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Boris Epshteyn, lawyer to Trump, testifies before Georgia grand jury
Boris Epshteyn, right, attends a celebration at the White House on April 1, 2019. (Andrew Harnik/AP)
Boris Epshteyn, a lawyer for former president Donald Trump, appeared Thursday before the grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., that is investigating whether Trump and his allies improperly interfered in the 2020 election.
The original request for Epshteyn’s testimony stated that he is a “necessary and material witness” in the investigation because he “is known to be affiliated with both former president Donald Trump and the Trump Campaign.” Among other things, it said he “possesses unique knowledge concerning the logistics, planning, and execution of efforts by the Trump Campaign to submit false certificates of vote to former vice president Michael Pence and others.”
Epshteyn serves currently as counsel to Trump. An emergency filing in advance of his testimony suggested issues of “attorney-client privilege” could come into play in response to questions about Trump and related matters.
Epshteyn’s lawyer, David M. Chaiken, filed the emergency motion earlier this week asking the Fulton County court to provide more details before the Trump adviser’s required appearance. There was no sign in court records that the request was granted. Chaiken could not be reached for comment. The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office, which is leading the inquiry, declined to comment.
Epshteyn is one of a series of high-profile Trump advisers who have appeared before the investigative grand jury. The list includes Rudy Giuliani, who testified for six hours in August, and John Eastman, who appeared in late August. Before their testimony, lawyers for both men said they were likely to cite “attorney client” privilege in response to grand jury questions.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis said recently that her team has interviewed more than half of its planned witnesses, a group that includes Georgia Republicans she has identified as targets of the criminal probe for purportedly casting electoral college votes for Trump in Georgia despite Joe Biden’s victory.
Giuliani was also told he was a target of the inquiry. Willis said in a recent interview that the number of targets is increasing.
Willis said she is considering calling Trump as a witness and predicted a decision will likely “be made late this fall.” Trump has said Willis is engaged in a “partisan witch hunt” as she aggressively pursues the inquiry.
Her investigation covers some of the same ground covered by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and by the Justice Department investigation examining efforts to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.
But Willis, a Democrat, has been at the forefront in publicly pursuing a criminal case, in part because she is able to take advantage of state statutes that could make a criminal prosecution faster and less cumbersome than a federal case.
While Willis has said she is making progress, she is still trying to secure testimony from several additional high-profile witnesses. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) has sought to toss out a federal court order compelling his testimony, citing protections provided to lawmakers by the U.S. Constitution. Graham’s case is being reviewed by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and will not be considered until next month. Depending on how the court rules, the matter could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Willis has also sought testimony from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. It is unclear when his testimony might occur.
Epshteyn’s appearance occurred as Willis prepares for the inquiry to move in to a quiet phase starting Oct. 7, so that grand jury activities won’t be seen as influencing the midterm election. A state court judge last month ordered Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) to comply with a subpoena but delayed his testimony until after the November election.
Willis has said she hopes the grand jury will wrap up its work before the end of the year. Once that happens, it will issue a report, and Willis will decide whether to bring criminal charges. | 2022-09-29T22:27:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Boris Epshteyn, lawyer to Trump, testifies before Georgia grand jury - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/boris-epshteyn-georgia-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/boris-epshteyn-georgia-trump/ |
This image from video provided by KABC-TV shows a truck owned by Anthony John Graziano after a shootout on a highway in Hesperia, Calif., on Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022. The Southern California man who was accused of killing his estranged wife and abducting their 15-year-old daughter had been living with the teenager out of his pickup truck and hotels for weeks before the violence, authorities said Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022. (KABC-TV via AP) (Uncredited/KABC-TV) | 2022-09-29T22:27:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police: Teen saw father shoot, kill mother in California - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/police-teen-saw-father-shoot-kill-mother-in-california/2022/09/29/563a4246-4044-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/police-teen-saw-father-shoot-kill-mother-in-california/2022/09/29/563a4246-4044-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
In 1974, she co-founded the first Ronald McDonald House, in Philadelphia, to provide affordable lodging for families of gravely ill children
By Margaret Foster
Pioneering oncologist Audrey Evans in Philadelphia in 2015. (Matt Rourke/AP)
Dr. Evans, 97, renowned as a scientist, as a medical administrator and as an advocate for children, died Sept. 29 at her home in Philadelphia. Her death was announced by Ronald McDonald House Charities. The cause was not immediately available.
McDonald’s agreed in exchange for naming rights, and “Ronnie’s House” opened in 1974. More than 300 Ronald McDonald House programs exist today, offering long-term rooms near hospitals for modest donations, or nothing at all.
Dr. Evans moved to Boston in 1953, landing a position in Farber’s inpatient ward, where she met D’Angio, a radiation oncologist known as “Dan.” She became godmother to his sons, and, in 2005, after his first wife died, they were married. She was a first-time bride at 79. D’Angio died in 2018.
Survivors include two stepsons, Carl D’Angio and Peter D’Angio, and several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. | 2022-09-29T22:28:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Audrey Evans, cancer scientist and Ronald McDonald House founder, dies - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/29/audrey-evans-cancer-ronald-mcdonald-house/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/29/audrey-evans-cancer-ronald-mcdonald-house/ |
Mark Souder, ‘ultraconservative’ congressman felled by affair, dies at 72
The Indiana politician resigned in 2010 amid his eighth term after admitting to an extramarital affair with a female staffer
Reps. Mark Souder, left, and David McIntosh, both Indiana Republicans, in 1998. (Keith Jenkins/The Washington Post)
Mark Souder, a self-described “ultraconservative” Republican who represented northeastern Indiana in Congress for more than 15 years before resigning in 2010 after his extramarital affair with a female aide came to light, died Sept. 26 at 72.
His family announced the death. Mr. Souder disclosed in January that he had inoperable pancreatic cancer.
Throughout his time in Congress, Mr. Souder made evangelical Christianity a centerpiece of his public persona. It was an image that played well in his Fort Wayne-area district, which has a strong base of religious conservatives. Mr. Souder was known for his uncompromising conservative positions on social issues such as abortion and gay rights.
Mr. Souder was running for a ninth term in the U.S. House when he abruptly resigned in May 2010 after saying he had an affair with a woman who worked part-time in his congressional office. At a news conference, he stood alone and apologized for his actions, saying that his wife and children were “more than willing” to stand with him but that “the error is mine, and I should bear the responsibility.”
Mark Edward Souder was born in Fort Wayne on July 18, 1950, and grew up in nearby Grabill. He graduated from Indiana University in 1972 and received a master’s of business administration degree from the University of Notre Dame in 1974. For many years, he was an aide to Daniel Coats, an Indiana Republican who served in the U.S. House of Representatives and then in the Senate.
He defeated incumbent Rep. Jill Long (D) in 1994 to capture the congressional seat previously held by Coats.
After leaving Congress, Mr. Souder ran the family’s longtime country store business in Grabill.
Information about survivors was not immediately available. | 2022-09-29T22:28:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mark Souder, ‘ultraconservative’ congressman felled by affair, dies at 72 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/29/mark-souder-congressman-indiana-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/29/mark-souder-congressman-indiana-dead/ |
Debris litters a mobile home park in Fort Myers, Florida, on September 29, 2022, one day after Hurricane Ian made landfall. (Joseph Agcoili/AFP/Getty Images)
Hurricane Ian made landfall Wednesday in southwestern Florida as one of the most powerful storms to ever hit the United States. Millions of people are without power, and the full extent of the destruction may not be clear for days.
We hear from Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Brittany Shammas, and Brady Dennis about what we know so far about the damage from Hurricane Ian. And why Florida is more vulnerable than ever to these storms, given its growing population and the effects of climate change.
Maps show how millions of people have moved into Hurricane Ian’s path. | 2022-09-29T22:28:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Hurricane Ian’s 'expanding bull’s eye' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/in-hurricane-ians-expanding-bulls-eye/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/in-hurricane-ians-expanding-bulls-eye/ |
Create surreal Pokémon lookalikes of Jeff Bezos, The Rock and more with AI
Wordle (the Pokémon) — I choose you!
(Jonathan lee and Justin Pinkney/Washington Post illustration)
Have you ever wondered what former president Barack Obama would look like as a Pokémon? What about a Pokémon based on the “Mona Lisa”? A new AI-powered Pokémon generator can now bring an infinite number of Pokémon crossovers to illustrated life.
The generator, Text-to-Pokémon, is a pet project by software consultant Justin Pinkney. Pinkney is a senior machine learning researcher at Lambda Labs, a deep-learning company that provides high-powered computer workstations and servers to clients. Pinkney’s role specifically involves consulting on image generation, a field he became interested in while completing a PhD in biophysics at the University of Oxford.
“It’s been really fun to see all the stuff people are making with it,” Pinkney wrote in an email to The Washington Post. “I’m always impressed by how it seems to capture the essence of famous people, but in a very weird Pokémon form.”
Very weird is an apt way to put it. People have used it to generate all sorts of Pokémon in the bizarre likeness of famous figures. Here’s what it spit out using Hollywood superstar Dwayne Johnson as a prompt:
Here are some Pokémon variants of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. (Bezos also owns The Washington Post).
Jeff Bezos Pokémon pic.twitter.com/DTpRfKWjty
— WAPO FTX ℳikhail (victim of gatekeeping) (@LeaderGrev) September 27, 2022
Here, by the way, is Wordle as a Pokémon.
But the generator is also capable of producing some surprisingly poignant creations, as can be seen in this mosaic of sample images shared by Pinkney. The first Pokémon in the lineup was generated from the prompt “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” the famed painting by Dutch master Johannes Vermeer. See if you can guess the others.
This is a Pokémon created from “The Return of the Prodigal Son,” one of the best-known paintings by another Dutch master, Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn.
Pinkney was inspired to create a Pokémon art generator by his 6-year-old daughter, who has recently become a big fan of the franchise.
“I thought it would be a fun project to train a model so she could describe her ideal Pokémon,” he said. “It seems like it worked!”
Text-to-image art generators work through a process called deep learning, in which algorithms make predictions and complete tasks in a process that mimics the human brain’s neurons. In the case of AI-generated art, the generators pull from a database of existing pictures and illustrations to put together a discrete piece based on a user’s prompt. Pinkney explained that his own creation is adapted from an open-source deep-learning model called Stable Diffusion, which already has vast data sets of information. Text-to-Pokémon works by matching Stable Diffusion’s data sets to a data set of 850 Pokémon images from a previous university-run research project, which Pinkney filed using an automated caption system to categorize each image with a text description.
That’s why Text-to-Pokémon can create a more-or-less convincing Pokémon facsimiles of well-known public figures such as Dwayne Johnson or Taylor Swift, but will generate more abstract results for most people using their own names (unless they’re also high-profile celebrities). Pinkney published an extensive write-up on how his generator works on Lambda’s blog.
If you want to try your hand at creating some of your own Pokémon, you can access it here. You’ll need a GitHub account to run the model through the website, but once that’s set up, all you need to do is enter a phrase (Keanu Reeves, “The Last Supper,” “Doom Eternal,” etc.) and hit the submit button to generate one or more Pokémon.
Pinkney intends to keep working on Text-to-Pokémon. He floated the possibility of getting more images of Pokémon to increase his data set with more detailed captions, perhaps as a collaboration with someone with more Pokémon knowledge. He’s also interested in developing art generators that can compile images beyond text prompts.
“I think people have only seen the tip of the iceberg so far from these techniques!” Pinkney wrote. “Personally, although I think text prompts are a nice, easy interface to tell the AI what sort of image you want, I’m really interested in how to add other ways of influencing and controlling the output, to make it much more useful for artists and creatives to guide it to give the sort of images they’re after.” | 2022-09-29T22:29:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Create surreal Pokémon lookalikes of Jeff Bezos, The Rock and more with AI - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/09/29/pokemon-ai-generator-github/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/09/29/pokemon-ai-generator-github/ |
As judges rule against Dan Cox, Md. Dems press him to accept results
Maryland Del. Dan Cox (R-Frederick) in May 2020. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Judges on Thursday ruled against Dan Cox’s effort to stop poll workers from confidentially counting mail-in ballots early, as his political opponents amplified concerns about whether the GOP nominee for Maryland governor will accept the results of the November election.
Cox has repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether he would respect the results if judges ruled against him, only saying he would accept the outcome if ballots were counted after Election Day, as has been the normal practice.
Cox’s spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the ruling. He previously committed to accepting the results in his race against Wes Moore (D) if the rules were not changed, saying relief sought by the State Board of Elections after a bruising primary cycle marked by delayed results would sow mistrust in the system, and that such changes should be enacted by the legislature, not by a court during the height of campaign season.
Maryland Democrats, meanwhile, launched a campaign earlier in the day casting Cox’s stance as dangerous to democracy, focusing on his denial of the 2020 presidential election results with a news conference held before the appeals court panel released its ruling.
“Dan Cox’s decision to file an appeal against the court’s ruling regarding the counting of mail-in ballots isn’t a surprise by any means,” Maryland Democratic Party Chair Yvette Lewis said at the conference. “It’s straight from his cult leader’s playbook of deny and delay.”
Most recently, Cox, who has described the 2020 presidential election as “stolen,” would not commit to accepting the results the governor’s race during a forum at Morgan State University on Tuesday night.
“I believe very firmly in making sure that our system works. I don’t believe in changing the rules midstream,” he said. “I don’t believe in making a system that creates questions. I don’t believe in losing our chain of custody with mail-in ballots. I don’t believe in failure to assert and verify that it’s actually voters voting.”
The tumult comes amid a backdrop of heightened focus nationally on so-called election integrity, a term that rose to prominence in the wake of former president Donald Trump’s defeat and ensuing campaign to cast doubt on President Biden’s victory. Across the country, more than half of GOP candidates running for positions with significant roles in overseeing future elections in battleground states have disputed the validity of the 2020 election.
Experts warn that having election deniers in roles with that power could bring chaos to presidential elections — potentially delaying results, undermining confidence in the electoral process system and heightening division.
In Maryland, while the governor does not play a direct role in administering elections, Democrats are still raising Cox’s fight against early voting and his election denial as a threat to democracy — and as a way to point voters to Moore.
Lewis was joined by State Senators Cheryl C. Kagan (D-Montgomery) and Shelly L. Hettleman (D-Baltimore County) at the conference calling on Cox to accept the results of the election, regardless of the process.
“With Donald Trump and Dan Cox raising doubts about the accuracy of our elections, the sanctity of our system,” Kagan said, “we cannot afford to have delays.”
The legal action centers on an outdated law prohibiting election workers from counting mail-in ballots until two days after the election — the only rule of its kind in the country. As voting patterns shifted and mail-in voting increased, the rule led to significant delays during the state’s primary. To avoid delays in November, the State Board of Elections successfully filed a petition asking a judge to suspend the law and allow canvassing to begin on Oct. 1.
Cox filed a notice of appeal earlier this week. His lawyers asked the judges to prevent early ballot counting until his arguments could be considered. Shortly after the State Board of Elections filed its response on Thursday, the court denied Cox’s motion. Lawyers for Cox did not immediately answer questions about whether the appeal will move forward.
Cox has said he’s fighting the decision to support the constitutional process and protect the “integrity of elections.” His ambiguity on whether he will accept results should not come as a surprise, the Democrats said in the news conference. Election integrity was a key part of his primary platform.
Cox has been criticized for chartering buses to the “Stop the Steal” Trump rally near the White House that preceded the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — a charge he has contested — and for a tweet he sent during the riot calling Vice President Mike Pence “a traitor.” He later expressed regret for his choice of words.
Cox’s stance on the 2020 election reflects a larger divide in the Republican Party, said Mileah Kromer, a Goucher College political science professor who noted the question of safeguarding elections should be nonpartisan.
“I think it’s dangerous that so many people still hold the position that the 2020 election wasn’t free and fair,” Kromer said.
Erin Cox and Ovetta Wiggins contributed to this report. | 2022-09-29T23:45:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland Democrats cast Cox's position as dangerous for democracy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/maryland-democrats-criticize-cox-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/maryland-democrats-criticize-cox-election/ |
Russian President Vladimir Putin chairs a Security Council meeting via a video link in Moscow on Thursday. (Gavriil Grigorov/Sputnik/AFP/Getty Images)
Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday repeated that “the United States does not, and will never, recognize the legitimacy or outcome of these sham referendums or Russia’s purported annexation of Ukrainian territory.”
But over the past 10 days — since Russia rapidly organized referendums in Ukrainian territories its military forces partially occupy, received the expected overwhelming popular endorsement in staged votes held this week, and scheduled a Putin signing ceremony for Friday — the allied governments have tried to match Moscow’s speed.
At the United Nations last week, President Biden rewrote portions of his General Assembly speech at the last minute to make the just-announced referendums, and a veiled Putin threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, a centerpiece, a senior administration official said. In a message directed at those nations who saw the “democracy versus autocracy” rhetoric that had characterized debates over Ukraine as far from their own concerns, this was seen as an issue that would hit closer to home for many.
It was “no secret” that the United States “is determined to defend and strengthen democracy,” Biden said. But Russia’s attempt to seize another country by force, and change its borders unilaterally, was a violation of the U.N. Charter that “was negotiated among citizens of dozens of nations with vastly different histories and ideologies,” and designed to protect them all.
“No matter what else we may disagree on,” he said, “that is the common ground upon which we must stand.” To sweeten the pot, Biden then said he supported efforts to expand the U.N. power base in the Security Council — dominated by the World War II victors who created the institution — to include nations from the global South.
Several U.S. and European officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive issue, said there was evidence the argument was having some resonance. Major countries such as China and India have recently raised questions about how Putin was handling the situation, as were some smaller nations.
“Russia having announced that they would simply annex territory, and make that part of Russia, also covered by a nuclear umbrella — that is so monumental, so outrageous, that it has catapulted the principle of territory integrity,” a senior European official said. “These countries cannot stay aloof, cannot stay on the fence, about a crucial principle of international law that could actually be used against them. Something has changed” in their calculus, the official said.
“I think … a lot of the countries that have tried to keep their heads down and not weigh in are going to have a really hard time swallowing the annexation thing,” said a senior U.S. defense official.
Proof of the argument may come with a possible Friday vote on a U.S.-introduced U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the annexations. “We expect that Russia will do what Russia always does — they will veto it,” U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in announcing the resolution this week. “We plan to have solid support for it.”
Western allies will be closely watching countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Gabon and India, who have abstained on previous measures criticizing Russian actions in Ukraine. If they are disappointed by the votes of those countries or others, “then we will move it to the General Assembly, if we have to, as we did in the past.” The last General Assembly vote on the Russian invasion, in March, brought 35 abstentions.
“I think you can anticipate, if Putin goes ahead with this scheme, and I think we assume that he will, that there will be some significant political and economic consequences, in addition to the security stuff,” the U.S. defense official said. “And then, by the way, we’re just going to continue doing what we’re doing. Which is there will be more security assistance packages.”
The allies are eager to demonstrate to Putin that his hopes that the West will lose enthusiasm for the war — as attention is drawn to other issues, as it continues to drain the allies of money and weaponry, and in the medium term, as the coming winter strains European energy supplies — will not be fulfilled.
Earlier this month, at a meeting of the 40-plus-nation Ukraine contact group created to encourage and coordinate weapons donations and delivery to Ukraine, the emphasis was on sustainment, and the commitment to building what the defense official called Ukraine’s “2023 [military] force.”
A pending Pentagon announcement of an additional $1.1 billion in long-term U.S. military aid was moved up to Wednesday, to demonstrate U.S. staying power before Putin’s upcoming annexation. The package included 18 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers, or HIMARS. The 16 HIMARS already sent are credited with playing a significant role in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian artillery battle for the eastern and southeastern part of the country, where Russian forces are dug in.
Unlike the earlier shipments that were drawn from existing U.S. stocks, the new systems have yet to be manufactured and will likely take years to arrive. The aid package, bringing total U.S. military aid to $16.2 billion since the start of the war in February, also includes 150 Humvees, 150 vehicles for towing artillery, radars, counter drone systems and body armor.
Funding for the new HIMARS and much of planned future aid, as existing U.S. stocks diminish, comes from the Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act (USAI), a multibillion-dollar fund that the administration is hoping Congress will replenish in the pending Continuing Resolution for the rest of this year. The Senate passed the stopgap measure Thursday, and it now moves to the House.
“Right now, we’re essentially announcing about a billion dollars of [drawdown], and a billion dollars of USAI every month,” the defense official said. “It goes up and down, but that’s the order of magnitude. And if Congress provides the money that we’ve asked for — and I’m optimistic that they will — we’ll be able to sustain that rate through the end of this calendar year, until we have a formal budget.”
The European Union took the lead Wednesday in announcing a new draft of its eighth sanctions law, including proposing a price cap on the global purchase of Russian oil. The measures, to be discussed at a meeting of E.U. ambassadors Friday, include new export bans on the Russian purchase of European appliances such as washing machines and dishwashers, which officials say the Russian military is using to extract chips banned by earlier sanctions. Additional new proposed import bans include the European purchase of an expanded range of Russian products.
“Russia has escalated the invasion of Ukraine to a new level” with the referendums and annexation, E.U. Commission President Ursula von der Leyden said during a news conference. “And we are determined to make the Kremlin pay the price for this further escalation.” The new sanctions, she said, would be “biting.”
U.S. officials declined to specify additional sanctions they plan to announce Friday. | 2022-09-29T23:49:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S., allies to increase pressure on Russia following annexation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/29/russia-annexation-us-response/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/29/russia-annexation-us-response/ |
A smartphone displays application icons for Pinterest Inc., from top left, Google LLC’s YouTube, Facebook Inc.’s WhatsApp, Messages and Google Chrome in an arranged photograph taken in Mumbai, India, on Saturday, Feb. 15, 2020. Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok will have to reveal users’ identities if Indian government agencies ask them to, according to the country’s controversial new rules for social media companies and messaging apps expected to be published later this month. (Bloomberg)
Just last month, the Indian government junked a personal data protection bill that had been in the making for five years, and decided to replace it with “a comprehensive legal framework.” Going by the tenor of the draft telecom law, it’s unrealistic to expect India to lean toward European-style privacy safeguards. Both the public and the private sector are happy to see everything from banking services to state subsidies linked to a controversial national repository of biometric identification. Monitoring the daily lives of 1.4 billion Indians with databases — to extract profit or wield power — is a leaf taken straight out of Beijing’s playbook. | 2022-09-29T23:58:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | India’s Internet Bill Is Straight Out of Beijing’s Playbook - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/indias-internet-bill-is-straight-out-of-beijings-playbook/2022/09/29/4287b6c8-404b-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/indias-internet-bill-is-straight-out-of-beijings-playbook/2022/09/29/4287b6c8-404b-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
An unprecedented number of storms rated Category 4 or stronger have lashed the U.S. shoreline in recent years
Damaged homes and debris in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian, Thursday, in Fort Myers, Fla. (Wilfredo Lee/AP)
A few factors help account for the shift, including the warming waters — fueled by climate change — that give hurricanes more energy to release though crushing winds and pounding waves. Climate scientists suspect the slow movement of storms like Ian also stem from global warming, giving more opportunity for them to strengthen and destroy as long as day-to-day conditions remain ripe.
Since 2017, an unprecedented number of storms rated Category 4 or stronger have lashed the U.S. shoreline: Harvey, Irma, Maria, Michael, Laura, Ida and now Ian. They all qualify as “rapid intensification events,” when a storm’s wind speeds increase by at least 35 mph within 24 hours.
These kinds of storms have increased in recent decades, often accelerating hurricanes’ capacity for destruction. Sixteen of the last 20 hurricanes in the Atlantic basin have undergone rapid intensification.
Ian was only the latest case when its winds nearly doubled within a 24-hour period, going from a low-end hurricane with sustained 75 mph winds Monday to a Category 3 storm with 125 mph winds Tuesday. Then, as it approached Florida on Wednesday, its winds surged even faster, going from 120 mph around 2 a.m. to 155 mph winds by 7 a.m.
The series of intense hurricanes striking the United States since 2017 is “one of the busiest times for landfalling powerful hurricanes that we’ve seen historically,” said Phil Klotzbach, a senior research scientist at Colorado State University. One comparable period of hurricane activity came from 1945-1950, when five Category 4 hurricanes hit Florida in six years, making Klotzbach reluctant to call the series of intense storms since 2017 unprecedented.
One study published earlier this year found that since 1990, a steadily growing number of global tropical cyclones have undergone what the study called “extreme rapid intensification,” with winds increasing by at least 50 knots, or 57 mph, within a 24-hour period. Another study from 2018 focused on the Atlantic basin found that among cyclones that have strengthened the most rapidly, their rates of intensification have accelerated, growing by 4 mph each decade over the past 30 years.
For instance, Balaguru said, if a storm in the Caribbean Sea four decades ago intensified by 34 mph in a day, the same storm would increase by 48 mph in today’s climate.
Generally, ocean waters must be above 79 degrees Fahrenheit for a hurricane develop and persist. In recent decades, the ocean has warming at record rates due to human-emitted greenhouse gases, bringing this threshold closer within reach. As Ian was moving away from Cuba, sea surface temperatures were approaching 86 degrees.
Rising global air temperatures also mean that waters, especially in bodies like the bathub-esque Gulf of Mexico, are warming beyond just their surface. The deeper that warmth goes, the more fuel can flow to a slow-moving storm like Ian. The warm seawater evaporates and pumps moisture into air, which can recondense into storms, clouds and rain.
Vertical wind shear — changing wind speeds and direction at different altitudes in a storm — is also a key influence on the intensity of hurricanes, although researchers are still parsing out any long-term trends. High wind shear can weaken a hurricane, while weaker shear can help a hurricane to form and strengthen.
Wind shear has been relatively low in the western Atlantic since 2017, a factor that has contributed to the flurry of tropical cyclones since then, according to Klotzbach. It’s possible that in the long run, climate change could make this environmental condition more common. Scientists hypothesize that the jet stream, which creates strong wind shear, could be pushed north as global temperatures rise.
Climate change also may be increasing hurricanes’ potential for intensification — and destruction — by slowing them down, increasing the duration of damaging winds and flooding rainfall.
For example, while Hurricane Ian took a similar path, and with a similar intensity, as Hurricane Charley in 2004, Charley blew into Florida at 20 mph, while Ian only moved half as fast. That allowed Ian to dump as much as 20 inches of rain along its path, according to early estimates, already more than twice Charley’s rainfall.
Scientists hypothesize storms’ slow movement may stem from rapid warming at Earth’s poles, since this has narrowed the gap in temperature and pressure from the poles to lower latitudes. Those differences drive winds around the globe, pushing around weather systems, including hurricanes, like corks in a stream. So when they are minimized, that may be causing a broader slowdown in global weather systems.
The same phenomenon may be causing abnormal spells of extreme heat and blasts of polar frigidity, because the jet stream winds that normally break up weather patterns and drive storm systems are weaker.
“It just seems like the whole atmosphere is getting more sluggish, and consequently, the storms that are carried in it are moving more slowly,” Kossin said.
Slower-moving storms are capable of dropping massive amounts of rain. Hurricane Harvey showered more than 60 inches of rain in some parts of southeastern Texas because it stalled over the region for nearly two days.
Similarly, if a storm bearing hurricane-force winds remains over one spot for long enough, “it’s eventually going to flatten everything,” Kossin said.
Authorities have changed the way they issue forecasts and warn the public, meteorologists said, because of the danger posed by a storm’s sudden escalation.
The National Hurricane Center signaled fears about rapid intensification with Ian as soon as the storm developed into a tropical storm. On Friday morning, well before Ian approached the Cayman Islands and Cuba, forecasters warned it would likely feed off warm Gulf of Mexico waters and become a major hurricane approaching Florida within five days.
“We have a lot better tools to be able to predict this rapid intensification than we used to,” Klotzbach said. “The models are just better.” | 2022-09-29T23:58:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hurricane Ian's rapid intensification signals climate change's impact - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/29/ian-hurricane-rapid-intensification-climate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/29/ian-hurricane-rapid-intensification-climate/ |
Searchers hunt for victims of Hurricane Ian amid a swath of destruction
Flooding and storm damage after Hurricane Ian ravaged Fort Myers, Fla. (Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post)
Emergency crews and search teams deployed across the Ian-battered flood zones of Southwest Florida on Thursday, hunting for survivors and the missing while only beginning to measure the massive scope of destruction wrought the day before by one of the most powerful hurricanes ever to hit the United States.
More than 2.5 million Floridians remained without power in a region where a three-pronged punch of storm surge, fearsome winds and downpours inundated roads, flipped boats, unmoored houses from their foundations and destroyed at least two bridges to barrier islands.
Yet even as the Gulf Coast emerged from more than a day of harrowing weather, Ian made clear it was not yet finished. Early Friday, weakened to a tropical storm, it dumped record-setting rain on what officials predicted would be a deadly and costly path across the peninsula. Then it moved offshore into the Atlantic, where it strengthened again into a hurricane. It is expected to slam into South Carolina on Friday.
Flooding across a wide swath of Florida’s hard-hit coastal counties made rescue missions slow and challenging, officials said, offering widely varying estimates of a death toll. Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno said early Thursday that “hundreds” may have lost their lives to the wrath of Hurricane Ian, which made landfall as a Category 4 storm. Later, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said two people had been confirmed dead, and it was not yet clear whether the storm was to blame. President Biden, who declared the state a major disaster area, warned of “substantial loss of life.”
By midafternoon Thursday, more than 500 people had been rescued in Charlotte and Lee counties since operations began in the morning, the Florida Division of Emergency Management said. DeSantis said Thursday night that the number overall had risen to more than 700.
“I walked through the storm and got more coffee,” he said, smiling, as he stood in the front yard of his neighbor’s house. “We’re tough ’round here, we’ve got to keep life going.”
Hennessy-Fiske, Shammas and Rozsa reported from Florida. Brulliard reported from Boulder, Colo. Jason Samenow and Zach Rosenthal in Washington contributed to this report. | 2022-09-29T23:58:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Florida's victims, survivors mount after Hurricane Ian pummels state - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/hurricane-ian-rescues-victims/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/hurricane-ian-rescues-victims/ |
D.C. boxing card postponed after fatal shooting of trainer Buddy Harrison
A fight card featuring Dusty Hernandez-Harrison, right, whose father/trainer Buddy Harrison was fatally shot Saturday, is being postponed, Events DC announced. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
A boxing card featuring D.C. fighter Dusty Hernandez-Harrison originally scheduled for Saturday night at Entertainment & Sports Arena has been postponed in the wake of the fatal shooting of Hernandez-Harrison’s father and trainer last weekend.
Events DC, the official convention and sports authority for the nation’s capital, issued a statement late Thursday afternoon in conjunction with card’s promoters announcing the postponement.
“We just believe that there is always going to be plenty of time for boxing, for sporting events, which we love,” Events DC interim president and CEO Samuel R. Thomas Jr. said in a telephone interview. “But this is a time for mourning, for remembrance, an opportunity to honor a man who was beloved by many throughout the community.”
Buddy Harrison, 62, was shot Saturday morning outside his home along the 2700 block of 30th Street SE, according to D.C. police.
The postponement of “Beltway Battles: Round Three” comes amid an ongoing police investigation into the shooting. The suspects have been described as three men wearing black and carrying handguns. Homicide detectives indicated they were searching for a white Kia Optima with the Ohio license plate JAU 3816.
Hernandez-Harrison intent on fighting in wake of father's shooting
Hernandez-Harrison (34-0-1, 20 knockouts), whose last fight was in February 2020, said earlier this week he was intent on fighting Saturday as a way to honor his father, a longtime fixture in the District boxing scene.
Harrison, a longtime fixture in the District boxing scene, taught Hernandez-Harrison to box beginning at age 2. The son has had his father in his corner ever since, including during this most recent training camp in which Hernandez-Harrison dropped 70 pounds.
Hernandez-Harrison also has served as one of the primary promoters for the Beltway Battles series aimed at reviving the rich history of boxing in the region, although for this card the founder of DHH Promotions had devoted almost all of his attention to activity inside the ring.
Officials from Events DC spoke with Hernandez-Harrison as well as co-promoter Thomas LaManna, president and founder of Rising Star Promotions, via telephone Thursday afternoon to discuss the postponement.
Neither Hernandez-Harrison nor LaManna, who also fights professionally, responded to text messages regarding the move to postpone. Both were expected to attend a vigil for Harrison on Thursday night to be held at the site of the shooting.
“It was a tough decision because as you can imagine, today is Thursday, and this is a decision that we have been swaying back and forth throughout the week, trying to figure out what is the right thing to do,” Thomas said. “It’s very difficult when you’re dealing with circumstances like this.”
The Entertainment & Sports Arena is located in Congress Heights, not far from the shooting, and with the suspects still at large, security issues surrounding the safety of those on the fight card, support staff, patrons and venue employees also were taken into consideration. Organizers said about 2,000 tickets had been sold for Saturday’s event, in a facility with a capacity of 4,200.
The first two Beltway Battles, held at the same arena, unfolded without incident. The most recent card took place May 28, with the first installment Oct. 29, 2021.
“We are fully aware that it’s an open case,” Thomas said. “Again with that, there’s a lot on people’s minds right now, and we want people to be able to focus on what they have to focus on and not have to focus, on top of that, to put it on a fight. It takes an incredible amount of attention to detail to produce an event, and as we were working through the past week, we can see how all those details, it was added weight for everyone.” | 2022-09-30T00:00:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. boxing card postponed after fatal shooting of trainer Buddy Harrison - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/dustin-hernandez-buddy-harrison/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/dustin-hernandez-buddy-harrison/ |
Stories of surviving Ian: Narrow escapes, harrowing rescues, floodwater fish
A resident of the Gulf Air mobile home park walks through floodwaters from Hurricane Ian near Fort Myers Beach, Fla., on Sept. 29. (Ted Richardson for The Washington Post)
FORT MYERS, Fla. — Kathy Sharp thought she would be safe at the Thunderbird Park, a mobile home community for retirees dotted with palm trees two miles from the Gulf of Mexico. They thought Hurricane Ian was heading north to Tampa.
But as the storm’s eyewall tore through Fort Myers, Sharp looked out a window and noticed pieces of her neighbor’s roof flying into the air. Not long after, her own home started to break apart, the fierce wind casting aluminum paneling into the swirl of airborne debris.
Then the water hit.
“It was just like a river out of nowhere,” said Sharp, 74, describing the apocalyptic storm surge Ian pushed ashore. “There was nothing there, and then all the sudden there was like a foot water in the house.”
Frightened, Sharp and her husband, Lonny Henry, frantically called 911. Even before a dispatcher picked up, however, she knew no one would be coming to her rescue.
Harrowing stories of survival surfaced across southwest Florida on Thursday as first responders rescued hundreds of people from homes turned into islands surrounded by still-deep floodwater. One elderly woman recounted how the water rose so high she had just six inches of space in which to breathe. A couple described looking out a window and seeing several large fish swimming by.
Many described being caught off guard — settling in as Ian approached with supplies of nonperishable food, water and generators on hand, only to find out that their homes were no match for the storm.
In communities near Fort Myers Beach, the water was so forceful it collapsed buildings, tumbled concrete walls, and pushed sailboats and dumpsters hundreds of feet. At one gas station, a large boat ended up parked next to a gas pump, as if ready to fill up. Scores were still waiting to be rescued from trailer parks, residential subdivisions and luxury waterfront apartment complexes in a part of the state that is home to a large senior citizen population.
Everett Bailey, 56, said he was asleep on a couch and woke up to see water starting to spill into his one-story home. He immediately waded through the flood to get his car.
“The water was in the car, too,” he said. “But my car started, and I drove it to the church.”
He returned home when the water receded to find his waterlogged belongings ruined.
A few doors away, Anne Dalton, 70, considers herself lucky that the flood stopped inches short from reaching the interior of the house her family has owned since the 1980s. But as she watched the murky water swirl around her house Thursday, Dalton said she nonetheless experienced the scariest night of her life.
“The weird thing is it was like a river of currents, and it was not calm water at all,” she said. “It was pulsating, and it was pulsating under the water, too. It was very frightening, because we couldn’t go anywhere. We would have just fallen down.”
At one point, Dalton’s husband, Oliver Martin, looked outside and saw fish swimming by.
“They were not small,” Martin, 75 said. “There was eight- to 12-inch fish swimming by.”
In another subdivision off McGregor Boulevard — a main transit route from Fort Myers to Fort Myers Beach — Laurent Boce, 58, estimated that Ian brought a 13-foot storm toward his home, which sits at about 11-feet above sea level.
“It was just like five, six hours of pure madness,” said Boce, who was essentially trapped in his subdivision on Thursday as parts of the street remained under two feet of water. “I was able to sit in a chair and just watch the water and debris come in, in, in.”
Boce’s neighbor, Karen More, 69, said she will never again underestimate a hurricane.
As she watched floodwaters carry debris down her street, the wind began shaking her door.
“I was holding my front door, because of the wind, and I didn’t know what else to do,” she said. “I didn’t know what else to do. I thought the ocean was going to come through.”
In downtown Fort Myers, the Caloosahatchee River spilled over, inundating several blocks inland. In neighborhoods closer to the Gulf of Mexico, the water rose so high against structures — especially trailers — it knocked over interior walls, said Myke Hastings of Gulf Search and Rescue, a Texas-based team, as he attempted to check up on stranded residents in one trailer park.
He recalled rescuing a 77-year-old woman in a lifejacket who said she had just six inches of space between the floodwaters and her ceiling.
“She was trapped,” Hastings said. “We had to dig her out. Everything had collapsed around her, and she couldn’t get out of her trailer even though the water had receded.”
About 25 miles to the north, in Punta Gorda, the wind rattled residents at Creekside RV Park, who said Hurricane Ian’s eye passed directly over them.
Deborah Clark, 57, and her husband have lived in their 40-foot trailer for the past two years while they build a house nearby.
About 8 a.m. Thursday, Clark woke up as her unit began shaking.
“My gut said, ‘This is bad,’ ” said Clark, who had not the expected the winds to pick up so soon.
She rushed to the community’s clubhouse, which she said was built to withstand a Category 5 hurricane. Within a few hours, 30 other residents were huddled inside. For the next six hours, they watched from windows as Hurricane Ian flipped over their trailers.
“It sounded like planes flying overhead,” Clark said. “But you knew this wasn’t planes. And then you could almost hear a whistling sound.”
When the wind subsided, residents discovered that about 40 of the 50 recreational vehicles that had been parked at the site had been turned upside down or destroyed. One was pushed into a pond.
“For most of the people, these are their homes,” said Erik Clark, Deborah’s husband. “Everything they own is in these campers.”
The Clarks said they decided not to evacuate Punta Gorda ahead of the storm because it was initially forecast to make landfall near Tampa. When they realized Tuesday that the forecasts had changed, Erik Clark said he worried that roads would be cluttered with traffic.
Many said they won’t hesitate to leave next time a powerful hurricane rolls in.
As the floodwaters seeped into her home Wednesday, Sharp and her husband watched from a kitchen table and prayed while trying to stay as clam as possible.
“We were just sitting there in the water,” she said, adding “this storm made me a true believer” of the power of wind and water.
When they did peek out the window, the couple saw “roofs going by and insulation” floating down the street. At one point, a neighbor’s washing machine was sucked out of a home. Another neighbor’s 600-pound toolbox floated away.
“By midnight, it was pretty much done,” Henry, her husband, said. “And when we got up this morning, we started to cleaning up.” | 2022-09-30T00:29:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hurricane Ian survival stories: Narrow escapes, harrowing rescues, floodwater fish - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/hurricane-ian-survival-stories/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/29/hurricane-ian-survival-stories/ |
A news crew prepares to deliver a report on the effects of Hurricane Ian near a statue of a flying boat on Wednesday in St. Petersburg, Fla. (Steve Helber/AP)
There was Jim Cantore, the Weather Channel’s intrepid storm reporter, very much in his element. Standing in the path of Hurricane Ian in Punta Gorda, Fla., on Wednesday, Cantore was getting lashed by rain and blown around by the wind when a flying tree branch kneecapped him in full view of his camera crew.
“You gonna be all right?” asked an unseen anchor as Cantore staggered to a street sign, holding on in the wind.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” replied Cantore in a video that has been shared tens of thousands of times on social media. “You just can’t stand up.”
All of which is kind of the point in TV news coverage of hurricanes and major storms. Watching a human being drenched and tossed about in the elements is exactly the sort of dramatic visual that stations and networks seek when they assign TV journalists to cover storms.
It’s not enough to simply point a camera at nature’s fury and let viewers soak in the awesome mix of water, wind and property destruction. For decades, the cliche in television coverage has been to place a reporter in the picture, letting viewers see just how dangerous the storm is.
Some, like Cantore, have become famous for chasing countless storms on camera, often enduring some form of punishment from the elements in the pursuit.
Such participatory journalism has no equal in the news business. War reporters usually don’t place themselves in the midst of combat and police reporters typically don’t do “standups” in the middle of a shootout. A reporter covering a fire keeps a safe distance.
Not so with “severe” weather reporting, especially in an age when clips like Cantore-meets-tree-branch can quickly go viral. As Ian passed over Florida this week, the most hairy encounters were all over Twitter and social media. In one of the more dramatic, reporter Tony Atkins of WESH in Orlando was shown wading into waist-deep water to rescue a nurse who’d become stranded in her car.
TV news people say live storm coverage is driven by more than a desire for ratings and clicks. Demonstrating a storm’s danger to viewers can deter others from venturing out, said Dan Shelley, who heads the Radio Television Digital News Association. “It’s important to show it in factual and vivid terms so people understand just what they’re up against,” he said.
But there are ways to demonstrate the danger without placing a person in the midst of it. In Florida, many stations have carried live webcam feeds and user-supplied videos of swamped roads and buildings, pounding ocean surf, and arcing transformers with nary a human in the picture. Fox Weather, a streaming network, said it deployed “rain-resistant drones” for aerial footage leading up to and following Ian’s landfall.
Live reports can also be somewhat misleading, underplaying the true severity of a hurricane. Few reporters actually venture into the teeth of a storm. If they did, the consequences would probably be lethal. Ian made landfall in Florida as a Category 4 storm, meaning it packed sustained winds of at least 130 mph — much faster than what the National Weather Service calls an “extreme threat to life and property.”
What’s more, there’s a paradox in the message and the messenger: Reporters telling people to stay home because of the danger when the reporters are out there in the danger themselves.
Journalists say they don’t simply sally into a storm; they prepare for them. Many are experienced at covering such events, and most plot out a specific course of action, including escape routes and shelters.
They also are usually in communication with their newsrooms, which relay the latest information about storm conditions and keep tabs on their movements and well-being. “You just can’t guess at it,” said Amy Freeze, a meteorologist and anchor at Fox Weather. “There’s an inherent risk.”
In 2003, Freeze was doing a live report on Hurricane Isabel from a barrier island near Virginia Beach. As the storm began to bear down, she noticed a surge of water coming from the bayside of the island, a precursor to the much stronger ocean surge that was ahead. “We knew at that point, we had a short time to get out of the way,” she said. They did. But a less experienced reporter might have overlooked the warning.
Despite the dangers, American journalists are rarely killed or severely injured while covering extreme weather. The most recent instance was in 2018, when anchor Mike McCormick and photojournalist Aaron Smeltzer of station WYFF in Greenville, S.C., died while covering the subtropical storm Alberto. A tree struck their SUV as they drove along a highway in North Carolina.
Shelley said the reporting that comes before and after a storm might be the most valuable, even if it isn’t as exciting as the clips that go viral.
