flocked to the National Gallery of Art's landmark East Building for National Gallery Nights “Homecoming” on Sept. 8. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
On a recent Thursday night in the National Gallery of Art’s East Building, I watched from a railing at the edge of the mezzanine level as crowds on the floors beneath flocked between exhibits and bars and perched with drinks at colorfully lit tables. Patrons collected sketch pads from museum staff and set about creating gesture drawings of two elegantly dressed models, not far from where DJ Heat had coaxed lines of dancers into enthusiastically doing the wobble. In the galleries, groups posed for selfies next to paintings by Wayne Thiebaud and Amy Sherald, while 20-somethings wandered through the crowd, phones held high in their extended arms, capturing the scene for TikTok.
Where did all these people come from?
After-hours parties began returning to Washington museums in the spring, once again drawing locals with a mix of culture and mingling, drinks and hands-on activities. But in recent weeks, interest has exploded. The Phillips Collection’s Phillips After 5 and National Gallery Nights sold out of tickets for their September dates, as did some of the Library of Congress’s weekly Live! at the Library events, such as one featuring a conversation with author Ian McEwan.
More than 3,300 people passed through the National Gallery on Sept. 8, which Sherri Williams, the manager of community programs, says is “on par with our highest attendance ever” — around 800 to 1,000 more people than the pre-pandemic average. And while passes are free, letting patrons reserve them without fear of commitment, “more people are showing up, redeeming their pass,” Williams says. The attrition rate was about 35 percent in September, below what organizers would usually expect for a free event. Also surprising: The first wave of free tickets was snatched up in less than three minutes, faster than some of this summer’s popular Jazz in the Garden events.
Museum after-hours parties have been part of D.C.’s cultural fabric since the mid- to late 2000s, when events like Hirshhorn After Hours and Phillips After 5 became cultural phenomena, drawing crowds very different from the ones that visited during the day. “Looking at the 2,800 partygoers, it was hard to imagine that a single, good-looking, under-30 District resident was left beyond the museum’s plaza walls,” wrote a Post reporter when electronic artist Dan Deacon headlined a raucous event at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in 2008.
But large crowds and cool vibes (and funds raised by alcohol and ticket sales) aren’t the only reason museums are glad to host these events. The Library of Congress conceived the weekly Live! at the Library series as a way to engage local residents, explains Katie Klenkel, the library’s chief of visitor engagement. The library is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and “we were just missing out on a huge part of our audiences who worked during the day Monday through Friday and just didn’t have a chance to come see our great exhibits or experience what we have to offer,” Klenkel says.
Keith Costas, the Phillips Collection’s director of special events, was part of the group that helped create Phillips After 5 as a weekly, and then monthly, event back in the summer of 2008. To date, the gallery — the first museum of modern art in the U.S. — has hosted, by Costas’s count, 155 After 5s. “Everyone has always said to me, ‘Keith, you’re just throwing a party.’ I said, ‘Well, no, that’s not the case.’ You know, my purpose is really just to bring people in, to get them to learn about the collection, our special exhibitions, and to walk away having an enriched cultural experience.” Yes, he says, there will always be people “having a glass of wine, listening to music, engaging, conversing with people, you know, going on a date.” But for the staff who created and continue to plan the event, he says, “it was always about the art and making it a cultural and learning experience.”
Beyond a good time, these after-hours events are about inviting Washingtonians to think of art as part of their lives — an after-work social experience as natural as going to happy hour or rounding up friends to catch up over dinner. And if you learn something about Lou Stovall’s museum workshop, or decide to come back another day to continue gazing at modern art, so much the better.
Phillips After 5 at the Phillips Collection
The Phillips Collection began in Duncan Phillips’s home, and even though the building has been extended and modernized numerous times, Phillips After 5 still gives off house-party vibes. One minute, you’re upstairs in an exhibition space, browsing the brightly colored silk-screen prints in “Lou Stovall: The Museum Workshop,” listening to a spotlight tour where guest curator Will Stovall is delving into the history of the posters his father created for concerts at Bohemian Caverns, his more activist work and the prints made for Washington Color School pioneers such as Gene Davis.
Then you head down the curvaceous spiral staircase to the lobby. There’s a beer tasting with D.C.’s own Soul Mega happening in the gift shop. Go through a set of doors and you’re out in the courtyard, where hands are in the air and bodies are bouncing while local jazz-meets-go-go stars the JoGo Project cover UCB’s “Sexy Lady.” Do the people singing along with the chorus notice the site-specific Ellsworth Kelly sculpture behind the band? Maybe, maybe not.
Groove for a bit, then wander back inside and head downstairs, where a silk-screen demonstration is teaching visitors the basic principles of Stovall’s art and they’re making a tote bag to take home. And did I mention that Ben’s Chili Bowl is serving half-smokes?
D.C. art, D.C. music, D.C. food and a hands-on experience that brings it back to the art: That kind of synergy is what Nehemiah Dixon III, the Phillips’s senior director of community engagement, is looking for when Phillips After 5 is in the planning stages. “I think everything paired well,” he says after the “We’re Back! Let’s Go-Go” event in early September. “You can tell the excitement, the buzz of people being back in the museum at that capacity.”
The nature of the Phillips’s exhibitions is something that Dixon relishes: “We’re in a unique place where our walls change fairly consistently,” he says. “And with each new exhibition, with each new show, there’s a new opportunity to sort of experiment and play” with the themes of After 5. Next month, though, the focus is on the most iconic painting in the collection: Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party.”
The Phillips draws a slightly older crowd than the National Gallery and some Smithsonian events — I’m willing to bet the $20 ticket price has something to do with the demographics — and guests seem fairly split between those who are focused on the music and the art. But that’s fine with Dixon. “Whether it’s a painting on the wall or a program that you’re attending, our goal is always, you know, let’s create these pockets of joy for our community.”
When: The first Thursday of the month from 5 to 8:30 p.m.
Tickets: $20, from phillipscollection.org.
Next up: “Oktoberfest” on Oct. 6, featuring tours and talks focused on Renoir’s “Luncheon of the Boating Party” and the opportunity to take a photo in a 3D version of the painting; jazz from the Carr/Keys quintet; hard cider from Capitol Cider House and German Oktoberfest beers. 1600 21st Street NW.
Live! at the Library at the Library of Congress
If some other after-hours events come across as eager to party, the Library of Congress is the refined older relative, befitting its setting in the grand marble building across the street from the Capitol. Since its first event in May, Live! at the Library has allowed visitors to gawk at the magnificent dome and sculptures in the historic Reading Room, which is surely one of the most beautiful indoor spaces in D.C. Events have given visitors a chance to see Abraham Lincoln’s life mask, celebrate Juneteenth with the Gullah band Ranky Tanky and ask Nationals pitcher Sean Doolittle about the books that spurred his love of reading, as well as to explore ongoing exhibits. The series attracts locals interested in the subject of the week, but also a Hill crowd and, given the location, plenty of tourists.
The lack of access to exhibits for locals working 9-to-5 jobs had been part of the inspiration for the series, but Katie Klenkel, the chief of visitor engagement, explains that there was also a desire to consolidate the library’s calendar. Between author talks, film screenings, concerts, lectures and other events, “we do so many programs at the library on so many different disparate topics” that sometimes potential audience members didn’t know that something they’d be interested in was happening. “And so we were trying to create a through line for people so they could anticipate that kind of cultural programming on a specific date, specific time, every Thursday,” Klenkel says. “It makes it easier than having things on Wednesday afternoons and Saturday evenings.”
So after beloved radio producers and podcasters the Kitchen Sisters donated their entire archive to the library’s American Folklife Center, it was a natural fit to have them as guests at Live! at the Library in mid-September, interviewed by Academy Award winner Frances McDormand. Ditto author Ian McEwan, who discussed his latest novel, “Lessons,” on Sept. 22, or journalist James Kirchick, who celebrated Pride Month by talking about his book “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington” while the library displayed items from its collection that Kirchick used in his research.
But there’s an element of surprise, too, when the library can pull out that Lincoln life mask, show off a selection of items from the Harry Houdini collection or display vintage Star Wars trading cards that maybe aren’t the first thing someone thinks of when they hear “Library of Congress.” (Who knew about the library’s vast flute vault before Librarian Carla Hayden tweeted at Lizzo?)
If you visit Live! at the Library most weeks, you’ll find exhibits open and docents available to talk about the building or special displays, a bar with wine and local craft beer, and live music. A reading room that visitors can’t usually see might be open, but there won’t be an event like the Kitchen Sisters every Thursday. “What we’re trying to focus on right now is having a big tent-pole event once a month with something very splashy and exciting,” Klenkel says, and letting the library, and its vast collections, shine the rest of the time.
When: Every Thursday from 5 to 8 p.m.
Tickets: Free timed entry passes available 30 days in advance from loc.gov/live. Additional passes released at 9 a.m. on the day of the event.
Next up: “Opening the Case: The Giant Bible of Mainz” on Oct. 6, with a chance to get up close and personal with the illuminated German manuscript, created in 1452 and 1453, with specialists from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. Other medieval manuscripts will also be on display. Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. SE.
National Gallery Nights at the National Gallery of Art
“I describe [National Gallery Nights] as a choose-your-own-adventure evening in the museum, where we give you lots of options and you could just pick and choose how you want to spend your time with us,” explains Sherri Williams, the museum’s manager of community programs. “If it’s the whole three hours, if it’s an hour, there’s something for you to do.”
So that “Homecoming” after-hours program earlier this month, the first in the landmark East Building since 2019, was loaded with opportunities that guests could explore in any order. A map guided them to nine locations offering 10-minute pop-up talks on such topics as “Hahn,” the giant blue rooster on the rooftop terrace, and the James McNeill Whistler exhibit “The Woman in White.” There was trivia about twins, in honor of the exhibition “The Double”; live music; an installation featuring two people walking a path on the floor while wearing giant, body-covering mirrors; and, of course, multiple bars.
Williams, the primary programmer of National Gallery Nights, doesn’t feel bound by the newest exhibits when she’s planning the next happening. “We try to be timely and take advantage of the exhibitions if we can,” she says, but “they are not the motivators for a program for a National Gallery Night.” Instead, “the theme really matters,” with the art experience shaped around that. In May, for example, there was a seasonally appropriate “Prom” theme, with a band and DJ, prom photos, a crown crafting station, and a self-guided tour of “regal and resplendent” works of art. And yes, many attendees showed up in party dresses. Next month’s “Trick or Treat” will include gallery talks and music, but also a screening of “Gremlins” in the auditorium, scored by the Shaolin Jazz crew, and organizers suggest guests wear “art-inspired” costumes.
One of the key things, Williams says, is reaching out to attendees while they’re enjoying themselves at the event and telling them, “ ‘If you’re interested in National Gallery Nights, you might also be interested in this film series,’ just to show them all that the museum has to offer and to make them feel comfortable, so they don’t feel as if, you know, there’s only one right way to attend and to be a visitor at the National Gallery of Art.”
When: The second Thursday of the month from 6 to 9 p.m., through November.
Tickets: Free passes available one week in advance, beginning at noon, at nga.gov. (For the Oct. 13 event, for example, you should be online at 11:59 a.m. on Oct. 6.) More tickets are released at 10 a.m. on the morning of the event, and some additional tickets are available at the door, beginning at 5:30 p.m.
Next up: “Trick or Treat” on Oct. 13, with “spooky” gallery talks, a screening of “Gremlins” scored by Shaolin Jazz, pop-up performances and DJ RBI. East Building, Fourth Street and Constitution Avenue NW.
After-hours events at Smithsonian museums have their own individual vibes, whether that’s electronic musician Dan Deacon leading a conga line of revelers through the Hirshhorn’s plaza at a legendary 2008 concert or groups gossiping around a table while constructing felted birds or working on a macramé project during the quarterly Handi-Hour happy hour at the Renwick Gallery. The thing to remember, though, is that schedules vary by location, creating a patchwork of events that come and go. The National Museum of Asian Art held a series of indoor and outdoor events dubbed “Afterhours @ NMAA” over the summer, with DJs, dance performances, gallery talks and food from local restaurants, but those are on hold. Handi-Hour is held once per quarter, with the next edition in February. (Guests will be able to make “Valentine’s-related crafts,” in addition to a paper wall hanging.)
Since 2015, the National Museum of American History has marked the end of its Smithsonian Food History Weekend with “Last Call,” an event dedicated to the past, present and future of beer. The centerpiece is a moderated discussion among a panel of beer experts, which has included such luminaries as Kim Jordan and Dick Cantwell, the co-founders of New Belgium and Elysian, respectively (2015); Sierra Nevada founder Ken Grossman (2019); and Highland Brewing Co. founder Oscar Wong (2017). While recent years have also seen four or five breweries from across the country pouring beers for attendees to sample, “we are always proud to note that it is an event about beer history,” says Theresa McCulla, the curator of the museum’s American Brewing History Initiative. “This is not just a beer tasting. It’s not just a happy hour.”
This year’s theme, “¡Salud! to American Latinos in Beer,” draws inspiration from the new Molina Family Latino Gallery at the museum and highlights four Latino-owned breweries, from San Diego to New York City. McCulla says “all four of the brewers are talking about how they’re brewing, and how the ingredients they pick are inspired by their Latin roots, dishes or flavors, or experiences” that they grew up with: Mujeres Brew House, from San Diego, makes Hola Saladito!, inspired by a favorite childhood Mexican snack with dried, salted plums; Dyckman Beer Co. draws on owner Juan Camilo’s Dominican heritage for Highbridge Summer Ale, made with chinola, or passion fruit.
Visitors can also tour exhibits and explore rarely seen beer-related objects from the museum’s collection, such as vintage tap handles and a colorimeter, a 19th-century brewer’s gadget that showed whether a beer was the right shade. McCulla also plans to show some of the latest acquisitions, which “preserve the history of breweries and their experiences of the pandemic, and their responses to things like the Black Lives Matter movement.”
When: Events vary by museum.
Next up: “+234 Connect” at the National Museum of African Art. Part of the museum’s Community Day, this celebration features the Afrochique dance team; live music from Eme & Heteru and the Cavemen; food trucks; and head-wrapping workshops. (Oct. 1. Concert from 7 to 11 p.m. 950 Independence Ave. SW. africa.si.edu. Free.)
“A Speakeasy Evening” at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. “Inspired by the Speakeasy clubs of the Harlem Renaissance,” this evening for the LGBTQ community includes music, comedy, games, art and a discussion about “Ballroom and Beyond,” as well as food and drinks. A discussion for ages 13 to 24 precedes the main program. (Oct. 14 from 7:30 to 10:45 p.m. 1400 Constitution Ave. NW. nmaahc.si.edu. Free; registration required.)
“Last Call: ¡Salud! to American Latinos in Beer” at the National Museum of American History. Part of the annual Smithsonian Food History Weekend, this event features a discussion with American Latinos who work in the craft beer industry and a tasting of eight of their beers, as well as exhibit tours. (Oct. 14 from 7 to 9 p.m. Constitution Avenue NW between 12th and 14th streets. americanhistory.si.edu. $40; includes beer tastings and light snacks.) | 2022-09-29T10:13:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After-hours events, concerts and tours at Washington. D.C.. museums - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/museums-after-hours-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/museums-after-hours-dc/ |
Martha’s Vineyard’s reaction to DeSantis stunt shouldn’t be surprising
White Protestants have a long history of welcoming migrants
Perspective by Nicholas T. Pruitt
Nicholas T. Pruitt is associate professor of history at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy, Mass and author of "Open Hearts, Closed Doors: Immigration Reform and the Waning of Mainline Protestantism."
Migrants at St. Andrew’s Church in Edgartown, Mass., on Sept. 14. (Ray Ewing/Vineyard Gazette/Via Reuters)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) recently pulled a political stunt intended to turn the tables on liberals. DeSantis authorized flying 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in an attempt to place the onus on officials claiming sanctuary status for their municipalities. In the days that followed, New Englanders, social workers and officials came to the aid of the people caught in the middle of a hostile political climate.
This isn’t the first time that Americans in local communities rallied to help refugees and asylum seekers. Despite the fierce debates over immigration and refugee policy that plagued the last century, many Americans found ways to look past political punditry and work to meet the immediate needs of people facing incredible obstacles and hardships while hoping to settle in a new home country.
During the late 1940s and 1950s as people were fleeing war-torn Europe, a curious demographic of Americans offered assistance: Protestant Christians. Despite a long history of anti-immigrant sentiment and cultural gatekeeping, these Americans pooled local and denominational resources to sponsor refugees following World War II and during the Cold War. Protestant organizations such as Church World Service marshaled significant fundraising and publicity to rally Christians to support refugees. Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists and many other Protestants used denominational channels to sponsor refugee resettlement. In doing so, they joined the efforts of Jews and Catholics also working to resettle refugees and advocate for loosening immigration restrictions at the time.
In 1948 and 1953, Congress passed legislation that committed the United States to receiving more than 600,000 refugees, a fraction of the millions displaced around the world during the mid-20th century. Many Protestant denominations backed this legislation, including more conservative groups. Southern Baptists declared at their annual convention in 1947 that they supported the legislation since “these displaced persons are unable to return to their own homes because of persecution or fear of persecution by reason of their race, religion, or political beliefs, and desire above all else to start a new life in a nation where there is freedom of speech, freedom of worship, and freedom of movement.”
While humanitarian groups and religious organizations coordinated relief, it came down to local churches and towns to resettle refugees. The government mandated specific requirements for sponsors of refugee families, including finding housing and employment.
Examples of local Protestant refugee resettlement efforts abounded following World War II and into the Cold War era — sometimes in unexpected places. Take for instance the Central Congregational Church of Newton, Mass. Church members there pooled resources to sponsor a Latvian family, even pitching in an extra $1,000 on account of the father’s disability, which made him a liability in the eyes of the government.
Parishioners in the South also rose to the occasion. In 1960, Langdale Methodist Church in Alabama resettled a refugee family, apparently with assistance from the community. In addition to meeting the standard requirements of housing and employment, the church helped provide clothing, and a schoolteacher offered evening English classes. According to one account, “The whole community has responded most graciously to them. Even those who are not members of our Church are anxious to help.”
By the early 1960s, following Fidel Castro’s rise to power in Cuba, another refugee crisis soon followed. Protestant organizations, alongside Catholic and Jewish groups, established operations in Florida to resettle newly arrived Cuban refugees. In addition to more liberal Protestant denominations, some evangelical groups also joined the push to aid Cuban refugees, including the Southern Baptist Convention and Assemblies of God.
While such stories of assistance and aid can feel encouraging, they were also regularly disrupted by anti-immigrant fervor. While some White Protestants supported liberalization of immigration laws during the 1950s and 1960s that focused on removing the racist quotas from 1924 that favored some nationalities (northern Europeans) over others (eastern and southern Europeans, Asians and Africans), many of these liberal Protestants still made it clear that they were not calling for increasing immigration to the United States.
While many Protestants helped resettle European refugees in the 1950s, they also largely overlooked the government’s “Operation Wetback” in 1954 that forcibly relocated several hundred thousand Mexican Americans south of the border. Some mid-century Protestants even articulated earlier versions of the “great replacement theory” with its concern over new immigrants replacing “Anglo-Saxon” culture in the United States. One Presbyterian wrote in 1956 that liberal Protestant support for immigration reform seemed to be with the intent to bring in “people with widely divergent viewpoints to those of the earlier immigrants who made America what it is today.” Within Protestant circles were skeptical parishioners who assumed religious leaders were simply forcing liberal agendas on them that would threaten American culture.
Moreover, refugee resettlement itself could reflect racist patterns. Americans came to the aid of European refugees but were largely silent on the need to resettle displaced people in areas such as Asia immediately following World War II and during postwar decolonization.
Nevertheless, these early Cold War programs prepared Christian churches for later migration crises, including refugees fleeing Vietnam during the 1970s and those fleeing Central America during the 1980s. The exodus from Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador inspired the sanctuary movement in the United States, where some churches sheltered asylum seekers fleeing political and social unrest.
Protestant responses over the past 70 years demonstrate that not just churches of more liberal orientations but also some evangelicals recognized the needs of refugees and immigrants. But this has not come without opposition, especially within evangelical circles, where positions on immigration run the gamut from supporting new restrictions to immigration advocacy.
Regardless of DeSantis’s political maneuvering, this history provides instructive examples of local communities beginning to contend with the historical challenges and prejudices immigrants have faced, and then stepping up to help. With this history in mind, it should come as no surprise that the center of assistance for asylum seekers last week on Martha’s Vineyard was St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. And if politicians continue to use immigrants as political pawns and relocate them to disparate parts of the country, Christian churches across the nation will need to draw from their history and work to more fully embody the words of Jesus Christ to “love thy neighbor as thyself” in their local communities. | 2022-09-29T10:13:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Martha's Vineyard welcomed migrants. That shouldn't surprise us. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/29/marthas-vineyard-desantis-migrants/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/29/marthas-vineyard-desantis-migrants/ |
By Stephen McGrath and Jamey Keaten | AP
BUCHAREST, Romania — Doreen Bogdan-Martin of the United States was elected Thursday to head the U.N.’s telecommunications agency, winning a U.S.-Russia face-off for the leadership of a key global agency that sets guideposts for radio, internet and television communications — ending a race that has been overshadowed by geopolitics in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine. | 2022-09-29T10:14:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | US candidate to lead UN telecoms agency after US-Russia race - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-candidate-to-lead-un-telecoms-agency-after-us-russia-race/2022/09/29/c43ed02a-3fd8-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-candidate-to-lead-un-telecoms-agency-after-us-russia-race/2022/09/29/c43ed02a-3fd8-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Kim Mulkey is now the coach at LSU. (Mark Humphrey/AP)
Kim Mulkey said nothing. The greatest basketball player she has ever coached sits in a Russian prison, “wrongfully detained,” according to the U.S. government, serving the first months of an excessive 9½-year sentence for bringing less than a gram of cannabis oil into the country. Brittney Griner isn’t being punished as much as she is being weaponized. Most of the American sports community is on edge. Not Mulkey. She would rather be petty.
On the 221st day of Griner’s detainment, a reporter asked Mulkey, now the coach at LSU, about Griner. The two have had a strained relationship since Griner left Baylor, but some things are supposed to be bigger than feuds. On Monday, Mulkey chose to remain small.
“I just want to get your thoughts on the Brittney Griner situation,” the reporter said. “I don’t think I’ve seen anything from you on that and just …”
“And you won’t,” Mulkey replied.
She said nothing.
And it said everything.
After months of silence, that was all Mulkey offered. If you had a microscope, you wouldn’t have been able to detect any decency.
In all my years of covering the emotional, confrontational and sometimes crude world of sports, I’ve never encountered such a disturbingly bitter moment. I’ve seen angrier incidents. I’ve seen violence. But it’s reprehensible for a coach — a college coach who recruits teenagers with promises of familial relationships and lifelong bonds — to reject one of her own amid dire circumstances.
Kevin Blackistone: The National Archives and the great myth of American sports
Mulkey ignored an opportunity to show basic, superficial compassion. It took more effort to be terse and dismissive than it would have to offer something this simple: “I hope she gets home soon. I don’t want to comment any further, but that’s my hope.”
It was no time to persist with the petty. But like many lionized college coaches, Mulkey cannot contain her narcissism. She was too busy thinking about herself to meet the moment. It seems Mulkey is still upset that Griner, after saying she was gay before the 2013 WNBA draft, revealed Baylor had told her to keep her sexuality a secret. She wrote more about Mulkey and the school in her 2014 memoir “In My Skin.” She intended for that part of her story to illustrate her struggles with identity while attending a private Baptist school in Texas. Mulkey did not like how she and her program’s culture were portrayed. The two never made amends.
In 2012, when Baylor won the national championship with a 40-0 record, Mulkey called Griner “the face of women’s basketball.” In the 10 years since, Griner has had a stellar professional career and enhanced her reputation as one of the most dominant post players in the sport’s history. Mulkey has 658 career victories, an .857 winning percentage and three national titles. She is in the second year of a $23.6 million contract at LSU, a milestone deal in the ongoing fight for fair pay in women’s sports.
Griner and Mulkey were magical together. They had remained outstanding apart. And then Griner was arrested for a mistake that many athletes playing overseas and trying to manage pain and inflammation could have made. Her freedom has turned into a political custody battle between feuding nations.
Dawn Staley, who was Griner’s coach with USA Basketball, doesn’t let a day pass without sending a social media message or doing a media interview about freeing Griner. On the same day Mulkey punted on humanity, current Baylor coach Nicki Collen talked for almost five straight minutes about Griner. Collen spent most of the time pleading with people who have discarded Griner as a criminal and failed to think about the global dynamics at play. And in the most subtle way, Collen alluded to the intolerance and prejudice behind some of the public dismissal of a 6-foot-9 Black gay woman.
“It’s not my job to judge, quite frankly,” Collen said. “I don’t see it as my job. I think as a Christian, it’s to give grace. It’s to love, to love one another. Knowing BG, like knowing her, being around her, she’s a big kid. To know her is to love her. Honestly, she just is one of those people that radiates joy, that would give you a high-five or a hug. It’s so easy to say when it’s someone you don’t know, but would everyone be saying the same thing if it was their sister? I think they might feel differently.”
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For four years, Griner wasn’t just any big kid to Mulkey. She was her big kid, a celebrated all-American, the best player in the nation. One disagreement shouldn’t ruin that — unless the relationship was phony and transactional from the beginning. While Griner isn’t blameless in their beef, Mulkey is the 60-year-old who earns a living teaching young people to manage conflict and work together. Before she retires, she may win 1,000 games preaching harmony. But given a chance to transcend discord and show sincere empathy, she acted worse than a spoiled freshman away from home for the first time.
“Keep that in mind when you’re choosing schools,” former Baylor star Queen Egbo wrote in a tweet.
Said Chloe Jackson, another former Baylor player: “And I will say it again. SILENCE SPEAKS VOLUMES, smh.”
If Mulkey was too emotionally conflicted to express herself, she ought to step to a microphone and try again. Try harder. Articulate anything that makes her human and not a revenge-seeking control freak.
Mulkey isn’t the first coach to grow distant from a star athlete. But difficult times are supposed to unite people, assuming what they shared was real. The player who delivered Mulkey a second championship needs all the support she can get. If her former coach cannot rise to this occasion, she has no credibility as a leader. | 2022-09-29T10:14:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kim Mulkey's failure to support Brittney Griner said plenty - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/kim-mulkey-brittney-griner/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/kim-mulkey-brittney-griner/ |
Kliff Kingsbury and Kyler Murray are 1-2, with some unsightly offensive numbers. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)
In the heady days of last October, the Arizona Cardinals were 7-0, and Coach Kliff Kingsbury and quarterback Kyler Murray were contemplating individual hardware — to say nothing of boffo contract extensions — while basking in the limelight as the darlings of the NFL.
That was only 11 months ago. It feels like much longer.
Since then, owner Michael Bidwill watched his team get dragged through the second half of the season, then bow out around the midpoint of the second quarter of its first-round playoff game with the Los Angeles Rams. (It ended as an ugly 34-11 defeat.) Bidwill opted to dole out massive new deals to the coach and QB anyway.
He also has watched his 1-2 outfit — which is a few miracle, improvised plays away from an 0-3 start — produce some of the most unsightly offensive play in the NFL this month (although the defense is also fairly odious). Suspect game-opening scripts and dubious execution are in a weekly battle to be the biggest issue marring the Kliff and Kyler Show, which is 2-7 in its past nine games, including that playoff debacle.
Once again, major questions are being asked around the league — especially among those who have watched the Cardinals closely — about the direction and potency of this offense and its ability to adjust. The personnel is not special; the Cardinals struggle to pass or run, and they don’t seem particularly prepared, either, outscored 31-0 in the first quarter. Arizona is averaging just 3.65 yards per play in the first quarter, behind only the offensively bereft Giants and Panthers.
Could that possibly be related to Kingsbury’s early-game play-calling tendencies?
“I wish I had an answer,” he told the media this week.
Answers, for this operation, are often in short supply.
Kingsbury, a former college head coach hired away from becoming USC’s offensive coordinator by the Cardinals, mostly lives in “11” personnel (three wide receivers) in the shotgun formation (which Arizona uses 95 percent of the time, the most in the NFL, according to data from stats website TruMedia). He eschews motion — Arizona is 31st of 32 teams in its usage — despite it being more popular than ever among the brightest offensive minds. Arizona largely forgoes play-action (28th in usage) at a time when early-down play-action fuels the league’s best offenses.
He’s not the only young coach who dares teams to stop his attack in “11” and the shotgun, but unlike the Rams’ Sean McVay and Cincinnati Bengals’ Zac Taylor, he has no truly big wins to show for it. Innovation and creativity seem to be lacking, with 2019 first overall pick Murray making just enough off-script plays to tease but not nearly enough to win consistently.
“There is an arrogance to their scheme on both sides of the ball,” said one scout who has watched the Cardinals closely but is not permitted to speak about them by his employer. “It’s like they just say, ‘We’re going to do what we planned to do, no matter what.’ But it’s not working.”
Said a high-ranking official from an NFC club, under similar restrictions about speaking publicly about other organizations: “We were shocked that they extended the coach. It’s not a sophisticated scheme. He’s not considered a great play-caller. Every year the production drops as the season goes on.”
Problem is, this season the Cardinals have looked as ineffective as they ended the 2021 campaign. That raises major questions about what’s to come.
The offensive line is again a problem in the running game (just 3.5 yards per rush in the first half of games, before the Cardinals are far behind and teams are conceding the ground game). For all their money spent, the Cardinals are 28th in yards per play (4.77), and Murray is 30th in intended air yards per attempt (6.02) and sports a brutal passer rating of 82.6 — about the same as Baker Mayfield, who was drafted first overall a year before Murray and took a preseason pay cut to facilitate a trade to Carolina.
General Manager Steve Keim dealt a first-round pick to get wide receiver Marquise Brown from Baltimore, with the idea that the smaller speedster — a teammate of Murray’s at Oklahoma — would unlock the deep game. But he struggles to run a full route tree, suffers from drops and was not a consistent downfield threat for boyhood buddy Lamar Jackson with the Ravens. For the Cardinals, he has been a short-yardage safety valve at best. Brown is averaging just 10.5 yards per catch — only two of his 24 receptions are for more than 20 yards — and Murray has a staggering passer rating of 39.96 on balls traveling 11 yards or more downfield.
The Cardinals don’t seem to think they can beat opponents by going with heavy personnel — they use two tight ends just 13.5 percent of the time, 29th in the NFL — though it might boost a sagging running game. They keep relying on A.J. Green as a regular route runner, even though some scouts believe the 34-year-old is done. (Murray is 5 for 13 targeting Green this season, gaining a putrid 2.23 yards per attempt.) And there don’t seem to be enough pass catchers who can win individual battles to help bail out the quarterback — or the scheme.
“Just look at the film of the Raiders game” in Week 2, said another scout who has watched the Cardinals closely. “The offense, when they need a play, is ‘wait for Murray to run around and make a big play.’ That’s how they win games.”
Murray remains polarizing in the scouting and executive community, where some still question his dedication to his craft. The Cardinals’ insertion of a clause in his contract mandating time spent studying his playbook — later removed after it became public — spoke to the team’s uncertainties.
“It makes no sense to me,” longtime NFL executive Joe Banner, who negotiated contracts for over a decade, said of that clause over the summer. “I don’t understand why a team making this commitment felt like it had to ask for it, or why the player would agree to it. Of course, it was always going to get out. Both sides knew that. It’s preposterous.”
Botched draft picks and signings have much to do with this malaise as well, but that didn’t prevent Keim from getting another payday from Bidwill this offseason. And good luck overhauling the roster at this time of year.
“Never underestimate how close Keim is with that owner,” said one NFL GM, not at liberty to comment on other organizations. “It’s like he’s part of the family. Does wonders for your job security.”
Even Kingsbury himself doesn’t seem particularly confident about where it’s all going. He speaks about the Cardinals’ early-game foibles — they’ve trailed by at least 13 points before scoring in all three of their games — almost in the passive voice, as if the failures have been foisted upon him: “It’s hard when you’re chasing offensively and defensively like we’ve been. We’re just trying to crawl back into it. You’re not calling the game on your terms. You’re trying to catch up. That’s not an easy place to be, and that’s where we’ve been.”
Should the coaching staff mull major philosophical change? Is it time for reinvention — or at least alterations in how the Cardinals practice and navigate the workweek?
“At some point, it just has to click for us,” Kingsbury told the Arizona media when probed on such matters.
Will that happen? I wouldn’t bet on it. The problem for Cardinals fans: Bidwill already has doubled down on his Kliff and Kyler gamble. | 2022-09-29T10:14:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kliff Kingsbury, Kyler Murray and the Arizona Cardinals are struggling - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/kliff-kingsbury-kyler-murray/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/kliff-kingsbury-kyler-murray/ |
Terry McLaurin hauls in a pass against Philadelphia safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson in the Commanders' Week 3 loss to the Eagles. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
In the first three games of the season, Washington Commanders star wide receiver Terry McLaurin has been a non-factor before halftime. In three first halves, he has run 58 routes but gotten only six pass targets, three of which were on the mark and only one of which he caught — for nine yards.
“I just try to be ready for my opportunities when they do come,” McLaurin said. “Obviously, you want to get involved as early as possible. I know my role in this offense is a big one, and any time I can try to impact the game as early as possible, that’s what I want to do. I think Coach Turner and Carson know that as well. But at the same time, those plays don’t necessarily come up as early as you would want. … I just try to stay prepared for when those plays do come up and control what I can control.”
“There’s plays for [McLaurin]. There’s plays for each guy, and we haven’t executed them well yet,” Wentz said. “I’m very confident we will get him and the other guys involved. … I don’t think it’s anything that we want to panic about or force the issue on, because I know he’ll get his.” | 2022-09-29T10:14:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Slow-starting Commanders offense has yet to lean on Terry McLaurin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/terry-mclaurin-commanders-offense/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/terry-mclaurin-commanders-offense/ |
Tom Stoppard at 85: ‘Without the writing, life isn’t purposeful’
The playwright’s sprawling ‘Leopoldstadt,’ now on Broadway, heartachingly explores his Jewish roots
Tom Stoppard stands at the Longacre Theatre in Manhattan on Sept. 15, 2022. (Jesse Dittmar for The Washington Post)
NEW YORK — Tom Stoppard sounded sincerely perplexed when Patrick Marber, the director of his latest Broadway play, declared that he had always known that Stoppard was Jewish.
“I’m fascinated by it,” Stoppard said of the assertion. How, he wondered, could Marber have been so sure of this when Stoppard himself hadn’t known it? Marber, a British Jewish dramatist (“Closer”) and director, was adamant.
“My two heroes were the Jewish playwrights Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard,” Marber recounted. “I always knew [Stoppard] was being claimed as a Jew, certainly by my proud Jewish father. It was just a known thing.”
Stoppard listened, marveling at the observation. “I’ve never had this conversation with Patrick,” he remarked during a recent joint Zoom interview.
Now we’re all receiving instruction on the evolution of Stoppard’s ethnic identity by virtue of “Leopoldstadt,” the renowned playwright’s new, sprawling drama. It lays bare his coming to terms with a heritage that had been suppressed, of one that perhaps he wasn’t capable of fully absorbing until midlife.
The play, which has its official opening Sunday night at the Longacre Theatre after a sustained success in London, is easily the 85-year-old Stoppard’s most anguishing work, in a canon that includes some of the most intellectually adventurous mainstream drama of the past half-century. Plays of glittering urbanity, such as “Arcadia,” “Travesties,” “The Invention of Love,” “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.” (Not to mention an Oscar-winning screenplay for “Shakespeare in Love.”)
“Leopoldstadt” — which Stoppard originally thought to title “A Family Album” — portrays in epic fashion a large, extended family of well-to-do Viennese Jews between 1899 and 1955, the decades leading up to and after the advance of antisemitism and Nazi atrocity. It’s a story of devotion wrapped in doom. Some 30 actors, American and British, populate the stage in the $8 million production, stats that place this venture, imported by British producer Sonia Friedman, wildly above the normal scale for a Broadway play.
“Sonia gave me carte blanche,” Stoppard said, “and she gave me the opportunity to write a play which was, as a business model, insanity.”
The successive generations depicted over the two hours and 10 minutes (performed without an intermission) are fictionalized. But through his gallery of characters, Stoppard refracts something searingly vivid about the indelible truth of one’s roots, about the erasures time and circumstance and neglect impose on memory, about the guilt that attends the survival of a genocide, like an insistent guest at a perpetual memorial. Even as the shattering events depicted here ring familiar, especially to Jews, who have the intimations of annihilation soldered onto their souls, Stoppard’s words contribute another poetic verse to a long and tragic elegy.
“The play grew out of the related self-reproach about seeing my life as a charmed life,” Stoppard said during our long conversation. Marber and I were on video, but Stoppard was unseen, his throaty vowels and clipped consonants wafting in, as if over a PA system.
“It was a phrase I’ve used over the years, because I was thinking to myself, I got scooped out of the way of the Nazis, then out of the way of the Japanese after Pearl Harbor, and then instead of going back to Communist Czechoslovakia, I found myself an English schoolboy. Of course it was a charmed life. I finally realized I should write about this because, yes, this notion of having a charmed life ignores my early history and completely erases a family background.”
In 1999, Stoppard wrote a magazine article, “On turning out to be Jewish,” as the coming-out event of what has become a protracted, candid effort to explain an aspect of his life he long failed to explore.
He was born Tomás Straussler in 1937 in what was then Czechoslovakia to Jewish parents. But he wouldn’t learn of the Jewishness on both sides of his family until decades later, in 1993, when a cousin revealed, among other things, that all four of his grandparents had died in Nazi killing centers. His mother, having been widowed after escaping Europe and resettling in Singapore, married an English army officer, Ken Stoppard, a crusty non-Jew and apparent antisemite, when the boy was 8. As Stoppard biographer Hermione Lee and others have recounted, any Jewish identity evaporated in the new family life.
The life story has complexities that beggar volumes of analysis: To many Jews, the notion of not knowing (as in the famous case of the late U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright) is hard to fathom. I asked Stoppard, in view of the subject of his latest play, whether he now thinks of himself as a Jewish playwright.
“No,” he said, “and I never have done. I think of myself as an English playwright.”
Stoppard was transfixed for the moment by Marber’s father’s notion that he was always a Jew in plain sight. Wrestling with that idea, Stoppard cited “Travesties,” his cerebral 1974 play about Dadaism, and the metaphysical musings in “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern,” in which two secondary “Hamlet” characters are promoted to center stage.
“I’m asking myself, thinking about ‘Travesties’ … where did he see the Jewishness in that?” Stoppard said, referring to Marber’s father. “If you went back to ‘Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,’ where are the Jews?
“I’m intrigued by this whole conversation,” he continued. “When I said I always think of myself as an English playwright more than a Jewish playwright, that’s nothing but the truth. Partly because there’s a kind of pride in it. It’s actually the kind of pride in being associated with a great British tradition.”
That these questions are turbulently alive for Stoppard seems undeniable, on the evidence of the play. In “Leopoldstadt’s” final act, three family survivors, played by Jenna Augen, Arty Froushan and Brandon Uranowitz, gather in their looted ancestral home in Vienna 10 years after World War II. Froushan’s Leo — a transparent stand-in for Stoppard — has arrived from England, to which he was whisked away as a child, his Austrian Jewish identity long since Anglicized. When Leo professes ignorance about the family’s fate under the Nazis, Augen’s Rosa erupts: “That’s not an excuse, Leo!” she cries. “You knew you were Jewish.”
“When?” Leo replies. “Yes, obviously I knew. But you don’t understand. In England it wasn’t something you had to know, or something people had to know about other people. I can’t remember anyone asking me. It was the Book of Common Prayer if you could be bothered, and a carol service at Christmas.”
The thorny issues the play raises about assimilation, collective responsibility and one’s sense of self feel especially relevant in an America experiencing a rise in antisemitism and a breakdown into tribal factions. It comes across as a play that could speak to many audiences, not just Jewish ones.
The cast of “Leopoldstadt” — many of them Jewish — is keenly aware of the resonances. Uranowitz, who plays two central roles — Ludwig, a Jewish mathematician in the first and second acts, and Nathan, a half-Jewish family descendant 50 years later — said in a separate interview that the piece is “incredibly taxing but incredibly rewarding.”
“The questions that we’re asking are such distinctly American Jewish questions that are really bubbling to the surface, particularly right now,” he said. “There’s something for multiple generations of American Jews in this play. There are the generation of survivors and children of survivors that want to honor their families. And then I think there’s also the generation, like my generation and younger generations, who are contending with what it means to be Jewish in this country, and particularly in the context of what’s going on politically and culturally.”
It’s a testament to Stoppard’s esteem as a dramatist that such a massive play could be staged in a commercial run, without an acting star, on Broadway in 2022; the odds against financial success are astronomical. “We have a very brave and passionate producer in Sonia Friedman, who had said to Tom, ‘Write the play you want to write,’ ” Marber said.
So Stoppard did. But as to whether this is an octogenarian playwright’s last play, well, the man with the diamond-cut precision with language is imprecise. “I would like to write something new, but it’s hard to imagine how it can avoid being a setback in scale and ambition and profundity,” he said. “Because there’s nothing more profound than the Holocaust.
“When I finished ‘Leopoldstadt,’ my feeling was that if I didn’t write anything else, that’s okay. Because I ended up with a big play. That was three years ago, and I don’t feel at all like that now. Without the writing, life isn’t purposeful in a vital way. And therefore, I cannot announce to myself that I’ve stopped.”
Leopoldstadt, by Tom Stoppard. Directed by Patrick Marber. At Longacre Theatre, 220 W. 48th St., New York. telecharge.com. | 2022-09-29T10:14:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tom Stoppard at 85: With 'Leopoldstadt,' exploring his Jewish roots - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/09/29/tom-stoppard-leopoldstadt-broadway/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/09/29/tom-stoppard-leopoldstadt-broadway/ |
U-Md. to dedicate dorm named for Black students who broke barriers on campus
The Johnson-Whittle Hall and Heritage Community plaza on the University of Maryland campus in College Park. (John T. Consoli/U-Md.)
In the fall of 1955, Elaine Johnson Coates became one of seven African American students allowed to live on the University of Maryland campus. She graduated four years later, the first African American woman to do so.
She overcame struggles of prejudice and loneliness to get her education.
“I thought when I walked away in 1959 with my diploma in hand that no one would ever speak my name again,” Coates said. “I was surprised but really honored when they contacted me and started asking about my time there.”
Coates’s name will now be part of the campus, on one of two residence halls honoring former students who broke barriers at the university. Johnson-Whittle Hall — which will be dedicated in a ceremony Friday — also honors Hiram Whittle, who in 1951 was the first African American male admitted to the university.
Whittle died in 2021. After the announcement of the residence hall names in 2020, Whittle said, “My hope is that my story will continue to inspire the campus community to move forward and follow their dreams.”