Prestorm reporting — typically featuring shop owners boarding up windows and people stocking up at grocery stores — alerts residents to danger and helps publicize government-mandated evacuation orders, he said. Reporting on a hurricane’s immediate aftermath works in the opposite direction: by alerting government officials and the public to damage, shortages and emergencies.
Experts note that many people are killed in the aftermath of a storm, often by misjudging the hazards around them. “If you asked me,” Shelley said of the after-storm reporting. “I’d say, it’s the most important kind of work we can do.” | 2022-09-30T00:50:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | TV reporters standing in hurricanes: A national tradition - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/09/29/hurricane-videos-jim-cantore/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/09/29/hurricane-videos-jim-cantore/ |
New York City, embracing merit, rolls back diversity plan for schools
New York Mayor Eric Adams had backed merit-based admissions for schools. (Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg)
New York City schools announced Thursday they would allow middle schools to consider academics in admitting students to some of the city’s most sought-after programs, unraveling pandemic-era rules aimed at injecting racial and economic diversity into a segregated system.
High schools would also rely more heavily on merit and less on the luck of a lottery under the new plan, reversing the previous administration’s direction as a new mayor takes command of the nation’s largest school system.
Mayor Eric Adams and his schools chief, David C. Banks, have made clear they want to reward merit in admissions decisions, and backers say this is critical to retaining privileged families who will leave the public schools if their children are not placed on campuses they say are equipped to serve them best.
“This process, I think, will ensure more top-tier students, students who achieve, will get into the schools of their choice,” Banks said Thursday. Students who work hard, he said, “deserve to be rewarded for that.”
Also under the new rules, a smaller group of top students will qualify for a lottery into the most sought-after high schools. And for middle school, the city’s 32 districts will have the option of bringing back admission criteria that advantage those with the best grades or other metrics. Each district will make its own decision after gathering input, though they have only a few weeks before final rules are put in place in late October.
Critics argue these policies box out many Black, Latino and low-income students from top schools and drive segregation in the city schools.
What happened when Brooklyn tried to integrate its middle schools
“Competitive admission methods that are built on the premise of exclusivity have no place in public school systems that are meant to serve all students,” read a statement from the advocacy group New York Appleseed. The decision, it said, will “take us a step backward in fulfilling a promise to provide students with inclusive, equitable, and integrated schools.”
Asked about this concern, Banks said at a news conference that he rejects the premise that Black and Latino students cannot compete and succeed with higher standards.
Lucas Liu, president of the Community Education Council in District 3, in Manhattan, said he expects a fierce debate and hopes academic criteria will be restored for some of the middle schools in the area. Parents who don’t want that need not apply, he said.
“Nobody should be trying to tell another parent what type of education their kid should be getting,” said Liu, who is also co-president of Place NYC, a parent group that advocates for merit-based admissions. “We have to accept kids are at different abilities at different levels.”
Across the country, similar debates have raged over the value of racially diverse schools and classrooms against the advantages of rewarding top students with access to elite schools and advanced courses.
In San Francisco, admissions into the elite Lowell High School were converted from merit-based into a lottery. As in New York, though, the change was reversed — in this case, after several school board members were recalled, in part over this issue.
In northern Virginia, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology also shifted from merit-based admissions to a lottery, a move that is being challenged in court and has faced resistance from the Republican governor and his administration.
Hear from four TJ freshmen admitted under controversial circumstances
Elsewhere, schools have worked to dismantle academic sorting at the classroom level, eliminating or reducing tracking of students into regular and honors-level classes.
In New York, the debate is particularly fiery because students are required to apply to middle and high school, and before the pandemic, about a third of the city’s 900 middle and high schools included requirements for admission — such as grades, test scores, attendance and behavior records. Those measures tended to favor the most privileged students, who were also most likely to be White or Asian. These applicants flocked to schools that had the best academic reputations.
That system was largely converted into a lottery under Mayor Bill de Blasio.
For high school, applicants were put into tiers based on their grades. But the top tier included about 60 percent of all students, who had the first crack at the top schools. Competitive schools drew acceptances randomly from this group.
Critics said that because so many students qualified for the top tier, there was almost no reward for those who worked hardest in middle school. But supporters were buoyed because some schools grew more racially and economically diverse.
Now, under the new system announced Thursday, it will be harder to get into the top tier, though once in that group, it will still be a lottery. To get into the top tier, students must be in the top 15 percent of their school or of the city overall, and they must have at least a 90 percent on grades.
Test scores, which had been used for years but also criticized as biased, will not be considered. Banks said exam scores are a flawed measure but grades are “still a very solid indicator of how you are showing up as a student,” even for students who face hardships at home.
For middle school, decisions about “screens” — or admissions criteria — will be made by individual districts. The education department did not specify who would have the final say but said it would work to engage the community.
Kaushik Das, who serves on the Community Education Council for District 2 in Manhattan, said he hopes the district restores screens to the half-dozen or so middle schools that had them before the pandemic.
“Parents who want a zoned school or a lottery school can still pick them,” he said. “Parents who want more for their kids, who want more rigor, who want schools teaching above grade level should also have that choice.”
But Matt Gonzales, an integration advocate who directs the Integration and Innovation Initiative at New York University, said he worries that there are only a few weeks for community engagement on an issue that draws passionate views from both sides.
“This will undoubtedly ensure the most well-resourced and privileged voices get heard, and opens the city back up to more segregation,” he said. “Screens cause segregation. Segregation is bad. We should stop using screens.” | 2022-09-30T01:30:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New York City, embracing merit, rolls back diversity plan for schools - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/29/nyc-merit-school-applications-diversity/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/09/29/nyc-merit-school-applications-diversity/ |
Dolphins’ Tua Tagovailoa exits field on stretcher with head, neck injuries
Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa is examined by the team's medical staff during Thursday night's game in Cincinnati. (AP Photo/Jeff Dean)
Quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was taken from the field on a stretcher and was transported to a hospital by ambulance after suffering head and neck injuries during the Miami Dolphins’ game Thursday night at Cincinnati.
The Dolphins said in a statement at halftime of the game that Tagovailoa had been “taken to a local hospital for further evaluation” and was “conscious and has movement in all his extremities.”
His injury came four days after he was cleared to return to a game against the Buffalo Bills in Miami Gardens, Fla., after being examined for a possible head injury. Tagovailoa and Dolphins Coach Mike McDaniel said then that Tagovailoa had suffered a back injury in that game. The NFL and the NFL Players Association are conducting a joint review to determine whether the league’s concussion protocols were followed properly in that case.
Tagovailoa started the game Thursday night and played most of the first half. He was injured on a sack by Bengals defensive tackle Josh Tupou late in the second quarter. The back of Tagovailoa’s head appeared to hit the turf. He remained on the ground and held his hands in front of his face with some of his fingers bent awkwardly.
Many other Dolphins players stood nearby on the field as members of the team’s medical staff examined Tagovailoa. He was placed on a stretcher and left the stadium in an ambulance. He reportedly was taken to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
McDaniel told Amazon, which was carrying the game, at halftime that Tagovailoa was conscious and speaking to his coach while on the field, wondering what had happened on the play. McDaniel described it as a “scary moment,” Amazon reported.
“I think that’s one of the toughest scenes I’ve ever seen…. That was a scary scene,” former Dolphins quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick, once a teammate of Tagovailoa, said on Amazon’s halftime show.
Former NFL cornerback Richard Sherman said on Amazon: “It brings us back to a sense of reality of the violence of this game…. You hate to see those things.”
Other observers questioned whether Tagovailoa should have been playing in Thursday’s game.
“That’s a serious injury,” former NFL tight end Shannon Sharpe wrote on Twitter. “Tua shouldn’t have been out there with Sunday[-]Thursday turn around. Sometimes players need protecting from themselves. [The] Dolphins failed Tua.”
Christopher Nowinski, the founding CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, wrote on Twitter: “This is a disaster. Pray for Tua. Fire the medical staffs and coaches. I predicted this and I hate that I am right.”
McDaniel said Monday that Tagovailoa was not in the NFL’s concussion protocol.
Tagovailoa left Sunday’s game against the Bills in the first half after being shoved to the ground on a play by Buffalo linebacker Matt Milano. Tagovailoa got to his feet after the play but stumbled. He left the game and walked off the field with members of the medical staff. But Tagovailoa was cleared and returned to that game to begin the second half. He and McDaniel said afterward that Tagovailoa had injured his back, not his head.
The NFLPA exercised its right to initiate a joint review with the NFL as to whether the concussion protocols were followed properly. Those protocols outline a step-by-step process for evaluating a player suspected to have suffered a head injury. A player can return to a game if cleared by the team physician and an unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant following several tests.
The league said Wednesday that the review was ongoing but it had “every indication” that the protocols had been followed properly. Jeff Miller, the NFL’s executive vice president of communications, public affairs and policy said in a conference call with reporters then that the league welcomed the review.
“We think that upholding the protocol is of great import,” Miller said Wednesday. “Obviously the Players Association does as well. And that usually takes a week or two to make sure that we’ve spent enough time with all of the people who are involved in the protocol and the evaluation to get a sense as to whether it was followed. Every indication from our perspective is that it was. I know the player, the coach and others have spoken to this. And we are engaged in that review now. So we'll come back with a formal answer to that question, something that we want to engage in and make sure all that needs to be done for player protection is done.”
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was shown in attendance at Thursday’s game.
The scene was troubling to many who saw it.
“Stop showing the replays. Please,” Arizona Cardinals defensive end J.J. Watt wrote on Twitter. | 2022-09-30T03:02:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dolphins’ Tua Tagovailoa exits field on stretcher with head, neck injuries - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/tua-tagovailoa-dolphins-bengals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/29/tua-tagovailoa-dolphins-bengals/ |
We have a very big gig in a couple of months, and, because my heart’s not in it anymore and I’ve lived my “rock star” dream, I know it will be our last.
Should I tell the band before the gig that it’s our last gig, or should I wait until after? I see pros and cons to both.
Rock Retiree: I shared your dilemma with my friend, the comedy writer and musician Adam Felber, co-host of the fun podcast “Dad Band Land.”
Felber and his co-hosts play in a neighborhood cover band.
He responds: “Announcing your retirement depends on what instrument you play. If you’re a guitarist, I wouldn’t worry about it, because there are a lot of you, and it’s entirely likely your replacement will randomly wander into the garage while you’re telling the band you’re retiring.
“But seriously, unless you’re the frontman and there’s absolutely no way the band can continue without you, I’d wait until a few days after the gig, and then tell them you need to take a break for a while.
“Telling them beforehand may have some upside for you, but not for the rest of the band. There’s no reason to add that to the vibe. This is your last gig, not ‘The Last Waltz!’ ”
Felber’s podcast co-host and fellow musician Kevin Burke also took his own sardonic solo: “If you really want this to be a true ‘rock star’ moment, wait until right before the very last song, then make a big ‘quitting’ announcement over the mic to the audience and the band at exactly the same time.
“Otherwise, I’d wait until the show is over. Let everyone in the band have their last hurrah without making it bittersweet. And who knows? You might rock so hard you change your mind.”
It shocked many people there who talked about it afterward; my father was in the early stages of dementia and may not have understood what he said.
About a year later, Wendell told my mother on a phone call that he had some leftover morphine from a sick relative’s illness, and he offered to administer it to my father. My mother was shocked and extremely upset.
Amy, I’ve never been close to my brother for various reasons, but these two actions were more than I could tolerate. I’m cordial when I see him but can’t get over/accept his behavior. I understand that he, like many, has issues with his upbringing, but I think this goes way beyond “normal.”
Sister: The way you describe him, your brother is extremely angry and is also holding on to some dangerous notions — directed at your father.
In this situation, I vote for understanding and clarity before forgiveness. “Understanding” means you should understand that your brother is not to be trusted. You need not contemplate forgiveness unless he acknowledges and apologizes for his hostile behavior.
He doesn’t seem likely to do that, so you should be extremely wary, especially regarding any attempts to be with your father and/or manipulate your mother.
Dear Amy: Your response to “Disgusted” (“Apparently, ‘hot sex’ is the hill I am willing to die upon”) made me laugh out loud after a long and difficult day.
Thanks for the chuckle, and good for you to stand up for yourself.
Suzy: I’m genuinely happy to have delivered a smile. | 2022-09-30T04:29:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I’m ready to leave my band. When do I tell the other members? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/30/ask-amy-band-retire-gig/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/30/ask-amy-band-retire-gig/ |
Dear Carolyn: My old friend, who still introduces me to others as his best friend, got married and didn’t invite me and another close friend of ours to his wedding. We were his best friends in the world and were very close. When we asked him about the plans, he said he was not going to have a wedding and so there was no need for us to travel to the West Coast to be there. He wanted something very minimal. We respected his decision.
When visiting him a few months later, we found out from his wife that he actually did have a wedding. A few years have gone by and now my friend regularly calls for advice and support regarding his marriage. Should I feel obliged to help my duplicitous friend with his marriage problems, given that he excluded me from his wedding? One detail: We are people of color and the wife is not. She is from a wealthy White family on the West Coast. Were we segregated from the wedding?
— Excluded
Excluded: You know better than I do, and you don’t know because you haven’t tried to find out. You’re not obtuse. You can intuit, add 2 + 2, and generate informed opinions. You probably know a lot of the story that way.
But by your own account, you don’t equate that to certainty your friend had racist motives for excluding you. Right? Because exclusion based on race would be horrific and end the friendship on the spot, yet you didn’t even follow up when you learned of his lie. Hmm.
And maybe you don’t feel the same sense of best friendship anymore, but you’re still there for him, taking his “regular” calls, reciting your lines as his friend, which may be muscle memory, but still tells me you think it’s possible there was an innocent enough explanation for his lie.
That seems right to me because the only thing you know for certain is that he said one thing and did another. That’s it. (Well, that and everyone’s skin color.) So you clearly need more information. Yet instead of saying something, you have quietly harbored your pain, resentment and terrible theories while pretending you’re still his best friend. That, by the way, is also “duplicitous.” It’s reactive where his lie was proactive, but still.
Anyway, please just get on with it and tell your friend what you know. Say how you feel about it. Ask whether he’s willing to share the real story. Then see whether his answer satisfies you. Decide what to do next based on this information. It’s not a perfect remedy, but it’s better than asking me to search my mind for what your friend had on his.
Dear Carolyn: On a recent visit with my cousin and his wife, I observed him speaking to her in a very disrespectful and demeaning manner on several occasions. It was very distressing to witness and I can’t stop thinking about it. He is normally a gentle and good-natured soul. I’m tempted to approach him about it but worry I’d be overstepping my grounds. Your thoughts?
— Distressed
Distressed: Flagging mistreatment you witness firsthand is not overstepping. Neither is inquiring after loved ones who aren’t themselves lately. Ask him, “Are you okay? You seemed edgy last week,” and have an objective example at the ready, just the facts.
In other words, at least start from the possibility he’s mishandling his stress versus something more sinister, and offer an ear. If it persists or gets worse, thehotline.org can help you with your next step. | 2022-09-30T04:29:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Does racism explain why they were left off the guest list? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/30/carolyn-hax-racism-wedding-invite/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/30/carolyn-hax-racism-wedding-invite/ |
Dear Miss Manners: A female companion of mine was invited to a longtime friend’s home and asked me to accompany her. The invitation was for “dessert only,” as many of the other guests were also invited for dinner a couple of hours earlier.
Well, you showed her, didn’t you?
Perhaps. But your friend is not being passive-aggressive. She has made it clear — for the past 20 years, no less — that she does not like to celebrate her birthday.
“Oh, dear, they only ever spoke highly of you. If I had known how awful the children were to you at the time, I would never have continued to subject you to them.” | 2022-09-30T04:29:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: Some dinner party guests were only invited for dessert - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/30/miss-manners-dessert-only-invite/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/30/miss-manners-dessert-only-invite/ |
Suicides increased in 2021, especially among younger people
‘It’s all over the country,’ lead study author says of the rate increase among 15-to-24-year-olds
By Lenny Bernstein
A Yale group called Elis for Rachael holds a candlelight vigil on the New Haven Green for Rachael Shaw Rosenbaum, a student who died by suicide in March 2021. (Stan Godlewski for The Washington Post)
The U.S. suicide rate resumed its upward climb in 2021 after two years of decline, with young people and men hit hardest by the persistent mental health crisis, according to provisional data released Friday by the government.
The 4 percent increase almost wiped out modest decreases in the two previous years, bringing the country back near the most recent peak in suicide deaths, 48,344 in 2018. There were 47,646 suicides in 2021, according to the data, boosting the rate to 14 per 100,000 people, up from 13.5 in 2020.
“A four percent rise is certainly disappointing,” said Christine Yu Moutier, chief medical officer of the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. “However, what had been predicted at the beginning of the pandemic was that there would be a major escalation.”
Suicide is a complex, multifaceted problem whose causes can defy generalization. In individuals, it is linked to depression, family history of suicide, physical illness, childhood trauma and substance abuse, among other factors. In interviews, experts also cited a recent increase in guns in the home, loss of jobs and loved ones to the pandemic, last fall’s covid-19 surge and the influence of social media on teens as a few of the issues that may aggravate those risks.
“You can have people exposed to the same stressors and for the most part, most people are not killing themselves,” said Jane Pearson, an adviser on suicide research to the National Institute of Mental Health. “People with mental disorders are at higher risk, but we also know that if people can manage their mental disorders, they are at lower risk.”
Suicides have been increasing steadily since 1999, going up 35 percent over two decades, before dropping 5 percent cumulatively over 2019 and 2020. The 2021 data are not final, but are not expected to change much, said Sally C. Curtin, a statistician at the National Center for Health Statistics and lead author of the new report.
In recent years, concern has grown about increased suicides among Black Americans. Native Americans and younger people. “It’s all over the country,” Curtin said of the rise in suicide among younger people. “What would a kid on a farm in Iowa and a kid in New York City have in common?”
Suicide is the second leading cause of death for people aged 10 to 34, and the new data from NCHS, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, support that trend. The rate for people aged 15 to 24 rose 8 percent and the rate for people aged 25 to 34 rose 4 percent. People in the 35-to-44-year-old and 65-to-74-year-old age groups also saw statistically significant increases.
In December, U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy issued an advisory report on the mental health of younger people, warning that “even before the pandemic, an alarming number ... struggled with feelings of helplessness, depression, and thoughts of suicide.” Both Congress and the Biden administration are working on plans to improve mental health services, especially for younger people, amid a dire shortage of caregivers.
The nationwide hotline for mental health emergencies switched to a simple 988 number in July and saw a 45 percent increase in calls, texts and chats in its first month.
Suicides are also committed overwhelmingly by men and boys. In 2021, like many other years, male suicides outnumbered female suicides by about 4 to 1, the data show. There were 38,025 suicides among men and 9,621 among women. The report found that the small increase in the 2021 women’s suicide rate was not statistically significant.
The gender disparity is most commonly explained by the stigma attached to men admitting that they are struggling with psychological issues and seeking help, Moutier said, a situation that many hope is beginning to change. It is also attributed to the fact that more men than women use firearms as a suicide method, leading to many more completed suicides.
Many experts had expected to see an increase in suicides during 2020, the first year of the pandemic, which brought lockdowns, loss, grief and uncertainty worldwide. But suicides declined that year, only to increase in 2021, when coronavirus vaccines became widely available and many people returned to their pre-covid lives. Experts said an explanation for that is still unclear.
“You’d expect the more acute time to have more of an impact,” Pearson said. “But we also know a lot happened in 2020 and 2021.”
“The tale of this pandemic in terms of mental health is going to be many, many years to process,” added Hannah Wesolowski, chief advocacy officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness, an advocacy group.
The new data also revealed an unusual monthly pattern for suicides, which typically peak in the spring months of April and May, according to Moutier. In 2021, the largest percentage increase in suicides over 2020 came in October, when 4,211 people died, 11 percent more than a year earlier.
Again, the reasons are largely unknown. Perhaps the covid surge that fall or the return to school and work contributed, speculate people in the field.
“There is no doubt we are experiencing a mental health crisis in this country,” said Miriam E. Delphin-Rittmon, assistant secretary for mental health and substance abuse at the federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. “Largely due to the ongoing covid-19 pandemic, which continues to have ripple effects, we’re seeing increased levels of anxiety and depression in children, as well as adults, and increased substance use.” | 2022-09-30T04:30:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Suicides increased in 2021, especially among younger people - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/29/suicide-increase-2021/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/29/suicide-increase-2021/ |
For half a decade, we have drawn comparisons between Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and former president Donald Trump. In many ways, the two right-wing ultranationalists are birds of a feather: They both surged to power on a tide of anti-establishment anger; they counted on the enduring support of evangelical voters and certain business elites; they gained politically by the spread of misinformation on social media; they stymied collective global action on climate change; they raged at the strictures imposed by (and the science behind) pandemic-era lockdowns; they waged a relentless culture war against supposed enemies in media, state institutions and schools.
Throughout, Bolsonaro and Trump have referred to each other as allies and fellow travelers, locked in the same battles against the Western liberal establishment. Earlier this month, in his typically self-regarding style, Trump offered Bolsonaro an endorsement ahead of upcoming national elections: “‘Tropical Trump’ as he is affectionately called, has done a GREAT job for the wonderful people of Brazil,” Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social. “When I was President of the U.S., there was no other country leader who called me more than Jair.”
As Brazilians head to the polls Sunday, the putative “Tropical Trump” is reading directly from the Trump playbook. For more than a year, Bolsonaro has derided Brazil’s election processes and called into question the integrity of the imminent vote. He insists that the country’s electronic voting system is compromised, contrary to the preponderance of evidence and the rulings of independent experts and state authorities. Sound familiar?
Opinion polls show Bolsonaro trailing his main rival and nemesis Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva by a considerable margin. Should Lula, as the leftist former president is known, win more than 50 percent of the vote in Sunday’s first round it would be enough to secure the presidency without the need for a direct second-round runoff against Bolsonaro. The incumbent, though, has repeatedly suggested that any electoral defeat would be only due to fraud — and an outcome his supporters would never accept.
Here's our story from last night on Jair Bolsonaro and Brazil's upcoming election...https://t.co/ckhWjBPQOn
— John Oliver (@iamjohnoliver) September 26, 2022
The question on many people’s minds is whether Brazilian democracy can stand up to the challenge. The current clash has raised all forms of hoary specters in a country that’s no stranger to anti-democratic coups and plots. Bolsonaro, of course, has expressed nostalgia for the years of Brazil’s right-wing military dictatorship. And while few analysts believe the country’s top brass would go along with an anti-democratic usurpation of power, Bolsonaro may have other tactics in mind.
“He could summon his supporters to take to the streets and cause turmoil, especially if there’s a second round,” said Guilherme Casarões, a political analyst at the Getulio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo, to my colleagues. “He could try to subvert the results or force a state of emergency so he could postpone the second round until next year.”
Mario Braga, analyst for international consultancy Control Risks, predicted that Brazil “may have political instability in the coming months,” but not necessarily “democratic rupture.”
“We are talking about a polarized environment and higher degree of radicalization in some parts of the electorate,” he told me.
Still, Braga added, “Bolsonaro is a credible threat to democracy” and represents “the biggest test of the country’s institutions” since the country clawed back its democracy from the military dictatorship in 1985.
Even if Bolsonaro can’t overturn or thwart the results, he can opt to refuse to leave office. And the prospect of a Brazilian Jan. 6-style event remains, with Bolsonaro supporters, fueled by an almost-existential animus against Lula and his leftist party, attempting to interrupt the statutory certification of the votes in Brasilia.
“Bolsonaro retains the fervent devotion of millions of people who believe they too are acting to save democracy,” wrote Brian Winter, editor in chief of Americas Quarterly. “Many of them, uniformed and otherwise, have guns.”
Lula was jailed for a year and a half on alleged corruption charges that his defenders always believed were trumped up. The conviction was later overturned and Lula stormed back into public life, buoyed not just by his long-standing popularity among a segment of the Brazilian electorate but the support of voters who fear Bolsonaro’s corrosive impact on the country’s body politic. At a recent rally, he cast the choice facing Brazil as one of “democracy or barbarism.”
Lula “is far from the ideal candidate, but he is squarely within the realm of the normal — and he is a supporter of democracy,” noted Britain’s Economist, not known to back charismatic leftists. “Bolsonaro, by instinct, is not. He may operate within a democratic system, but he is constantly looking for ways to evade its strictures. And the worry is that the system constraining him is less robust than the one that constrained Trump.”
Some analysts suggest a possible Bolsonaro defeat would have global implications, marking a setback for illiberal demagogues at a time when liberal democracies are under strain in many parts of the world. “If Bolsonaro loses, that will be significant,” said Richard Youngs, a senior fellow with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, to my colleagues. “The fact that Brazil has gone backward in terms of democratic quality is quite a large part of the story in explaining these negative overall trends. I think a number of autocrats could very well be put on the back foot.”
In recent months, campaigns by Brazilian civil society activists have focused international attention on the stakes of the election. On Wednesday, dozens of members of the European Parliament urged the leaders of the European Commission, including President Ursula von der Leyen, “to make it unequivocally clear to President Bolsonaro and his government that Brazil’s constitution must be respected and attempts to subvert the rules of democracy are unacceptable.”
On the same day in Washington, the Senate unanimously approved a resolution defending Brazilian democracy that was proposed by Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). It urged the U.S. government to “immediately recognize” the results of the election once announced by the country’s electoral authorities and to “review and reconsider the relationship” with Brazil in the event of a seizure of power through undemocratic means.
“It is important for the people of Brazil to know we’re on their side, on the side of democracy,” Sanders said in a statement. “With passage of this resolution, we are sending that message.” | 2022-09-30T04:31:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jair Bolsonaro, ‘Tropical Trump,’ takes Brazil’s democracy to the brink amid election - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/bolsonaro-trump-brazil-election-democracy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/bolsonaro-trump-brazil-election-democracy/ |
The Stealth Tax Buried in Kwasi Kwarteng’s Budget
LONDON, ENGLAND - SEPTEMBER 23: UK Chancellor of The Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng leaves 11 Downing Street on September 23, 2022 in London, England. Amongst other recent economic announcements including an increase in interest rates, a 1.25 percent rise in National Insurance will be scrapped from November 6th as new Prime Minister Liz Truss enacts measures to combat the cost of living crisis. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) (Photographer: Carl Court/Getty Images Europe)
For all the talk of tax cuts in UK Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng’s mini budget last week, the most significant stealth tax imposed by his predecessor Rishi Sunak remains very much in place.
In his spring budget of 2021, Sunak sought to offset the cost of the pandemic with a four-year freeze in income-tax thresholds. Ordinarily, these thresholds rise in line with inflation to preserve the real value of your income. When they don’t, people’s real spending power falls.
Consider someone who earned exactly last year’s threshold of £12,570 ($13,476) and consequently paid no tax. This year, their pay maybe rose 9.9% to match the latest CPI reading. They’d now earn £13,814, but are no better off in real terms. If the tax threshold remains at £12,570, they will now pay £248 of tax (20% of this year’s pay increase) and will be worse off as a result.
With inflation much higher than Sunak originally expected, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that this so-called fiscal drag will cost taxpayers around 30 billion pounds ($32.5 billion).
But the income-tax thresholds weren’t the only allowances to be frozen in that fateful 2021 budget. The capital gains tax (CGT) and inheritance tax (IHT) thresholds were also frozen, as was the pensions lifetime allowance. Liz Truss’s new government has kept all of these in place. T his makes tax planning simultaneously more important and complicated.
For the Treasury, the benefit of freezing the thresholds is relatively simple. Inheritance-tax receipts rose to £6.1 billion in 2021-2022, up 14% on the previous year. Capital gains tax, meanwhile, contributed £14.3 billion to Treasury coffers, an increase of 42% on the previous year. (To be fair, it wasn’t just fiscal drag that boosted CGT revenue. Certain business reliefs were cut and buy-to-let landlords also paid a lot more CGT as they exited the property market.)
For taxpayers, the frozen thresholds make it even more important to carefully plan for long-term investment goals such as retirement.
Pension contributions generally attract relief at a person’s marginal tax rate. For someone earning less than £50,270 a year, every £80 that they contribute to their pension is topped up by an additional £20 of tax relief to bring the total to £100 . For those earning above £50,270, the relief is even more generous: A £60 contribution draws £40 of relief.
When it comes to retiring, however, drawing down one’s pension may be tax-efficient, but it is not tax-free. Generally, you can withdraw a quarter of your pot tax-free, but the rest is taxed as earned income and this is where the frozen income-tax thresholds add to the bite. When these are frozen, withdrawing more money from your pension pot to compensate for inflation will inevitably mean paying more tax.
Pensions still remain a good deal, and the vast majority are completely unaffected by the gilt market volatility that so stressed the providers of lucrative, but increasingly rare, final salary pensions. But there is a limit to how much tax relief the government will grant an individual. Any pension savings above the rather arbitrary sum of £1,073,100 are taxed at 55% if you take out the money as a lump sum. If you withdraw the excess as regular income instead, you pay a 20% penalty on top of your marginal income-tax rate.
Fortunately, there is an investment vehicle with complimentary tax advantages to a pension. An Individual Savings Account (ISA) doesn’t attract tax relief on contributions, but you can withdraw money entirely free of income tax, and ISAs also enjoy similar CGT advantages to pensions. And although you can usually only pay £20,000 a year into an ISA, you can grow your portfolio as large as you like without attracting penal taxation.
Therefore, a promising strategy for retirement and estate planning involves combining these two products to beat the threshold freezes and enjoy the best of both worlds. Ideally you would throttle back your pension contributions in favor of ISA savings if you feared that your pension pot was likely to exceed the pension lifetime allowance.
There is one key consideration, though, when juggling both pensions and ISAs. The former can be very efficient in terms of inheritance tax, which is important given the freeze in IHT thresholds. ISAs, meanwhile, have no such exemption from IHT. That means when it comes to retirement, you should withdraw from ISAs first, as they offer an income-tax exemption, but no protection against inheritance tax. Each pound you spend from your ISA is not only free of income tax but can also reduce your potential inheritance-tax liability.
Of course, there are more subtle variations around these themes, which would generally require the assistance of a financial adviser. Nevertheless, even with random freezes and changeable allowances, it is possible to construct a viable strategy for income in retirement and still leave a tax-efficient legacy for your loved ones.
Much of this resourcefulness would be entirely unnecessary if the government’s policy were applied in a simple and predictable manner. Investors may appreciate tax breaks, but what they crave above all else is certainty and consistency.
• Why Investors Are Facing Even More Market Instability: Mohamed A. El-Erian | 2022-09-30T06:06:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Stealth Tax Buried in Kwasi Kwarteng’s Budget - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-stealth-tax-buried-in-kwasi-kwartengsbudget/2022/09/30/8e1ed102-407d-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-stealth-tax-buried-in-kwasi-kwartengsbudget/2022/09/30/8e1ed102-407d-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Security forces killed more than 150 people and raped scores of women in 2009
By Rachel Chason
Soldiers unload bodies of victims fatally shot by Guinea junta forces at a demonstration in Conakry on Oct. 2, 2009. (Seyllou/AFP/Getty Images)
CONAKRY, Guinea — The 9-year-old girl headed to the soccer stadium with her friends on a rainy Monday to join thousands of people protesting Guinea’s junta government, calling for democracy. But the singing and dancing turned to mayhem when security forces opened fire, Djenabou Bah later recounted. She tried to run but soldiers caught her. They repeatedly stabbed her with bayonets, then raped her.
“For 13 years, nothing has been done,” said Bah, now 22, her eyes blank and the scars of knife wounds still visible on her hands and neck.
After years of delay, this West African country has begun trying the officials — including former president Moussa Dadis Camara — allegedly responsible for the carnage at the stadium on Sept. 28, 2009, when security forces killed more than 150 civilians and raped more than 100 women, according to a United Nations commission, then tried to cover it up.
Human rights experts say the trial, which began Wednesday, is historic because governments rarely try their own leaders in domestic courts for atrocities of such magnitude. Victims have praised the proceeding as a chance for long-awaited justice.
“Now is the first time I have some hope,” said Bah, who says she is ready to forgive despite the horrors she experienced and those she witnessed — including members of the presidential guard mowing down protesters as they knelt to pray.
But for many in Conakry, hopes of righting past injustices are dampened by the reality of the present.
Since last year, Guinea’s government has been led by a new military junta, which has banned public demonstrations and dissolved the coalition of civil society groups that served as its main opposition. The junta, helmed by Col. Mamady Doumbouya, has faced widespread international condemnation and sanctions for failing to establish a timeline for democratic elections.
But Doumbouya has also been consistent in his commitment to holding a trial. Former president Alpha Condé, who Doumbouya ousted in a bloodless coup last year, had avoided doing so during more than a decade in power, despite strong pressure from domestic and international human rights groups to act. The International Criminal Court began examining the case in 2009 and will continue to closely follow the proceedings, ICC prosecutor Karim Khan said.
“These crimes were among the most brutal in Guinea’s history, the kind that shocks the conscious,” said Elise Keppler, associate international justice director at Human Rights Watch, which has been documenting the violence since 2009. “Fair credible proceedings are necessary to send a clear message that such crimes cannot be tolerated.”
The historical roots of Guinea’s latest coup
Ibrahima Diallo, a local activist who has been jailed since July for helping to organize a protest, said he worries the junta’s decision to launch the trial on Wednesday — the 13th anniversary of the massacre — seems to be more about publicity than justice.
“It’s about winning international goodwill,” said Diallo, who was a student leader in the stadium that day, “and justifying their decision to stay in power … I want justice, but my fear is that this is not about real justice.”
Diall0 had been living in exile under Condé and returned to Conakry last year after the coup, optimistic about Doumbouya’s stated commitment to democracy. Diallo said any hope vanished as he saw Doumbouya’s government crackdown on dissent, with security forces fatally wounding multiple peaceful protesters and eventually showing up in hoods at Diallo’s house to arrest him. He is now detained at the same Conakry prison as Camara.
Outside the courthouse on Wednesday, a young woman who said she was raped in the stadium waited with clasped hands for the opening. An older woman whose husband’s body was never found clung to the arm of a young man whose father’s dead body was also never recovered. Around the courtyard of the new courthouse, built especially for the trial, were banners with Guinea’s red, yellow and green flag, and signs with hammers and scales of justice declaring: “Justice for all.”
Alphonse Charles Wright, Guinea’s justice minister, promised in a speech outside the courthouse that the trial would be transparent, impartial and safe. The country, he said, would not be afraid to confront its past.
Inside the courtroom, Camara, who had been living in Burkina Faso and returned to Conakry for the trial, sat quietly through opening proceedings along with 10 other top members of his government accused of orchestrating the killing.
Camara and the other defendants have not yet entered pleas. A lawyer for Camara, who has maintained his innocence since the massacre, said he will plead not guilty.
The trial could last more than a year, Wright said, with victims able to personally testify.
How the coup in Guinea could raise car prices — or foster better deals for its people
As Asmaou Diallo sat in her Conakry office this week, a framed photo of her son, killed during the massacre, hung on the wall behind her. She said survivors and victims’ families want compensation. They want government recognition of the horrors they endured. And they want the facts finally revealed.
“We want the truth,” said Asmaou Diallo, the president the Association of Victims, Parents and Friends of the Sept. 28 Massacre. “Why? That is what we want to know. Who ordered it?”
She said she is grateful that the government has finally decided to act. But she said she also fears for democracy.
Victims and their families crowded into her organization’s lobby this week, bringing with them medical records and photographs as they prepared to testify. Among them was Oumar Diallo, a 55-year-old truck driver who said he saw a soldier smash his rifle into the skull of a woman in front of him. When Oumar Diallo raised his arms to shield his own face, the soldier broke them with his rifle.
He said he spent more than a month in the hospital and has not been able to work since, his arms still too mangled. He has received no compensation from the government, relying on his family and charity to help him support his daughters.
His hope, he said, is that the trial brings a measure of support.
Saran Cissé, a 43-year-old mother with a quick smile, recalled hearing a few loud “booms,” then seeing those around her begin to fall. A young man who tried to help her escape over a stadium wall was shot in the head. When security forces approached, she begged them to kill her instead of rape her. They did not listen.
In the months that followed, she said, her husband rejected her because of the stigma of assault and tried to keep her from her children. “I have suffered humiliation,” she said, as tears streamed down her face, but added that she was determined to keep telling her story so that the atrocities would never be repeated.
For Bah, who said she was raped and stabbed at age 9, there has been no moving on. She was rejected by the man who had been chosen for her to marry. She has headaches and often struggles to sleep. “I have had no peace,” she said, her voice quiet and her gaze facing downward.
When asked if she would testify at the trial, her eyes for the first time lit up. “Of course,” she said. “I am ready.”
Borso Tall in Dakar, Senegal, contributed to this report. | 2022-09-30T07:15:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After shocking stadium massacre, Guinea finally begins trial of former leaders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/guinea-conakry-stadium-massacre-trial/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/guinea-conakry-stadium-massacre-trial/ |
Giorgia Meloni Has a Mandate But Little Time
Giorgia Meloni, leader of Brothers of Italy, before a general election campaign rally by right-wing coalition made up of Brothers of Italy, Forza Italia, and League parties, in Rome, Italy, on Thursday, Sept. 22, 2022. Italy’s right-wing coalition would not seek an overhaul of the country’s plan for spending European Union recovery funds, a leading member of the alliance said as investors closely watch Sunday’s elections. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
Those disheartened by the election campaign run by Giorgia Meloni may think that the best thing about Italy’s incoming government will be its likely transience. Hers will be the country’s 70th government since World War II. But it would be wrong to conclude that Italian leaders don’t matter. To the contrary, Europe badly needs a stable Italy capable of tackling long-festering economic and social problems that threaten to spiral out of control.
If Meloni wants to achieve anything while in office, she’ll first need to tone down the retrograde rhetoric that characterized her campaign. Her Brothers of Italy party is squarely rooted in postwar neo-fascism, a legacy Meloni has at times embroidered with her own brand of euro-skepticism. Her campaign featured attacks on immigrants and what she called the “LGBT lobby.” She has sometimes echoed the xenophobic language of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. It’s no wonder that the outside world has some doubts about her aptitude. She’ll need to decide if she wants to provoke or to govern.
The new government won’t take office until late October, but with an economy expected to grow by only 0.4% this year, Meloni has little time to lose. Italy’s public debt is now more than 150% of gross domestic product. Per-capita GDP hasn’t grown since 2000, and nearly a quarter of the country’s youth are out of work and not in school. Rising interest rates have sent yields on 10-year bonds to 4.3%, compared to less than 1% last year.
Reassuring investors that Italy can still manage its immense liabilities should be Meloni’s top priority. Selecting a competent economic minister would be a prudent first step. Next, her government should set a small number of clear goals when drafting its first budget. Simplifying the country’s convoluted tax system, something Meloni advocated on the campaign trail, would go a long way toward improving compliance and investment. Bolstering the flagging state education system — which is plagued by excessive bureaucracy, rigidities in hiring and centralization — would help lay the groundwork for growth.
Meloni will also need to ditch the corporatist and protectionist policies she aired on the campaign trail, which would only compound Italy’s chronic lack of productivity. To some extent, she won’t have a choice: Some $200 billion in loans and grants from the EU’s pandemic-recovery funds, which Italy desperately needs, were conditioned on a fiscal framework and set of reforms agreed to by Meloni’s predecessor, Mario Draghi. Any sign that Italy is reneging on its commitments would also make it ineligible for the new bond-buying instrument approved by the European Central Bank in July. It should help Meloni that Matteo Salvini’s League, a coalition partner, had a disastrous election, polling less than 9%. That should make it easier for her to resist his unaffordable campaign promises.
Beyond shoring up public finances, Meloni will face no shortage of challenges. Most prominently, Italy needs to continue working with its European and NATO allies to counter Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, even as sanctions-related energy costs soar this winter. Meloni has wisely resisted calls for more deficit spending to shield Italians from these costs. But she’ll have to find a better way to fund the support already announced; a windfall tax that Draghi imposed on energy companies has produced much less revenue than expected and faces legal challenges. Longer-term, Italy needs to further reduce its heavy dependence on Russian gas and stick to its energy-transition targets.
Meloni’s rise has been dizzying. But she should remember that what gets Italian politicians into power rarely keeps them there for long. The sooner the new government moves beyond the incendiary rhetoric and focuses on delivering stable government and growth, the better her chances of staying relevant — and in office.
• Meloni Could Have More Sway in EU Than at Home: Rachel Sanderson | 2022-09-30T07:37:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Giorgia Meloni Has a Mandate But Little Time - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/giorgia-meloni-has-a-mandate-butlittle-time/2022/09/30/601069c2-408e-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/giorgia-meloni-has-a-mandate-butlittle-time/2022/09/30/601069c2-408e-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Gatsby, the Dollar, and Staring Blankly at the World Falling Apart
Bound for the Plaza?
Thoughts in the currency market are turning toward the Plaza Hotel. The stately pile at the southeast corner of Central Park has a lasting place in American culture as the scene of Tom Buchanan’s confrontation with Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby; in the financial world, it has lasting fame as the place where world finance ministers and central bankers came together in September 1985 to agree on intervening to weaken the dollar against the West German deutsche mark and the Japanese yen. The effect was dramatic (if not as dramatic as Daisy Buchanan’s choice between her husband and her lover):
The ministerial intervention was successful and achieved what its backers wanted. The dollar has never regained its pre-Plaza highs from early 1985. But now, wishful thoughts are returning to the Plaza Accord once more. As the chart shows, the dollar is still far below its 1985 high in nominal terms. On a real effective basis, taking account of inflation, Citibank’s index show that it is almost back to its high since inception in 1989, after the accord was reached.
Some of the dollar cliches are true. Printing dollars does give the US “exorbitant privilege” (in the words of former French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing) and it is “our currency and your problem” (to quote President Richard Nixon’s treasury secretary, John Connally). And so it is that a succession of major economies have tried over the last week to rein in the US currency.
Last week, Japan’s Ministry of Finance intervened directly to avert the yen from falling beyond 145 per dollar; this Wednesday brought the Bank of England’s intervention in the gilts market, which also had the effect of arresting the pound’s descent toward parity; and on Thursday, the People’s Bank of China responded to the yuan’s weakest dollar exchange rate since 2008 by warning: “Do not bet on one-way appreciation or depreciation of the yuan, as losses will definitely be incurred in the long term.”
In all cases, sharp losses for the home currency were more or less halted. None of the interventions has as yet have led to any kind of major reversal:
Interventions by three of the four largest economies outside the US in the space of a week show that the dollar’s strength is beginning to cause real stress. But there are at least two sides to any currency trade, and no meaningful limit to the dollar is possible without willing participation by the US. Hence the talk of a return to the Plaza. The logic is expressed as follows by Julian Brigden of Macro Intelligence 2 Partners:
We’ve discussed the growing use of policy as a thumb on the economic scale. Now, with volatility rising and some markets threatening to seize up, policymakers appear to have seen the size of the economic shark they are fighting and had the thought that, with apologies to Jaws, they’re “going to need a bigger thumb.”
If not a full-blown formal repeat of Plaza, there are at least hopes of a new version of the informal 2016 Plaza Accord, when dollar strength caused problems for China, and the Fed decided to hike rates only once during the year, rather than the four times it had previously guided the market to expect. The shifts in the financial tectonic plates are already causing alarm, while the Ukrainian conflict has driven a sharp devaluation for European currencies compared to the dollar. A strong dollar has also driven several emerging market crises in the past.
However, the story is more complicated. The Institute of International Finance points out that the dollar has been far stronger with respect to the developed world than to emerging markets:
According to the IIF’s estimates of fair value, the euro and the pound are still overvalued and have further to fall, despite the damage they have already sustained. That might vitiate any Plaza-style attempt to limit the dollar. And it also confirms that this dollar surge is likely to create more pain in western Europe than in the emerging world.
Beyond that, the forces driving the dollar are strong, and not going away. To quote Fiona Cincotta of City Index:
There’s nowhere to hide. There’s still some dollar strength to come. If we just think about what’s going on with the dollar, it’s being supported by safe haven flows, it’s been supported by a very hawkish Fed. It’s not showing any signs of really slowing down in that hiking cycle right now. And also, there’s no alternative... You don’t want to be going near the euro right now, given the energy crisis, the inflation troubles over the state of the economy... There’s nothing that’s appealing about the pound given the concerns over the outlook for the UK economy.”
Or, as Nick Carraway in Gatsby might have put it, the dollar is the pursued, and everyone else is pursuing, busy or tired. Weakening it would be hard. In any case, the US isn’t on board for doing so, for a list of reasons covered by Morgan Stanley’s economics team:
First and most importantly, a weaker USD runs counter to what the Fed and Treasury are trying to achieve: lower inflation. A weaker dollar is, on net, inflationary in the US and deflationary abroad; foreign currency appreciation supports higher external demand. While US inflation is elevated, it seems difficult to countenance why the US would proactively participate in an inflationary dollar policy, and without US participation, we see little chance of success.
Beyond that, they couldn’t do another Plaza if they wanted to, because of lack of ammunition:
We think that policymakers are aware of a hard truth: They don’t have enough FX reserves to make a sustained difference. Back in 1985-87, the last time we had a coordinated intervention to weaken USD, daily FX turnover was near US$200 billion per day (on a net-gross basis) but, as of the last reported BIS figure in 2019, daily turnover is over 40 times higher at US$8.3 trillion per day. The G10 collectively has US$2.8 trillion in FX reserve assets (deposits and securities, so excluding gold).
The bottom line is that despite the growing problems the rising dollar is causing for the world, we won’t be returning to the Plaza any time soon. The non-dollar economies may have each other’s company, but in another pearl from Gatsby, they must feel like “they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly.”
$till $pending
If there is one obstacle to the Fed’s hopes to slay inflation (and also to the desire for the US to weaken its own currency), it’s the obdurate American consumer. Helped by a robust labor market and a formidable supply of pandemic savings and stimulus checks, they’re still spending.
The robustness of the labor market has many observers baffled. Using data on weekly initial claims for jobless insurance, a good but noisy indicator of hiring trends, it appears that layoffs are falling again. Initial claims seemed to have hit a bottom in the spring and started a steady rise (exactly what the Fed was hoping to engineer), but the latest data show they’re falling:
This keeps consumers spending. Aaron Clark, equity portfolio manager at GW&K Investment Management, speculates that companies are mindful of the difficulty they had rehiring people after the pandemic, and are trying harder to avoid layoffs than they would in a typical cycle:
It was so hard to hire that if they’re viewing this as just the Fed fighting inflation, then I think they’ll hold on to their workers longer than they might otherwise have done in a normal recession… They don’t want to now lay them off and then a year from now be trying to hire them back. So I think companies might be just willing to eat margins more and hold onto their workers in a slowdown.
Thus tighter monetary policy is not yet severing consumers from their jobs and their paychecks. Beyond this, the Fed is also hoping to create a “wealth effect” to bring inflation down — falls in asset prices will make people feel poorer and less likely to spend. But even the deepening bear market won’t derail any consumption in the next several quarters, according to Doug Peta, chief US investment strategist at BCA Research. Americans, he said, will spend enough to keep the economy afloat:
Empirically, changes in equity wealth have exerted little to no impact on consumption... Neither the equity bear market nor a softening housing market will stifle consumption. The Fed’s anti-inflation campaign will eventually induce a recession, but wealth effect concerns are overblown.
The graph below shows consumer spending on a near-perfect linear trend, barring the minor dip during the height of the pandemic in 2020, and an even shallower one during the Great Financial Crisis:
The mountain of excess savings US consumers accumulated across 2020 and 2021 have provided the foundation for their spending power. The wealth effect is real, Peta underscored, and household spending fluctuates depending on their current wealth. But the savings rate is low and declining, suggesting they are finding ways to keep spending.
What has a greater impact is changes in housing wealth, Peta said, citing a study by group of academics led by Yale University Nobel economics laureate Robert Shiller that analyzes the relationship between the consumer and home prices:
Changes in equity wealth exert considerably less influence over changes in consumption than changes in housing wealth. With a two-quarter lag, year-over-year consumption has changed by nearly three cents for every dollar move in equity wealth... The housing wealth regression indicates that every dollar of changes in housing wealth leads to a 38-cent change in consumption.
Multiple data point to the resiliency of households, from credit card spending to consumer confidence, yet Luca Paolini, chief strategist at Pictet Asset Management, warns this may wear thin and that betting on endless consumer spending is “a very dangerous way of thinking”:
Inflation is rising more than incomes, and the savings that consumers accumulated during Covid are still high but declining. The outlook of the consumer is better than the outlook for businesses… but I think we shouldn’t overestimate the fact that the labor market is the last thing to drop. In every recession, the labor market is strong before it gets worse.
Nobody should extrapolate a strong US consumer long into the future, then. But the evidence is that consumer strength can last longer than anticipated. That’s good news for many, but also means at the margin that the Fed may need to keep rates higher for longer than it wanted.—Isabelle Lee
Narrative Fallacy and the Gilts Market
I probably shouldn’t go there. But. Plenty of people are trying to argue that the gilt market implosion wasn’t caused by last Friday’s disastrously misjudged “mini-budget,” but by the Federal Reserve and global rising bond yields. There is a grain of truth to this, in that the gilt meltdown required underlying conditions of rising rates and elevated risk aversion. But it’s still absurd to say that the new chancellor of the exchequer’s decision to announce the second-biggest tax cut in UK history, with no information on spending cuts to pay for it, wasn’t the trigger for the implosion, because it was.
International conditions were and remain difficult, and it was obvious to anyone that bond markets were likely to revolt if the UK tried to embark on a new wave of borrowing. That makes the bizarre decision to press ahead more, not less, culpable.
It’s best illustrated with an analogy made 12 years ago by the great bond investor Bill Gross, the founder of Pimco. He said: “The UK is a must to avoid. Its gilts are resting on a bed of nitroglycerine.” That call was a tad early, but we can use the illustration. When Kwasi Kwarteng arrived at the Treasury, the gilts market was indeed resting on nitroglycerine. Inflation and rising rates meant there was every danger that it would explode. And he could see this clearly. Yet his first move was to light a match and blow it up. As the global market was so evidently troubled, his decision to press ahead is unforgivable. He didn’t put the explosive there, but it was his decision to light the fuse.
For some context, the following chart shows the spread of the UK bank rate over the fed funds rate over the last 12 months, as well as the spread of 10-year gilt yields over Treasuries. The Bank of England, hobbled by a more obviously troubled economy, slipped behind the Fed in the hiking cycle. Meanwhile, 10-year gilts continued to trade at a lower yield than Treasuries — until the morning of the mini-budget, when they overtook Treasuries in spectacular fashion:
It’s also inaccurate to say: “No, the pound isn’t crashing over a trifling batch of tax cuts. It’s because the markets are terrified of Starmer.” That was the headline on an article by Conservative peer Daniel Hannan published by the ConservativeHome.com website. Keir Starmer is the leader of the opposition Labour party, whose chances of coming to power in 2024 seem to have improved this week. Markets would doubtless prefer Britain not to move back to the center-left. Political uncertainty was a component in the loss of confidence. But the greatest problem was the appearance that the current government is incompetent, and that yet another leadership change lies ahead. In a week dominated by discussions of the gilt markets, I hadn’t seen or heard Starmer’s name mentioned even once until that article. The next general election is two years away, far too distant for markets to pay attention to Labour’s improvement in the polls.
When criticizing a politician, it’s difficult to avoid the appearance of making a political point. But the facts in this case are obvious. This was one of the biggest and most damaging market reactions to a policy announcement in memory. The error was entirely avoidable and self-inflicted, and its perpetrators have no choice but to own it.
More magazine covers. The Economist’s trajectory on the Liz Truss administration can be traced through its covers. This was three weeks ago:
And this is their current cover:
Is this just a matter of the elitists who read the Economist looking down on people with whom they disagree? No, not really. This is the front page of the Daily Star, one of Britain’s livelier downmarket tabloids, from earlier this week:
As for Bloomberg Opinion itself, it’s fair to say we pegged in advance that Liz Truss’s greatest risk was ridicule. This is the headline from a piece written three weeks ago by Sir Max Hastings (a former editor of the Daily Telegraph):
And this was the headline for Points of Return yesterday:
With the latest polls showing a spectacular fall in the Conservatives’ popularity, this looks like one occasion when the media managed to do more than provide contrarian indicators. And they might even have provided something like a laugh at a difficult time.Have a good weekend everyone.More From Bloomberg Opinion:
• Aaron Brown: The Stock Market Had History on Its Side. Now It Doesn’t
• Clive Crook: Is It Too Late for Truss to Repair the Damage?
• Javier Blas: Uncle Sam Wants to Be an Oil Trader. That’s a Bad Idea | 2022-09-30T07:37:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gatsby, the Dollar, and Staring Blankly at the World Falling Apart - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/gatsby-the-dollar-and-staring-blankly-at-the-world-falling-apart/2022/09/30/08e4f81c-4088-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/gatsby-the-dollar-and-staring-blankly-at-the-world-falling-apart/2022/09/30/08e4f81c-4088-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Blast targets education center in Shiite area of Kabul, kills at least 19
A woman arrives on a motorbike to search for a relative at a hospital in Kabul on Friday after a blast in a learning center in the Dasht-i-Barchi area of Afghanistan's capital. (AFP/Getty Images)
A suicide bomber targeted an education center on Friday in the Afghan capital of Kabul where students were taking practice exams, killing at least 19, according to authorities.
Nearly every Friday, explosions have targeted places of worship and other institutions in Afghanistan, carried out by the radical Islamic State group despite the Taliban takeover of the country a year ago.
Police spokesman Khalid Zadran said 19 were killed and 27 wounded, but the toll is likely to climb. The target was an education center in the Dasht-i-Barchi neighborhood, which is predominantly populated by ethnic Hazaras, a mostly Shiite Muslim group.
Prominent Afghan high school targeted by deadly bombings
The Islamic State group see Shiites as heretics and has regularly carried out attacks on their neighborhoods and places of worship. No group has yet claimed responsibility for Friday’s attack.
The U.S. chargé d’affaires for Afghanistan, Karen Decker, condemned the attack in a tweet. “Targeting room full of students taking exams is shameful; all students should be able to pursue an education in peace & without fear.”
While violence in general has dropped dramatically around the country since the Taliban takeover in August 2021 and the withdrawal of the U.S.-led coalition, the Islamic State continues to carry out attacks.
In April, a pair of blasts struck outside a high school in Dasht-i-Barchi, killing six people, mostly teenage boys. Another school in the same neighborhood was attacked in May 2021, killing at least 85 people, again mostly students. A maternity hospital in the same neighborhood in May 2020 was the scene of a horrific assault that left 16 dead, including newborns. | 2022-09-30T07:38:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Afghan blast in Shiite neighborhood of Kabul kills at least 19 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/afghanistan-kabul-blast-hazara-dasht-i-barchi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/afghanistan-kabul-blast-hazara-dasht-i-barchi/ |
People make preparations for a concert at the Red Square, with constructions reading the words ‘’Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Russia’’, and the St. Basil’s Cathedral and Lenin Mausoleum on the background, in Moscow, Russia, Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022. The Kremlin said that Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of the four regions of Ukraine that held a referendum on joining Russia will attend a ceremony to sign documents on the regions’ incorporation into Russia, which will be followed by a big concert on Red Square. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko) | 2022-09-30T07:38:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russian strike kills 23 as Kremlin to annex Ukraine regions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ukrainian-official-russian-strike-kills-23-wounds-28/2022/09/30/c8bb567a-408a-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/ukrainian-official-russian-strike-kills-23-wounds-28/2022/09/30/c8bb567a-408a-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Neil deGrasse Tyson tries punditry, with less-than-stellar results
Review by Mark Whitaker
In his new book, Neil deGrasse Tyson offers takes on human and political affairs, through the lens of science. (Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
Handsome, gregarious and passionate about his subject matter, Neil deGrasse Tyson for more than two decades was America’s most famous astrophysicist since Carl Sagan. While holding down a day job running the Hayden Planetarium in New York, Tyson became a recognizable fixture as a television host, guest and paid public speaker. Then, four years ago, several allegations of sexual misconduct surfaced, and Tyson bowed out of the public eye until the planetarium announced that it had conducted an investigation and decided to keep him on. Now, after a further covid delay, Tyson is making a comeback of sorts with a new book, “Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization,” in which he meditates on what a life studying the majesty of the stars and the planets can teach us about how to deal with all the messy social and political conflicts bedeviling us here on Earth.
When Tyson sticks to his orbit of expertise, he remains as engaging as ever, like the professor of a popular college survey course that students might take to satisfy their science requirement. He is lucidly down-to-earth and charmingly enthusiastic in describing the rigors of the scientific method, explaining the elegance of classic equations such as Newton’s second law of motion and Einstein’s theory of relativity, and cataloguing all the neat technology we fast-tracked by sending people into space. Yet while Tyson extols the virtue of a skeptical mind-set in scientific inquiry, he often comes off as none-too-skeptical in his discussion of how that mind-set can be applied to human and political affairs.
In a typically credulous passage, Tyson recounts a conversation he had with Bill Clinton about a rock that Clinton, as president, kept on the coffee table between the two facing couches in the Oval Office. “He told me that any time an argument was about to break out between geopolitical adversaries or recalcitrant members of Congress, he would point to the rock and remind people it came from the Moon,” Tyson writes. “This gesture often recalibrated the conversation, serving as a reminder that cosmic perspectives can force you to take pause and reflect on the meaning of life, and on the value of peace that sustains it.” Nowhere does Tyson suggest that he understands how difficult negotiating with Congress and foreign leaders actually is, let alone what other associations might come to mind when conjuring up Oval Office couches in connection with Bill Clinton.
In a chapter titled “Exploration & Discovery,” Tyson chronicles the astounding pace of scientific and technological change over the past century and a quarter, beginning with the invention of the airplane, the spread of automobiles, the electrification of cities and the rise of cinema. “Daily life in 1930 would be unrecognizable to anyone transported from the year 1900,” he writes. He goes on to show how the same would be true for every 30-year span after that, up through the advent of the World Wide Web, smartphones, social media, GPS and electric cars between 1990 and 2020. In all his wonder, however, Tyson doesn’t address the way many of these latest advances have served to sap privacy and sow political divisions, or how resentment of the economic dislocation brought on by all this technological change has fed political backlash across the globe, from Brexit to the MAGA movement.
In some of the book’s most fanciful passages, Tyson proudly lets his nerd flag fly, imagining what visitors from space would make of our social divisions and holding up Comic-Con, the annual gathering of comic book aficionados, as a model of social community. In other places, however, he exhibits some self-awareness that real-world headlines aren’t always best met with slide rules and scientific calculators. In an embarrassing incident from his own “Forbidden Twitter File,” Tyson recalls, he posted a tweet pointing out that mass shootings represent “a tiny fraction of all preventable deaths in the country … within days of the 2019 El Paso, Texas shooting, in which 46 people were shot in a Walmart, 23 of them killed.” The social media pounding that Tyson received “for my insensitivity to the victims and their loved ones” was a reminder of a similar backlash, before the Twitter era, after he compared the death toll on 9/11 to the number of Americans who die in traffic accidents every month.
Only when Tyson attempts to grapple with the hot-button issues of race and gender identity does he acknowledge that the world of science isn’t always as noble and objective as he has contended. From eugenics to conversion therapy, science has routinely been manipulated and invoked to justify racist, homophobic and transphobic beliefs and policies, and it remains rife with implicit bias of all kinds. Rather than delve into the structural roots of those abuses, however, Tyson suggests that the human sciences would be fine if they just worked harder to be more like his bailiwick, the physical sciences. “Among branches of scientific inquiry,” he writes, “those most susceptible to human bias are fields that study the appearance, conduct, and habits of other humans. Topping that list, find psychology, sociology, and especially anthropology.” In case scholars in those disciplines aren’t already aware, Tyson advises that “if they are to establish and preserve their integrity, these fields must engage extra levels of peer review and disclosure, with the express purpose of spotting bias.”
The title of the book — “Starry Messenger” — is a translation of Sidereus Nuncius, the Latin treatise that Galileo Galilei published in 1610, announcing to the world the first discoveries he had made using a telescope. It’s a touching tribute to the father of astronomy and to the more than 400 years of scientific inquiry since. Intentionally or not, it’s also a good description of the author. Substitute “starry-eyed,” and you have an apt summary of the earnest spirit and frustrating substance of Tyson’s debut as a social pundit.
Mark Whitaker is the author of “Smoketown: The Untold Story of the Other Great Black Renaissance.” Previously, he was managing editor of CNN and editor of Newsweek.
Starry Messenger
Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization | 2022-09-30T09:08:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Neil deGrasse Tyson tries punditry, with less-than-stellar results - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/30/neil-degrasse-tyson-tries-punditry-with-less-than-stellar-results/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/30/neil-degrasse-tyson-tries-punditry-with-less-than-stellar-results/ |
David Hayes, who served as special assistant to the president for climate policy since President Biden took office, is leaving his post Friday
As special assistant to the president for climate policy, David Hayes has led efforts to implement climate resilience interagency working groups dedicated to extreme heat, drought, wildfires, floods and coastal impacts; worked to expand offshore wind power; and helped to develop and carry out President Biden’s ambitious plan to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030. (Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images)
With two back-to-back hurricanes — one of which ranks among the most extreme storms in history to threaten the United States — making landfall on the heels of a summer of record-shattering heat waves and raging wildfires, countless Americans are experiencing the country’s acute vulnerability to climate change firsthand.
For the past two years David Hayes — who served as deputy interior secretary during the Clinton and Obama administrations — has largely focused on coping with climate impacts and becoming more resilient as special assistant to the president for climate policy. Hayes, 69, whose last day in his post is Friday, has led efforts to implement climate resilience interagency working groups dedicated to extreme heat, drought, wildfires, floods and coastal impacts; worked to expand offshore wind power; and helped to develop and carry out President Biden’s ambitious plan to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030.
This week, ahead of his departure, Hayes sat down with The Washington Post for an interview to reflect on his experience and how prepared he thinks the country is to weather the climate threats of a warming planet.
(This interview has been edited for clarity and length.)
Biden swells the ranks of his White House climate team
As a country, how are we doing when it comes climate resiliency and adaptation? If you had to assign a letter grade, what would it be and why?
On Jan. 19, [2021] the letter grade would be “D.” We really as a country have not given nearly enough attention to the climate impacts that are happening. Most of the conversation around climate traditionally has been on the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition to clean energy. The president in his climate executive order said yes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, yes to transition to clean energy, but yes, also, to resilience, to getting our communities prepared because these impacts are happening right now. Look at today in Florida, my gosh, what more of a reminder do we need.
So, “D” before the president came in, “A” for ambition with the president to make resilience a key part of the climate platform of the administration, and I would say “A” in terms of creating the ecosystem in the government to confront the resilience challenge.
The first step is organizing around resilience. This is just like climate. Climate doesn’t exist in one agency or another agency. Similarly with resilience, what we need to do is actually look not at a department-by-department approach. We need to look at what are the impacts that communities are facing and how do we organize around those impacts and have the federal government help the communities that are facing coastal impacts, extreme heat, wildfire, drought and flood. The ecosystem we developed was to actually focus on the impacts and not on the federal funding streams or the federal services or the particular departments that have a role to play, and we set up these interagency working groups. We have a new way of doing things. I’m very excited about these impact-focused interagency working groups.
But we have a lot more work to do. It’s like an “A” on the first test of a semester, but the finals are coming up.
What have you accomplished in your time as part of the White House climate team and what’s the most important thing you couldn’t get done, or the biggest stumbling block you encountered?
One of the biggest voids that we saw early on was the fact that there was not a capability to tell communities, basically, for your Zip code, 50 years from now, what’s your extreme heat risk, what’s your flood risk? So we’ve worked for the past year with experts at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey and our own Office of Science and Technology Policy to put together the Climate Mapping for Resilience and Adaptation web portal. You can go down to the census tract and look forward. That’s particularly salient, by the way, at a time when under the bipartisan infrastructure law, we’re going to be investing over a trillion dollars in new infrastructure. Let’s make sure that communities know what the risks are and so the infrastructure can be designed in a way that will withstand what we’re seeing in Florida right now.
The portal is also designed to give communities the tools they need. It pulls together, for example, under wildfire and under extreme heat, here are the funding opportunities from the federal government.
The biggest challenge is continuing to work with communities and doing the outreach with communities. It’s something that we need to continue to work on and expand our efforts. This is all about community decisions about how they are going to best protect themselves.
When you look at what’s happening with Ian, what does it tell you about America’s vulnerability to climate impacts, and where we stand in terms of resilience? What needs to shift so that the country can be well prepared for the future?
Ian reminds us that we have underinvested in longer-term resilience. We’ve been very good as a country in terms of immediate response and you’ll see it again with FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency]. They are fabulous in coming in and working to get the power back up and dealing with the immediate impacts. But as a country and certainly prior administrations and prior Congresses have not funded the longer term issues.
I’ll give you one other example of an initiative that we’re excited about that is highly relevant here: the National Initiative to Advance Building Codes. Modern building codes ensure that the structures being built in that community will withstand the kind of amazing winds, et cetera, and they also are very oriented toward energy efficiency. But only 30 percent of the communities in the country have adopted modern building codes.
It’s just a plain old practical thing, but it’s essential. When you build back now after this crisis, will the infrastructure be able to withstand the next Ian that’s coming along? That question has not been asked in previous administrations. It’s being asked and answered in this one.
What has been the impact of the initiative to advance building codes?
We’re early in it. On Friday, we are sending out to all of our agencies directives about how to ensure that in their notices of funding opportunities, they are incentivizing the adoption of building codes. There are steps then that communities have to take to raise up their building codes. Those are out of our control. But we’re excited about the uptake that we’ve had and the recognition by communities that they need to advance.
Wildfires have only gotten more severe and costly. Was anything done differently this past year? Will something be done differently next year?
We now have a 10-year plan from the Forest Service and a five-year plan from the Department of Interior for identifying the high-risk fire sheds. We are using the new money coming from the [bipartisan infrastructure] bill and from the IRA [Inflation Reduction Act] to be focusing on those high-risk fire sheds. This is another area that’s been around for a while, but it’s been underfunded terribly.
We’re already talking about shifting the firefighting workforce, now that fire season is ending, thank goodness, into fire mitigation efforts, so this is a huge focus.
How much safer are Americans today compared to before Biden took office?
We are definitely safer. Communities have more information to make their decisions. We have more funding that we are getting out.
But we’ve got a challenge here. Climate change is happening, is accelerating and creating more risk. So, I don’t want to sugarcoat it. We’ve got our work cut out for us, but we’re confronting it and addressing it aggressively.
Are policymakers and the public beginning to recognize the importance of adapting and becoming more resilient in the face of climate change? What role do you see it playing as part of the country’s overall response to climate change?
The fact that Congress and the bipartisan infrastructure law gave $50 billion for resilience under a title called resilience, that tells you something.
[On Wednesday,] Sen. Christopher A. Coons’s [D-Del.] and Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s [R-Alaska] bipartisan bill called the National Climate Adaptation and Resilience Strategy Act passed out of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on a voice vote, which you never see. The fact that Sen. Coons and Sen. Murkowski are joined at the hip to deal with resilience and adaptation, that tells you something.
We have turned an important page, and it’s going to take everybody in Congress, the federal government, states and local communities to tackle this thing. I’m excited about the launch that has occurred in this administration to really take it on and to back it with information, with money and with commitment.
In a 2013 interview with The Post, you said your dream job would be a golf teaching pro at Pebble Beach. What’s next for you?
I have given up on that dream. I’m going to take a step back and think about how I can best help this agenda going forward. I’m going to stay in the arena in some capacity. TBD in terms of what it looks like. | 2022-09-30T09:08:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | David Hayes, who has worked on U.S. climate resilience, on how we're doing amid Ian - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/09/30/david-hayes-climate-change-resilience-adaptation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/09/30/david-hayes-climate-change-resilience-adaptation/ |
The president is targeting a trio of Republicans in his midterm rhetoric — a GOP campaign chief, a vulnerable senator and the would-be speaker.
President Biden and first lady Jill Biden before a Rose Garden event Wednesday on the Americans With Disabilities Act. (Tom Brenner/For the Washington Post )
President Biden stood in the Rose Garden, removing his aviator sunglasses and squinting into the sun before delivering a set of blistering remarks aimed at congressional Republicans and plans that he argues could jeopardize programs like Social Security and Medicare.
Over the course of five minutes, the president sought to ridicule a trio of prominent Republicans and cast a spotlight, this time not on the existential threat to democracy that he believes is posed by Donald Trump, but on the policy rollbacks that he forecasts will come if a different set of Republicans are empowered.
First it was Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, head of the committee trying to boost Senate Republican candidates. Then it was Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, perhaps the most vulnerable Senate Republican. Finally, it was House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the Californian and would-be speaker.
For a large portion of Biden’s presidency, he has sought to limit harsh partisan rhetoric as he courts a handful of Republicans to help enact his agenda. But as he shifts into a rawer campaign mode, he has started fine-tuning his attacks on this particular trio of Republicans who, while well-known to political junkies, are not exactly household names.
The mission may be a little more complicated this year. Biden’s approval ratings are low and he is not the most desired commodity on the campaign trail.
He initially planned to deliver this week’s comments on Social Security and Medicare in Florida, Scott’s home state and a haven for elderly people who rely most heavily on those programs. The Democratic nominee for governor, Charlie Crist, was scheduled to join him, but the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate, Val Demings, was not. Ultimately the trip was canceled because of Hurricane Ian.
Targeting of the Republican trio has become a staple of Biden’s speeches, especially to partisan audiences.
“This is a different breed of cat. This is not — this is not your father’s Republican Party,” Biden said at a Democratic fundraiser Wednesday night, where he again mentioned Scott, Johnson and McCarthy. “There’s an awful lot of Republicans I admired … These are MAGA Republicans and a different breed.”
The three have put forth plans that Biden argues would take much-needed benefits from Americans, which they deny.
Biden has for months highlighted Scott and his proposal to “sunset” all federal programs after five years, meaning they would expire unless renewed. “If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again,” Scott says in his proposal.
Earlier this month, Scott tweeted a photo of himself outside the White House, writing that Biden had wanted to get more copies of his Rescue America plan. “So I stopped by the White House today to make sure he did,” Scott wrote. “Thanks for spreading the word, Joe!”
The White House eagerly hit back. “Couldn’t agree more, Rick,” Biden wrote on Twitter, urging people to read Scott’s plan and providing a link. “Thanks for stopping by.”
Some top Republicans have suggested that Scott’s approach is unwise — “That will not be part of the Republican Senate majority agenda,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said when Scott’s plan was released — but that hasn’t stopped Biden from trying to make Scott the face of the GOP.
And if the Florida senator wanted to draw more attention to his plan, Biden was happy to do so on Tuesday. Scott’s plan does not specifically say Social Security or Medicare will expire, but it recommends that “all federal legislation sunsets in 5 years.”
“Senator Scott has proposed the plan where Social Security, Medicare — every five years on the chopping block,” the president said, holding up the pamphlet. “It means every five years, you either cut it, it reduces, or completely eliminate it.”
Scott has said he’s not trying to eliminate either program, and that his proposal is aimed at reining in federal spending by eliminating unneeded programs.
Asked for response to Biden’s comments, his office pointed to the storm in his home state. “Senator Scott has been entirely focused on Hurricane Ian,” communications director McKinley Lewis said.
Over the past few weeks, Biden has added new lines focused on Johnson. “And then along comes Ron Johnson of Wisconsin,” he’ll say, often prompting boos from the crowd. “God love him.”
He points to Johnson’s calls for repealing the Affordable Care Act and his proposal that federal programs must be reauthorized annually. “He thinks waiting five years — every five years is too long to wait. Not a joke. These are actually in writing, okay?” Biden said. “He wants to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every single year in every budget.”
Johnson quickly took issue with that characterization. “Democrats may have broken a record for the number of lies told about me in one day,” Johnson wrote on Twitter following Biden’s remarks. “I want to save Social Security, Medicare and Veterans benefits. The greatest threat to these programs is the massive, out-of-control deficit spending enacted by Biden and Dems in Congress.”
Now that McCarthy has unveiled a House Republican plan called “Commitment to America,” he has joined Biden’s GOP trio of targets. One of the plan’s top goals is repealing the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s sweeping legislation that includes such items as letting Medicare negotiate for lower prices on prescription drugs.
“All those things that I mentioned we’re going to do, they get rid of all of them — all of them — with the repeal,” Biden said. “I have a different idea. I’ll protect those programs.”
McCarthy’s office pointed to an earlier response when Biden first criticized the plan.
“Under Biden & House Democrats’ watch, wages are down while crime and illegal border crossings are up,” McCarthy tweeted at the time. “They have NO plan to fix it but offer plenty of excuses. House Republicans, with our Commitment to America, have a plan for a new direction to get America back on track.”
White House aides suggest that Biden will continue focusing on Johnson, Scott and McCarthy.
“Those are the three that have been very vocal about the GOP agenda,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Wednesday. “Those are the three that have been very vocal about putting Medicare and Social Security on the chopping block.”
One Republican leader, however, has largely been spared Biden’s criticisms. He has often refrained from attacking McConnell, who served with him in the Senate for more than two decades and with whom he has a record of working together. “I think Senator McConnell is a rational Republican,” Biden said in May, suggesting they could come to an agreement on gun policy, which they did.
“Mitch, I don’t want to hurt your reputation, but we really are friends,” he said during the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this year, motioning toward McConnell. “And that is not an epiphany we’re having here at the moment. You’ve always done exactly what you’ve said. You’re a man of word, and you’re a man of honor. Thank you for being my friend.” | 2022-09-30T09:08:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden takes aim at a GOP triumvirate: Scott, Johnson, McCarthy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/biden-scott-johnson-mccarthy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/biden-scott-johnson-mccarthy/ |
James Madison began the season with a blowout win over Middle Tennessee State in Harrisonburg, Va. (Daniel Lin/Daily News-Record via AP)
Those letters stand for Sun Belt Conference, in which the Dukes are competing for the first time this fall. What they might as well say is “FBS” because James Madison is now rubbing elbows with college football’s most successful programs, bringing both unbridled optimism and unabashedly brash goals.
“Maybe we found ourselves in a position — I’m not going to call it complacency — but after a while, once you’ve been to the championship game so many times, there’s a certain thought that grows inside you,” said Jeff Bourne, in the midst of his 24th year as JMU’s athletic director. “Is there something more? Is there something different that we could be doing that would allow us a different opportunity but something that would be very meaningful for our program?”
Why not us?
The Dukes followed by beating Norfolk State, 63-7. After a week off, they traveled to Boone, N.C., to face Appalachian State. The same App State team that had taken North Carolina to the final play earlier in the season. The same App State team that went to College Station, Tex., and beat Texas A&M. | 2022-09-30T09:09:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | JMU football is in the FBS. The winning hasn't stopped. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/30/jmu-football-fbs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/30/jmu-football-fbs/ |
By Babak Dehghanpisheh
People hold pro-Kurdish signs and demonstrate during a protest and vigil in Los Angeles on Sept. 22 after the death of a young Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini, in police custody in Iran. (Bing Guan/Reuters)
As protests spread across Iran last week, Salim Haqiqi could think of little else. He watched every video he could find on social media, looking on in horror as security forces confronted protesters with bullets and tear gas. And he worried constantly about his son.
Haqiqi, 46, is a Kurd from western Iran, just like Mahsa Amini, whose death on Sept. 16 in the custody of the “morality police” in Tehran has rocked the nation. Demonstrators, many of them women, have taken to the streets in dozens of cities, burning headscarves and calling for the downfall of the Iranian regime.
Haqiqi left Iran as a teenager more than 30 years ago and now lives in Norway as a political refugee. But his 21-year-old son, Milan, was raised in Iran by his grandparents. They would see each other several times a year, in neighboring countries such as Armenia and Turkey.
Milan joined the protests in Oshnavieh, one of the Kurdish cities in the west where demonstrations have been especially intense and the crackdown especially brutal.
Last Wednesday, Haqiqi got the sense that something was wrong. He called Iran for hours but could not reach his son or other members of his family. At 4 a.m. that Thursday, he finally got through, and received the news: Milan had been killed by security forces, along with two other protesters.
“He was killed in a barrage of Kalashnikov bullets,” Haqiqi said. “It’s very difficult. I’m not allowed to go back to Iran. I have no sleep, no life. I think about him 24 hours a day. He lost his life for freedom in his country.”
For the millions of Iranians living in exile, the latest protests have given them an opportunity to reconnect with their homeland and dream of a different future. But they have also reinforced the pain of separation and exposed again the brutality of a government willing to resort to deadly force to stay in power. Dozens of people have been killed and hundreds injured in the protests, according to Amnesty International.
After Milan’s death, Haqiqi received tens of thousands of condolence messages on social media from fellow Kurds and, to his surprise, members of nearly all of Iran’s different ethnic groups living inside and outside the country.
“If you think of the diaspora as a spectrum of different immigrant waves and moments, this is a very unifying moment where people are seeing this woman’s death as a symbol of a lot of frustration and anger,” said Persis Karim, chair and director of the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies at San Francisco State University. “It’s frustration and anger at the regime in Iran but it also sheds light on all these other moments that have occurred in the last 43 years.”
The waves of Iranians leaving the country have usually followed periods of great upheaval, such as the 1979 revolution, as well as previous mass protests in 2009 and 2019. Iran’s diaspora is believed to be among the largest in the world, with an estimated 1 million Iranians living in the United States and several million more scattered throughout Canada, Europe, Turkey, Australia and the Persian Gulf.
Over the weekend, thousands of Iranians in Los Angeles — home to the largest diaspora community of Iranians in the world — as well as in Toronto, Washington and several European capitals, protested in solidarity, chanting the same slogans that have rung out from the capital, Tehran, to the holy city of Qom: “We’ll fight, we’ll die, we’ll take Iran back!” “Woman, life, freedom!”
While most of the gatherings were peaceful, French police tear-gassed protesters Sunday as they attempted to march on the Iranian Embassy in Paris. “They wanted to go toward the embassy to express their rage, to protest so the workers at the embassy and the ambassador hear it,” said Ehsan Hosseinzadeh, a 35-year-old lawyer who obtained political asylum in France in 2018 and was at the protest.
On the same day in London, protests outside the Iranian Embassy there took a violent turn after protesters clashed with police, and with each other. One video posted on social media showed a man, who some protesters said was a supporter of the Iranian government, being beaten by members of the crowd as police pulled him away. London’s Metropolitan Police said at least five police were seriously injured and 12 people were arrested.
The clashes among Iranians living abroad are not surprising, observers say, given the number of factions with different agendas. Monarchists, who normally carry the distinctive pre-revolution “Shir va Khorshid” or “Lion and Sun” flag, were at protests last weekend, as were supporters of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), a onetime militant group that was removed from the U.S. government’s list of terrorist organizations in 2012.
But most of those who protested did not see themselves as having any political affiliation other than opposing the Islamic republic and its harsh restrictions, attendees in London, Paris and California said.
“You see the different groups there because of what Mahsa Amini’s murder sparked,” said Azadeh Pourzand, a researcher on human rights in Iran at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, who attended a peaceful rally in London last weekend. “It’s a moment for everyone to come together, but you have to be prepared for things we haven’t experienced before.”
Tehran has sought to blame outside agitators for the protests inside the country — lashing out at Western countries and launching missile strikes on Kurdish groups across the border in Iraq — but it is young Iranians who are leading the demonstrations, and putting their lives on the line.
“If this is a movement that’s unfolding in Iran, then the people in the diaspora don’t have very much to say about where it’s going,” said Karim, of San Francisco State University. “All we can do is amplify the voices of people in the streets.”
Members of the diaspora say they will continue to lobby the United Nations and elected representatives around the world to highlight human rights issues in Iran. They will keep protesting, and sharing stories of the protesters who have lost their lives.
When Haqiqi’s mother went to recover Milan’s body at the hospital in Oshnavieh, she was initially refused entry and, after insisting, was beaten by security forces until she fainted. When the body was finally released to family members, the security forces gave clear directions: Bury him within an hour and do not hold a funeral.
But Haqiqi is determined to keep his son’s memory alive. And even in the depths of his pain, he knows he is not alone.
“The best way to support the people of the country is to take part in protests,” he said. “These protests against the government must take place every day in all the countries of the world.” | 2022-09-30T09:09:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iranians in exile work to support protests over death of Mahsa Amini - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/iran-protests-mahsa-amini-exile/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/iran-protests-mahsa-amini-exile/ |
1966 ‘Castle House’ in Alexandria, Va., on the market for $2 million
The six-bedroom, six-bathroom 5,275-square-foot house was designed by architect Harvey L. Gordon
Tall ceilings in the living room expose the second-floor balcony; below, a wet bar and fireplace. (HomeVisit)
When architect Harvey L. Gordon decided it was time to move his family — himself, his wife and their four young children — to Alexandria, Va., in 1966, he took it upon himself to craft what was, to them, the perfect house. Known affectionately as the “Castle House,” the “Turret House” or, less lovingly, the “Hobbit House,” this Tudor-style home is a fond memory for those who grew up within its stone and brick walls.
“We used to go to the site and enter the piles of dirt as the house was being built,” said Gordon’s son Alan, who was 10 years old at the time of the home’s construction. “We were told to just play around in the construction site. Really good stuff as a kid.”
Castle House | The 5,275-square-foot home was designed by prominent commercial architect Harvey L. Gordon in 1966. It is listed at $2 million. (HomeVisit)
Those dirt piles gave way to a three-story home on a tree-lined street. Alan recalls exposed wooden beams that were notched with hatchets to achieve a hand-cut look, the original embossed-leather wallpaper and the solid two-inch oak front door that “took a lot of work” to open (when friends arrived, he told them to enter through the back of the house instead).
The house was designed with a large family in mind, featuring an intercom system and a laundry chute. It was also built to entertain. Alan joked that because “there were no child labor laws in the 1960s,” he tended bar at many parties, at which his parents hosted prominent neighbors, family reunions and Gordon’s business partners.
With his partners, he discussed such projects as the Children’s Inn at the National Institutes of Health, the Rockville Crowne Plaza and the Falls Church Marriott.
Before his career as an architect, Gordon served as a Navy pilot in the Pacific theater during World War II. Born in Washington, he was a graduate of Woodrow Wilson High School and Catholic University.
Alan’s daughter, Heather Bishop, recalls visiting her grandparents’ house in her youth — catching fireflies in the backyard and playing dress-up with her grandmother’s clothes in the now-closed attic. Her father’s collection of model trains and a jukebox were in the basement. She recently visited the property to recount those memories to her 4-year-old son, also named Harvey, after her grandfather.
“It was just so cool,” Bishop said. “I felt like I was straddling history and present, all at the same time. I’m in this house, and I remember how things were, but I see what it looks like now. It was just fascinating, and it’s still so beautiful.”
The turreted stone front entry leads to a French manor-style foyer. On the main level, the renovated kitchen has a heated floor, two wall ovens, a center island, a butler pantry and two breakfast bars. The open-plan living room has a cathedral ceiling, a kegerator and a gas fireplace. This level also includes a bedroom and en suite bathroom, a large dining room for entertaining guests and a laundry chute.
Two staircases lead from the main level to a spacious soundproofed basement, which has a recreation room, a mudroom with laundry facilities, a wood-burning fireplace, and a room that opens to the backyard and is currently used as an exercise space.
“Down there is where we kids would have our pool table, our ping-pong table and all our record players,” Alan said. “We played games and had our parties — it was all downstairs.” He said the basement was soundproofed so the noise wouldn’t bother his father. “It actually proved against us once when we were all home upstairs and we got robbed,” he said, laughing at the memory.
The owner’s bedroom suite, on the upper level, has a gas fireplace, large closets and a bathroom with a heated floor and a jetted tub. Three other bedrooms overlook a rear living room from a balcony.
The secluded backyard has manicured greenery, a wide patio, a bar with stools, a wall-mounted television, a built-in gas grill and a hot tub. A circular driveway leads to a heated, roomy two-car garage and a sport court that has a basketball three-point line.
The six-bedroom, five-bathroom, 5,275-square-foot house is listed at $1,999,950.
1401 Key Dr., Alexandria, Va.
Features: · The 1966 Tudor-style house was built by D.C.-area architect Harvey L. Gordon. It is surrounded by mature trees, and the kitchen has a heated floor, two wall ovens and two breakfast bars. The basement has a wet bar and a recreation room. The two-car garage is attached.
Listing agent: Jim Crowe, Compass | 2022-09-30T10:09:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 1966 ‘Castle House’ in Alexandria, Va., on the market for $2 million - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/30/castle-house-for-sale/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/30/castle-house-for-sale/ |
For owners of vintage vehicles, being forced out of their weekly meeting spot eliminated a community lifeline
Scores of car buffs show up on Aug. 24 to show off their wheels in Upper Marlboro, Md. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
The drivers eased onto the dry asphalt parking lot in candy apple red and ocean blue custom paint rides with steel bodies and chrome finishes.
On a Wednesday evening in August, a little after 5 p.m., the temperature hit 89 degrees with blue skies and no sign of storms. The cruisers were ready for a night like this one. The weekly meeting in the far corner of a strip mall parking lot in Upper Marlboro, Md., had been rained out for the past two weeks.
“When we have these cars, we want to bring them out. If they sit all the time, it’s just like the blood in your body. You gotta keep it flowing,” said Beverly Curry, a 76-year-old with cropped hair and glasses known as “Mustang Sally,” who owns a ’66 bright red six-cylinder Ford Mustang.
People have traveled nearly every Wednesday to Marlboro Square for the evening car meet that runs from early April to late October. The parking lot adjacent to Advance Auto Parts transforms into “Hump Day Car Meet and Cruise-In,” a four-hour event meant to bring together the coolest rides and connect others who bond over a love of cars. This year marked the group’s 10-year-anniversary.
Many of the men and women who attend have invested years’ worth of effort and money into buying and restoring classic cars to their former glory. Some connections date back to childhoods spent at neighboring race tracks or meeting at other car shows. Week after week at Hump Day Wednesdays, they’ve exclaimed over each other’s wheels while building a community.
“I like cars, but the cars are secondary,” said Terry Daye, a 72-year-old retiree who has been bringing his ’68 Plymouth GTX since the meet started. “I love running my mouth with people.”
But in recent months, with many pandemic restrictions lifted and shopping center businesses trying to ramp back up, property managers at Marlboro Square said the group can no longer meet in the parking lot and weren’t given permission to do so in the first place. On one of the last Wednesdays in August, a security guard patrolled the lot and warned the car fans to leave.
“It’s disruptive for the tenants, and those tenants are rent paying,” said Adam Steuer, an official with Marlboro Square.