The co-ed residence hall will house 450 students, with single and double rooms available.
“A great privilege of my career is playing a role in honoring Maryland trailblazers, including the time I have spent with Hiram Whittle and Elaine Johnson Coates,” said U-Md. President Darryll Pines. “Students from all backgrounds come to Maryland and thrive, in part, because of them. Now generations of Terps will call Johnson-Whittle Hall their home, and they will be inspired by a story of diverse excellence.”
The university opened a neighboring residence hall, Pyon-Chen Hall, in 2021 honoring Pyon Su, who in 1891 became the first Korean student to graduate from the institution, and Chunjen Constant Chen, who in 1915 became the first Chinese student to enroll at the school.
Coates initially planned to go into teaching after she graduated but did not receive a placement — Black schools were oversaturated and White schools were not hiring. She pivoted and went into social work for two years. Later, she got an opportunity to teach at her former high school for a few years, then returned to social work. She eventually earned a master’s degree in social work.
U-Md. previously honored Coates’s achievements at the Maryland Awards in 2019, when she became the first recipient of an award in her name. She also gave the 2019 commencement address, discussing the importance of being fearless even in the midst of struggle.
Coates said the university has been taking the right steps toward creating diverse and inclusive spaces. “During the past couple of years, as I’ve been going out for meetings and seeing all the other opportunities for Blacks and other minorities out there, it’s just amazing,” Coates said. “I did not have that support. It was not there.”
Coates will attend Friday’s ceremony, with friends and family traveling to show their support.
Her granddaughter Paris Walker made a TikTok highlighting Coates’s personal tour of the residence hall. “I am incredibly honored to have been able to share this groundbreaking moment with her,” Walker wrote in a caption.
Coates’s children, Tamara Coates-Walker and Jason Coates, who both attended U-Md., will be in attendance Friday. Jason Coates works as a wellness director and trainer, and Coates-Walker works as an obstetrician-gynecologist.
Coates-Walker said she is amazed that her mother’s story is so important to others and that she has the opportunity to be honored in such a big way.
She said that although her mother was the first Black woman to graduate from U-Md., she didn’t view herself as a “legacy” and her mother wouldn’t harp on what took place throughout her experience.
“She would tell me to turn every scar into a star, meaning find something good in any situation,” Coates-Walker said. “These were the lessons I took when I went to Maryland.” | 2022-09-29T11:09:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | University of Maryland to dedicate Johnson-Whittle residence hall - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/29/umd-johnson-whittle-residence-hall/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/29/umd-johnson-whittle-residence-hall/ |
Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers are off to an inconsistent start heading into their Week 4 game against the New England Patriots. (Jason Behnken/AP)
Through three weeks of the NFL season, typical NFC contenders such as the Green Bay Packers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Los Angeles Rams have had inconsistent starts, and the top of the AFC doesn’t seem to be living up to its hype yet, either.
Still, the AFC appears ahead of its counterpart after three games, largely because of the caliber of play of its young quarterbacks. In the NFC, where the Philadelphia Eagles are the conference’s lone undefeated team, Jalen Hurts is the only young signal caller performing consistently at the moment. Maybe this is the week when the NFC finds its footing, with Tom Brady’s receivers potentially returning from injury and suspension for Tampa Bay, Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers adjusting to life without Davante Adams, and Arizona’s Kyler Murray finding his groove.
So far, 18 games have been decided by three or fewer points, and 25 have been decided by six or fewer, both the most in NFL history through three weeks of a season. Here’s a quick look at the matchups on the schedule in Week 4.
Dolphins (3-0) at Bengals (1-2), 8:15 p.m., Amazon Prime: As if this one needed any spice, Miami’s Tyreek Hill supplied it, looking ahead to his third matchup with Cincinnati cornerback Eli Apple in nine months. “I can’t wait to go against Eli Apple,” Hill told reporters Sunday. “I owe you, boy. I owe you. I’m here. The Cheetah is here.” The Kansas City Chiefs, Hill’s former team, lost twice to Cincinnati in a 28-day span last season, and Apple called Hill a baby in a tweet after the AFC championship game. Bengals safety Jessie Bates responded, “Somebody comes after Eli, he comes after all of us.” Hill would be helped by the appearance of quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who is considered questionable with back and ankle injuries.
Vikings (2-1) vs. Saints (1-2) in London, 9:30 a.m., NFL Network: This is the first of five international games (three in London, one each in Munich and Mexico City) in eight weeks. Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson will look to bounce back from two lackluster performances, with nine total receptions for 62 yards in the two games since his 184-yard game in Week 1.
Browns (2-1) at Falcons (1-2), 1 p.m.: Cleveland’s Amari Cooper is coming off back-to-back 100-yard games for the first time since 2016, when he was with the Raiders. A Browns receiver had not previously accomplished that since Josh Gordon’s four straight 100-yard games in 2013.
Bills (2-1) at Ravens (2-1), 1 p.m.: Lamar Jackson’s “ka-ching” tour continues; the soon-to-be free agent has passed for 749 yards and 10 touchdowns (with the NFL’s leading passer rating of 119.0) and rushed for 243 yards and two touchdowns. Buffalo is coming off a game in which it had the highest time of possession (40:40) in a non-overtime loss for any team since Week 7 in 2014.
Commanders (1-2) at Cowboys (2-1), 1 p.m.: Dallas has given up only three touchdowns over three games, tied for the fewest allowed through the first three games of a season in franchise history.
Seahawks (1-2) at Lions (1-2), 1 p.m.: Seattle’s 47 points on the season are fewer than half of Detroit’s 95. And the legendary Seattle defense is a thing of the past, with the Seahawks forcing only one three-and-out all season.
Chargers (1-2) at Texans (0-2-1), 1 p.m.: Los Angeles Coach Brandon Staley is feeling the heat, this time less for fourth-down gambles and more for his decision to allow franchise quarterback Justin Herbert (25 of 45 completions for 297 yards) to make the call to keep playing in a lopsided loss despite being hampered by fractured rib cartilage. Staley said Herbert didn’t suffer any setbacks and is expected to play going forward.
Titans (1-2) at Colts (1-1-1), 1 p.m.: Derrick Henry rebounded with 85 yards rushing (on 20 carries) and a touchdown to go with five receptions for 58 yards last week against Las Vegas. Indianapolis ranks first in the league in rushing yards allowed per attempt.
Bears (2-1) at Giants (2-1), 1 p.m.: New York’s Daniel Jones remains a man under pressure (sacked five times Monday night by the Cowboys, who pressured him on 40.5 percent of dropbacks) behind a porous offensive line. But Saquon Barkley is second in the league in rushing with 317 yards.
Jaguars (2-1) at Eagles (3-0), 1 p.m.: Beware the … Jaguars, whose last road win before last week was in 2019? The last time before the past two weeks the team had a 20-point lead in back-to-back games was Weeks 14 and 15 in 2000 against the Browns and Cardinals. Doug Pederson, who coached the Eagles to a Super Bowl championship and now toils in Jacksonville, was a quarterback for the Browns in that game.
Jets (1-2) at Steelers (1-2), 1 p.m.: Mike Tomlin swore after Pittsburgh’s Thursday night loss to Cleveland last week that he would not make a quarterback switch from Mitch Trubisky to Kenny Pickett, but it may soon be time to give that a try. Speaking of quarterback changes, Zach Wilson is expected to start for the Jets after he missed the first three games with a knee injury he suffered during the preseason. Joe Flacco returns to the bench.
Cardinals (1-2) at Panthers (1-2), 4:05 p.m.: Slow starts have hurt Arizona, which trailed the Rams by 13 and the Chiefs by 16 in the first half of its losses. The Cardinals rallied for an overtime win against the Raiders after trailing by 20 in their only win.
Patriots (1-2) at Packers (2-1), 4:25 p.m.: Rodgers is averaging the fewest passing yards per game — 228 — in his career as a starter. In the Patriots, he’ll face a Matt Patricia-led offense with Brian Hoyer (whose last start was in 2020 and last win was in 2016 with Chicago) and Bailey Zappe the quarterback options with Mac Jones expected to be out with an ankle injury.
Broncos (2-1) at Raiders (0-3), 4:25 p.m.: Since 1979, only six teams have made the playoffs after a 0-3 start, but the Raiders did so last year with help in Week 17. Maybe history will repeat. If so, Derek Carr should pause before throwing the ball in the direction of Denver cornerback Patrick Surtain II, who has allowed the fourth-lowest passer rating (59.8) with a minimum of 70 targets since he was drafted last year.
Chiefs (2-1) at Buccaneers (2-1), 8:20 p.m., NBC: This is the sixth Patrick Mahomes-Tom Brady matchup despite the fact Mahomes is in only his sixth NFL season. Brady’s receivers have been hurt (or suspended for a game in the case of Mike Evans), and the Bucs have managed only one offensive touchdown in each of their three games. Evans is back this week, and Julio Jones might be as well.
Rams (2-1) at 49ers (1-2), 8:15, ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN Deportes: San Francisco has given up 37 points over three games, and yet the 49ers are 1-2. The 2-1 Rams have allowed 70. | 2022-09-29T11:22:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL Week 4 schedule, matchups and five-minute guide - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/nfl-week-4-schedule/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/nfl-week-4-schedule/ |
Driving Your Tesla in California Is Really, Really Expensive
An illuminated icon of an electric vehicle (EV) charger on display at a Electrify America booth during AutoMobility LA ahead of the Los Angeles Auto Show in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on Thursday, Nov. 18, 2021. Covid-19 canceled the Los Angeles Auto Show in 2020 and now that the show is back, some automakers have decided they didn’t need it anyway. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
Forgive the obviousness, but if you want to sell a new product, make it affordable. Electricity isn’t new, but the effort to electrify much of our world — essential to decarbonization — is. Persuading people of middling means to, say, swap their gasoline-fueled car for a battery-powered one requires making not only electric vehicles affordable but also the electricity to charge them up.
Yet California, at the vanguard of net-zero, which recently announced a ban on sales of new gas-guzzlers by 2035, doesn’t make it easy. The state sports not only the second-highest average residential electricity tariffs in the US, but also the most regressive.
Severin Borenstein, Meredith Fowlie and James Sallee of UC Berkeley’s Energy Institute at Haas just published an analysis of detailed billing data for more than 11 million Californian households, in conjunction with Next 10, a non-profit organization. They found that electricity tariffs there are two-to-three times the “social marginal cost.” That’s the actual cost to the utility of producing and delivering an extra kilowatt-hour of electricity to an existing customer, including an assumed social cost of emissions. These were modeled at about 8-9 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2019 compared with an average residential tariff for the state of 19 cents.
Most electricity bills consist of a fixed charge and a charge that varies with how much electricity we use. In theory, the fixed charge covers costs that don’t change regardless of usage, such as building and maintaining the grid. In practice, all utilities recover some of their fixed costs through that variable charge. This is always a mismatch since fixed costs are fixed, regardless of how long you leave the lights on.The distortion is bigger in California for two reasons. First, monthly bills there have among the lowest fixed charges in the US, meaning more fixed costs get layered into the variable price. Second, the variable price also includes other charges that don’t relate to the cost of providing additional electricity, such as funding compensation for wildfire victims or alleviating the burden of high power prices on poorer residents (think about that last one for a minute).The extra costs are an effective tax on electricity, in the sense that they inflate the cost and thereby deter consumption. The economists at UC Berkeley estimate this “tax” adds about $600 to the annual running cost of an electric vehicle in California, on average. To put that in perspective, that takes away roughly a quarter of the money saved by not buying gasoline for a regular car and instead investing in a Tesla Inc. car or EVs from the likes of Hyundai Motor Co. or Ford Motor Co. (1) It also adds $600 in annual costs for households switching to electric heat from gas, even as the state moves to ban gas-fired heating and boilers by 2030.
Moreover, these charges hit California’s poorest households harder, the analysis finds, equating to 2-3% of annual income for households at the bottom of the scale versus less than 1% for those earning $200,000 or more. This disparity is compounded by the greater prevalence of solar panels on the roofs of wealthier households, since it reduces the quantity of electricity they draw from the grid.
Socializing costs via electricity prices is embedded in California’s DNA. Exhibit A: the state’s quirky “inverse condemnation” laws that funnel the costs of grid-related fires through bills regardless of a utility’s actual culpability. Yet inflating the cost of incremental power consumption in this way curbs demand, and regressively so. Potential solutions include higher fixed charges linked to household income and just shifting some state-level costs, such as for energy-efficiency programs or wildfire mitigation, to general taxation. Absent such reform, California risks pricing its own citizens out of the future its legislators seek to will into being.More From Bloomberg Opinion:
• California Power Crisis Is New Normal: Elements by Liam Denning
• Can Oil Majors Make Electric Vehicle Charging Pay?: Liam Denning
(1) This assumes a vehicle getting 25 miles per gallon, driving 10,000 miles a year, at a current average Californian pump price of $5.72 per gallon. | 2022-09-29T11:44:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Driving Your Tesla in California Is Really, Really Expensive - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/driving-your-tesla-in-california-is-really-really-expensive/2022/09/29/dd4a1658-3fea-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/driving-your-tesla-in-california-is-really-really-expensive/2022/09/29/dd4a1658-3fea-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
MacKenzie Scott. (Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
The petition was filed in King County, Wash., on Monday, 18 months after Scott and Dan Jewett announced their marriage. The filing requests that the couple’s property be divided according to a separation contract, the details of which were not included in the petition. Jewett and his lawyer also signed the filing, which was first reported by the New York Times.
In 2019, Scott and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (who owns The Washington Post) ended their 25-year marriage, with Scott being awarded about 4 percent of Amazon, a cut worth roughly $36 billion at the time. Since then, Scott has been donating her fortune at an astonishing rate — an estimated $12 billion to more than 1,200 groups in three years, the Times reported in March.
Most recently, Scott donated $15 million to the Health Forward Foundation and $20 million to the Episcopal Health Foundation, the organizations announced Tuesday. Earlier this month, Scott donated two Beverly Hills homes worth a combined $55 million to the California Community Foundation, a Los Angeles-based charitable organization.
Jeff Bezos, in divorce settlement, retains 75 percent of the Amazon stock he held with Scott
The couple’s marriage was made public in March 2021, when Jewett — then a science teacher at Seattle’s Lakeside School, where Scott’s children have attended classes — posted a letter to Scott’s profile on the Giving Pledge. Philanthropists make pledges through the organization to donate most of their wealth during their lifetimes or after they die.
Praveena Somasundaram contributed to this report. | 2022-09-29T11:44:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | MacKenzie Scott files for divorce from second husband Dan Jewett - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/mackenzie-scott-second-divorce/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/mackenzie-scott-second-divorce/ |
Those old power plants? Now we have the means to turn them green.
By Dan W. Reicher
The Diablo Canyon Power Plant at Avila Beach in San Luis Obispo County, Calif., in March 2011. (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)
Dan W. Reicher is a senior research scholar at Stanford’s Doerr School of Sustainability and an adviser to the Climate Adaptive Infrastructure Fund. Previously, he was U.S. assistant secretary of energy and Google’s director of climate change and energy initiatives.
After decades of failing to tackle the climate crisis head on, Congress finally got its act together in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). We have almost $500 billion in government support to address this existential threat by building thousands of new green energy facilities — solar plants, wind farms, long-distance transmission lines, even nuclear reactors and carbon capture projects — across the country. The only problem: Increasingly, people don’t want to live next to these often massive new plants, farmers decry the loss of prime land, and nearby communities argue that the projects will sacrifice their rural character.
But the good news is that there’s a faster and cheaper way to scale up clean energy: retrofitting thousands of old energy plants into an array of new green facilities. And the IRA provides an additional $250 billion to the Energy Department to help finance just that.
These facilities include everything from old power stations, transmission lines and oil wells to long-standing dams, waste sites as well as industrial and residential buildings. Consider this shining example: In 2010, the Energy Department lent a small firm $465 million that helped retrofit a mothballed old auto factory to build electric vehicles. The company? Tesla — now the planet’s most valuable carmaker.
To be sure, we still need to develop many new clean-energy projects, but we don’t have the luxury of ignoring what’s already built. And the “old is new” opportunities are boundless. Across the United States, scores of coal-fired power plants, complete with transmission lines, significant land and supportive adjacent communities, are shutting down. In Illinois, nine such plants are on track to become solar farms, with one facility alone hosting 190,000 solar panels on 500 acres, enough to generate electricity for tens of thousands of homes, plus a massive battery for periods when the sun isn’t shining. The largest coal-fired power plant in New England, on the Massachusetts seashore in Somerset, will soon be replaced by a factory making undersea electricity cable for offshore wind turbines and connecting a nearby offshore wind farm to the power grid.
To cut carbon emissions, natural gas-fired turbines are being converted to burn hydrogen, increasingly extracted from water using low-carbon electricity. Old oil-drilling rigs can be repurposed to develop new geothermal wells for electricity generation, while some retired oil wells can be tapped for hot water to provide geothermal heating. According to its backers, one effort will make Oklahoma — with almost 500,000 old oil and gas wells — the “Geothermal Capitol of the Nation.”
Many thousands of miles of existing power lines can be upgraded to carry more electricity — and current rail lines and highways could provide existing rights of way for new electrical lines — thereby helping to avoid fierce battles over siting greenfield transmission. The old generators in some of the 2,300 U.S. hydropower plants can be replaced to generate more electricity, and existing dams can be retrofitted to store electricity through “pumped hydropower.” The turbines in older wind farms can be upgraded with longer blades and more powerful generators or replaced entirely with new machines. Old waste sites and surface mines can host renewable energy projects and restore damaged lands in the process. And, of course, we can renovate factories, offices and homes to use less energy — and increasingly meet their remaining electricity needs from on-site solar or wind.
Even existing nuclear power plants can be retrofitted and kept on line. In California, the state legislature recently voted to support the upgrade and continued operation of the Diablo Canyon reactors, which generate almost 10 percent of the state’s electricity. And the Energy Department reported this month that old coal-fired power plants are good locations for new nuclear reactors.
The $250 billion in the IRA is key to unlocking these opportunities, especially for projects demonstrating retrofit potential with both an attractive financial upside and straightforward replicability. The government can make loans or provide loan guarantees in three areas: to retool, repower, repurpose or replace shuttered energy infrastructure; to enable operating energy facilities to cut greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution; and to clean up environmental damage associated with energy plants. The new law also provides $5 billion for loan closing and other costs borrowers would otherwise have to shoulder.
We must get this major investment vehicle on the road quickly and run it well. The climate crisis means we don’t have the usual several years for the Energy Department to issue regulations and to fight over them in court. Some of the investment — and the resulting jobs and tax revenue — should occur in economically distressed areas of the country, particularly where energy-related jobs such as coal mining are quickly vanishing. We need to excite clean-energy developers and investors about retrofitting old facilities and making rapid progress on shovel-ready projects. And, importantly, foes of nuclear energy, hydropower, carbon capture — and greening up fossil-fuel-powered plants more generally — must temper their opposition to these technologies to increase our odds of conquering climate change.
The IRA has handed us an extraordinary tool to do something meaningful about the climate. Now we need the fortitude to use that tool — and quickly — on these compelling old-is-new opportunities. | 2022-09-29T11:44:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Old power plants can be retrofitted to new green facilities - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/power-plants-retrofitting-ira-green-facilities/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/power-plants-retrofitting-ira-green-facilities/ |
Thousands were released from prison during covid. The results are shocking.
By Molly Gill
Molly Gill is vice president of policy for Families Against Mandatory Minimums.
We are keeping many people in prison even though they are no danger to the public, a jaw-dropping new statistic shows. That serves as proof that it’s time to rethink our incarceration policies for those with a low risk of reoffending.
To protect those most vulnerable to covid-19 during the pandemic, the Cares Act allowed the Justice Department to order the release of people in federal prisons and place them on home confinement. More than 11,000 people were eventually released. Of those, the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) reported that only 17 of them committed new crimes.
That’s not a typo. Seventeen. That’s a 0.15 percent recidivism rate in a country where it’s normal for 30 to 65 percent of people coming home from prison to reoffend within three years of release.
Of those 17 people, most new offenses were for possessing or selling drugs or other minor offenses. Of the 17 new crimes, only one was violent (an aggravated assault), and none were sex offenses.
This extremely low recidivism rate shows there are many, many people in prison we can safely release to the community. These 11,000 releases were not random. People in low- and minimum-security prisons or at high risk of complications from covid were prioritized for consideration for release.
No one was automatically barred from consideration because of their crime, sentence length or time served. The BOP instead assessed each eligible person individually, looking at their prison disciplinary record, any violent or gang-related conduct and their risk to the public.
The agency allowed a person’s release if they had a home to go to and would be able to weather all the burdens of home confinement. Home confinement requires people to wear an ankle monitor with GPS tracking, stay home except when given permission to leave for things such as work or doctor’s appointments and remain drug- and crime-free. No one was simply released onto the street without support or supervision.
The Cares Act policy teaches us that many of our prison sentences are unnecessarily lengthy. People who commit crimes should be held accountable, and that might include serious time in prison. Many of the people released to home confinement had years or even decades left to serve on their sentences. But they changed in prison and are no longer a danger to others, as the new data confirms.
Releases to home confinement were also focused on two groups of people who pose little to no risk to public safety: the elderly and the ill (i.e., those most likely to face serious covid complications). Study after study confirms that people become less likely to reoffend as they get older. America’s elderly prison population is growing rapidly, because of our use of lengthy prison terms.
People with serious chronic illnesses or physical disabilities are another group who can be safely released from long sentences. They are not dangerous, but their increased medical needs make them exponentially more expensive to incarcerate. Taxpayers aren’t getting much public safety bang for their buck when we incarcerate bedridden people.
The federal Cares Act home confinement program should inspire similar programs across the country. Virtually all states have programs available to release elderly or very sick people from prison, but they are hardly used and should be expanded. States should also give people serving the longest sentences a chance to go back to court after 10 or 15 years and prove that they have changed and can be safely released.
The data is in. It shows that we can thoughtfully release low-risk people from prison with supervision and not cause a new crime wave. At a time when crime is going up in so many cities and towns, we cannot afford to waste money or resources keeping those who no longer need to be in prison locked up. | 2022-09-29T11:45:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Covid policies show many people in prison are no danger to the public - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/prison-release-covid-pandemic-incarceration/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/prison-release-covid-pandemic-incarceration/ |
What Trump capitalized on in 2016
President-elect Donald Trump listens to members of the media at Mar-a-Lago in 2016. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Five years after Hillary Clinton titled her latest memoir, “What Happened,” the revolution that hit American politics in 2016 remains little understood. When the former secretary of state joined me on air to discuss her book in 2017, she’d worked out in her own mind what drove the most improbable upset in modern political history.
“I understand the anger,” Clinton told me. “I understand the resentment. I understand the very strong feelings that a lot of people in our country have about everything from the economy to race to immigration to national defense.”
But the cataclysm of 2016 is more complicated than that. Even now, do any of us who live inside the Beltway bubble or who swim in the waters of “elites” really understand?
Now comes an explanation from Walter Russell Mead, a scholar of U.S. foreign policy, national politics and national security as well as a past professor at Yale, who gets very close to the answer. I have no idea how Mead votes. To me, he’s always been a respected voice whose wide-ranging interests and scholarly credentials are not in question. He’s not a political analyst in the way the term is used today.
So it was a surprise that Mead used the final chapter of his latest book, “The Arc of a Covenant: The United States, Israel, and the Fate of the Jewish People,” to reexamine what happened in 2016.
Mead’s whole book deserves an in-depth read, but for those in the political analysis business, the final pages are worth the cover price. “Getting to grips with the Trump presidency is a trying task,” concedes Mead. “Trump was such a unique and controversial figure that both his achievements and his failures defy conventional analysis.”
“Yet with all his many shortcomings,” Mead continues, Trump “understood some important truths about international politics and the state of the world that eluded his establishment critics.
“To millions of Americans, [Trump] was like the little boy who dared to cry out that the emperor had no clothes — that the American elite had lost its way and had no answers for the problems of the United States, much less for those of the world beyond our frontiers.”
The folks caught most unaware of the undertow in 2015 and 2016? Republicans like me, categorized by Mead as Sun Belt Republicans, not so because of where we lived but because of our broad commitment to “optimism, laissez-faire conservatism, free trade, and a vigorous promotion of American values abroad and at home.”
We were blindsided by Trump, both his march through the primaries and his eventual upset in November 2016. The “Republican establishment, both intellectual and political, were the ones to suffer defenestration as Trump stole the Republican Party out from under them in 2016,” Mead observes.
Trump tallied 63 million votes in 2016, and he collected even more — 74 million — four years later. He lost the popular vote to Clinton by almost 3 million and to President Biden by 7 million.
Why were voters pulling the lever for Trump? They expressed their disapproval of who had come to govern American life, left, right and center, and what those “elites” had set as their priorities.
“If the mid-century model of an American economy built on the growing success and stability of a middle class no longer worked, what kind of society was the United States? … And if the United States could no longer see itself as a providential nation with a global mission,” Mead writes, “what did it mean to be an American?”
Similar forces are at work in other Western countries. Democratic electorates across the globe have been voting since World War II, Mead explains, to govern themselves via people like themselves who share their values. They have voted again and again against elites, especially elites embodying different morals and world views, he said. Even Ukraine’s struggle against Russia can best be understood in this context of “self-rule first,” Mead told me Monday.
Finally, he writes, a broad cross section of voters “wanted less and less to do with conventional Republican foreign policy. They still scorned Democratic talk about multilateralism and international institutions, but they no longer saw establishment Republicans as trustworthy opponents of the Democratic agenda at home or abroad.
“By 2016, millions of GOP voters were ready to strike out in a new direction. Donald Trump was in the right place at the right time.”
Read Mead. He has provided the balanced, persuasive short course on all that we need to understand. | 2022-09-29T11:45:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What Trump capitalized on in 2016 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/trump-captured-american-malaise/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/trump-captured-american-malaise/ |
Thursday briefing: Ian knocks out power to millions in Florida; rising mortgage rates; Coolio dies at 59; DALL-E; and more
Millions of people are without power in Florida.
The Category 4 hurricane made landfall in southwest Florida on Sept. 28 with 150 mph winds and threats of up to an 18-foot storm surge in some coastal areas. (Video: The Washington Post)
What to know: Ian was one of the strongest hurricanes ever to hit the U.S. It slammed into southwest Florida yesterday afternoon.
How bad is the damage? We’ll find out more today, but officials are expecting devastation; winds were so strong yesterday that first responders weren’t able to reach the most-flooded areas.
Ian will bring more heavy rains today.
The forecast: The storm, now downgraded from a hurricane, is moving over central and northeast Florida, then will make a second landfall in South Carolina tomorrow. Track its path here.
Today: Orlando and other parts of Florida could see dangerous flash floods; some areas could get up to 30 inches of rain.
The rest of the week: Parts of Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia are expected to get heavy rains.
The U.S. is preparing for a long conflict in Ukraine.
How? By making more long-range rocket artillery systems and sending them to Ukraine, the Pentagon said yesterday, though that could take years.
What this shows: The U.S. doesn’t expect the war to end any time soon. Russia is trying to round up 300,000 more troops and is preparing to illegally annex large parts of Ukraine.
The cost of a home loan is soaring.
How high? Some lenders are quoting over 7% for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, and data to be released this morning could show the highest average rate in two decades.
Why is this happening? Mainly because the U.S. central bank hiked interest rates again last week in an attempt to bring down prices.
What it means: The housing market is cooling as buyers are being priced out.
Coolio, one of the biggest hip-hop stars of the 1990s, died yesterday.
How we’ll remember him: “Gangsta’s Paradise” was a defining song of the decade, and he also put out hits like “C U When U Get There” and “1,2,3,4 (Sumpin’ New).”
What we know: The 59-year-old died at a friend’s Los Angeles home, his manager said. We don’t yet know why.
The FDA wants to change its definition of “healthy” food.
How? Products would need to a) have a meaningful amount of food like fruits or veggies and b) meet specific limits on added sugar, fats and other nutrients to use the word “healthy.”
Why? Six in 10 American adults have chronic lifestyle-related diseases. The goal is to make healthy choices easier, the FDA said yesterday.
However, it’s not that simple: The government has a spotty record on deciding what’s good for you, and the rules could change as they’re finalized.
You can now create any image in seconds using artificial intelligence.
How? DALL-E, software that makes original, sometimes accurate, images from any spur-of-the-moment phrase. A wait list was removed yesterday, giving anyone access.
It’s extremely popular: Around 1.5 million people use the text-to-image generator each day; however, researchers worry it could be misused to create realistic disinformation.
And now … a moment of joy: Watch Lizzo play James Madison’s centuries-old crystal flute. Plus, if you use public WiFi: Here’s what a creep could learn about you. | 2022-09-29T11:46:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Thursday, September 29 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/09/29/what-to-know-for-september-29/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/09/29/what-to-know-for-september-29/ |
Biden’s chances of being the 2024 Democratic nominee are rising dramatically
President Biden outside the White House on Sept. 28. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
President Biden won the Democratic nomination in 2020 largely because of his electability and ability to unite the full spectrum of Democrats. His success thus far in delivering on his center-left agenda reiterates the best argument for him to run in 2024: It avoids a brutal primary and the risk of a candidate too far left to win in the general election.
Biden’s higher approval rating in recent weeks is largely a function of his improved standing among Democrats. The Associated Press, for example, reported earlier this month that “78% of Democrats approve of Biden’s job performance, up from 65% in July. Sixty-six percent of Democrats approve of Biden on the economy, up from 54% in June.”
The most recent Morning Consult-Politico poll confirms the trend and shows the party is warming to the possibility of a reelection campaign. “Roughly 3 in 5 Democratic voters (59%) said Biden should run for reelection in 2024, up from a 51% low set in early July before Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act, the president’s signature legislative achievement of the year,” the poll found. “Over the same time period, separate Morning Consult surveys have found the share of Democratic voters who said Biden has been keeping his promises rose — from 50% in a July 7-9 survey to 69% now.” Among Democrats, there is a 20 percentage point increase in those who have heard positive news about Biden.
At a moment when many in the mainstream media narrative insist that former president Donald Trump has consolidated his hold on the party, it is actually Biden who has reaffirmed his broad support. If this persists, it is hard to imagine Biden turning down the chance to run for a second term, provided his health remains strong. Before LBJ decided against running for reelection after his relatively weak showing in the 1968 New Hampshire primary (because of the increasingly unpopular Vietnam War), the last president to voluntarily give up the chance for a second term was Rutherford B. Hayes. | 2022-09-29T11:53:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden’s chances of being the 2024 Democratic nominee are rising - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/biden-2024-reelection-will-he-run/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/biden-2024-reelection-will-he-run/ |
Kentucky and quarterback Will Levis are a good pick as an underdog against Mississippi on Saturday. (Michael Clubb/AP)
Clemson’s failure to cover as a seven-point favorite against Wake Forest — the Tigers won by six in double overtime — was my only loss in Week 4 of the college football season, giving this column two straight 3-1 weeks and a 10-6 record on the year. This good run ideally will continue in Week 5.
This column will give out four picks per week: the game of the week, a favorite, an underdog and a wild card, which can be anything (another favorite or underdog in a game that might be flying under the radar or a total, for instance). Hopefully we’ll all be rich by the time the clock hits zero in Inglewood, Calif., on Jan. 9.
No. 7 Kentucky (+7) at No. 14 Mississippi, noon, ESPN
No. 10 North Carolina State at No. 5 Clemson is probably the best game on Saturday’s schedule, but I’m not touching it because the remnants of Hurricane Ian could introduce a whole lot of weather uncertainty. Instead, let’s take a look at this battle of unbeaten SEC foes.
The Wildcats’ rushing attack has been more or less nonexistent without Chris Rodriguez, who has averaged 6.7 yards per carry and rushed for 26 touchdowns over the past three seasons but was suspended for the first four games this year after a DUI arrest in May. Rodriguez, the SEC’s leading rusher last year, will be back against the Rebels, significantly boosting a Kentucky rushing attack that ranks 121st in success rate and has averaged only 2.41 yards per carry (125th nationally).
Last weekend, Tulsa averaged 6.1 yards per rush against Mississippi, which allowed the Golden Hurricane to hang around after the Rebels jumped to a 35-14 lead in the second quarter. The Rebels still won, 35-27, but it wasn’t the sort of momentum-building performance needed entering SEC play, and Kentucky could finally find some running room.
Flipping sides, Mississippi rushed for 308 yards against Tulsa, but the Wildcats rank 18th nationally in rushing defense success rate. They also have allowed only two passing touchdowns (and one of them was on a trick play by Northern Illinois last weekend).
Neither of these teams have been super impressive against pedestrian opposition. I’ll go with the underdog Wildcats, who also have the better quarterback (NFL prospect Will Levis).
Western Kentucky (-5.5) vs. Troy, 7 p.m., ESPN Plus
How much is this spread being influenced by the fact that the Trojans last week scored a 16-7 win over Marshall, which earlier this season upset Notre Dame? It was a fairly smothering performance on defense — Troy held the Thundering Herd to just 2.5 yards per play — but the Trojans’ offense failed to reach the end zone even though it had eight drives enter Marshall territory. (It kicked three field goals, and its only touchdown came on a return of a Marshall fumble.)
Troy averages just 2.24 yards per carry (128th of 131 Football Bowl Subdivision teams) and runs the ball on only 43.4 percent of its scrimmage plays, which ranks 109th. This could play into Western Kentucky’s defensive strengths, because it ranks 16th in expected points added per pass, 25th in defensive passing success rate, 22nd in opponent yards per attempt and 20th in opponent passer rating.
Hilltoppers quarterback Austin Reed has thrown 14 touchdown passes against only three interceptions and will be the best quarterback Troy has seen this season, with a 175.9 rating. Coming off a 73-0 demolition of Florida International, Western Kentucky should be able to keep it going against the Trojans.
Illinois (+7) at Wisconsin, noon, Big Ten Network
The total for this one is pretty low at 43, and in a game in which scoring is expected to be at a premium, that’s a lot of points for an offensively challenged team such as the Badgers to be laying against an Illini team whose defense has been extremely stingy, allowing nine points combined in its three wins and only 23 in its one loss to Indiana, a three-point defeat in which Illinois fumbled four times and lost three of them.
Yes, the Illini’s three wins came against two bad FBS teams (Wyoming and Virginia) and a Football Championship Subdivision team (Chattanooga), but in that latter game — a 31-0 win — Illinois forced the Mocs into seven three-and-outs and held them to 142 yards overall and 2.7 per play. In its other three games, all victories, Chattanooga averaged 435.7 yards and 7.1 yards per play. FBS teams are supposed to handle FCS teams easily, but Illinois’ defense — which ranks second nationally in success rate and fifth in yards per play allowed (3.8) — went well beyond that, erasing any hope that the Mocs could keep pace.
Wisconsin has more offensive firepower than an FCS team, obviously, but in its two games against respectable competition, the Badgers managed only 14 points against Washington State and only seven in the competitive portion of Saturday’s 52-21 loss to Ohio State. (Fourteen of Wisconsin’s points came with less than 10 minutes remaining, when the game was well out of hand.) Take away Braelon Allen’s 75-yard touchdown run in garbage time against the Buckeyes’ backups, and the Badgers averaged only 3.4 yards per rush. Quarterback Graham Mertz averaged a sad 4.7 yards per pass attempt, which is exactly the same number Illinois is allowing this season. (Only Iowa and Michigan are better in that department.)
I’m expecting one of those Big Ten rock fights that always seem to pop up in the noon window, and the underdog is the play.
Stanford at No. 13 Oregon over 63½ points, 11 p.m., Fox Sports 1
These are two bad defenses, ranking 119th (Oregon) and 124th (Stanford) in success rate and 119th (Oregon) and 120th (Stanford) in points allowed per drive.
In three games against FBS opposition, the Ducks have allowed their opponents to breach their 40-yard line on 20 drives, and 14 of them ended in a touchdown. True, BYU only managed to put up 20 points against Oregon on Sept. 17, but of the seven Cougars drives that advanced past the Ducks’ 40, four ended in zero points (three turnovers on downs and a missed field goal). The rest of the time, opponents have been reaching the end zone freely.
Stanford has topped 28 points in only one of its three games — in its season opener against FCS Colgate — but that’s more a byproduct of a defense that can’t get the opponent off the field (we’ll get back to that in a second) and some bad turnover luck. Against USC on Sept. 10, the Cardinal had two drives end at the Trojans’ 2, one because of an interception and another because of a fumble. (Stanford scored touchdowns on its four other trips inside USC territory.) Three more drives ended because of turnovers in Saturday’s loss to Washington, two of them lost fumbles and another an interception thrown from the Huskies’ 17. In all, Stanford has fumbled eight times and failed to recover seven of them, a rate that ranks 112th in the country and is pretty unlucky: Of the 16 teams that have at least eight fumbles, only one other squad (Northwestern) has failed to recover the ball at such a low rate. (Auburn, for instance, has fumbled eight times and recovered six of them.) At some point, the bounces will start going Stanford’s way.
On the other side of the ball, the Cardinal is allowing 4.6 yards per carry (106th nationally), and its opponents are averaging 32:01 in time of possession (103rd). Oregon’s offense ranks third in rushing success rate. Both teams should be able to move the ball, and this Pac-12 After Dark matchup should go over the total. | 2022-09-29T12:10:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | College football betting picks, underdogs, locks, over/unders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/college-football-picks-kentucky-mississippi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/college-football-picks-kentucky-mississippi/ |
A hurricane hunter shot video as he flew into the center of Ian
Nick Underwood, an aerospace engineer with NOAA, said Hurricane Ian gave him ‘the roughest flight of my career’
Aerospace engineer Nick Underwood adjusts his headset on Wednesday after getting knocked around during a flight into Hurricane Ian. (Nick Underwood/NOAA)
Nick Underwood flies through hurricanes for a living. Over the past six years, the aerospace engineer has made 76 passes through more than 20 of them, none rougher than the one he endured Wednesday morning.
“This flight … was the worst I’ve ever been on,” Underwood said in a tweet after flying into the center of Hurricane Ian. “I’ve never seen so much lightning in an eye.”
And he caught it all on video — in a matter of hours, one of the clips had been viewed 1.2 million times.
Underwood, 30, was filming around 6 a.m. Wednesday when the aircraft he was aboard flew into Ian as the Category 4 storm approached Florida’s Gulf Coast. He is part of a crew of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration hurricane hunters that collects data that forecasters use to predict where storms like Ian will go next and how strong they will be when they get there. Since 2016, Underwood has made more than six dozen hurricane penetrations, or “pennies,” through 22 or 23 hurricanes — he is not sure of the exact number.
“I’ve personally lost count,” he told The Washington Post. “I need to update my spreadsheet.”
None of them gave him a gnarlier ride than the one Ian offered up Wednesday morning.
“When I say this was the roughest flight of my career so far, I mean it. I have never seen the bunks come out like that,” he said on Twitter, referring to crew members’ beds at the back of the plane being tossed around. “There was coffee everywhere. I have never felt such lateral motion.”
About nine hours after Underwood flew into Ian, the hurricane made landfall near Fort Myers as a Category 4 storm with 150 mph winds. Early Thursday, Ian weakened into a tropical storm as it spiraled northeast, but NOAA warned that it will leave life-threatening, catastrophic flooding in parts of central Florida. Forecasters are predicting Ian will soon kick north, causing considerable flooding in the northern part of the state, southeastern Georgia and eastern South Carolina through the end of the week.
Underwood and his fellow hurricane hunters took off from Houston around 4 a.m. and flew Kermit, their Lockheed WP-3D Orion turboprop plane, a little less than two hours to reach Florida’s coast. Before arriving, their military counterparts reported what they’d encountered having just flown through the storm, Underwood told The Post. “They said, ‘Hey guys, this ride was not fun,’ and so we kind of knew what we were getting into.”
The NOAA hurricane hunters secured everything they could, strapped themselves in and dropped Kermit to roughly 8,000 feet before entering the hurricane. Traveling through the storm’s outer bands, they hit a “hefty amount” of turbulence.
Underwood started recording as they approached the eyewall, the strongest part of the storm. Jolts of turbulence sent bunks, coffee, shoes and Underwood himself flying, along with some choice words.
“You’re getting bounced around. Parts of it are, you know, it’s fun. It’s kind of like being on a roller coaster at some point,” he said. “But then other times, you’re hearing the aircraft shake and vibrate, and that can be a little unnerving.”
What stood out for Underwood was the lightning. He said he has never seen so much of it and pointed to a photo he took during Wednesday’s mission, one that appears to have been taken during the day.
“It looks like it’s like 11 a.m. outside. It looks like the sun’s up,” he told The Post. “But it was completely dark, and that’s just a lightning bolt that was so close to us and so bright that it just lit up the whole eye.”
Born and raised in West Virginia, Underwood started working at NOAA in August 2016, he said. Two months later, he flew into his first hurricane — Matthew, which became a Category 5 storm that raked Florida’s Atlantic coastline. While the first two hours of his debut mission were fine, he spent the next six being as sick as he ever had been. Still, he was hooked.
“It was all about that mission of gathering this data that, at the end of the day, is going to save lives and is going to save dollars. That is what really drew me in,” he said.
There have been many storms since. Irma, Maria and Harvey in 2017. Florence the next year. Dorian and Lorenzo in 2019, followed by Laura, Eta “and so many other storms” in 2020. Before Ian, Underwood’s toughest flight was through Hurricane Florence.
Underwood said he enjoys his work but stressed that hurricane hunters do not fly into storms just for fun. They are collecting data on temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction inside a storm, all so the National Hurricane Center can pump them into forecasting models.
More data means better forecasts.
“And that means the earlier you can warn people that they need to get out of the way, that they need to secure their homes, whatever they need to do,” Underwood said. “And so the whole mission is really just about protecting life and property.” | 2022-09-29T13:11:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hurricane hunter shoots video of 'roughest flight' into the eye of Ian - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/hurricane-hunter-video-ian/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/hurricane-hunter-video-ian/ |
Ask Sahaj: Longtime friends and co-workers keep mispronouncing my name
Dear Sahaj: My family and I immigrated to the U.S.A. more than 30 years ago. We’ve made a conscious effort to use American pronunciation when conversing in English, especially when it comes to names of friends and co-workers. Much to my annoyance, that is not reciprocated by many of those with whom we interact. Even those we’ve known for decades still mispronounce or misspell names of some of my family and mine. I’ve tried to gently correct them by using the name in our conversation and enunciating it clearly. I’m fed up. I don’t want to be disrespectful, but I’m tired of putting up with the lack of the same from others. I don’t care if a server, barista or other fleeting acquaintance mispronounces one of our names, but it hurts and feels disrespectful when a longtime friend or co-worker does. How do we navigate this with our personal and professional friendships/relationships? What would you advise?
— Fed Up
Fed Up: As someone with a “difficult” name to pronounce, I empathize with your situation. It makes sense that you feel devalued and disrespected when others continuously mispronounce your name.