The shopping center, on busy Crain Highway in Prince George’s County, is home to a beauty supply store, liquor store, grocery market, Advance Auto Parts, Dollar Tree and Nipsey’s, a local bar and restaurant, among other businesses. Jauhar Abraham, a member of the family-owned Nipsey’s, said the business had received complaints starting in June about drinking, card playing and trash during the car meet. He said he was worried Nipsey’s would have to close on Wednesdays and brought his concerns to the car group founders and property managers.
“I don’t support non-sanctioned meetups anywhere,” Abraham, 50, said. “As soon as there’s an incident or accident, we’re going to be the people who are going to have to defend ourselves, and we weren’t a part of it.”
The car enthusiasts, mostly older men and women from Prince George’s County and surrounding areas, contend that the weekly meet has gone on largely without incident. The show is meant to provide car owners with camaraderie and a place for a midweek reprieve to appreciate the classic cars, not to cause trouble, said Van Newman, creator of Hump Day Wednesdays. They also patronize the center’s businesses, such as a local Chinese food carryout and a chicken wing restaurant.
The clash pits a business trying to recover from the pandemic against classic car owners for whom the weekly car meets have become a lifeline.
Property managers seemed to see the group as more of a liability than a commodity. Steuer, the Marlboro Square official, said the gathering is not allowed at Marlboro Square because it’s a “public safety concern” and that the group never got the permits or license to have an event — not that it would have been approved, he added.
Newman, a man of 70 with light gray facial hair from Brandywine, Md., sat in the shade underneath the canopy of the beauty supply store in a blue lawn chair next to other seniors in lawn chairs. His long-sleeve white shirt read, “I’m not old, I’m a classic.”
Newman said he started the midweek car meet a decade ago after retiring from a 38-year career at Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, first as a bus driver, then a train operator and finally a station manager. Car shows take place throughout the week in parking lots across Prince George’s, but there wasn’t one on Wednesdays, he said.
So, with his cousin David Proctor and friend Leroy Proctor, he talked to Advance Auto Parts in Marlboro Square about bringing their cars to their lot on Wednesdays. The location provided a central spot to many of the participants who travel from Charles County and across Prince George’s.
For 10 years, a group of car enthusiasts in Upper Marlboro, Md., have gathered weekly. (Video: Sidney Thomas)
Rickey Sampson, assistant manager of Advance Auto Parts, began working at the store four years ago. The car enthusiasts buy their carwash, wax and towels there. The store even allowed Newman to pin fliers of the car show on the Coke machine.
“We’ve never had to tell them, ‘Hey, you’re bringing riffraff.’ It’s not that type of thing,” Sampson said.
By nightfall on this night in late August, at least 50 cars would cruise in and out of the lot. Many drivers assembled in rows with popped car hoods like a candy store aisle on display. Onlookers visiting the nearby Dollar Tree would stop to get a look at the vintage models, which ranged from the 1940s to the ’70s.
Marcus Boykin, 50, and Deshawn Clarkson, 62, sat appreciating the scene. Boykin got into old-school cars because of the ’72 Pontiac GTO his grandfather gave him in high school. Clarkson said he remembers riding in the back seat with his four brothers while his father drove, shouting “There goes my car!” as they passed other vehicles. His father would say, “One day, boys,” said Clarkson, who now owns eight cars.
“You think about a simpler time and age,” Boykin said. “When you think about society and everything that we’re going through on a day-to-day basis, when you’re able to go back to a simpler time it makes you feel better about what’s going on now.”
Newman said the group hadn’t received backlash from community members, businesses or property managers. As the years went on, its popularity and influence grew, with up to 60 cars filling the lot on a good Wednesday.
Abraham, of Nipsey’s, said that some of Nipsey’s employees and customers couldn’t get in and out of the parking lot because of the amount of traffic.
“A few years ago, the car show wasn’t so big. Some older cars, older people, I never paid much attention to it,” Abraham said. But the meet also attracted some younger people, who sped through the lot, he said.
“Once you create this atmosphere, it gets out of control,” he added. “They couldn’t control what it grew to became.”
Prince George’s County police have received only one call this year for trespassing and drag racing at the location of the car meet, 5775 Crain Highway, on Aug. 31, a Wednesday. Officers responded and could not “verify any criminal behavior,” Christina Cotterman, a spokeswoman for Prince George’s County police, said in a statement. On three other Wednesdays — July 20, Aug. 3 and Aug. 24 — police received calls for trespassing at the address of Marlboro Square and also could not “verify any criminal behavior,” Cotterman said.
Officers have known about the car meet for years, without any issues reported to county police until recent weeks, Cotterman said.
Avis Thomas-Lester, a spokeswoman for the county’s Department of Permitting, Inspections and Enforcement, said a special event permit is required for organizers that sell tickets, set up stages or sell food or alcohol. There are also requirements to ensure safety.
“People have the right to assembly peacefully, but the management would be responsible for deciding if a gathering, such as a car enthusiasts’ meeting, would be allowed on their property,” Thomas-Lester said in a statement.
Newman said the group tried to reason with Abraham and management. Over the years, participants have cleaned up during and after the meet, even bringing their own trash bins to collect garbage thrown in the woods bordering the parking lot, he said. They also encouraged people who brought motorcycles and dirt bikes to behave responsibly.
Early in September, Newman was back in the lot. He had gotten a call from a property manager saying the meet wasn’t allowed and that police had been notified. But he arrived in his Ford pickup anyway, just to see if anyone showed up and to let them know it was over. As rain fell, he sat in the driver’s seat with the windows up.
Hump Day Wednesdays were on the calendar until Nov. 2 and it might take a while for people to get used to it ending, he said.
“We had a good 10 years,” Newman said. “It’s a shame that we couldn’t ride it to the end.”
Only one driver showed up for the meet that evening. Newman told him to spread the word that the group is looking for a new spot. | 2022-09-30T10:09:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After a business complains, a classic car meet in Prince George's ends - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/30/classic-car-prince-georges-canceled/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/30/classic-car-prince-georges-canceled/ |
More traffic cameras, reckless driving classes among D.C. plans for bad drivers
With traffic fatalities at a 14-year-high last year, D.C. looks to driver’s license points and other measures to reduce recklessness on city streets
A newly installed camera along Wheeler Road SE after a 9-year-old boy was critically injured when a driver struck him last year. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Traffic fines as steep as $500 aren’t effectively deterring dangerous driving in the nation’s capital, some city lawmakers say. Now they want D.C. to take other, more drastic measures.
Among the proposals before the D.C. Council: allowing traffic cameras to issue points on driver’s licenses, reporting driving records of rulebreakers to insurance companies and forcing reckless drivers to take “safe driving” lessons. The accumulation of points can result in the loss of driving privileges, while a poor driving record can raise insurance premiums.
The bills targeting speeders and red-light runners — particularly those with the most egregious or repeated offenses — aim to reverse an alarming rise in reckless road behaviors that contributed to a 14-year high in D.C. traffic fatalities last year. The proposals are part of the city’s efforts to move away from car-dependency as it also struggles to create public spaces where transit users, pedestrians, cyclists, scooter riders and drivers can safely coexist.
“If the fines are not changing behavior, we need to figure out what are the other mechanisms by which we can get people to slow down on our streets,” said D.C. Council member Christina Henderson (I-At Large).
Henderson is the lead sponsor of a bill that would use traffic cameras for what she said police already do during a traffic stop: assess points on a driver’s license. The measures follow other policies in recent years that have reduced speed limits and raised fines in hope of discouraging unsafe driving and reducing collisions.
“We had just been trying to move cars, but the paradigm is shifting around what we want for our communities, and I know that can be a shock for folks,” Henderson said. “People are always ruffled by change — and this is a shift.”
Her proposal, co-signed by four other council members, would allow the city to issue points based on infractions caught on traffic cameras, a measure used only in a handful of jurisdictions nationwide. If approved, a driver would get a point on their license for every ticket issued by a camera, whether for speeding, running a red light or ignoring a stop sign.
Under the Automated Traffic Enforcement Effectiveness Amendment Act of 2022, the Department of Motor Vehicles would be required to report to insurance companies, on a biannual basis, the driving record of motorists who accumulate at least five moving infractions in the city.
Henderson said the proposal would ensure drivers face consequences similar to being pulled over by police. Those penalties have largely been absent in recent years, she said, as D.C. has moved away from police performing routine traffic enforcement while relying more heavily on automated enforcement. D.C. police spokeswoman Alaina Gertz said the department “continues to conduct routine traffic enforcement,” while special operations and patrol officers help to enforce traffic rules and educate residents about traffic violations.
Under D.C. law, drivers can have their license suspended up to 90 days if they accumulate 10 or 11 points over a two-year period, while 12 points or more results in a license being revoked. Henderson said her measure would include provisions to give vehicle owners a chance to dispute the penalty if they weren’t behind the wheel, as well as a path for having points waived.
Another proposal, the Reckless Driver Accountability Act of 2022, would make it easier for the city to boot or impound vehicles with a record of infractions and require drivers to complete a traffic safety program to recover their vehicle. Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large), the lead sponsor of the bill, said the measure would bring accountability to drivers with multiple tickets.
“We have found that excessive fines don’t always work,” she said.
According to data provided to the D.C. Council late last year, more than 3,000 vehicles had more than 20 outstanding tickets for moving violations in the District and about 500 had more than 40 outstanding tickets. The records indicate about 550,000 vehicles with D.C., Maryland or Virginia tags had two or more unpaid parking or traffic tickets in the city that were at least 60 days old, making them eligible to be booted.
About 5,000 vehicles in the region have tickets for traveling at least 21 mph over the speed limit in the city, 150,000 for running a red light and about 50,000 have fines for running a stop sign.
“We want to change people’s behavior, and we want to do it in a way that is not punitive but restorative,” Silverman said “The approach to driver education has been proven to make those behavioral changes.”
Silverman’s proposal would authorize the District to boot or impound any car with five moving violation tickets, three tickets for speeding by more than 25 mph or for running a red light, received over the span of a year — even if the tickets are paid. Owners would be required to take what the bill calls a “restorative-justice-based reckless driving class” to recover their vehicle. She said the program is based on one in New York City that has proved successful at reducing dangerous driving.
Silverman is also proposing another bill that would install devices on about 3,000 city-owned vehicles to prohibit them from traveling more than 40 mph. The measure would exempt emergency vehicles and have exceptions for vehicles that travel on highways with higher speeds.
“We need to lead by example,” she said.
The city’s default speed limit is 20 mph. DDOT recently announced it is reducing speeds along some major commuter corridors, including Connecticut Avenue NW and New York Avenue NE, from 30 mph to 25 mph.
The District last year recorded 40 traffic fatalities, its highest number since 2007. So far this year, 25 people have been killed in traffic collisions, down five compared to the same time last year.
The proposals come after the D.C. Council in September voted to ban right-on-red turns for cars beginning in 2025, except at intersections where the District Department of Transportation determines it is safer to allow such turns. The measure, which will receive a final vote in October, also permits bicyclists and scooter riders to yield instead of stop at stop signs when conditions permit.
In an effort partly aimed at getting more people off the road, a council committee this past week also advanced a proposal that would give District residents $100 a month for transit.
The District already has some of the nation’s heftiest fines for traffic violators and among the strictest road rules in the Washington region. It was an early adopter of automated traffic enforcement through the use of cameras and is on track to add dozens more in the next year.
The programs have become a tool to enforce traffic rules in cities across the country, while some studies suggest they have been effective at dissuading bad driving. They aren’t always popular with residents, and critics argue they are often used to generate revenue.
Alex Angel, a spokesman for the National Association of City Transportation Officials, said cities are taking different approaches to automated enforcement, but there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. The association said the programs have become more popular in the wake of high-profile police shootings of Black people during traffic stops. Several states have sought legislation to expand speed camera authority, including New York, Massachusetts and Colorado.
Nationwide, at least 179 jurisdictions have speed-camera programs and 338 have red-light cameras, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Maryland and the District use automated speed enforcement, while Virginia has authorized speed cameras in highway construction zones.
Only Arizona and California allow cameras to assess points to drivers, according to the insurance organization.
Henderson’s proposal to increase the role of traffic cameras has come under fire among some critics, with some saying it fuels the perception the city is engaging in a “war on cars.”
“These punitive strategies are counterproductive, and it really feels like a money grab,” said Chioma Iwuoha, a neighborhood commissioner in Ward 7 who has testified before the D.C. Council against what she calls “predatory ticketing.” She said some residents feel fines are excessive and hit low-income drivers hardest.
Iwuoha said allowing cameras to issue points would create further distrust. Instead, she urged the city to make physical changes to streets, such as adding raised crosswalks and bike lanes, and remaking roads to reduce speeding.
“The city’s focus should be primarily on non-punitive ways to make our streets safer and to actually have traffic-calming measures beyond overly fining people,” she said.
Jonathan Adkins, a D.C. resident and executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association, said automated enforcement has been effective nationwide. He said whether fines or points are issued — or both — the primary goal should be to eliminate dangerous driving.
“Fines have a more immediate deterrence and accountability impact, while points have to rack up before any real-world action occurs,” he said. “In that sense, points are useful to take action on drivers that have a clear pattern of dangerous driving.” | 2022-09-30T10:10:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. proposal eyes expanded traffic cameras, reckless driving classes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/30/dc-reckless-driving-speed-cameras/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/30/dc-reckless-driving-speed-cameras/ |
As Purple Line construction resumes, the fight against gentrification is on
Gerrit Knaap’s group, the Purple Line Corridor Coalition, examines how development coming to future Maryland light-rail stations can be most equitable
In 2013, four years before construction started on Maryland’s Purple Line, a group of academics, planners, nonprofits and elected officials began thinking about the economic development the 21 rail stations would bring — and the inequities likely to follow.
State and local officials have said they hope the Purple Line will transform aging, auto-dependent suburbs, particularly in Prince George’s County, into vibrant hubs of new apartment buildings, stores and restaurants — all within walking distance of light-rail stations.
But the public-private group known as the Purple Line Corridor Coalition, has long eyed cautionary tales from other new transit lines. Without intervention, the coalition says, rising land values around stations lead to higher rents and price out local businesses and residents, including lower-income workers most in need of faster, more reliable mass transit.
Without help, light-rail line will bring gentrification
The coalition, based at the University of Maryland’s National Center for Smart Growth Research, has analyzed how to preserve affordable housing and small businesses along the 16-mile rail alignment between Prince George’s and Montgomery counties.
As major construction on the long-delayed Purple Line resumes this fall under a new lead contractor, The Washington Post spoke with Gerrit Knaap, the coalition’s founder and the smart growth center’s director. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Why did the coalition begin focusing on gentrification issues in the Purple Line corridor so long before the light-rail line would open, and even four years before construction started?
Knaap: It takes a lot of lead time to change the urban fabric. Land market changes take a long time. Price changes occur more quickly. We’ve begun to see housing prices and rents rise in the Purple Line corridor already and have for a number of years. And obviously if you’re going to try to preserve affordable housing and small businesses, you need to do that before prices start to rise too quickly. Therefore you need to get a head-start on it, not to mention you need to have the policies and resources in places to help businesses and residents during the construction period.
Q: What was it about the Purple Line corridor that prompted concerns about gentrification?
Knaap: I’d say two things: One is the Purple Line corridor is extremely diverse in terms of income levels and economic prosperity. There are some very low-income communities right on it. In fact, I give credit to [immigrant advocacy group] CASA for really beginning the conversation about addressing the gentrification threat, and we teamed up with them very quickly.
Obviously, Langley Park was a place where this vulnerability is certainly strong. Langley Park, Lyttonsville, Long Branch and Riverdale Park are some communities that are not as well-off as others and are communities of color. So there’s that vulnerability.
The other is that the Purple Line is going to connect four major Metro stops, and it’s going to provide access to places between those Metro lines. Between Silver Spring and College Park is probably the area with the greatest potential for changes in land market dynamics, and then between College Park and New Carrollton as well. So you have some very vulnerable communities, as well as pretty significant changes in transportation accessibility.
Q: What about more affluent areas along the Purple Line, such as between Bethesda and Silver Spring? Those aren’t necessarily vulnerable communities, but do you see them changing as well?
Knaap: I see them changing less. First of all, the change in [transit] accessibility is going to be slightly less there. It’s already a very highly accessible corridor. The difference the Purple Line is going to make is not going to be as large in those places that are already pretty heavily served by transit.
How the Purple Line's new lead construction contractor plans to get it open by late 2026
Q: What development changes have you seen so far in the Purple Line corridor?
Knaap: The development on the ground is largely just beginning. We’re in the construction phase [of the Purple Line] so the construction disruption is happening now. I’d say we’re seeing probably the largest change at the New Carrollton Metro station. That place is really transforming rather dramatically because of the [station there for] MARC [commuter rail] and the Metro, as well as the Purple Line. A lot of stuff is happening now in College Park. In Silver Spring, we’re seeing continued activity, though how much of that is related to the Purple Line is a little hard to say.
New Carrollton train hall will unite transit lines, bike lanes and retail
Q: A lot of us think about transit-oriented development as high-rise apartment or condo buildings with coffee shops and high-end stores at the ground level. Is that the kind of development you see coming along the Purple Line, or will it be different in these more suburban locations?
Knaap: No, it’s definitely going to be different. You’re not going to see high-rises at these Purple Line stations in between the Metro stations. That’s just not going to happen. The market isn’t there for it and even the regulatory environment wouldn’t allow it currently. It’s going to be more mid-rises, more smaller scale. We’re going to be thinking about strip malls. I don’t think it’s helpful to have strip malls near Purple Line stations. If we can get them to increase to two-, three- or four-story density, that might be a good thing. And, of course, you’d want them to be as mixed-use as possible. I don’t think anyone envisions the Manhattanization of the Purple Line corridor.
Q: Some activists, particularly in heavily Latino areas like Langley Park, worry that their communities could lose their international feel. How can those cultures be preserved amid new development?
Knaap: One of the new minors we’ve just created at the University of Maryland is called “placemaking,” and the coalition is going to work very closely with this placemaking initiative. Obviously being sensitive to the existing cultural assets of a community is where you start. Also engaging with residents who currently live there to identify their aspirations and their cultural preferences is key. As an organization, we’re making considerable efforts to make sure the placemaking efforts are culturally sensitive and will preserve the existing cultural assets along the Purple Line.
Q: How can lower-rent housing be preserved as demand to live near future rail stations increases? How difficult is that to do?
Knaap: It’s very hard and there’s not one answer. You have to be a bit opportunistic. One way is to preserve the existing affordable housing stock, which you can do by buying it or having rights-of-first refusal policies. … On one hand you’re trying to preserve the existing housing stock. On the other, you’re trying to increase the housing stock through affordable housing construction. Another way is to try to change the existing development regulations, either by upzoning [with more density] or by policies that enable middle-income housing to be competitive.
Montgomery, Prince George's reach deal to preserve affordable housing along Purple Line
Q: How have the Purple Line stations’ suburban locations led to safety concerns about surrounding streets for cyclists and pedestrians?
Knaap: I’m glad you brought that up because that’s a major part of the work we’ve done under a Federal Transit Administration grant. We’ll be introducing a light-rail system into an urban environment and a transportation infrastructure that is really not well set up for it. Suburbs are largely built for cars. If you introduce a light-rail line fundamentally designed to promote a different kind of travel behavior pattern, there are a lot of changes that need to be made. We’ve identified a lot of places along the Purple Line corridor where the pedestrian and bike access really needs quite a bit of work.
In auto-centric Montgomery, planners seek data-driven ways to make walking safer
Q: What are some examples of road improvements needed around the future rail stations?
Knaap: We did something we call accessibility mapping to see how far and safely you could walk from a [future Purple Line] station into the neighborhoods. We found there are tremendous obstacles. You’ve got to cross six-lane streets in some places. You have fenced barriers in some places. Sidewalks have very little protection from the traffic. Some right-turn lanes allow cars to drive at high speeds and turn really quickly. There are just things in the design of the roadways near the Purple Line that need to be improved quite a bit to ensure people can get to the stations safely.
Q: What else should people be thinking about as the Purple Line is built?
Knaap: The Purple Line corridor is in for a change, and it’s really important that that change is managed to promote equitable development and that we do our best to try to prevent displacement in the corridor. I think one of the real underlying themes of the Purple Line Corridor Coalition has been equitable development. Hold us to account as to whether we can foster transit-oriented development that increases ridership and does all the good things that transit ridership does while preserving the existing vulnerable communities in the corridor. That’s our mission.
Suburbs try Vision Zero to protect walkers, cyclists on roads designed for vehicles | 2022-09-30T10:10:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As Purple Line construction resumes, the fight against gentrification is on - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/30/purple-line-maryland-gentrification/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/09/30/purple-line-maryland-gentrification/ |
Horns aplenty: Classical concerts to fill your weekends with music
The Chiarina Chamber Players are hosting the Attacca Quartet for two nights in October. (David Goddard)
For some people, the arrival of fall is all cardigans and shawls. For others, it’s cider doughnuts and pumpkin spice.
But for us, it’s the return of classical music — and the more the better. Lucky for local music buffs, our hometown orchestras and ensembles are no slouches. Here, find a helping of weekend-friendly concert season highlights to keep you covered for October and November. (But I can only fit so much: Be sure to click through and check out their full seasons!)
And for maximum calendar crammage — as well as details about offerings from Washington National Opera, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Bach Consort and more — don’t forget to revisit our fall preview.
Chiarina Chamber Players
The relentlessly compelling chamber ensemble led by artistic directors Efi Hackmey and Carrie Bean Stute kicks off its fall season by playing host for two nights to Attacca Quartet. On Oct. 1, they’ll perform Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet as well as string quartets by Edvard Grieg and Caroline Shaw; on Oct. 2, it will be Schubert’s Cello Quintet and string quartets by Maurice Ravel and Shaw. (Also worth noting: Chiarina’s “Form, Shape, Groove” program on Nov. 6, featuring music by Reinaldo Moya, Gabriela Ortiz, Jennifer Higdon, Kaija Saariaho and Astor Piazzolla.) Oct. 1 and 2 at 7:30 p.m. St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, 301 A St. SE. chiarina.org. $25; free for 18 and younger.
21st Century Consort
The esteemed musical adventurists bring “Threnody,” a performance inspired by Armenian American artist Zarouhie Abdalian’s work “Threnody for the Unwilling Martyrs” as well as the museum’s exhibition highlighting works by 49 women and nonbinary artists called “Put It This Way: (Re)Visions of the Hirshhorn Collection.” In addition to works by Tatev Amiryan, Susan Kander, Elena Ruehr, Stacy Garrop, Alexandra Gardner, Juri Seo and Tansy Davies, the Consort will perform “Lament for the City,” in memory of its composer and longtime Consort associate, David Froom. Oct. 1 at 5 p.m. Hirshhorn Museum, Ring Auditorium, Independence Avenue and Seventh Street SW. hirshhorn.si.edu. Free; reservations recommended.
Virginia Opera continues its slow-cooker Ring cycle with a production of Richard Wagner’s “Die Walküre,” in a compacted adaptation by Jonathan Dove and Graham Vick. (The company will stage “Siegfried” in 2023 and “Götterdämmerung” in 2024.) Bass-baritone Kyle Albertson takes on the role of Wotan, and soprano Alexandra Loutsion sings Brünnhilde. Adam Turner conducts, and Joachim Schamberger directs. Oct. 8 at 8 p.m. and Oct. 9 at 2 p.m. at the Center for the Arts at George Mason University, 4373 Mason Pond Dr., Fairfax; additional performances at Harrison Opera House in Norfolk (Sept. 30, Oct. 1-2) and Dominion Energy Center in Richmond (Oct. 14 and 16). vaopera.org. $20-$110.
Candlelight Concert Society
Now entering its 50th season, the Candlelight Concert Society welcomes the Brentano String Quartet for an evening of Monteverdi, Mozart (his Clarinet Quintet in A Major, K. 581, with clarinetist Alexander Fiterstein) and Dvorak (his Quartet in A-flat Major, Op. 105). And while you’re at it, this may be a good time to pick up tickets for the Society’s Oct. 29 date at Linehan Concert Hall with pianist Marc-André Hamelin. Oct. 9 at 4 p.m. Horowitz Center Smith Theatre, Howard Community College, 10901 Little Patuxent Pkwy., Columbia. candlelightconcerts.org. $10-$45; younger than 17 free with a paying adult.
Fairfax Symphony Orchestra
Fairfax Symphony Orchestra welcomes virtuoso pianist and MacArthur fellow Jeremy Denk for what’s sure to be a thriller of a run through Brahms’s second piano concerto, paired with Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39. Denk will give a preconcert talk with FSO Music Director Christopher Zimmerman at 7 p.m. Oct. 15 at 8 p.m. Capital One Hall, 7750 Capital One Tysons Rd., Tysons. fairfaxsymphony.org. $33-$65.
Pianist Garrick Ohlsson joins the Apollon Musagète Quartet for the opening weekend of the Library of Congress’s fall concert series (a strong and busy season well worth a more detailed gander). As part of the library’s celebration marking Schubert’s 225th birthday, the quartet will play Schubert’s String Quartet in D major, D. 94, and Krzysztof Penderecki’s third string quartet (“Leaves of an Unwritten Diary”), with Ohlsson hopping in for Shostakovich’s Piano Quintet in G minor, Op. 57. (Mark your calendars as well for the LOC’s salon-style Founder’s Day Concert on Oct. 29, featuring bass-baritone Eric Owens, and a Nov. 19 appearance by avant-gardist and toy piano specialist Margaret Leng Tan, who will take on George Crumb’s “Metamorphoses, Book 2.”) Oct. 15 at 8 p.m. Library of Congress, Coolidge Auditorium, 101 Independence Ave SE. loc.gov. Free; advance registration recommended.
The Thirteen
The Thirteen choir and orchestra, led by Director Matthew Robertson, opens its fall season with a performance of Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, featuring the Children’s Chorus of Washington and period brass from the Dark Horse Consort. (Take note also of the Thirteen’s “Barber, Brahms, Britten and Bruckner” program of Nov. 11-13, which will feature a world premiere by British composer Ed Rex, as well as pieces by George Walker and Caroline Shaw.) Oct. 21 at 7:30 p.m. at Episcopal High School, 1200 N. Quaker Lane, Alexandria; Oct. 22 at 7:30 p.m. at St. Peter’s Church on Capitol Hill, 313 Second St. SE; Oct. 23 at 5 p.m. at Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church, 6601 Bradley Blvd., Bethesda. thethirteenchoir.org. $10-$40.
National Philharmonic
On Oct. 22, violinist Gil Shaham joins conductor Piotr Gajewski and his National Philharmonic for a program of Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges’s first symphony; Camille Saint-Saëns’s third violin concerto; and Louise Farrenc’s third symphony. Mark your calendars as well for Nov. 12, when Stan Engebretson conducts the Philharmonic and the National Philharmonic Chorale in Berlioz’s epic Requiem (the Op. 5, also known as the “Grande Messe des Morts”). Oct. 22 at 8 p.m. Strathmore Music Center, 5301 Tuckerman Lane, North Bethesda. nationalphilharmonic.org. $79-$99; free for children ages 7-17.
Cathedral Choral Society
Atlanta Ballet joins the Cathedral Choral Society for a dramatic interpretation of Berlioz’s 1839 choral symphony, “Roméo et Juliette,” with new choreography by Claudia Schreier. The power trio of mezzo-soprano Krisztina Szabó, tenor Patrick Kilbride and bass-baritone Kevin Deas join the Cathedral Choral Society Orchestra, led by conductor Steven Fox. Oct. 22 at 4 p.m. Washington National Cathedral, 3101 Wisconsin Ave. NW. cathedralchoralsociety.org. $22.50-$112.
Washington Chorus
After a long pandemic delay, the Washington Chorus presents “Tomorrow! A Reflection on Hope and Resilience,” described as a “visual and immersive experience” featuring a live performance of Damien Geter’s pandemic-spawned choral work “Cantata for a More Hopeful Tomorrow” as well as the short film of the same name from Emmy-winning director Bob Berg. Oct. 28 and 29 at 7 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Live! at 10th and G, inside First Congregational United Church of Christ, 945 G St. NW. thewashingtonchorus.org. $25-$49.
Washington Performing Arts brings the 2021 Kennedy Center honoree back to D.C. for a unique program that shuffles Bach’s sonatas and partitas (a particular sweet spot for the acclaimed violinist) with contemporary works by Jessie Montgomery (her Rhapsody No. 1) and John Zorn (“Passagen”). Oct. 30 at 7:30 p.m. Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, 2700 F St. NW. washingtonperformingarts.org. $30.
Midori’s career started with a fleeting moment. It’s evolved into a lasting legacy.
American Youth Philharmonic Orchestra
If you’d like to put an ear to the future, on Nov. 6 the talented American Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, led by conductor Timothy Dixon, presents its fall concert, a program of Tchaikovsky (Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36) and Verdi (the overture from “La Forza Del Destino”). Nov. 6 at 3 p.m. Schlesinger Hall, 4915 E. Campus Dr., Alexandria. aypo.org. $10; free for those under 21.
Italian-born pianist Rodolfo Leone (who took first prize in 2017 at the International Beethoven Piano Competition Vienna) comes to Dumbarton Oaks to make his D.C. debut with a pair of concerts covering works by Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy and Stravinsky. Nov. 13 and 14 at 7 p.m. Dumbarton Oaks, 1703 32nd St. NW. doaks.org. $55; single ticket sales begin Oct. 13.
Choral Arts
Choral Arts’s newly minted artistic director Jace Kaholokula Saplan leads the Choral Arts Symphonic Chorus in “O! What a Beautiful City: Wondrous Music Rooted in D.C.,” a locally sourced program of works by George Walker, Duke Ellington, B.E. Boykin and Ysaye Barnwell. Nov. 19 at 7 p.m. Washington National Cathedral, 3101 Wisconsin Ave NW. choralarts.org. $15-$59.
Vikingur Olafsson
As part of the Hayes Piano Series, Washington Performing Arts welcomes Icelandic piano phenom Vikingur Olafsson, whose latest recording for Deutsche Grammophon arrives mid-October. For this recital, Olafsson will draw from his most recent release, “Mozart & Contemporaries,” which blends a beautiful selection of Mozart piano pieces with lesser-heard works from Haydn, Baldassare Galuppi, C.P.E. Bach and Domenico Cimarosa. Nov. 19 at 2 p.m. Kennedy Center Terrace Theater, 2700 F St. NW. washingtonperformingarts.org. $30-$60. | 2022-09-30T10:27:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Classical concerts to fill your weekends with music this fall in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/30/classical-music-concerts-dc-fall/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/30/classical-music-concerts-dc-fall/ |
‘Hocus Pocus’ has become a cult favorite. How does the sequel stack up?
Sarah Jessica Parker as Sarah Sanderson, Bette Midler as Winifred Sanderson and Kathy Najimy as Mary Sanderson in Disney Plus’s “Hocus Pocus 2.” (Disney Plus) (Disney Plus)
The only thing millennials have been waiting longer for than affordable housing is a “Hocus Pocus” sequel. The 1993 Halloween-themed Disney movie rankled critics and charmed audiences, resulting in its elevation to cult-movie status in the three decades since its debut. Now its follow-up, “Hocus Pocus 2,” has finally arrived with a straight-to-VHS — er, pardon — exclusive Disney Plus streaming premiere Friday.
The original film follows a trio of kids who work together to defeat the wickedly funny Sanderson sisters (played by Kathy Najimy, Bette Midler and Sarah Jessica Parker) after accidentally bringing them back from the dead. The witches are on a time-sensitive quest for immortality, an adventure that entails a virgin, the souls of children and a few musical numbers, of course.
The comedy was lambasted by film critics, including The Washington Post’s own Desson Howe, who called it “another future videotape disguised as a movie. In the not-too-distant future look for ‘Hocus Pocus’ in the rental-store bins, or as part of a Halloween ‘Trick or Treat’ package.”
But critical disgust did nothing to stop the intense love that children developed for the slightly scary movie. Though it didn’t do particularly well in theaters or with home sales, it found a second life on television: When Disney started to air the film on its own channel, and later on ABC Family, “a generation of millennials … suddenly began associating ‘Hocus Pocus’ with Halloween, viewing it with the same reverence ’70s and ’80s kids had for ‘It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown’ and the ‘Thriller’ video,” according to Vulture’s Josef Adalian.
As Midler told People magazine in a piece celebrating the movie’s 25th anniversary, “It was like an ugly duckling … a little creature that nobody thought could do anything and now it’s a swan. It’s found its wings and it’s just flown away. I think it’s fantastic.”
Midler, Najimy and Parker reprise their roles as Winifred, Mary and Sarah Sanderson in “Hocus Pocus 2,” alongside Doug Jones (who you may remember as the fish person from “The Shape of Water” or the fish person from “Hellboy”), who returns as friendly zombie Billy Butcherson.
So how does the new outing stack up to the original, without the benefit of shoddy special effects watched on well-worn tapes?
Here’s how the two do — and do not — compare.
“Hocus Pocus” centers on new kid Max (Omri Katz), his much cooler younger sister Dani (Thora Birch), his crush Allison (Vinessa Shaw) and a cursed boy-turned-cat named Zachary Binx (Sean Murray). While the audience fell in love with them nearly 30 years ago — in part because of Max’s very floppy hair — none of those characters are in the sequel.
Director Anne Fletcher told Entertainment Weekly that she tried to fit in the entire original cast, but their appearances didn’t work with the story. “People would say, ‘They could be in the background!’ and I’m like, really? You’re going to put the leads of the first movie in the background and be satisfied? You’re not going to be satisfied, you’re going to be angry,” she explained.
The new generation of Salem youths are a group of teen girls: Becca (Whitney Peak), Cassie (Lilia Buckingham) and Izzy (Belissa Escobedo). These childhood friends don’t need much convincing that their hometown is haunted, and are also without the constant guidance of a talking cat. And though they have less floppy hair than Max, they also have significantly better witch-foiling plans.
Bad witches are out; good witches are in. Whether it be because of the more universal acceptance that the historic concept of evil women was based in sexism, or because a bunch of Disney’s target audience is on #WitchTok, the “wicked” are given a new image in “Hocus Pocus 2.”
As naive Gilbert (played by “Veep’s” Sam Richardson) says about the Sanderson sisters in this go-round: “They were ahead of their time, they were misunderstood.” And while it’s fair to say that good witchery may still not be in the cards for that particular family clan, it is found in a new generation.
Becca, Cassie and Izzy have been trying their hands at magic for years. The group is fractured at the start of the film because of a bad high school boyfriend, but their mini-coven provides the necessary positive rebrand to avoid a witch PR crisis.
The original film has the iconic cover of Jay Hawkins’s “I Put a Spell on You,” as performed by Midler, Najimy and Parker. The sequel changes tunes, going with an upbeat performance by the trio of Blondie’s “One Way Or Another,” complete with an entranced flash mob.
While “I Put a Spell on You” is a fan-favorite, the super-creepy “Come Little Children,” sung by Parker’s Sarah to bewitch children for eating, is also a memorable performance. For fans of that, you’re in luck! We get a shortened version performed by the Mother Witch (played by “Ted Lasso’s” Hannah Waddingham).
The sisterhood
Did Winifred actually like her sisters in “Hocus Pocus?” It would be fair to assume no: Her focus is only on revenge, her youth and snappy quips. At one point she even asks, “Why was I cursed with such idiot sisters?”
But “Hocus Pocus 2” provides more sisterly affection and less mockery. Audiences are given a glimpse into the Sandersons’ childhood and how Winifred worked to keep them together. It’s a “Cruella”-esque origin story rewrite in terms of how it gives a childhood excuse for adulthood villainy, but works to up the sibling camaraderie nonetheless.
The virgins
Will you still have to explain to your child what a virgin is after watching the new movie?
Yes, sorry.
To achieve their immortality in the original “Hocus Pocus,” the Sanderson sisters require a virgin to light a candle. Consequently, the film puts an aggressive emphasis on ribbing Max for his ability do so. While the sequel sweeps the issue a little more under the rug, the birds and the bees conversation still haunts Salem, and even pokes fun at the uncomfortable “what’s a virgin?” conversation many families were forced into after the first movie.
We might suggest a more informative approach than Gilbert’s, whose explanation is that a virgin is someone who has never lit a candle, but far be it from us to deprive young millennials of reliving the uncomfortable situation they put their own parents in 29 years ago while trying to watch a simple family Halloween movie. In that respect, “Hocus Pocus 2” remains quite the same. | 2022-09-30T10:27:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘Hocus Pocus’ has become a cult favorite. How does the sequel stack up? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/30/hocus-pocus-2-disney/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/30/hocus-pocus-2-disney/ |
Mal Waldron, sideman to jazz greats, gets a solo retrospective
The pianist known for his work with the likes of Billie Holiday and John Coltrane is the subject of a solo archival release highlighting a 1978 concert in France
By Shannon J. Effinger
Mal Waldron in San Francisco in 1980. (Brian McMillen)
One of the great joys of jazz is seeing how the music of many of its giants — Dizzy, Miles, Duke, Mingus — reflected their unabashed personalities. Their music was synonymous with who they were in life, always keeping your attention with material that was audacious and irreverent. Just as enjoyable is discovering the accompanists who helped shape the sound and bring to life the vision of these very leaders. It’s an incalculably long list of musical greats, and among the upper echelon is pianist Mal Waldron.
Best known as the composer of the jazz standard “Soul Eyes,” Waldron was also the accompanist for Billie Holiday for the last two years of her life. As a session pianist for Prestige Records in the late 1950s, he appeared on seminal recordings, including “Eric Dolphy at The Five Spot,” Jackie McLean’s “Makin’ the Changes,” and “Interplay for 2 Trumpets and 2 Tenors,” a 1957 album that was one of John Coltrane’s first major outings.
Waldron penned more than 400 compositions, as he told writer Ted Panken in a 2001 interview. This count likely includes his Prestige compositions and early play-along records published by Music Minus One. “My mom used to tell me that he would be working on charts and arrangements on the train, or in the car, on the way to sessions,” said pianist Mala Waldron, eldest daughter of the late musician, during a recent phone conversation. And yet still, jazz history has largely overlooked Waldron and his vast contributions to this music.
“I think the way that [Waldron] plays and his feel, his eccentricity, is just not easily copped by jazz students,” said pianist Matthew Shipp. “The way that he syncopates and phrases, if it’s not codified, then he escapes a dialogue about jazz piano history.” (Shipp explored this idea more fully in his recent article on “Black Mystery School Pianists.”)
Waldron was the epitome of style and urbanity in jazz, from his pendulous brown cigarette dangling from his fingers to his signature coifed natural Black hair that grew into a stately white. He was an expat, traversing much of Europe and settling in Paris, Munich and Brussels. He composed scores for film, ballet and theater, including Amiri Baraka’s celebrated plays “The Slave” and “Dutchman.” He spoke four different languages (English, German, Japanese and French), worked with horses, and, according to Mala, was such a chess wiz that he often beat the computer.
Compared to the likes of Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie or Charles Mingus, he was far more understated as both a player and a man. No one was more aware of this fact than Waldron himself. “The piano was very, you know, inside, and you hide behind the piano,” he explained in the 1997 documentary “A Portrait of Mal Waldron” by Belgian filmmaker Tom Van Overberghe. “You play very quietly and work out your changes. It’s a beautiful instrument for a person like me.”
Waldron was heavily influenced by other giants of jazz piano — Bud Powell, Horace Silver and Thelonious Monk. He deeply explored the latter’s body of work in duets with the late saxophonist Steve Lacy in the 1980s and 1990s. Rather than imitate Monk’s idiosyncratic, flat-fingered style, Waldron’s playing grew less terse and much more dissonant and harmonic, particularly later in his career.
“[It’s] the contemplative use of space, which not too many people seem to know how to do today,” said renowned bassist Reggie Workman, one of Waldron’s frequent collaborators, in the documentary. “How to play the instrument percussive, as well as harmonic.” You can hear some of Waldron’s percussiveness in a 1964 performance of “All Africa” (from the “Freedom Now Suite”) as a member of the Max Roach Quintet, featuring Abbey Lincoln on vocals.
Waldron, who died of cancer at the age of 77 in 2002, is the subject of a new archival release, “Searching in Grenoble: The 1978 Solo Piano Concert.” Transferred from the original Radio France tapes, the deluxe two-disc album was released in coordination with Waldron’s estate and the Institut National de L’audiovisuel. It’s a profound work that captures some of his most exploratory playing. “When I play the piano, I’m trying to find things,” Waldron said in the 1997 documentary. “And I miss, and sometimes I don’t miss. But it’s always a constant search, you know? I search because I don’t know what’s happening. And I have to try and find out what’s happening.”
When listening to “Searching in Grenoble,” it is difficult to fathom that Waldron suffered a nervous breakdown after a near-fatal heroin overdose over a decade earlier. He had to teach himself how to play the piano again. He underwent spinal taps and shock treatments as part of his physical rehabilitation. “Part of the beauty of Mal is that you hear the struggle,” said pianist Ethan Iverson, who has penned a poignant encomium on Waldron’s musical journey. “The struggle is right there in front of you, which is also very appealing. He worked with Billie Holiday, and we love Billie Holiday because we know the struggle and can hear her struggle. … The people that can play a ton of piano can’t give the vibe that Mal Waldron gives.”
He was born Malcolm Earl Waldron in New York City on Aug. 16, 1925, to Jamaican middle-class parents. His father was a mechanical engineer for the Long Island Rail Road, and his mother was a nurse. At the age of 4, Waldron and his family moved to Jamaica in Queens.
Waldron had said that he started taking piano lessons as a young child because his parents hoped it would keep him out of trouble. And they were strict and adamant about what he could and couldn’t play. “They insisted that it had to be classical, and they didn’t want to hear anything about it,” his daughter Mala said.
Waldron took a slight detour to the saxophone after being floored by Coleman Hawkins’s playing on his legendary tune “Body and Soul.” But it was after hearing another iconic saxophone player, Charlie Parker, that Waldron was drawn back to the piano. “He felt that people played certain instruments that went with their personality,” Mala explained. “My dad was always an introvert, and he felt that the saxophone was more of an extroverted person’s instrument and that the piano was more fun — he felt that that suited his personality more.”
Waldron was stationed at West Point while serving in the Army, giving him access to New York’s many jazz clubs. After two years of service, he attended Queens College and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in composition, studying with composer Karol Rathaus whose essay “Jazzdämmerung — The Twilight of Jazz” cited George Gershwin and the Paul Whiteman Band for “cultural larceny” and blamed America for “Europeanizing Black music.” Waldron’s studies helped him hone his talents for composition while firmly cementing his switch from saxophone to piano.
He emerged onto the New York jazz scene in the 1950s. A fixture at Café Society, he performed alongside everyone from Ike Quebec, Lucky Thompson and Mingus, who was in the nascent stages of his movement toward collective improvisation. However, one of his most significant collaborations was with Billie Holiday.
“[Bassist] Julian Euell called my father, and he got the gig on short notice,” said Mala. “She was my godmother. He always said Billie was like his big sister who had him under her wing. While he and Billie were rehearsing, she could see that he wasn’t comfortable playing this tune, which was a blues [number]. Billie teased him saying, ‘I never knew a Black man [who] couldn’t play the blues!’ They used to laugh about that.”
“My dad was always a great accompanist who loved working with singers and knew how to listen,” she continued. “And Billie loved that. She taught him to pay attention to the lyrics, how to approach them when you’re playing the song, and be more [present] in what’s happening with a song on a given day. Not just chords or melodies, but the actual story.” | 2022-09-30T10:27:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mal Waldron, sideman to jazz greats, gets a solo retrospective - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/30/mal-waldron-jazz-piano-grenoble/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/music/2022/09/30/mal-waldron-jazz-piano-grenoble/ |
The Problems Facing the Gilt Market Aren’t Unique to the UK
The Bank of England recently announced that it would enter the market to buy government bonds (known as gilts) with a remaining maturity of 20 years or more. Although the central bank insists that its actions are “temporary,” to restore “orderly” markets, it’s not really clear what either of those words mean.(1) It was only on Sept. 21 that it announced plans to shrink its balance sheet assets by auctioning some of its gilt holdings. It looks like the bank’s follow-up action was to rescue some UK insurance and pension funds, which were facing hundreds of millions of pounds of margin calls as the value of their bond holdings declined – margin calls that some would surely struggle to meet.
That the BOE acted swiftly is to its credit. But the questions about what happened in recent days run deep, are far from relevant only to the UK and are most certainly not over.
The proximate cause of the run on UK government bonds and sterling was the government’s rather bold plan, announced on Sept. 23, to cut taxes without any attempt at cost savings or the slightest nod to fiscal probity. Small wonder, perhaps, that gilt yields climbed like the proverbial homesick angel and sterling collapsed. At one point, two-year inflation-linked bonds fell 8% in value from their high in late August. Apart from an emerging-market default, I cannot remember any short-dated bond moving that much over such a short period of time: they move not in percentage points but in hundredths of a percentage point. Long-dated inflation-linked gilts collapsed by almost 75% from their highs in December. Conventional 30-year gilts tumbled by some 60% over the same period.
The resulting problems for pension funds were twofold. First, to offset liabilities they had bought long-dated gilts (and probably some long-dated inflation-linked bonds) via counterparts who held those positions for them. Second, because the UK market is relatively small, they had also bought fairly low-quality investment-grade credit in the US and swapped these exposures into sterling. That left them with a dollar short position on one leg of the swap. Both types of trade were done via counterparts who demanded collateral — lots of it. Often, that meant selling other assets, hence the vortex of the past few days which the BOE has, rightly, alleviated by its actions. I am not sure that this is the end of the story.
For a start, the acute problems that have beset UK assets afflict other countries too, albeit in less visible and more chronic ways. The differences, I would suggest, are ones of degree not of kind. Other European countries, after all, have put energy caps of one sort or another in place, thereby loosening fiscal policy. The US has done the same, albeit for different reasons and in different ways. That is what President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness package does. Some analysts put the cost at as much as $1 trillion. You might argue that the UK government has driven a coach and horses though institutional checks and balances, among other things by sacking the top Treasury civil servant. But I’m not sure that the same isn’t true elsewhere. Even if he had the power, did Biden really have the authority to wipe out student debts at the stroke of a pen? All this, lest we forget, at a time when inflation is at multi-decade highs.
Which brings us to my second point. Recent turmoil in the UK draws attention to the fragility of markets for government debt around the world when they are not, one way or another, being manipulated by governments and central banks. Putting it bluntly, the world in the 15 years since the financial crisis is a world in which the authorities have artificially suppressed the yields on their debt. This is a big reason why bond yields haven’t risen anything like as much as inflation.
There are broadly three main ways in which governments have suppressed yields. The first is central banks via their quantitative easing programs. The second is central banks (sometimes the same ones doing QE) via the accumulation of foreign-exchange reserves (which is really the same as QE, the only difference being you buy another country’s debt and the maturity of that debt has historically been much lower). The third is regulations on financial institutions that in effect force them to buy government debt. Many financial institutions have various incentives and rules which encourage or force them to buy government bonds. Since the financial crisis, banks must in effect buy government debt before lending to each other. This isn’t different in its effects from a government buying the debt itself.
That last probably won’t change much. But the other two have changed. Most central banks have stopped adding to their QE programs and in some cases, such as the BOE and the Federal Reserve, are reversing it, albeit very slowly. The big upward pressure on bond yields of late seems to have come from the strength of the dollar. To stop their currencies falling more sharply against the greenback, central banks, mainly in Asia, have been buying their own currencies and selling dollars. Global foreign-exchange reserves have dropped $1 trillion this year, to about $12 trillion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg, though the drop is certainly larger because of the delay in reporting reserves.
This, of course, has also meant selling dollar-denominated assets, although other markets have suffered because of a need to keep the denomination of their reserves fairly constant. Once upon a time, central banks held very short-dated assets, but rates near zero or less for many years meant that they lengthened the maturity of their debt to obtain higher yields, though no-one knows by how much. What does seem clear is that central bank intervention seems to have been a big factor of late in pushing yields up in the developed world. Presumably that continues until the dollar turns.
And although perfectly understandable, the BOE’s backtracking this week won’t stop this last force. Nor will it magically make inflation disappear. Indeed, if it doesn’t backtrack again, the BOE will have to push short rates far more than it would otherwise have done. The market-clearing price of government debt, it is increasingly clear, is rather lower than present yields suggest.
(1) The BOE says purchases will end Oct.14, but presumably it would have to start restart them if markets start to fall sharply after that date and again postpone sales of government debt, which it says will now start at the end of October. | 2022-09-30T10:40:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Problems Facing the Gilt Market Aren’t Unique to the UK - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-problems-facing-the-gilt-market-arent-unique-to-the-uk/2022/09/30/78f8ec84-40a7-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-problems-facing-the-gilt-market-arent-unique-to-the-uk/2022/09/30/78f8ec84-40a7-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
He was shot inside his D.C. apartment. Then management evicted him.
Patrick Oseni sued a D.C. apartment building for $7.5 million, alleging he was wrongfully kicked out after he was shot
Patrick Oseni in front of the D.C. apartment building from which he was evicted. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Late one January 2020 morning, Patrick Oseni, his then-girlfriend and three friends were gathered in his Northwest D.C. apartment when Oseni heard a knock at his door.
As he opened it, Oseni said he saw a gun pointed at his face. The gunman fired one bullet, grazing the back of his head, he said. A second bullet seared through Oseni’s left shoulder and passed through his torso, while the assailant took off running down the hallway.
Oseni’s friends rushed him to Howard University Hospital, where he underwent two surgeries on his arm. At the hospital, Oseni said he told police he did not see his attacker, and had no idea who it was or how the person got into the building. “I was in shock. I had never been shot before,” Oseni said. “The doctors told me I was lucky to be alive.”
When Oseni returned to his apartment building a few days later, he discovered his key fob no longer worked. He said a building manager met him in the lobby and told him that his neighbors no longer felt safe with him living there, and he should retrieve his belongings and move out immediately.
Nearly a year after the incident, Oseni, who is Black, filed a $7.5 million lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court against the apartment complex, the Capitol View on 14th, and its parent company, Colorado-based UDR, Inc., alleging the building’s management discriminated against him based on race. He was only four months into a 14-month lease, according to his suit. In early September, a judge ruled Oseni’s lawsuit could move forward.
“This was crazy. I literally had just gotten shot. They escorted me to my apartment, told me to grab an overnight bag and I had to go stay in a hotel,” Oseni, 31, said in a recent interview. “I was victimized again. It was unbelievable.”
The apartment complex disputes Oseni’s claims. “We deny Mr. Oseni was wrongfully evicted,” said UDR’s attorney, Darcy C. Osta. “The defendants look forward to presenting their case for decision based on all of the facts, should the plaintiff’s case survive further legal challenges ahead.”
Oseni alleges the apartment complex was negligent in ensuring that the building was secure, and in preventing nonresidents from gaining access. The Howard University graduate alleges that because he is Black, the building’s management assumed he must have been involved in illegal activity that culminated in the shooting.
While investigating the shooting, police found four shell casings in the hallway outside Oseni’s apartment. Inside, police found a small stash of marijuana, hashish and six bullets of various calibers, according to a police report. Police initially charged Oseni with possession with intent to distribute and unlawful possession of ammunition. Prosecutors later dismissed the charges. Mark A. Smith, one of Oseni’s attorneys, said it was “unclear” who the items belonged to since so many people visited.
D.C. police have not arrested anyone involved in the shooting. Police spokesman Dustin Sternbeck said detectives have made “repeated” attempts to follow-up with Oseni and the others in the apartment at the time of the shooting, but they have yet to do so.
Smith said that after his client was evicted, he returned to his parents’ home in New York for a few weeks to recover. Smith said, “as time passed, there was not follow up from either side,” referring to both his client and police.
Housing experts say there is growing pressure on landlords to protect their tenants — including from their neighbors. Ezra Rosser, an American University housing law professor, said there has been an increasing number of cases nationwide involving landlords evicting tenants, even after the tenant has been the victim of violence in their homes — which sometimes spurs controversy.
“Landlords that don’t evict or fine these tenants could have a claim filed against them for not having a safe premises,” Rosser said. “The writing is all over the place as to the morality of this. It does leave the victim of violence in a bad place with the landlord, but it also leaves the landlord in a bad place with the other tenants.”
Oseni moved into the $3,200-a-month, one-bedroom apartment in September 2019. The lease was up in November 2020. He said he had already paid his January rent before he was shot. Oseni said he is an entrepreneur who owns and manages a fleet of four, high-end luxury cars, which he rents to customers.
“I thought it was a safe building, but obviously it wasn’t. Capitol View was trying to make me look like I was this bad guy, and I wasn’t. I’m not,” Oseni said. “I am a Black man who was the victim of a shooting, and they treated me like the shooting was my fault.”
In the lawsuit, Oseni’s attorneys argue that after the shooting, building management emailed residents and told them that Oseni knew his attacker. Oseni said that was not what he told police when he was hospitalized. In a recent interview, Sternbeck, the police spokesman, said the shooting did not appear “to be random.”
Smith said he believes his client was shot due to mistaken identity.
A month after Oseni’s shooting, while investigating a reported kidnapping, D.C. police searched an apartment just three doors away from where Oseni lived, and found a cache of drugs, guns and money. They seized two semiautomatic pistols and an Uzi-style rifle, along with thousands of dollars worth of hallucinogenic mushrooms, crystal meth, cocaine, marijuana, synthetic cannabinoids and cash, according to a search warrant. A police spokeswoman said two people were arrested in connection with the reported kidnapping incident, but no one has been for the items found in the apartment.
Smith, a former federal prosecutor, said he believes Oseni’s assailant meant to target the occupants with the drugs, cash and weapons, but mistakenly went to Oseni’s apartment.
“I am not a criminal,” Oseni said. “I am a victim. Twice. First, after being shot and then by this management company.” | 2022-09-30T10:40:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | He was shot inside his D.C. apartment. Then management evicted him. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/oseni-lawsuit-apartment-shooting-eviction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/29/oseni-lawsuit-apartment-shooting-eviction/ |
Three weeks after finding out about each other, the women boarded a plane to Costa Rica for a getaway
Emely Ortiz, left, and Faith Bistline took a vacation together in Costa Rica after figuring out they were dating the same man. (Faith Bistline)
Faith Bistline was excited for her 30th birthday trip to Costa Rica with her boyfriend, but a few weeks before they were to leave, she received an unsettling Facebook message.
“Is he your boyfriend?” the message asked, inquiring about a photo Bistline posted with her boyfriend of 18 months. “Because he’s been dating my friend for the past 10 months.”
Bistline was in disbelief. There had to be a mistake.
She took a screenshot and forwarded it to her boyfriend. He saw the message, she said, but he didn’t reply.
The inquiry came in late August from a woman who said her friend and co-worker, Emely Ortiz, was also his girlfriend.
Soon, Bistline got a text from Ortiz introducing herself and saying she’d been dating the guy for nearly a year, and believed they were exclusive.
“I just want to know how long you guys have been dating for,” Ortiz, 22, said. “Did he ever mention me to you or you had no clue,” she asked.
Bistline answered: “I had no idea. This is sorta freaking me out. We’ve been dating almost a year and a half. I’m trying to give him the opportunity to explain himself to me but he’s not responding to me right now.”
The boyfriend, who is 33, and his two unsuspecting girlfriends all work in health care and live in Las Vegas.
He wasn’t responding to Ortiz that day either. But the women continued to text each other. They sent each other photos of him to be sure he was the same guy, they talked about where they left their toothbrushes in his bathroom when they slept over, the gray fuzzy robe he wore around the apartment. How he met their families.
Over the next few days, they dumped the boyfriend and began to console each other.
“He played us,” Ortiz wrote.
The Washington Post is not naming the boyfriend for privacy reasons. A reporter tried to contact him several times by text and phone, and in a phone conversation on Tuesday, set up a time to talk to him on Thursday. On Thursday, he did not answer his phone and could not be reached.
As the two women commiserated about their heartbreak, Bistline told Ortiz about her birthday trip to Costa Rica. She had paid for it all, but she was not about to take her cheating ex as she had planned, she said. So she asked Ortiz to go with her.
“If you’re serious about costa rica let me know. I’m dead serious about bringing you instead of him lol,” Bistline wrote.
“Yes I’m serious about Costa Rica we need a vacation after this,” Ortiz wrote.
So on Sept. 16, three weeks after finding out about each other, they boarded a plane to Costa Rica together.
“I didn’t want to go alone,” Bistline said in an interview with The Post. “I was thinking it would probably help us both to go on a trip like this. We deserve this after what we’ve gone through.”
Ortiz said she initially hesitated when Bistline invited her.
“At first I was like, this girl is crazy,” Ortiz said, adding that her parents were worried for her safety on the trip. “But I just thought, it might be good for us to heal together because we’re the only two people who know what we went through.”
They spent four days exploring the jungle and waterfalls, healing and working through their feelings of betrayal. They sat for hours at the base of La Fortuna waterfall, trading stories.
They uncovered the extent of the deceit.
“I guess he would pack my things up into a duffel bag, like the gym duffel bag, and put it in his closet,” Ortiz said. “And then when I came back, he would take out my things before I came over.”
Bistline, a nurse, began dating him in April 2021, about a year after meeting through friends. Ortiz is a medical assistant at the clinic where the boyfriend, a doctor, had his residency. He asked her out on a date in October 2021, never revealing he already had a girlfriend, she said.
Both women had similar first impressions of him.
“When I very, very first saw him, he seemed like a ladies’ man to me,” Bistline said.
Emely agreed. Her initial thought: “He looks like a player.”
But he reassured them both, they said, that he was worth their time.
When Bistline received the initial Facebook message about her boyfriend’s duplicity, she was working at the Burning Man event in Nevada as a nurse. She reached out to him for an explanation, but he didn’t answer for two days, she said.
“The first thing he said was, ‘So I guess I have a little bit of explaining to do.’ And then he put this little, like, half-laugh emoji,” Bistline recalled. “That really rubbed me the wrong way. I’m like, ‘Is this funny to you?’ ”
Ortiz went to his house the day she found out. She waited hours outside, she said, but he didn’t show.
“I think I called him, like, a hundred times,” she said. The next evening, she went back to his apartment and found him there.
“I confronted him,” Ortiz said. “He said, ‘What are you talking about? Are you crazy?' And then I pulled up the messages, and he was like, ‘Oh … yeah.’ Eventually, she said, he apologized and told her, “I never should have let it get out of hand.”
Ortiz said she made him a large basket on Valentine’s Day, driving around the city to gather items — balloons at Family Dollar and candies at Target.
He re-gifted it to Bistline, the women discovered.
“My heart sank into my stomach because I had put so much feeling into that Valentine’s Day gift,” Ortiz said.
There were other discoveries, too. He claimed he went shopping when Bistline asked about the new clothes Ortiz bought him, she said.
When Bistline returned to Las Vegas from Burning Man in late August, she and Ortiz met in person for the first time. Bistline had planned to meet up with her ex-boyfriend that night, and she brought Ortiz along.
“He just started, like, laughing awkwardly, looking back and forth at us,” Bistline said. “I think he didn’t know what to say.”
When they confronted him, he admitted he’d swap out their toothbrushes when each visited his apartment, they said.
As they sorted through their emotions in Costa Rica, they discovered that they fell for the same qualities in him.
“During our first date, there were never any boring moments,” Bistline said. “He was super intelligent, and he wanted to talk about things that I was interested in. We had super deep conversations.”
Ortiz said she fell for his compassion. “He was always there for me.”
Both women said they’d miss snuggling his cats. They won’t miss hanging out with his friends, they said, because they believe the friends knew about the double dealing.
There were red flags, too. Ortiz noticed he’d go long stretches without replying to her texts, then claim to have been sleeping.
“I would believe him,” she said. “But in the back of my head, I was like, that doesn’t sound correct.”
For Bistline, looking back, the biggest red flag was his life philosophy.
“He was super big on the fact that good and evil don’t exist,” she said. “And when things happen, it just is; it’s not bad, it’s not good. Now when I look at that, I’m like, oh my God, he’s trying to justify dating two women at the same time.”
Now that their breakups are about a month old, and they’re back from their travel adventure, they remain close.
When they were in Costa Rica, Ortiz surprised Bistline on the night of her 30th birthday with a special dessert. The whole restaurant sang to her.
“I don’t remember the last time I was that happy,” Bistline said. “Friendship is what’s going to carry you through everything.”
Ortiz agreed, and said in addition to a new friend, she gained a lesson from the experience.
“Always listen to your intuition,” she said. | 2022-09-30T10:40:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Faith Bistline, Emely Ortiz dumped cheater boyfriend, took vacation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/30/cheating-boyfriend-vacation-bistline-ortiz/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/09/30/cheating-boyfriend-vacation-bistline-ortiz/ |
On the heels of a mob, James Meredith integrated Ole Miss. He left lessons for today.
The military veteran’s story from 60 years ago offers a warning: Extreme political rhetoric can fuel violence.
Perspective by Robert Billups
Robert Billups is a PhD candidate in history at Emory University. His work focuses on violence against the U.S. civil rights movement.
Civil rights movement activist and military veteran James Meredith, pictured in 2018, greets a friend with a Black power salute as he takes a coffee break at a Jackson, Miss., grocery store. (Rogelio V. Solis/AP)
Sixty years ago, on Sept. 30, 1962, James Meredith, a Black military veteran, moved onto the University of Mississippi’s campus in Oxford. He intended to enroll in fall classes the next morning, which would formally desegregate the student body. As Meredith settled into his dormitory at Ole Miss, a massive crowd attacked the hundreds of U.S. marshals assigned to protect him. The assault lasted for hours and ceased only when President John F. Kennedy mobilized the military. Hours after the mob dispersed, Meredith finally enrolled, officially desegregating the university on Oct. 1, 1962.
Meredith’s enrollment is a milestone worthy of commemoration and celebration, while the “Battle of Oxford” that preceded it serves as an important reminder of America’s long history of mob violence. The 1962 attack on the U.S. marshals has stark parallels to other violent mobs in U.S. history, including the one that descended upon the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. In moments like these, people who feel ignored by political institutions are more likely to embrace violence to protest, pressure or remove the groups or authorities they oppose.
Historian Paul Gilje has shown that mobs are part of a centuries-old tradition of political violence. Since the 1600s, some Americans have formed violent mobs to coerce public officials, institutions and ethnic and racial groups into a variety of demands — from waiving excise taxes to forcing Black and Chinese residents out of certain neighborhoods and towns.
Despite this history, the American South entered a distinctly new age of political violence after the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which prohibited legalized racial segregation in public schools. Most White southern politicians signed onto the 1956 “Southern Manifesto,” which deemed Brown an unconstitutional attack on states’ autonomy and called for resistance to school desegregation and federal civil rights programs. For White southerners holding or seeking office, defying federal authority became a way to channel and legitimate their White constituents’ antagonism toward racial equality and the national government.
Like many vocal segregationist officials, Gov. Ross Barnett (D-Miss.) set the stage for violence when he openly fought Meredith’s enrollment at the University of Mississippi. Meredith applied to the university in January 1961, but faced stonewalling and rejection for months. With support from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,, he sued the university for denying him admission on the basis of race.
While the university and state government fought back in court, vigilantes tried to pressure Meredith into dropping the case. Meredith suffered threats, intimidation, vandalism and even arrest for trumped-up charges of fraudulent voter registration. “My greatest concern was for the safety of my family and parents,” he noted in his 2012 memoir. Meredith’s relatives supported him despite receiving threats of their own.
On June 25, 1962, federal judge John Wisdom ruled in Meredith’s favor, but Barnett kept fighting to bolster his own political status. The state appealed the case, which ended on Sept. 10 when the U.S. Supreme Court sided with Meredith and called for his admission to the university.
Three days later, Barnett gave a radio address that presented White Mississippians with two options: “Either submit to the unlawful dictates of the federal government or stand up like men and tell them ‘NEVER!’ ” Barnett’s preference for the latter was clear. Championing the discredited legal theory of interposition, he claimed that state officials could essentially bypass the federal government’s will and instead uphold Mississippi’s own laws that kept the university segregated.
Barnett shepherded increasingly desperate efforts to block the university’s desegregation. In one stunt, the university’s board of trustees made the governor a registrar so he could personally deny Meredith’s admission. On Sept. 27, Barnett surveyed an armed mob in Oxford. Rather than attempt to talk down the mob, he instead convinced Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to cancel a federal convoy bringing Meredith to campus.
Barnett earned ardent segregationists’ admiration, but at the cost of a federal contempt charge. To avoid fines and possible arrest, the governor secretly agreed to a desegregation plan with President John F. Kennedy’s administration on Sept. 30, 1962, which resulted in U.S. marshals ushering Meredith onto campus that evening.
The ensuing mob gradually grew in numbers and eventually turned violent. While Meredith moved into his dormitory, marshals gathered at the Lyceum administrative building that housed the registrar, where Meredith would enroll the next morning. As federal officers congregated, so too did White onlookers. At first, the crowd was mostly made up of students because the Mississippi Highway Patrol had set roadblocks to filter out vehicles unaffiliated with the university. University chancellor John Williams attempted to quell the gathering mob and encouraged students to leave. Some did.
The situation quickly deteriorated, however, as protesters — including many from outside the university — bypassed the roadblocks and joined the crowd. The throng became rowdier, harassing journalists on the scene as well as marshals, whom several in the crowd mistakenly believed guarded Meredith inside the Lyceum. Adding to the violence, several highway patrol officers encouraged the mob and its escalating attacks on the federal marshals. By 7 p.m., some people were throwing brickbats and beating reporters.
Rather than talk down the brewing mob of his supporters, Barnett riled it up. At 7:30 p.m., he delivered a broadcast address that at first plainly denounced violence. The governor concluded the speech, however, by signaling support for continued resistance to Meredith’s enrollment. He asked God to have mercy on the souls of federal officials, whom he accused of trampling Mississippi’s sovereignty and destroying the U.S. Constitution. After his speech, the crowd intensified its assault on approximately 400 U.S. marshals. For hours, the mob set fire to vehicles, attacked journalists and pelted federal agents with rocks, molotov cocktails and gunfire. Barnett did nothing to stop them, and the highway patrol eventually left the federal marshals to fend for themselves.
Barnett was just one public figure who stoked violence against the federal marshals. Former Army general Edwin Walker had begrudgingly followed President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s orders to desegregate Little Rock High School with troops in 1957, but a few hours into the onslaught in Mississippi in 1962, he joined the mob and effectively became its commander. The mob raged through the night, with gunfire killing two bystanders: journalist Paul Leslie Guihard and Walter Ray Gunter, a White onlooker from just north of Oxford. Approximately 160 U.S. marshals suffered injuries and it took the military until the next morning to suppress the rioting. Hours after the crowd dispersed, Meredith entered the Lyceum and formally enrolled at the university.
The mob that fought Meredith’s enrollment is a reminder that political hostility toward federal authorities — which has emanated most often in recent years from the MAGA wing of the Republican Party — is neither new nor without consequence. Just as Barnett fueled violence against U.S. marshals 60 years ago, unduly lambasting government agencies today elevates threats to law enforcement personnel. This lesson was especially clear on Jan. 6, 2021, when President Donald Trump inspired his supporters to attack the Capitol, which resulted in the death of a Capitol Hill police officer.
The 60th anniversary of the Battle of Oxford is a timely reminder that extreme political rhetoric can foment violence. | 2022-09-30T10:41:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | James Meredith and the cautionary tale about extreme political rhetoric - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/30/james-meredith-ole-miss/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/09/30/james-meredith-ole-miss/ |
States are targeting pet store loans that can balloon by tens of thousands of dollars, sometimes for sick dogs
A puppy is on display at a pet shop in July in New York. (John Smith/Getty Images)
Millie Hill said it was love at first sight as her husband of 50 years held a pint-size Chihuahua puppy at a Puppyland pet store last summer.
Howard Hill, 95 and dealing with vascular dementia, was worried about how quiet their home in Kent, Wash., might become when their aging dog, Mr. B, passed away. So after hurriedly signing papers at the national pet store chain, the Hills walked out with the new $4,595 puppy.
When she sat down to look at the paperwork a few days later, Millie Hill quickly realized her mistake: The bundle of high-interest loans she’d signed would eventually swell to a total cost of more than $19,000.
“I felt betrayed. You don’t expect this from people who sell animals and love animals,” said Millie Hill, 85, whose husband died in November. “This should not be allowed; it should be illegal.”
A growing chorus of state legislatures agree and are taking action to outlaw high-interest loans and leasing arrangements from brick-and-mortar and online pet stores. The deals can leave pet owners on the hook for double or triple the cost of an animal and can cripple the credit of those who can’t pay up.
Illinois banned the high-interest loans this year and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill on Monday that generally prohibits online pet stores — regardless of location — from being involved in financing the sale of dogs, cats or rabbits
Another 10 states have banned retail pet stores from offering leasing plans that are similar in cost and structure to car leases, meaning a failure to pay could result in a pet being seized.
“They are preying on people who are making an emotional decision,” said California state Rep. Brian Maienschein (D), who sponsored the bill. “These are not reasonable loans, the terms are predatory, in some cases doubling the cost of the pet. That’s absurd.”
The founder of Puppyland, which has six stores in four states, defended the company’s practice of using finance companies that offer the high-interest loans, arguing that it gives pet owners more flexibility.
“These interest rates are not unique to Puppyland and Puppyland has no control over the interest rates our customers receive when working with 3rd parties for financing,” Kayla Kerr said in a statement, adding that the company has no plans to change its loan policies. “If we were to suspend this option, it essentially narrows the choice for the customer and we would not want to do that.”
EasyPay Finance, a company that offers high-interest loans through pet stores across the nation, said they allow customers who might otherwise not qualify for a traditional loan to buy the pet of their choice. The company says its loan rates can be as high as 199 percent.
“Many Americans are left behind by the traditional banking and credit system. EasyPay facilitates financing options to ensure that these consumers have a trusted and secure choice to access otherwise unavailable credit for pressing needs and discretionary purposes,” a statement from the company said, adding that it offers “a range of credit tiers based on a borrower’s credit profile.”
Mike Bober, president of Pet Advocacy Network, a trade group that represents pet stores, declined to comment on the use of high-interest loans, saying, “This issue has been raised to us before, but our position is that it is outside the scope of pet care.”
Some states are going a step further, banning the sale of dogs — and sometimes cats and rabbits — from retail pet stores altogether. Backers say in addition to costly loans, consumers often end up with pets that have myriad costly and stressful health problems. So far, five states have enacted these pet store bans, and New York may join them if the “Puppy Mill Pipeline Bill” — passed by the legislature in June — is signed by Gov. Kathy Hochul (D).
Bober criticized those measures, arguing they do nothing to improve the quality of pets and hurt small businesses.
“The reality is that the impact that they have doesn’t end up where it’s purported to,” Bober said. “It’s not that these bills are affecting breeding conditions anywhere, especially with the unlicensed illegal breeders. Instead, what it’s doing is creating situations where small, local businesses cannot remain open.”
Pet stores that sell expensive dog breeds have offered traditional financing options to customers for decades. However, loan companies acknowledge that the newer, high-interest loans are aimed at customers with no or poor credit. And customers and animal rights groups say the loans are pitched by sales staff as affordable by focusing on the cost for monthly payments verses the overall price of the dog. These practices have allowed pet stores to sell breeds that cost thousands of dollars — such as French bulldogs — at prices far higher than private breeders charge due, in part, to impulse buys as people browse pets.
The Humane Society, Animal Legal Defense Fund, National Consumer Law Center, and other groups say complaints about triple-digit loans or leasing options have risen over the past several years. In February, the groups formed a coalition to raise public awareness and to apply pressure on government officials and agencies.
Congress has also taken action to close a loophole that enables the high-interest loans. Last year, President Biden signed a bipartisan resolution to repeal a Trump-era rule that made it easier for finance companies to make loans that exceed state interest rate caps, saying the system was set up to “allow lenders to prey on veterans, seniors, and other unsuspecting borrowers .... trapping them into a cycle of debt.”
A congressional bill was introduced in 2019 and again in 2021 that would provide a permanent, national solution by setting a 36 percent interest rate cap that covers all lenders, including banks. The bill has stalled under intense lobbying by the financial industry.
The lending and leasing practices have persisted despite rolling back the Trump-era rule, prompting several state attorneys general to take legal action against some of the pet stores and financing companies.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D) called pet leasing an “exploitive practice” when she announced a $930,000 settlement in April with a finance company that also agreed to wave consumers’ outstanding debt. Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) announced a settlement in August with a pet store that agreed to pay veterinary care or refund consumers who bought dogs with medical conditions. And the Hills’ case and others in Washington have triggered an inquiry by state Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D).
The state attorneys general probes have limited impact, however, since the investigations tend to focus on a singular finance company or pet store and can only protect consumers within their own states.
“Right now, this is a whack-a-mole approach that goes by lender and by state,” said Rachel Gittleman, a financial services outreach manager with the Consumer Federation of America. “Since most of these lenders operate online, it can be difficult to even find them. There’s isn’t some storefront operation that you can easily find.”
When Jennifer and Jeff Bowman spotted a brindle-colored English bulldog in a Petland pet store in Iowa City in 2019, the couple asked a sales clerk if they could meet the dog they would later name Zeke.
Zeke snorted and kissed them and the couple asked what it cost to take him home. The price tag — $4,400 — triggered immediate sticker shock.
However, the couple said a Petland employee told them financing options were available that would ensure a low monthly payment. They would just have to fill out a loan application.
State interest rates are capped at 36 percent in Iowa, so the Bowmans weren’t overly concerned — until they got home and saw that the 90-day interest free loan from EasyPay had an explosive clause in it. If they did not pay off the loan within that time, according to financial documents reviewed by The Washington Post, the interest rate would rise to 188.98 percent.
“We were worried about how much it would cost and, while we were talking about it, another worker took a call and said it was someone who was also interested in the dog,” Jennifer Bowman said in an interview. “I started begging my husband for us to find a way to get him. I think they played us for fools.”
The EasyPay loan was processed through Utah-based TAB Bank in what consumer groups and political leaders, including Biden, have referred to as a “rent-a-bank” maneuver, where financing companies process loans through out-of-state banks that don’t have to abide by the state-capped interest rates.
In a statement, TAB Bank defended its practices, saying it is a better option than payday loans and helps “consumers who have no or limited credit.”
Petland, which has 22 company stores and 75 franchises, stopped offering triple-digit loan options in April 2021, said Elizabeth Kunzelman, the chain’s vice president for legislative and public affairs, calling it “the responsible thing to do.”
In the Bowmans’ case, Kunzelman argued they should have been aware of the EasyPay interest rate since they “were given documentation of the terms.”
However, records suggest that at least some other Petland stores have continued to offer loans above this rate even after the store’s policy change.
For example, one video of a Petland employee this summer at a store in Wichita captured a conversation with a Humane Society volunteer posing as a customer in which the person was advised against a triple-digit interest loan that the employee suggested the company was still offering.
“If you don’t pay it off within those 90 days, you have to start paying the interest too, and their APR is like insane, like it’s, somebody got it figured the other day, like 194 percent,” the employee said in a video reviewed by The Post.
Kunzelman said the Petland franchisee — which independently owns and operates the store — told her that the highest interest rate they were offering at the time the video was shot was through a company credit card at 29.99 percent.
Especially troubling for pet owners like the Bowmans is the anguish they experience when the dog also comes with health problems. With Zeke, veterinary records reveal a host of physical problems that included a “chronic history of allergic skin disease, gastrointestinal disturbances and respiratory issues,” according to a necropsy report performed after he died of renal failure at 20 months of age. The veterinarian also said Zeke’s health problems were “a direct result of his prior genetic and breeding history.”
“We would be homeless if my mother-in-law had not stepped in to help us financially,” Bowman said. “We didn’t want to give up on Zeke, we loved him, and we wanted to save him.”
Kunzelman said the store took seriously the complaints about Zeke’s health and reimbursed the Bowmans for their veterinarian bills and for the price they paid for Zeke, minus financing. The couple say the ordeal still cost them thousands of dollars and their credit also suffered.
“The store communicated the medical issues and hardship back to the breeder who agreed to stop breeding the sire and dam. The store also stopped purchasing from that breeder,” Kunzelman said, adding that she does not believe any other Petland store has since purchased from the breeder.
In many cases, owners ultimately default on their loans. After Zeke died, the Bowmans said they stopped paying on one of the two loans they secured through Petland. They continue to receive monthly calls from a collection agency and, they said, their credit has been seriously damaged.
Millie Hill said once she saw the terms of the loans for her Chihuahua puppy, she secured a lower-interest loan to pay them off, but — due to late fees and other reasons — she said the finance companies told her they would not accept a lump sum. Ultimately, Hill’s daughter, Aimee Budrow, stepped in and encouraged her mother to walk away from the loans, even though creditors continue to seek payment. Budrow also quickly learned that her mother was unable to take care of a puppy, so it was given to a relative.
Budrow said the sales staff at Puppyland should have realized her parents would not be able to care for the dog when they were unable to secure a loan with a reasonable interest rate.
“People who sell puppies should not be selling them to people who have to take out a loan with this kind of interest rate,” Budrow said. “If that’s the only way you can secure a loan, you are probably not in a great position to take care of the dog.”
Kerr, Puppyland’s founder, disputed the idea that her employees should have known the Hills weren’t prepared for the dog or the loan they signed, saying employees are not “in the business of determining people’s finances or any medical conditions.”
Millie Hill said she worries that people with limited income — particularly those who are older — could also end up with a high-interest pet loan, which she describes as “one of the worse experiences of my life.”
“I don’t want them cheating other people,” she said. “Especially elderly people who just want something to love.” | 2022-09-30T10:41:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | States move to ban high-interest loans at pet shops - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/pet-stores-high-interest-loans-state-bans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/pet-stores-high-interest-loans-state-bans/ |
TikTok's ties to China set it apart from other platforms, according to Geoffrey Cain, a senior fellow at the Lincoln Network, a conservative-leaning think tank that studies technology policy. The country’s leaders have shown a willingness to spread disinformation that undermines the West, he said, and it would be foolish to think they haven’t tried to enlist TikTok in this work. | 2022-09-30T10:41:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | TikTok politics: Candidates turn to it 'for better or worse' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/tiktok-politics-candidates-turn-to-it-for-better-or-worse/2022/09/30/dbdbeba4-40a6-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/tiktok-politics-candidates-turn-to-it-for-better-or-worse/2022/09/30/dbdbeba4-40a6-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
TORONTO — The Blue Jays clinched a postseason berth without taking the field.
CINCINNATI — Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa sustained neck and head injuries and was stretchered from the field after being slammed to the ground against the Cincinnati Bengals.
BEREA, Ohio — Cleveland Browns All-Pro Myles Garrett returned to the team’s headquarters but didn’t practice while recovering from injuries sustained in a car crash earlier this week, when police said he lost control speeding on a rural road.
JACKSON, Miss. — Davis Riley got off to a hot start and kept bogeys off his card to the end for a 6-under 66 and a share of the lead with Will Gordon in the Sanderson Farms Championship, the PGA Tour event he considers his fifth major.
THE COLONY, Texas — Xiyu Lin of China made a 10-foot eagle putt on the par-5 17th hole that sent her to a 6-under 65 and a one-shot lead in The Ascendant LPGA.
PARMA, Italy — Top-seeded Maria Sakkari rallied past 97th-ranked Maryna Zanevska 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 at the Parma Ladies Open to reach her first semifinal since the grass-court season. | 2022-09-30T10:41:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Thursday's Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/thursdays-sports-in-brief/2022/09/30/7da8592e-40a5-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/thursdays-sports-in-brief/2022/09/30/7da8592e-40a5-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
By Rick Noack
Night view taken on Wednesday shows the Karsto gas processing plant in the municipality of Tysvær in the North Rogaland county, Norway. (Cornelius Poppe/AFP/Getty Images)
PARIS — Germany on Thursday announced an up to $194 billion program to tackle rising energy prices, seeking to shield consumers and companies from some of the worst fallout as temperatures across Europe are starting to drop.
German Finance Minister Christian Lindner said the planned emergency intervention is an “answer to Putin,” whom he accused of waging an “energy war” against Europe.
But the German announcement on Thursday also underlined just how divided Europe’s response to rising energy prices has been. E.U. energy ministers were expected to meet in Brussels on Friday to discuss joint measures, including a possible gas price cap and levies on excess profits of energy produces. Some member states, notably France, have had extensive price caps in place for much of the year. Germany, which heavily relied on Russian gas prior to the invasion of Ukraine, is only now taking comparable action.
Even though key details about Germany’s plan remained unclear, German officials were clear on what they don’t want them to look like.
“We are expressly not following the U.K.’s example down a path to an expansionary fiscal policy,” Lindner said.
New British Prime Minister Liz Truss caused a financial market revolt earlier this week after her government proposed using borrowed money to pay for tax cuts while spending heavily to insulate consumers from soaring energy bills. In response, the British pound fell to an all-time low against the U.S. dollar.
How are France and Germany doing it?
The French government has required its majority state-owned energy company to sell power at an artificially low price this year, but also intervened quickly to impose price caps.
The swift response was likely rooted at least partly in memories from the early stages of President Emmanuel Macron’s first term as president. Protests over environmental-linked fuel taxes in 2018 and 2019 quickly swelled in size, capturing broader concerns over social inequality, and triggering the Yellow Vest movement that later turned increasingly violent.
As the country prepared for the presidential election this April, Macron’s government capped the increase in electricity prices at 4 percent, and froze natural gas prices at fall 2021 levels — and kept them there after the election.
Earlier this month, French Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne said electricity and natural gas price increases would be capped at 15 percent in 2023, and 12 million low-income households will be eligible for one-off payments of up to around $200.
“This will prevent real incomes in France from falling as far as in neighbouring economies, but at the expense of a bigger budget deficit,” the Capital Economics consultancy added in a recent analysis.
Overall, the price caps are expected to cost around $44 billion, and France expects to borrow a record sum — around $260 billion — to finance its expanding budget next year.
But future spending could end up being even higher in neighboring Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, which relied more on Russian natural gas than most other E.U. countries.
Following the nationalization of gas importer Uniper earlier in September, the government called off a gas levy that was due to kick in Oct. 1. Instead, it is now expected to cover the cost of a price cap on gas and electricity that could bear some resemblance of the French approach. Private households, as well as small and medium-sized businesses, would receive a basic amount of electricity at a subsidized rate.
However, anything above that basic amount, consumers would have to purchase at the current market price. Alongside efforts to soften the financial impact of rising energy prices, Germany is keen to maintain an incentive among households and businesses to reduce energy consumption.
"The need to save energy remains unchanged,” German Energy and Economy Minster Robert Habeck said Thursday on announcing the latest support package.
German officials have called on the public to use less energy by washing clothes at 86 Fahrenheit (30C), using more energy-efficient light bulbs and heating their homes at around 62F (17C). Shorter and cooler showers have also been encouraged. Monuments, public buildings and shop windows nationwide have no longer been lit up at night.
Why was the British energy plan so disruptive?
Britain too plans to borrow heavily to shield its consumers, but it is doing so while dramatically slashing taxes, which has sent investors into a panic and shocked the currency.
“What France and Germany have approved is, on the whole, going to be more market friendly," said Andrew Kenningham, Chief Europe Economist at Capital Economics, a consultancy firm.
Britain already has some of Europe’s highest energy prices and so the British government has spent more than most to deal with the new surge. Over the past year, Britain spent 6.5 percent of its GDP to shield companies and individuals from the energy crisis — far more than most E.U. nations, according to Brussels-based economic policy think tank Bruegel.
Within days of coming into office earlier this month, Truss announced a package of measures, including a lower-than-anticipated cap on energy bills until 2024.
Whereas average British annual prices per household were previously expected to rise to around $3,900 — potentially throwing millions into financial difficulty — the government intervention will now likely keep annual prices around $2,800, according to the Energy Saving Trust, an NGO.
But the tax cuts her government has proposed have prompted an unusual warning from the IMF of an increase in inequality, compounding concerns over Britain’s ability to confront this winter’s energy crisis without a wave of public anger.
The pound’s plunging value will also make it more expensive for Britain to import from abroad, including energy.
What about Europe’s energy infrastructure?
The rising prices have reawakened a number of parallel debates over European energy infrastructure and supplies.
In Germany, Economy Minister Habeck — a member of the Green Party — said this week that the country would likely not take all of its remaining nuclear power plants off the electricity grid by the end of this year as originally planned, drawing fierce criticism from within his party.
Germany’s decision in 2011 to shut down all reactors by 2022 had followed decades of Green Party pressure to abandon nuclear energy.
Habeck argues that the extension is only temporary — only two plants may continue to operate until April next year — and that it is necessary because around half of all French nuclear plants are currently under maintenance.
France has also been under pressure from the German, Spanish and Portuguese governments to approve a natural gas pipeline project between Spain and France via the Pyrenees.
French officials have argued that existing pipelines between the two countries already have enough capacity, and a new pipeline would take too long to build. “I do not understand why we would jump around like Pyrenees goats on this topic,” Macron recently told reporters, according to Reuters.
But Spanish and Portuguese pipeline advocates argue that France is trying to put its own energy producers at an advantage by limiting the amount of gas Spain and Portugal can send to central Europe.
In Britain, the government last week lifted a ban on fracking, the environmentally fraught process of extracting shale gas, overturning an earlier decision that was made amid concerns over earth tremors. | 2022-09-30T10:42:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What is the difference between European energy policies as winter comes? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/germany-france-uk-energy-crisis-response/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/germany-france-uk-energy-crisis-response/ |
Some schools now allow mental health days. Here’s how your kid can use one.
In the past few years, some parents have received a new item to put into their child-rearing tool kits: the school mental health day. Since 2018, more than a dozen states have passed or proposed bills that would allow school districts to treat days missed for mental health issues the same way they treat absences for physical health issues.
The question for parents will be deciding when and how to use the option.
Mental health days are a response to the mental health crisis among children, said Jill Cook, executive director of the American School Counselor Association. “Even before the pandemic, we knew that anxiety was on the rise,” she said. “And we also know that the pandemic just exacerbated some of that for many students.”
“The trick,” Cook added, “will be to ascertain whether it is truly a need to rest and recharge as opposed to school avoidance or test avoidance or something else that might be more significant going on where a mental health day is not the solution.”
Mary Alvord, a clinical psychologist in Rockville, Md., agrees that mental health days could trigger school avoidance. “Life is filled with discomfort and uncertainty, and we need to learn how to cope with that,” said Alvord, founder of Resilience Across Borders, a nonprofit group aimed at helping youth build resilience. She recommends that mental health days be devoted to that learning, rather than to retreating from whatever is troubling the child.