It might seem like a small thing to many, but in fact, when others continuously mispronounce someone’s name, or assign a nickname for their own ease, it’s a name-based microaggression. And like all microaggressions, this can take a toll on your self-esteem, making you feel devalued or unworthy or like you need to compromise parts of yourself.
Our names are an extension of our identities and root us in our family cultures and histories. For many, they serve as a core representation of where we are from. Names hold meaning, pride, strength and courage, and they deserve to be honored.
It may not be purposeful for others to mispronounce your name; it can take time and practice to say words or names that are not used in someone’s native language. However, from your letter, these folks have done this for an extended amount of time. And while it sounds like you’ve tried a nonconfrontational way to address this, I would suggest having a more direct conversation one-on-one with people.
You can decide who is worthy of this conversation, and it may feel countercultural to be direct, but by doing so, you leave little room for the other person to mishear or ignore what you’re saying.
If you need starting points, here are a few scripts:
I wanted to take a second to chat with you because you are still incorrectly saying my name. This makes me feel disrespected, and I was wondering if we could take some time to practice it so you can get the pronunciation correct?
I’ve noticed that you are still mispronouncing my name, so I wanted to give you a phonetic spelling that might help you say it correctly.
I wanted to take a minute to address something that has been hurtful to me. I’ve noticed that you keep misspelling my name, and it would mean a lot if you could be more intentional about spelling it correctly from now on.
You may want to consider sharing more on the meaning or history of your name, to contextualize its importance to you and to educate others. Furthermore, you can discuss this issue with others who support you and ask them to serve as allies when your name is mispronounced or misspelled. Bringing in a third party may be especially helpful when the constant mispronunciation is from someone who holds power or privilege, making it more difficult for you to speak up.
I have to acknowledge that if someone still refuses to say your name correctly after you have a direct conversation about it, you may need firmer boundaries around how much (if at all) you engage with this person. Having consequences for those disrespecting you will allow you to retain self-respect and can show you which relationships are worth investing in.
You are worthy of respect, and others saying your name correctly is the bare minimum for anyone who wants to have a meaningful relationship with you.
Looking for advice? Ask our columnist Sahaj Kaur Kohli.
Sahaj Kaur Kohli created Brown Girl Therapy to build a mental health community focused on people with bicultural identities and immigrant parents.
Now, as an advice columnist for The Post, Sahaj is answering your questions about mental health, relationship quandaries, work stress and more. Need help figuring out how to have a tough conversation with a friend, or want advice on how to get over burnout? Ask her here. | 2022-09-29T13:16:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Sahaj: Friends and co-workers keep mispronouncing my name - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/29/ask-sahaj-mispronunce-misspell-name/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/29/ask-sahaj-mispronunce-misspell-name/ |
About 60 percent of the players are Black, but coaching is still dominated by White men.
Oakland Raiders Head Coach Art Shell at a 2006 game against the Cleveland Browns at McAfee Coliseum in Oakland, California. Shell was the first Black head coach in the modern era of the National Football League. (Robert B. Stanton/NFLPhotoLibrary/Getty Images)
First, the numbers. Despite that about 60 percent of the players in the NFL are African American, only 3 of the current 32 head coaches (9 percent) are African American.
Father and son turned their passion for sports into a podcast
Playing college sports is about life lessons more than championships
Serena Williams to retire as greatest women’s tennis player of all time | 2022-09-29T13:16:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The NFL has only 3 Black head coaches. That needs to change. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/09/29/nfl-has-only-3-black-head-coaches-that-needs-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/09/29/nfl-has-only-3-black-head-coaches-that-needs-change/ |
Analysis by Dino Grandoni
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! Dino Grandoni, a national environment reporter for The Washington Post, wrote the top of today's newsletter. Below we have the latest on Hurricane Ian's devastating impact in Florida. But first:
“There's a direct connection between biodiversity loss and instability in a lot of parts of the world,” Medina said in a recent phone interview. “It's not just about nature for nature’s sake. I think it is about people.”
What the United States wants out of the conference: For nations to commit to conserving 30 percent of their land and water area. “We are looking for ways to reach that goal, because that's what scientists tell us we need in order to have a healthy planet,” Medina said.
“It's a crisis that we face that's interwoven with the climate crisis, but also independent and important on its own,” she said. “If we can solve the biodiversity crisis, we're a long way along the way to solving the climate crisis.”
Ian moves inland, inundating coastal Florida and knocking out power to 2.5 million
Hurricane Ian gradually weakened into a tropical storm early Thursday, with maximum sustained winds of 65 mph. Although storm surge is thought to have already peaked, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned late Wednesday that decimation is likely to continue throughout the state, Jason Samenow, Kelly Kasulis Cho and Annabelle Timsit report.
Meanwhile, the National Hurricane Center said Ian, which is tearing toward Florida’s Atlantic coast, is expected to further weaken Friday night and into Saturday, but “could be near hurricane strength” on Friday when it approaches South Carolina.
About 2.5 million customers are without power, according to PowerOutage.us, which tracks outages across the country. Conditions are expected to deteriorate as Ian moves inland.
Ian jumped from a Category 3 storm Tuesday night to just shy of a Category 5 on Wednesday morning, a distinct marker of climate change. The rapid intensification of storms, which has occurred more frequently in recent decades, is tied to rising ocean temperatures. The warmer water helps fuel hurricanes, allowing them to grow, strengthen and release more rain.
The monster storm will drop 12 to 20 inches of rain over central and northeast Florida, with localized amounts up to 30 inches, according to the National Hurricane Center. Flash flooding is one of the most serious threats from tropical storms because it happens quickly and occurs far from shore. The slow-moving nature of Ian means that torrents of rain will fall across the state for a longer period of time.
In a news briefing Wednesday night, DeSantis said there would be an influx of personnel and supplies available to those in need, and that first responders would probably be able to reach residents in high-risk areas when conditions are safer at first light Thursday.
DeSantis also sent an official letter to President Biden on Wednesday requesting a major disaster declaration for the entire state, asking for full federal reimbursement of response and recovery costs for the first 60 days.
Millions of people moved into Ian’s path in the past 50 years
The swath of coastline that is facing the most disastrous effects from Hurricane Ian has been undergoing rapid development in recent decades, putting exponentially more assets and people in harm’s way, The Washington Post’s Simon Ducroquet, Brady Dennis and John Muyskens report.
From 1970 to 2020, census records show that the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area expanded by 623 percent to more than 760,000 people. At the same time, the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area saw growth of more than 187 percent and is now home to more than 3.1 million people.
Stephen Strader, a hazards geographer and professor at Villanova University, said as more people and businesses move to the beach, it creates an overwhelming opportunity for weather-related disasters 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. “We really haven’t done much to check this growth. … What we are finding out is that is not sustainable.”
After Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) on Tuesday said that he was pulling his energy permitting plan from a stopgap government funding bill, many environmental groups rejoiced. But the bill also included a provision to rapidly expand transmission lines, which are crucial for helping the United States meet its bold climate goals, Shannon Osaka reports for The Post.
Manchin’s bill, dubbed the Energy Independence and Security Act, was intended to help speed the approval process for new clean and fossil-fuel energy projects by setting up a two-year target for environmental reviews and granting the federal government the authority to build transmission lines.
However, many climate activists argued that although the bill would accelerate the nation's transition to clean energy, its potential benefits do not outweigh the harms of locking in additional greenhouse gas emissions for decades to come.
Still, those power lines are necessary for carrying renewable electricity from sunny and windy areas of the country to urban centers. According to an analysis from Princeton University, the newly passed Inflation Reduction Act could cut U.S. emissions 40 percent by 2030 compared to 2005 levels. But that calculation hinges on whether the nation manages to increase transmission by 2.3 percent per year. If transmission grows only 1 percent per year, the modelers predict that 80 percent of the new climate law’s benefits could be lost.
European Union leaders on Wednesday launched investigations into random, simultaneous breaches of three major underwater natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, pointing to Russian sabotage, Meg Kelly and Michael Birnbaum report for The Post.
Experts said the blasts potentially mark the largest-ever single release of methane into the atmosphere from the energy sector. The gas is more than 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide during its first 20 years in the atmosphere. Thomas Lauvaux, a researcher with the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences in France, said that in a worst-case scenario the leak could cause the same amount of planet-warming pollution that 1 million cars do in a year.
On Wednesday, E.U. foreign policy chief Josep Borrell vowed a “robust and united response” to any attacks on the 27-nation bloc’s energy infrastructure. Though the probes have only just begun, many politicians blamed Russia, saying that the explosions are the next step in the Kremlin’s strategy as it continues to wage a war in Ukraine and use energy supplies as leverage over Europe.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov called accusations that Russia was responsible for the explosions “predictably stupid” and “absurd.” He told reporters on a call that Moscow has no interest in damaging the pipelines — which are majority-owned Russian entities — because of the high value of the gas.
Photos: Hurricane Ian makes landfall in Florida as Category 4 — The Post
Hurricane Ian is pulling water away from ocean shores. Here’s what’s happening. — Amudalat Ajasa for The Post
White House faces firestorm over idling Puerto Rico fuel shipment — Jeff Stein and Toluse Olorunnipa for The Post
The geopolitics of natural gas, explained — Philip Bump for The Post
Moose boops! 🥰
📷: Intern, Christina pic.twitter.com/2p06gzQ5uR
— Northwest Trek Wildlife Park (@NorthwestTrek) September 28, 2022 | 2022-09-29T13:17:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In a first, U.S. appoints a diplomat for plants and animals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/first-us-appoints-diplomat-plants-animals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/first-us-appoints-diplomat-plants-animals/ |
Former Facebook executive turned critic joins top civil rights group
Happy Thursday! Be sure to check out today's Washington Post Live event on data privacy with Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.).
Below: Advertisers flee Twitter after ads were displayed next to posts by users seeking child abuse material, and rights groups clash with Meta over a report on human rights in India. First:
Since leaving her role as Facebook’s head of election integrity for political ads in 2018, Yael Eisenstat has emerged as one of the most prominent critics of how the social media giant and its peers tackle hate speech and misinformation. Now she’s turning to her next act.
Next month, Eisenstat will join the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a major civil rights group, to serve as vice president and lead its technology unit, a prominent perch that will allow her to continue to hold tech companies’ feet to the fire.
In an exclusive interview announcing the move, Eisenstat called the role a “natural fit” given the organization’s long history combating hate and extremism online and offline, and her years of advocacy and activism calling for a stronger safety focus out of Silicon Valley.
“It's really just taking the work that I've always been passionate about and marrying it up to an organization that has the capacity to make real change,” she told me Wednesday.
In the new role, Eisenstat will steer the nonprofit’s Center for Technology and Society (CTS), which researches and releases findings on the prevalence of extremist, hateful and misleading conduct across major platforms.
CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement that the hire shows ADL is “doubling down on our work to keep online companies transparent and accountable for the content they host.”
Eisenstat said that beyond scrutinizing the role digital platforms may play in exacerbating hateful content, she will be focused on figuring out what “accountability mechanisms” the group can use to “shine a light” on issues and bring about change at the companies. She also said it’s important to look beyond what material companies are hosting and consider systemic issues.
“I think it is really important to focus on the policies and tools of these companies as opposed to just the actual content they host,” she said.
Eisenstat brings a deep pool of experience to the organization, spanning roles in the tech industry, federal government and as an activist and researcher.
Before joining Facebook for a six-month stint in 2018, Eisenstat served as an officer for the CIA and as a special adviser in the Obama White House, focusing on national security issues.
She later joined the Center for Humane Technology, a nonprofit founded by Silicon Valley veterans, as a global policy adviser and served at research outfits including the Berggruen Institute and most recently the Institute for Security and Technology. She’s also been a member of the so-called “Real Facebook Oversight Board,” a group of company critics who draw their name from the company's official review board.
Eisenstat could also play a key role in shaping the group’s growing policy portfolio on tech accountability issues and expand its connections to the White House, where she served as an adviser to President Biden when he was vice president.
“We do work with policymakers and legislators to help tackle some of these challenges. I'm sure I'll have a role,” said Eisenstat, who in the past has visited Congress and met with lawmakers to discuss Facebook's approach to political ads.
Eisenstat said policymakers in Washington are becoming “more and more sophisticated” in their approach to the tech industry, but that there’s more work to be done.
“I'm very happy to see more effort going into transparency and oversight questions so that we can get the information and data needed to be able to actually write smart, actionable laws,” she said. “We're not there yet, to be clear, but I think we're getting closer.”
Eisenstat said she will also lead efforts to engage with tech companies to try to find common ground, which will always “be the first goal.”
She offered the issue of how platforms handle Holocaust denial material as an example, seemingly referring to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.
“When you have somebody who is in charge of the biggest platform in the world not understanding what Holocaust denial means and not understanding the ramifications of that, that's the type of place where ADL could have a really positive role in helping them understand why that’s so consequential and figuring out what the right policies around that might be,” she said.
Zuckerberg forcefully defended Facebook users' right to post Holocaust denial material in a 2018 interview. The company stood by the policy for years despite facing broad criticism, including from the ADL, before reversing it in 2020.
But she also signaled that she’s prepared to be nimble if engagement fails.
“Then, of course, there's the point where if you've gone as far as you can … to help any particular company then the next question is, ‘What are the next levers of influence?’ … That is an assessment I believe as a team we will always have to make,” she said.
Advertisers condemn Twitter after ads found near child sexual abuse material
Cybersecurity group Ghost Data found hundreds of Twitter accounts that openly shared or asked for such material, and some major advertisers’ ads were displayed alongside those posts, Reuters’s Sheila Dang and Katie Paul report.
“We’re horrified,” Cole Haan brand president David Maddocks told Reuters. “Either Twitter is going to fix this, or we’ll fix it by any means we can, which includes not buying Twitter ads.” (Twitter displayed a promoted tweet for Cole Haan next to a tweet by a user who said they were “trading teen/child” content, Reuters reported.)
Before Reuters published its story, Twitter told advertisers that it had “discovered that ads were running within Profiles that were involved with publicly selling or soliciting child sexual abuse material.” Twitter spokesperson Celeste Carswell told the outlet that Twitter “has zero tolerance for child sexual exploitation.” Twitter is working with advertisers and partners to investigate and ensure that a similar situation doesn’t happen again, Carswell said.
Meta privately says it didn’t publish India hate speech investigation after security concerns
Audio recordings show that Meta human rights executive Iain Levine told groups that Meta’s human rights team wanted to release more than a four-page summary on the investigation, but couldn’t after top executives decided “that it was not possible to do so for security reasons,” the Wall Street Journal’s Newley Purnell reports.
Rights groups told Meta executives that the decision appeared to show that the company didn’t take the work seriously and undermined a good-faith collaboration, Purnell reports. The company’s decision not to release the full report is “a slap in my face and my people’s face who have endured so much hate speech on this platform,” said an attendee of a briefing who said she was an Indian Muslim researcher. “We want a release of this report — now,” she said.
Meta declined to comment to the Wall Street Journal.
Antitrust advocates pin hopes on lame-duck period
Supporters of a bill to block tech giants from favoring their own products and services over those of their rivals gathered last week as “an opportunity to gather strength for one final legislative push” to turn the bill into law between midterm elections in November and the beginning of new lawmakers’ terms in January, Bloomberg News’s Emily Birnbaum and Anna Edgerton report. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) attended the event, and the federal government’s most powerful antitrust officials — FTC Chair Lina Khan and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter — also came after testifying on Capitol Hill, Birnbaum and Edgerton report.
“If the legislation doesn’t pass by the end of this Congress, it’s unlikely to make it to the floor for several years, particularly if there’s a new GOP majority in the House, as polls have predicted,” Birnbaum and Edgerton write. “House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a Republican from California who is in line to become speaker should his party win control, has vehemently opposed the bill, calling it partisan overreach.”
Amazon gives the Kindle a stylus and has a new way to track your sleep (Geoffrey A. Fowler, Heather Kelly and Chris Velazco)
Russia demands Apple explain VK removal from App Store (Reuters)
Privacy advocates want the FTC to take on invasive daycare apps (CyberScoop)
AI can now create any image in seconds, bringing wonder and danger (Nitasha Tiku)
The House Science Committee holds a hearing on artificial intelligence today at 10:30 a.m.
Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), the top members on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, discuss privacy legislation at a Washington Post Live event today at 11 a.m.
Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo discusses semiconductor legislation at an event hosted by the Global Tech Security Commission today at 11:15 a.m.
Nothing beats Library TikTok pic.twitter.com/MBiPfRVQHt | 2022-09-29T13:17:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former Facebook executive turned critic joins top civil rights group - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/former-facebook-executive-turned-critic-joins-top-civil-rights-group/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/former-facebook-executive-turned-critic-joins-top-civil-rights-group/ |
Extreme skiing community gutted by Hilaree Nelson’s death in avalanche
Hilaree Nelson and Jim Morrison (shown in 2018) were skiing on the world's eighth-highest mountain when Nelson was killed. (Niranjan Shrestha/Associated Press)
The niche community of mountain climbers and extreme skiers struggled to comprehend the death in Nepal of one of the most heralded and popular Americans in the sport, with one praising Hilaree Nelson for showing women “a path forward to lead a life of adventure in the big mountains and raise a family.”
Nelson, 49, and her partner, Jim Morrison, were skiing from the 26,775-foot summit of Mount Manaslu — the world’s eighth-tallest mountain — in what Morrison described as “tough conditions” Monday when an avalanche occurred. After authorities searched for two days, her body was recovered Wednesday.
“We quickly transitioned from climbing to skiing in cold and wind with a plan to ski around the corner and regroup with our Sherpa team. I skied first and after a few turns Hilaree followed and started a small avalanche. She was swept off her feet and carried down a narrow snow slope down the south side (opposite from climbing route) of the mountain over 5000 [feet],” Morrison wrote on Instagram. “I did everything I could to locate her but was unable to go down the face as I hoped to find her alive and live my life with her.”
Morrison wrote that the body of the Telluride, Colo., skier was recovered with the help of “an incredibly skilled pilot” who was able to land at 22,000 feet” and Mingma Tenzi Sherpa. The news stunned those who knew Nelson.
“Hilaree has been a force in my life and career since I moved to Telluride straight out of college in the ’90s,” Adrian Ballinger, a mountain guide, skier/climber and founder of Alpenglow Expeditions, wrote on Instagram. “First she was just an untouchable idol in a ski town. Then a hero from the pages of Nat Geo and The North Face. In 2012 she became a friend. And finally, in 2015, an expedition partner. It’s that trip, to attempt the first ski descent of Makalu together, that I’ve been dwelling on since her fall on Manaslu.”
Nelson and Morrison, who is from Tahoe, Calif., were among the hundreds of climbers who, with local guides, were attempting to reach the summit during Nepal’s autumn climbing season. Nelson and Morrison had a wealth of experience, having reached the summit of Mount Lhotse, the world’s fourth-tallest mountain, in 2018.
Ballinger called Nelson, the mother of two young sons, “an incredible force in life” who had mentored his wife, Emily Harrington, a climber and adventurer as well, “in all things life and mountains — from snow baths at 21,000 feet to finding her power and strength and confidence, to beating the boys at arm wrestling, and so often, up and down the mountain. She showed me a path forward to lead a life of adventure in the big mountains, and raise a family — who brings their 5 and 7-year-old on a two week trek to 17,000 feet through leeches and mud and the monsoon in Nepal — Hilaree did and they thrived.”
Over the past two decades, Nelson had been in about 40 expeditions and was regarded as the “most prolific ski mountaineer of her generation” by one of her sponsors, North Face. She grew up in Seattle and spent weekends at Stevens Pass in Washington’s Cascades. According to the North Face, her post-college visit to Chamonix, France, at the foot of Mont Blanc, the tallest mountain in Europe, hooked her on the sport.
She became the first woman to climb two of the world’s tallest mountains, Mount Everest and neighboring Mount Lhotse, in a 24-hour period in 2014. Four years later, she and Morrison became the first to ski down from the 27,940-foot summit of Lhotse. She wrote in 2019 about the difficulties of balancing her mountaineering career with motherhood. Nelson said she went on one expedition while six months pregnant and took pay cuts because, for an elite climber, “being pregnant was treated like an injury.” Harrington, who is pregnant with her first child, paid tribute to her decade of friendship and outdoor camaraderie with Nelson, praising her as a pioneer for women in the sport.
“I write this to tell you that beyond this tragedy, Hilaree was a force to be remembered not for this accident or even the physical mountains she climbed and so expertly skied down, but for unapologetically paving the way for women in this space to be everything they want to be,” she wrote on Instagram. “She broke ground and shattered expectations with a unique combination of grace and grit only a true leader possesses.”
Harrington praised her “intense desire to find her perceived limit and push past it balanced by her calm demeanor and tenderness as a friend and mentor. She was the best. Her influence and dedication to her passion has paved the way for future generations and will live on in each of us. Our world will miss Hils, but we are better because of who she was and the monumental impact she’s had on us all.”
A post shared by Jimmy Chin (@jimmychin)
Morrison wrote of his indescribable loss of “this woman, my life partner, my lover, my best friend, and my mountain partner” and turned his focus to her sons’ “steps forward. @hilareenelson is the most inspiring person in life and now her energy will guide our collective souls. Peace be with us all. Pray for her family and community which is broadly stretched across our planet. I’m devastated by the loss of her.”
Last week, Nelson wrote of the battle against the elements that brings exhaustion and exhilaration to the sport of extreme skiing.
“Back bent and head down. I haven’t felt as sure-footed on Manaslu as I have on past adventure into the thin atmosphere of the high Himalaya. These past weeks have tested my resilience in new ways. The constant monsoon with its incessant rain and humidity has made me hopelessly homesick. I am challenged to find the peace and inspiration from the mountain when it’s been constantly shrouded in mist.”
One attempt at reaching the summit had to be abandoned, “knowing that would mean carrying our skis all the way back up the mountain again if, big if here, we try again for a summit. It was the best thing we could’ve done.
“As soon as I made the first turn in the sticky hot pow, in a total white out, all the weight and seriousness that had been plaguing me this whole trip faded to the background. With @jimwmorrison we skied about 4,500 [feet] of the 6,000 [-foot] descent to BC [base camp]. It was full of shenanigans rappelling over seracs [ridges of ice] with our skis on, posing for pictures with climbers going uphill. Laughing, racing ... and generally just finally being present and actually seeing what I have been seeing for weeks but not absorbing (hope that makes sense). We got back to BC soaking wet, in the pouring rain, just in time for a hearty BC dinner. Smiling and laughing felt amazing!” | 2022-09-29T13:18:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Skiing community reacts to Hilaree Nelson's death in avalanche - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/hilaree-nelson-death-reaction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/hilaree-nelson-death-reaction/ |
A new term opens with public approval of the court at historic lows and the justices themselves debating what the court’s rightward turn means for its institutional integrity
The Supreme Court building in Washington. The court’s new term opens Oct. 3. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
The Supreme Court begins its new term Monday, but the nation, its leaders and the justices themselves do not appear to be over the last one.
She said that disregarding stare decisis — the doctrine of abiding by past decisions in the absence of compelling evidence that change is required — undermines public confidence. “It just doesn’t look like law when some new judges appointed by a new president come in and start just tossing out the old stuff,” she said.
The new justice this year is a liberal — Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s first African American woman, was nominated by Biden to fill the seat of Stephen G. Breyer, who retired after 28 years. Jackson will not change the court’s ideological makeup.
Breyer declared his last term on the court “very frustrating” in a recent interview with CNN. Breyer was known during his tenure for pragmatism and trying to reach compromise, and he seemed to warn the conservative majority against making further bold moves.
“You start writing too rigidly . . . the world will come around and bite you in the back,” he said.
“What really wounded me — what really wounded me — was when the Duke of Sussex addressed the United Nations and seemed to compare the decision whose name may not be spoken with the Russian attack on Ukraine,” Alito said.
Biden, in turn, invoked Alito last week at a gathering of Democratic activists, where he said Republicans loyal to Trump “just cheered and embraced the first Supreme Court decision in our entire history — the first one in our entire history that just didn’t fail to preserve a constitutional freedom, it actually took away a fundamental right.”
He added: “Justice Alito said that women can decide the outcome of this election — paraphrasing some quote in the actual decision. Well, he ain’t seen nothing yet.”
At the same event, New York University law professor Melissa Murray said there is a “whole curio cabinet of weirdness” about the court. She noted that the three Trump nominees — Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett — pledged varying degrees of allegiance to stare decisis at the their confirmation hearings and then voted to overturn Roe at the first opportunity. | 2022-09-29T13:42:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court term begins amid questions about its legitimacy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/supreme-court-roberts-kagan-legitimacy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/supreme-court-roberts-kagan-legitimacy/ |
The scandals and hypocrisy behind McKinsey’s sterling reputation
A sign for McKinsey & Co. in Geneva. The consulting firm has dozens of offices around the world. (Fabrice Coffrini/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
In their new book, investigative reporters Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe shatter the luminous image of McKinsey & Co. that has long attached to the consulting giant. Vault.com, a leading employment site, doesn’t exaggerate when it asserts that McKinsey “has achieved a near-universal level of renown.” With more than 30,000 employees spread across dozens of offices across the globe, McKinsey claims to serve 90 of the world’s 100 largest companies in addition to a host of prominent governments and institutions. McKinsey’s avowed mission stretches far beyond its $10 billion in annual revenue. Portraying itself as a “values-driven organization” dedicated to creating “positive, enduring change in the world,” the firm extols its environmental and social initiatives. Many of its senior partners stand at the pinnacle of the consulting profession, and just a small sampling of its famous alumni — including Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, Chelsea Clinton and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra, as well as the current chief executives of Citigroup, Alphabet and Morgan Stanley — exemplifies its exalted standing. With all these attributes, it’s no wonder that Vault rated McKinsey as “the most prestigious company of its kind.”
A far different portrait emerges in Bogdanich and Forsythe’s “When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm.” The authors expose the firm’s unsavory work with fossil fuel companies, cigarette-makers, opioid distributors, regulatory agencies and autocratic regimes. In a masterful work of investigative journalism building on their reporting for the New York Times, Bogdanich and Forsythe pierce through McKinsey’s “culture of secrecy” — a process they describe as “akin to chasing shadows” — to unearth conflicts of interest, corruption, hypocrisy and strategic blunders that read like a prosecutor’s indictment.
Besides the many venial sins uncovered by the authors, a graver set of dubious practices emerges. In Bogdanich and Forsythe’s telling, McKinsey was rife with conflicts of interest in which it advised multiple companies within a sector (it denies sharing confidential information among them) and, more disconcertingly, regulators alongside the companies they oversaw. Over the years, its cost-cutting recommendations downplayed safety concerns at U.S. Steel, Disneyland and American immigration centers, and shorted insurance policy holders of billions of dollars in claims, the authors assert.
Hypocrisy is the most odious trait highlighted in the book. As it touted its carbon reduction initiatives, for instance, McKinsey had a roster of clients that included at least 43 major carbon polluters since 2010. While helping tobacco companies fend off regulations, it advised health-care providers contending with the fallout from smoking, as well as the Food and Drug Administration, which regulated cigarette-makers. It advised the Chinese, Saudi Arabian and Russian governments even as it joined the United Nations Global Compact supporting anti-corruption efforts and human rights.
The most shocking behavior recounted in the book involved McKinsey’s role in the opioid crisis. “To settle government investigations into its role in helping Purdue [Pharma] ‘turbocharge’ opioid sales when thousands of people were dying of overdoses, the firm agreed to pay more than $600 million even as it denied any wrongdoing,” the authors write.
In the face of mounting concerns from pharmacies and federal regulators, McKinsey advised opioid-makers to target “high abuse-risk patients” and urge health-care providers to increase prescriptions. At one point, it concocted a plan to issue rebates to pharmacies for every “OxyContin overdose attributable to pills they sold.” McKinsey did all of this while advising the FDA.
Despite the litany of sketchy incidents in the book, other than the opioid imbroglio and a corruption scandal in South Africa, the “godfather of management consulting” has rarely been “held to account” for its misdeeds. The fact that neither regulators, the public, nor most of McKinsey’s employees knew about these sordid episodes until the media cast a spotlight on them is a testament to the authors’ prowess as investigative reporters.
The main thing missing from this superb book is context. Ascertaining whether these transgressions represented a small fraction of McKinsey’s undertakings or played a central role in its operations would have provided a better understanding of the scope of the wrongdoing. With only passing references to Boston Consulting Group and other competitors, it’s also difficult to gauge whether these ethical lapses made McKinsey an outlier in the industry.
In a broader sense, the problems at McKinsey are endemic to the entire class of professional advisers. Mega-size law, consulting and accounting firms have long taken on odious assignments for lucrative clients, helping them circumvent regulations, evade responsibility for toxic torts and criminal wrongdoing, and avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Yet few people are clamoring for fundamental changes to these professions. What makes it so difficult to reform the culture at these firms is that outside of those caught breaking the law or actively participating in a major scandal, few people have paid a social, professional or monetary price for their work on questionable projects. In McKinsey’s case, only a handful of people lost their jobs for the events chronicled in this book. Its members have rarely suffered reputational harm for their affiliation with the firm.
That’s the norm. In a milieu where networking and careful career maintenance are paramount, it’s easy to see why hiring managers at other firms are unlikely to hold McKinsey’s track record against its former employees. One day, after all, they may need a potential client or employer to look the other way as well.
Just as important, the ethos governing professional circles effectively shields their members from pangs of conscience. As at other advisory firms, McKinsey’s fixation on client service stripped away the political and social ramifications of its work. In contrast to a former employee who called McKinsey “an amoral institution,” a former partner elucidated the firm’s prevailing philosophy: “We don’t do policy. We do execution.”
Finally, there’s the money. Lots of it. MBAs starting at McKinsey can land pay packages totaling about $250,000, and senior partners can pull in more than $1 million annually. No matter how much pro bono work and other commendable programs McKinsey — and other leading professional service firms — may undertake, a portion of its income is tied to ethically dubious work.
How much would things change if McKinsey undertook reforms, which it vowed to do in response to its publicized scandals? If it implemented them earnestly and, in doing so, served as a lodestar for the industry, perhaps a great deal. Or perhaps not much at all. As the firm proclaimed in a rebuttal to a dejected associate’s complaint about McKinsey’s work on behalf of the fossil fuel industry: “If we don’t serve coal clients, BCG will.”
When McKinsey Comes to Town
The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm
By Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe
Doubleday. 354 pp. $32.50 | 2022-09-29T14:47:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of When McKinsey Comes to Town: The Hidden Influence of the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm by Walt Bogdanich and Michael Forsythe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/29/scandals-hypocrisy-behind-mckinseys-sterling-reputation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/29/scandals-hypocrisy-behind-mckinseys-sterling-reputation/ |
Great Country Farms’ Fall Pumpkin Harvest Festival, which begins this weekend, includes pumpkin picking, giant slides, live music and farmyard animals. (Maansi Srivastava for The Washington Post)
Dubfire at Eighteenth Street Lounge: If you love deep, dark house music, you may have been lucky enough to see Dubfire on the decks at Eighteenth Street Lounge back in the day. One half of the acclaimed duo Deep Dish, Dubfire has been a fixture in Ibiza and the biggest clubs in the world, but he’s always had an audience in D.C. This weekend, he graces ESL once again — this time at its brand-new digs in Shaw, where he’ll be in the Red Room with Martin Miguel. 9 p.m.
March on Washington Film Festival: Created for filmmakers and artists to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington, this year’s festival features more than 20 films and a mix of live and virtual workshops, including dance, spoken word, visual arts and panel discussions. Thursday’s events include a screening of “The Defenders,” a documentary on the lawyers of the civil rights movement, and a discussion led by filmmakers and activists associated with Color of Change and the NAACP. This evening is hosted at Union Market’s Dock 5 at 7 p.m., but later activities can be found throughout the weekend at Eaton Workshop. Times vary throughout the festival. $19-$500.
City of Caterpillar at the Black Cat: Has it really been 20 years between City of Caterpillar albums? Doesn’t feel like it. At least not to them. Maybe that’s because the resurgent Virginia quartet — whose sound falls somewhere between hardcore and post-rock, and whose reputation has grown into something between “cult” and “legendary” — have always been able to make time fly. Their most meticulous songs fold it like origami. Their most chaotic moments crumple it into a ball. Ask Kane to flash back to City of Caterpillar’s actual beginnings back in 2000, though, and he remembers songwriting cram sessions with his bandmates — guitarist-vocalist Brandon Evans, bassist-vocalist Kevin Longendyke, drummer Ryan Parrish — writing detonative music under the influence of Born Against and Godspeed You! Black Emperor in the cramped bedroom of a Richmond rowhouse. Those songs eventually formed the band’s stormy self-titled 2002 debut, an album that helped popularize the sound of “screamo” after the band fell apart in 2003. Then 13 years zipped past, and after reconvening in 2016 to play a friend’s birthday party, the foursome decided to keep at it. Their sophomore album, “Mystic Sisters,” is set to land on Friday, essentially picking up their urgency where they left it, setting cloudy melodies to ornate rhythms, prioritizing mood over message. 7:30 p.m. (doors open). $20.
Interview: City of Caterpillar reunited without having to rebuild its sound
Kanpai to Sake Day! at the Roost: Saturday is World Sake Day, but DC Sake Co., which operates an online sake boutique and hosts pop-up events in the D.C. area, is offering an early start on the celebrations. Sample more than 30 types of sake throughout the Roost, stopping at tables to talk to experts and trying their wares. When you find a style or bottle you like, you can order it at a discount from DC Sake Co. 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. $45.
Frederick’s Oktoberfest at the Frederick Fairgrounds: Frederick’s long-running Oktoberfest nods to the area’s German heritage — the local Historical Society runs a booth that teaches visitors how to explore their German roots and traditions, and anyone wearing authentic Bavarian lederhosen or a dirndl enters free. But at its heart, this is a big German-themed party. The music is split between accordion-driven German bands and retro and rock groups. Brats and jagerschnitzel are served in the “fest tent,” where local breweries, including Flying Dog, Brewer’s Alley and Smoketown, pour seasonal offerings alongside Germany’s Spaten and Hofbrau. On Saturday, college football games are projected on screens in a special sports tent, and there are music and crafts for kids in their own area. Friday from 6 to 10 p.m. Saturday from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. $6-$20; free for children 2 and younger. Discounted advance tickets available until Sept. 29.
Oktoberfest Weekend at the Wharf: Think of this three-day waterfront festival as multiple events. The main event, Saturday’s Wiener 500 Dachshund Dash, has been postponed until Oct. 16 due to the weather forecast, but other events continue as scheduled. On Friday night, there’s polka dancing — with free lessons! — and music on the Transit Pier from 7 to 9 p.m., and Sunday is all about the stein-holding competitions, plus German food specials at nearby restaurants. Friday through Sunday. Free.
Wheatland Spring Estate Brewing Discussion Panel at ChurchKey: Wheatland Spring is one of the finest breweries to open in the D.C. area in recent years. Owners John and Bonnie Branding have a dedication to farm-grown ingredients, their own well water, and local malt and grain suppliers, which combine to give their beers a delicious regional terroir. If there’s a downside, at least for D.C. residents, it’s that the farm brewery is located in Waterford, Va., and it’s not always easy to convince a designated driver to join you for a trip that can be an hour each way. Thankfully, the Brandings are bringing the farm to ChurchKey for one night. They’re participating in a discussion panel with Sebastian Wolfrum of Epiphany Craft Malt to discuss the difference that local ingredients and small producers make, and how that’s reflected in the beer. Speaking of beer, 10 of Wheatland Spring’s will be available, including the new Ursprung festbier and Fieldborn, a mixed-fermentation ale made with yeast from the farm. Both drafts and bottle pours are available in four-ounce tasters. 6 p.m. Free. Beers priced individually.
Kids Euro Fest Family Day at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library: The European Union’s annual Kids Euro Fest allows parents to take their kids on a European vacation without crossing the D.C. line, thanks to free events held at embassies and cultural centers across the city. The official kickoff event, held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library, is designed for children ages 6 to 12. Families can make Lithuanian crafts, learn about beekeeping from Slovakia, watch Irish dance performances or even try their hand at DJing, thanks to the Netherlands. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Free; registration required.
234+ Connect Community Day at the National Museum of African Art: The National Museum of African Art’s new exhibit, “Before Nollywood: The Ideal Photo Studio,” honors Solomon Osagie Alonge, who operated the first commercial photography studio in Benin City. The portraits on display, taken in the 1950s and ’60s, complement the lavish images of film stars and producers in the museum’s ongoing “Iké Udé: Nollywood Portraits” exhibition. To celebrate the two, the museum is hosting a multi-day festival, dubbed “+234 Connect” after Nigeria’s international country code. The schedule is full of film screenings, discussions and master classes, but the highlight is Saturday’s Community Day, which includes curator tours of the exhibits; an opening reception for “Before Nollywood”; and free family portrait photo sessions, with the help of on-site stylists. (Registration is required.) The day is capped with an outdoor concert featuring the Afrochique dance team, music by Eme & Heteru and the Caveman, head-wrapping workshops, and food trucks. In case of rain, the concert moves indoors. Family activities 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Concert 7 to 11 p.m. Free.
Fall Pumpkin Harvest Festival at Great Country Farms: Little piglets race for Oreos and a “P-Rex” dinosaur chomps down on pumpkins during the Fall Pumpkin Harvest Festival at Great Country Farms in Bluemont. This popular family attraction offers a corn maze and a 12-acre play area with a new, extra-long “mega slide,” as well as cider press demos and wagon rides to the pick-your-own pumpkin patch. On the weekends, adults will appreciate live music (the Jimmy Buffett-style Tropical Attitudes Band kicks things off at the festival on Oct. 1) and a pop-up for Henway Hard Cider at the farm’s on-site “Roosteraunt.” Open daily through October. $10-$16. Free for children 2 and younger. Advance reservations are recommended, particularly on weekends.
Art on the Avenue: Del Ray’s annual street festival is one of the area’s most dynamic. The artists’ market along Mount Vernon Avenue includes more than 300 vendors selling everything from pottery and paintings to jewelry and clothing for children and pets. The sounds of Irish, swing and blues music fill the air from four stages. Kids can stuff scarecrows, paint pumpkins, race balloon-powered cars and create their own art. Pick up snacks at the pop-up food court, or duck into one of the restaurants and beer gardens along the 10-block party. Word of advice: Parking is going to be more difficult than usual. Even though Braddock Road Metro station is closed, Art on the Avenue is running a free shuttle from the station to the festival. 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Free.
Open Streets on Georgia Avenue NW: A three-mile stretch of the district-bisecting street spurns cars in favor of foot and bike traffic this weekend. Attendees can expect hourly programmed classes and demonstrations, such as yoga, drum circles, dancing and pop-up bike lanes, while local businesses sell food, drinks and merchandise. 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Free.
Drive-In Movies at the Park: ‘Hocus Pocus’ at Prince George’s Stadium: The first day of October brings the official beginning of spooky szn, and what better way to kick off the witchiest month than with a drive-in screening of “Hocus Pocus.” The 1993 Disney film, starring Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy, has become a cult Halloween classic, and this family-friendly event at Prince George’s Stadium encourages costumes (you have figured yours out, right?) and provides free snacks for kids 12 and younger. 7:30 p.m. Free. Advance tickets required — one per vehicle.
Adams Morgan Porchfest: You don’t need to go to the sold-out All Things Go to experience a music festival this weekend; Porchfest will bring over 70 local bands to Adams Morgan’s streets for nonstop performances on 17 porches, patios and stoops. Pick up free wristbands at the corner of Columbia and Adams Mill roads for discounts at businesses like Roofers Union ($5 select IPAs) and the Diner (all-day happy hour and discounted lavender lemonade). Expect a range of genres from bluegrass and classic rock to rap and reggae. 2 to 6 p.m. Free.
Atlas Brew Works Ninth Anniversary Party: Atlas Brew Works has come a long way in the last nine years: There’s now a second taproom near Nationals Park, the Ivy City brewery is humming along, and its beers are found in bars and stores across the region. Join the celebrations on Saturday with $5 beers all day, music, and a dunk tank featuring brewery employees and local celebs, including D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6). Tickets include one beer; VIP tickets include two beers, early admission and a special beer to take home. 1 to 5 p.m. $15-$35.
International Observe the Moon Night at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center: The James Webb Space Telescope is sending us amazing images of never-before-seen galaxies. Rovers are exploring the geology of Mars. NASA is smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid 7 million miles away. With attention seemingly everywhere else in the universe, it must be a tough time to be the Earth’s closest celestial body. Thankfully, International Observe the Moon Night is here. Staff from the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center and the Northern Virginia Astronomy Club are hosting an evening of stargazing at the Air and Space Museum’s Chantilly location, allowing the public to look through their telescopes at the moon — and beyond. Check the website before heading out, as the event may be canceled due to bad weather. 7 to 9 p.m. Free.
Fall Family Fun at Miller Farms: Miller Farms has been owned by the Miller family since 1873, and it’s billed as the largest vegetable grower in Prince George’s County, with more than 200 acres dedicated to production. County residents know Miller Farms’ Clinton market as a go-to place for a variety of goods — produce and meat, sure, but also a full-service bakery, soft-serve ice cream, a nursery full of mums and, in early summer, pick-your-own strawberries. Come fall, the farm opens its fields and barn to the community on Saturdays and Sundays for Fall Family Fun, with hayride tours of the fields, a corn maze, jumping pads and slides, games, and meet-and-greets with farm animals. Piles of pumpkins encourage browsing, and the day isn’t complete without a taste of the bakery’s apple cider doughnuts, available glazed or covered in cinnamon sugar. Open Saturday and Sunday through October. $14.95 online, $16.25 at the gate; free for children younger than 2. Advance reservations recommended.
Virginia Wine Festival: Even basic general admission for the Virginia Wine Festival gets you unlimited tastings from wineries and cider houses located across the state. Besides more than 100 different pours, tickets include the Virginia Oyster Pavilion, where a la carte oysters from the Chesapeake are for sale. The festival at One Loudoun, a fancy mixed-use development in Ashburn, also brings in food trucks and live music, and bottles can be purchased to take home. VIP tickets allow early admission and a tasting of Virginia “reserve” wines. Saturday and Sunday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. $15-$79.
Vienna Oktoberfest: Oktoberfest fills the streets of Vienna’s historic district with craft vendors, beer gardens and live entertainment. The town green is given over to children, with games, bouncy obstacle courses and a stage that hosts singing princesses and well-known entertainer the Great Zucchini. Adults can hit the beer garden and listen to blues, disco and German music on one stage, or browse stands run by local restaurants, offering barbecue, empanadas or drinks from Vienna’s Caboose Brewing. 10:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Free.
Rocktobierfest at Rockville Town Center: Sample beers from eight local brewers and distillers, including Lone Oak, Crooked Crab, 7 Locks and Waredaca, while listening to cover bands and traditional German tunes in the streets of Rockville Town Center. A vendor area includes makers selling candles, jewelry and other gifts. 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free.