“If you have a sick kid complaining that their ear hurts, you’re not going to say, ‘Okay, just stay home.’ You’re going to say, ‘We need to go to the pediatrician,” Alvord said. Likewise, a mental health day should not be “a day to just stay in your room and play video games. There has to be an action plan,” such as talking to a counselor or therapist, working on calming strategies or challenging negative thinking with other scenarios that are more likely to happen.
How should parents decide?
Unfortunately, there’s no thermometer to tell you when a child is too stressed or anxious to go to school. Alvord said it’s about “closely observing them and listening to what they say and talking with them as much as they’re willing.” Ask questions such as, “What is making you think or feel like taking a day off would be helpful?” or, “Is there something pressing going on?”
Cook said parents will have to do a bit of detective work to see if the child is facing a test or hasn’t finished a project. “It’s really important that the parents and the young person can talk to one another and have these open and honest conversations when possible. And for parents to help students understand if it is an avoidance tactic, then they might not be doing themselves any favors by taking that day.”
Nekeshia Hammond, a clinical psychologist in Brandon, Fla., said she believes that, in middle and high school, “a lot of kids can say, ‘You know what, I need a break.’ And I think we need to really respect that.” She’s aware that some kids will try to take advantage of mental health days — but noted that there have always been children who try to game the system.
“The most important thing that we need to be thinking about is making sure that kids are learning how to take care of themselves,” Hammond said.
How to spend the day
“Our mental state is directly related to how we do in school. So, we don’t want to send a really distressed or really depressed kid if they can’t handle it,” Alvord said. “But you have to do something. It has to be proactive.”
Once you have a handle on what’s troubling a child or teen, work together on a coping plan. If a child is upset about a social interaction at school, the plan may be to go to see the school counselor together. If they were so anxious that they couldn’t sleep the night before, consider letting them sleep for a few hours before taking them in late — mental health days don’t need to last all day, Alvord noted.
During a mental health day, Hammond said, “It’s really important to engage in calming activities, whatever that looks like” for your child. Teaching them about mindfulness can be helpful, as can helping them process some upsetting experiences.
Parents can also introduce their children to mental health apps to help them regulate their emotions. Some suggestions are Three Good Things, Smiling Mind, and Breathe2Relax.
Finally, parents should be aware that they might need to help their child “transition from this mental health day to going back into the academic setting,” Hammond said. For example, if a child has anxiety, a parent can work with them on positive visualizations of being back in school. Or, said Alvord, a parent may drive them to school and do some calming exercises and reframing with them in the parking lot.
A new approach to mental health
One benefit of the concept of mental health days is that it gets parents, teachers and kids openly talking about the issue.
“It’s a really important statement for the states to be saying, ‘Hey, we care about your mental health,'” said Hammond, who hopes all states will eventually pass similar laws. “Because in my experience, some schools are so focused on academics they have completely forgotten that we need children to have positive mental health to work and perform academically.”
She praises the current de-emphasis on perfect attendance. “Missing a day or two of school is not necessarily going to have this horrendous impact academically when the goal is to make sure that this child is emotionally safe and emotionally healthy.”
Parents should also model emotionally healthy behavior for their children, Hammond said. “It’s okay to show your kids ‘I got really stressed out, but here’s what I’m doing about it. I’m trying to take care of myself.’ ”
In some cases, parents might share why they are taking a mental health day themselves. For example, after losing a loved one, a parent might say that instead of going to work, they “needed a day to grieve and be calm and celebrate this person,” Alvord said. The important thing, she added, is to communicate that you are doing something about the issueand not just taking to your bed.
The concept of mental health days is “a really positive thing for kids to be learning this early,” Hammond said. “This is a skill that kids need, not just in their childhood, obviously, but into their adult years. We’re giving them a gift of teaching them to take care of themselves.”
In fact, Hammond said she thinks parents should consider mental health days an option, even if they don’t live in a state that has passed legislation allowing them. “I’m a big advocate of doing what works for your child at the end of the day.” | 2022-09-30T11:41:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Advice for parents on student mental health days - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/09/30/school-mental-health-day-advice/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/09/30/school-mental-health-day-advice/ |
Post Politics Now Congress about to leave Washington until after the elections
On our radar: House set to pass bill averting government shutdown with hours to spare
Noted: Biden takes aim at a GOP triumvirate of Scott, Johnson and McCarthy
The latest: U.S., allies to increase pressure on Russia following annexation
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), left, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) depart after the unveiling of a statue of President Harry S. Truman in the Capitol Rotunda on Thursday. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Today, the House is expected to pass a stopgap funding bill to keep the government open through mid-December. Then most members will head home, with no plans to return to Washington until after the November midterm elections. The Senate passed the continuing resolution in a bipartisan 72-25 vote Thursday before leaving town; no more votes are scheduled until Nov. 14. The House margin on the funding bill is expected to be tighter, as GOP leaders in the chamber are urging “no” votes.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hold a traditional investiture ceremony Friday for Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s first Black woman, as it prepares to open a new term. President Biden and Vice President Harris are expected to be in the invitation-only audience at the court.
10 a.m. Eastern: The Supreme Court holds an investiture ceremony for Jackson.
11 a.m. Eastern: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) holds a weekly news conference. Watch live here.
11:30 a.m. Eastern: Biden delivers remarks on the federal response to Hurricane Ian. Watch live here.
Noon Eastern: Biden hosts a White House reception to celebrate the Jewish new year.
4 p.m. Eastern: Biden speaks at a reception to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. Watch live here.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) has become known for two things: a fierce commitment to strengthening the nation’s gun laws and seemingly random social media fundraising campaigns for Democratic candidates.
Writing in The Early 202, The Post’s Theodoric Meyer and Leigh Ann Caldwell say that one week from today, he’ll combine both of those efforts into the latest version of NR8, a play on NRA. The goal is a 24-hour social media blitz to fundraise for eight candidates or referendums backing gun control.
The Supreme Court will hold an investiture ceremony Friday for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman to sit on the high court, as it prepares to open a new term.
Jackson was confirmed by the Senate in April and took her official oaths as a justice in late June as Justice Stephen G. Breyer retired. Friday’s invitation-only ceremony is considered purely ceremonial.
Among those expected to be in the audience: President Biden, who nominated her, and Vice President Harris, who presided over her Senate confirmation vote.
RELATEDSupreme Court, dogged by questions of legitimacy, is ready to resume
The Post’s Marianna Sotomayor and Jacob Bogage report that the continuing resolution extends current government funding levels until Dec. 16, while also approving $12.4 billion in military and diplomatic spending to help Ukraine resist Russia’s invasion. It also contains $18.8 billion for domestic disaster recovery efforts, including Western wildfires, floods in Kentucky and hurricanes in the Southeast.
President Biden stood in the Rose Garden, removing his aviator sunglasses and squinting into the sun before delivering blistering remarks aimed at congressional Republicans and plans that he argues could jeopardize programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
On the eve of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ceremony to sign the annexation of four Ukrainian regions, the United States and its allies put the finishing touches on their plans to respond with measures designed to significantly increase the military, diplomatic and economic pressure they believe will eventually box Putin into an intolerable position.
The Post’s Karen DeYoung reports that new sanctions are to be announced on entities inside Russia and on those outside the country that contribute to its war effort, according to U.S. and European Union officials. Long-term commitments are being made to ensure the continued flow of Western weapons to Ukraine. Fence-sitting nations are being cajoled and pressured to take a stand against Moscow. Karen writes: | 2022-09-30T11:54:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Congress about to leave Washington until after the elections - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/congress-continuing-resolution-jackson-investiture/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/congress-continuing-resolution-jackson-investiture/ |
10 noteworthy books for October
By Becky Meloan
Many of October’s new books tell stories about women — sisters, mothers, daughters — displaying grace or grit while facing challenges. Science fiction and short stories will expand horizons, while nonfiction, including a memoir, will inspire.
‘The Goddess Effect,’ by Sheila Yasmin Marikar (Little A, Oct. 1)
While scrolling through her feed, Anita clicks on an ad for the Goddess Effect, a Los Angeles exercise studio and aspirational lifestyle company founded by a guru named Venus. After throwing herself into the program, it dawns on Anita that things may not be what they seemed at first. Mocking the wellness industry can seem like picking off low-hanging fruit, but Marikar elevates her story with wry humor and compassion.
‘Mad Honey,’ by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan (Ballantine, Oct. 4)
Olivia doesn’t know whom to believe — her 18-year-old son, Asher, who claims he remembers nothing after finding his girlfriend, Lily, bleeding and motionless at the foot of her staircase, or the police, who have enough evidence to charge him with murder. The tragic events propel a story that is alternatingly heart-pounding and heartbreaking. This collaboration between two best-selling authors seamlessly weaves together Olivia and Lily’s journeys, creating a provocative exploration of the strength that love and acceptance require.
‘When They Tell You to Be Good: A Memoir,’ by Prince Shakur (Tin House, Oct. 4)
Shakur, a queer Jamaican American activist, demonstrates a talent for self-examination, not to mention literary prowess, in this account of the forces that shaped him. His confidence and self-awareness enable him to identify life lessons in the moment; he pulls no punches when, for example, a White person tells him how to feel about racially charged issues, or when his mother’s friend describes his attraction to men as a “selfish choice” that will upset his parents. His inclination toward advocacy grew, because, as he says, “I’d learned the importance of being incompatible with a world that aimed to destroy you.”
‘The Mountain in the Sea,’ by Ray Nayler (MCD, Oct. 4)
Nayler’s debut novel, a cerebral, speculative eco-thriller, considers the capabilities of nonhuman minds. In a near-future world where oceans have been ravaged by pollution, a potentially menacing species of octopus has developed its own language and culture, and a fortune awaits the first to unravel its mysteries. A transnational tech corporation brings marine biologist Ha Nguyen to a research team led by a sentient android whose existence is outlawed in most of the world. As Ha gets closer to discovering the cephalopods’ true potential, hope for coexistence collides with the human tendency toward domination.
‘Hester,’ by Laurie Lico Albanese (St. Martin’s, Oct. 4)
Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter” inspires this thoughtfully researched tale about a young woman with an out-of-wedlock daughter. Like her fictional counterpart, Hester Prynne, Isobel Gamble’s husband is presumed to be lost at sea when she begins an affair with the scion of a notorious Puritan family, a young Nathaniel Hathorne (who later added the “w” to his surname). Isobel’s needlework skills, an extraordinary talent she inherited from her Scottish ancestors, bring her modest income and acclaim, but the stigma from her unplanned pregnancy shines a light on the barriers faced by 19th-century women who did not conform.
In Celeste Ng's 'Our Missing Hearts,' a boy fights for freedom
‘Quit: The Power of Knowing When to Walk Away,’ by Annie Duke (Portfolio, Oct. 4)
The adage “quitters never win and winners never quit” is ingrained in many people, but Duke, a former professional poker player, has a different view. To her, quitting is a skill, one that can bring knowledge and open the doors for future success. With illustrative stories about climbers who never reached Mount Everest’s peak, or comedians who regularly bomb onstage as a way to refine material, she helpfully shows how quitting is really just another decision — and sometimes a smart one.
‘The Impatient,’ by Djaïli Amadou Amal; translated by Emma Ramadan (HarperVia, Oct. 11)
Many women in North Cameroon are counseled to be subservient to men and show “munyal,” or patience, in the face of hardship, sadness or pain. Amal dramatizes the impact of normalizing subjugation and violence against women in her prizewinning fictional triptych. Hindou is married off to a man with violent tendencies, then labeled “crazy” for wanting to escape. Her older sister, Ramla, must relinquish her true love and marry an older man to appease her family’s desire for wealth. Ramla’s new co-wife, Safira, must accept that her husband of 20 years wants a younger second wife and that they must all live together in harmony. Yearning for release from society’s constraints, each woman plots her path toward a different life.
In 'Less Is Lost,' a lovable, hapless hero returns
‘Somewhere Sisters: A Story of Adoption, Identity, and the Meaning of Family,’ by Erika Hayasaki (Algonquin, Oct. 11)
Isabella, a child born in Vietnam in 1998, was adopted from an orphanage by a wealthy White American family and raised in the Chicago suburbs. On the other side of the world, Isabella’s identical twin sister, Hà, was raised by a biological aunt in a rural village. When Isabella’s mother learned of her daughter’s twin, she became determined to bring the girls together, setting both families on an unforgettable journey that engendered questions about race and identity. Hayasaki, a journalist who spent five years tracing the girls’ diverging paths, writes a sensitive, well-researched account of the years before and after their emotional reunion.
‘Poster Girl,’ by Veronica Roth (William Morrow, Oct. 18)
Sonya’s family benefited from the Delegation, an oppressive regime that used a medically implanted device to reward or punish its citizens’ behavior. Ten years after a violent revolution and now living as a political prisoner, she is offered parole on the condition that she locate a girl the Delegation “reassigned” to another family. Finding the lost child involves unearthing secrets and acknowledging a past she’d rather forget. “Divergent” author Roth smartly envisions the repercussions of a government gone too far and the potential abuse of technology in the wrong hands.
‘The Consequences: Stories,’ by Manuel Muñoz (Graywolf, Oct. 18)
Muñoz’s luminous story collection, his first book in more than a decade, portrays a community of Mexican and Mexican American farmworkers in California’s Central Valley, where inhabitants harvest the food that appears on tables across the United States and strive to find bounty in their own lives. Their daily difficulties are tenderly laid bare, as when two strangers meet on a bus and realize they are both waiting for their husbands to return after being deported. Muñoz once worked in the same fields, as did his parents and siblings, and his empathetic stories convey a realistic sense of the toll such labor takes on bodies and minds. | 2022-09-30T12:12:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 10 books to read in October - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/30/new-books-october/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/09/30/new-books-october/ |
In a celebration of sneaker culture, fans from all over the country converged in D.C. in late August to buy, sell, trade and authenticate shoes at SneakerCon. (Video: Mahlia Posey, Breanna Muir/The Washington Post)
Justin Mupas holds up two identical-looking pairs of the Nike “Chunky Dunkys," a highly sought-after sneaker that can resell for more than $1,000.
“Do you think you can pick which one is real and which one is fake?" he asks.
“There will always be some customers that are fooled and are victims themselves, but there are some customers who are part of the problem," she said. “So it’s a supply side problem and a demand side problem at the end of the day.”
Authentication is “a form of security" for the sneaker resale market — just as similar security and verification processes are for art, handbags, jewelry and technology, said Kevin Rivera, a designer and adjunct professor of footwear design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. | 2022-09-30T12:12:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How sneaker authenticators gained a foothold in the shoe market - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/30/sneaker-authentication-ebay-stockx-nike/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/09/30/sneaker-authentication-ebay-stockx-nike/ |
These ‘nuclear bros’ say they know how to solve climate change: ⚛️
Meet the internet subculture obsessed with nuclear power — and proud of it
(Washington Post illustration; Unsplash; iStock)
The typical “nuclear bro” is lurking in the comments section of a clean energy YouTube video, wondering why the creator didn’t mention #nuclear. He is marching in Central California to oppose the closing of the state’s Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. His Twitter name includes an emoji of an atom ⚛️. He might even believe that 100 percent of the world’s electricity should come from nuclear power plants.
As a warming world searches for ever more abundant forms of clean energy, an increasingly loud internet subculture has emerged to make the case for nuclear. They are often — but not always — men. They include grass-roots organizers and famous techno-optimists like Bill Gates and Elon Musk. And they are uniformly convinced that the world is sleeping on nuclear energy.
Meet the fans of nuclear power
Nuclear advocates often meet each other on the internet — on large shared WhatsApp groups, sharing news on the subreddit r/nuclear, or on Twitter. It’s also on the internet that they have earned the moniker “nuclear bro,” a catchall term of unknown origin that places men who are pro-nuclear alongside the likes of “Berniebros,” “Crypto bros,” and “brogrammers.”
The “nuclear bro” label — often wielded by environmentalists and others skeptical of nuclear power, some of whom are in return labeled “renewabros” — serves to cast nuclear supporters as all being of a particular type: young, white, millennial men with a singular focus on splitting atoms. It alludes to a few factors of “bro culture” that can make interacting with some nuclear bros frustrating and bizarre. The criticism is that these types of bros mansplain, refuse to accept other arguments, or otherwise harass their interlocutors.
But while some portion of the pro-nuclear community online certainly fit that description, many pro-nuclear activists argue that the label is misplaced. They say that the movement is a diverse group of men and women who come to nuclear energy mostly due to fear of climate change and with a science-based perspective.
Chris Keefer, a 40-year-old emergency medicine physician who lives in Toronto, has always been on the political left. Prior to the birth of his son, he said, he was “tribally anti-nuclear” — opposed to the energy source simply because everyone else he knew was opposed to it.
But after his son was born, in 2018, Keefer began to read more about climate change, and was horrified by the dangers of a much hotter world. He put his scientific training as a doctor to work, reading research about the energy transition and trying to understand how to power the economy without emitting billions of tons of carbon dioxide.
What he found surprised him. “It became quickly apparent that hydro and nuclear are basically the only two tools that have helped achieve deep decarbonization,” Keefer said. (“Deep decarbonization” means eliminating almost all fossil-fuel energy sources.)
He cites the example of Norway, which generates around 95 percent of its electricity from hydropower, and France, which generates around 80 percent of its power from nuclear plants.
By 2019, Keefer was organizing in-person rallies with a group that he co-founded, Canadians for Nuclear Power. First, the rallies were not much more than a folding table in a park — with a Geiger counter as a prop, Keefer adds — but they grew over time. Today, the organization has a board of eight people, around 80 active members, and a mailing list of around 1,000. Keefer participates in pro-nuclear rallies around the world (sometimes with friends dressed in polar bear suits), hosts a podcast that covers nuclear energy and once confronted the Canadian environment minister on camera, grilling him about his opposition to nuclear power.
Philip Ord, a 31-year-old from Denver, Colo., followed a similar path. He thought nuclear power was “extremely risky” until he watched “Pandora’s Promise,” a 2013 documentary featuring famous environmentalists like Stewart Brand and Mark Lynas coming to grips with their support for the technology.
Ord also read a 2005 study from the World Health Organization, which found that the deadliest disaster in nuclear power’s history — Chernobyl — had caused not tens of thousands of deaths, as originally predicted, but around 4,000 deaths in local residents and emergency workers. He began to feel that nuclear wasn’t so risky after all. Ord now hosts a pro-nuclear podcast and runs a small advocacy organization known as Americans for Nuclear Energy; his Twitter name includes an emoji of an atom and a lightning bolt.
The surge in nuclear activism from people like Ord and Keefer comes as many countries and states are rethinking nuclear power. (Both men say they have never taken any funding from the nuclear industry.) After the tsunami-induced meltdown of the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear plant in 2011, which covered 300 square miles with hazardous radiation, many countries backed away from the energy source. Japan shut down all its nuclear reactors; Germany closed half of its own.
But over the last few years, climate change — and more recently, the Russian invasion of Ukraine — has forced countries to reconsider. Japan is now considering building next-generation nuclear reactors and plans to restart others. Germany, faced with shortages of natural gas and a tough winter ahead, recently announced that it is delaying the planned closure of some of its plants.
In California, the planned shuttering of the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant near San Luis Obispo faced strident opposition from pro-nuclear advocates (and support from anti-nuclear groups). After a multiyear fight, California lawmakers decided to keep the plant open for five more years to help support the state’s straining electricity grid.
Armond Cohen, the co-founder and president of the environmental group Clean Air Task Force, says he was once opposed to nuclear. But now, he says, “We’re just staggered by the size of the energy system and the pace at which we have to replace fossil fuels.” Nuclear, he argues, has three benefits: Its power doesn’t fluctuate, like solar and wind, it has a small land footprint, and it can be scaled up dramatically over a period of decades. Many modeling studies find that the world’s electricity could be powered by around 70 to 80 percent renewable energy, like solar and wind, but that nuclear could help support the grid fill the remaining gaps after that.
Nuclear’s opponents, on the other hand, argue that the technology is too dangerous and high-cost to be used even for 20 percent of the world’s electricity. Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, an environmental group that opposes nuclear power, argues that nuclear plants take too long to build and that the problems of waste and aging reactors haven’t been solved. “The nuclear industry can’t prove that they can build reactors on time, at cost, and at scale that will make a dent in the climate crisis,” he said.
Cohen acknowledges that nuclear has faced some challenges, but argues that it shouldn’t be taken off the table. “Our general philosophy is just to throw everything you’ve got at the problem,” he said.
Nuclear ‘bros’ and their opponents
But while Cohen says he doesn’t adopt a “cultlike” enthusiasm for nuclear power — or any other source of energy — others are more dogmatic about the potential of nuclear.
“Occasionally I am met with skepticism about the existence of Nuclear Bros,” the climate writer David Roberts once said on Twitter. He then posted the screenshot of an email sent to him that began with “Hey dips***!!” and ended with “The answer to ALL our energy needs is in one word: THORIUM!!” (Thorium is an element that can be used to fuel nuclear reactors.)
Part of the battle over the “nuclear bro” label is that some nuclear supporters believe that renewables have been overhyped and that nuclear alone is the pathway to a clean energy transition.
This puts them at odds with groups who might be their natural allies — moderate environmental organizations who support an expansion of nuclear power along with growth in wind, solar, and geothermal power. It also sparks numerous online fights between supporters of renewables and supporters of nuclear.
Sometimes, those fights are filled with profanity and name-calling; other times, they’re simply funny.
“Focusing on renewables for your climate strategy is like doing nothing but leg extensions for your quads and wondering why your legs aren’t getting much bigger,” tweeted one nuclear supporter, who goes by the handle “@nukebarbarian.”
Alex Trembath, the deputy director of the Breakthrough Institute, a think tank that supports nuclear power, says the “nuclear bro” label is an “attempt to associate support for nuclear energy with an easily imagined political, even demographic, villain.” (Trembath, who got married this summer, does not consider himself a “nuclear bro,” but he does wear a visible sign of his affection for nuclear power: A wedding ring made of black zirconium, a key ingredient in nuclear fuel rods.)
And even if men dominate nuclear supporters, they are by no means the only ones. (One study found that over 60 percent of men support nuclear power, compared to less than 40 percent of women.) “Some of my favorite ‘nuclear bros’ are women,” Keefer jokes.
There is Heather Hoff, the co-founder of Mothers for Nuclear, who works at the Diablo Canyon nuclear plant and fought to keep it open with her fellow employee and co-founder, Kristin Zaitz. They try to take a different, gentler approach to pro-nuclear activism. “We can talk to people with empathy,” Hoff said. “‘We understand their fears because we had them too.”
let’s do this! pic.twitter.com/59I87SZvGu
— isabelle 🪐 (@isabelleboemeke) January 24, 2021
Then there is Isabelle Boemeke, a fashion model turned nuclear influencer who makes surreal TikToks about nuclear power’s role in fighting climate change. Boemeke, as illustrated in one of her most-viewed videos, believes that nuclear should be part of a suite of solutions: “We all waste precious time and energy fighting over our favorite form of electricity production,” she wrote in a message.
The future of nuclear
Even the most pro-nuclear energy experts say that it’s unlikely that nuclear will ever provide 100 percent of electricity in the U.S. or in other countries that have begun to shift away from the power source. Nuclear plants have also taken a historically long time to build; according to an analysis of the world nuclear industry, plants built over the past decade have taken about 10 years, on average, to complete. Even in the best-case scenario, nuclear projects started today likely won’t go online until 2030 or later.
Trembath argues that nuclear could shoulder a significant amount of electricity production from 2030 onward. But he adds that a 100 percent nuclear future “is not happening, and is not going to happen.” “Having more diversity and optionality in our energy system is a no-brainer,” he said.
And long-held perceptions of nuclear power as dangerous and scary are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Spencer Weart, a historian of physics and the author of “The Rise of Nuclear Fear,” says that splitting the atom has been associated with monstrosity, pollution, and danger since even before the development of the atomic bomb. Nuclear power, he argues, arouses fears of the “unnatural,” the “mad scientist,” and much more.
But grass-roots nuclear groups have begun to succeed in the fight to keep power plants like Diablo Canyon open — plants that are providing critical carbon-free electricity to the grid. In Michigan, pro-nuclear activists are pushing to reopen the Palisades nuclear plant, which once provided around 5 percent of the state’s total electricity generation. Similar efforts are underway to try to extend the life of the Pickering nuclear plant in Canada.
“We still have to prove that this nuclear renaissance won’t fizzle out,” Trembath said. But, he added, the pro-nuclear activism — even from the bros — has given the movement a boost. “There has never been a civil society around nuclear before,” he said. “Now there is.” | 2022-09-30T12:12:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | These ‘nuclear bros’ say they know how to solve climate change - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/30/nuclear-bros-power-activists/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/30/nuclear-bros-power-activists/ |
Diane Horvath, left, and Morgan Nuzzo, right, with their used medical equipment and a new door mat in a storage facility on June 1, in College Park, Md. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
When Betsy Youmans and her husband decided to leave their conservative California county, they chose College Park, Md., a D.C. suburb with pretty old houses, proximity to major cities and values in accordance with their own: liberal. Then an abortion clinic decided to open nearby, bringing a national debate to their doorstep — literally.
Late one night earlier this month a man approached their front door and left a flier with a graphic depiction of an aborted fetus and a message mocking the doctor and midwife poised to open an all-trimester clinic nearby.
“I physically got ill and started shaking,” Youmans said. “I thought, ‘Holy cow, where did we move?’ ”
When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark case that legalized abortion, the June decision made it possible for 15 states to ban or mostly ban abortion while some top lawmakers in deep blue Maryland are considering enshrining the protection in the state constitution.
Fallout from the decision has deepened the country’s fissures, with a nationwide increase in harassment, and in some cases violence, against abortion providers reaching liberal enclaves friendly to clinics and pitting residents’ support for abortion access against opponents’ First Amendment rights.
The Youmans learned the man at their door, who is known to authorities as an antiabortion activist, and two women were dropping the fliers around the neighborhood and at offices in the medical complex where Partners in Abortion Care could open within weeks.
A Prince George’s County police spokesman said officers have been in touch with the clinic owners, and stressed that no one has been charged with a crime.
Diane Horvath, an obstetrician-gynecologist, said the clinic has a robust security plan. She and her business partner, Morgan Nuzzo, a nurse-midwife, have also contacted the FBI, which gives guidance to providers on things like what to do if there’s an active shooter.
“But we shouldn’t have to fear for our lives now to open a clinic. We shouldn’t have to think about the ways someone might kill us,” Horvath said in tweets that included a redacted photo of the flier.
A spokeswoman for the Washington office of the FBI, which investigates violations of federal civil rights laws, including a civil rights statute that makes it illegal to intimidate or interfere with a person giving or seeking abortion care, declined to comment on the flier.
The first time Horvath’s work on abortion intruded into her personal life she found a photo of herself on an antiabortion website. She was holding her 15-month-old daughter in the image.
“That’s when I decided I wasn’t going to be quiet about this stuff,” she said.
But they are careful. Before Horvath and Nuzzo began publicly fundraising for their clinic, they hired a company to identify any security liabilities in their online data. Horvath’s tweets about the flier helped raise $8,000 on their GoFundMe page, she said.
“I think they picked the wrong community this time,” she said.
With access in peril, 2 women open a later-abortion clinic in Maryland
Shyamala Rajan said she also received the flier and found the content “very offensive” and the way it was left late at night “immoral.”
“I’m not pro-abortion,” she said, standing in her doorway. “I’m pro a woman’s right to do what is right for her.” She didn’t know the clinic was moving within an eight-minute walk of her home until she received the flier, but she supports the business. “Now you need it more than ever. You need that safe space.”
Youmans, a mother of two who volunteered for Planned Parenthood in Arizona years ago, said she is still coming to grips with the reality that Roe was overturned but never imagined the fight would follow her to College Park.
“I think we should be outraged by this,” she said.
College Park Mayor Patrick Wojahn said although he welcomed the clinic, and supported its mission to prioritize abortion later in pregnancy, as of Wednesday council members had not discussed the fliers.
“We respect the ability of the police to do their jobs and not get directly involved,” he said.
John Rigg, a College Park council member who has lived in the neighborhood nearest the clinic, Calvert Hills, since 2007, said city officials have assured him county police will ensure patient and staff safety without infringing on protesters’ rights.
The office complex where the clinic will open takes up most of a city block and includes many other medical offices, including Rigg’s optometrist and his children’s pediatrician, and future protests can’t impede access for any patients, he said.
“I strongly believe that women’s healthcare includes abortion,” Rigg said. “I believe that’s a strong opinion that is held throughout the College Park community.”
In the South and Midwest, within a month of the decision overturning Roe, at least 43 clinics stopped offering abortion services in 11 states that banned abortion completely or starting at six weeks, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a nonprofit research organization that supports abortion rights.
Many of the women denied care will travel to more permissive states, including Maryland, where an abortion may be performed at or after viability if the patient’s life or health is endangered or if there is a fetal anomaly. Local officials have tried to help clinics accommodate the surge in patients.
Montgomery County will give $1 million in grants to organizations that directly support access to abortion care. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) seeks a 15-week abortion ban, but Alexandria City Council plans to relax zoning requirements for new clinics and fund abortion services for low-income residents.
Starting with the leak of the draft opinion in May, the National Abortion Federation has tracked an increase in everything from threatening online posts to death threats, said Melissa Fowler, the group’s chief program officer.
NAF identified the man who distributed the fliers in College Park from security camera footage, Fowler said. He has ties to Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising, a group of antiabortion activists who boast about their arrest records and travel from place to place targeting clinics and providers.
“This is not the first or the last thing this person is going to do,” clinic owner Nuzzo said. “We’re in a blue state, but look at this. These folks are everywhere.”
Scott Clement, Peter Hermann and Peter Jamison contributed to this report. | 2022-09-30T12:12:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | College Park clinic opening soon hit with graphic anti-abortion fliers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/30/college-park-abortion-clinic-harassment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/30/college-park-abortion-clinic-harassment/ |
What to watch with your kids: ‘Hocus Pocus 2’ and more
Christopher Lloyd in “Spirit Halloween: The Movie.” (Scary Fun LLC)
Spirit Halloween: The Movie (Unrated)
Tween-friendly horror has some jump scares and spookiness.
“Spirit Halloween: The Movie” is a coming-of-age horror-thriller in which three tweens spend the night in a Halloween store. While it definitely has some scares, including jump scares throughout, it’s age-appropriate for tweens: There’s no gore or bloody violence. The three tweens, later joined by a teen, take on a variety of animatronic monsters that have become possessed by the ghost of a local legend. The monsters are usually stopped with fire, including a scene in which fire and bug spray are used to stop a skeleton monster that burns while shrieking. The movie explores themes of growing up, trying to adjust to living in a blended family and first crushes. Language is limited to “crap” and insults like “nitwit.” (87 minutes)
In theaters; available Oct. 11 on demand.
On the Come Up (PG-13)
Book-based drama about race, art, identity has gun violence.
“On the Come Up” is based on author Angie Thomas’s best-selling book, which is set in the same fictional neighborhood as her earlier “The Hate U Give.” The movie (co-star Sanaa Lathan’s directorial debut) is a tribute to fighting for your dreams and being true to yourself, even when external forces want you to change. Expect drug references, as well as occasional strong language (“a--hole,” “s---” and one LGBTQ slur). Violent scenes include characters brandishing guns or, in the case of two gang members, committing armed robbery after beating up/striking two unarmed teens. There’s also an upsetting encounter between a student and two school security officers. (They wrestle her to the ground and pin her there.) Later, there’s a protest against the security officers, who cower from the angry crowd. Romance is limited to a few kisses between teens. Families with teens will have plenty to discuss, from the racism and prejudice that Black teens face to the ways in which entertainers of color can feel pressured to portray themselves in stereotypical ways to appeal to mainstream (i.e., White) audiences. Messages include the importance of empathy, integrity and perseverance. (116 minutes)
In theaters; also available on Paramount Plus.
Hocus Pocus 2 (PG)
Campy but entertaining sequel has some violence, scares.
“Hocus Pocus 2” is the highly anticipated sequel to Disney’s hugely popular 1990s fantasy comedy “Hocus Pocus.” Like the original, the witchy sequel is family-friendly overall but does have magical violence, name-calling and gross-out scenes, mostly involving a decapitated zombie. The witches (returning stars Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker and Kathy Najimy) discuss eating kids to stay young, and they threaten to kill and torture others, including teenagers. They set fires, use spells requiring blood and bones, and talk about stealing souls. People are chased, pushed, slapped, hit over the head, beheaded (in the case of a walking zombie), zapped with magic rays and hypnotized — all of which is played for comedy. Women of all ages learn that they benefit from having supportive women around them. Beyond name-calling, language includes “damn” and exclamations of “God,” “Lucifer” and “Satan.” There’s mention of kisses and being a virgin. (106 minutes)
My Best Friend’s Exorcism (R)
Teen comedy-horror tale has bullying, language, drugs.
“My Best Friend’s Exorcism” is a comedy-horror-thriller based on a novel in which a teen girl must save her best friend from demonic possession. Expect a fair amount of horror movie violence and imagery, as well as some verbal and physical bullying, including gay shaming. A teen girl encourages her friend to drink tea that’s filled with tapeworm eggs that later hatch. While possessed, a teen gets up in front of the class, sits down and urinates (heard but not shown). References to rape: During a class lecture, a nun refers to booze as “rape juice,” and the lead character initially believes that the reason her best friend is acting so strange is that she was raped by their friend’s boyfriend. Characters use strong language throughout, including “motherf----r,” “f---,” crude slang and homophobic slurs. Teens take LSD at a sleepover, and some teens drink alcohol. There’s also sexual innuendo, references to sex and masturbation, and cigarette smoking by an adult. (96 minutes) | 2022-09-30T12:13:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Common Sense Media’s weekly recommendations. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/30/common-sense-media-september-30/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/09/30/common-sense-media-september-30/ |
Flamingos sheltering in a bathroom for a hurricane? Call it tradition.
Flamingos at Zoo Miami take shelter from Hurricane Floyd in a bathroom in 1999. (Tim Chapman/Miami Herald/AP)
As Hurricane Ian hit southwest Florida on Wednesday, images of devastation dominated television news reports and social media streams. But one image, taken from a St. Petersburg botanical garden, was striking for a different reason.
It showed about a dozen cotton-candy pink flamingos huddled in a public bathroom — a stark contrast to the images of Florida’s washed-out bridges, roofless homes and flooded roadways.
The birds were schlepped into the bathroom because Ian, forecast to become a major storm, was expected to cause catastrophic damage in the Tampa Bay area surrounding Sunken Gardens, which is home to a variety of birds and other animals.
“The flamingos are having quite the hurricane party; eating, drinking, and dancing,” a post on the botanical garden’s Instagram page said.
The storm instead hit hardest farther south, making landfall as a Category 4 hurricane and bringing 150 mph winds, storm surges and major destruction. As of early Friday, over 2.1 million Florida customers remained without power.
The photo of the flamingos bunched together in the bathroom spread widely on social media and perhaps served to lighten the mood amid an otherwise bleak crush of bad news. It was also reminiscent of another, now iconic photo taken decades earlier during a devastating hurricane.
Before Hurricane Andrew, a Category 5 storm, pummeled South Florida in 1992, a zoologist at what was then Metrozoo (now Zoo Miami) snapped a photo of dozens of pink flamingos huddled in a bathroom between stalls and sinks — an image that ended up going viral in its own way in the pages of newspapers. The storm was considered directly responsible for the deaths of 23 people and caused an estimated $26 billion in damage in the United States, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The National Weather Service still considers Andrew one of the most powerful hurricanes to strike the United States. Ian is also now considered to rank among the most powerful.
Ron Magill, the Metrozoo photographer and now the communications director at Zoo Miami, told The Washington Post that before Andrew struck in August 1992, animal keepers had come up with a plan to protect the flamingos from devastating storms.
“Unfortunately, they didn’t have, at that time, their own specific building that was made to protect them,” he said. “So we had to be innovative.”
The zoo’s restrooms were ideal for large birds like flamingos. They served as “perfect bunkers” that were easy to clean, Magill said. Staffers placed hay on the floor, gave the birds food and water, and moved them in a day before Andrew made landfall.
As McGill was about to lock up the bathroom the evening before the storm struck, he glanced at the birds, huddled together and looking at themselves in the mirrors above the sinks — a surreal image that he had to capture with his camera.
The next day, the hurricane barreled into South Florida, with the zoo at “ground zero,” Magill said. It looked like “a 25-mile-wide weed whacker came through.”
Five mammals and nearly 100 birds died, and the zoo required major repairs, Magill said. But the flamingos survived. “And we realized that had we not put those flamingos in the bathroom, they would have certainly all died,” Magill said.
As news outlets covered the storm’s aftermath, Magill’s photo of the bathroom flamingos eventually got picked up by a major wire service. “Then all of a sudden, it just was everywhere,” Magill said.
“I think people at that time really enjoyed that photograph because it was a positive aspect where everybody was talking about the destruction and the chaos and the looting and the bad things that were happening,” he added.
To this day, he still sees the photo during anniversaries of the hurricane. Its 30th came in August. The photo has also been replicated during other major storms, like a snapshot of flamingos in a bathroom at Zoo Miami during 1999’s Hurricane Floyd.
And as for the flamingos at Sunken Gardens?
“They’re doing great,” Dwayne Biggs, the botanical garden’s supervising director, told the Miami Herald on Thursday. “The public restrooms were perfect.”
Seeing those flamingos safely sheltering in the bathroom this week brought a huge smile to Magill’s face, he told The Post, adding, “I would like to believe that was something that they learned from us.” | 2022-09-30T12:13:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hurricane Ian flamingo bathroom photo recalls iconic Ron Magill image - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/30/flamingos-bathroom-hurricane-ian/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/30/flamingos-bathroom-hurricane-ian/ |
They dyed a waterfall for a gender reveal. An investigation followed.
‘It’s a boy!’ guests cheered as a viral video showed bright blue water cascading down a rocky cliff
Brazilian authorities take samples of the Queima-Pé waterfall, which was dyed blue during a gender-reveal party. (Secretaria de Estado de Meio Ambiente do Mato Grosso)
These days, social media posts featuring pops of pink and blue are inescapable as some parents take on ever more lavish approaches to revealing the sex of their babies. But the past few years have shown that the over-the-top celebrations are prone to disaster — like, say, an accidental wildfire, a plane crash or a possible environmental crime.
Take this week’s gender-reveal party in Mato Grosso, a state in central Brazil. Like other such parties, the outdoor event on Sunday featured pink and blue balloons, a giant stork and trendy powder cannons that fired colored plumes into the air. Things were taken a step further, however: According to Brazilian authorities, the party dyed an entire waterfall.
It was a violation of Brazil’s federal environmental law, a spokesperson for Mato Grosso’s environment protection agency (SEMA) told The Washington Post. While an investigation will determine which penalties and fees apply, the unnamed family member behind the stunt is being charged with harming the environment, SEMA said.
Known as Cachoeira Queima-Pé, the 59-foot-tall waterfall is located in Tangará da Serra, an area with eco-tourism sites and copious waterfalls. According to SEMA, the Queima-Pé feeds into a river with the same name that’s an important fresh water source for the city — which has been struggling with severe drought over the past few years.
On Sunday, the usually milky waterfall suddenly turned a bright, Listerine-like shade of blue. Videos show the couple lovingly embrace as other guests cheered — a boy! But in the digital realm, other Brazilians were less than impressed.
“So many ways to do a gender-reveal party and they chose just the one that has an environmental impact,” Vanessa Costa, a Brazilian forestry engineer and content creator, wrote on Twitter. In a follow-up video posted on Instagram, Costa dove into the possible harm caused by the stunt.
“The act of dyeing the water is pollution. You are polluting those waters, and that’s an environmental impact,” she said.
SEMA, which was promptly alerted about the party, agreed. On Monday, the agency sent a team of investigators to gather samples from the waterfall, which found “no change in the water’s physical parameters, such as color and other, and no trace of local fish mortality,” SEMA said.
The investigation, though, is still underway and aided by Mato Grosso’s Public Ministry, the state-level law enforcement agency told The Post.
While the water’s quality didn’t immediately appear to have been altered, the agency said the act of dumping a substance into the water “constitutes an infraction.” Under Brazilian law, “throwing solid, liquid or gaseous waste or debris, oils or oily substances” into the environment is subject to fines ranging from 5,000 to 50,000 Brazilian reals, or between $926 and $9,263, depending on human health effects, animal mortality and biodiversity destruction.
The agency said one of the gender-reveal party’s hosts told SEMA they didn’t know a chemical product would be used to dye the water — instead placing the blame on a family member, whom the agency has since identified and called in for charging.
Three schools went on lockdown after gunshots and screaming. The commotion was from a gender reveal, police say.
The party in Brazil is far from the first gender reveal gone awry. Last year, a Southern California couple was charged with manslaughter after the smoke bomb they used sparked a massive wildfire. Since becoming a trend in 2008, gender-reveal parties have triggered an explosion, caused a plane crash and led to death.
Gender-reveal parties have proliferated “in a cultural moment where events and rituals are often created to garner a share of the spotlight,” Carly Gieseler, a professor at York College with the City University of New York, wrote in a study published in 2017. While some have featured more low-key stunts — like popping a balloon with colored confetti inside — others have included dueling Power Rangers, smoking cars, fireworks and a whole lot of explosions. The trend’s longevity points to “our increased capacity for sharing, our competitive consumerism or our drive to permanently articulate moments so unfathomable or temporal,” according to Gieseler.
Yet even the creator of the gender reveal regrets starting the fad.
“Celebrate the baby,” Jenna Karvunidis told NPR. “ … Let’s just have a cake.” | 2022-09-30T12:13:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gender-reveal party investigated after waterfall in Brazil was dyed blue - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/30/gender-reveal-waterfall-brazil-dyed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/30/gender-reveal-waterfall-brazil-dyed/ |
For those freed after wrongful convictions, gratitude is a lot to ask
Adnan Syed, whose case was chronicled in the hit podcast “Serial,” leaves the Baltimore courthouse after his 2000 murder conviction was overturned on Sept. 19. (EVELYN HOCKSTEIN/REUTERS)
Eleven years ago, I attended a homecoming party for the man whose story got me my start in journalism. Cory Maye was convicted and sentenced to death for killing a police officer during a botched 2001 drug raid on his home. The police almost certainly raided his home by mistake. Maye had no prior criminal record and there was no evidence of him being a drug dealer (though the man who lived next door to him was); the police found one burned marijuana cigarette in his home, which would otherwise have brought a $50 fine.
Years later, Maye’s death sentence would be overturned, and then his conviction. He was finally offered a deal — if he pleaded guilty to manslaughter, he’d get 10 years in prison, which he had already served. He agreed and was freed.
As you might imagine, the homecoming was a happy occasion. There was an enormous spread of food, music, dancing and a lot of contagious joy. But toward the end of the evening, it occurred to me how perverse it all was. Here was a man who was harming no one when, in the middle of the night, a team of police officers kicked down the door to his home, endangering him and his 18-month-old daughter. Maye reacted as many of us might have, by trying to defend himself. He made a mistake — the same mistake police have often made during these raids, typically with no consequences. For that he was arrested, severely beaten, imprisoned and, for the next decade, the state of Mississippi did everything it could to move him toward execution.
Maye, who by all accounts was a terrific father, missed out on his kids’ lives. Prime years of his own life were taken from him. After a decade, the state reluctantly agreed to let him out if he admitted fault and pleaded guilty to a felony — a conviction that will follow him for the rest of his life.
In a righteous world, there would have been a mob outside the courthouse. Maye would have been generously compensated, and reforms would have been put in place to ensure it never happened again. (It has happened again — and far too many times to count.) Instead, we celebrated. We accepted that this was the closest one of these stories gets to a happy ending.
I get that feeling again each time I see celebratory images from a new exoneration. I felt it again with the release this month of Adnan Syed, the subject of the “Serial” podcast’s first season, after 23 years in prison (though Syed has not thus far been exonerated). People released after wrongful convictions, and their families, of course deserve to revel in their joy and relief. We shouldn’t deny them that. But it’s hard not to notice the absurd incongruity between their celebration and the years of freedom these miscarriages of justice have cost them.
We have a criminal justice system that, as a matter of policy, has declared that procedure is more important than guilt or innocence. It’s a system that has decided its own integrity rests on turning a blind eye to wrongful convictions — among the most profound mistakes a government can make — instead of admitting to them. And it’s a system that has continued that policy even after DNA testing pierced the credibility of entire categories of evidence prosecutors once deemed infallible — from forensic analysis to eyewitness testimony to informant testimony. DNA testing should have been a wake-up call. But we never course-corrected.
John Thompson, acquitted in 2003 after serving years on death row, had it right. Thompson survived seven death warrants and was days from execution when a defense investigator finally uncovered the evidence that exonerated him — evidence the state of Louisiana had hidden for years. Though the New Orleans DA’s office that convicted him had a long and sordid history of misconduct, the only prosecutor ever disciplined in Thompson’s case was the man who helped expose the others’ misconduct.
A jury would award Thompson $14 million, before the Supreme Court took it all away in an opinion that essentially shielded prosecutors and the cities that employ them from any liability whatsoever, even when they engage in blatant misconduct and convict the wrong person.
Thompson wasn’t grateful for his exoneration; he was angry about his conviction. He didn’t thank the system for clearing his name, he damned it for nearly executing him.
“They tried to kill me,” Thompson once told me in an interview. “To apologize would mean they’re admitting the system is broken. That everyone around them is broken. It’s the same motherf---ing system that’s protecting them. What would I do with their apology anyway? Sorry. Huh. Sorry you tried to kill me? Sorry you tried to commit premeditated murder? No. No, thank you. I don’t need your apology.”
We should all be as angry as John Thompson. Instead, when we learn that a conviction like his — or like Maye’s or Sayed’s or thousands of others — has been overturned, the system has conditioned us to show . . . gratitude.
It’s a hell of a trick. | 2022-09-30T12:13:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | For those freed after wrongful convictions, gratitude is a lot to ask - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/adnan-syed-conviction-release-gratitude/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/adnan-syed-conviction-release-gratitude/ |
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is serving a nine-year sentence in a maximum-security penal colony. This essay was conveyed to The Post by his legal team.
What does a desirable and realistic end to the criminal war unleashed by Vladimir Putin against Ukraine look like?
If we examine the primary things said by Western leaders on this score, the bottom line remains: Russia (Putin) must not win this war. Ukraine must remain an independent democratic state capable of defending itself.
This is correct, but it is a tactic. The strategy should be to ensure that Russia and its government naturally, without coercion, do not want to start wars and do not find them attractive. This is undoubtedly possible. Right now the urge for aggression is coming from a minority in Russian society.
In my opinion, the problem with the West’s current tactics lies not just in the vagueness of their aim, but in the fact that they ignore the question: What does Russia look like after the tactical goals have been achieved? Even if success is achieved, where is the guarantee that the world will not find itself confronting an even more aggressive regime, tormented by resentment and imperial ideas that have little to do with reality? With a sanctions-stricken but still big economy in a state of permanent military mobilization? And with nuclear weapons that guarantee impunity for all manner of international provocations and adventures?
It is easy to predict that even in the case of a painful military defeat, Putin will still declare that he lost not to Ukraine but to the “collective West and NATO,” whose aggression was unleashed to destroy Russia.
And then, resorting to his usual postmodern repertoire of national symbols — from icons to red flags, from Dostoevsky to ballet — he will vow to create an army so strong and weapons of such unprecedented power that the West will rue the day it defied us, and the honor of our great ancestors will be avenged.
And then we will see a fresh cycle of hybrid warfare and provocations, eventually escalating into new wars.
To avoid this, the issue of postwar Russia should become the central issue — and not just one element among others — of those who are striving for peace. No long-term goals can be achieved without a plan to ensure that the source of the problems stops creating them. Russia must cease to be an instigator of aggression and instability. That is possible, and that is what should be seen as a strategic victory in this war.
There are several important things happening to Russia that need to be understood:
First, jealousy of Ukraine and its possible successes is an innate feature of post-Soviet power in Russia; it was also characteristic of the first Russian president, Boris Yeltsin. But since the beginning of Putin’s rule, and especially after the Orange Revolution that began in 2004, hatred of Ukraine’s European choice, and the desire to turn it into a failed state, have become a lasting obsession not only for Putin but also for all politicians of his generation.
Control over Ukraine is the most important article of faith for all Russians with imperial views, from officials to ordinary people. In their opinion, Russia combined with a subordinate Ukraine amounts to a “reborn U.S.S.R. and empire.” Without Ukraine, in this view, Russia is just a country with no chance of world domination. Everything that Ukraine acquires is something taken away from Russia.
Second, the view of war not as a catastrophe but as an amazing means of solving all problems is not just a philosophy of Putin’s top brass, but a practice confirmed by life and evolution. Since the Second Chechen War, which made the little-known Putin the country’s most popular politician, through the war in Georgia, the annexation of Crimea, the war in Donbas and the war in Syria, the Russian elite over the past 23 years has learned rules that have never failed: War is not that expensive, it solves all domestic political problems, it raises public approval sky-high, it does not particularly harm the economy, and — most importantly — winners face no accountability. Sooner or later, one of the constantly changing Western leaders will come to us to negotiate. It does not matter what motives will lead him — the will of the voters or the desire to receive the Nobel Peace Prize — but if you show proper persistence and determination, the West will come to make peace.
Don’t forget that there are many in the United States, Britain and other Western countries in politics who have been defeated and lost ground due to their support for one war or another. In Russia, there is simply no such thing. Here, war is always about profit and success.
Third, therefore, the hopes that Putin’s replacement by another member of his elite will fundamentally change this view on war, and especially war over the “legacy of the U.S.S.R.,” is naive at the very least. The elites simply know from experience that war works — better than anything else.
Perhaps the best example here would be Dmitry Medvedev, the former president on whom the West pinned so many hopes. Today, this amusing Medvedev, who was once taken on a tour of Twitter’s headquarters, makes statements so aggressive that they look like a caricature of Putin’s.
Fourth, the good news is that the bloodthirsty obsession with Ukraine is not at all widespread outside the power elites, no matter what lies pro-government sociologists might tell.
The war raises Putin’s approval rating by super-mobilizing the imperially minded part of society. The news agenda is fully consumed by the war; internal problems recede into the background: “Hurray, we’re back in the game, we are great, they’re reckoning with us!” Yet the aggressive imperialists do not have absolute dominance. They do not make up a solid majority of voters, and even they still require a steady supply of propaganda to sustain their beliefs.
Otherwise Putin would not have needed to call the war a “special operation” and send those who use the word “war” to jail. (Not long ago, a member of a Moscow district council received seven years in prison for this.) He would not have been afraid to send conscripts to the war and would not have been compelled to look for soldiers in maximum-security prisons, as he is doing now. (Several people were “drafted to the front” directly from the penal colony where I am.)
Yes, propaganda and brainwashing have an effect. Yet we can say with certainty that the majority of residents of major cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg, as well as young voters, are critical of the war and imperial hysteria. The horror of the suffering of Ukrainians and the brutal killing of innocents resonate in the souls of these voters.
Thus, we can state the following:
The war with Ukraine was started and waged, of course, by Putin, trying to solve his domestic political problems. But the real war party is the entire elite and the system of power itself, which is an endlessly self-reproducing Russian authoritarianism of the imperial kind. External aggression in any form, from diplomatic rhetoric to outright warfare, is its preferred mode of operation, and Ukraine is its preferred target. This self-generated imperial authoritarianism is the real curse of Russia and the cause of all its troubles. We cannot get rid of it, despite the opportunities regularly provided by history.
Russia had its last chance of this kind after the end of the U.S.S.R., but both the democratic public inside the country and Western leaders at the time made the monstrous mistake of agreeing to the model — proposed by Boris Yeltsin’s team — of a presidential republic with enormous powers for the leader. Giving plenty of power to a good guy seemed logical at the time.
Yet the inevitable soon happened: The good guy went bad. To begin with, he started a war (the Chechen war) himself, and then, without normal elections and fair procedures, he handed over power to the cynical and corrupt Soviet imperialists led by Putin. They have caused several wars and countless international provocations, and are now tormenting a neighboring nation, committing horrible crimes for which neither many generations of Ukrainians nor our own children will forgive us.
In the 31 years since the collapse of the U.S.S.R., we have witnessed a clear pattern: The countries that chose the parliamentary republic model (the Baltic states) are thriving and have successfully joined Europe. Those that chose the presidential-parliamentary model (Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia) have faced persistent instability and made little progress. Those that chose strong presidential power (Russia, Belarus and the Central Asian republics) have succumbed to rigid authoritarianism, most of them permanently engaged in military conflicts with their neighbors, daydreaming about their own little empires.
In short, strategic victory means bringing Russia back to this key historical juncture and letting the Russian people make the right choice.
The future model for Russia is not “strong power” and a “firm hand,” but harmony, agreement and consideration of the interests of the whole society. Russia needs a parliamentary republic. That is the only way to stop the endless cycle of imperial authoritarianism.
One may argue that a parliamentary republic is not a panacea. Who, after all, is to prevent Putin or his successor from winning elections and gaining full control over the parliament?
Of course, even a parliamentary republic does not offer 100 percent guarantees. It could well be that we are witnessing the transition to the authoritarianism of parliamentary India. After the usurpation of power, parliamentary Turkey has been transformed into a presidential one. The core of Putin’s European fan club is paradoxically in parliamentary Hungary.
And the very notion of a “parliamentary republic” is too broad.
Yet I believe this cure offers us crucial advantages: a radical reduction of power in the hands of one person, the formation of a government by a parliamentary majority, an independent judiciary system, a significant increase in the powers of local authorities. Such institutions have never existed in Russia, and we are in desperate need of them.
As for the possible total control of parliament by Putin’s party, the answer is simple: Once the real opposition is allowed to vote, it will be impossible. A large faction? Yes. A coalition majority? Maybe. Total control? Definitely not. Too many people in Russia are interested in normal life now, not in the phantom of territorial gains. And there are more such people every year. They just don’t have anyone to vote for now.
Certainly, changing Putin’s regime in the country and choosing the path of development are not matters for the West, but jobs for the citizens of Russia. Nevertheless, the West, which has imposed sanctions both on Russia as a state as well as on some of its elites, should make its strategic vision of Russia as a parliamentary democracy as clear as possible. By no means should we repeat the mistake of the West’s cynical approach in the 1990s, when the post-Soviet elite was effectively told: “You do what you want there; just watch your nuclear weapons and supply us with oil and gas.” Indeed, even now we hear cynical voices saying similar things: “Let them just pull back the troops and do what they want from there. The war is over, the mission of the West is accomplished.” That mission was already “accomplished” with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the result is a full-fledged war in Europe in 2022.
This is a simple, honest and fair approach: The Russian people are of course free to choose their own path of development. But Western countries are free to choose the format of their relations with Russia, to lift or not to lift sanctions, and to define the criteria for such decisions. The Russian people and the Russian elite do not need to be forced. They need a clear signal and an explanation of why such a choice is better. Crucially, parliamentary democracy is also a rational and desirable choice for many of the political factions around Putin. It gives them an opportunity to maintain influence and fight for power while ensuring that they are not destroyed by a more aggressive group.
War is a relentless stream of crucial, urgent decisions influenced by constantly shifting factors. Therefore, while I commend European leaders for their ongoing success in supporting Ukraine, I urge them not to lose sight of the fundamental causes of war. The threat to peace and stability in Europe is aggressive imperial authoritarianism, endlessly inflicted by Russia upon itself. Postwar Russia, like post-Putin Russia, will be doomed to become belligerent and Putinist again. This is inevitable as long as the current form of the country’s development is maintained. Only a parliamentary republic can prevent this. It is the first step toward transforming Russia into a good neighbor that helps to solve problems rather than create them. | 2022-09-30T12:13:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Alexei Navalny op-ed: How to build a peaceful post-Putin Russia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/alexei-navalny-parliamentary-republic-russia-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/alexei-navalny-parliamentary-republic-russia-ukraine/ |
Meet the Republican who could upset California’s Democratic monopoly
Lanhee J. Chen, who is now a Republican candidate for California controller, during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" in January 2020. (NBC Newswire/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images)
No Republican has won election to any of California’s nine partisan statewide offices for 16 years, and the GOP hasn’t controlled either house of the legislature for more than a quarter-century. But when Lanhee J. Chen was growing up in the Los Angeles suburbs in the 1980s and 1990s, the state that had helped catapult Ronald Reagan to the presidency was still politically competitive.
Chen, 44, thinks it can be competitive again — at least when the focus is state governance rather than national culture wars. The top policy adviser to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign and a fellow (on leave) at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, Chen is running as a Republican to be controller, California’s chief fiscal officer.
He has reasons for optimism, having come out first in the June “jungle primary” with 37 percent of the vote, outraised his general election opponent, Democrat Malia Cohen, and won the endorsements of the Los Angeles Times and Sacramento Bee. The Chen campaign’s internal polling shows 57 percent of Californians would consider voting for a Republican controller candidate.
It is difficult for any Republican to overcome the state’s partisan lean, with Democrats holding a nearly 2-to-1 registration advantage. But if Chen can break the state GOP’s long losing streak, it would point to voter fatigue with one-party rule — and a glimmer of possibility for renewed political competition on the West Coast.
The erosion of accountability in Sacramento is Chen’s best point to press with independents and moderate Democrats. “It’s not even just about being part of the one-party monopoly,” Chen told me over lunch in Washington. “It’s like you’ve got to be part of the right part of the one-party monopoly — you’ve got to be part of the San Francisco clan, because the L.A. clan never sees the light of day.” Gavin Newsom, California’s Democratic governor, was mayor of San Francisco, and Cohen, Chen’s opponent, was president of the city’s board of supervisors.
Chen was born in North Carolina in 1978. But his parents, immigrants from Taiwan, “figured out two things” about the Tar Heel State — first, that it’s “very far from Taiwan, and second, the Chinese food is very bad,” Chen said. “So we ended up moving to Southern California when I was six.” After high school, Chen went to Harvard University, where he returned for a law degree and a doctorate in political science.
Part of his dissertation studied the effect of partisan state judicial elections, and found that partisan elected judges were less likely to overturn criminal convictions. After all, it’s politically safer to let even questionable convictions stand. “Political science is sometimes the art of proving the obvious,” Chen observed.
Some of California’s unsettling fiscal truths are also hiding in plain sight. Newsom, for example, has boasted of California’s $97.5 billion budget surplus. “What people need to understand,” Chen said, is that that figure “is entirely a function of a lot of people realizing capital gains” from the booming stock market, “and a lot of federal money” from pandemic relief, “both of which have gone away this year.”
According to Chen, the state is headed for “probably a $30 billion deficit within a few fiscal years.” He added that “there is very little effort made, certainly by this governor, to inform people about the implications of a large surplus going into a large deficit” for the state’s ability to solve problems. In 2011, Chen noted, California’s controller “refused to pay the legislature because they didn’t produce a truly balanced budget.”
The controller’s most important power is auditing public expenditures. Chen wants to understand how California paid $20 billion in fraudulent unemployment benefits during the pandemic. He also says there “hasn’t been any systematic effort” to keep track of the billions in pandemic aid Washington sent to Sacramento to support schools.
“I have heard anecdotally across the state,” Chen said, that school districts have not made “the kinds of improvements they were supposed to” with the windfall. He suspects that some of this budgetary opacity in the state educational system “is intentional.”
Chen is skeptical of politically motivated investing strategies that public pensions are under increasing pressure to adopt (California’s teacher and state-employee pensions funds manage more than $700 billion). But unlike conservative politicians who cast their critique of “woke capital” in culture war terms, Chen points to the pragmatic fiscal risks. Issuing social statements through pension investments can make it harder for California to meet its underfunded obligations to civil servants, and open the door to cronyism, he said, if “somebody doesn’t like one company … for whatever reason.”
A Chen controllership could strike a blow for moderation — in California and the country. It would shine a light on the fiscal stewardship practiced by the “San Francisco clan” that controls America’s most populous state. The presidentially inclined Newsom, Chen said, “has other ambitions, and he probably doesn’t want anybody who’s going to be a fly in the ointment.”
An end to the Democrats’ statewide winning streak in California might also have a salutary effect on the GOP. The party’s collapse in the Golden State likely accelerated its turn toward populism at the national level. The fear is that that California’s transformation from conservative bastion into one-party Democratic government is a preview of America’s political future.
It will take more than one election, but if Republicans can still win statewide by fielding disciplined and qualified candidates focused on the issues, the people of California will benefit from greater choice — and undercut the draw of the radical right. | 2022-09-30T12:13:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The GOP candidate who could weaken Democrats' grip on California - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/california-republican-challenges-democrats-lanhee-chen/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/california-republican-challenges-democrats-lanhee-chen/ |
Republicans don’t own ‘patriotism’
Maryland Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore speaks during a rally for the Democratic National Committee at Richard Montgomery High School on Aug. 25 in Rockville. (Alex Brandon/AP)
Democrats are standing firmly on their values and beliefs to set glass-house Republicans straight. And, as the kids these days say, I’m here for it. Rather than cede the flag and love of country or shrink from the so-called culture wars, Democrats rhetorically are punching back forcefully and unapologetically.
“Patriotism” is the word reclaimed by Wes Moore, the Democratic candidate for Maryland governor. He did it during a recent meeting with The Post's Editorial Board at which he plotted the future of the Democratic Party.
“We have to take back this mantra of patriotism. I am absolutely exhausted by the idea of getting lectured by Republicans on patriotism,” said Moore, a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. “My definition of patriotism was leaving my family and putting on the uniform of this country and defending her with paratroopers with the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan, and I’m literally running against somebody whose definition of patriotism was putting on a baseball cap and asking people to join him on January 6.”
Moore’s opponent is Maryland House of Delegates member Daniel L. Cox. Not only did the far-right Republican charter buses to take him and supporters of President Donald Trump to Washington that awful day, but he also tweeted during the violent insurrection that “Pence is a traitor.” Nothing says patriotism like aligning with the crowd wanting to hang the vice president because he wouldn’t go along with an unconstitutional effort to overturn a free and fair election.
Moore is not alone in pushing back against Republicans. Earlier this year, after being called a “groomer” by a Republican colleague, Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow delivered a tour de force response that immediately went viral. “I want every child to feel seen, heard and supported,” McMorrow said, “not marginalized and targeted if they are not straight, white and Christian.” McMorrow — who is straight, white and Christian — also used her speech to snatch back the narratives of “Christian” and “family” values that have been used against Democrats for decades.
Out gay Missouri state Rep. Ian Mackey (D) and Alabama state Rep. Neil Rafferty (D), the only gay member of that legislature, have upbraided Republican colleagues for bills targeting transgender children. Pennsylvania state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D) has formed a PAC to go after “beatable bigots everywhere.”
Jonathan Capehart: Don’t let Mallory McMorrow fight bigotry alone
But the OG of GOP clapbacks is California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). When I talked with him in February, he said Democrats must “address these things a little bit more head on, a little bit more forcefully.” And since then, he has made it clear that he doesn’t just mean with words. He means with actions, too.
This month, Newsom bought billboards in what he calls seven “anti-freedom” red states to tout California as a place that “will defend your right to make decisions about your own health.” In July, he ran full-page ads in Texas newspapers that went after Gov. Greg Abbott (R) on abortion and guns, writing, “If Texas can ban abortion and endanger lives, California can ban deadly weapons of war and save lives.” Newsom also targeted Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in 30-second television ads in which he declared, “Freedom is under attack by Republican leaders in states like Florida.”
That ad against DeSantis is an especially cheeky troll because it’s paid for by “Newsom for Governor 2022.” This, of course, has led to rampant speculation that Newsom is angling to run for president should the opportunity present itself. So what if he is? His actions also have the benefit of being rooted in his core beliefs about the promise of this nation and the power of government to help the people eager to fulfill it.
Wes Moore’s South Carolina-born grandfather, the Rev. Dr. James Thomas, was one of them. Thomas was 6 years old when his Jamaican immigrant parents fled back to the island to escape the Ku Klux Klan. Moore said his great-grandfather pledged never to return to the United States. But Moore’s grandfather eventually did come back. “My grandfather in all of his humility said this country would be incomplete” without him, Moore recounted.
How essentially American. That’s why Moore won’t cede “patriotism” to Republicans. The GOP will probably try to snatch it back, but Democrats shouldn’t let them. Instead, they ought to follow their colleagues’ examples and keep getting bolder in defending their values, defining what it really means to be American and standing up for all the people striving to make the country complete. | 2022-09-30T12:14:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Democrats are reclaiming 'patriotism' from Republican attacks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/democrats-reclaim-patriotism-republican-attacks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/democrats-reclaim-patriotism-republican-attacks/ |
Iran’s security forces have little incentive to ease up on protesters
Will forces remain loyal to the regime? That might depend on their business networks.
Analysis by Roya Izadi
Iranian security forces gather in the city of Arak, in the country’s Markazi province, in a video grab made available Sunday. (-/AFP/Getty Images)
Iranian security forces have cracked down on protesters for the past two weeks, with at least 76 people reported killed and hundreds arrested. Iranians are protesting the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was reportedly beaten to death by Iran’s morality police, a unit within Iran’s national police (NAJA), for not wearing a proper hijab, or head covering. Under Iranian law, all women are required to wear a hijab.
For the past two weeks, just like previous protest waves in December 2017-January 2018, November 2019 and January 2020, Iran’s security forces have remained loyal to the Islamic Republic, indicating no sign of defection. The research suggests that a country’s armed forces are key to determining the outcome of social movements, if political elites show few signs of stepping down.
What do we know about Iran’s security forces and their loyalties?
Iran’s security forces include a complex web of interlocking agencies, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), regular police (NAJA), secret services and the standing army (Artesh). Iran has two militaries: Artesh, which was established under the rule of the Pahlavi monarchy, and the IRGC, established after the 1979 revolution.
One important factor in determining the armed forces’ incentives to stick with the regime is whether they have economic incentives to remain loyal. In other words, they might have material interests that will be at risk in the absence of the current incumbents. That is very much the case in Iran.
My research suggests that many governments have granted their armed forces opportunities to make extra-budgetary profits as a way to co-opt the armed forces into being loyal agents. Business entities run by the armed forces are prevalent not only in Iran, but also throughout the Middle East/North Africa and other parts of the world. These businesses include the ownership/management of profit-making enterprises such as banks, consumer goods factories and construction companies.
Do business interests change incentives to repress?
Iran’s first military-run economic enterprise, Khatam-al-Anbia, was established in the late 1980s, following the end of the Iran-Iraq war, and placed under the control of the commander of the IRGC. Several factors drove this decision, including the need to decrease the military budget and to implement institutional changes within the IRGC and the army. But it was also a specific way to create a cohesive repressive apparatus.
Over the past four decades, Khatam-al-Anbia has become Iran’s largest contractor on many projects, from industrial ventures to mining, gas, oil and petrochemicals. My research shows that the IRGC directly controls or owns at least 275 firms today, across almost all sectors of the Iranian economy. And 54 of these firms are under the direct control of Basij, an armed wing of the IRGC that is among the first units deployed to control mass protests.
Iran’s police organization, NAJA, also directly controls at least 79 business entities, including the NAJA Cooperative Foundation, one of Iran’s largest holding companies. The Artesh, while heavily purged after the 1979 revolution, controls at least 30 entities including the Army’s Cooperative Foundation.
These business enterprises provide both officers and rank-and-file soldiers incentives to remain loyal to the government. Particularly for IRGC members, the prospect of regime change would probably put at risk millions of dollars worth of profits — as well as jobs and benefits that are generated through these entities.
Will Iran’s struggle for change succeed, given security forces’ business interests?
Many countries, including Venezuela, Egypt, Syria, Myanmar, Cuba and Yemen, have used this strategy of co-opting the armed forces through monetary incentives. This approach can prove a double-edged sword, however. My research shows that defection depends on how economically consolidated the armed forces are. Economic consolidation means first, whether the armed forces have created large economic webs throughout time, and second, whether they have been able to maintain those economic webs through leader transitions.
Armed forces tend to not defect when they are economically unconsolidated. But as the armed forces consolidate their economic power over time, they will have less incentive to protect those in power. Indeed, sometimes they have more incentives to defect, when sticking to the regime endangers their economic power.
The Iranian armed forces have not experienced any power transitions since becoming involved in the economy, which means they are not fully consolidated. This, along with ideological commitments to the core values of the Islamic Republic, can help explain why the continuation of the current Iranian regime is so vital to the IRGC.
Are there lessons from Egypt and elsewhere?
The scenario was quite different in Egypt in 2011. The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces had to weigh its own economic concerns when deciding whether to allow the increasingly unpopular president, Hosni Mubarak, to be overthrown. Instability would have threatened millions of dollars the Egyptian military earned each year if the protests dragged the country into a civil conflict. As one commentator at the time noted, “People in the middle of violent political chaos don’t buy dishwashers.” The Egyptian military had heavily invested in various industries since 1952. Throughout the decades, the military expanded its business entities and weathered leader transitions in 1956, 1970 and again in 1981.
The research suggests a consolidated military — like those in Egypt, Pakistan or Myanmar — will repress protests to avoid a scenario where protests target the armed forces themselves. Armed forces that are deeply invested in the civilian economies have incentives to intervene in any social, political and economic aspect of their societies that touches upon those interests. And armed forces on the path toward economic consolidation tend to be loyal forces.
The decision of the Iranian security forces, especially the IRGC, to remain a loyal force or refuse to crackdown on protests will depend greatly on what might happen to their grip on economic power. The deepening web of economic interests make it unlikely that they will join the protesters, or ease up on the crackdowns.
Iran’s standing army, Artesh, has less economic and political influence and hasn’t been used as extensively to suppress protests in the past. That might leave its rank and file more likely to defect in case they are deployed against the protesters. But, short of that, Iran’s military appears unlikely to defect from the regime in support of the current protests.
Roya Izadi is an assistant professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island and a nonresident research fellow at the Gender and Security Sector Lab at Cornell University. | 2022-09-30T12:14:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iran’s security forces have little incentive to ease up on protesters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/iran-protests-security-forces-amini-death/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/iran-protests-security-forces-amini-death/ |
Lawmakers want the Biden administration to do more about spyware
Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202! After today, we’ll see you next on Tuesday.
Below: Researchers find the CIA’s secret websites it used to communicate with spies, and a U.S. candidate wins an election for the top post at the International Telecommunications Union. First:
Exclusive: Members of House Intelligence panel urge State, Commerce to step up spyware fight
The State and Commerce departments should take more aggressive action against foreign commercial spyware, including forging a ban on its use among democratic countries and ensuring companies aren’t evading existing U.S. prohibitions, according to a letter from House Intelligence Committee members today.
The letter, first obtained by The Cybersecurity 202, follows July legislation that the committee passed out of the House aimed at countering the proliferation of such technology, and a rare open hearing on the subject the same month.
All of this comes on the heels of an ever-growing body of evidence that nations are using spyware around the globe, not only repressive governments like Saudi Arabia, but also U.S. allies like Mexico and Spain as well as U.S. foreign aid beneficiaries like Rwanda.
Researchers and investigators have found spyware in the hacked phones of dissidents, journalists and even U.S. diplomats. Earlier this year, U.S. company L3Harris nearly purchased industry leader NSO Group before the Biden administration objected, and the deal to buy the Israeli firm was scuttled.
“The impetus behind the letter … is that it's one thing to argue with the Chinese or the Iranians or the Russians — our traditional antagonists, if you will — about the use of technology like this,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), who spearheaded today’s letter, told me. But it’s another thing, he said, “to have our purported allies, or those who are substantial recipients of U.S. aid, to use this technology in an inappropriate way.”
What the lawmakers want
The letter has several major calls for action from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo:
Continually update the companies on the Commerce Department’s “entity list,” which bans them from receiving U.S. technologies. In November, the Biden administration added NSO Group and another company, Candiru, to the list.
More closely monitor potential abuses of those companies to make certain they aren’t getting around the ban. The lawmakers cited an open letter from advocacy groups detailing reported abuses of NSO Group spyware over the past year.
Apply pressure to foreign governments, especially those that receive U.S. aid, to curtail abuse of spyware. “The American people’s tax dollars should not be going to foreign governments that target our own people,” the letter states.
Publicly detail use of foreign commercial spyware against U.S. diplomats, and what the State Department is doing in response. The Post reported last year that Apple notified embassy personnel concentrated in Uganda that their phones were hacked by Pegasus spyware, the NSO Group tech.
Unite democratic countries on a ban of foreign commercial spyware. “Such a strong message would dissuade investors from backing spyware companies and complement efforts by U.S. technology companies to protect the privacy of billions of people,” the letter reads. The U.N. Human Rights Council began general debate on spyware and other topics Thursday, and two weeks ago the U.N. Human Rights Office warned of the rising threat that spyware poses. Meanwhile, the FBI this year acknowledged testing Pegasus.
“Clear and determined action needs to be taken to send the unequivocal message to foreign governments who have acquired commercial spyware that the targeting of Americans and exploitation of this technology will not be tolerated,” the lawmakers wrote.
The Biden administration has touted its effort to crack down on foreign commercial spyware as “unprecedented.”
The NSO Group has consistently maintained that it suspends accounts that abuse its technology, which it says it licenses to vetted government customers and has helped avert terrorist attacks and other crimes.
It denied most elements of the Pegasus project, an international journalism investigation last year, and has denied its tech played any role in the murder of Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, for which the company is expected to become the subject of a lawsuit by his wife. It also already has faced trouble with investors.
Some nations accused of using spyware deny it, while others decline to comment.
The other letter signatories include every Democrat on the panel: Jackie Speier (Calif.); Val Demings (Fla.); Jason Crow (Colo.); Mike Quigley (Ill.); Chairman Adam B. Schiff (Calif.); Joaquin Castro (Tex.); Peter Welch (Vt.); Eric Swalwell (Calif.); Sean Patrick Maloney (N.Y.); Jim Cooper (Tenn.); Raja Krishnamoorthi (Ill.); and André Carson (Ind.).
Republican Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.) and Chris Stewart (Utah) also signed.
Himes believes the Biden administration will be receptive to the letter’s requests.
“I don't think there's any reason to believe that they won't be cooperative and on the same team here, but we'll wait to hear what they have to say,” he said.
Researchers find hundreds of fake websites the CIA used to secretly talk to spies
A covert CIA system for communicating with Iranian informants and other spies may have exposed dozens of them before it stopped operating in 2013, Reuters’s Joel Schectman and Bozorgmehr Sharafedin report. The CIA hid a secret messaging system on sites they built like Iraniangoals.com, which was used to communicate with an Iranian engineer who was later arrested.
“Far from being customized, high-end spycraft, Iraniangoals.com was one of hundreds of websites mass-produced by the CIA to give to its sources,” independent analysts from Citizen Lab and Victory Medium told Reuters. “These rudimentary sites were devoted to topics such as beauty, fitness and entertainment, among them a Star Wars fan page and another for the late American talk show host Johnny Carson.” In all, the researchers found more than 350 websites with the CIA messaging system. All of the sites were offline for the past decade. Yahoo News previously reported that the system was compromised.
Researchers said the secret communications systems were easy to find. “The CIA really failed with this,” Citizen Lab senior research fellow Bill Marczak told Reuters. The secret messaging systems “stuck out like a sore thumb,” he told the outlet.
The CIA declined to comment on specifics of the report. “A spokeswoman said the CIA does its utmost to safeguard people who work with the agency,” Reuters writes. Iran's Foreign Ministry and U.N. mission didn't respond to the outlet's requests for comment.
U.S. candidate wins election to lead U.N. telecommunications agency
Doreen Bogdan-Martin received more than 80 percent of votes for the International Telecommunications Union’s secretary general position. She’ll be the first woman to lead the ITU, which works on worldwide telecommunications standards. U.S. officials said the election was critical for setting emerging technical standards, which will have sweeping implications on economic development and internet access around the world.
Bogdan-Martin ran against Rashid Ismailov, a former Russian deputy minister of telecommunications and mass communications who worked at Chinese telecom giant Huawei. U.S. officials have worried that China and Russia have sought to broaden the scope of the ITU’s work.
A European official was elected to another top position at the ITU. Tomas Lamanauskas, a Lithuanian diplomat, was elected deputy secretary general of the ITU. Lamanauskas, who was endorsed by all 27 members of the European Union, defeated candidates from South Korea and Samoa.
FBI arrests former NSA employee on espionage charges
Jareh Sebastian Dalke, who was an information systems security designer for three weeks at the National Security Agency, is accused of trying to sell sensitive documents to a foreign government, CyberScoop’s Suzanne Smalley reports. Dalke told an FBI agent that “he had access to … [information] relating to foreign targeting of U.S. systems and information on cyber operations, among other topics,” an FBI counterintelligence agent wrote in a court filing.
The court filing didn’t say which foreign government Dalke allegedly tried to sell the documents to, but Dalke told the agent that he tried reaching out to a dark-web site hosted by Russia’s foreign intelligence agency.
Dalke apparently wanted to be paid in cryptocurrency for selling the documents, saying that “[t]here is an opportunity to help balance scales of the world while also tending to my own needs.” He asked to be paid in a specific cryptocurrency because “as in these things privacy is extremely important,” according to the filing. CyberScoop couldn’t immediately locate Dalke’s lawyer.
Kent County election worker charged after allegedly inserting USB drive into poll book (Detroit Free Press)
People search websites create privacy nightmares for abortion rights advocates (CyberScoop)
Army doctor accused of leaking medical records in bid to help Russia (Dan Morse and Alex Horton)
The Congressional Internet Caucus Academy hosts an event on digital identity at 1 p.m. Monday.
Recorded Future holds its Predict intelligence conference Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies hosts an event on information warfare and Ukraine at noon Wednesday. | 2022-09-30T12:14:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lawmakers want the Biden administration to do more about spyware - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/lawmakers-want-biden-administration-do-more-about-spyware/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/lawmakers-want-biden-administration-do-more-about-spyware/ |
Supreme Court to hear high-stakes challenge to Clean Water Act
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! As a scheduling note, the newsletter won't publish on Monday or Friday next week. (We'll have a short week with Congress out of town.)
Below we have an update on the devastation from Hurricane Ian and a scoop about a White House climate staffer leaving his post. But first:
The Supreme Court will take up a major Clean Water Act case. Here's what to know.
Monday marks the first day of the Supreme Court's new term, and the justices are wasting no time in weighing another challenge to one of the nation's bedrock environmental laws.
The court will hear oral arguments Monday morning in a closely watched challenge to the Clean Water Act, passed in 1972 to protect all “waters of the United States”— including streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands — from harmful pollution.
Environmentalists fear the court's conservative majority could dramatically narrow the law's reach, undercutting the federal government's ability to protect waterways — and the wildlife for which they provide critical habitat — across the country.
“This decision will be nothing short of a life-or-death sentence for coho salmon, razorback suckers, California tiger salamanders and hundreds of other endangered animals that rely on ephemeral and intermittently flowing streams and wetlands,” Hannah Connor, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement.
However, business groups and home builders have cheered the court's decision to take the case. They argue that legal confusion over the definition of “waters of the United States,” or WOTUS, has created regulatory chaos for businesses and property owners.
“Without clear guidance from this Court, the Chamber’s members will continue to endure an expensive, vague, and time-consuming process whenever they need to determine whether a project or activity will impact waters subject to federal jurisdiction,” the U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote in a brief.
The case comes after the Supreme Court ruled in June that the Environmental Protection Agency had overstepped its authority under the Clean Air Act to slash planet-warming emissions from power plants.
Here's what to know about the Clean Water Act case — and why it matters.
SCOTUS takes on WOTUS
The case, Sackett v. Environmental Protection Agency, centers on a long-running dispute involving an Idaho couple named Chantell and Michael Sackett.
The couple began their lengthy legal battle in 2007, when they tried to build a home on their land near Idaho's Priest Lake. The EPA determined that the property contained a wetland, and that the couple needed to obtain a Clean Water Act permit or face heavy fines.
The Sacketts, who are represented by the conservative Pacific Legal Foundation, have won at the Supreme Court before. This time, they're calling on the justices to significantly narrow the definition of “waters of the United States” so that their property — and others like it — would not be subject to the Clean Water Act.
In the famously muddled 2006 case Rapanos v. United States, the justices split 4-1-4 over which test courts should use to determine what constitutes “waters of the United States.”
Under the test proposed by then-Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, a wetland must have a “significant nexus” to regulated waters. Federal courts have favored this interpretation, which informed the Obama administration's Clean Water Rule.
Under the narrower definition proposed by then-Justice Antonin Scalia, a wetland must have a “continuous surface connection” to regulated waters. Business groups such as the Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Home Builders favor this interpretation, which informed President Trump's Navigable Waters Protection Rule.
A federal court has since struck down Trump's rule. The Biden administration is planning to issue a new regulation.
‘A major rewrite’
Mark Ryan, a Clean Water Act expert who worked as a lawyer at the EPA for 24 years, said he thinks at least five conservative justices could vote to adopt Scalia's narrower test.
“Reading the tea leaves of the Supreme Court is always a dangerous venture,” Ryan said. “But I would predict a 5-4, if not a 6-3, adoption of something in line with the Scalia standard from the Rapanos decision, which would be a major rewrite of the Clean Water Act.”
Damien Schiff, a senior attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation who will argue the case on Monday, said he is “quietly optimistic” that the Sacketts will prevail. He noted that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. signed Scalia's opinion in Rapanos, while Justice Neil M. Gorsuch signaled in the Clean Air Act case that he is “skeptical of broad EPA interpretations of statutes.”
Jon Devine, who leads the Natural Resources Defense Council's federal water policy team, said the adoption of Scalia's test could remove Clean Water Act protections for roughly 19 percent of streams and 51 percent of wetlands in the country.
“That would be catastrophic,” he said, “for the water quality purposes of the act.”
Oral arguments in Sackett v. EPA begin at 10 a.m. Eastern time on Monday, both in person and online here.
Revived Hurricane Ian aims for South Carolina after battering Florida
Hurricane Ian re-intensified and set its sights on South Carolina on Friday after walloping Florida as one of the deadliest storms to ever hit the United States, The Washington Post's Jason Samenow, Kelly Kasulis Cho, Annabelle Timsit and Kim Bellware report.
In an update at 2 a.m. Friday, the National Hurricane Center placed Ian about 175 miles southeast of the historic city of Charleston, where the Category 1 storm could make landfall later Friday, bringing with it “life-threatening storm surge" and maximum sustained winds of 85 mph.
In Florida, where Ian came ashore Wednesday as a monster Category 4 storm, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said at least 700 rescues were conducted Thursday involving the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Guard and urban search-and-rescue teams. As of Friday morning, more than 2 million customers in Florida remained without power, according to the online tracking site PowerOutage.us.
President Biden, speaking at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters Thursday, said Ian “could be the deadliest” storm in Florida history. As of Thursday evening, 12 people had been confirmed dead in the storm, Phil Helsel, Daniel Arkin and Tim Stelloh report for NBC News.
Ian's rapid intensification bears the unmistakable fingerprints of climate change, The Post's Scott Dance and Kasha Patel report. Warmer waters give hurricanes more energy to release through crushing winds and pounding waves. Since 2017, six other hurricanes to hit the U.S. shorelines have qualified as “rapid intensification events,” meaning their wind speeds increased by at least 35 mph within 24 hours.
According to a preliminary analysis released Thursday, human-caused climate change increased Ian's extreme rainfall rates by 10 percent. The analysis, conducted by Stony Brook University professor Kevin Reed and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory senior scientist Michael Wehner, has not yet been peer-reviewed but relied on the same methodology as a prior peer-reviewed study of the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season.
David Hayes, White House climate staffer, steps down
David Hayes, who served as deputy secretary of the Interior Department during the Clinton and Obama administrations, is stepping down from his post as special assistant to the president for climate policy. His last day is Friday, The Post's Allyson Chiu scoops.
Hayes, 69, helped develop and carry out President Biden's ambitious goal of conserving 30 percent of the nation's lands and waters by 2030. He also helped establish interagency working groups focused on climate resilience and worked to expand offshore wind power.
In an interview with The Post this week, Hayes warned that America has not adequately prepared to cope with the perils of a warming planet.
“Ian reminds us that we have underinvested in longer-term resilience,” he said. “We’ve been very good as a country in terms of immediate response and you’ll see it again with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. They are fabulous in coming in and working to get the power back up and dealing with the immediate impacts. But as a country and certainly prior administrations and prior Congresses have not funded the longer-term issues.”
Senate Environment and Public Works panel approves TVA nominees
The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Thursday voted to advance five nominees to be members of the Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors.
If confirmed by the full Senate, the nominees — Robert Klein, Michelle Moore, William Renick, Joe Ritch and Adam Wade White — would help oversee the nation’s largest federally owned utility as President Biden targets a carbon-free electricity grid by 2035.
“As the nation’s largest public power system, TVA should be leading the charge in offering affordable rates and transitioning to cleaner energy generation,” Committee Chair Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) said in a statement. “I believe that all starts with the right leadership.”
House Natural Resources Committee passes bill to update U.S. fishing laws
The House Natural Resources Committee on Thursday advanced legislation to reauthorize U.S. fishing laws, which haven't been updated in 15 years and don't mention climate change.
The Sustaining America’s Fisheries for the Future Act from Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) aims to modernize the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, the primary law governing federal fisheries management and conservation.
The measure would require consideration of climate change in regional fishery management council planning, according to a summary from Huffman's office. It comes as the ocean has absorbed more than 90 percent of the excess heat that greenhouse gas emissions have trapped in the atmosphere, threatening marine species and ecosystems.
Nord Stream spill could be biggest methane leak ever but not catastrophic — Meg Kelly, Ellen Francis and Michael Birnbaum for The Post
The aspiring ‘coral factory’ restoring reefs wrecked by climate change — Allyson Chiu for The Post
These ‘nuclear bros’ say they know how to solve climate change — Shannon Osaka for The Post
New York to mandate zero-emission vehicles in 2035 — Sharon Udasin for the Hill
Fed announces six large banks to participate in 2023 climate scenario analysis — Reuters
A useful tip for setting boundaries at work: 😂🌳
Nature can teach us a lot about navigating the workplace.
Reject new projects like a deciduous tree: “Conditions are unfavorable for me to accommodate additional photosynthesis, so I will be dormant for the winter.” | 2022-09-30T12:14:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court to hear high-stakes challenge to Clean Water Act - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/supreme-court-hear-high-stakes-challenge-clean-water-act/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/supreme-court-hear-high-stakes-challenge-clean-water-act/ |
Why have so many Americans come to mistrust the Supreme Court?
It’s not only because the justices are making unpopular decisions. Here’s what to know as the new term opens.
Analysis by Paul M. Collins Jr.
Members of the Supreme Court pose for a group photo on April 23, 2021. (Erin Schaff/AP)
The Supreme Court opens its 2022 term on Oct. 3 with its lowest public approval rating in modern history, which the justices are acutely aware of. One reason is that the court issued some highly controversial decisions last term — most notably, the Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.