Dogtoberfest at Dacha: This Oktoberfest spoof at the beer garden’s Navy Yard location promises more than just pet-friendly treats and dog owner meetups: Arlington’s Animal Welfare League is hosting a pet adoption event, with adoptable cats and dogs for a reduced $25 fee. 1 to 4 p.m. Free.
Melan at the Eaton: In 2020, R&B songstress 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. 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.” Last September, Melan released her debut album, “A Cool Girl Dream,” a 17-minute affirmation of self-respect, femininity, freedom and fun. 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. Whether you want to dance or cry, Melan is here for you. 9 p.m. Free.
Interview: Melan is here for you, whether you want to dance or cry
MK at Echostage: 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. 9 p.m. $25-$35.
Takoma Park Street Festival: Takoma Park’s 41st annual street fair closes Carroll Avenue from Philadelphia Avenue all the way to the D.C. border, turning the city’s main drag into a giant block party. Eighteen bands perform on three stages, ranging from children’s acts to Chopteeth’s Afrobeats and the Nighthawks’ blues. The 150 booths lining the road include handmade crafts, goods from local shops and tables run by community organizations. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Free.
Piketoberfest at Pike and Rose: The Pike and Rose district in North Bethesda hosts a fall festival with a beer garden sponsored by Owen’s Ordinary, live music, DJs, games and activities for children, and a maker’s market with local vendors. Noon to 4 p.m. Free.
L’Rain at Songbyrd: 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. 7 p.m. $15-$17.
The Mars Volta at the Anthem: 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.” 8 p.m. $55.
Profs and Pints: With October just days away, ’tis the season for all things spooky. Profs and Pints is hosting a series of Halloween-themed chats over the next week, and guests can grab a brew and listen to professionals and academics speak on topics like ancient vampire folklore, medieval monsters and the witch trials in early America. Adding to its existing locations at Little Penn Coffeehouse and the Bier Baron Tavern, Profs and Pints is expanding its talks to the Hill Center at the Old Naval Hospital and reviving events at Metrobar. Check its website for a full list of upcoming topics and locations; the series begins with a discussion of ghost photo controversies, led by an art historian and curator, at Little Penn in Penn Quarter. 6 to 8:30 p.m. $12-$15. | 2022-09-29T14:48:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fall festivals, concerts, Oktoberfests and events in the D.C. area. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/best-things-do-dc-area-week-sept-29-oct-5/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/best-things-do-dc-area-week-sept-29-oct-5/ |
New movies to stream this week: ‘The Greatest Beer Run Ever’ and more
Russell Crowe, left, and Zac Efron in “The Greatest Beer Run Ever.” (Apple TV Plus)
“The Greatest Beer Run Ever” is a dumb title for this film by Peter Farrelly (“Green Book”), based on the true story of a New York Merchant Marine who, in 1967, took a freighter to Vietnam just so he could spend three days on furlough bringing a duffel bag filled with American beer to his enlisted buddies from back home. The escapade by Chickie Donohue (Zac Efron) was also dumb and dangerous, and at first the film has an unsettlingly larky tone. (Maybe it’s wasn’t all that dangerous. One of the soldiers Chickie encounters remarks that “some people are too dumb to get killed,” and Chickie, who seems to have a guardian angel looking out for him, certainly fits the bill.) But he quickly gets an education, in what turns out to be a complex story that is elevated well above its title. Chickie, you see, believes in the war effort with an irritating naivete but is eventually disillusioned after he meets a cynical American photojournalist (Russell Crowe) and sees firsthand that the in-country chaos that characterizes the conflict isn’t like he imagined war to be. Yes, the protagonist is a numskull. But the movie, like its hero, eventually matures into something with a greater appreciation of nuance. It doesn’t sound like it, but “The Greatest Beer Run Ever” turns out to be a tale about moral ambiguity, about truth and lies, about PR and PTSD — and, ultimately, about the meaning of friendship. R. Available on Apple TV Plus. Contains coarse language and some war violence. 126 minutes. — M.O.
The recent canon of films reappraising maligned female pop stars of the 1990s now has a galvanizing and thoughtful new addition. In “Nothing Compares,” director Kathryn Ferguson invites viewers to consider the Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor, not as a train wreck in need of saving but as a breathtakingly courageous avatar, an artist-activist who came to both identities honestly, by way of sensitivity and supernatural vocal range as well as deep wells of empathy and garden-variety chutzpah. “Nothing Compares” opens with O’Connor at Madison Square Garden in 1992, when she stared down a hostile crowd at a Bob Dylan tribute concert, just days after ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live,” an act that made her an instant pariah. Ferguson then loops back to fill in the biography leading to that moment, with O’Connor herself narrating her abusive childhood, her escape to punk-era England, her self-discovery by way of Rasta culture, gay nightlife, aesthetic camaraderie, and the birth of her son and her serenely self-contained insistence on always going her own way, regardless of the haters. With a dearth of visual material from O’Connor’s youth, Ferguson is forced to rely on hazy reenactments, and Prince’s estate sadly declined her request to license “Nothing Compares 2 U,” the song that made O’Connor a superstar. But the elements of O’Connor’s story — her bravery, prescience, ultimate vindication and that ethereal, scorching voice — take on irresistible cumulative power. TV-MA. Available on Showtime. Contains strong language and mature thematic elements. 95 minutes. — A.H.
Sinead O’Connor is still in one piece
The horror movie “Devil’s Workshop” stars Timothy Granaderos as an actor under consideration for the role of a demonologist in an upcoming film. To give himself an edge over the competition (Emile Hirsch), he enlists the help of an expert in devil lore (Radha Mitchell), who soon has him dredging up his past and sacrificing a goat. R. Available on demand. Contains violence, strong language throughout, drug use, some sexuality and nudity. 86 minutes.
Produced by Michael Shannon and Alyssa Milano, the documentary “From the Hood to the Holler” follows the 2020 campaign, across Kentucky, of Charles Booker in the Democratic primary for the U.S. Senate seat held by Mitch McConnell in Kentucky. Unrated. Available on demand. 102 minutes.
Emily Watson stars in “God’s Creatures,” a drama about a woman in an Irish fishing village who lies to protect her son (Paul Mescal) after he is accused of sexual assault. According to Variety, the film “largely avoids didactic moralizing in favor of a deeper, more sorrowful examination of interior guilt, accountability and compromised solidarity — though its touch in this regard could be lighter.” R. Available on demand; also opening at Landmark’s E Street Cinema. Contains strong language. 100 minutes.
From writer-director Ana Lily Amirpour (“A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night” and “The Bad Batch”), “Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon” tells the story of a struggling single mother (Kate Hudson) and an escaped mental patient with supernatural powers (Jun Jong Seo) whose crime rampage draws the attention of a detective (Craig Robinson). Paste magazine says the movie “highlights the filmmaker’s flair for vicious world-building through its playful use of lighting, soundtrack and character.” R. Available on demand. Contains strong language throughout, sexual material and some violence. 107 minutes.
Inspired by characters from a 1960s horror sitcom, writer-director Rob Zombie’s “The Munsters” tells the story of the courtship between the monstrous Herman Munster (Jeff Daniel Phillips) and a vampire named Lily (Sheri Moon Zombie, Rob’s wife). PG. Available on demand. Contains macabre and suggestive material, scary images, and coarse language. 109 minutes.
Lea Thompson stars in “Ten Tricks” as a glamorous madam who decides, after years in the sex industry, that she wants to settle down and start a family. Unrated. Available on demand. 88 minutes.
“Vesper” is a sci-fi drama about the titular 13-year-old girl (Raffiella Chapman), who is trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. Variety calls it a “strikingly designed futuristic fairy tale.” R. Available on demand. 114 minutes.
Iliana Sosa’s documentary “What We Leave Behind” centers on the cross-border life of the filmmaker’s father, a Mexican who has spent his life going back and forth between his homeland and America, where his children live. The Austin Chronicle calls the film an “intimate portrait of a family separated by distance but united in love,” TV-PG. Available on Netflix. In Spanish and English with subtitles. 70 minutes. | 2022-09-29T14:48:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New movies to stream from home this week - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/29/september-30-new-streaming-movie-roundup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/29/september-30-new-streaming-movie-roundup/ |
Fox News host Tucker Carlson, at the National Review Institute's Ideas Summit on March 29, 2019, in Washington. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
If you are curious, here is how you transliterate “Tucker Carlson” into Russian: Такер Карлсон.
I know this because on Wednesday those characters appeared on Russian TV over and over again, as broadcasters blessed by authorities in that country eagerly embraced Carlson’s effort to pin the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage on President Biden’s administration.
If you are less dedicated to tracking rhetoric that might be embraced by Russian President Vladimir Putin, you may have missed Carlson’s riff on Tuesday. The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake walked through it in detail, but the short version is that Carlson suggested that damage to two underwater gas pipelines in Europe was possibly a function of U.S. saboteurs.
There’s no evidence of this, of course. Carlson leveraged statements from administration officials opposing the activation of the pipeline to suggest they had committed to destroying it. But the point, as usual, was to frame the actions of Biden and his aides as inherently dangerous for the American people — in this case because there would be a cascading effect after Russia retaliated.
You can see the appeal for the Russian state. First, that the damage to the pipelines — an action for which Russia is certainly a more-than-viable suspect, if not the preeminent one — would get pinned on its archenemy. And, second, that Russia is presented not as it is (weak, hobbled by Ukraine’s counteroffensive) but instead as it sees itself (an actor equivalent to the United States that can impose pain where and when it wishes). Again, Carlson’s intent was almost certainly centered more on impugning Biden than elevating Putin but, you know. Enemy of your enemy.
And so the clip from Такер Карлсон entered heavy rotation, as captured by the Internet Archive.
There he was, just after noon Moscow time, shown on Channel One’s news program.
There he was again on the Russia1 program “60 Minutes” at 1:52 p.m.
At 2:56 p.m., back on Channel One.
And again at 3:37 p.m.
A few minutes later, at 3:42 p.m., it aired on Russia1′s “Who Is Against?”
At 5:44 p.m., it aired again on Russia1.
The clip aired on Channel One again at 7:34 p.m.
In the 9 p.m. hour, it was shown at least four times. On Russia1 at 9:05...
...on Russia24 at 9:14...
...on Channel One at 9:19...
...and on Channel One again 20 minutes later. This segment included former Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D), now a regular commentator on Carlson’s show, one of a coterie of regular voices skeptical about the American government (and often sympathetic to Russia).
The last clip recorded by the Internet Archive aired on Channel One at 11:15 p.m.
There were other segments from the show that got picked up, too, like Channel One’s elevation of Carlson’s suggestion that the sabotage might have been a sop to American gas companies. That clip included this restrained graphic.
It is, of course, not Carlson’s fault that Russian TV looped his segment into their broadcasts. He didn’t make these claims to get airtime in Moscow, it’s safe to assume; he has enough people tuning into his show here in the United States. But it is telling: The networks on which the clips aired are state-run, meaning that the rhetoric Carlson offered was seen as a boon to Putin’s propaganda.
Again, there’s no evidence that the scenario Carlson outlines is accurate. There are probably better-than-even odds that the sabotage will be eventually linked back to Russia itself. In a statement on Thursday, NATO asserted that a deliberate attack on member state infrastructure would be “met with a united and determined response” — an announcement of force that would be awkward if its most important member were found to be at fault.
The question, really, isn’t why Russia would embrace unfounded allegations against the Biden administration that cast Russia as the victim. That’s obvious. The question is more why Fox News embraces it.
Though that, too, is fairly obvious.
On our radar: Supreme Court, dogged by questions of legitimacy, is ready to resume | 2022-09-29T14:48:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russian TV is very excited about Tucker Carlson’s Nord Stream theory - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/russia-nord-stream-tucker-carlson-fox-news/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/russia-nord-stream-tucker-carlson-fox-news/ |
King Charles III and members of the royal family follow the coffin of Queen Elizabeth II in London, Sept. 19, 2022. (Danny Lawson/AP)
The document lists the queen’s occupation as “Her Majesty The Queen.” Her daughter, Princess Anne, is listed as the “informant.” Several days after Elizabeth’s death, Anne had shared a personal statement saying “I was fortunate to share the last 24 hours of my dearest mother’s life.” | 2022-09-29T14:50:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth II’s cause of death revealed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/29/queen-elizabeth-death-certificate-old-age/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/29/queen-elizabeth-death-certificate-old-age/ |
An appeals court will hear arguments Thursday on whether allowing trans athletes to participate in youth sports discriminates against their cisgender classmates
From left: Terry Miller of Bloomfield, Conn., and Andraya Yearwood of Cromwell, Conn. ( Stan Godlewski for the Washington Post/Washington Post illustration)
On Thursday, a federal appellate court will hear arguments concerning the rights of transgender student-athletes.
But unlike most other legal challenges, the plaintiffs aren’t trans people suing to have their rights recognized.
The case, Soule et al v Connecticut Association of Schools et al, was dismissed by a federal district judge last year, but it has proved to be consequential.
Inside the Christian legal powerhouse that keeps winning at the Supreme Court
The case is frequently cited by those who want to bar trans women and girls from competing in women’s sports, with several of the plaintiffs advocating for states to pass more restrictions. Advocates on both sides say the case has been instrumental in shaping the public narrative about trans girls in sports.
Here’s what to know about it.
What are the plaintiffs arguing?
The plaintiffs in this case are four young cis women from Connecticut who competed in track and field during high school: Selina Soule, Chelsea Mitchell, Ashley Nicoletti and Alanna Smith. They are challenging the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference’s policy of allowing trans high school students to compete in sex-segregated sports that align with their gender identity.
This policy, the suit claims, puts the cis women at a competitive disadvantage in girls’ track, so much so that it violates their Title IX rights, which require schools to provide “equal athletic opportunity for members of both sexes.” In other words, they are arguing that Title IX protections for cis girls are compromised when trans girls are allowed to compete against them.
Competing against trans girls, their complaint said, left the plaintiffs with “materially fewer opportunities to stand on the victory podium, fewer opportunities to participate in post-season elite competition, fewer opportunities for public recognition as champions, and a much smaller chance of setting recognized records.”
This caused irreparable harm to cis female students, the ADF argues, citing a 2019 race in which Mitchell competed against two trans girls, Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood.
In that competition, Mitchell placed third — behind Miller and Yearwood. If it weren’t for CIAC’s policy, the complaint alleges, Mitchell would have placed first, been named State Open champion, and been publicly recognized for her achievements — which could have influenced her college prospects.
“It’s really difficult to quantify how the girls recruiting has been impacted over the long haul. But what we do know is that any loss in an unfair race is wrong,” said Christiana Kiefer, senior counsel for the ADF.
The complaint asks the court to block all transgender girls from competing in women’s sports in Connecticut. The plaintiffs also would want their records amended to reflect what their results would have been if Miller and Yearwood had not competed against them.
What are the defendants arguing?
The defendants are the Connecticut Association of Schools as well as the school boards representing the schools the four plaintiffs attended. The trans athletes, Miller and Yearwood, were not named as defendants but have joined the suit to defend the Connecticut policy. They are being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has asked the court to dismiss the complaint.
“The entire premise is just blatantly false,” said Joshua Block, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s LGBTQ Project.
It is not true that the plaintiffs “can’t win” against trans girls, the ACLU argues in court documents, pointing to their “extensive record of victories,” which include competitions where they outperformed their trans peers.
ACLU filings allege that Smith and Mitchell bested both Miller and Yearwood in several state championships between 2019 and 2020. All four plaintiffs have since received scholarships to run track in college, which contradicts their claim that they lost scholarship or recruitment opportunities, according to the ACLU. Meanwhile, neither Miller nor Yearwood was offered athletics scholarships.
“As a result of this whole process, they’re not competing in sports at all,” Block said.
The ACLU has argued that because all four plaintiffs have graduated from high school, as have the defendants, the court cannot block Connecticut’s trans-inclusive policy, since they are not being directly harmed by it. According to the ACLU, there are no out trans girl athletes in Connecticut’s schools at present.
What have the courts said?
U.S. District Judge Robert Chatigny dismissed the lawsuit in April 2021 on procedural grounds, ruling that the issue was “moot” — and so could not be considered by the courts. At the time, two of the plaintiffs had graduated from high school, and Chatigny found that “there is no indication that Smith and Nicoletti will encounter competition by a transgender student” in their upcoming track season.
Chatigny also noted that “courts across the country have consistently held that Title IX requires schools to treat transgender students consistent with their gender identity.”
The ADF has appealed Chatigny’s decision to the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit. At a hearing Thursday, the plaintiffs will ask the panel to send the case back to the district court for a reconsideration of the case’s merits. The defendants are expected to argue that the court should uphold the original ruling but also will provide new arguments so the appellate judges may make their own ruling on the case.
On the basis of legal precedent: the defendants.
“The vast majority of the precedent from federal courts recognizes that Title IX protects transgender students from discrimination,” said Scott Skinner-Thompson, an associate professor at the University of Colorado Law School.
“In those rulings, trans students were being forcibly excluded by schools. Here, the cisgender students are not being excluded in any way. They’re allowed to compete in sports consistent with their gender identity.”
There is also U.S. Supreme Court precedent to consider. In 2020, a conservative majority decided that protections against sex discrimination under Title VII also apply to gay and trans employees. Title VII and Title IX are usually interpreted in the same way, Skinner-Thompson noted.
Accepting the plaintiffs’ position on Title IX would require the courts to interpret the federal statute in a completely different way. Rather than protect trans students, Title IX would be wielded against them.
How could this case affect the future of student athletics?
If the case is dismissed or decided in favor of the defendants — the most likely eventual scenario — it would affirm that allowing trans students to compete in sports categories aligning with their gender identity is consistent with federal law and may even be required, Skinner-Thompson said.
If judges rule in favor of the plaintiffs, the ruling would create a conflicting interpretation of Title IX that would need to be settled by the courts.
What impact has it already had?
No matter how the case is decided, it has already affected how people talk about trans participation in sports.
Often, the goal of these kinds of challenges is not just to shape legal doctrine, “but to shape societal understanding of issues,” Skinner-Thompson said.
The case has been “extremely important” in shaping public perception of trans youths’ participation in sports, said Kiefer of the ADF. (The ADF has helped craft model legislation for anti-trans sports restrictions and bathroom bills across the country.)
The plaintiffs’ stories have been referred to by states looking to pass laws that would restrict trans girls’ competing in female sports. Soule, among the very first cis female athletes to speak out on the issue, has given testimony to a number of state legislatures — including in Kansas and North Dakota — supporting these policies.
“I do think it’s been the start of a movement that is meant to restore fairness and a level playing field to women’s sports,” Kiefer said.
But this case’s influence doesn’t stop at sports, said ACLU attorney Block.
“The topic of athletics is, in a lot of conversations, sort of an entry point for driving a wedge into a broader argument: that girls who are transgender should not be treated as girls, and that boys who are transgender should not be treated as boys.” | 2022-09-29T15:18:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A battle over Title IX: Can it be used to exclude trans athletes? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/connecticut-trans-athlete-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/connecticut-trans-athlete-lawsuit/ |
Washington Commanders Coach Ron Rivera during Sunday's loss to the Philadelphia Eagles. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The last time Washington visited AT&T Stadium, where the Commanders will take on the Dallas Cowboys Sunday, Ron Rivera’s team gave up the first 21 points and trailed 42-7 at halftime of an eventual 56-14 loss in prime time. At least Washington put points on the scoreboard in the first half of that debacle, something it failed to do while being outscored 46-0 in the first two quarters over the last two weeks.
Slow starts and three-touchdown first-half deficits have been alarmingly frequent for Washington in Rivera’s two-plus seasons at the helm. When the Philadelphia Eagles scored on the final play of the second quarter to take a 24-0 lead into halftime last Sunday, it marked the seventh time in 36 games under Rivera that the burgundy and gold have allowed the first 20 points. That league-leading total includes the previous week, when the Commanders spotted the Detroit Lions a 22-0 halftime lead before mounting a comeback that fell short.
“Do you know how impossible that is to pull off?” The Team 980 host Kevin Sheehan said on his podcast this week. “In a league that is designed for all of these teams to be fairly close, to be down by 20 or more in 20 percent of the games you’ve coached so far by halftime? … It’s troubling.”
The Lions and Houston Texans have allowed the first 20 points of a game five times since 2020, and the Jacksonville Jaguars have done it four times during that span, according to data from TruMedia, but Rivera’s Commanders are in a class of their own when it comes to digging themselves early holes. Not surprisingly, they’re 0-7 in games in which they fall behind 20-0 or worse over the last three years.
The frequency with which Rivera’s teams have fallen behind 20-0 or worse over the last three years is staggering, especially compared to Washington’s other coaches in the Daniel Snyder era. Mike Shanahan also saw his Washington squad fall behind 20-0 seven times, but that was over 64 games. Jay Gruden’s teams trailed 20-0 or worse five times over 85 games. Washington had less frequent ugly starts under Steve Spurrier, Marty Schottenheimer, Joe Gibbs and even Jim Zorn.
During Rivera’s nine years as coach of the Carolina Panthers, his teams allowed the first 20 points of a game only five times. It happened in his first loss with Washington, a 30-15 defeat in Week 2 of the 2020 season that saw the Arizona Cardinals take a 20-o lead into halftime.
“We hurt ourselves in the first half when you go back and look at it,” Rivera said after that game.
Rivera’s teams have a history of starting the season slow, record-wise. During his tenure in Washington, that trend has extended to individual games. Since 2020, Washington has scored first 11 times, the second-fewest total in the league, and trailed at halftime in 22 of 36 games, the fifth-most in the league. Washington has trailed by at least 20 points at halftime in a league-high five games. Despite having only the ninth-most losses (21) over the last three years, Washington has trailed at any point in the second-most games (33).
Say this for Washington: It’s done a decent job of not getting blown out. The Commanders’ 11 double-digit losses since 2020 are the eighth-most in the league. Their three 20-point losses over the last three seasons are fewer than 13 teams, including the Lions, Jaguars and New York Jets, who have nine apiece. Last year’s home game against the Cowboys, in which Washington trailed 24-0 at halftime and lost 27-20, is a perfect example of the team’s tendency to rally to at least make things interesting after falling behind by multiple scores.
“I feel like I let [the fans] down,” Rivera said after that loss. “I wanted them out here to cheer for us, and we should have given them a better first half. We gave them a very good second half, something to cheer about. … But that’s football, and that’s what happens.”
It just doesn’t usually happen like this, and so often.
On Sunday, Washington will look to avoid being shut out in the first half of three consecutive games for the first time since 1965.
“You’re not going to win too many games without putting any points on the board in the first half like we have in the last few weeks,” wide receiver Terry McLaurin said after Sunday’s loss. “We all know that, and we all have to take individual accountability for that and improve.” | 2022-09-29T15:22:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Under Ron Rivera, Washington football frequently faces 20-0 deficits - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/ron-rivera-commanders-slow-starts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/ron-rivera-commanders-slow-starts/ |
Vinyl is booming in the digital age. So why does the best way to listen feel just out of reach?
(Ryan Young for The Washington Post)
Tom Port is a 68-year-old man who spends his days in an office park outside Los Angeles where he takes it upon himself to determine which records are the best-sounding in the world. This is a task for which he considers himself uniquely qualified. Port is a true audio iconoclast. He delights in telling you that the slab of vinyl you’re listening to isn’t worthy of his ears and the only thing more pathetic is the audio setup you’re using to listen to it.
Port developed his self-proclaimed skills over decades of scouring used LP bins, gathering up multiple copies of the same album and comparing them side by side — listening sessions he calls “shootouts.” That’s what I’m here today to observe. It’s just one stop on my year-long search for the perfect sound, an attempt to take a lifelong passion for music and find out if I’ve really been hearing it.
“The number of copies of ‘Sgt. Pepper’ I’ve played or ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ are well over 100, maybe close to 200, to find the ones that are really good,” Port says. “I want the best, and that’s exactly what should be driving you. You get this very special record. You may have only five of them in your whole collection. But those five are like a drug. They’re just so beyond anything you’ve ever heard, and you just can’t believe it.”
Port believes that records are like snowflakes — no two are the same. So many things can impact the pressing, including room temperature, the split second the stampers are pressed onto the hot, vinyl biscuit, and unknown factors no human can understand. You can’t find the best-sounding record by reading the marketing sticker proclaiming the latest advances in audio technology. The only way is to use your ears. So Port and his staff at Better Records sit for hours in a windowless room, unplug the small refrigerator in the back so as not to get any electrical interference, and simply listen.
Speaker wires hang from the ceiling like renegade strands of linguine so as not to cross and cause feedback. Port sits in a chair on one side of the room, its position marked under each leg with blue electrical tape. Sunshine English, a staffer, sits at a VPI turntable outfitted with a Dynavector cartridge. On the menu today, at my request, is jazz trumpeter Kenny Dorham’s 1959 album “Quiet Kenny.” It’s an elegant album that has become a collector’s item. Original copies in top condition regularly sell for more than $1,500. I don’t have one of those, but I’ve brought three copies with me, all of which claim to be on the cutting edge of new audio technology.
Owner of Better Records, Tom Port, in California on May 23. (Ryan Young for The Washington Post)
The first is from the Electric Recording Co., based in London, which produces roughly a dozen albums each year on vintage equipment painstakingly restored by owner Pete Hutchison. ERC makes just 300 copies of each reissue and charges $376 per album. The stock sells out immediately. Then the records pop up on eBay for as much as $2,000.
English has agreed not to reveal which copy is being played so the shootout can be truly blind. She lowers the needle onto the ERC edition of “Quiet Kenny.” Port groans loudly. “Listen to that bass,” he says. “Blah, blah, blah, blah. Who wants to play a record that sounds like this?”
Next up is a copy pressed by Analogue Productions, the Kansas-based label founded by Chad Kassem. Port says that Kassem “has never made a single good sounding record” since AP’s founding in 1991. (Kassem calls Port a “f---ing loser.”) This blind listen gets better marks, which surprises Port when he’s told it’s an Analogue.
“That’s the best-sounding Analogue Productions record I’ve ever heard,” Port says. “Because it’s not terrible.”
Tom Port shows his labeling methods and some of his favorite albums. (Ryan Young for The Washington Post)
Tom Port performs a three-step wash of an album. (Ryan Young for The Washington Post)
LEFT: Tom Port shows his labeling methods and some of his favorite albums. RIGHT: Tom Port performs a three-step wash of an album. (Ryan Young for The Washington Post)
The third is a test pressing from Tom “Grover” Biery, a former Warner Bros. veteran who is starting a label called Public Domain Recordings. Biery believes records are too expensive and wants to offer a solid-sounding, cheaper alternative to the costly reissues coming out today. Port calls it serviceable but flat. He grumbles that it’s a mono, not a stereo recording.
“It sounds tonally correct,” he says. “But the problem with mono is everybody is in line between me and Sunshine, and they’re all standing one behind the other. Can you really separate out all those musicians when they’re all right in the middle? It’s very difficult. I don’t like it.”
None of these would make the hot stamper cut. (Port defines a hot stamper as a pressing that sounds better than other copies of the same album.) We talk more about ERC and how coveted Hutchison’s records are in the market. He agrees to try song two on the ERC vinyl, but things don’t get better. I suggest that maybe English adjust the arm on the turntable. The vertical tracking angle, or VTA, as he calls it. “Nothing can fix this record,” he shouts back. “It’s junk. And that guy should be ashamed of himself.”
There is something almost charming in Port’s brash refusal to praise anything pressed in the modern era or to consider a digital source. (He won’t even listen to music in his car; the system just can’t compare to that in his shootout room, he says.)
And Port’s take, as rigid as it is, makes a certain amount of sense when you consider the scandal that emerged during the reporting for this story.
Mike Esposito, a Phoenix record store owner and YouTuber, claimed that Mobile Fidelity (MoFi), a reissue record label beloved by analog-only purists, had been misleading its customers and using digital files in the production chain.
The revelation sparked outrage among the label’s devotees and plunged audiophiles into something of an existential crisis. Two customers filed a lawsuit against the Sebastopol, Calif., company after an article was published by The Washington Post.
Experts such as Esposito and Michael Fremer, the dean of audiophile writing, had included some of the now-exposed company’s records on their list of the best-sounding analog albums. Could digital technology have advanced enough to fool even the best of ears?
A trio of acclaimed mastering engineers — Bernie Grundman, Kevin Gray and Ryan K. Smith — told me that an all-analog chain always sounds better than an album with a digital step, but that didn’t seem to settle the debate.
How sharp are your ears? Can you tell the difference between analog and digital?
We recorded different tracks playing from the same set of speakers twice, once as a vinyl record and the other as a digital file.1 Listen below and see if you can tell which is which. We recommend plugging in your best wired headphones and turning the volume up a little.
1We recorded these samples in front of Jonathan Weiss’s $363,000 Oswalds Mill Audio (OMA) speakers in his Brooklyn showroom, using a binaural mic and a stereo mic at 32bit_192kHz. The digital file was streamed through an iFi nano iOne home DAC, which has a Bluetooth codec maxing out at 16bit_48kHz. The audio files have been matched post-production to have the same loudness. (Of course, nothing sounds quite like being there.)
Choose a track:
The Miles Davis Quintent “Oleo”
Neil Young “Out On The Weekend”
The Miles Davis Quintent — “Oleo”
Sample one
Sample two
Which sample is the vinyl recording?
It's definitely sample one.
Pretty sure it's sample two.
It also brought back an exchange I’d had earlier in the summer with Grammy-winning producer T Bone Burnett. He had spent years working with scientists to create a special record that would capture a recording session in a way a normal LP couldn’t, using materials primarily found in space stations. He recruited Bob Dylan to rerecord his first iconic composition, “Blowin’ in the Wind.” Burnett made only one copy of the record. It would be auctioned by Christie’s only weeks after we met in New York for $1.78 million.
After Burnett played me the song, we talked about the process behind the recording. Burnett told me he captured the session on a restored Nagra tape machine as well as a digital recorder. When it came time to put the song on the disc, he chose the digital recording as his source. I asked him whether he worried about the analog crowd. He was unrepentant.
“There was no noise or tape hiss,” he said. “That’s the way we deemed it was best. I don’t have to apologize for it. It’s a great recording.”
Which may lead to the biggest lesson of my quest. Don’t pretend to know everything.
Grammy-winning recording engineer and mixer Mike Piersante gets a disc ready for a June 15 listening party at Christie’s in New York. (Jackie Molloy for the Washington Post)
A journey back to vinyl
Everybody has that first song they become obsessed with. I was 9 years old when I walked into the Chestnut Hill Mall and bought my first tape, the self-titled debut from the new wave hitmakers, the Cars. I still remember the incredible, distorted crunch of “Good Times Roll” on my rectangular RadioShack tape machine. By 1981, I’d moved on to a Sony Walkman and a couple years later got my first record player. That Panasonic all-in-one could handle LPs, cassettes and tune in to Casey Kasem’s “American Top 40.” By the late ’80s, I had fallen in love with CDs, and a decade later immediately embraced online music. I loved Napster, packed with bootlegs from my favorite artists, and stuffed each successive iPod with as many songs as the hard drive would allow. I never stopped to consider how listening habits changed. I just consumed.
But one day my iPod classic’s battery failed. Instead of trying to resurrect my digital library, I began to move back into records. In 2011, I bought a used Dual 1219 turntable for $150 and restarted the record collection I’d stupidly downsized. I knew very little about which albums to buy and gobbled up $16 reissues from labels like WaxTime and Simply Vinyl. And I never bought old, used records. I believed those hype stickers on the plastic wrap pushing the qualities (180-gram, half-speed remaster!) of the latest pressings. That new record had to be the best ever.
It wasn’t until last year that I began to reassess my own collecting strategy. I also started to notice a shift in the vinyl landscape. So many record reissues were delayed. I asked several artists and publicists why. They told me records weren’t just more popular than at any point in the last few decades, they were selling so well that the biggest entertainment conglomerates — Universal, Sony, Warner Bros. — could not press them fast enough to meet demand.
“My own group can’t even celebrate milestones,” Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson grumbled when I asked about the anniversary of the Roots’ 1996 record “Illadelph Halflife.” “There are but so many pressing plants in the world, and they’re backed up for, like, months.”
Questlove performs June 21 during the Mythical Games NFT.NYC event at the Glasshouse in New York. (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)
The history of recorded sound is largely about progression and abandonment, from Edison’s wax cylinders to shellac 78 rpm records; from vinyl LPs, 8-tracks and cassettes to the compact disc. It was in 1985 that Joseph McLellan, right here in The Post, declared the LP all but dead.
“CDs sound excellent on the average home system, and they continue to sound good, unlike LPs and even tapes no matter how many times you play them,” he wrote. “By 1990, perhaps sooner, CD will be the standard format for recorded music.”
By 2000, CDs had peaked, with global sales of more than 13 billion. More than 2.4 million copies of ’N Sync’s “No Strings Attached” were sold in its first week on sale; only 1 million vinyl albums were sold the entire year. But by 2020, the shiny discs themselves had been declared all but dead as streaming services took hold. This summer, Spotify announced its total monthly users had climbed to 433 million.
But the numbers weren’t what I was after. My search was about sound.
OMA Imperia speakers (Cynthia van Elk/OMA)
Can you put a price on perfect sound?
Perfect sound. What is it exactly? You can measure it, reducing it to frequencies and amplitudes, or you can recognize it as something else. The way your room is set up. Your mood. What you expect and what you’re used to. When I told David Byrne, the author, artist and former Talking Heads frontman about my quest, he told me that nothing compared to that time, as a teenager, he heard Jimi Hendrix on his transistor radio.
“Phones sound better than those things and yet it was a life-changing experience,” he said. “Even crappy sound can be life-changing and can actually move people emotionally and socially.”
By then, I had already visited Jonathan Weiss’s showroom in Brooklyn and listened to records on his $363,000 K3 turntable — a machine built with parts found in the U.S. military’s anti-ballistic missile defense systems, he says. The system played through speakers that stood taller than seven feet; the same set was recently installed for Tom Cruise.
Weiss is both prickly and philosophical. In this space, he’s hosted listening parties for everyone from Blondie to Alicia Keys. He snickered at the idea of my search but not my desire to hear music through those massive speakers.
“There is no such thing as perfect sound,” he says. “But how do you explain what this sound is? It’s like Buddhism, where any real truth, you have to actually experience it somehow. Get a taste of it. Otherwise, you don’t know.”
Talking to musicians about the subject can lead to very different opinions. Chuck D, the rap legend whose booming voice has always defined Public Enemy’s thick productions, didn’t seem impressed when I told him I got chills when I heard Louis Armstrong’s “St. James Infirmary” on Weiss’s towering system. He seemed more focused on how I listened: from a specific chair, marked out and measured on the floor, to provide the best possible sonic experience. What I described, he said, sounded like nothing more than a glorified man cave.
“What do you want to do with the sound?” Chuck said. “That’s the biggest question. Like, I want to dance with it. Are you going to sit? Are you going to respond or just chill out and go to sleep? You want to multitask? Oh, I got the perfect sound. Perfect sound for what?”
Rapper Chuck D performs onstage during “Midnight At The Oasis” Annual Art For Life Benefit at Fairview Farms on July 15, 2017, in Water Mill, N.Y. (Jason Kempin/Getty Images)
Neil Young, meanwhile, has long been obsessed with chasing great sound. For years, he’s called out purveyors of low-resolution audio — whether MP3 or Spotify — and tried to upgrade what we stream and download. He also works hard on reissues to use tapes whenever he can, aspiring to an all-analog chain.
He told me about his first encounter with digital technologies in the recording studio.
It was the late 1980s, and Young was in the studio with his longtime collaborators, Crazy Horse, working on what would become the electric classic, “Ragged Glory.” He was excited about the convenience of the newfound technology, which would allow him to cut tracks on a computer. Then he listened to the playback from the first sessions. The digital files were a disaster.
“It hurt my ears,” he says. “Like being hit with a machine gun of ice cubes.”
Years later, Young would stick to tape while also keeping up to date with technology. He even tried his hand at a short-lived high resolution portable music player. (RIP, Pono.) He created an online store packed with high-res files. That didn’t mean he was willing to concede to digital when a preserved analog tape was available.
He explained the difference. “If you’re at Mount Shasta and you see it reflecting in the lake, that is a classic shot,” Young says. “The water is totally still, it’s perfect. But if you took the same thing and took a digital picture of it, it’s a bunch of average squares. The variety is the universality of the sound. All is destroyed.”
CDs were not a crime against sonic nature. Their success as a product did lead to major shifts, though. Suddenly, the technologists, not the music geeks, were in charge. They focused on psychoacoustics, a field that embraces the idea that our ears can mask deficiencies in a recording. What we hear isn’t merely what’s presented but how we interpret it.
A century ago, Thomas Edison’s “tone tests” tapped into this concept. The inventor hosted several recitals to prove the quality of his Diamond Disc records. If you have ever listened to one of those records or a 78, the idea of mistaking it for the real thing — a live singer or performer — would seem absurd. But Edison’s recitals placed a performer and a machine on a darkened stage and accounts stated that the audience could not distinguish the two.
“And you go, wait a minute, we know what these old things sound like,” says Byrne, who wrote about the tests in his book “How Music Works.” “How could people be fooled by this? I think this goes to show that we hear — not just hear but perceive — what we want to perceive. People have seen UFOs and, in the Victorian era, saw fairies. I’m not going to debate whether UFOs are real or not, but there are a lot of things through history that people have heard and seen that are completely imaginary. And sound is like that.”
Which brings us to the lowest point on the sound ladder: the MP3.
The psycho-acousticians knew they could take an original master and throw away enough material to fit it onto portable devices. What was lost in sound quality could be masked by the human ear. The pleasure would come from the portability.
“So that whole experience of MP3 and other types of compressed audio is what a whole generation born in the ’90s and 2000s grew up with,” says Marc Finer, who was enlisted by Sony to serve as a kind of ambassador for CDs in the 1980s.
In other words, an entire generation learned to embrace the portability and convenience of music at the expense of the sound. And really, who could blame them?
Napster’s arrival opened the floodgates for the “everything should be free” generation and blew up the music industry.
Executives, still drunk on CD revenue, had no idea how to respond to the free flow of sound. They tried to fight the rebels rather than cut deals with them.
“They were slow in so many ways,” says Hilary Rosen, CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America from 1998 to 2003. “There was always this view in the music business that there was nothing a good hit couldn’t fix. And they held on to that notion for six years too long.”
A girl tries out an iPod at a London Apple store, the first one to open in Europe, on Nov. 18, 2004. (Nils Jorgensen/Shutterstock)
Goodbye iPod, hello streaming
Early this year, Apple ended the iPod era after 21 years and 450 million sold. The death of the digital music player inspired several nostalgic articles, but for me and most others, it had been so long since I’d used my last iPod. By now, I was well into streaming and, specifically, trying to experience high-resolution audio. As I explored, I needed a way to listen to those high-res files. The iPhone’s space-saving sound chip wouldn’t work. I needed a digital-to-analog converter, or DAC, I could plug into my system.
These machines take the math exercise that is a digital signal and turn it into the continuous wave that is analog. Tony Stott, the head of product marketing for the London-based Cambridge Audio, suggested I pick up a CXN V2 DAC (retail $1,299). Then I told him about the larger quest I was on. And how I’d been mocked by Port and some of the other audio guys. They said my search was hopeless, that my system could never sound good enough because I wasn’t willing to clear out enough space for suitably sized speakers.
“What can sometimes happen is that some of the joy of the music is overtaken by the joy of building a system,” Stott said. “But listening to good-quality audio is a bit like owning a Formula One team. It will cost you a million pounds to get around the track in two minutes. It will cost you 10 million pounds to get around the track in a second under two minutes.”
Stott also cautioned me that it wasn’t enough to get a DAC. I also needed to consider the source.
“Rubbish in, rubbish out,” he said. “Not to say that Spotify is rubbish, it has its place, is brilliantly convenient and it’s wonderful for on-the-go in the car, but when you start taking a high-resolution file and feed it into a good digital-to-analog converter, there’s a big lift.”
For me, that lift would be Qobuz, a digital music service founded in France in 2007 and still a very small fraction the size to Spotify.
“In the U.S., we have seven people. Not seven people at the front desk,” says managing director Dan Mackta of his workforce. “Seven people.”
Mackta won’t tell you how many people subscribe to Qobuz. (That number is also but a very small fraction of Spotify’s users.) But for almost a year, I’ve been one of them. There are limitations — no podcasts, for example — which is why I pay $14.99 a month for Qobuz but still subscribe to Spotify.
You don’t need to understand bit rates to get why I’m paying for both services. Just put on the same track — say, the Rolling Stones’ apocalyptic anthem “Gimme Shelter” — on Qobuz and Spotify and you’ll hear a clear difference.
Now how sharp are your ears when it comes to low- and high-resolution digital audio? Can you tell which sample below is higher quality? 2 Don’t forget to plug those wired headphones in if they aren’t already.
2These two versions of “I Feel The Earth Move” are digital files, one a lower quality (16bit_22kHz) MP3 file heard in the earlier days of file sharing, the other a high-resolution (24bit_96kHz) .WAV file from Qobuz. Note that a Bluetooth connection may not support high-resolution streaming.
Carole King — “I Feel The Earth Move”
Which sample is the high-resolution file?
For all its limitations, digital is mostly a known quantity. If you listen to enough new records, you’ll realize why Tom Port’s business is thriving. Old records in excellent condition can cost hundreds. New pressings are miss as much as hit. Some of them are warm and dynamic, others are dull and muddy. There’s no way to know what you’re getting until you throw down $40, rip open the plastic and put that new disc on your turntable. Why does a Hank Mobley reissue mastered by Kevin Gray sound so good when a Chet Baker reissue by the same engineer falls flat?
“That’s one of the big problems with vinyl,” says Bernie Grundman, the 78-year-old mastering engineer whose lengthy career has included working on Carole King’s “Tapestry,” Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” and Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic” and who now oversees a company booming with reissue jobs. “When we started getting back into vinyl in a big way, I said, ‘Okay, now we’re ready for a lot of headaches.’ ”
Sometimes, the record company won’t deliver the original master tape and he’s stuck with a digital file (the 25th anniversary reissue of the “Buena Vista Social Club”). Sometimes the original tape is damaged (Sonny Rollins’s “Newk’s Time”) and he has to tirelessly patch together sections from old CDs. Then there are the production chain woes.
A great record is always going to sound better than its digital counterpart, but, Grundman says, “to get a really great record is next to impossible.”
A framed “Thriller” record with a note signed by Michael Jackson on a wall of records that American audio engineer Bernie Grundman has worked on over the years. (Damon Casarez for The Washington Post)
American audio engineer Bernie Grundman photographed in his mastering studio. (Damon Casarez for The Washington Post)
LEFT: A framed “Thriller” record with a note signed by Michael Jackson on a wall of records that American audio engineer Bernie Grundman has worked on over the years. RIGHT: American audio engineer Bernie Grundman photographed in his mastering studio. (Damon Casarez for The Washington Post)
Massive demand, limited supply
It’s 4:50 a.m. in Taipei, Taiwan, and Danny Lin is waking up to the sound 0f his iPhone alarm. He is 49 and the vice president of an internet browser company, and he lives with his wife and two children in a condo. He also really wants a copy of Yusef Lateef’s “Eastern Sounds.”
An original copy of the saxophonist’s 1961 album will cost hundreds. But Craft Recordings is putting out a special reissue for $100 as part of its “small batch” series. Grundman has mastered this reissue, and it’s also a “one-step,” meaning parts of the production process usually used in the making of a record are eliminated. This is supposed to make the Craft record sound closer than ever to the original session tapes.
4:58.
Lin places the record in his cart and enters his credit card information, but poof, the album is no longer there when he tries to finalize the transaction. Sold out. He tries again, with no luck. All 1,000 copies are already gone. Or rather, they’re just available somewhere else now. He checks eBay where he already sees multiple listings for the Lateef record on the auction site, most in the $500 range. Another victory for the flippers.
“That price is crazy,” says Lin. “I’m never going to trust Craft again.”
I know how he feels. Because there is at least one other person who has clicked through and struck out the same way. Me. This is a long way from the ’80s, when I could gobble up used copies of Howlin’ Wolf or the Pretenders for $8.
But then, as CDs grew more popular, the record industry morphed. Pressing machines were destroyed, record plants converted. The only problem is that records didn’t die. They just went into hibernation. And then, when they came back, the infrastructure that enabled record companies to press as many as 350 million records a year during the “Hotel California” era was gone.
“I think about it all the time,” says Josh Bizar, vice president of Music Direct, MoFi’s parent company. “How did Led Zeppelin make 4 million copies to introduce their albums to the world when we have trouble making 5,000 of anything?”
The “Eastern Sounds” reissue followed the familiar game plan in this new soundscape. Put out something old and special. Package it in a beautiful box. And promise, through a technical explanation that’s beyond the understanding of most civilians, that this album is “as close as the listener can get to the original recording.”
Then sit back. Craft, for its part, says it made an honest mistake in one part of the process and by the time its next release came out, a reissue of Miles Davis’s “Relaxin’,” pressings were increased from 1,000 to 5,000 copies.
“We really didn’t anticipate it to sell out as quickly as it did,” says Mark Piro, who is a director of artists and repertoire for Craft Recordings, the catalogue division of Concord. “We don’t want people to be left out. That’s not our goal.”
The vinyl boom can be charted pretty easily. In 2008, Radiohead had the No. 1 record on the vinyl charts. “In Rainbows” sold 25,000 copies. That wouldn’t even land in the top 100 of 2021. Just last year, new albums from Adele, Olivia Rodrigo and Taylor Swift sold more than 250,000 vinyl copies each. Then there’s the thriving market of reissues, which range from the slew of sealed records pumped out by major labels to the more particular releases aimed at audiophiles from companies such as Analogue Productions and Intervention Records.
Everybody faces the same challenge. Massive demand, limited supply.
“Physics dictate how many records you can make,” says Billy Fields, who leads commercial vinyl strategy at the Warner Music Group. “It takes basically half a minute to make a record. And then you just back out from there. How many presses do you have working? How many shifts are those presses operating? How efficient are those presses? How many records basically is every press putting out every single day that it’s in operation? And what’s the grand total of that?”
He actually has a number: 170 million records. That’s how many Fields says can be pressed in the world each year. To keep up with demand, the industry would need to produce 350 million. That accounts for indie releases, Beatles and Stones reissues, the latest from Harry Styles. They are for audiophiles with $20,000 turntables in special listening rooms and kids with portable Crosleys. All of a sudden, these records are for everyone.
A turntable at Brittany's Record Shop in Cleveland on Record Store Day, April 23. (Amber N. Ford for The Washington Post)
Happy Record Store Day!
It wasn’t easy to find Brittany Benton. There are no signs for her pop-up record store, a space found in an industrial building in St. Clair Superior, an east Cleveland neighborhood that’s peppered with vacant homes. I drove around the building twice, parked in a dusty lot and stopped somebody walking to her car with an Ari Lennox record under her arm. Elise Burnett Boyd pointed me down the lot to Dock 5, to a door propped open with a cinder block.
“Just follow the music,” she said.
I could hear the groove of Hall and Oates’s “I Can’t Go For That (No Can Do)” and, at the end of a hallway, spotted Benton, 35, wearing a brown hoodie and sitting against the wall as she priced out records.
Owner of Brittany’s Record Shop, Brittany Benton, chats with customers between purchases on April 23. (Amber N. Ford for The Washington Post)
Benton sold records online through the pandemic, but these days, she’s renting a 25-by-25 section of floor in this 120-year-old factory building for $300 a month. I’m coming to see her because she’s not obsessed with rare pressings and $100 reissues. She’s just selling records.
It also happens to be Record Store Day, which was created in 2007 to gin up excitement around vinyl but has morphed into a flipper’s dream, with dozens of limited editions produced just for this event. Signs or no, by 11 a.m. Benton has had enough business already to earn back her rent. She’s also filled the space with sound. She has a DJ on-site and talks about abiding by the guidelines of the now 14-year-old vinyl holiday. She knows she could make more by putting the limited-edition RSD albums on eBay. She also knows that would be bad form.
“It’s not a record store’s right to be in Record Store Day so much as it’s a privilege,” Benton says. “And if we’re taking part, it’s almost like a pledge that we will respect things. I’m not going to take an album that didn’t sell well and sell it on eBay the next day for 10 times the price. That discourages the everyday person coming in who wants to have access to these records. I’m not trying to hawk or shark records.”
She’s trying to build a community.
Tony Tanori, a 50-year-old bank analyst who had all but abandoned records during the CD era, picks up a stack. He got back into records after a friend told him about a vinyl club that meets once a week at the Winchester Music Tavern in nearby Lakewood, Ohio. He might bring his Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. Another guy might throw the Stanley Brothers on the table.
“There is nothing like putting a needle to a vinyl record,” he says.
A DJ plays some tunes for customers to enjoy as they are in Brittany’s Record Shop. (Amber N. Ford for The Washington Post)
Cleveland locals search crates and racks, looking for records to add to their collections at Brittany’s Record Shop on Record Store Day. (Amber N. Ford for The Washington Post)
LEFT: A DJ plays some tunes for customers to enjoy as they are in Brittany’s Record Shop. RIGHT: Cleveland locals search crates and racks, looking for records to add to their collections at Brittany’s Record Shop on Record Store Day. (Amber N. Ford for The Washington Post)
Lessons from the last year
Over the last year, I’ve learned a lot. I’ve also spent a lot. I replaced my 1970s-era Pioneer SX-737 receiver with a vintage McIntosh 1900 and then sold that to buy a tube amplifier built by Rogue Audio. I turned a restored Thorens TD 125 — and about $2,500 — into a Technics SP-10. I gave my son my Bose speakers and tried Harbeths and then settled on Focal Aria 906s. I’d never invested so much in a stereo, and it sounded excellent to me. Still, when I referenced virtually any element of it to my audiophile sources, they made it clear I had not gone far enough.
Which made me think of something I heard from Andy Zax, the music historian and producer.
We are, he wrote during an email exchange, prisoners of our own expectations. So focused on FOMO and equipment and who says what on which message board that we lose sight of the most important question: How do we have an enjoyable listening experience?
Which brings me back almost to where I started: Michael Fremer.
Things had not gone well between us. For almost a year, the pioneering audiophile writer and I had gotten along swimmingly as we chatted about gear and recordings. He had generously offered me insight and sources. Then I wrote about the MoFi scandal and Mike Esposito, which infuriated Fremer. Those two had been feuding online for months, and the MoFi situation only exacerbated their conflict. Fremer slammed Esposito for spreading a rumor before he could confirm it and then, after the rumor proved correct and the record store owner went to MoFi’s headquarters to talk with the company’s engineers, Fremer took to YouTube to criticize his interviewing skills, calling him a “fanboy” who got “rolled over.” After my MoFi story published, Fremer was furious with me. He peppered me with angry text messages, made a 10-minute YouTube video retort to my piece and called me a liar online.
Fremer, who is 75, has a long history with music, dating back to his time during the 1970s at WBCN, the powerful Boston radio station. He worked as music supervisor of the movie “Tron,” in 1982 and shortly after, focused on writing about audio and specifically fighting for the superiority of vinyl as a format. He was a crucial component of this story, but he wanted nothing to do with me.
“He was one of the only ones waving the analog flag in the cold, sterile digital day,” Chad Kassem told me. “I’ll work on him.”
The next day, a text arrived.
“The only way to move forward is for you to do what I’ve been asking you to do for it seems like years: visit and spend most of a day listening to records here,” Fremer wrote.
Michael Fremer, the pioneering audio writer, after attending a listening party in June hosted by Christie's to hear Bob Dylan’s new recording of “Blowin’ in the Wind” before it headed to auction. (Jackie Molloy for the Washington Post)
So on a Thursday in August, I drove four hours from Boston to the white Colonial Fremer shares with his wife, Sharon, just outside of Newark. Fremer warmly shook my hand and ushered me downstairs.
“This is not an audio salon,” he said as we got settled. “This is a workspace.”
The basement is cramped, packed with records and Fremer’s equipment, which includes Wilson XVX speakers (retail: $329,000) and the turntable he has decided will be his last, a prototype of Weiss’s K3.
I realized quickly that Fremer wasn’t going to mention our conflict. He sat me in a comfortable chair in the center of the room as he pulled out the British pressing of “Rubber Soul” that he bought when he was 19. It’s hard to not to be impressed by the harmonies, Ringo’s snare and Paul’s snaky bass when you’re in front of those $300,000 Wilsons. We listened to an Electric Recording Co. issue of Thelonious Monk’s “Brilliant Corners.” Fremer offered high praise for Hutchison’s work. He also showed me how many inconsistencies this system could expose. He played “In My Room” off a 2015 reissue by Analogue Productions to slam a version released earlier this year by Capitol Records.
“This is an inept mix,” he said of the newer release. “Like mush on the bottom and then there’s that horrible ssss on top.”
Fremer wanted to focus on MoFi records to show me what he considered the label’s bad sound formula. I wanted to know what it was about my article that upset him so much.
What bothered him most, he said, was that I wrote that MoFi’s secret would not have been revealed without Esposito.
“It would have taken longer, but I was on the case,” Fremer said. “I would have gotten to the bottom of it. That’s what I do.”
Whatever his approach and temperament, when you sit with Fremer listening to music, it’s clear what drives him. He wants to sit in a room as you listen to his favorites — an acetate of the Who’s “Tommy,” a Weavers performance, the British pressing of Elvis Costello’s “Imperial Bedroom” — and luxuriate in the sonic beauty.
“Do you think there is a perfect sound?” I asked as he searched through a pile of records.
“There are some incredibly great records,” he said. “Great recordings. Perfect? I don’t know what that means, even.”
I reminded him of when we met for the first time. In June, T Bone Burnett threw a listening party in New York City for that special, one-of-a-kind Bob Dylan rerecording of “Blowin’ in the Wind” he was auctioning. I had wondered if there, in that studio, we might find that perfect sound. An idea that Burnett quickly dismissed.
That got Fremer excited. He jumped into the stacks and pulled out a Japanese pressing of a record of the 1963 Newport Folk Festival. It features Dylan doing the same song with backing from Joan Baez, the Freedom Singers, Pete Seeger and Peter, Paul and Mary.
“Just sit back and relax,” Fremer told me. “Close your eyes, and let the space envelop you.”
Two microphones captured that live performance. The lone instrument was Dylan’s acoustic guitar. The record wasn’t cut at half-speed or on clarity vinyl. It wasn’t part of a limited reissue released at midnight. It was an ordinary record in every way except for what came out of the speakers. You could close your eyes, hear Baez’s voice rising behind Dylan, and have something, perfect or imperfect, you wanted to hear again and again.
Audio equipment in Bernie Grundman’s mastering studio. (Damon Casarez for The Washington Post)
Writing by Geoff Edgers. Research by Alice Crites and Magda Jean-Louis. Design and development by Joanne Lee. Photo editing by Moira Haney. Video by James Cornsilk and CJ Russo and production by Angela M. Hill. Audio production by Bishop Sand. Editing by David Malitz. Copy editing by Angela Mecca. Project editing by Steven Johnson.
Geoff Edgers, The Washington Post's national arts reporter, covers everything from fine arts to popular culture. He's the author of "Walk This Way: Run-DMC, Aerosmith, and the Song That Changed American Music Forever." He is also the host of "Edge of Fame," a podcast co-produced by WBUR Boston. Twitter Twitter | 2022-09-29T15:23:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Does the perfect sound exist? Vinyl records rebound in digital music age - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/interactive/2022/perfect-sound-quality-vinyl-records/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/interactive/2022/perfect-sound-quality-vinyl-records/ |
For all we depend on economic growth, there’s still a lot we don’t understand about it. Spectacular growth has brought hugely positive impacts — longer and healthier lives, millions removed from poverty, myriad life-improving innovations. But these benefits have also come with immense costs, including vast pollution, land degradation, biodiversity loss and global warming.
Some environmental scientists argue that these environmental impacts mean economic growth is now actually destabilizing society. Economists tend to fire back that the only way to keep society stable is to keep economies growing.
Trained as a scientist myself, it’s probably no surprise that I’ve been skeptical of the possibility of infinite growth on a finite planet. I’ve been perplexed as to why economists find the standard economic arguments put forward for growth so appealing, while dismissing concerns about physical limits to growth as being, well, a little silly.
However, a few weeks ago I encountered the first really convincing explanation of why the economists’ perspective has been so persuasive. It came in a lecture delivered by the distinguished Cambridge University economist Partha Dasgupta. He made the point that it’s hard to appreciate the deep appeal of these ideas for economists without understanding the historical context of their appearance — in the postwar era during which technological innovations in areas like medicine, agriculture and chemistry did so much to generate global prosperity.
Even so, growth theory itself, Dasgupta argued, contains serious flaws which have pushed modern economics off track in important ways, with the result that our continued search for growth is now actively reducing the overall wealth of the planet. The key question Dasgupta raised — and then answered — is this: How is it that economic theory got itself into a condition in which it doesn’t even count the natural world as an important part of our economic wealth?
An early growth theory, proposed by economist Robert Solow in 1948, held that long-run growth depends on basic factors including population growth, saving and investment, and the rate of technological development. Later growth theories have essentially followed this plan, emphasizing technological innovation — our ability to continually find new ways to use resources more productively — as the real engine of economic growth.
Dasgupta pointed to this deep faith in innovation — drummed into economists by what they saw happening in the postwar era — as the reason economists of the 1970s rejected suggestions by natural scientists that there might be natural limits to growth. These scientists suggested that the human expansion of economic activity would eventually grow too large for the planet to safely contain; that our activities could undermine much of the value that is produced by the natural world. Economists dismissed these worries, believing that innovation would always allow humans to find a way around such problems.
The early growth theorists — not by intention, but through some subtle assumptions they made — effectively stipulated that nature has no important role in supporting economic growth. In the standard theory, human innovation enters the growth formula as a purely human construct, not dependent on a huge range of valuable things the environment provides for us, like clean air and water, a stable climate and plentiful reservoirs of complex biomatter. As a result, innovation, and growth, are always possible, even if the natural world were to be severely degraded.
This seems like a huge oversight today, when the science of ecology has been well-developed and we’ve got decades of evidence showing the natural costs of human activities. But we didn’t have these things when growth theory was originally developed. The field of ecology barely existed. “At this early stage,” he told me in an interview, “I don’t think it was an outrageous idea to keep nature out of economic modeling.”
But, he argues, it is surely outrageous to continue this way today, and he’s taken important steps in showing how economists can include innovation in growth theories in a way that would acknowledge its deep dependence on the natural environment. The key problem is that economists today, when they talk about growth, almost invariably mean GDP growth, which does not record the depreciation of natural capital that comes about during the production of goods and services. What Dasgupta has tried to do in his work is to include nature in economic accounting.
At this point, his lecture stepped into the detailed mathematics of growth theory, which I won’t delve into here. In a nutshell, he showed how small changes in the mathematics would make it clear that our human ability to innovate always depends on a stock of goods and services provided by the environment. As a result, depletion of this stock would also deplete our ability to continue doing innovative things.(1)
“If a household consumes more than its income,” as Dasgupta put it, “it can finance the excess by running down household wealth — selling stocks, drawing down savings accounts in the bank, and so on. But it cannot do that forever without becoming bankrupt. That’s the problem humanity faces today, and why we must shift to talking about the inclusive wealth of nations and the global economy, not GDP.”
Dasgupta has taken a big step forward in showing precisely, within economic orthodoxy, where growth theorists can take the objections of environmental scientists seriously, and build a more realistic and useful theory as a result. The revised theory still holds economic growth to be enormously positive, but envisions growth not as GDP growth, but as far more inclusive growth, which has to preserve the value of the natural world for prosperity to continue.
The successful theories of one era often get so entrenched that they constrain the ability of later scientists to think clearly. But today, there’s every reason to take limits to growth concerns seriously: A United Nations study from 2018 found that the world’s natural capital declined by nearly 40% between 1992 and 2014. We appear to be consuming the stock of natural wealth on which we ultimately depend.
I heard Dasgupta’s lecture at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, at a meeting convened by the US State Department. It was somewhat unusual in that it brought together economists, physicists, ecologists, demographers and business leaders to break down some of the intellectual barriers to real progress on sustainability. More events like this are sorely needed.
Because technological innovation may not be enough to get us out of this mess. For that, we’ll need some innovation in our economic thinking as well.
(1) Readers interested in the mathematical details should look at the starred chapters, especially chapter 4, of an important report Dasgupta produced in 2019 for the UK Treasury: The Economics of Biodiversity: The Dasgupta Review. | 2022-09-29T16:19:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Much More Economic Growth Can the Planet Sustain? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-much-more-economic-growth-can-the-planet-sustain/2022/09/29/e260bfdc-400f-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-much-more-economic-growth-can-the-planet-sustain/2022/09/29/e260bfdc-400f-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
This image made available by NASA in 2014 shows Jupiter’s icy moon Europa in a reprocessed color view, made from images captured by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft in the late 1990s. NASA’s Juno spacecraft made the closest approach to Jupiter’s tantalizing, icy moon Europa in more than 20 years on Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/SETI Institute via AP) (Uncredited/NASA) | 2022-09-29T16:20:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NASA spacecraft buzzes Jupiter moon Europa, closest in years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/nasa-spacecraft-buzzes-jupiter-moon-europa-closest-in-years/2022/09/29/47f499b8-4010-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/nasa-spacecraft-buzzes-jupiter-moon-europa-closest-in-years/2022/09/29/47f499b8-4010-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is considering new consumer privacy legislation that would allow Americans greater control over who can access their personal information online. Join The Post’s Leigh Ann Caldwell for a conversation with the committee’s chair Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and ranking member Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), about the prospects for a bipartisan bill and the future of tech regulation.
Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.)
Chair, House Energy & Commerce Committee
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.)
Ranking Member, House Energy & Commerce Committee | 2022-09-29T16:22:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Key lawmakers on data protection and privacy legislation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/09/29/key-lawmakers-data-protection-privacy-legislation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/09/29/key-lawmakers-data-protection-privacy-legislation/ |
Hae Min Lee’s brother will appeal order vacating Adnan Syed conviction
Young Lee previously said the motion to vacate the conviction of Syed, whose case was featured on the ‘Serial’ podcast, left him feeling ‘betrayed’
“Serial” podcast subject Adnan Syed walks out of the Baltimore Circuit Court after a judge vacated his murder conviction. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
The brother of Hae Min Lee — a Baltimore teenager whose 1999 slaying and the subsequent prosecution of her ex-boyfriend was the subject of the true crime podcast “Serial” — will appeal a Baltimore judge’s decision to vacate the ex-boyfriend’s conviction, according to the Lee family attorney and a court document.
Steven Kelly, the Lee family attorney, filed a notice Wednesday on behalf of Lee’s brother, Young Lee, appealing Circuit Court Judge Melissa Phinn’s decision to vacate the conviction of Adnan Syed.
Kelly said in a statement that the notice was based on “violations of his family’s right to meaningfully participate in the September 19, 2022 hearing on the motion to vacate Adnan Syed’s conviction.”
“The notice of appeal is the first step in seeking the Maryland Court of Special Appeals’ review of the potential violations of Maryland’s victim’s rights statutes in connection with the hearing,” Kelly said.
The brief notice did not lay out the basis for the appeal.
Syed was arrested for Lee’s murder in February 1999, when he was a 17-year-old in high school. Investigators at the time determined that Lee, 18, died by strangulation, and Syed was convicted of murder in 2000 and sentenced to life behind bars. Then, in 2014, his case captivated the nation after it was featured on “Serial.”
Syed tried unsuccessfully for years to get a new trial. But it wasn’t until earlier this month that prosecutors asked a judge to vacate the conviction, citing possible alternate suspects and deficiencies in how prosecutors had turned over evidence to defense attorneys decades ago. Phinn ultimately ordered Syed freed from prison after 23 years.
The judge gave prosecutors 30 days to decide whether they will retry Syed.
David Jaros, a law professor at the University of Baltimore, said that he believes the court will deny the family’s motion, but also “chide” the judge and state’s attorney for not doing a better job of giving more notice of the hearing.
“The last thing that would be appropriate for a judge to look past the constitutional violation out of sympathy for the victim’s family,” Jaros said.
Young Lee said at the hearing earlier this month that prosecutors’ motion to vacate the conviction left him feeling “betrayed.”
He said that he was “not against investigation or anything of that sort,” adding, “Knowing that there could be someone out there free for killing my sister — it’s tough.”
In a previous statement, Kelly said that the Lee family was “deeply disappointed that today’s hearing happened so quickly and that they were denied the reasonable notice that would have permitted them to have a meaningful voice in the proceedings.”
Zy Richardson, a spokeswoman for the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office, said that the office empathizes with Hae Min Lee’s family, who is now being “re-traumatized by the misdeeds of the prior prosecutors.”
“As administrators of the criminal justice system, our responsibility is to ensure that justice is done, and the right person is held accountable,” Richardson said. “We refuse to be distracted from this fundamental obligation and will never give up in our fight for the Lee family.” | 2022-09-29T16:37:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hae Min Lee’s brother will appeal order vacating Adnan Syed conviction - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/appeal-adnan-syed-conviction-overturned/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/appeal-adnan-syed-conviction-overturned/ |
McDuffie, Silverman announce endorsements in at-large council race
The John Wilson Building, home to the D.C. Council. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
D.C. Council members Kenyan R. McDuffie (D-Ward 5) and Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) rolled out high-profile endorsements this week in the race for the District’s two at-large seats as the November election nears.
Outgoing D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) announced his support for Silverman during a meet-and-greet in the Palisades on Wednesday evening. The next morning, McDuffie announced the endorsement of former U.S. labor secretary and former Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez on Twitter.
The endorsements come as the two independent candidates jockey for position as the front-runners for what is likely to be a single available seat in the District council’s at-large race. The Democratic nominee in the at-large race, Council member Anita Bonds, is a favorite to retain her seat in a city where the majority of voters are Democrats.
Perez’s endorsement comes as McDuffie makes a bid to extend his career in D.C. politics after he was ruled ineligible to run for D.C. attorney general in this year’s Democratic primary. McDuffie, a three-time Democratic member on the D.C. Council in the Ward 5 seat, announced a last-minute bid for an at-large seat as an independent in July.
Perez, who lost to author Wes Moore in the race for the Democratic nomination for Maryland governor this year, served several roles in the Obama administration, including secretary of labor. In a video released by the McDuffie campaign, Perez praised McDuffie’s work as a trial attorney when Perez served as assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
McDuffie’s pivot to the at-large race drew criticism from Silverman, an incumbent, and her endorsement comes from the outgoing attorney general whose seat McDuffie originally sought. In a video released by the Silverman campaign, Racine said Silverman funded his office’s Public Advocacy Division, which worked to return stolen wages to workers. Racine previously endorsed Silverman in the at-large race ahead of the 2018 election.
In an email to The Washington Post, Silverman also announced an endorsement from the Metro Washington Labor Council.
The other candidates for the District council’s at-large seats are independents Karim Marshall, Graham McLaughlin and Fred Hill, Republican Giuseppe Niosi and D.C. Statehood Green Party candidate David Schwartzman.
Ballots are scheduled to be mailed to voters early next month, in advance of the Nov. 8 general election. | 2022-09-29T16:37:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | McDuffie, Silverman announce endorsements in at-large D.C. council race - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/mcduffie-silverman-dc-council-endorsements/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/mcduffie-silverman-dc-council-endorsements/ |
Bike groups sue over demolition of Maryland bridge they want for trail
A lawsuit alleges changes to the design of a Potomac River crossing in Southern Maryland violated environmental review laws
Construction on the new Nice/Middleton Bridge across the Potomac River near Newburg, Md., looking east. (Maryland Transportation Authority) (Maryland Transportation Authority)
Three bike trail advocacy groups filed a lawsuit Wednesday asking a federal judge to stop Maryland transportation officials from demolishing a bridge across the Potomac River they say could form a key link in cycling routes through the southern part of the state.
The Maryland Transportation Authority, which manages the state’s toll roads, is in the final stages of replacing the Nice-Middleton Bridge about 30 miles south of Washington with a separate wider, more modern crossing. Initial plans for the new bridge included a bike and pedestrian path, but state officials eliminated that element of the design in 2019.
The lawsuit alleges the late change to the plan — along with a proposal to demolish the old bridge using explosives — is a violation of state and federal environmental review laws. The bike groups are asking a U.S. District Court judge in Greenbelt to block the demolition so officials can assess the suitability of the old bridge for use in an envisioned network of trails spanning Maryland and Virginia.
“In this age, it is inconceivable that a major new bridge traversing two states crossing the Potomac River would not have bicycle and pedestrian facilities; especially since the bridge will be used for a century,” said David Brickley, president of the Dahlgren Railroad Heritage Trail Association. “That lack of foresight can be solved by converting the Historic Nice Bridge into a world-class walking and bicycling attraction.”
The idea of preserving the bridge has the support of federal lawmakers and both candidates for Maryland governor. State transportation officials have said they explored the idea of keeping the 82-year-old bridge, but found no one willing to bear the cost of maintenance. The new bridge will be accessible to bikes and have warning signs for drivers, but cycling advocates contend it will be too unsafe to cross.
The 1.7-mile crossing connects Maryland’s Charles County with King George County in Virginia. It carries almost 7 million vehicles each year.
Bike advocates, lawmakers want to save Potomac bridge as demolition begins
The lawsuit names as defendants the transportation authority, the Maryland Department of Transportation and the U.S. Department of Transportation, which provided a construction loan and issued environmental approvals for the bridge.
The Maryland agencies did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Federal officials declined to comment on pending litigation.
While environmental lawsuits challenging transportation projects are typically filed before construction begins, it’s not a requirement. Eric Brenner, a former chair of Maryland’s bike and pedestrian advisory committee, said advocates expected state officials would agree to preserve the old bridge and described their legal challenge as a “last resort.”
“There was an easier alternative, which was don’t demolish the bridge,” Brenner said.
The initial proposal for the new bridge would have created four lanes for cars and trucks, with a separated bike and pedestrian path. That plan was studied as part of an environmental review that concluded in 2012, according to the lawsuit. But in 2019 the transportation authority dropped the path as a cost-saving measure — a late change the lawsuit alleges was an illegal “bait and switch.”
“Studying and selecting one configuration yet building another violates the Environmental Review Laws, as well as the public trust,” according to the complaint.
The lawsuit seeks an injunction that would prohibit the state from demolishing the bridge and block the federal government from providing funding for demolition until new environmental reviews are finished. In a memo asking the judge to issue the injunction while the case is pending, trail advocates argue the new bridge could still open, even if the old one is left standing.
“Delaying demolition of the Historic Nice Bridge will avoid adverse environmental and human consequences that have not been considered adequately,” they wrote. | 2022-09-29T16:37:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bike group lawsuit challenges demolition of Maryland's old Nice Bridge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/29/nice-bridge-demolition-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/29/nice-bridge-demolition-lawsuit/ |
Woman, 73, killed in Northwest Washington
Gloria Williams died of “sharp force injuries,” police said
A 73-year-old woman was killed Sunday inside a residence in Northwest Washington, D.C. police announced Thursday.
Gloria Williams, from Northwest Washington, died of “sharp force injuries,” according to an autopsy report.
Police responded to the 5100 block of Second Street NW just after 12:10 p.m. Sunday for a welfare check. They found Williams inside, unconscious and unresponsive. She died at the scene, police said.
Authorities have ruled the death a homicide but have not made an arrest in her killing. The investigation is ongoing. | 2022-09-29T16:50:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woman, 73, killed in Northwest Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/woman-killed-northwest-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/woman-killed-northwest-dc/ |
Did the FBI really seize 200,000 pages of documents at Mar-a-Lago?
This image contained in a court filing by the Department of Justice on Aug. 30 and partially redacted by the source shows a photo of documents seized during the Aug. 8 FBI search of former president Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate. (Department of Justice via AP)
In their latest court filing related to the seizure of material from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, the former president’s attorneys made a remarkable assertion Wednesday about the scale of what was recovered.
“[W]hen Plaintiff’s counsel referred to either 11,000 pages or even 11,000 documents during the status conference (we are still awaiting the transcript), the Government chose not to interject with an accurate number,” they write. “In conversations between Plaintiff’s counsel and the Government regarding a data vendor, the Government mentioned that the 11,000 documents contain closer to 200,000 pages.”
Setting aside the claim about the transcript (which has been made available, including to Washington Post reporters), the claim is striking. The understood scale of what was removed from Trump’s office and a storage room at the facility — generally that 11,000 figure — may be off by a factor of 18.
But: Is it? Is it conceivable that there were some 200,000 pages of material seized, bolstering the Trump team’s argument that the whole process should be slowed down significantly?
Not really, no.
As it happens, the government released an updated list this week of what it took when it searched the property. It recovered 33 identified groups of material, including 26 boxes or containers from the storage room, and one box and six collections of documents from Trump’s office. The contents break down as follows:
Loose documents
Government documents/photos
News articles/clippings
Box/container
Empty folder
Clothing/gifts
It’s important to note that there is no indication that the seized material includes any sort of digital device. We lack a good vocabulary to describe the extent of digital material, often using the term “pages” to refer to things like emails, which aren’t generally presented as printed documents. But here that’s not an issue. There’s no indication that the 200,000-page total is bolstered by, say, a thumb drive containing a number of files.
So it’s just paper. And paper has one important constraint: volume.
I happen to have a ream of paper by my desk. It measures 8.5 inches by 11 inches (the size of a standard sheet) by 2 inches deep. That’s 500 sheets, fresh off the production line. We don’t know how big the boxes were that were recovered, admittedly, but photos taken during Trump’s administration and of his departure from the White House on Jan. 20, 2017, show that material was often transported in banker’s boxes. In the famous photo of documents arrayed on the floor of Mar-a-Lago, you can see a banker’s box containing framed photos of Time magazine covers.
A banker’s box is about 10 inches by 12 inches by 15 inches. In other words, it can hold about 10 reams of paper. Meaning that if all of the material seized from Mar-a-Lago were compressed into ream-sized bundles — not typically possible with paper that’s been printed upon or otherwise used — it would take 40 bankers’ boxes to hold 200,000 pages. (Ten reams times 500 sheets is 5,000 sheets per box.) And the FBI removed only 27 boxes.
If we assume that those 27 boxes were stuffed with 5,000 sheets each, that accounts for about 135,000 pages of documents. Meaning that those other six loose groupings of documents would have to account for the other 65,000 pages. Since those groupings included 1,436 identified documents, that would necessitate that each of those 1,436 identified documents was an average of 45 pages in length. Which, given the photo of classified documents released by the Justice Department, seems unlikely.
But those boxes included things besides simple sheets of paper. There were 33 books and 19 items marked as “clothing/gifts.” There were those mysterious empty folders, 88 of them. If we assume that the books each took the space of half a ream of paper and that the gifts each used the space of a full ream, the stuffed-to-the-gills boxes now hold only 117,000 pages or so, meaning the average size of the individually grouped documents soars to 57 pages.
The contents of the boxes, incidentally, would have to average about 10 pages per document, if we assume that the pages of the books are not counted to the total. (Of course, given how all of this has played out, they may very well be included.) We know that much of what was seized, though, wasn’t 10 pages long. As journalist Marcy Wheeler points out, more than 1,500 of the documents included in the boxes found in the storage room are identified as news clippings. I’ve never seen a news clipping that runs to 10 pages; usually, they’re one or two. Take those out and the average length of the other documents necessarily stretches to 12 pages.
Bear in mind that we know what some of those documents look like: We have that photo. None of those documents (found in the box recovered from the office) appear to be 12 pages in length. Did Trump select only the unusually short documents to keep in his office? Or is all of this based on trying to bolster a 200,000 pages claim that’s impossible to defend?
That seems to be the most likely answer. Trump’s attorneys want to throw roadblocks in the path of the Justice Department and are using this claim of the scale of what was recovered to demand more time for their review. Not only do they admit that the total is secondhand, they have a reason to want the number to be as high as possible.
So the idea that the FBI walked out of Mar-a-Lago lugging hundreds of thousands of documents seems to be pretty clearly inaccurate. | 2022-09-29T17:03:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Did the FBI really seize 200,000 pages of documents at Mar-a-Lago? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/trump-fbi-search-documents/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/trump-fbi-search-documents/ |
Trump’s paid-speeches organizer is struggling financially
A company that puts on for-profit Trump rallies, including an upcoming Mar-a-Lago gala and multimillion-dollar fees for the former president, is having trouble paying its bills
Former president Donald Trump dances after speaking during the American Freedom Tour at the Austin Convention Center on May 14 in Austin. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
With speakers, affiliates and investors all clamoring for their money, one of the people involved who did get paid was Trump, people close to the former president say. Some Trump advisers have warned against doing future events, though Trump has expressed interest.
The company’s CEO, Brian J. Forte, declined to be interviewed for this article. A Trump spokesman did not respond to requests for comment.
The tour has had a slate of problems, including angry investors, speakers and vendors who have not been paid, according to people familiar with the situation, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal details.
Some unpaid investors are preparing possible legal action, demanding full payment plus interest, according to a demand letter obtained by The Post. If the company doesn’t pay, the group wants Forte to step aside and give them control of the company, according to the letter. Otherwise, they said they will sue.
“Vendors, speakers and other unpaid participants are lining up to collect,” a lawyer working for the investors said in an email to the group. “The intention is still to put a board of governance in place.”
Trump's new money-maker: Paid speeches to fans
Forte’s spokesman said he didn’t receive a demand letter. “The tour has a solid relationship with its investors,” Ward said.
Ward said the tour was attempting to pay both investors and speakers. “Unforeseen scheduling issues for the programs caused a delay and we asked a limited number of investors if their payment could be delayed until November,” Ward said.
Several speakers other than Trump have not been paid, including prominent Trump allies, a person with direct knowledge of the tour’s finances said.
“We are working very hard to make them whole, and we are confident they will be made whole very soon,” Ward said.
In July the company missed payroll, according to a note to staff from Forte. “We are experiencing some growing pains and all will be OK,” he said in the internal message reviewed by The Post. The spokesman said the company is currently paying its employees.
Forte recently sought personal bankruptcy protection for a fifth time this summer, according to court filings, saying that he owned 100 percent of the American Freedom Tour, earned $19,900 a month, but owed more than $3 million. In a response seeking to dismiss the case, the Justice Department accused Forte of abusing the bankruptcy system to try to thwart foreclosure proceedings and criticized him for traveling to Puerto Rico rather than “making this fifth bankruptcy case a priority.” The government later withdrew its motion at a hearing.
“The bankruptcy filings were over a dispute with a mortgage company,” Ward said, adding: “Mr. Forte visits Puerto Rico frequently but is a legal resident of Florida.”
The financial pressures at the American Freedom Tour led to business practices that some employees found objectionable. In July, the company canceled a planned event in Milwaukee but continued selling tickets online, according to two people familiar with the matter. At times, the company has continued to sell tickets online for events that organizers knew were unlikely to happen, according to two people familiar with the matter.
When another show was canceled in North Carolina, the company initially said it would honor tickets for a future event before agreeing to issue refunds. “We give the option of refunds or rain checks for postponed or canceled events,” Ward said.
The tour’s website currently lists no upcoming events. A planned show in Birmingham, Ala., was also canceled earlier this year.
To promote the events, the company offered a 25 percent commission for ads and social media posts resulting in sales, according to its website. But a Republican Party county chapter in Texas that helped sign up attendees for an event there went unpaid for at least two months, messages show.
“We are awaiting payment and now four months overdue,” Matt Mackowiak, a Republican consultant who leads the local Republican Party in Austin, wrote in an email on Sept. 7. “I will get loud and litigious if not paid by end of week.”
“As you know from reaching out a few weeks ago looking for your payment, I resigned from the American freedom tour on August 3rd,” Chris Widener, the company’s former president and emcee who quit in August, responded. “You are definitely owed the money and should be paid promptly.”
Widener confirmed his resignation in an email but declined to comment on the exchange with Mackowiak, who said he was paid last Friday afternoon “once The Washington Post sought comment.”
Mackowiak said he vetted the company before entering into an agreement with them, and heard from others that while they often were slow to make payments, they eventually did. He said he demanded a written contract, “which took more than a month even though it was a simple document,” according to Mackowiak.
“I hope anyone that is owed money uses every legal channel available,” Mackowiak said. A spokesman for the company said they were sorry Mackowiak’s payment was late.
The company also recently lost its chief financial officer, Dale Ainge. In an interview, Ainge said he left the company in June due to a health issue and wished the company well. He said the company had defaulted on two of its loans before he left, and some vendors were complaining they had not been paid.
“They had to cancel a couple events, which caused some financial issues,” he said. “They were behind on things. They were behind on payments. So for me to say, what kind of financial position they’re in? They were a little bit behind in a couple of the notes. There were a couple accounts payable that were past 60 days.”
Ainge said he was paid by the company and that he believed they would turn their fortunes around when he left in June. Ainge said he was approached by Forte to plan events around Trump and conservative speakers, similar to events he held for a company called Get Motivated.
He said some of the events had made money, but others had not and some were canceled even after expensive marketing. “It’s a start-up,” he said. “There are always challenges.”
When the tour was starting, investors were promised to earn 20 percent on their money in six months, according to loan documentation obtained by The Post. But internal emails show that when the money came due, the company failed to pay.
“We needed a little more time,” Forte assured investors in March. “The investment is intact. Please bear with us a couple of weeks.”
By August, Forte still hadn’t provided the money, the emails show. In one email, Forte explained that he was trying to raise more money domestically and overseas and confirm future event dates with Trump. He offered to pay $5,000 in a week while the company closed other deals to be able to pay in full by November.
One person familiar with Forte’s actions said he was constantly trying to hold off speakers, investors and others who were seeking money — “putting the biggest fire out and holding on.”
“You have been an INCREDIBLE supporter of President Trump and the events we are doing,” Forte told an investor in an email. “We would love if you could attend the Gala” at Mar-a-Lago in December. “We would like to honor you there if you are able to make it,” he wrote.
Ainge said Trump was the highest paid speaker but declined to say how much, citing a confidentiality agreement. “It’s in line with the speaking fee of past presidents,” he said.
He said that Trump was the group’s biggest seller, and many supporters wanted to meet him backstage and were willing to pay “thousands and thousands of dollars to do it.” Trump, he said, was freewheeling and congenial to the guests.
Ward, the spokesman for the tour, said Trump had expressed no reservations about participating going forward.
“President Trump has been fantastic to work with,” Ward said. “He has opened Mar-a-Lago to the American Freedom Tour for a Gala December 1st. I’m sure he wouldn’t do that if he had reservations about the tour. President Trump loves speaking on the American Freedom Tour. He wants to do more programs.”
The latest: Schumer announces plan to vote on a continuing resolution
4:50 PMNoted: Sen. Kelly ad hits Blake Masters on abortion
4:43 PMThis just in: Trump’s paid speeches organizer is struggling financially | 2022-09-29T17:03:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump’s paid speeches organizer is struggling financially - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/trump-speeches-bankruptcy-vendors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/trump-speeches-bankruptcy-vendors/ |
Florida needs help. Maybe DeSantis can learn something from it.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks alongside Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, during a news conference in Largo, Fla., on Sept. 26. (Chris O'Meara/AP)
There’s an old quip that a neoconservative is a “liberal who has been mugged by reality.” These days, it might be more apt to say: A liberal is a conservative has been mugged by hardship.
Republicans have a tendency to throw their anti-government rhetoric out the window whenever they and the people they represent face some sort of disaster. So it is with Ron DeSantis. In the wake of Hurricane Ian, the Florida governor now believes in science (of weather forecasting) and the beneficence of the federal government (when his constituents are hungry or lacking shelter).
Perhaps DeSantis knows that his political future hangs in the balance, so he has avoided smearing President Biden or calling on Floridians to pull themselves by their bootstraps once the floods recede. Such nonsense gets in the way of helping people, after all.
DeSantis was actually complimentary toward the administration. "He said all hands on deck, that he wants to be helpful,” DeSantis said of Biden in a news conference Wednesday. “He said whatever you need, ask us. He was inviting us to request support.”
That’s a far cry from DeSantis’s comments excoriating the administration for trying to save people from covid-19. He has repeatedly insulted Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and accused Biden of “hating” his state.
Some might be tempted to stick it to the Florida governor, who has abused his power when it comes to asylum seekers, LGBTQ youths and pregnant women. Why help him when he has no interest in helping vulnerable people? But we do not do that in this country.
Similarly, after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky decried federal pandemic aid to states as “blue state bailouts,” some might have wanted to tell Kentuckians, whose state receives more money from the federal government than it pays in taxes, that they’re on their own in cleaning up the wreckage from powerful tornadoes that swept the state last year. But again, that’s not how America operates.
Unlike the grandstanding right-wingers, who flaunt their cruelty and rely on demeaning the vulnerable to stir up their base, Americans largely follow faith-based and moral teachings. For example: “Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed. Rescue the weak and the needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked” (Proverbs 82:3-4). They understand: “We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves” (Romans 15:1).
Even those with no religious faith can appreciate the admonition in Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address: “Let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.” They can recognize the generosity that inspired the Marshall Plan and the billions of dollars in aid we are currently sending to Ukraine. Whether one calls it compassion or enlightened self-interest, human decency demands we help our fellow Americans in Florida and, when possible, desperate people around the globe.
Biden is especially skilled at conveying compassion and empathy. Perhaps in modeling those qualities for the people of Florida (in contrast to the scurrilous way his predecessor treated Americans in Puerto Rico), Biden can drive home that point. When the issue isn’t about a policy win or loss, maybe those siloed in the world of right-wing media would be willing to listen.
Will DeSantis learn anything from this? Likely not, but it would be a good opportunity after the immediate crisis is over for Biden to speak to Americans about real “unity” — not agreeing on policy issues, but treating all of those in our country with kindness and respect while relying on scientific consensus to guide our efforts. Maybe such a message could reach some people who previously thought it was clever politics to pick on vulnerable groups. Misery can be humbling. | 2022-09-29T17:03:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | After Hurricane Ian, DeSantis can learn something about helping people - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/desantis-florida-hurricane-ian-biden/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/desantis-florida-hurricane-ian-biden/ |
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas, Venezuela, on July 11. (Ariana Cubillos/AP)
Venezuela’s sorrows under the rule of President Nicolás Maduro and his mentor Hugo Chávez are evident for all to see — years of severe economic decline, sundering of democracy and an epic exodus out of the country. Now come details of how Mr. Maduro personally has directed the brutal security services to silence dissent.
An international fact-finding mission created by the U.N. Human Rights Council has just issued a third report, after earlier findings in 2020 and 2021. Taken together, they conclude the regime committed crimes against humanity in a “widespread and systematic attack directed against a civilian population,” with the result that “political dissent has been largely crushed.” Mr. Maduro had help, too, from Cuba’s dictatorship.
The reports, based on 471 interviews, provide a hair-raising picture of the Maduro police state, including the following list of ghastly punishments: “heavy beatings with bats and sharp objects; electric shocks to sensitive parts of the body; asphyxiation with toxic substances and water; cuts and mutilations including in the bottom of their feet and under their nails … rape with objects; beating and electric shocks to the genitals; constant lighting or constant darkness; extreme heat or extreme cold; forceful feeding of faeces and vomit; and death threats and threats of rape to victims and their family members.”
The 2020 report found that law enforcement and intelligence services were key to the systemic repression. In 2021, the panel implicated prosecutors and judges. The new report points to the Directorate General of Military Counter-Intelligence(DGCIM), and the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SEBIN). The “crimes and violations” committed by these agencies, the panel concludes, “were of particular cruelty” against defenseless detainees. No one in these agencies has been investigated for the crimes, the report says, and “the harm [victims] suffered remains unaddressed.”
Who is responsible? At the top sits Mr. Maduro, who “gives direct orders” to the head pf the DGCIM, always in person or by phone, never in writing; orders to SEBIN “came directly from President Maduro himself,” the report says. In some cases, a high-level official said, when a target was under surveillance by the SEBIN, “President Maduro wanted to know what the person was doing 24 hours a day, so the Director General would send him information every two hours.” Mr. Maduro and top officials “stand out as the main architects in the design, implementation and maintenance of a machinery at the service of dissidence repression,” the report says.
The report comes at a delicate time for U.S. policy, which has sought to isolate the Maduro regime and still recognizes democratically elected Juan Guaidó as interim president, although Mr. Maduro appears to be strengthening his hold. Leftist governments coming to power in Latin America seem ready to reestablish ties with Venezuela. U.S. officials have met directly with the Venezuelan government twice this year to discuss releasing U.S. citizens wrongly detained. Meanwhile, the stream of Venezuelan refugees are a heavy burden for the Western Hemisphere and the United States. In all this, Mr. Maduro’s crimes must not be overlooked. | 2022-09-29T17:16:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Maduro and top officials are responsible for repression in Venezuela - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/venezuela-nicolas-maduro-political-repression/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/venezuela-nicolas-maduro-political-repression/ |
Her 1970 pamphlet “Woman and Her Mind” was a founding text of second-wave feminism
Meredith Tax in 2016. (Miriam Berkley/Verso Books)
Meredith Tax, a prominent activist and writer of second-wave feminism who challenged herself, her peers and the world at large to rethink long-held ideas about gender, race and class, died Sept. 25 at 80.
Her friend Frances Kissling confirmed the death but provided no further details.
The life of Ms. Tax, born into an upwardly mobile Jewish family in Wisconsin, was often a story of self-discovery. She was a graduate of Brandeis University and a fellowship student in London who had dreams of a gilded career in the arts before the 1960s politicized her, then radicalized her into “studying the world instead of literature.”
Contentious even within communities of activists, she confronted Planned Parenthood and other abortion rights supporters over the issue of sterilization abuse and was thrown out of the Leninist October League after criticizing its treatment of women. She faced her own reckoning in the 1970s when she worked in a Zenith TV factory in Chicago and was the only White person on the assembly line.
“While #MeToo is unquestionably a powerful movement against job-related sexual harassment and assault, it is not a membership organization, so there is no way for people who support it to ensure its consistency or change its public face,” she wrote.
Rachel Carmona, executive director of Women’s March, disputed Ms. Tax’s perspective. In a letter to the Nation, she cited the massive 2017 gatherings held soon after President Donald Trump’s inauguration as “an example of online activism transforming itself into activism in the streets, on the ground, where and when it was needed most.”
Ms. Tax’s books included the nonfiction “The Rising of the Women” (1980) and the novels “Rivington Street” (1982) and its sequel, “Union Square” (1988), which New York Times book critic Eden Ross Lipson described as “a kind of ‘politically correct’ but popular fiction. It is accessible and entertaining, and combines romance, family life, fashion and politics without condescension.”
Ms. Tax wrote for the Nation, the Guardian and the Village Voice among other publications, and has been praised for her 1970 pamphlet “Woman and Her Mind,” a founding text of second-wave feminism, in which she explored how society conditioned the behavior of men and women.
“Men are taught to be active,” she wrote, “to go and seek what they need; not to look pretty and wait for it to come into their vicinity. Men don’t observe each passing cloud over human relations as if their whole future depended on it. There’s a reason for that. It doesn’t. Women are hyper-aware of their surroundings. They have to be. Walk down a street without being tuned in and you’re in real danger; our society is one in which men rape, mug and murder women whom they don’t know every day.”
Meredith Jane Tax was born in Milwaukee on Sept. 18, 1942. Her father was a physician, and her mother was a homemaker “of the Betty Friedan generation, angry and bitter about her deprived childhood and her own crazy family, but too fearful to try to expand her horizons,” she wrote. “Today she would be diagnosed as having an anxiety disorder; she was afraid of everything and couldn’t stand having anybody around whom she couldn’t completely control.
Ms. Tax graduated from Brandeis in 1964, then spent four years at the University of London before returning to the United States to join the antiwar and the feminist movements.
She helped found the PEN American Center Women’s Committee, the Committee for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse, and the Women’s World Organization for Rights, Literature and Development (Women’s WORLD). More recently, she chaired the board of the Center for Secular Space, founded in 2011 “to strengthen secular voices, oppose fundamentalism, and promote universality in human rights.”
Ms. Tax’s first marriage, to Jonathan Schwartz, ended in divorce, and she later married author and philosopher Marshall Berman. She had a child with each husband. Information about survivors was not immediately available. | 2022-09-29T17:20:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Meredith Tax, feminist author, dies at 80 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/29/meredith-tax-feminist-author-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/29/meredith-tax-feminist-author-dead/ |
New details on the bizarre effort to hide the USS John S. McCain for Trump
The guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain conducts routine underway operations in December 2020. (Mass Communication Spec. 2nd Class Markus Castaneda/U.S. Navy/AP)
It’s one of those Trump controversies that you might have somehow forgotten, due to the volume of such flaps.
The Wall Street Journal reported in May 2019 that the military had worked to obscure the USS John S. McCain ahead of President Donald Trump’s visit to a neighboring ship in Japan. It was a decision that apparently stemmed from Trump’s feuds with the decorated war hero and late senator, who was added as a namesake for the ship initially named for his father and grandfather. But the senator had died just nine months prior, rendering the effort particularly bizarre.
Trump initially seemed to confirm that someone had tried to keep the ship out of sight, while emphasizing that he didn’t request it. But then he called the reporting into question, citing a statement from the Navy and suggesting that the report was “an exaggeration, or even Fake News.”
It was not fake news, as a batch of newly released emails reinforces and details.
The emails, obtained by Bloomberg News reporter Jason Leopold and by the Wall Street Journal through Freedom of Information Act requests, fill out the story of military officials responding to a request from the White House Military Office. Among the discoveries:
They show military officials saying repeatedly that this was a White House request, but also that officials didn’t want to put it in writing.
At one point, a military official was apparently so taken aback by the request that the person asked that it be confirmed. “I could see that becoming a Tweet,” the official added.
Another military official responded the next morning by saying, “This just makes me sad.”
While there were calls for investigations at the time, including by then-acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan and McCain’s successor in the Senate, Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), we’ve learned very little since then. And while it might not rank too high on the list of Trump-era controversies, it’s at the very least hugely emblematic of officials’ often-strange attempts to treat Trump with kid gloves, for fear of angering him.
The released emails stretch back to more than a month before Trump’s late-May 2019 visit. And while they redact virtually everything said by White House officials, the context makes clear that the request to hide the USS McCain did come from the White House.
On April 12, the director of the White House Military Office, Rear Adm. Keith Davids, replies to an email from Rear Adm. Ted LeClair, the deputy commander of the U.S. 7th Fleet, which is headquartered in Japan. The contents of the email are almost entirely redacted.
On April 22, the director of operations for the White House Military Office forwards another email (also almost completely redacted) to 7th Fleet officials.
On April 24, the chief of staff for the 7th Fleet replies, looping in five White House Military Office (WHMO) addresses and a public affairs officer. “Clay — get this worked ASAP with Charlie Brown at [U.S. Pacific Fleet] and see what you can provide,” the email says.
On May 15 comes the first unredacted reference to obscuring the USS John S. McCain. An official in the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command writes to fellow military officials, “Please see below for excerpt from discussions between WHMO and” the 7th Fleet. Among three directions listed: “3. USS John McCain needs to be out of sight.” It instructs recipients to “please confirm #3 will be satisfied.”
One recipient forwards the email, pasting only the text of that directive. In another email, potentially from the same official, the instructions are forwarded with the comments:
Just talked to [REDACTED] on bullet number 3. He is checking on the validity.
3. USS John McCain needs to be out of sight.
I could see that becoming a Tweet…
One of the recipients replies by saying, “This just makes me sad…”
Further emails reference the White House requesting that the ship be obscured. A May 24 email from the 7th Fleet chief of staff cites “the WH request to keep the name not visible” and “that JSM be ‘kept out of sight.’ ”
“We asked for a formal order but non [sic] was forthcoming,” the email states.
The same day, another official runs through the situation, saying, “This direction was passed to” someone in the White House Military Office, “who in turn provided this guidance to” the 7th Fleet. The email also cites a Davids email to LeClair — potentially the April 12 email above — “emphasizing the importance of making sure this happens.”
And for the first time, it references a Navy official who “took additional steps by hanging the … brow banner,” while emphasizing this was “NOT directed” by the 7th Fleet.
NEW: The White House wanted the USS John McCain “out of sight” for Trump’s visit to Japan. A tarp was hung over the ship’s name ahead of the trip, and sailors—who wear caps bearing the ship’s name—were given the day off for Trump’s visit. w/@gluboldhttps://t.co/6ugPceCOre pic.twitter.com/KuIoWJK5Kt
— Rebecca Ballhaus (@rebeccaballhaus) May 29, 2019
While the “brow banner” reference isn’t clear, the Wall Street Journal published a photo of what it called a “tarp” covering the ship’s name. The photo was taken the same day as the email — May 24.
Later on May 24, the 7th Fleet commander, Vice Adm. Phillip G. Sawyer, emails the Pacific Fleet commander, Adm. John C. Aquilino, and again cites the request as coming from the White House Military Office. He says that the “banner” and “paint scaffolding” were used to “ensure JSM name was not visible” from the USS Wasp, the ship on which Trump would appear:
We received an RFI re tasking ‘to keep MCCAIN out of sight’ during the upcoming DV1 visit. A rough reconstructed sequence of events follows:
* O/A 15 May: WHMO requested (SIPR traffic) to ensure JSM was not visible from WSP.
* This WHMO request was later (o/a 16 May) pushed out by INDOPACOM planners to JTF POTUS and component commanders. ALCON were tracking this as a requirement though it was not listed in the IPC PLANORD.
* Based on the tasking above, organizations under my OPCON leaned forward to ensure JSM name was not visible from WASP. This includes:
--Designating JSM as the CDS-15 Flagship. CDS-15 banner is now on the JSM brow (vice a JSM banner)
--Placing a paint scaffolding at the stern of the ship. This partially obscures the ship’s name.
--JSM’s 4-day Memorial Day weekend runs from Saturday through Tuesday (the day of DV1 visit)
(Note: All you see from the WASP wrt JSM is JSM’s bow and the hull name 56)
(The “weekend” reference appears to cite another detail reported by the Journal: That “sailors on the ship, who typically wear caps bearing its name, were given the day off during Mr. Trump’s visit.”)
Sawyer recommended “no further actions” and added that “this includes ‘undoing’ anything that has been done (brow banner, paint scaffolding).”
Further emails from May 25 feature military officials trying to account for those actions and again noting that other military officials resisted putting instructions in writing.
The tarp was taken down that day, the Navy confirmed. The Journal reported that a barge later blocked the name but was also moved.
After the controversy exploded, the Navy issued a statement noting that the name of the ship was not obscured during Trump’s visit — but without acknowledging that it had been previously, and deliberately so. Trump seized upon this, tweeting: “The Navy put out a disclaimer on the McCain story. Looks like the story was an exaggeration, or even Fake News — but why not, everything else is!”
Yet again, the fake news was instead coming from inside the Oval Office.
Noted: Most Latinos say the Democratic Party works for their votes; fewer say same of GOP | 2022-09-29T17:20:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Emails show Trump White House's effort to hide U.S.S. John S. McCain during Trump visit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/new-details-bizarre-effort-hide-uss-john-s-mccain-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/new-details-bizarre-effort-hide-uss-john-s-mccain-trump/ |
The Nationals are in the midst of a rebuild. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Because of inclement weather Wednesday, the Class AAA Rochester Red Wings did not play their scheduled season finale, settling their record at 67-81. And like most of the Washington Nationals’ affiliates — save a strong year and early playoff exit for the low-Class A Fredericksburg Nationals — the Red Wings’ spring and summer was something of a reflection of the club’s entire minor league system.
Strides in the right direction — in pitching development, mostly, but also by simply acquiring more players with upside — were counterbalanced by injuries and head-scratching performances. For the Red Wings in particular, a hot start was weighed down by a 19-game losing streak that stretched across July and August. Rochester regularly fed players to the majors, priming Carl Edwards Jr. and Erasmo Ramírez for important bullpen roles; sending Joey Meneses, Ildemaro Vargas and Josh Palacios up at the trade deadline; then eventually prepping top prospect Cade Cavalli for his debut in Washington.
Cole Henry, another top prospect, briefly pitched for the Red Wings before undergoing season-ending surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome. Matt Cronin, one of the Nationals’ main young relievers, was promoted to Rochester in late May and logged 35⅔ innings, taking some lumps along the way. When Washington traded Juan Soto and Josh Bell to the San Diego Padres on Aug. 2, the return was sprinkled throughout the affiliates, the whole system receiving a massive boost from popular rankings sites.
The implication, then, was twofold: Yes, the package for Soto and Bell reset the Nationals’ top prospects for the better. Shortstop CJ Abrams initially went to Rochester. Outfielder Robert Hassell III went to high-Class A Wilmington and eventually leaped to AA Harrisburg. James Wood, a 19-year-old outfielder, joined Fredericksburg for the playoff push and flashed his potential. And Jarlin Susana, an 18-year-old fireballer, took his 103-mph fastball from West Palm Beach, Fla. to Fredericksburg, drawing attention from General Manager Mike Rizzo and other members of the front office at his second stop.
But by underachieving in scouting and player development for so many years — and by further thinning the talent pool with trades to stay competitive — the Nationals needed to deal Soto, a generational star, to put their system on track for a successful rebuild. That’s the undercurrent of Washington’s ongoing transformation, which to date has included a new director of player development (De Jon Watson), a reshaped staff (more roles, some fresh faces) and expectedly mixed results.
Progress is often incremental, especially when making up for lost time. And any progress, or lack thereof, will be magnified as Washington’s rebuild rolls along.
For whatever wins and losses are worth in the minors, the Nationals’ affiliates finished 22nd in combined winning percentage. The Tampa Bay Rays, regarded as a model for player development and talent acquisition, had the best affiliate winning percentage for the second consecutive year.
Washington’s main hope is that players from Fredericksburg will soon fill a void of promise in Wilmington and Harrisburg. Health will be a significant factor, too, especially for Henry and 19-year-old infielder Brady House, who missed most of the season with lower-back issues after a bout with the coronavirus. On Wednesday, Rizzo was asked about fitting House and Abrams in the same infield by hosts of The Junkies on 106.7 The Fan. The implication was that Abrams’s arrival means House will have to move from his natural position, a possibility that’s trailed House since he was drafted in the first round in 2021.
“[House] had a terrific first half of the season before he got covid and then he got a little bit of a back injury, and looks like he’s going to be a power-hitting type of middle of the lineup guy for us in the near future,” the GM said. “So we’ll figure that out if that’s the way it has to be when they’re both so good they have to be on the field at the same time. We’ll figure that one out easily.”
Svrluga: The Nationals and their fans know the bottom. This isn’t it.
Rochester named outfielder Andrew Stevenson their most valuable player. Stevenson, 28, played for Washington in parts of the previous five seasons, even scoring as a punch-runner in the Nationals League wild-card game in 2019. But after getting designated for assignment in April, he spent the year in AAA and finished with 16 homers, 39 steals, a .279 batting average, .344 on-base percentage, and .457 slugging percentage.
Stevenson and outfielder Donovan Casey were rare constants in Rochester’s lineup. By September, though, the club’s most intriguing player was Jake Alu, a 25-year-old who has climbed the entire system — and its most intriguing pitcher was reliever Zach Brzykcy, who was a late addition after posting a 1.66 ERA for Wilmington, then a 1.89 ERA with a high strikeout rate in 32 appearances for Harrisburg.
Having excelled for the Senators, too, Alu smacked 11 homers and posted a .323 batting average, .372 on-base percentage and .553 slugging percentage in 53 games for the Red Wings. In September, he slashed a remarkable .409/.442/.761 in 95 plate appearances, good for an on-base-plus-slugging percentage of 1.204. And beyond improving offensively after a jump to AAA, Sports Info Solutions had Alu as one of its minor league leaders in defensive runs saved, a metric measuring a player’s fielding contributions at a given position.
Alu was a third baseman in 2022 but has played a bit at second. On Tuesday, Nationals Manager Dave Martinez mused about Alu possibly backing up at third, second and left field in the future. Earlier this summer, Watson praised Harrisburg hitting coach Micah Franklin for his work with Alu.
To keep Alu in the mix, the Nationals would have to add him to the 40-man roster this fall so he can’t be selected by another club in the Rule 5 Draft. He and Vargas are the top internal options to be a utility infielder off the bench next year. They also could be candidates to play third, a spot hinging on Carter Kieboom’s recovery from Tommy John surgery and the team’s approach to free agency.
“He’s definitely going to be with us next year,” Martinez said of Alu, a 24th-round pick in 2019. “I don’t know if he’ll be in spring training. But I’d like to get eyes on him and see what he does with us a little bit, so we’ll see what happens. He’s had a tremendous year and he should be proud of himself. I have noticed.”
Turning Alu and Brzykcy into major league contributors would be victories that show a slight uptick in organizational depth. But beyond that, the Nationals have to hit on their big-name prospects, both those who came from San Diego and those the club picked in the past few drafts. Again, a critical winter of decisions and brainstorming looms.
Hurricane Ian forces weekend schedule changes
Remnants of Hurricane Ian have already forced Major League Baseball to adjust the Nationals’ four-game series with the Philadelphia Phillies. A day-night doubleheader will now take place at Nationals Park on Friday, with the first game beginning at 1:05 p.m. and the second at 7:05. From there, the teams are scheduled for a 1:05 p.m. matchup on Saturday and a 1:35 p.m. finale Sunday.
Those contests could be further affected by storms, and the Nationals noted in a statement that they will “continue to work closely with MLB as the weather situation unfolds.” Completing four official games is paramount as the Phillies are still in the National League wild-card race. | 2022-09-29T17:42:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nationals’ minor league affiliates finish a critical year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/nationals-minor-league-season-wrapup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/nationals-minor-league-season-wrapup/ |
Six months of contraction is a long-held informal definition of a recession. Yet nothing is simple in a post-pandemic economy in which growth is negative but the job market strong. The economy’s direction has confounded the Federal Reserve's policymakers and many private economists since growth screeched to a halt in March 2020 as COVID-19 struck and 22 million Americans were suddenly thrown out of work. | 2022-09-29T17:51:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EXPLAINER: How do we know when a recession has begun? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/explainer-how-do-we-know-when-a-recession-has-begun/2022/09/29/30cb1434-4019-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/explainer-how-do-we-know-when-a-recession-has-begun/2022/09/29/30cb1434-4019-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
“At the end of the day, probably what counts most is the time from the last immunization or infection,” says Alessandro Sette, a professor at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology. He says right now there’s too much emphasis on the number of boosters people are getting, rather than their timing. For two or three months after infection or a previous booster, your immune system probably isn’t very boost-able. There might be some benefit after three months, but, he says, you’d get the most benefit after four-to-six months.
A more targeted CDC messaging campaign would prioritize the 35% of people over 65 who haven’t been boosted at all; they’d benefit the most from the retooled booster. Next on the priority list would be the over-65s who haven’t been boosted or been infected during the last six months. Even if they already had one booster, there’s now evidence that getting a second booster reduces the risk of death, so a second shot is worth it. It’s less urgent to reach the two-thirds of adults aged 18-64 who’ve yet to get a single booster, although they’d also benefit, so long as they haven’t been infected in the last four-to-six months.
(Clarifies Alessandro Sette’s position on boosters in the 6th paragraph of the article published Sept. 28.) | 2022-09-29T17:51:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Here’s Who Really Needs the New Covid Booster - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/heres-who-really-needs-the-new-covid-booster/2022/09/29/5f28a0ac-401a-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/heres-who-really-needs-the-new-covid-booster/2022/09/29/5f28a0ac-401a-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Coolio took a ‘Fantastic Voyage’ and invited the whole world along
The song that launched him to fame should not be outshined by the one that defined it
Coolio, above at a performance in Zurich in 1997, died at age 59 in Los Angeles on Wednesday. (Michele Limina/Associated Press)
Whether it was poetry or a fluke, Coolio’s quick trip to the top was right there in the song titles: “Fantastic Voyage” to “Gangsta’s Paradise” — and if fate decides to perform a poetically fluky encore, the ’90s rap star, who died in Los Angeles on Wednesday at 59, will eventually be remembered for the song that launched his fame instead of the one that defined it.
Everybody knows “Gangsta’s Paradise.” Your parents, Stevie Wonder, Weird Al, Michelle Pfeiffer, misguided wedding DJs, the most-soused White person at karaoke, everybody. In a way, the song’s ubiquity has helped us forget the weirdness of its arc: A melodramatic selection from the soundtrack of an entirely regrettable 1995 White-savior movie, “Dangerous Minds,” lurched “through the shadow of the valley of death” and took a wrong turn onto the very top of the pop charts.
But “Fantastic Voyage,” a breakout single that smothered MTV the summer prior, is the Coolio cut that deserves to bask in its own magic-hour sunshine for perpetuity. Over a backing beat made out of industrial-grade g-funk elastic — an interpolation of Lakeside’s 1980 tune of the same name made somehow bouncier than its source material — Coolio, who had already cut his teeth as a member of Los Angeles troupe WC and the Maad Circle, evangelizes for rap music writ large: “We’re going to a place where everybody kick it, kick it, kick it, yeah that’s the ticket.”
And if rap was still on its way to becoming America’s dominant pop idiom in the summer of ’94, “Fantastic Voyage” definitely helped speed everything along. The song’s mood felt tight and buoyant, but its lyrics underscored rap’s inherent capaciousness, addressing the psychic damage of gun violence, the fraudulence of the American Dream, a couple of nifty lessons in music history via stray references to Motown, the Staple Singers and Parliament-Funkadelic and lots more — a reminder that rap music got big by being big.
Things obviously got even bigger for Coolio within the space of a year. “Gangsta’s Paradise” dropped in August 1995, quickly went multiplatinum in half a dozen countries and eventually became one of the most recognizable rap songs on the planet. That’s an achievement. But “Fantastic Voyage” remains a jam, a journey, a mission statement and, ultimately, an invitation. All aboard. | 2022-09-29T17:51:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Coolio took a ‘Fantastic Voyage’ and invited the whole world along - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/29/coolio-died-appreciation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/29/coolio-died-appreciation/ |
Updated September 29, 2022 at 1:28 p.m. EDT|Published September 29, 2022 at 12:25 p.m. EDT
Tony Rojas is a star running back and linebacker at Fairfax High and is committed to play at Penn State. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Today, it’s in her toes. It’s the kind of discomfort that might send some to the hospital. But by now she’s accustomed to it. She has lived in a wheelchair, on crutches, or with a limp for as long as she remembers, a daily fight against her spina bifida neuropathy, a disability that can paralyze the lower limbs.
Sticking with Fairfax
But Josh Richards, a family friend and youth football coach, pushed him toward the gridiron. Richards noticed Rojas’s shy nature — the way he’d peer behind the banister of their basement steps, hoping to avoid conversation — and wanted to see if football might break the kid out of his shell.
Rojas took quickly to the sport, and by the time he entered high school, people outside of his immediate circle knew of his talent.
Parker, who arrived at Fairfax after Rojas’s freshman season, was taken with the athlete’s demeanor and commitment. He observed the way Rojas encouraged teammates to join him in the weight room, despite his introversion, and the way he’d stay late in the coming years to help freshmen with their technique.
And of course, he witnessed the gravitational pull this wiry teen had on the field, which mirrored the Division I-bound players Parker had coached at North Stafford.
Several local teams made inquiries, and even IMG Academy, a boarding school in Florida synonymous with collegiate recruitment, made contact in hopes Rojas would go south. But he and Parker continued to talk. When the subject of his family and loyalty arose, it clicked.
His mother’s son
The Rojas family wants you to know, if nothing else, they show up for one another. Daniela wakes up by 6 a.m. every day to make her son’s breakfast and lunch. Tony encourages his mom to get through her days. Daniela said her children are her biggest motivation and mentions that they pushed her to lose more than 100 pounds, which eased her fight against her disabilities.
For the next few months, it’s just the two of them. One sister teaches in Florida, while the other attends Penn State; Rojas’ father has been absent throughout his life, though he has attempted to reconnect with his son in recent years.
Once Rojas selected linebacker as his position of choice for college, their mailbox overflowed. Parker remembers one of Rojas’s final recruiting trips, when he returned at 1 a.m. with five offers, including one from the Nittany Lions.
Rojas had options to play at other preeminent programs, such as Georgia or Clemson. But they couldn’t offer what Penn State did.
The stressors of the recruiting process are in the rearview. But Rojas can’t escape the attention now. Children flock for pictures and autographs at Fairfax games and Penn State visits. He was just invited to play in the All-American Bowl in San Antonio. He’s Fairfax’s homecoming king.
Rojas will keep an eye on the results. Fairfax hasn’t won a playoff game in 28 years. This fall, that his his top priority. | 2022-09-29T17:52:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘He’s a momma’s boy’: Why Tony Rojas stuck with Fairfax football - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/tony-rojas-penn-state/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/tony-rojas-penn-state/ |
Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts (1) makes a pass to tight end Dallas Goedert (88) during the first half of a NFL football game between the Washington Commanders and the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday, September 25, 2022 at FedExField in Landover, Maryland. Goedert scored a touchdown on the play./Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP) (Shaban Athuman/Richmond Times-Dispatch) | 2022-09-29T17:54:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pederson’s return highlights Eagles-Jaguars showdown - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/pedersons-return-highlights-eagles-jaguars-showdown/2022/09/29/32c7d562-401c-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/pedersons-return-highlights-eagles-jaguars-showdown/2022/09/29/32c7d562-401c-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
In this week’s By The Way Concierge, a rule follower questions those who test them
Is skipping or cutting in TSA lines common to other travelers? I wonder if this a thing now. It starts with someone from behind saying, “My flight leaves in 10 minutes. May I pass?” But they don’t show a boarding pass and instead take advantage of the goodwill of prompt and play-by-the-rules passengers. — Al K., Orlando
In the words of my niece’s favorite movie “Frozen,” let it go.
This situation is common, but not a regular occurrence — and not a problem on the rise, in my experience. I’ve been tapped by a handful of late travelers over the years, but it’s never made me miss, or even risk missing, my own flight. At worst, it can be annoying if the cutter comes off as a jerk, but most of the time it’s just a flustered, desperate soul who I don’t mind helping.
But maybe I’m missing something, so I checked in with other travel experts to get their take.
“I think it’s a very honest and real question,” Shayna Mizrahi, founder and CEO of Vive Voyage travel agency, told me. “It has happened to me many times in many airports. … I’ve had clients complain about this.”
Mizrahi agrees with you that it can be tough to spot the bad actors from the actually-late, but there is one way to know someone is not faking it.
“When it’s actually real is when there’s an officer or someone from the airline escorting the person through,” she said, speaking from experience. After some terminal confusion in an Australian airport, Mizrahi was whisked through security by her airline — legitimizing the cut.
Does that mean you shouldn’t let someone pass without a chaperone?
“It is a real annoying occurrence that happens in airports but at the end of the day, just be a nice person and let someone go through,” Mizrahi said. “Even if you don’t really know [if they’re faking tardiness].”
For Yannis Moati, founder and CEO of HotelsByDay, it’s fully okay for travelers to ask to cut.
“I think we’re all anxious that we’re going to be late for our flight, even if we’re three hours early, so I think we can all relate to the person who only has 15 minutes to get to their gate,” Moati said.
It’s so common that you can ask a TSA agent to help because “it happens on a regular basis and they have a protocol for that,” Moati said.
Daniel Bubb, a commercial air travel historian, professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and former airline pilot, recognized that people will react differently to the request.
“Oh, boy, you’re going to get a mixed bag on that one,” he told me when I read him your question. “You’ll get some people who may be sympathetic [to cutters] and other people who are actually not going to be sympathetic and probably will respond rather negatively to it.”
Bubb thinks it comes down to the travel experience of the cuttee. If you’re a frequent flier, you’re numb to the headaches of the security line.
“For people who don’t travel very frequently, it can be very stressful,” Bubb said. “And that stress can irk people a little bit. So if you have someone who’s cutting in line, they may not respond very well.”
Being a seasoned professional, Bubb is okay with a cut now and then, “because anything can happen,” he said. Flat tires, impossible parking, canceled Ubers, road construction, epically long airport lines — the list of possible disruptions for any traveler are endless.
The case for cutting your airport arrival time dangerously close
“I guess what I’m saying is it’s out of our control,” Bubb said. “So I’m usually sympathetic to people. I wouldn’t be sympathetic if they were people who habitually show up 15 minutes before their flight.”
But it’s impossible to know whether the stranger is a chronic late-arriver. So let them go. Even if the traveler is pulling a fast one on you, it’s not going to ruin your day to let them slide. Consider it good travel karma, and hope someone helps you out the next time you’re in a bind. | 2022-09-29T17:54:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Should you be allowed to cut the line at TSA? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/tsa-line-cutting-late/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/tips/tsa-line-cutting-late/ |
Perspective by Thomas Boswell
Joey Meneses hit 12 home runs in his first 49 big league games. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
If Joey Meneses were a flower, he’d blossom on Christmas. In baseball, it’s one thing to be a late bloomer. It’s another to reach age 30 with zero MLB home runs, as Meneses did, then try to create a meaningful career.
Since 1900, only one player has reached age 30 without a big league homer, then ended his career with at least 100: the great Lefty O’Doul.
So far, Meneses is batting .320 with 12 homers, 29 RBI and a .922 on-base-plus-slugging-percentage in the first 49 games as a rookie with the Nationals. Since he was called up on Aug. 2 as a top-of-the-order bat after the Juan Soto trade, he’s fifth in MLB in hits.
Someday, Joey may illustrate one of baseball’s most heartwarming, rare but recurring storylines: the player who won’t quit, figures out how to hit in his late 20s and keeps belting until he’s 35 or even 40.
The Nats should grasp that one advantage of being awful — an MLB-worst 54-101 through Wednesday — is that you can give yourself a full chance to be lucky with a long shot like Meneses. Your top hitting prospects at corner positions in the minors are still infants. You can give Meneses all of 2023, or longer, to pan out. If he does, you win big — and do it cheaply.
Consider: When they reached their 29th birthdays, ex-Nat Jayson Werth, Justin Turner, Raul Ibanez, Melvin Mora, Matt Stairs, Hank Sauer and Charlie Maxwell had only a paltry 87 MLB home runs, combined. After that date, they hit 1,530 more homers.
Nelson Cruz, a current Nat, hit 394 of his 459 homers after turning 30. Others with more than 75 percent of their homers after their age 29 season include David Ortiz, Andres Galarraga, José Bautista and Dante Bichette, who averaged 313 homers each.
Meneses, however, has a higher hurdle: age bias. For every year you don’t make a dent in the majors, your chances plummet. By 30, you’ve hit a brick wall. Modern analytics have documented this to the point of doctrine.
Proper perspective on Meneses’s task should give his new fans, like me, respect for how far he’s already come and what he’s overcome, no matter how his story ends.
How long has his road been? Meneses, who signed out of Mexico at 18, has played more games as a pro — 1,425, at all levels and in all countries — than the total number of MLB games in the careers of Hack Wilson, Hank Greenberg, Jackie Robinson and Buster Posey.
Joey played nine years of winter ball in Mexico for his hometown Tomateros de Culiacán. He’s played a “tomato” more often than Dustin Hoffman in “Tootsie.”
How tough is it to overcome such a pedigree?
In my lifetime, there has been one career — one — which mirrored Meneses’s and ended up close to stardom: Sauer. By age 31, he had only seven career MLB homers. The next eight years, he reeled off seasons of 35, 31, 32, 30, 37, 19 and 41 homers. Could the Nats use that? At 35 in ‘52, Sauer was National League MVP.
One even more glorious exception proves the past-30-breakout rule: O’Doul. Lefty never hit a homer in the majors until he was 31. Yet, at 32, he batted .398 and set the NL record for hits (254) that still stands, while also hitting 32 homers with only 19 strikeouts. His final career batting average of .349 is higher than that of Ted Williams.
How did such a career arc happen? O’Doul began as a pitcher, reaching the Yanks in Babe Ruth’s era, but blew out his arm and remade himself as a hitter at 27. In the Pacific Coast League he became a legend, with 309 hits in 1925.
Even after he finally made it back to MLB at 31 as an outfielder and hit .311, Giants manager John McGraw had no faith in him and traded him to the Phillies. Oops.
Perhaps the moral of this story of doggedness — whether in hitting or elsewhere — is that it’s a virtue which never stops giving and builds on itself with age. O’Doul’s great, but brief, MLB career was just his first act.
Lefty fell in love with Japanese culture during MLB’s barnstorming tours there in the ‘30s and learned to speak the language. His clinics in Japan and instruction books on hitting and pitching (since he’d done both in the majors) helped elevate the quality of play in Japan. His role as sensei was a key catalyst in the growth of Japan’s Nippon league, which has now produced another pitcher-hitter in Shohei Ohtani.
In 1949, Gen. Douglas MacArthur asked O’Doul to help revive the U.S.-Japan all-star series. The flags of the two countries had not flown together since World War II until O’Doul’s all-stars were given a parade in Tokyo. Crowd estimate: 1 million. Some games drew 100,000 fans.
Barry Svrluga: The Nationals and their fans know the bottom. This isn’t it.
Do all O’Doul’s contributions deserve Cooperstown? Japan got it right — O’Doul is in their hall of fame.
O’Doul is the extreme example of a career path almost unique to baseball. No other major sport has produced as many players who arrived as late, yet rose as high, as baseball hitters who became stars after they were all but forgotten within the game.
Even granting this, Joey Meneses is no Lefty O’Doul.
If you want to find reasons to worry about him, you can. His defense can be spotty, he doesn’t run well, he grounds into too many double plays and he once tested positive for a banned substance during a season in Japan; he contends he a doctor injected him without his knowledge.
But Joey can hit.
At ages 23, 24 and 25, when baseball was giving up on Meneses, he believed he was just beginning to create himself as a hitter. To develop his craft, he played, almost year-round, in the minors, the Mexican league and the Caribbean series. Just give him a uniform and he’d play. He averaged an insane 177 games a year. And something finally clicked.
For the last five years, he has hit everywhere he has played, with stats worthy of a first-rate prospect.
In 2018, Meneses was MVP of the AAA International League and almost won the Triple Crown. With his path to the Phillies lineup blocked by Bryce Harper in right field and Rhys Hoskins at first base, Meneses went for a payday — a $1 million contract to play with Orix in Japan.
In 2021, with Red Sox clubs in AA and AAA plus winter ball, Meneses played 150 games and — this shouldn’t surprise you — drove in 118 runs. Boston released him.
Nats General Manager Mike Rizzo, a talent thief when scrounging vets, grabbed him. So far in 2022, between AAA and the Nats, Meneses is hitting .298 with 32 homers.
Before we damn Meneses with the faint praise of “still a long shot,” consider that off all rookies in the last 50 years with 200 plate appearances, Joey ranks in the top 30 in slugging, OPS and wRC+. Most of the players on those lists became very good players, or even huge stars. The sample size is too small for comparisons. But big enough to let us smile.
“I love to watch Joey hit,” said Nats Manager Dave Martinez after a game-winning homer by Meneses.
Hold that thought. A bet on Joey costs little. The odds against him are still long, but he could pay off big. | 2022-09-29T18:13:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is Joey Meneses for real? He might be. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/joey-meneses-washington-nationals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/joey-meneses-washington-nationals/ |
The Hokies take on the Tar Heels at 3:30 p.m. Saturday (ACC Network)
Virginia Tech quarterback Grant Wells is 79 of 131 this season for 844 yards, five touchdowns and five interceptions over four games. (Steve Helber/AP)
BLACKSBURG, Va. — After Virginia Tech’s least productive offensive showing of the season last week in a loss riddled with errors of the mind and body, Hokies football coach Brent Pry did not equivocate when assessing the state of the program in the early stages of a rebuild.
“This is kind of where we’re at as a team right now,” said Pry, in his first season as a head coach. “You don’t fix certain things — you can look at the stats and the number of penalties, but you don’t fix certain things just in a couple of weeks. It’s an overall mind-set and the manner in which you play.”
The grim evaluation came on the heels of a 33-10 loss in which Virginia Tech managed a season-low in points and total yards (228), drawing jeers from what was at kickoff a highly charged, overflow crowd at Lane Stadium. Instead of harnessing that energy the Hokies managed just 35 rushing yards for their fewest since 2015.
Pry’s remarks also served as a stark reminder of just how much needs to be addressed in order for Virginia Tech (2-2, 1-0 ACC) to emerge from years of offensive decay marked by a revolving door of quarterbacks.
Heading into its game against North Carolina (3-1, 0-0) on Saturday night at Kenan Stadium, the Hokies have had six players take snaps with some regularity over the past three years, underscoring an alarming lack of continuity at the most impactful position on the field.
Virginia Tech, meantime, is ranked 12th out of 14 schools in the ACC in both total offense (330 yards per game) and scoring (20.3 points per game).
Grant Wells, this season’s starting quarterback, has completed 79 of 131 attempts for 844 yards, five touchdowns and five interceptions over four games. Against the Mountaineers he went 16 for 35 with 193 yards, one touchdown and one interception.
Wells’s interception handed West Virginia the final points of the game when Jacolby Spells took the ball back 27 yards to the end zone with 9:36 to play in the fourth quarter, sending fans streaming toward the exits.
Wells also missed on a handful of deep passes to wide-open teammates in the first half that could have drastically altered the complexion of the game when the Hokies were still within reach of reclaiming the Black Diamond Trophy.
“I think we’ll continue growing and learning from each other until the last game of the season,” Wells said. “Everybody’s learning how [first-year offensive coordinator Tyler Bowen] likes to call a game, and that will continue throughout the season. Obviously we’ve learned from our mistakes game to game.”
The redshirt junior transfer from Marshall, where he was selected Conference USA first-team and freshman of the year, won the starting job following a competition in spring practice and preseason camp against Jason Brown, a transfer from South Carolina.
Pry did not hint at a quarterback change this week, indicating Wells has played well enough in spots for the Hokies to be able to win if it weren’t for committing 15 penalties for 132 yards or other mental mistakes such as being out of position at critical times.
Plus, Wells was clearly more comfortable directing the offense during spring and camp, where he gained considerable separation over Brown and compelled Pry and Bowen to name him the starter without reservations.
“It’s what you’re investing in, what you believe in snap after snap,” Pry said. “We still are a work in progress in that area, and the most important thing is that we learn from each and every one of these situations, and we grow to become a more mature football team.”
The more pressing concern in facing the Tar Heels is if Virginia Tech can get its rushing attack in gear. The Hokies are ranked second-to-last in the ACC in rushing this season, averaging 112 yards per game and 3.1 yards per carry with four touchdowns.
Keshawn King, a redshirt junior who started one game last year, leads Virginia Tech with 179 yards and a touchdown on 29 carries. Jalen Holston has 144 yards and a team-high two rushing touchdowns on 45 attempts, and Wells is next with 81 yards and a touchdown on 26 carries.
Reinforcements at running back may be close with Malachi Thomas on the verge of rejoining the lineup after missing the first four games with a foot injury. Thomas, a sophomore, is the Hokies’ leading rusher from last season (440 yards, three touchdowns, 93 carries) among players on the current roster.
“He is doing more,” said Pry, who indicated the anticipated rain Saturday in Chapel Hill, N.C., would not factor into whether to play Thomas. “We’ve got to make a decision by [Thursday] morning if we’re going to travel him and ride this thing all the way to game day, but he’s looking much, much better.” | 2022-09-29T18:13:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fixing Virginia Tech's offense is going to be long-term job - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/virginia-tech-sputtering-offense/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/virginia-tech-sputtering-offense/ |
Decades after local shops were razed, Ward 7 got a Lidl. Hooray?
People walk in front of a Lidl, the first full service supermarket east of the Anacostia River to open in 15 years, on Sept. 22. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
There were potent emotions outside the grand opening of D.C.’s first Lidl, and they weren’t all about the German grocery chain’s wunderbar selection of brats.
“Everyone kept rejecting us,” said Celestine Washington, 63, as she waited in line well before the front doors whooshed open to customers for the first time at 8 a.m. Wednesday. “Finally, you know? Fi-na-lly.”
The wait had spanned decades. For those who live here, in one of the poorest wards in the nation’s capital, its end marked a time to reflect: with pride, with validation, with frustration — and fear. What might big business’ interest in their home portend for gentrification?
There was also an unmistakable hint of bitterness.
People from here remember when politicians declared war on the tired and unattractive collection of mom-and-pop shops with promises of a gleaming, new shopping center. The beauty salons, a liquor store, the Discount Mart, cleaners and a carryout were “a blighting factor,” officials said.
“It wasn’t attractive at all,” conceded Elaine Mittleman, one of the attorneys who represented a good chunk of the small businesses razed in the name of progress.
It began when the residents of Hillcrest, a well-organized and vocal part of the ward, started agitating for the development boom that launched the flocks of cranes reshaping the wealthier parts of D.C. across the Anacostia.
It was a righteous request.
While one out of four residents in Ward 7 live in poverty, the ward is also home to a robust middle class — federal workers, bus drivers, schoolteachers. And they drive into Maryland or Virginia for big box stores, sit-down restaurants, for better shopping beyond the Discount Mart that took over the old Naylor Theater.
The council members running for reelection wanted to give this powerful voting block something — anything. So the city council passed the 2004 Skyland Act, giving the city eminent domain powers to reshape that part of D.C., despite the fact that they had no real plans and no written promises from big retailers.
So the city kicked Marion Fletcher out of the beauty salon she spent three decades building up; it shoved Duk Hae Oh’s beauty supply shop out of the neighborhood it had served; and shut down the liquor store that Joseph and Rose Rumber saved up to buy.
The shabby, Skyland shopping center faces an uphill battle against redevelopment
Lawrence Ray, a regular at the Rumbers’ place, told The Washington Post’s Lynne Duke in 2006 that he didn’t think a revitalization of the area was about the people who live there.
“I hate that word ‘revitalize.’ Revitalizing what? Whose idea? That wasn’t our idea … What about the people that’s in the community who may not even afford to be here once it’s revitalized?” he told Duke.
He saw it as a part to push out poor residents, “because eventually that’s what’s going to happen.”
Mittleman worked with these business owners, trying to get them the best possible compensation to start their lives over. None of them, to her knowledge, was able to relocate their businesses. The beloved Fletcher died before the Lidl announcement was made.
“This was never about a food desert,” Mittleman said, noting there’s a Safeway nearby.
Well, the Safeway sucked, a lot of residents complained. And D.C. Council member Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7) agreed. It’s where he shopped and he made noise about the gray meat, moldy produce, long lines and reduced hours.
Advocates like D.C. Hunger Solutions called the scarcity a gaping “grocery gap.”
So politicians kept making promises for Skyland: Target! Shoppers Food Warehouse!
But nope, those places never signed on.
Developments created through eminent domain weren’t attractive, it became a nationwide ick to change a city’s landscape that way and big box retailers were spooked. Plus, Safeway, it turned out, had a covenant with the city insuring they wouldn’t get any competition. (It eventually cost taxpayers millions to break that).
This was something the politicians remembered when Wal-Mart came around with promises in 2011 to build stores throughout the ward of D.C.
The folks who drove into Maryland or Virginia for that kind of shopping cheered. The city council divided, though, half of the members sparring with America’s largest retailer, trying to force a higher minimum wage.
Again, another righteous request, but a battle that wasn’t waged when the much sexier and hipper Target — whose salaries and practices were no better than its blue-and-yellow country cousin — built a store in Columbia Heights. Wal-Mart promised five stores if the legislators backed down, including the a big one at Skyland. But the corporation bugged out after building just three — none of them east of the river.
D.C. needs Wal-Mart more than Wal-Mart needs us
“It was just dead there, all those years,” said Roxann Seals, 61, as she waited in line to check out the new Lidl. She, like many others in the ward, was furious that a huge swathe of her neighborhood lay fallow through five mayoral administrations.
Nearly everyone I talked to outside the Lidl mentioned the Wal-Mart betrayal. “We weren’t good enough for a Wal-Mart?” one woman said, happily swinging the free canvas tote bag that Lidl employees gave her.
“This is a blessing that they’re coming here, after Wal-Mart pulled out,” said Priscilla Moore, 60.
“I don’t know why Wal-Mart did that, if they thought because it was here people would be stealing in the stores,” she said. “But that’s not who we are.”
The people who live here — so frequently described by outsiders through the lens of a problem — know they are worthy of a Wal-Mart. And a sushi bar. And promises kept. But they worry about what comes next.
Besides Lidl, the new Skyland Town Center has the city’s only drive-through Starbucks, plus hipster pizza and sushi. A smoothie place and a Mediterrean grill are opening soon. There’s an apartment building with a dog park and dog wash, a courtyard pool, bike storage and a fitness center. One-bedroom apartments start at $1,750.
The Crest’s nod to affordable housing is the small print on their website: The housing provider will not refuse to rent a rental unit to a person because the person will provide the rental payment, in whole or in part, through a voucher for rental housing assistance provided by the District or federal government.”
“We’re up-and-coming!” said Seals, who is a big fan of Lidl and said she is thrilled to be able to shop at her favorite store in her own neighborhood, east of the river.
James, who is 73 and a retired federal worker, is less optimistic about the new places.
“East of the river? Who knows what they’re going to be calling it soon,” he said. “They’ll come up with some new name.”
After the line died down, later in the morning, the “they” James was talking about began trickling in. A blonde in vinyl pants and a fuzzy, cropped sweater marveling at the Halloween decorations, a bike commuter with a helmet dangling from his backpack buying kombucha.
“Wal-Mart would’ve been better,” James said. | 2022-09-29T18:39:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Skyland Lidl stirs emotions for Ward 7 after decades of promises - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/skyland-lidl-dc-ward7/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/skyland-lidl-dc-ward7/ |
New Maryland law requires motorists to make room for stopped vehicles
Maryland’s expanded “move over” law requires drivers to change lanes or slow down when approaching any vehicle stopped on a highway
A new Maryland law that takes effect Oct. 1 requires motorists to move over or slow down when approaching any vehicle stopped on a highway. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Motorists in Maryland must change lanes or slow down when approaching any vehicle stopped on a highway with hazard lights flashing or with flares out, according to a new state law that takes effect Saturday.
Safety advocates say the law is aimed at reducing the number of roadside collisions involving stranded motorists, as well as those who come to their aid. Previously, Maryland’s “move over” law was limited to police and other first-responder vehicles, tow trucks, utility trucks and emergency service vehicles.
The law was expanded to protect any vehicle stopped or parked on a highway with its hazard lights on or with road flares, traffic cones or other caution signals out. Approaching drivers must switch lanes away from the stopped vehicle to create more room or, if they can’t, slow to an unspecified “reasonable and prudent” speed.
Drivers of electric vehicles are about to lose their free HOV privileges in Maryland
A first offense is punishable by a $110 fine and one point on a driver’s license. Penalties increase if the violation contributes to a collision.
“We’re still seeing people being hit and injured,” said Ragina Ali, spokeswoman for the motorist advocacy group AAA Mid-Atlantic, which advocated for the law. “Being on the side of the road is a dangerous place to be.”
A AAA survey last year of Maryland first responders, tow truck drivers and roadside emergency aid workers found more than 90 percent said they’d had a “near miss” or “had their life threatened” by a motorist passing too closely. Statewide, Ali said, 38 state roadside assistance vehicles have been hit since 2019 while helping stranded motorists.
Motorists who break down should try to get off the highway or, if they can’t, pull as far off as possible and remain in the vehicle while calling for help, Ali said.
Maryland is the eighth state to apply its law to all vehicles, according to AAA. | 2022-09-29T19:05:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New Maryland law requires drivers to 'move over' for stopped vehicles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/29/maryland-move-over-law/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/29/maryland-move-over-law/ |
Army major accused of leaking medical records in bid to help Russia
Federal authorities also charged a Maryland physician in the alleged conspiracy
Two medical doctors — including a U.S. Army major — were indicted on federal charges amid accusations that they passed along confidential medical information to a person they thought was working for the Russian government, according to court records unsealed in Maryland on Thursday.
Anna Gabrielian, 36, and her spouse, Jamie Lee Henry, 39, both of Rockville, were charged with conspiracy and improper disclosures related to what federal prosecutors termed as “efforts to assist Russia in connection with the conflict in Ukraine.”
The pair passed along information related to at least five people who had been patients at a U.S. military base in North Carolina, where Henry had been stationed, including a retired Army officer, a current Defense Department employee and three military spouses, according to federal court records. They also provided medical information related the spouse of someone employed by the Office of Naval Intelligence, according to the court records.
The pair were trying to demonstrate how they could be an asset to Russia, according to federal authorities. There is no indication, according to the records, that information ever got to Russia.
Thinking they were talking to a Russian operative, the doctors met the undercover agent at hotels in Baltimore and Gaithersburg to demonstrate “their willingness to provide” confidential medical records and show “the potential for the Russian government to gain insights into the medical conditions of individuals associated with the United States government and military in order to exploit this information.”
Couple accused of peddling nuclear sub secrets face stiffer penalties
It is unclear whether Gabrielian or Henry have retained attorneys. They could not be immediately reached for comment.
Federal authorities described Henry as a major in the U.S. Army who, during the time of the alleged conspiracy, worked as a staff internist stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C., the home of the Army’s XVIII Airborne Corps, headquarters of the U.S. Army Special Operations Command and the Womack Army Medical Center.
Authorities described Gabrielian as an anesthesiologist at an unnamed “medical institution” in Baltimore. Online records for Johns Hopkins Medicine list Gabrielian as an instructor of anesthesiology and critical care medicine. | 2022-09-29T19:23:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland couple accused of leaking medical records to help Russia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/maryland-spy-couple-russia-leak/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/maryland-spy-couple-russia-leak/ |
‘Blonde,’ ‘Elvis’ and the challenge of telling the truth about icons
Bobby Cannavale and Ana de Armas as Marilyn Monroe in "Blonde." (Netflix)
“Blonde” and “Elvis” aren’t just two epics about American icons. They’re also documents that force the public to consider what it means for the families of major figures to control the interpretation of cultural history.
The two films almost demand to be watched in tandem, which you can do if you have HBO Max (where “Elvis” is streaming), Netflix (where “Blonde” debuted on Wednesday), and 5½ hours to kill. Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe were the two single greatest stars of their era, and their early deaths — hers in 1962, his in 1977 — bookended a period of enormous social and political upheaval in a traumatized America. And just as important as their legacies are the conditions under which those legacies are being interpreted today.
“Elvis” is best understood not as a musical biopic but as a superhero movie, the origin story for The Great American Entertainer. Director Baz Luhrmann, who can fairly be described as “a bit much,” poured all his energy and talents into crafting a vision of Elvis (Austin Butler) as a larger-than-life avatar of greatness. Luhrmann is not subtle about this. He hangs a Shazam-style lightning bolt around the neck of our hero in a scene in which the young Elvis skips through the ramshackle town in which he lives. Hopping back and forth between a juke joint and a church, Elvis absorbs the skills and the talents of those around him, synthesizing them into their ultimate form.
Notably absent from “Elvis” is much in the way of Elvis’s later, decadent years, during which he got puffy and fat and drugged out. The film doesn’t depict Elvis hanging out with Richard M. Nixon. The villain here is not Elvis’s appetites or excesses or treatment of his family but Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks), the evil outsider with the malicious accent, the controlling puppeteer who trapped Elvis in Las Vegas as a way of paying down his own gambling debts.
None of this should be surprising, given the need for Luhrmann and his collaborators to secure the blessing of Elvis’s estate to gain access to his songs and other elements that made the movie the rousing, audience-friendly triumph it was. Gliding past inconveniences such as Priscilla Presley’s extreme youth during their courtship is, apparently, a small price to pay for the musical catalog.
All films take artistic license — see the contretemps about “The Woman King” — and the licenses taken here serve Luhrmann’s goal, which is mythmaking. Yet a hero with his flaws sanded down is less interesting than one forced to grapple with them, and there’s a smoothness to “Elvis” that undercuts the drama of his life and his role in the mainstreaming of Black American culture.
But while the King got a superhero story, our nation’s movie Queen gets a horror movie.
Based on the novel of the same name by Joyce Carol Oates, “Blonde” shouldn’t be taken for a pure biopic. It is, rather, an interpretation of the actress’s life designed to highlight the ways in which fame can destroy a person. In the case of Norma Jeane Baker (Ana de Armas), the pursuit of fame was an effort to escape the meaninglessness and emptiness of her home life. Her mother was insane. Her father was nonexistent. She needed something to fill the void.
This is why Norma Jeane refers to husbands Joe DiMaggio (Bobby Cannavale) and Arthur Miller (Adrien Brody) as “Daddy” throughout the movie. It’s creepy and infantilizing, but that’s the point: The love from the masses couldn’t fill the father-shaped hole in her heart. Whether or not the movie needed this display of desperation at such length (166 minutes), much less the sight of talking fetuses begging not to be aborted, is a question for another day.
Again, artistic license means that director Andrew Dominik is free to use Norma Jeane’s life story however he wishes. But doing so reduces a real woman who suffered real tragedies to little more than a cut-out doll, a plaything for the amusement of filmmakers and audiences alike.
Indeed, the very existence of “Blonde” proves Norma Jeane’s eagerness for family to protect her wasn’t pathetic; it was prescient. While the Presley family controls Elvis’s assets and rights, Baker’s estate has been dispersed: Part of it is owned by a charity, and the wife of Baker’s acting coach eventually sold the bulk of it to a corporation.
Even if Baker’s legacy were controlled by family or friends who knew her and loved her as a person, there’s probably only so much an effective estate could have done to stop Norma Jeane’s life from being reduced to horrific NC-17 #content beamed directly into 200 million households globally. The estate wouldn’t have a back catalog of music under its control, and biopics don’t necessarily need the approval of their subjects.
But somewhere between the whitewashed hagiography of “Elvis” and the garish nightmare of “Blonde,” there rests a happy medium that better balances truthfulness and artistry.
Opinion|‘Blonde,’ ‘Elvis’ and the challenge of telling the truth about icons | 2022-09-29T19:24:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | 'Blonde,' 'Elvis' and the challenge of biopics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/blonde-elvis-biopics/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/blonde-elvis-biopics/ |
Biden cannot let Pacific island nations fall into China’s hands
Secretary of State Antony Blinken greets dignitaries during the U.S.-Pacific Island Country Summit at the State Department on Sept. 28.
President Biden’s two-day summit with the leaders of many small Pacific Island nations hasn’t received much media coverage. But it’s an important development in the increasingly fraught efforts to limit China’s power.
The nations invited to the summit are some of the smallest and most obscure nations on Earth. Tonga, Vanuatu, Kiribati and Palau are usually the answers to bar trivia questions, not the objects of presidential attention. But they and six other island nations occupy strategic locations in the Pacific Ocean. China noticed this in recent years and started a diplomatic offensive that has borne significant fruit, forcing the United States and its allies to respond.
One look at the map and a dose of history tell you all you need to know about the cards these relatively poor islands can play.
They are strung out for over a thousand miles in the South Pacific, forming a barrier between the United States and Australia. Chinese bases here could threaten Australia’s security and prevent the United States from supporting its ally in the event of war. They could also threaten U.S. supply lines with the Western Pacific, severely affecting its ability to defend Taiwan, and put Chinese military assets close to crucial U.S. bases in Guam, the linchpin of U.S. power in the region.
Japan understood this in World War II and occupied many of these nations during its war of conquest. In response, the United States mounted an “island hopping” campaign of amphibious invasions to roll back Japanese control of the Pacific and gain secure access to the Japanese mainland. Thousands of servicemen died for control of these seemingly small specks of land.
Chinese control of these places would similarly divert U.S. attention in case of war and give China freer rein to accomplish its objectives. That’s why China’s recent security deal with the Solomon Islands was a wake-up call for the United States.
While Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare denies that the pact will lead to a permanent Chinese presence, others are not sure. Sogavare’s party has already delayed elections due next year, sparking fears of a Chinese-sponsored power grab. The move was followed by a Chinese-sponsored summit for the island nations, which failed to produce a regional security and economic development pact under U.S. pressure. Thus arose Biden’s own hastily organized summit this week.
The United States still has time to recapture its post-World War II position of dominance, but it needs to act fast. Many of these nations are tiny atolls threatened by rising oceans due to climate change. They want financial aid and economic development assistance to help survive the crisis. The United States should provide it whenever feasible.
It also needs to simply show up and pay attention. For many years, the United States did not even have embassies in many of these countries. The administration has hurriedly announced it will open them in Tonga and Kiribati, and it should ensure that all Pacific Island nations have the same access to ambassador-level U.S. diplomats as other, larger countries.
The United States should also look into how it can help island expatriates living and working here. Remittances from expats are a large source of income for the islands, averaging 10 percent of gross domestic product and going as high as 25 percent in Samoa and 39 percent in Tonga. Remittance fees to these islands are some of the highest in the world. Lowering them, even at the cost of subsidies from the United States and its allies who host large number of expats, would be a tangible way to aid these nations that China cannot match.
The initial reaction from the conference is positive. The administration has announced hundreds of millions of dollars in new aid to the nations, along with other outreach efforts. This is an excellent first step and should be matched by similar efforts from regional allies such as Australia and New Zealand, which have closer and more extensive economic relations with their neighbors. Together, these efforts should begin to turn back the rising tide of Chinese influence.
This cannot be a one-off commitment. The United States will be locked in a battle for influence with China far into the foreseeable future. So long as China remains committed to making its techno-totalitarian system a viable alternative to the U.S.-led democratic capitalist alliance, every nation in the region is a potential flash point. It’s not enough to build ties with the larger Pacific nations; the smaller ones count, too.
Thousands of Americans died in the battles to control Guadalcanal, one of the Solomon Islands, in World War II. This week’s economic and diplomatic offensive, if carried to completion, could ensure that we won’t have to fight a similar battle in the future. | 2022-09-29T19:24:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden cannot let Pacific island nations fall into China’s hands - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/pacific-island-summit-biden-china/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/pacific-island-summit-biden-china/ |
Pakistan’s flood crisis could be an opportunity for real change
Pakistanis displaced by flooding stand near a road underwater in Sehwan, Pakistan, on Sept. 16. (Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)
This week, Americans are understandably focused on the hurricane-related flooding in Florida, which is causing tragedy for thousands. Yet there is little attention in the United States to the fact that Pakistan has been flooded since mid-June, a catastrophe that is still causing unspeakable suffering for tens of millions.
Both of these crises owe much to the same phenomenon — climate change. But aside from some limited aid, there’s scant U.S.-Pakistan cooperation on long-term solutions. That has to change, according to Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, who was in the United States this week pitching his proposal for a “Green Marshall Plan.” In meetings with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres and others, Zardari argued for a way those countries most responsible for climate change can help those countries most affected — and, in turn, help themselves.
It’s a big idea and there are reasons for skepticism. But considering the global nature of the climate challenge, at some point the United States and Pakistan must find the courage to work together. In the process, the two countries might find a way back to being true allies, which would benefit both sides and balance China’s rising influence in the South Asia region.
“We have to find the opportunity in this crisis,” Zardari told me. “There are two ways of us going forward. We can do this dirtier, badly, in a way that will be worse for us and worse for the environment, or we can try to build back better in a greener, more climate-resilient manner.”
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Zardari’s call for a “Green Marshall Plan” is meant to evoke America’s historical penchant for pursuing its enlightened self-interest. The idea also plays into President Biden’s own Build Back Better World concept. The theory is that Western government support for private-sector investment in climate-resilient, ecologically sustainable infrastructure in Pakistan would redound to the benefit of Western industry and help mitigate the future climate-related crises that are sure to come.
Florida will have several days of rain. In Pakistan, it rained for more than three months, submerging one-third of the country in a body of water than can be seen from space. The high floodwaters have created a cascade of problems, devastating Pakistan’s agriculture, manufacturing, trade and public health sectors.
Floods are almost a perennial occurrence in Pakistan, but this year’s continuing disaster is uniquely cataclysmic, impacting more than 33 million people (more than Florida’s entire population), including 16 million children and more than 600,000 pregnant women, according to the United Nations.
The flood and its aftereffects also risk throwing Pakistan right back into the economic crisis it was clawing its way out of. Pakistan was already on the hook to pay back $1 billion of the $10 billion it owes the Paris Club by the end of this year. Islamabad also owes some $30 billion to China. Now the country is being forced to borrow billions more to deal with the current situation.
The real question, Zardari said, is not whether the international community will come through with short-term aid and debt relief. The challenge is for the world to realize that Pakistan’s flood crisis won’t be the last or the worst, meaning the international response must take a far broader view.
In a world where covid-19, the Russia-Ukraine war and the worldwide economic slowdown are commanding the attention of policymakers in Western capitals, the bandwidth for new and expensive ideas is narrow. Zardari knows it’s a tough sell.
“I understand that the concept of a Green Marshall Plan might not have many players. But that doesn’t change the fact that I believe it genuinely is the solution,” he said. “We have to pause our geopolitical differences and unite to face this existential threat to mankind.”
The concept of investing in green infrastructure in a coordinated, global way is not new; but under the current plans, it’s not happening. Global promises to invest $100 billion in the Green Climate Fund for developing countries by 2020 have been broken.
And while humanitarian aid is not primarily about strategic competition, it is worth noting that China has its own project called the Green Silk Road, and that Beijing is pushing propaganda in Pakistan claiming it is more generous than the United States (which is not true). The need to counter Chinese influence was a big reason the White House hosted leaders of 14 Pacific Island nations this week, all of which are suffering disproportionately from climate change.
In Washington, Pakistan has become something of a pariah, following years of disagreements over Afghanistan and other issues. But the end of that war provides an opening for a rethink. To be sure, Pakistan’s democracy looks shaky at times — but then again, so does America’s. The two allies still share many long-term interests and saving the planet should be at the top of the list. | 2022-09-29T19:24:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Pakistan flooding prompts call for 'Green Marshall Plan' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/pakistan-flood-crisis-climate-change-warning/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/pakistan-flood-crisis-climate-change-warning/ |
Second lawsuit emerges challenging White House authority to cancel up to $20,000 in student debt for millions of borrowers
Republican U.S. Senate candidate and Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt listens to an attendee at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, Mo., in August. (Charlie Riedel/AP)
GOP lawmakers and conservative advocacy groups have pushed back on that claim, arguing Biden’s move represents illegal executive overreach because the 2003 law was created to give the president authority after a disaster like the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Instead, Republicans such as Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) have said their biggest challenge in successfully overturning the policy is finding someone who can demonstrate “standing” before the court, or the grounds to sue.
The lawsuit filed by the states takes a different tack, arguing that debt cancellation will hurt them in numerous ways. The suit emphasizes that Missouri’s student loan servicer, which is part of its state government, could see a drop in revenue because borrowers are likely to consolidate their loans under the Federal Family Education Loan program. On Thursday, however, the administration said it would exclude FFEL from the loan forgiveness program, a move first reported by Politico. That change could help head off legal claims against the policy, although it will mean that roughly 2 million of the 44 million otherwise eligible borrowers will not qualify for relief.
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R), who is leading the litigation, also said in a statement that the policy will worsen inflation for Americans who do not benefit from student debt cancellation. Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, and South Carolina joined Missouri in filing the complaint. Schmitt is also the Republican nominee for Missouri’s U.S. Senate seat in this fall’s election. | 2022-09-29T19:26:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Republican states sue to block Biden student loan cancellation plan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/09/29/republicans-student-loan-forgiveness-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/09/29/republicans-student-loan-forgiveness-lawsuit/ |
Former Metro manager pleads guilty in nine-year fraud scheme
Metro paid $1.3 million to a company that federal prosecutors said was involved in the conspiracy.
A train pulls out of Metro Center. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
A former manager at Metro admitted to a fraud scheme involving a New Jersey signage company that paid him with NFL tickets, according to federal authorities.
Scottie Borders, 61, of Arlington pleaded guilty in federal court in Washington on Thursday to a charge of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.
Borders admitted using his position at Metro to manipulate the contracting process and secure work for the New Jersey business, identified in court documents as “Company 1.” The company was hired to supply Metro with poles, decals, bus stop signs, flags and tools.
The conspiracy involved producing sham bids from companies that appeared to be competing for business against Company 1, and Borders sharing information on competing bids, according to court filings. Borders also admitted to purchasing equipment from the company that was either unnecessary, substandard or in some cases never delivered.
Federal authorities said the scheme ran from January 2011 to September 2020 and that Metro paid the company $1.3 million.
Borders is likely to face a prison sentence of 33 to 41 months when sentenced in January. His attorney declined to comment Thursday.
Borders signed a plea agreement in November and agreed to cooperate with authorities, records show. While court documents say other people were involved in the scheme — including an owner of the company — a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington said no one else had been charged. | 2022-09-29T19:31:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former Metro manager Scottie Borders pleads guilty to fraud scheme - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/29/metro-fraud-scheme/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/29/metro-fraud-scheme/ |
President Biden speaks about student loan debt forgiveness in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Aug. 24. (/AP)
The Congressional Budget Office has weighed in on the cost of President Biden’s plan to forgive up to $20,000 per borrower in student loan debt, and the numbers are pretty staggering: $420 billion over 10 years. That’s $180 billion more than the estimate the White House offered on Aug. 26, two days after Mr. Biden announced the proposal. Notably, that’s also roughly $50 billion more than the Inflation Reduction Act provided to address climate change. On the other hand, the CBO’s figure is lower than independent estimates from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (between $500 billion and $650 billion over the next 10 years) and the Penn Wharton Budget Model ($605 billion to more than $1 trillion).
One way or the other, it’s an expensive commitment. Also clear is the constitutional principle that the executive branch cannot spend money, let alone hundreds of billions of dollars, without a mandate from Congress. Mr. Biden says that such statutory authorization exists — but his legal argument is no less debatable than his cost estimate.
Henry Olsen: Biden’s student debt plan will likely be defeated in court. Good.
According to the administration, the Heroes Act, initially enacted in January 2002 and made permanent in 2007, authorizes the Education Department to “waive or modify any statutory or regulatory provision applicable to the student financial assistance programs” if necessary to keep borrowers from being "in a worse position financially” because of a war or national emergency. The administration’s position is that the covid-19 pandemic constitutes a sufficient emergency. This is an expansive reading of a statute that Congress passed after 9/11 with service members deployed to Afghanistan and, later, Iraq in mind; lawmakers almost certainly did not contemplate the wholesale relief that Mr. Biden is trying to set in motion.
Mr. Biden took a calculated risk that his plan would also prove immune from a suit, because it creates millions of potential beneficiaries, but — despite its general cost to taxpayers — incurs on no particular plaintiff the “concrete and particularized injury” usually necessary to bring a case. However, a contender came forward Tuesday: Represented by the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, Frank Garrison sued in an Indiana federal court arguing that the Biden plan, which for technical reasons would grant his $20,000 in relief even if he doesn’t ask for it, threatens him with a net financial loss because he would owe Indiana taxes on the forgiven loan. Thus, his complaint says, he has standing to challenge the plan, both as a presidential usurpation of congressional power and on the grounds that the administration did not go through proper administrative procedure before announcing it. The administration quickly countered by notifying borrowers that they may opt out of automatic debt forgiveness and told the court Wednesday it had already started removing Mr. Garrison from the eligible list.
Paul Waldman: The GOP attack on Biden’s student loan plan is upside-down class war
We hope someone can establish standing, because the issues seem worthy of review. If there is any abuse the Constitution was designed to prevent, it would be the distribution of vast sums of public money, based on little more than executive say-so. This is especially true when much of the benefit will go to people who are far from poor, but zero to the majority who either did not graduate from college, didn’t borrow or paid off their loans. The country needs a competent judgment on whether that is indeed what Mr. Biden is trying to do — preferably before he has actually done it.
Opinion|The GOP attack on Biden’s student loan plan is upside-down class war
Opinion|If the pandemic is ‘over,’ so is Biden’s authority to forgive student debt | 2022-09-29T19:45:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The courts should review the constitutionality of Biden’s costly student loan plan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/biden-student-loan-forgiveness-constitutional-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/biden-student-loan-forgiveness-constitutional-review/ |
The next presidential race will be all about anxious masculinity
Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo delivers remarks at a political event in Manchester, N.H., on Sept. 20. (Steven Senne/AP)
Like a political version of those supplements that promise a “unique man-boosting formula,” Republican politicians are preparing to run for president on a warning and a promise: American manhood is threatened as never before, but they can lead its restoration.
Take, for example, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, who has launched a campaign to end “wokeness” in the military. “A woke military is a weak military,” he says.
This is just one manifestation of the widespread fear on the right that in every way, even in its armed forces, America is being feminized. Or as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said last year when admiring a testosterone-fueled Russian army recruitment video, “Perhaps a woke, emasculated military is not the best idea.”
The recent performance of that Russian army, which is definitely not woke but has failed disastrously in Ukraine, might suggest that a military that is nimble, technologically sophisticated and drawn from diverse array of talent will be the most effective in the 21st century. But for these politicians, the point isn’t to have a nuanced debate about military strategy.
It’s to position themselves as the champions of a kind of gender rollback. If we can just stop worrying about pronouns, shove LGBTQ people back into the closet and get in touch with our inner silverback gorillas, the world will make sense again.
Sooner or later, every Republican presidential candidate will stand up in favor of “traditional” masculinity. Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.) has a book coming out next spring — timed for the beginning of the presidential campaign — titled “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs.”
It’s unclear exactly what Hawley believes manhood should consist of. Last year, he gave a speech on “the left’s attack on men in America” but said almost nothing about what men ought to be, beyond lauding “courage and independence and assertiveness.”
We do have one model of manhood we know Republicans thrill to: that of former president Donald Trump. He was an indifferent father who had five children with three women without, apparently, participating much in any of their upbringings. (“I’ll supply funds and she’ll take care of the kids. It’s not like I’m gonna be walking the kids down Central Park,” he once said.) Outside of the golf course, Trump possesses no physical prowess or mastery of the kind of tasks “traditional” men are supposed to be capable of; it’s hard to imagine him changing a light bulb, let alone building or fixing anything with his hands.
Yet he does embody a particular kind of manhood: He’s a bully. He glorifies violence. He objectifies women (and two dozen of them have accused him of sexual harassment, though he denies this). To him, every interaction is a contest in which the only choice is to dominate or be dominated. So when his fans photoshop his head atop a musclebound body wielding an assault rifle, they’re saying this is the version of manhood to which they aspire.
There is no question that gender roles and expectations are in flux. Of course, gender roles are always changing, and that change is always accompanied by frantic warnings that men are being feminized. (Here’s an amusing newspaper article from 1902 lamenting that men were adopting “the hateful style of parting the hair in the middle,” which showed we were failing to “cultivate strong manhood on American soil.”)
But change seems to be coming particularly quickly in the last few years as young people explore new ways of thinking about gender. If you’ve always accepted that you were at the top of a hierarchy and now people are trying to break it down, you might feel threatened. If you aren’t sure you have the tools to maintain your position, you might feel panicked.
These societal changes don’t just happen out in the world; they’re also narrated by a chorus of hectoring conservative media figures, constantly telling men they should feel threatened and anxious. Along with a legion of right-wing podcasters and radio hosts ranting about how they can’t stand Vice President Harris’s nagging voice, you have figures such as Fox News’s Tucker Carlson devoting hours of airtime to the supposed masculinity crisis.
Earlier this year, Carlson presented a documentary titled “The End of Men,” which warned about plunging testosterone and recommended shining infrared light on your testicles. This is nothing new for him. As far back as 2007, he was saying of Hillary Clinton, “When she comes on television, I involuntarily cross my legs.” Not many men are so candid about their fears of emasculation.
The farther we get from the days when societal status was settled with contests of upper-body strength, the more urgently some men feel they must proclaim that their special value comes from their manhood. Many respond by fetishizing old-fashioned markers of masculinity constructed around physical strength and threats of violence: blast their lats, grow a beard, buy some guns.
Those men will have no shortage of politicians telling them that masculinity can be restored by the right presidential candidate. It’s an elemental appeal, one that reaches down to where their fears and resentments lie. And it has about as much ability to deliver on its promises as those man-boosting supplements. | 2022-09-29T19:45:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Republicans' 2024 campaigns will be all about defending masculinity - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/republicans-defend-masculinity-presidential-campaign/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/republicans-defend-masculinity-presidential-campaign/ |
The only thing the debt limit is used for is political blackmail
A statue of George Washington in the Capitol Rotunda in Washington. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
It was journalist Mark Ambinder, then with the National Journal, who first injected into the public conversation the idea that the government’s limit on accrued debt might be used for political leverage.
At President Barack Obama’s year-end news conference in 2010, Ambinder noted that Republicans “have a significant amount of leverage over the White House,” given that the amount of federal debt was reaching the statutory ceiling.
Obama was confused. “When you say it would seem they’ll have a significant amount of leverage over the White House, what do you mean?” he asked.
“Just in the sense that they’ll say essentially we’re not going to agree to it unless the White House is able to or willing to agree to significant spending cuts across-the-board,” Ambinder replied, “that probably go deeper and further than what you’re willing to do.”
Obama dismissed the idea. “I’ll take John Boehner at his word,” he said, referring to the incoming House speaker, “that nobody, Democrat or Republican, is willing to see the full faith and credit of the United States government collapse, that that would not be a good thing to happen.”
Obama was wrong. Ambinder was right.
It’s been nearly 12 years since that interaction and Ambinder’s assessment of the political utility of the limit has gotten only more right. Over those 12 years, the once grudging-but-rote practice of elevating the limit as the debt approached turned into a series of fights over whether it should be raised at all.
The debt limit doesn’t do what a lot of people assume. It’s not a limit on spending but on paying for the spending that’s already been approved. The theory behind many debt-ceiling fights is that by capping the amount of debt that can be accrued, you’ll constrain spending by working backward.
But that’s not how it works in practice, as you can see below. Instead, Congress spends money at a deficit and the debt keeps growing higher to give it breathing room. The debt ceiling doesn’t affect the debt; the debt affects the debt ceiling.
The graph goes back to 1994, the first term of President Bill Clinton. About halfway across, you can see that 2010 news conference marked with a black line. That was the moment at which Ambinder predicted that the debt limit would be used for political blackmail. And it was. Notice the little black box at the center. The purple line indicating the amount of accrued debt becomes flat for a while; Congress didn’t raise the debt limit and so the amount of debt didn’t increase. This was early 2011, and it set a pattern for the next 11 years.
Before 2010, there are no significant periods in which the debt line goes flat, no times when the debt limit wasn’t increased to accommodate growth in debt. There are also no blank spots, periods when the debt limit was simply suspended to avoid fights over raising it. In fact, since 2010, there have been relatively few periods in which the debt ceiling was both higher than the debt and in place.
It’s useful to review all of this because of a report from Axios on Wednesday afternoon. It suggested that if Republicans retake the House in November, as is expected, they may once again use the debt limit as a point of pressure on the Biden administration.
Axios’s Alayna Treene spoke with Neil Bradley, chief policy officer for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, who told her that “the debt limit turning into a ‘political football’ has become a ‘pattern in divided government,’ particularly with a Democratic president.”
The use of “particularly” there is what we in the writing business call an “understatement.”
Since 2010, there have been four years in which there was a Republican president. Of those four years, two overlapped with unified Republican control of Congress. So if we’re talking about divided government under a Republican president, we’re talking about 2019 and 2020.
In March 2019, a suspension of the debt limit that had passed in early 2018 on a bipartisan basis came to an end. A new limit kicked in at the amount of debt the government had accrued.
It’s useful to point out, of course, that being willing to suspend the debt limit at all largely gives the game away: If the limit is gone, there’s no putative control on debt at all. It’s a tacit acknowledgment that the purpose of the debt limit at this point isn’t actually to control the debt but to use debt as leverage.
The Treasury Department announced that it could continue to pay its bills for a few months anyway using what are referred to as “extraordinary measures.” In July, it kicked up the timeline: Congress had until early September to increase the limit or the government could default on its debts. Less than two weeks later, Congress passed a bipartisan bill again suspending the limit — with most Democrats supporting it and most Republicans opposing it.
In other words, claims that the debt limit is a tactic used by the party that controls Congress but not the White House are lacking. The only time that happened under a Republican president in the blackmail era, it was Democrats who pushed to suspend the limit, not Republicans.
The rest of the Axios article is more direct about this fact. It’s predicated on the idea that a Republican House will use the limit as leverage, part of a now-familiar tool kit for putting pressure on a Democratic president.
This just in: Biden: U.S. will ‘never, never recognize’ Russia’s claims on Ukraine | 2022-09-29T20:02:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The only thing the debt limit is used for is political blackmail - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/congress-republicans-debt-limit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/congress-republicans-debt-limit/ |
Chesapeake Bay lighthouse sold for $192,000 after surprise bidding war
The U.S. General Services Administration had put the Hooper Island Lighthouse, located in the Chesapeake Bay, up for auction with the opening bid set at $15,000. (General Services Administration)
For 30 days, no one offered to buy this Chesapeake Bay lighthouse.
Then the first bid came in. And a second. And soon there was a bidding war for a lighthouse that can’t be used as a home or rental property, sits in a Navy-controlled “danger area,” and will cost a substantial amount of money to maintain in accordance with specific preservation standards.
The five potential buyers upped the $15,000 starting price for the Hooper Island Lighthouse to the winning bid on Sept. 22 of $192,000. The auction closed the next day after 24 hours without a single competing offer.
The Hooper Island Lighthouse’s new owner, whose identity remains private until final documentation is signed within 45 days of the sale date, will be required to maintain the lighthouse as an active aid to navigation for the U.S. Coast Guard, preserve it in line with historic standards and sign a memorandum of agreement with the Navy that designates when it can be accessed, said Will Powell, a spokesman for the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA).
“We’ve had a lot of calls and a lot of interest from folks in this property, and we just started explaining to them … this is what you’re taking on with it,” Powell said. “It is a unique opportunity. And there are people out there that love lighthouses.”
Since 2000 — the year the National Historic Lighthouse Preservation Act took effect — the GSA has transferred about 148 lighthouses. That’s 82 no-cost transfers to public entities, such as nonprofit organizations, and 66 through public sales that have brought in more than $8 million. All proceeds, beyond the cost of sale, are returned to federal agencies and the Treasury, Powell said.
Three lighthouses in the Florida Keys were auctioned earlier this year and “had very eager bidders,” with the final prices ranging from $415,000 to $860,000, Powell said.
But this particular lighthouse, affectionately called the “sparkplug” by locals, is best described by what it can’t offer a new owner.
The lighthouse is in the middle of the bay, three to four miles west of Middle Hooper Island in Maryland’s Dorchester County, and has no nearby dock at which a boat can moor, meaning any visitors would need to navigate waves and weather to tie the boat to the lighthouse’s outer ladder and climb up.
The property can’t be converted into a unique Airbnb or vacation home. Even if it could, it would be a tremendous undertaking as there is no water, sewer, electricity or gas. What was once a kitchen area is now empty.
An overnight stay is also complicated by the hazardous materials inside the structure, including lead-based paint, asbestos, benzene and a host of other dangerous substances, according to a 2019 inspection report.
Whenever the new owner decides to work on the lighthouse — which also has issues with erosion and paint that has come off from age and exposure to wind and salt — they’re required to communicate with the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD) of the Navy. The lighthouse is in the northeast corner of a “surface danger zone,” meaning it’s within the test range where the NAWCAD can release nonexplosive ordnance such as practice bombs, inert missiles and rockets from aircraft.
Owning and maintaining this lighthouse was even too difficult for the U.S. Lighthouse Society, a national organization with more than 3,000 members and the lighthouse’s previous owner. The federal government, which has been looking to offload the lighthouse since 2017, auctioned it on the organization’s behalf and decided to open bids to the public after it exhausted other options.
Greg Krawczyk, vice president of the Chesapeake chapter of the U.S. Lighthouse Society, was glad to hear someone finally bought the lighthouse.
“It now has a better chance of maybe being saved and restored,” Krawczyk said, adding that large price tag is a good sign. “Somebody had money; that’s what you need.” | 2022-09-29T20:42:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Chesapeake Bay lighthouse sold for $192,000 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/chesapeake-bay-lighthouse-auction-sold/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/chesapeake-bay-lighthouse-auction-sold/ |
The Terps will host the Spartans at 3:30 p.m. Saturday (Fox Sports 1)
Maryland wide receivers Tai Felton (10) and Dontay Demus Jr. (7) helped keep their game close against Michigan. (Paul Sancya/AP)
Nobody likes to lose. Coaches and players often dismiss the idea of moral victories. Yet, for Maryland football, Saturday’s 34-27 loss at No. 4 Michigan felt a little different from years prior. While the Terps aren’t satisfied with the game’s result, they can sense their growth. The next step of the program’s evolution will be to harness this expanding confidence and take care of business at home against Michigan State on Saturday.
“We’re in search of continuous improvement and I think that’s what the tape shows. Every week, every person in our program, from coaches to players, are looking to find a way to improve,” said Maryland Coach Michael Locksley. “Even though it was a tough loss, and we never celebrate those, I thought we did see improvement out of our team.”
Last season, the Wolverines marched into College Park and completely outclassed Maryland in a 59-18 victory. This year, the game came down to the final minutes. Players left their first Big Ten test of the season feeling not like they lost, but that they beat themselves.
“Anyone watching that game can see the growth of our program,” Locksley said. “Players see it, which is a testament to the investment that they make each and every day, from the end of last season until now. The investment that these guys have made, I’ve been really pleased with.”
With the struggling Spartans (2-2, 0-1 Big Ten) traveling to College Park, the Terps are not taking their next challenge lightly. Both of Michigan State’s losses have come against teams now ranked in the Top 25 — No. 15 Washington and No. 21 Minnesota. The Spartans, who went 11-2 last year and won the Peach Bowl in Coach Mel Tucker’s second season in East Lansing, have been plagued by injuries this year.
Maryland will need to continue its progression to tally its first conference win of 2022. In prior years, the Terps have shown a tendency to fade as the level of competition intensifies. Maryland is 6-18 in Big Ten competition since the start of 2019. Saturday will be another chance to prove that this team is different. That begins with a strong, focused week of preparation, building on the jolt of confidence from last Saturday.
“I’m proud of the way that our guys have responded after the loss [and] the way they’re preparing,” Locksley said. “We had a really good energized practice [Monday]. We stood toe to toe with the reigning champions but we’re still not there so that means we got work to do.”
The Terps will need to hone in their defensive execution to be victorious Saturday. Maryland held up well against a strong Michigan offense, but a few explosive plays proved costly in Ann Arbor. Last year, quarterback Payton Thorne threw four touchdown passes to lead the Spartans to a 40-21 win over Maryland in East Lansing. This year, the Terps feel their versatility can address the defensive woes against the top teams in the Big Ten.
“Every week, I feel like we’re improving from last year. We weren’t as versatile as we are this year,” said redshirt senior linebacker Ahmad McCullough. “We have the ability to give multiple different presentations of defense. I feel like we’re improving and we’re understanding our strengths as a defense.”
Offensively, the Terps have played well in the early going. Maryland is fourth in the Big Ten in both total offense (473.5 yards per game) and passing (299.8 yards per game) while averaging 37 points per contest. The offense has continued to improve over recent years with redshirt junior quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa at the helm. However, like the defense, the offense must prove they can get it done in the big moments against elite competition. The group is confident that their preparation will begin to pay off on the bigger stages.
“Obviously playing in a big stadium like that, it’s a big opportunity. We do take some confidence away from that.” Tagovailoa said. “Our confidence comes always from within which is something that I really love about this team. We always have confidence in ourselves because of the hard work we put in.”
Tagovailoa didn’t play in the final drive at Michigan with rib and knee trouble. Locksley said the quarterback’s status would be a game-time decision, but Tagovailoa said he feels “100 percent” healthy and appeared to participate fully during the media-viewing portion of Tuesday’s practice.
For the Terps, each new challenge is an opportunity to grow and prove they belong with the Big Ten elite. If Maryland has truly turned a corner, it will have an opportunity to prove it Saturday.
“We still got a lot of work to do. We’re still in the developmental stage of our program,” Locksley said. “We’re still chasing playing a perfect game, and being able to execute at a high level to find a way to win games like [Michigan].” | 2022-09-29T20:46:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland can show how far its come against Michigan State - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/maryland-football-confidence-michigan-state/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/maryland-football-confidence-michigan-state/ |
This combination of images provided by NASA shows three different views of the DART spacecraft impact on the asteroid Dimorphos on Monday, Sept. 26, 2022. At left is the view from a forward camera on DART, upper right the Hubble Space Telescope and lower right the James Webb Space Telescope. (NASA via AP) (Uncredited/NASA) | 2022-09-29T20:55:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Space telescopes capture asteroid slam with striking clarity - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/space-telescopes-capture-asteroid-slam-with-striking-clarity/2022/09/29/ef30486c-401f-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/space-telescopes-capture-asteroid-slam-with-striking-clarity/2022/09/29/ef30486c-401f-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Highland Park victims try Sandy Hook legal strategy: Sue the gunmaker
Robert E. Crimo III has been charged in connection with the Fourth of July shooting in Highland Park, which killed seven and injured more than 40. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Survivors and families of those killed and wounded in a shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Ill., are suing the manufacturer of the weapon used in the attack and two gun stores that they say helped the gunman carry out the massacre.
The suit against Smith & Wesson follows a similar one by families of victims in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which ended with Remington Arms agreeing to pay $73 million earlier this year.
The group of survivors is also suing Robert E. Crimo III, the man charged in connection with the shooting in a Chicago suburb, which killed seven and injured more than 40, according to court records filed Tuesday in Lake County Circuit Court. Crimo faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
Also named in the lawsuit are his father Robert Crimo Jr. who allegedly helped his son legally obtain the assault rifle used in the rampage, along with gun stores Bud’s Gun Shop and Red Dot Arms.
Attorneys representing the families filed a set of 10 civil complaints alleging negligence, aiding and abetting, battery and assault following a shooting they say was “foreseeable” and “entirely preventable.”
“The community in and around Highland Park has been devastated by this tragic shooting and too many lives have been lost or forever changed,” Antonio M. Romanucci, one of the lawyers representing survivors, said in a news release. “Parents and grandparents lost their lives while simply trying to spend time with their families, others were shot and seriously wounded, including one young boy who has paid the highest price and will never ride his bike or run again.”
A representative with Smith & Wesson did not immediately respond to a message from The Washington Post. Bud’s Gun Shop, an online gun distributor, also did not respond to a message when reached by The Post. A man who answered the phone of Illinois gun shop Red Dot Arms and who declined to identify himself when reached by The Post said the store “had no comment.”
A public defender representing Crimo, who has pleaded not guilty and is being held without bail, could not be immediately reached by The Post. George Gomez, an attorney for his father, declined to comment when reached by The Post.
Remington Arms, the maker of the AR-15 style rifle used in the Sandy Hook rampage, agreed in February to settle a lawsuit filed by families of nine of the victims by paying $73 million, as reported by The Post.
As Highland Park heads back to school, scars of July 4th shooting remain
The attorneys representing the families of three killed in the Highland Park shooting and dozens of injured allege the “shooter was the type of a young consumer susceptible to Smith & Wesson’s deceptive and unfair marketing, and was enabled by his father.” The lawsuits also allege that both gun stores, Bud’s Gun Shop and Red Dot Arms, negligently and illegally sold the weapon used during the attack, an M&P15 assault rifle.
“The use of a Smith & Wesson M&P15 for this nefarious purpose was predictable and preventable and there must be accountability for the corporate decisions that incubated this tragedy, clearly dismissing public safety while bringing in record earnings. With this litigation we intend to end the Smith & Wesson manipulation of consumers,” Romanucci said in the news release.
According to the complaints, Smith & Wesson deceptively markets its M&P rifles line as if it were approved and/or used by the U.S. military, an unfair practice “particularly effective with young men fascinated with militaristic combat missions.”
The lawsuits also claim Bud’s Gun Shop sold the assault rifle to the gunman although it is illegal for Highwood and Highland Park residents to buy and possess assault weapons. Bud’s Gun Shop, the lawsuits allege, later shipped the rifle to Red Dot Arms, the gun dealer in Illinois, that illegally gave the shooter access to the weapon. According to the complaints, both stores knew that they were selling an assault rifle to a resident of a municipality where this is not allowed by the law because they were aware of his address but still went forward with the sales. | 2022-09-29T20:55:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Highland Park families sue Smith & Wesson, gun shops, Robert Crimo III - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/highland-park-lawsuit-smith-wesson/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/highland-park-lawsuit-smith-wesson/ |
Joe Bussard, who built a basement temple for music worshipers, dies at 86
He was a longtime collector of 78 rpm records and had one of the largest and foremost private collections in the country
Joe Bussard accompanies one of his 78s with a rendition of an “air trumpet." (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Joe Bussard, who began collecting rare recordings of early American jazz, blues, country and gospel music as a teenager and built one of the world’s foremost private collections of 78 rpm records, died Sept. 26 at his home in Frederick, Md. He was 86.
The cause was complications from pancreatic cancer, said his daughter, Susannah Anderson.
Mr. Bussard, an enthusiastic talker and storyteller — as long as the subject was music — began collecting records after hearing a Jimmie Rodgers song on the radio. “It was like a bomb when I heard that,” he told The Washington Post this year. “I wanted every Jimmie Rodgers record I could get.”
That raw, unadulterated sound of early American music captivated him, and he spent the rest of his life searching for recordings made before mass production and an increasingly homogenized culture ruined music, in his view.
Over the decades, he took long drives through Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and the Carolinas, sometimes even farther South, stopping at gas stations, homes hidden deep in hollers and small-town general stores, all in search of 78s that many people were more than happy to unload at little or no cost.
“I got to know exactly when to drive on by and when to stop,” he wrote in his entry in “The Encyclopedia of Collectibles,” a 1978 volume published by Time-Life Books. “I stopped if I saw a house with not too much paint on it, with old-fashioned latticework, maybe a stained-glass window in the door or a lace curtain. To me that house just hollered, ‘Old records! Come on in!’ ”
He remembered the adrenaline spike when he came across an especially rare and valuable recording, some of them worth hundreds or thousands of dollars. As he told The Post in May: “Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy. I had to hold my hands down to keep them from shaking.”
This year, Mr. Bussard said he had about 15,000 records remaining in his basement though he once had more than 20,000. The records filled every inch of the shelves he had built for them in the 1960s. They were kept in identical green paper sleeves and arranged in an order only he knew — and never divulged.
But far from being a hoarder, Mr. Bussard wanted anyone who was interested to experience the same bliss he enjoyed when listening to the records. He played the records on radio shows he hosted and made recordings on tape, and eventually CDs, that he shipped — for a price — all over the country and the world. And he invited in anyone who wanted to stop by for a listen.
The quality of Mr. Bussard’s collection, which has been compared with the Library of Congress’s holdings of traditional American recorded music in terms of breadth and quality, astounded those who came in contact with it.
“It is one of the great glory holds, probably the finest in the world,” the late music researcher Tom Hoskins said in a 1999 Washington City paper story about the records Mr. Bussard had amassed. “He was canvassing earlier than most, and he’s been at it longer, and he took everything: He recognized stuff that he really didn’t even like at the time, but he recognized it as being good, and he kept it.”
“Almost mystical,” is how Ken Brooks, a 78 collector from Indiana who became friends with Mr. Bussard over the years, described his collection to The Post this year. “It’s so deep and wide. He has blues records that nobody else has. Country records that no one else has. Jazz records that no one else has.”
Joseph Edward Bussard Jr. was born in Frederick, Md., on July 11, 1936, to a family that owned a farm supply company. He dropped out of Frederick High School during his junior year, worked for the family business, clerked in a supermarket and held other short-lived jobs that allowed him time to spend untold hours collecting music. He also spent eight years in the National Guard before that, too, interfered with his fixation.
As a child, he told the Baltimore Sun, he had loved Gene Autry westerns and country recordings but felt even then “something wasn’t quite right, like there ought to be something more.” He said an epiphany came around 1948, when he heard Rodgers and instantly felt a lightning-bolt connection, a feeling of authenticity in a world that had seemed to settle for the artificial.
At first, he was mostly interested in country songs recorded in the 1920s and ’30s, but his tastes expanded to include early jazz, blues and gospel performers who recorded for Gennett, Vocalion, OKeh and any number of now-obscure labels. In a West Virginia coal town, he found what he called “the rarest of all county blues records,” “The Original Stack O’Lee Blues” made by Long Cleve Reed and Little Harvey Hull for the short-lived Black Patti label in 1927.
A savior of abandoned American music contemplates his collection
As enthusiastic as Mr. Bussard was about the music he loved, he was even more dismissive of the music he didn’t, namely anything after 78s were replaced by 45s, then LPs and eventually CDs. He barely tolerated big bands led by Artie Shaw and Benny Goodman (“like watching ice melt”). And forget anything recorded after 1950, especially Elvis Presley, the Beatles and “all that rock-and-roll crap.” He sneered at country stars such as Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline and rolled his eyes to the heavens at the mention of pop.
When rap came up, he pointed to something he felt superior: the Beale Street Sheiks’ 1920s blues recording of “It’s a Good Thing” — “They don’t call it rap, but it is,” he insisted to an Associated Press reporter.
In addition to collecting, he also formed a music group, Jolly Joe’s Jug Band, and for several years had his own label, Fonotone, recording musicians at his home, including the influential guitarist and composer John Fahey.
Featured in documentaries, books and countless articles, the often-cantankerous Mr. Bussard was never happier than when he had guests in his basement and could astonish them with music they may not have ever had a chance to hear.
His daughter estimated that at least 150 people a year spent time with Mr. Bussard at home listening to him play songs and tell stories about how he found the records, how much (or how little) he paid for them, which musicians played on them and what year they were released.
A few years ago, Jack White, the lead singer and guitarist of the White Stripes, spent an afternoon with Mr. Bussard listening to old records — and listening to Mr. Bussard talk about them. He remembered Mr. Bussard pulling out a jazz record, playing it on a modern turntable, and claiming it would sound as if the band were playing live in the basement.
“I was like, okay, whatever, eye roll, and then damn, if he wasn’t right,” White told The Post. “Thirty seconds into this song, l was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. What is this? Who recorded this? What is the speaker we’re listening to this through? What amplifier are you using? Because, damn, you weren’t kidding me, it sounds like this band is in the room with us right now.’
“I just thought, wow, what a gorgeous thing he did for me.”
Mr. Bussard’s wife of 34 years, the former Esther Keith, died in 1999. Their marriage grew strained at times by Mr. Bussard’s music obsession, she told the City Paper. His singular focus, she said, made him “very, very difficult to live with.” She worked as a cosmetologist to support the family and her husband’s music collecting.
Survivors include his daughter, of Frederick, and three granddaughters.
Anderson says she hasn’t decided yet what to do with the recordings. For now she plans to leave them be.
“I almost can’t even go into the room. It’s like a museum or a sanctuary of sorts,” she said. “It’s a connection to him.”
For his part, Mr. Bussard wasn’t particular about the ultimate fate of the records other than that he didn’t want them to go to a university or library where he thought they would just collect dust.
“I like to say I’ll enjoy them until I croak,” he said in May. “Then whatever they do with them is fine.” | 2022-09-29T21:03:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Joe Bussard, top collector of American roots music on 78s, dies at 86 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/30/joe-bussard-record-collector-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/30/joe-bussard-record-collector-dead/ |
George Mason U. to give tuition credit, joining other Va. colleges
The credit will offset a tuition increase that had been put in place for in-state undergraduates
George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
George Mason University leaders agreed on Thursday to ease tuition costs this year, approving a credit for in-state undergraduate students that offsets the 3 percent increase that went into place this fall.
The pivot came amid strong messages from Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) to public universities to hold college tuition steady this year to ease the impact of inflation on Virginia families. Most schools backed off plans to increase costs.
George Mason leaders said they had explained the financial pressures that had prompted the university’s tuition increase, and had been assured by state leaders that they would work on ways to address systemic issues.
“I take that as a big win,” Gregory Washington, the university’s president, told the George Mason board of visitors.
In a written statement, Washington also said the university has always championed the ideal of holding tuition for students as low as possible.
On Thursday, the board approved the credit, equivalent to $285 for full-time undergraduates. It will effectively bring in-state undergraduate tuition levels to $9,510 for this year.
The decision to offer a credit creates an approximately $5.8 million shortfall for this fiscal year.
“This year’s original increase was the result of a careful effort to strike a balance between maintaining a quality experience for students while limiting the economic impact on Virginia families,” Horace Blackman, rector of the board of visitors, said in a written statement Thursday. “Mason will now work to rebalance operations based on this new cut, with our commitment to minimize negative impacts to the community.”
Earlier this month, the University of Virginia approved a one-time credit in the amount of a tuition increase that went into effect this fall, leaving George Mason as the only public university with increased tuition still in place.
George Mason’s board met in June to consider the governor’s request that the 3 percent increase for in-state undergraduates for the 2022-23 academic year be rolled back to the previous year’s level, and appointed a committee to study the issue.
In a statement at that time, the board wrote that they supported the governor’s intent to help families combat inflation. But they noted that the school receives less funding than all but one of Virginia’s other five doctoral institutions, despite being the largest public research university in the state and operating in the most expensive and competitive labor market in Virginia. Inflation was increasing operating expenses, they wrote, and the inability to pay competitive wages was resulting in an ongoing loss of talent.
On Thursday, Youngkin praised the steps taken by the state’s public college and university boards to ease “the burden on Virginia’s families and students during a time of high inflation and cost of living.” The schools collectively serve more than a quarter-million students.
“Early on in my administration, I encouraged all colleges and universities to take on this challenge,” Youngkin said in a statement, “and I am pleased that now all of Virginia’s students will have the opportunity to pursue their higher education at every public college, university, and community college in the Commonwealth free from tuition hike fears.” | 2022-09-29T22:04:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | George Mason University approves tuition credit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/29/george-mason-university-tuition-credit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/29/george-mason-university-tuition-credit/ |
Biden, DeSantis and how leaders can be defined by hurricanes
President Biden on Sept. 29 said Hurricane Ian recovery wasn’t political, adding he spoke with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) multiple times. (Video: The Washington Post)
President Biden and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) are saying the right things about working together across party lines in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian.
And it’s becoming more evident that this poses a huge leadership challenge for both of them.
Biden on Thursday afternoon offered a startling forecast on the potential ultimate toll of the hurricane. While the situation is in flux and official numbers aren’t available, he said, “This could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida’s history.”
The deadliest hurricane in Florida’s history is understood to be the 1928 Okeechobee hurricane, for which the official death toll is listed at more than 2,500, according to the National Weather Service. Were Ian to exceed the death toll of that hurricane, it would not only be the deadliest hurricane in Florida’s history, but it would also rank in the top three in U.S. history — higher even than Hurricane Katrina. The death toll for Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico in 2017, officially registers at 3,000, though a study of excess deaths in the aftermath suggests the number might have been higher.
It’s not clear what Biden is basing his suggestion on, and preliminary, unofficial figures can prove overzealous. The sheriff of Lee County, Fla., on Thursday morning estimated the death toll there alone was “definitely” “in the hundreds,” before tempering that. (For reference, the 10th-deadliest hurricane in U.S. history killed around 400 people.)
But photos of the destruction are unambiguous. DeSantis, for his part, called the damage “historic,” adding: “We’ve never seen a flood event like this. We’ve never seen a storm surge of this magnitude.”
And large-scale storms have a way of testing, and often coming to define, our state and national leaders.
Two prominent examples will always spring to mind. One is Katrina, in which a slow and botched response was among the reasons George W. Bush left office in 2009 as one of the most unpopular presidents in modern history. By contrast, then-New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) hands-on approach and bipartisan work with President Barack Obama after Superstorm Sandy made him historically popular in his home state.
He seemed at the time to be primed for national office. But there were four years left until the next presidential election; in the meantime, the Bridgegate scandal doomed him back home, and some conservatives blamed him for helping Obama win reelection in the aftermath of the storm. (As for the storm’s actual impact on Obama’s reelection? The evidence is inconclusive.)
Other storms, further back in history, also carry lessons for politicians dealing with the fallout of Ian, as political science professor John A. Tures wrote in 2016.
During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration sent hundreds of troubled and jobless World War I veterans to work camps in Florida to build a highway to the Florida Keys, in part to keep them from protesting in Washington. A year later, in 1935, a hurricane threatened the area, but officials dithered on evacuating the men. Ultimately, what’s become known as the Labor Day hurricane killed an estimated 260 of them, prompting extensive political damage control from the administration. (Ernest Hemingway wrote a piece titled, “Who Murdered the Vets?” but FDR was able to preempt blowback in Congress and largely keep it out of the news.)
By 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson appeared to recognize the benefit of at least the appearance of a more hands-on approach to storm response. A day after Hurricane Betsy, a Category 4 storm, struck New Orleans, he was on the ground to coordinate the response. Four years later, another devastating storm along the Gulf Coast, Hurricane Camille, solidified the role of the federal government in disaster response.
In 1992, Hurricane Andrew and the slow and uncoordinated response to it was a problem for President George H.W. Bush’s reelection campaign. But it was perhaps most brutal for Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles (D), whose approval rating dropped to 22 percent. (He didn’t face reelection until 1994, though, and recovered politically to win another term.)
Similarly, modern hurricanes have often proved damaging for state-level politicians. A slow evacuation ahead of Hurricane Floyd in 1999 might have contributed to South Carolina Gov. Jim Hodges’ (D) reelection loss in 2002. Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco (D) didn’t even attempt to seek reelection after Katrina. And while New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin (D) did narrowly win reelection in 2006, his actions — such as visiting family in Texas shortly after the storm — were widely criticized, and he was ultimately convicted of corruption charges that included actions taken after Katrina, as his city was still reeling.
And most recently, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló resigned two years after Hurricane Maria, while facing protests that were spurred in part by his government’s mismanagement of the situation.
A through-line on virtually all of these: They were among the biggest and most devastating storms in American history. It wasn’t just that the responses were particularly bad or good; it was that the stakes were higher than normal because of the impact of the storm.
It will be some time before we can appreciate the scope of what just has happened in Florida and the scale of the task that lies ahead for both leaders. In a news conference Thursday, DeSantis initially struck an optimistic tone about the state’s resilience and its ability to stay open and keep moving forward (in keeping with his messaging about coronavirus restrictions), while also making his case on non-hurricane-related agenda items like the economy.
But what we do know at this point is that, according to the historic terms both Biden and DeSantis are now speaking in, these could be legacy-defining moments for both of them.
And they’ll apparently be working together. Biden said Thursday that he intends to travel to Florida — as well as Puerto Rico, which is still reeling from Hurricane Fiona — and that he will meet with DeSantis if the governor is available. | 2022-09-29T22:09:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden, DeSantis and how leaders can be defined by hurricanes like Ian - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/biden-desantis-hurricane-test/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/biden-desantis-hurricane-test/ |
Ginni Thomas told Jan. 6 committee she still thinks election was stolen, chairman says
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a conservative activist and wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, met with the Jan. 6 committee for nearly five hours Thursday. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)
Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, reiterated her belief that the 2020 election was stolen during her interview Thursday with the committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.).
There is no evidence to back up her claim. Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
Ginni Thomas spoke with the committee for nearly five hours. Her interview came one day after the committee had planned to hold its final public hearing. But it was postponed because of Hurricane Ian.
Thomas, a conservative activist, drew the attention of the committee after investigators obtained emails between her and lawyer John Eastman, who had advocated a fringe legal theory that Vice President Mike Pence could block the congressional certification of Biden’s electoral college win.
She also repeatedly pressed White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to find ways to overturn the election, according to messages she sent to him weeks after the election. The messages represent an extraordinary pipeline between Thomas and one of Trump’s top aides as the president and his allies were vowing to take their efforts all the way to the Supreme Court.
The committee says it may use clips from her appearance, if they are warranted, in a future hearing. But lawmakers have not yet scheduled their next hearing.
Mark Paoletta, an attorney for Thomas, said in a statement that she appeared before the panel “to clear up the misconceptions about her activities surrounding the 2020 elections.”
“As she has said from the outset, Mrs. Thomas had significant concerns about fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election,” the lawyer said. “And, as she told the Committee, her minimal and mainstream activity focused on ensuring that reports of fraud and irregularities were investigated. Beyond that, she played no role in any events after the 2020 election results.”
The panel had previously contemplated issuing a subpoena to compel her testimony. | 2022-09-29T22:09:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ginni Thomas told January 6 committee election was stolen, chairman Bennie Thompson says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/ginni-thomas-jan6-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/ginni-thomas-jan6-election/ |
Lenny Bronner
A view of a suburban neighborhood in Cherry Hill, N.J., on Nov. 5, 2021. (Michelle Gustafson/The Washington Post)
In just over a month, voters will finish casting their ballots for candidates for the U.S. House. In most cases, the districts in which those voters live will have changed since 2020, expanding or contracting as states adjust the distribution of House seats following the most recent census. After a decade of mostly static boundaries, who and what members of the House represent has shifted to better reflect the population.
That means not only a change in the political composition of the House — state legislatures in charge of drawing those new lines are very attuned to the political repercussions of doing so — but also to how the country itself is represented. For example, redrawing district lines means moving some neighborhoods out of one district and into another, changing the composition of the district. Shatter a suburban district and you might create a new rural one, for example — probably changing who might get elected.
In 2018, David Montgomery created an index of how urban or rural congressional districts were for CityLab, now part of Bloomberg. It uses a six-category scale from “pure urban” to “pure rural,” with various iterations of suburban density in between. Usefully, Montgomery also explained the methodology he used for his calculations, allowing The Washington Post to replicate it with the newly drawn congressional districts.
As it turns out, there’s not much change at the margins. Here’s how Montgomery’s 2018 analysis compares with our new one in terms of the distribution of seats.
Pure urban
Urban-suburban mix
Dense suburban
Sparse suburban
Rural-suburban mix
Pure rural
There are now three more rural districts than there used to be, but also three more districts that sit in the urban-suburban overlap. The biggest change is in suburban density, with a drop in densely suburban districts and an increase in sparsely suburban ones.
These terms are admittedly vague. The best way to explore the political differences is, instead, to compare how residents of the districts voted in 2020 and key factors that correlate to political decision-making, such as income and education.
Adding up the votes cast in each type of district in 2020, we see that the four densest population categories all preferred Joe Biden, by margins ranging from 57 to 2 points. The least-dense districts preferred Donald Trump, which is what we’d expect.
Within those categories, though, there’s variation. Three of the “pure urban” districts, for example, were won by Republicans in 2020; one of them also voted for Trump. That’s New York’s 11th district: Staten Island and a sliver of Brooklyn.
At the very bottom, there are similar outliers. In the most rural districts, there are seats won by Democrats in 2020 and won by Biden that same year.
Interestingly, the median household income in these clusters of districts doesn’t vary that much, save in the most rural ones. There are much wealthier districts included in the “pure urban” and “urban-suburban” mix categories, but the median incomes in the four densest groups are all within about $3,500 of each other.
You’ll remember that those latter two groups, where median incomes are lower, were the two that preferred Trump in 2020.
But that’s not solely because of income. Population density overlaps with other factors, too, like education. Considering the percentage of the population that has a college degree (or more), the four most densely populated groups of districts all sit at about the 30 percent mark. In the more-rural groups, that percentage drops.
Those two factors are correlated. In each district, more education and higher incomes go hand-in-hand. You can see that below. As dots (individual districts) move to the right (have more residents with college degrees), they also generally move up (the district has a higher median income).
If you watch, you’ll see that we’ve isolated the most rural and most urban groupings of districts. Even in those, the correlation exists: Rural districts with higher education have more income, even if both generally trail the values for more urban districts.
Those rural districts with higher levels of education also were more likely to vote for Joe Biden in 2020.
The best indicator of how redistricting will affect the politics of the House, of course, will come in November. But just by considering this limited demographic lens, we see two different Americas: one wealthier, more educated and more urban. The other, less of each of those things — and more likely to vote for Trump.
Adrian Blanco Ramos and Harry Stevens contributed to this report.
Noted: Reps. Bush, Pressley introduce bill on reproductive health care for people with disabilities | 2022-09-29T22:09:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What the urban-rural split in the 118th Congress will look like - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/us-house-districts-rural-urban/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/29/us-house-districts-rural-urban/ |
A family from Berdyansk, which is occupied by Russian forces, spent two days on the road to get to the regional capital of Zaporizhzhia. They left their home in fear of Russia's plan to annex much of southeastern Ukraine. (Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post)
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — As Russian President Vladimir Putin prepared to declare his annexation of Zaporizhzhia and three other regions stretching across southeastern Ukraine, here in the regional capital, Ukrainian flags still fluttered above government buildings on Thursday, and Ukrainian officials still scurried through the halls.
Despite the Kremlin’s announcement that Putin would sign “accession treaties” at a ceremony in Moscow at 3 p.m. on Friday, the 10,000-square-mile province of Zaporizhzhia is neither under full Russian military nor under full administrative control of Russia’s proxies.
Ukraine still holds roughly a quarter of the region, including Zaporizhzhia, the capital city, located on the Dnieper River in the northwest corner. The regional administration is paying salaries, including in occupied cities.
And in the mismatch between Moscow’s fantastical rhetoric and the enduring reality of life in their sprawling province, many Ukrainians here said they saw Putin’s gambit as somewhere between surreal and absurd.
“It’s serious, but how can you take it seriously,” asked one woman who escaped Russian-controlled areas on Wednesday. “They’re just making up lines on a map.”
In a move that mirrored the stagecraft of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, Russian soldiers and compliant local administrations held staged plebiscites in Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Donetsk and Luhansk, in a futile attempt to legitimize Russia’s still-tenuous military victories.
Proxy authorities said that 93 percent of citizens voted to become part of Russia. Escaping residents said those votes in some cases were cast at gunpoint.
Ukrainian forces halted the Russians’ advance through Zaporizhzhia in March, but not before Moscow had seized control of major cities including Mariupol, Melitopol, and Kherson, the urban hubs in an area that now forms Putin’s much-coveted “land bridge” to Crimea.
The Russians also seized an especially lucrative prize: Enerhodar, a town whose prewar population of 53,000 kept Europe’s largest nuclear power plant running.
“The referendums were a sham, they were theater,” said Dmytro Orlov, the exiled mayor of Enerhodar, interviewed from an old brick university building where the offices and corridors are now lined with aid boxes. “They change nothing for us, we’re still doing our work.”
On Thursday, several doctors waited hours to lead a ragtag convoy of personal vehicles across the lines and toward their hometowns. Some were going to collect family members, others were there to do business. For the medics, the mission was life saving health care.
“People need us there,” said one of them, Vitaly, who like others interviewed along the road, asked that their last names be withheld for the security of family members and their work. “My specialty is heart problems, but I’ve worked on limbs, I’ve patched wounds. We need so many supplies, though. So many supplies that we just don’t have.”
When asked by reporters how he felt, Serhiy, a 36-year-old father from the southern city of Kherson, struggled to find the words. “If you weren’t there, you can’t know what it is to feel this feeling,” he said, taking a deep breath as he stared out at the line of vehicles now waiting for registration in a local car park.
One woman, Olga, 29, had not heard of Putin’s annexation plans before she arrived there, and her message to Russia’s president in reply was succinct. “Well I’d tell him to go...” she said, adding an expletive with a smile.
One man, a worker from the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Enerhodar said that the plant was now being operated by an exhausted skeleton staff, and that he may yet return to help. He said he saw it as his duty. “Right now, if they can keep an eye on the core temperature then it’s good,” he said. “The systems are functioning properly so nothing has gone catastrophically wrong.”
Among the workers, the man said, there was still fear that the Russians might demand them to do something “unthinkable.” | 2022-09-29T22:13:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia plans to annex Zaporizhzhia but does not fully control the region - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/29/zaporizhzhia-annexation-russia-referendum-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/29/zaporizhzhia-annexation-russia-referendum-ukraine/ |
Italy and Sweden show why Biden must fix the immigration system
Giorgia Meloni, the leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy, speaks to members of the media in Rome on Sept. 26. (Gregorio Borgia/AP)
Italy and Sweden are about as different as two European countries can get. One is Catholic, Mediterranean, sunny and chaotic; the other Protestant, northern, chilly and ordered. Over the decades, they have had very different political trajectories. But now, both are witnessing the striking rise of parties that have some connections to fascism.
In each country, this rise has coincided with a collapse of support for the center-left. And it all centers on an issue that the Biden administration would do well to take very seriously: immigration.
Giorgia Meloni, likely the next prime minister of Italy, is a charismatic 45-year-old politician. Her campaign was a familiar attack on the forces of globalization and a comforting story that she would somehow bring back the good old days before George Soros ruined everything.
In a video that went viral, she says that she is proud of all things that the globalists want you to be ashamed of — being Christian, a mother, Italian, etc. And a big part of her actual policy program is immigration. “Nations only exist if there are borders, and those are defended,” she says, promising a naval blockade if that is what it takes to stop the flow of illegal migrants from the Mediterranean.
The appeal of the far-right Sweden Democrats also centers around immigration. The party talks a great deal about the rise of crime, gang violence and abuse of the country’s generous welfare state. But its main campaign proposal was a 30-point plan designed to turn Sweden, which has arguably one of the most generous immigration systems in Europe, into the most restrictive. It is "time to put Sweden first,” says Jimmie Akesson, the dynamic 43-year-old leader of Sweden Democrats.
There is lots of demagoguery in these two politicians and their parties, but there is also an important truth at the heart of their appeal. Immigration in many countries in Europe is out of control.
By out of control, I do not mean it is too high. It’s impossible to say what the right number is for any given country. I mean that migration is now largely taking place in a chaotic manner, with massive surges in flows, rampant human smuggling and crime, and a total breakdown of the legal system by which countries evaluate and admit applicants. Sweden’s population is now about 20 percent foreign-born, which is much higher than the United States, where that number is about 14 percent.
America is different from Europe. American identity is political, while European countries’ national identities, at least historically, have been based on ethnicity, religion and culture. Either way, there are limits to how many people a country can absorb.
About 5 percent of the U.S. population was foreign-born in the 1970s. Since then, that percentage has almost tripled. Even so, people can be convinced that large numbers of outsiders can be assimilated and absorbed. What enrages them is the sense that people no longer become immigrants through a process that the host country controls but rather by crossing the border illegally, claiming asylum status, gaining entry and then simply sticking around. And that fear is justified.
The U.S. asylum system has broken down. It was designed after World War II, in the wake of the Holocaust, to take in people who faced immediate and dire persecution. Today, many people seeking asylum face hardships much like those that have traditionally led people to seek a better life here: poverty, crime, disease, dislocation. They are deeply deserving of dignity and decent treatment. But anyone claiming asylum for only those reasons is abusing the system in an effort to bypass the normal immigration process.
And that process in the United States is now utterly dysfunctional. Already clogged and understaffed, President Donald Trump deliberately jammed it up even more, to the point that routine business visa applications from countries such as India can take months; students cannot enter the United States even after getting scholarships; and work-visa applications now rest on the chance of applicants winning a lottery (literally).
The Biden administration is going into the midterm elections with a strong hand. It could be undone by this one issue. It has found an intelligent way to speed up the consideration of asylum requests, though it feels woefully inadequate to the backlog at hand. There are about 744,000 asylum cases pending.
Biden needs to find a way to demonstrate that his administration is taking control of immigration in general and the border in particular. Then he can propose the obvious compromise that could appeal to most Americans: a better, faster, more predictable legal immigration system but a tougher, more effective way to restrict illegal immigration. Or else, the populist right will use this issue to keep gaining ground in the United States just as it has in Italy and Sweden. | 2022-09-29T22:13:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden must fix immigration — or perhaps lose ground to the far right - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/immigration-italy-sweden-meloni-biden-zakaria/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/29/immigration-italy-sweden-meloni-biden-zakaria/ |
A public health worker enters the building where people will be receiving monkeypox vaccines last month in Charlotte. (Logan Cyrus for The Washington Post)
Eligible individuals who did not receive the monkeypox vaccine were about 14 times more likely to become infected than those who received a first dose of the two-dose vaccine, according to new early data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a promising sign CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said provides “a level of cautious optimism that the vaccine is working as intended.”
The CDC is expanding eligibility for vaccination against a virus that has infected more than 25,000 people in the United States. Despite the decrease in new cases, severe infections have been showing up in recent weeks among men, the majority of them Latino and Black, according to the CDC. The agency issued a health advisory to clinicians Thursday alerting them about “severe manifestations” of disease in men with weak immune systems because they have advanced HIV. In many instances, these patients have had more than 100 lesions. | 2022-09-29T22:26:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What happened to monkeypox? Answers to your most pressing questions. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/28/monkeypox-vaccine-symptoms-cases/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/28/monkeypox-vaccine-symptoms-cases/ |
The treatment was thought up by two Brown University undergraduates a decade ago.
Brian Wallach and his wife, Sandra Abrevaya, founded I AM ALS to promote the patient's point of view on ALS research and treatments. (Erin Hooley/Chicago Tribune/Getty Images) (Eric Hooley/Chicago Tribune/Getty Images)
The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday overcame doubts from agency scientists and approved a fiercely debated drug for ALS, a move that heartened patients and advocates who pushed for the medication but raised concerns among some experts about whether treatments for dire conditions receive sufficient scrutiny.
“It’s a huge deal,” said Sunny Brous, 35, who was diagnosed with ALS seven years ago after she had trouble closing her left glove while playing softball. She plans to begin taking the drug as soon as she can.
“Anything that shows any amount of efficacy is important,” the resident of Pico, Tex., added. Even a small change, Brous said, “might be the difference between signing my own name and someone else signing it for me.”
The newly approved therapy, which will be sold under the brand name Relyvrio, is designed to slow the disease by protecting nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord destroyed by ALS — amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. The ailment paralyzes patients, robbing them of their ability to walk, talk and eventually breathe. Patients typically die within three to five years, though some live much longer with the condition sometimes called “Lou Gehrig’s disease” for the renowned baseball player diagnosed in 1939.
In a memo about the approval, the FDA said the drug showed “a statistically significant treatment benefit” and met its clinical-trial goal, a slowing of decline in patients with ALS. It also said the drug provided a survival benefit and that there were no safety concerns.
The agency acknowledged “limitations” to the findings that resulted in some uncertainty about the drug’s degree of effectiveness but said that was “acceptable in this instance” and that the use of “regulatory flexibility is appropriate.”
Officials from Amylyx, the Cambridge, Mass., biotech company that makes the drug, said they plan to move as quickly as possible to make the drug available. They said a final decision on the price has not been made.
Patients, advocates and ALS specialists hailed what they called a landmark approval, saying the drug represents the kind of modest advance needed to make progress against the disease. About 30,000 people in the United States have ALS, with 6,000 new cases diagnosed every year. Two other drugs are approved for the ailment but have extremely limited effectiveness.
Some drug policy experts, however, said insufficient evidence exists that the drug works. The FDA cleared the medication based on a single trial with 137 patients plus follow-up data and analyses. A trial with 600 patients won’t be completed until late 2023 or early 2024.
“There is some evidence to support the efficacy of the product, but I don’t think it hits the bar that the FDA typically requires,” said G. Caleb Alexander, an internist and epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health who serves on the FDA advisory committee that reviewed the drug. “How much should the FDA lower the bar — if at all — for products for a devastating disease” that lacks effective treatments?
Diana Zuckerman, president of the of National Center for Health Research, a think tank, agreed.
“How many ineffective ALS drugs do we need?” Zuckerman said. “It would be better to have one that has been proven to make a meaningful difference to live longer.”
But Jinsy A. Andrews, an associate professor of neurology and director of neuromuscular clinical trials at Columbia University, applauded the approval and said she plans to start prescribing the drug as soon as it is available. Other ALS specialists agreed.
“I see patients living with this disease, and I diagnose them every day,” Andrews said. “So to have another therapy for the tool kit is helpful.” Andrews is an investigator in the large trial for the drug now underway.
AMX0035, as the drug has been called during development, is the first new therapy approved for ALS in five years, consists of two components — a prescription drug called sodium phenylbutyrate used to treat rare liver disorders and a nutritional supplement called taurursodiol. The drug comes in a powder that is dissolved in water and can be swallowed or given through a feeding tube.
Two Brown University undergraduates came up with the idea for the therapy almost a decade ago, initially thinking it would be for Alzheimer’s disease. Justin Klee and Josh Cohen went on to found Amylyx.
ALS advocates said the approval shows the importance of patients and advocates getting involved in efforts to bring drugs to the market.
“We still have a lot of work to do to cure ALS, but this new treatment is a significant step in that fight,” said Calaneet Balas, president and chief executive officer of the ALS Association.
In 2014, the organization raised $115 million in six weeks from the Ice Bucket Challenge and provided $2.2 million of that to help pay for testing AMX0035. The drug is the first funded by the organization to receive FDA approval. Amylyx has agreed to use proceeds from sales of the medication to repay the organization 150 percent of its investment.
In 2019, Brian Wallach, a staffer in the Obama White House, and his wife founded a group named I AM ALS after Wallach was diagnosed. That organization made getting the Amylyx drug onto the market a priority.
The two groups pressed the FDA to be faster and more flexible in clearing ALS drugs, saying patients would accept treatments with increased safety risks in return for even a small benefit — a viewpoint incorporated into the agency’s 2019 guidance to the pharmaceutical industry on developing ALS therapies. In 2020, the two ALS organizations submitted more than 50,000 signatures to the FDA calling for approval of AMX0035.
In a do-it-yourself effort, some ALS patients in the United States already are taking the ingredients of AMX0035. Because sodium phenylbutyrate was already approved, doctors may prescribe it off-label to ALS patients. The nutritional supplement taurursodiol, also called TUDCA, can be bought online.
Steve Kowalski, 58, who lives in Boston and takes the components of AMX0035, along with the other two approved ALS drugs, credits the regimen for slowing his deterioration. With careful planning and the help of his three adult children, he can still go see his beloved Red Sox but is exhausted when he gets home, he said.
Kowalski welcomed the FDA action on the drug. He prefers to get a high-quality, approved version of the medication rather than having to buy a supplement online.
The company’s application to the FDA was based largely on a single 24-week clinical trial and follow-up data from an “open label” study in which all trial participants were offered the drug. Amylyx said the data showed the drug was safe, prolonged survival by several months and slowed by 25 percent a decline in essential functions, such as walking, talking and cutting food.
Typically, the FDA expects drugmakers to submit “substantial evidence of effectiveness” provided by two well-designed clinical investigations. But the agency says a single trial may be sufficient if the study demonstrates a “clinically meaningful and statistically very persuasive effect” on extending survival or some other aspect of the disease.
In March, however, the FDA staff issued a mostly negative assessment of the clinical trial and the drug, and its advisers agreed, voting 6-4 to recommend against FDA approval. Patients and advocates flooded the agency with more than 10,000 emails pleading for approval, advocates said.
In a rare move, the FDA held a second advisory meeting this month to consider additional analyses submitted by the company. Once again, the FDA staff suggested in a memo that there was not enough evidence of effectiveness to approve the drug.
But the tone of the meeting differed markedly from that of the first session. At the outset, Billy Dunn, director of the FDA’s Office of Neuroscience, acknowledged the data for the drug raised numerous questions, but also stressed the “tremendous unmet medical need” for ALS and the seriousness of the disease. He said the agency had the legal authority to be flexible. And in a highly unusual move, Dunn asked the Amylyx officials whether they would voluntarily withdraw the drug from the market if the large trial failed; they said they would.
With a few of the outside experts on the advisory committee changing their position, the panel recommended approval 7-2.
The debate over the drug has echoes of the battle over Aduhelm, the controversial Alzheimer’s drug approved by the agency in June 2021. Critics said there was scant evidence of efficacy for that medication, and Medicare declined to cover it except in trials. The drug collapsed in the marketplace, never gaining traction with patients or physicians.
But ALS doctors insist the ALS drug is different. It reached its primary goal in the trial, even if the benefit was modest, they noted.
Canada recently approved AMX0035 on a conditional basis. Amylyx can sell the drug there, as long as the treatment’s benefits are confirmed by the larger trial. But the FDA’s approval processes are somewhat different from Canada’s. | 2022-09-29T22:27:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FDA approves first ALS drug in 5 years after pleas from patients - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/29/als-drug-fda-approval/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/29/als-drug-fda-approval/ |
This 2018 photo provided by Amylyx shows the company’s co-founders Joshua Cohen, left, and Justin Klee in Cambridge, Mass. A much-debated drug for Lou Gehrig’s disease, made by Amylyx, won U.S. approval Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022, a long-sought victory for patients that is likely to renew questions about the scientific rigor behind government reviews of experimental medicines. (Amylyx via AP) (Uncredited/Amylyx) | 2022-09-29T22:27:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ALS drug wins FDA approval despite questionable data - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/als-drug-wins-fda-approval-despite-questionable-data/2022/09/29/3a9c4eae-4039-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/als-drug-wins-fda-approval-despite-questionable-data/2022/09/29/3a9c4eae-4039-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Two migrants shot, one fatally, along Texas highway
A male migrant walking along a rural road in West Texas was fatally shot and a female migrant was wounded after two men in a pickup truck opened fire on a group that stopped for drinking water, Texas authorities said Thursday.
The incident occurred Tuesday evening near the town of Sierra Blanca, about 85 miles southeast of El Paso. The suspects attacked the migrants as they stood near a water tank along a farm road, according to Texas authorities. The female victim is recovering at the Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso.
Two brothers, Mike and Matthew Sheppard, were taken into custody Thursday, according to KVIA, an ABC affiliate in El Paso, which identified Mike Sheppard as the warden of a private detention center.
The men face manslaughter charges, according to a statement provided by Lt. Elizabeth Carter, a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety in El Paso. The FBI, U.S. Border Patrol and Homeland Security agents are assisting the investigation, the statement said.
Authorities have not identified the victims nor provided information about their nationality. | 2022-09-29T22:27:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two migrants shot, one fatally, along Texas highway - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2022/09/29/texas-migrants-shot/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2022/09/29/texas-migrants-shot/ |
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