But this is only part of the story.
Other important political officials have tarnished Americans’ opinions of the court, and public trust in democratic institutions and processes has dropped more generally as well.
That matters. With no independent enforcement power for their decisions, the justices rely on public respect for the court’s legitimacy. Yet they’re not necessarily in charge when trying to improve public approval for the court.
A turn to the right
During its last term, the court took a sharp turn to the right and decided numerous high-profile cases by a 6-3 conservative majority.
Most notably, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization Association, the court — for the first time in its history — took away a civil liberty in ruling that there was no constitutional right to abortion. In reversing the nearly 50-year-old precedent of Roe v. Wade, the conservative majority ignored the fact that more than 60 percent of Americans support access to abortion in all or nearly all circumstances, and wanted that right preserved.
Research shows that unpopular rulings can turn the public against the court — as Dobbs did.
Half of Americans support abortion on demand
Supreme Court succession process
But Senate Republicans also hurt public support for the court by openly politicizing Supreme Court vacancies over the past decade.
That began with the February 2016 death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. Led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the Republican-controlled Senate refused to consider President Barack Obama’s nomination of moderate Merrick Garland to succeed him. McConnell argued that with only 269 days before the next presidential election, the Senate should wait until the country chose a new leader to consider a Supreme Court nominee. This year-long delay violated a long-standing tradition that every nominee not withdrawn by the president should get a hearing and a vote. As a result, a year later, newly elected President Donald Trump nominated conservative Neil M. Gorsuch, whom the Republican-led Senate promptly confirmed.
Only four years later, liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died only 46 days before the 2020 presidential election. McConnell ignored his election-year rationale and led the Senate to confirm conservative Amy Coney Barrett as justice on a strict party-line vote, at a time when, in many states, early voting for the presidency was already underway.
Between these events, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy retired — which some news reports suggest came after a coordinated Trump administration persuasion campaign in 2018, asking that his preferred successor and former law clerk Brett M. Kavanaugh could take his seat. While Kavanaugh was confirmed, that came after a controversial confirmation battle that included charges that he had sexually assaulted a woman as a teenager.
The controversies over each of these nominations and confirmations probably helped decrease public support for the court in those years, as you can see in Gallup polling. Scholarship shows that Senate actions on Supreme Court nominations can shape public attitudes toward the court, even though justices have no control over how the Senate handles nominations.
Attacks from political actors and the media
In response to all this — both how the Senate has handled vacancies over the past six years and the court’s extremely conservative decisions last term — the president, members of Congress, and some in the media have been criticizing the court.
For instance, soon after the Dobbs decision, President Biden levied these harsh words: “We cannot allow an out-of-control Supreme Court, working in conjunction with the extremist elements of the Republican Party, to take away freedoms and our personal autonomy.”
Research finds that when the president, political candidates, or the media criticize the court, they can influence Americans to think poorly of the court, especially among those who disagree with its decisions.
Declining public trust in democratic institutions and processes
Scholarship demonstrates that public support for one political institution — like the Supreme Court — is linked to support for democratic institutions and processes more generally. Unfortunately for the court, these have been declining in recent years. For example, public approval of Congress has sunk substantially over the past 20 years. Only about 20 percent of the American public say they are very confident in the integrity of elections. And nearly 70 percent of Americans now believe that U.S. democracy is in crisis.
Biden's court commission is worried about Supreme Court legitimacy. So what is 'legitimacy,' exactly?
All of this is bad news for public views of the court — even though the justices themselves can’t influence much of the above, from Senate behavior to partisan criticism to how people view U.S. democracy.
In the Federalist Papers, Founding Father Alexander Hamilton wrote that, unlike Congress or the presidency, the Supreme Court lacks both a purse and a sword, meaning that it is unable to ensure — either by spending or by force — that Americans follow its rulings.
As a result, the justices must rely to a large extent on the goodwill of the American citizenry and the agreement of the other branches to see that its rulings are followed. If Americans do not have faith in the court, that reliance is on shaky ground.
We believe the justices can likely get back some public trust by moderating their decisions, if they wish. But they can’t affect many other factors influencing public approval of the court. Restoring public esteem will be difficult. Given that, the president and Congress are likely to keep proposing various changes to how the court works.
Paul M. Collins Jr. is a professor of legal studies and political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the co-author of “The President and the Supreme Court: Going Public on Judicial Decisions”” (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
Artemus Ward is professor of political science and faculty associate at the college of law at Northern Illinois University and the co-author of "The Puzzle of Unanimity: Consensus on the United States Supreme Court” (Stanford University Press, 2013). | 2022-09-30T12:14:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why is the Supreme Court's approval rating so low? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/supreme-court-new-term-public-approval/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/supreme-court-new-term-public-approval/ |
Former Cowboys tight end Gavin Escobar found dead in rock-climbing incident
“Gavin was a great man, father, son and teammate, and will be deeply missed by all,” said San Diego State Coach Brady Hoke. (AP Photo) (Associated Press/AP)
A report shared online by the Riverside County coroner’s office cited two deaths Thursday, that of Escobar and also of 33-year-old Chelsea Walsh, both of Huntington Beach, Calif. The location of their deaths was listed as “a rockface,” with the time of death 1:18 p.m. after an injury at 12:21 p.m.
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection shared an “inaccessible rescue” report of two injured rock climbers Thursday afternoon. The agency stated that after a mountain rescue team was requested, rescuers were able to reach the victims, who were described as having “perished at the scene.”
The site of the incident was Tahquitz Rock, a popular rock-climbing spot in California’s San Jacinto mountain range.
Escobar, who played in the NFL from 2013 to 2017, had been working as a firefighter in Long Beach, Calif. The fire department there said on social media Thursday that it was announcing the news of his death “with deep sadness.” Noting that Escobar was hired as a firefighter in February, the LBFD said he leaves behind a wife and two young children.
Born in New York, Escobar was a high school standout in Orange County, Calif., before spending three seasons at San Diego State. Aztecs Coach Brady Hoke said Thursday in a statement, “Our thoughts and prayers go out to Gavin’s family. I know his wife, Sarah, and daughters, Josey and Charlotte, were everything to him. Gavin was a great man, father, son and teammate, and will be deeply missed by all.”
“Gavin was the epitome of a student-athlete, and a leader on and off the field,” said SDSU athletic director John David Wicker. “Our thoughts and prayers are with Gavin’s family in this incredibly difficult time.” | 2022-09-30T12:14:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former Cowboys tight end Gavin Escobar found dead in rock-climbing incident - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/30/gavin-escobar-rock-climbing-accident/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/30/gavin-escobar-rock-climbing-accident/ |
The space agency is studying a potential mission with Elon Musk’s company to boost the telescope, which has been in space for more than 30 years
NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is old and, after more than 30 years in space, somewhat worn and tired. It has been upstaged recently by the new James Webb Space Telescope, which is bigger, more powerful and already beaming back images of the universe that have astronomers drooling.
But NASA says there’s more life yet in Hubble, which contributed to the 2011 Nobel Prize in physics for helping confirm the accelerating expansion of the universe. And like a car owner trying to squeeze out every last mile, NASA would like to keep the telescope going for as long as it’ll go — only it’s been slowly, steadily falling back to Earth. When it was last serviced by NASA astronauts in 2009, it was at an altitude of about 350 miles. Today, it’s at 332 miles, and at some point — perhaps by 2037, according to NASA’s predictions — it will reenter and burn up in Earth’s atmosphere.
On Thursday, NASA and SpaceX announced they would study whether such a mission were even feasible. In some ways, it is yet another partnership between the space agency and SpaceX, as NASA seeks to leverage the growing capabilities in the commercial space sector to further its exploration and science goals. Elon Musk’s company already launches cargo, supplies and even NASA’s astronauts to the International Space Station.
But the Hubble mission, should it come to pass, would represent a new dynamic — one made possible by the fact that SpaceX has already sold multiple spaceflight missions to a billionaire tech entrepreneur who is eager to push boundaries.
Last year Jared Isaacman, the founder of payment processing firm Shift4 Payments, commissioned a flight from SpaceX that sent him and three other private citizens to space for three days, making them the first all-civilian crew to reach orbit. Now, Isaacman is paying for three more flights, each designed to break new territory as part of what he calls the Polaris program.
The first, in March, is set to send another crew of private citizens farther than any other human spaceflight mission since Apollo. They are also planning to perform the first private astronaut spacewalk.
As he prepares for that flight, Isaacman had been quiet about what the second would entail. On Thursday, though, he made it clear that he wants to send a private crew to boost Hubble to a higher orbit, and that it could be accomplished with “little to no potential cost to the government,” Isaacman said.
It’s unlikely SpaceX would do such a mission for free. But it’s already sold a flight to Isaacman for an undisclosed price, and has allowed him to decide where he wants to go and what he wants to do in space.
For NASA, though, the proposal is a little tricky. It can’t just award SpaceX or Isaacman a mission, even if it comes at no cost. Federal procurement rules dictate that there needs to be competition for such services, which is why agency officials stressed that the study is only that — a study. NASA and SpaceX said they would explore over the next six months how the company’s Dragon spacecraft would dock with the telescope, what sort of modifications would have to be made, or even if the mission could be done autonomously, without any crew members on board.
Since Hubble was launched in 1990, NASA led five servicing missions to the telescope, including one in 1993 to repair a problem with its primary mirror that was affecting the clarity of the images it was sending back. But when the space shuttle was retired in 2011, NASA had no way to get back to Hubble, and resigned itself to the fact that its beloved telescope would eventually die.
Now, however, not only does NASA have SpaceX, which has a successful track record docking with the space station, but there is also a whole new industry beginning to emerge for repairing and refueling satellites in space, breathing new life into what would otherwise become pieces of junk in orbit.
In 2020, for example, a spacecraft built by Northrop Grumman latched on to a communications satellite operated by Intelsat that was running out of fuel. Once attached, Northrop’s spacecraft essentially became a tow truck, taking over propulsion for the satellite and ensuring it maintains the correct orbit and position.
If SpaceX or another company can raise Hubble by 40 miles or so, that could “easily add 15 to 20 years of orbit life to the mission,” Patrick Crouse, Hubble Space Telescope project manager, said Thursday.
Yes, the Webb telescope is 1 million miles from Earth, and able to peer back 13.5 billion years to the dawn of the universe. But Webb was never supposed to replace Hubble, according to the space agency.
The only option NASA has to extend the life of Hubble, though, is to look to the private sector. | 2022-09-30T12:15:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NASA, SpaceX studying mission to boost Hubble telescope - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/30/nasa-spacex-hubble-telescope/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/30/nasa-spacex-hubble-telescope/ |
Friday briefing: Ian to hit Carolinas; Ukraine annexation plan; Tua Tagovailoa injury; student debt lawsuits; ALS drug; and more
Ian is strengthening again as it heads toward South Carolina.
The forecast: The storm is expected to hit near Charleston today as a Category 1 hurricane, with dangerous storm surge, flooding and winds. Expect effects along the East Coast.
In Florida: Millions of people are still without power, and major flooding is expected to continue across the central part of the state.
The damage so far: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said there was massive destruction along the southwest coast. There have been over 700 rescues, and search efforts continue.
Russia will illegally annex four regions of Ukraine today.
were held on
President Vladimir Putin is set to hold a signing ceremony to claim the territory, which Russia does not fully control militarily or politically. This violates international law.
Why it matters: Annexation could give Russia an excuse to label Ukrainian attacks in those areas as attacks on Russia itself, raising the threat of nuclear retaliation.
Congress must act today to avoid a government shutdown.
Why? It’s the last day of the government’s fiscal year. Without new funding, key Social Security and IRS services would be disrupted, national parks would shut down and more.
What’s going to happen? The House is expected to pass a bill to keep the government running until Dec. 16. It passed the Senate late yesterday.
A judge ruled in favor of Donald Trump’s lawyers yesterday.
The issue: Whether the former president’s lawyers must say if they believe his statements that FBI agents lied about documents seized from Trump’s home.
What’s new? A judge yesterday said the lawyers don’t need to follow last week’s order to clarify the claims.
In other news: Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, discussed her efforts to overturn the 2020 election with the Jan. 6 committee yesterday.
A legal battle has begun over the plan to cancel some student debt.
What happened? Seven Republican-led states yesterday sued over the White House plan to forgive borrowers up to $20,000 in debt, asking a court to block it immediately. Another lawsuit was filed on Tuesday.
What else to know: Those with FFEL loans — about 770,000 people — were excluded from the forgiveness plan yesterday.
The Miami Dolphins’ quarterback got a head injury in last night’s game.
What happened? Tua Tagovailoa was diagnosed with a concussion, four days after he was examined (and then cleared) for a possible head injury on Sunday.
Why this matters: It’s reigniting debate over the NFL’s concussion protocols, whether they were followed correctly and whether Tagovailoa should have been playing against Cincinnati at all.
A new treatment for ALS was approved yesterday.
This is a big deal: It’s the first such drug approved in five years, and many patients are celebrating the FDA’s move. However, there is still some debate over whether it works.
What’s ALS? Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It paralyzes patients — eventually killing them — by destroying cells in the brain and spinal cord.
And now … what to watch this weekend: The long-awaited sequel to “Hocus Pocus” (on Disney Plus). Or, one of these 10 fall TV series. | 2022-09-30T12:15:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Friday, September 30 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/09/30/what-to-know-for-september-30/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/09/30/what-to-know-for-september-30/ |
In Scotland, a city's world-class industrial past informs its present
By David Brown
As part of Dundee's waterfront preservation, the city has saved workshops and offices that whisper of the city's importance as a whaling, import and shipbuilding powerhouse. ((David Brown for The Washington Post))
Some cities have a past that is beautiful in the present. Old buildings and public spaces effortlessly become tourist attractions long after their reason for being has disappeared. Venice is like that. So is Paris.
Other cities carry their past into the present as an unavoidable burden, sprucing up their edges with beautiful things, new and old, to distract attention. Dundee, on the east coast of Scotland, is one of those. So is Baltimore, my home.
I spent most of a week in Dundee last spring while doing archival research in St. Andrews, 13 miles to the south across the River Tay, Scotland’s longest river. Every day I commuted to my hotel — 40 minutes by bus — in a “real” city, as I had between Washington and Baltimore for 22 years.
And I came away a fan. More than a fan, actually. When I left, in my breast was the defensive love felt by people who stumble into has-been cities and stay, as I’ve done in Baltimore for more than half my life.
Dundee, like Baltimore, is a city whose great days are a century gone.
It has a world-class industrial past, and a vast inventory of vacant industrial buildings in the present — like Baltimore. Both cities have a dominant and oppressive building material — red brick in Baltimore, and in Dundee a local sandstone that can’t make up its mind whether it’s tan or gray. As in Baltimore, some of these buildings — wonderful ones — have been repurposed, like the hotel I stayed in, an old linen mill.
Both cities have signature culinary products — crabs in Baltimore and marmalade in Dundee. Both have a lot of litter. Both are defaced or decorated with graffiti, depending on your taste. Dundee has the highest crime rate of cities in Scotland while Baltimore ranks third in the United States.
Where does one begin to learn about Dundee’s history and heart? Luckily, for a tourist, there is a place.
In Scotland, a ferry-borne exploration of the Inner Hebrides
It’s called Verdant Works, a former jute mill in a part of the city known as Blackness. (Dickens couldn’t have come up with a better name.) Once the employer of 500 people, the mill is a keyhole through which most of Dundee’s history can be descried. Unlike many factory museums, its story is made vivid by docents only one or two generations removed from its inescapable clutches.
But before we spend an afternoon there, let’s look around.
A vibrant maritime history
Dundee is a port on the Firth of Tay, the place where the river widens into a tidal estuary before entering the North Sea. It was built on trade, and for many centuries it was Scotland’s second most important city, behind Edinburgh. Its maritime past is telegraphed in street names (Chandlers Lane, East Whale Lane), stone workshops along the waterfront, a compact Maritime Trail where its piers and shipyards once stood, and a small collection of historic ships.
Of the last, the most notable is the Discovery, a three-masted sailing vessel that also had a steam engine. Billed as the first ship designed specifically for scientific research — there was no iron or steel within a 30-foot radius of its “magnetic observatory” — it was built in Dundee in 1901 and owned by the Royal Geographical Society.
The Discovery’s most famous voyage was a four-year trip to Antarctica featuring two of Britain’s legendary explorers — Robert Falcon Scott, the captain, and Ernest Shackleton, the third officer. Visitors are allowed to go almost anywhere on it. (In that regard it’s better than Baltimore’s estimable Constellation, built in 1854 and used to catch slave traders, among other tasks.)
On the pier next to it is V&A Dundee, an offspring of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum. Like its parent, it’s dedicated to design, decorative arts and performance. Opened in 2018, the V&A is the antithesis of Discovery — no vertical lines in view, and clad in what looks like a grate from a pier. But it’s just as interesting, with a wonderful collection that includes a salvaged tea room from Glasgow that was designed by Scotland’s art nouveau genius, Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
The ship and the museum are the most visible pieces of a 30-year, nearly $2 billion development project along five miles of waterfront.
A 15-minute walk inland is the McManus, a gallery and museum that’s a good place to see art and artifact telling Dundee’s story. That includes eras as Britain’s most important whaling port; a textile and shipbuilding center; and, in the second half of the 20th century, the British home to American companies, including Timex and National Cash Register.
As in Baltimore, Dundee’s shipyards and factories eventually closed. (The city lost 10,000 manufacturing jobs in the 1980s.) Like Baltimore, it’s now trying to cobble a future out of tourism, biotech and lots of little companies.
Scotland's Bass Rock is a birding paradise
There’s a lot to see in Dundee’s environs, including castles and archaeological sites. But if you have time for only one stop, make it Verdant Works. The museum stands in for the more than 100 jute mills that once operated in Dundee and employed, by the late 1800s, 40,000 of the city’s 170,000 residents.
The jute era
Jute?
It’s a fiber made from the middle layer of a 12-foot-high grass that grows mostly in India and Bangladesh. Its closest competitor is hemp.
You make burlap from jute. From burlap (in the old days) you made the binding of cotton bales and sacks for coffee, cocoa, sugar, potatoes and lots of other things. Woven tighter, it became cloth for tents and the covers for artillery pieces. War was good business for jute. In one two-week period during World War I, 150 million jute sandbags were shipped out of Dundee.
So how did a city on the North Sea come to process fiber grown in South Asia?
In the 1700s, Dundee developed a linen industry, importing flax from the Baltic states and other high-latitude countries where it grew. By 1840, the city had overtaken Leeds, in England, in the production of coarse linen. The Crimean War (1853-1856), however, interrupted the flax trade.
Dundee’s industrialists realized they had the knowledge and labor to process, spin and weave other fibers. Imperial Britain had access to a flax alternative growing in its colony, India. Add a little time and Dundee became the jute capital of the world.
A small thing that made a big difference was Dundee’s whaling fleet. At some point the mill managers discovered that washing the raw fiber in a mixture of 90 percent water and 10 percent whale oil made raw jute less likely to snag in fast-moving machinery. This 10 percent solution was enough to keep Dundee’s whaling industry alive 50 years longer than in almost anywhere else in the world.
The first docent I encountered at Verdant Works was Ian Findlay, a 73-year-old retired civil servant. His mother’s mother was a jute weaver. His father’s mother was a jute spinner. His father’s father was a maintenance engineer in a jute mill.
“It was the only show in town, to be honest,” he said.
On the factory floor I met another man, Iain Sword, also 73, whose jute pedigree wasn’t as long. His father left school at 14 and was a jute salesman, mostly to the carpet industry, his whole life.
Sword had been a banker around the United Kingdom before retiring to Dundee, his hometown. He was a jute Wikipedia, and no apologist for the mill owners. He told me that when Britain finally required public education, Dundee mill owners successfully petitioned to be an exception. They got permission to employ “half-timers” — children who’d work 30 hours a week in the mill for minuscule pay and go to school for half days only. They were so good at crawling under machinery and pulling out dust and fibers!
In fact, 70 percent of mill workers in Dundee were women and children, who were paid less than men. The city was known as “She Town” and was the first place in Scotland where jailed “suffragettes” went on hunger strike. It was also full of men raising children and drinking too much.
In part as a consequence of these conditions, 63 percent of Dundee’s eligible men fought in World War I, where they were slaughtered in droves. A battalion known as “Dundee’s Own” sent 423 men and 20 officers into battle at Loos, France, in September 1915. All but one of the officers were killed, as were 230 enlisted men. The McManus has a spectacular painting of two dozen Dundonians — that’s what the city’s residents are called — standing in the ruined landscape after another battle, Neuve Chapelle. The painter, Joseph Gray (1890-1962), had been a newspaper artist in Dundee; everyone in the painting is identified.
“Working conditions were just very, very hard. It’s very difficult to think of what life was like,” Sword said, between explanations of how various pieces of machinery operated.
A glimpse of that life, however, comes through in a remarkable piece of public health research published by the Royal Society of London in 1886. The authors were three men — Dundee’s health officer; a chemist at University College in London; and a second scientist from that institution, J.S. Haldane, who would become the most important respiratory physiologist of his generation.
The team took air samples from tenements occupied by mill families — 29 one-bedroom and 13 two-bedroom dwellings — and from 18 dwellings of four or more bedrooms occupied by middle- and upper-class families. They measured temperature, carbon dioxide (a product of respiration and a measure of crowding), as well as “organic matter” (basically dust), and bacteria and mold.
“The samples were taken during the night, between 12.30 A.M. and 4.30 A.M.,” the scientists wrote. “The houses were visited without warning of any kind to the inhabitants, so as to avoid the risk of having rooms specially ventilated in preparation for our visit. In every case but one we were most civilly received.”
The average number of sleepers per room in the one-room flats was 6.6; in the two-room ones, 6.8; and in the houses of four or more rooms, 1.3.
At 52 pages, it’s a long and complicated study that highlights the dramatic effects of crowding. Compared with four-room houses, one-room ones had air with twice as much carbon dioxide, four times as much dust and seven times as many microorganisms.
The most important data, however, was provided by Dundee’s health officer.
The death rate of children was four times higher in one-room tenements than in four-room houses. Residents living in one room “have the chance at birth of living only one-half as long as those in better-class houses, or they die nearly 20 years sooner, on the average, than those of the better class.” At this the scientists couldn’t restrain themselves: “This is an enormous difference.”
Other research found that teenage boy mill workers were 4½ inches shorter and “a stone lighter” — that’s 14 pounds — than rural teenagers in Scotland.
Haldane’s more famous son, mathematician and geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, later said of his father: “His experience of the Dundee slums may not have made him a radical, but it kept him one.”
What Dundee needs is its version of New York’s Tenement Museum, or even Baltimore’s modest Irish Railroad Workers Museum, to bring these conditions to life.
The jobs leave
Jute mill owners eventually found a way to make even more money: They moved the business to India, closer to the fiber’s source. Dundee lost a whole industry, much of its culture and untold thousands of people. Before, it had been a place where a boy with mechanical aptitude could advance — even if he left school at 14. “The loss of the textile industry pretty much led to the loss of all that,” Iain Sword told me.
But remnants of the jute trade are still visible in Dundee, if you keep an eye out. Passing a trash-strewn factory yard early in my visit, I saw at the far end a sign over a door: “Drivers should not stand under slings while bales are being hoisted.” Jute bales — compressed rock-hard to save space on shipment from India — weigh 400 pounds.
The city is also full of concert halls, parks, pools and other public amenities that might not exist but for the barons. They gave generously while mercilessly exploiting their workers — like Andrew Carnegie, a Scot whose wealth paid for more than 1,500 libraries in the United States.
Verdant Works shows this story and doesn’t just tell it. The exhibits are clever and moving. Physical objects butt up against photographs of people doing work with those same objects. You feel as if you’re in a diorama or onstage in a play. Mural-size photographs make faces larger than life. You can’t help pondering the individuality of the people staring at you.
It’s a place to feel the beating heart, and the stony heart, of a city.
Brown is a writer based in Baltimore. His website is aweewalk.com.
Hotel Indigo Dundee
Lower Dens Mill, Constable St., Dundee
011-44-1382-472110
ihg.com/hotelindigo/hotels/us/en/dundee/dndid/hoteldetail
This upscale hotel is in a five-story repurposed textile mill with a bell tower and is within walking distance of Dundee’s downtown sights. The interior retains hints of its industrial past. A good restaurant, Daisy Tasker, is on-site and uses Scottish ingredients. Rooms from about $100 per night.
West Henderson’s Wynd, Dundee
verdantworks.co.uk
This refurbished jute mill is a must-see attraction. Its docents are excellent and its exhibits detailed and unsparing about the work once done by tens of thousands of Dundonians at dozens of mills. Open Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. from April 1 to Oct. 31. Open Wednesday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., and closed Monday and Tuesday, from Nov. 1 to March 31. Last admission one hour before closing. Tickets can be used anytime within 12 months of purchase. Tickets about $14 per adult, about $8 per child and free for 5 and younger; family tickets for two adults and two children about $37.
RRS Discovery
Discovery Point, Riverside Drive, Dundee
rrsdiscovery.com
This beautifully restored four-mast vessel was built in Dundee in 1901. Its most famous voyage was to Antarctica, with Robert Falcon Scott (who later died in an effort to get to the South Pole first), at the helm. Tours of the ship are self-guided; there is a museum on the pier. Open Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. April 1 through Oct. 31. Open Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Nov. 1 through March 31. Last admission one hour before closing. Tickets valid within 12 months of purchase. Tickets about $14 per person for adults and about $6.50 per child ages 5 to 12. Ages 5 and under free. Ticket for both RRS Discovery and Verdant Works about $22 per adult and about $11 per child ages 5 to 12. Family price about $37.
Albert Square, Meadowside, Dundee
mcmanus.co.uk
This art gallery and museum tells Dundee’s story and has numerous special exhibitions. Open Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday 12:30 to 4:30 p.m.; last entry 15 minutes before gallery closing time. Free admission.
1 Riverside Esplanade, Dundee
vam.ac.uk/dundee
A branch of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, “Scotland’s design museum” boasts both permanent and temporary exhibits. Open Wednesday through Monday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; closed Tuesday. Free admission; some special exhibits require payment.
visitscotland.com | 2022-09-30T12:15:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to do and see in Dundee, Scotland - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/30/warming-up-dundee-scotland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/09/30/warming-up-dundee-scotland/ |
Russian rocket strike on civilian convoy kills 25 in Zaporizhzhia
At least 23 people were killed and another 27 injured in a missile strike that hit a convoy of civilian vehicles in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, on Friday. (Wojciech Grzedzinski /For The Washington Post)
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine — A wave of suspected Russian missile strikes killed at least 25 Ukrainians on Thursday as they waited to deliver aid and to collect relatives from an area that Russian President Vladimir Putin is preparing to annex in violation of international law.
In Avtorynok, an old car market on the southern fringe of Zaporizhzhia, the regional capital city, a group of civilians had waited all night to cross into the Russian-controlled territory. The broader Zaporizhzhia region is one of four where Russia orchestrated referendums in an attempt to legitimize annexation, but only part of the region is under Russian military control.
In interviews with Washington Post reporters on Thursday, the civilians had described the reason for their travel. Some were doctors, crossing battle lines to conduct life saving surgeries in hospitals that Russian forces have failed to adequately restock. Others were ordinary civilians, trying to rescue loved ones who were too elderly or infirm to make the journey themselves.
“What choice do I have, he’s my relative,” said one man, Serhiy, as he waited to join the convoy, asking that his family name not be used out of fears for his safety. Serhiy said he understood the danger but saw no other option.
Many residents of occupied Ukrainian territory who remained in their homes after Russian forces invaded and took control have finally decided to flee in recent days, following Putin’s announcement of his annexation plans.
Early on Friday while the convoy still waited to depart, three missiles slammed into the ground around the vehicles, eyewitnesses at the scene said.
It was unclear whose bodies lay under the blankets and tarpaulins that security forces and the assembled doctors had used to shield the dead.
Some of the victims fell next to their cars, or in the bushes where they had scrambled for safety.
Hours after the attack, a handful of shellshocked survivors were still there, and at a loss. When one received a phone call, he picked up and simply, ‘I’m here, I’m alive,” and then hung up.
At least 25 people were killed in the strikes, officials said.
In local hospitals, surgeons in the operating theaters were battling to save the lives and limbs of at least 15 other victims of the missile strike.
Ukrainian officials said that the missiles appeared to have been fired from an S-300 system.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in recent days has accused Russia of firing missiles at civilian infrastructure and other nonmilitary targets. Zelensky denounced the longer-range strikes as an act of cowardice following the messy retreat of Russian soldiers from the northeast Kharkiv region. | 2022-09-30T12:15:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rocket strike on civilian convoy kills at least 25 in Zaporizhzhia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/zaporizhzhia-convoy-rocket-russia-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/zaporizhzhia-convoy-rocket-russia-ukraine/ |
(Ann Kiernan for The Washington Post)
You thought the Supreme Court’s last term was bad? Brace yourself.
The cataclysmic Supreme Court term that included the unprecedented leak of a draft opinion and the end of constitutional protection for abortion would, in the normal ebb and flow, be followed by a period of quiet, to let internal wounds heal and public opinion settle.
That doesn’t appear likely in the term set to start Monday. Nothing in the behavior of the court’s emboldened majority suggests any inclination to pull back on the throttle. The Supreme Court is master of its docket, which means that it controls what cases it will hear, subject to the agreement of four justices. Already, with its calendar only partly filled, the justices have once again piled onto their agenda cases that embroil the court in some of the most inflammatory issues confronting the nation — and more are on the way.
Last term, in addition to overruling Roe v. Wade, the conservative majority expanded gun rights, imposed severe new constraints on the power of regulatory agencies and further dismantled the wall of separation between church and state.
If there was a question, at the start of that term, about how far and how fast a court with six conservatives would move, it was answered resoundingly by the time it recessed for the summer: “Very far, very fast,” said Donald B. Verrilli Jr., who served as solicitor general under President Barack Obama. “I hope the majority takes a step back and considers the risk that half the country may completely lose faith in the court as an institution.”
Maybe it will, but for now, the court is marching on toward fresh territory, taking on race, gay rights and the fundamental structures of democracy — this even as the shock waves of the abortion ruling reverberate through our politics and lower courts grapple with a transformed legal regime. And there’s every indication that the court intends to adopt changes nearly as substantial — and as long-sought by conservatives — as those of last term.
Of course, blockbuster cases can fizzle. Even if four justices vote to hear a case, the need to secure a fifth vote for an eventual majority can force incremental rulings over bold proclamations. But a six-justice supermajority means that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., the most moderate of the conservatives, can’t apply the brakes alone, even in the relatively few instances where he might be so disposed. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh is the justice most likely to join Roberts in defecting from the conservative fold, but Kavanaugh’s approach has more often been to put a comforting gloss on the majority’s version — and then sign on to it anyway.
In assembling its cases for the term, the conservative wing has at times displayed an unseemly haste — prodded by conservative activists who have seized on the opportunities presented by a court open to their efforts to reshape the law. The court reached out to decide a dispute about when the Clean Water Act applies to wetlands, even as the Environmental Protection Agency rewrites its rules on that very issue. It agreed to hear a wedding website designer’s complaint that Colorado’s law barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation violates her free speech rights to oppose same-sex marriage, even though Colorado authorities have not filed any complaint against her. It took the marquee case of the term — the constitutionality of affirmative action programs at colleges and universities — although the law in this area has been settled and there is no division among the lower courts.
“They’re impatient,” Harvard Law School professor Richard Lazarus said of the conservative justices, especially the longest-serving, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. “They’ve spent a lot of time waiting for this majority to happen and they don’t plan to waste it.”
If so, that is a perilous course for an institution whose very authority is grounded on the presumption of stability. If the majority insists on its current and hurried path, it risks deepening the very questions about the court’s legitimacy that have tormented the justices — divisions reflected in the bellicosity of their written work and that have erupted, in recent weeks, into their public debate. At a moment of extreme and increasing national division, change of such velocity and breadth is unhealthy not only for the court but also for a nation being asked to abide by its rulings.
Nearly 80 years ago, Judge Learned Hand observed that “the spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure that it is right.” By contrast, “This is a court that is very convinced of its righteousness,” said Stanford Law School professor Pamela S. Karlan. “This is a court on which there are a number of justices who are very eager to push the law in directions they prefer, and they don’t think to themselves ‘We should go slow on these things.’ ”
As much as the previous term was dominated by the decision to overrule Roe, the overriding theme of the coming term will be race — with one major case on the constitutionality of weighing race as a factor in college admission and another on the fate of the remaining shreds of the Voting Rights Act.
Both implicate the same fundamental question: Does the Constitution and federal law impose an unyielding insistence on colorblindness? Or should the nation’s history of racial discrimination and its lingering pernicious effects permit some flexibility to allow consideration of race?
This majority is certain it knows the answer. Race is a triggering issue for the conservative justices, one that rivals abortion in the intensity of response that it evokes. They have made a near fetish of Justice John Marshall Harlan’s famous 1896 admonition in Plessy v. Ferguson that “our Constitution is colorblind” — somehow forgetting that statement came in the context of arguing against state-compelled segregation of rail cars, what Harlan termed “a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with ... the equality before the law established by the Constitution.” These justices are offended by the notion of allowing any consideration of race, whether the motive is malign or benevolent.
And no justice is more hostile to that idea than Roberts. His much-vaunted incrementalism has rarely manifested itself in race-related cases. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” he declared in a 2007 case rejecting a school district’s effort to achieve racially balanced classrooms. “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race,” he wrote in a 2006 Voting Rights Act case.
The affirmative action case, to be argued Oct. 31, involves the constitutionality of race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina; the court, with considerable discomfort, has narrowly allowed the practice. In a 2003 case, Grutter v. Bollinger, the court voted, 5-4, to uphold a University of Michigan law school admissions program.
“Student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the majority, echoing the position of Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. in the 1978 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke ruling. None of the five justices in the Grutter majority remain on the court. Justice Thomas, who dissented in Grutter, has since been joined by five new colleagues who are apt to support his view.
Just as lawyers for Mississippi, after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, urged the newly constituted court to use Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization to overturn Roe, those challenging the Harvard and UNC admissions programs have taken direct aim at Grutter. Their brief invokes Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark school desegregation case, as support for invalidating efforts to assure diversity in higher education. “Because Brown is our law, Grutter cannot be,” the brief asserts. “Just as Brown overruled Plessy’s deviation from our ‘colorblind’ Constitution, this Court should overrule Grutter’s.”
This is jawdroppingly offensive. One case was designed to undo Jim Crow-era segregation; the other to promote racial diversity. As with the paeans to “colorblindness” in Harlan’s Plessy dissent, the invocation of Brown ignores that fundamental difference.
Go back to Chief Justice Earl Warren’s language for a unanimous court in Brown: “To separate them [schoolchildren] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.” That is not what happens to applicants rejected by Harvard, however aggrieved they might feel.
The conservative justices are no doubt inclined to take up the invitation to overrule Grutter — it’s fair to surmise that’s why they accepted the cases. But in doing so, they’ll have to confront the tension between their insistence on colorblindness and their asserted adherence to an originalist judicial philosophy.
The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, guarantees to every person the “equal protection of the laws.” During that very period, however, those defending race-conscious admissions point out, Congress and states also enacted special programs to help newly freed enslaved people and other Black citizens.
Don’t count on that swaying this court. “One of the striking things in this area is that originalists do not bring their usual apparatus to bear on these questions,” said Yale Law School professor Justin Driver.
The second race case, to be argued Oct. 4, concerns Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. It, too, demonstrates how newly aggressive conservative states and other parties are pushing the majority to deploy the equal protection clause not as a weapon for assuring minority rights but as a guise for retrenching on them.
Over the past decade, the court has put the Voting Rights Act through the shredder. In 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, the court eviscerated the law’s central mechanism, known as Section 5, which required jurisdictions with a history of voting discrimination to obtain advance federal approval before changing voting rules. Roberts, who wrote the opinion, offered assurances then it in “no way affects the permanent, nationwide ban on racial discrimination in voting” in Section 2 of the law.
But Section 2, which prohibits any voting practices that result in the “denial or abridgment” of the right to vote on account of race, hasn’t fared much better. Two years ago, the court made it much more difficult to use the law to go after voting restrictions, such as limits on absentee ballots, that disproportionately harm minorities.
This term, the court is turning its focus to what has been the main use of Section 2, to ensure that state legislative and congressional district lines are drawn fairly. The case, Merrill v. Milligan, involves a congressional redistricting plan in Alabama. The state’s population is 27 percent Black, but Blacks constitute a majority in just one of its seven congressional districts. A lower court, citing Alabama’s “extensive history of repugnant racial and voting-related discrimination,” ruled that the state had to create another majority Black district to comply with Section 2.
Applying the approach set out in a 1986 case, the lower court found that voting in Alabama is so racially polarized that Black voters don’t have a decent chance of electing their preferred candidate unless they are in a district that is at least close to majority Black. In addition, it concluded, Blacks in the state are numerous enough and clustered sufficiently compactly to make it feasible to create a second such district.
Alabama argues that it can’t be required to draw a second district — but not because it contests the factual findings by the three-judge lower court, which included two Donald Trump appointees. Instead, the state is urging the court to discard decades of precedent and simply rewrite the “existing framework.”
Even though Congress amended Section 2 in 1982 to make clear that it wanted to prevent voting practices with discriminatory effects (as well as discriminatory intentions), Alabama insists, those challenging existing district lines must prove that “can be explained only by racial discrimination.”
At the same time, it argues, plaintiffs trying to show that a majority-Black district is possible can’t take race into account in drawing that district. The illustrative maps must, the state says, be created in a way that is “race-blind.” Otherwise, Alabama says, Section 2 would violate the 14th Amendment by taking race into account.
This is simply head-spinning. As the Biden administration explained in its brief, “it would be extraordinary to hold that the Fourteenth Amendment, which itself empowers Congress to combat racial discrimination, disables Congress from adopting Section 2’s limited measures” to ensure equal participation by minority voters.
The implications of Alabama’s logic would be enormous, especially in the Deep South, at a moment when minority representation in elected office generally lags below the minority share of the vote. “For those who care about Black or Latino representation … this is the most disruptive case to minority representation in several decades, more so than Shelby County,” said Harvard Law School professor Nicholas Stephanopoulos, who filed a brief in the case on the side of those arguing for the second majority-Black district.
If past is prologue when it comes to this court and the Voting Rights Act, that won’t make much difference.
But race isn’t the only issue on which the court is poised to usher in dramatic change. Some of the cases the justices are set to hear — including one that is hurtling its way toward a receptive court — involve the tension between religious liberties and gay rights. The buttressed conservative majority has moved cautiously but inexorably in a single direction: in the clash, religious rights prevail.
Five years ago, in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, the court punted in a case involving a Christian baker, Jack Phillips, who said his religious beliefs prevented him from creating a custom cake for a same-sex wedding. Colorado authorities said Phillips’s refusal violated the state’s anti-discrimination law.
The court in Masterpiece Cakeshop said it was a “general rule” that religious and philosophical objections “do not allow business owners and other actors in the economy and in society to deny protected persons equal access to goods and services under a neutral and generally applicable public accommodations law.” But the court kicked the case back to the lower courts because it said there was evidence that Colorado authorities were hostile to Phillips because of his religion.
Now, a different court — Kavanaugh replaced Anthony M. Kennedy and Amy Coney Barrett succeeded Ginsburg — has decided to plunge back into the contentious issue. The case again comes from Colorado, this time brought by Lorie Smith, a graphic artist and website designer who wants to create custom wedding websites that “express what she believes is the beauty of God’s design for marriage,” as her lawyers told the court.
The case, 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, has been brought as a restriction on Smith’s free speech rights as an artist, not as an infringement of her religious liberties. (Masterpiece Cakeshop originally raised both issues.) Still, given this court’s solicitude for freedom of religion, it is hard to see how such concerns will not end up influencing the outcome. At the same time, the First Amendment focus opens up a whole new can of worms: Given the array of businesses that could claim their activities deserve free speech protections, what would the limiting principle be?
“If 303 Creative is correct, could a bakery that opposed celebrating Black families refuse to sell a birthday cake to a Black mother?” the American Civil Liberties Union asked in its friend-of-the-court brief. “Could an architecture firm that serves the public refuse to design homes for Muslims because it opposes their religion? … Could a restauranteur opposed to ‘mixed marriage’ put up a sign in its window saying, ‘No inter-racial or inter-faith couples served’?”
The second case presents the religious freedom issue even more starkly. It pits Yeshiva University, an Orthodox Jewish institution whose beliefs oppose homosexuality, against a group of gay students seeking official recognition as a campus organization. In September, the justices, in a 5-4 split, rebuffed Yeshiva’s plea for emergency intervention, saying it should continue to make its case in New York state courts; Roberts and Kavanaugh joined with the three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and the newly arrived Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Unless the New York courts change course, this appears to be a mere stay of execution for the gay student group — and perhaps not for very long. The four dissenters, in an opinion by Alito, predicted flatly: “At least four of us are likely to vote to grant certiorari if Yeshiva’s First Amendment arguments are rejected on appeal, and Yeshiva would likely win if its case came before us.”
Indeed, Yeshiva is pressing the court to use the opportunity — one it ducked two years ago — to overrule Employment Division v. Smith, a 1990 opinion by Justice Antonin Scalia that has long been a target of religious rights advocates who say laws and regulations should have to give way if they burden religious freedom.
Finally, democracy is on the court’s docket in the form of a case called Moore v. Harper, a dispute over gerrymandering in North Carolina — this time partisan, not racial, gerrymandering. The case raises what conservatives call the “independent state legislature theory.” Some background: The Constitution’s elections clause provides that “the Times, Places and Manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof,” subject to congressional action. (A parallel provision applies to appointing presidential electors.)
In Moore, the question is whether, notwithstanding the elections clause, the state Supreme Court retains the power to supervise the actions of the state legislature to make certain they comply with the requirements of the state constitution.
This case matters for democracy on two levels — one immensely important, the other potentially revolutionary.
The first concerns the precise issue in this case: the increasingly common and, with the help of powerful computers, increasingly effective practice of partisan gerrymandering. In 2019, after toying with the notion for years, the justices declared that federal courts had no business involving themselves in supervising such manipulation.
Even as it did so, the majority insisted that its withdrawal from the field did not “condemn complaints about districting to echo into a void.” State courts could remain active in the area and police excessive gerrymandering, the court noted.
That’s just what happened in North Carolina. The state Supreme Court struck down a redistricting map that would lock in 10 of 14 congressional districts for Republicans, calling the map an “egregious and intentional partisan gerrymander” that violated the state constitution. Republican state legislators, invoking the independent state legislature theory, appealed to the Supreme Court, claiming that the North Carolina courts had usurped their authority and intruded on the exclusive domain of the state legislature.
The case will be closely watched, but not only because of redistricting. Much as the Christian website designer’s case could usher in a new era of line-drawing about when discrimination must be tolerated, the North Carolina case could create new limits on state courts’ oversight of state legislators.
The independent state legislature theory, if validated in Moore, could be used as a tool for election subversion, letting state legislatures interfere with election results they don’t like. What if state election officials determine that certain ballots should be counted — say, from absentee voters postmarked by a certain day — but the state legislature doesn’t agree?
An even more extreme scenario, though not one directly implicated by this case: What if a state legislature disapproves of the slate of presidential electors certified by a governor? Could it step in to undo election results? This was the theory being peddled by lawyer John Eastman as he tried to upend the 2020 election results and have Trump declared the winner.
But letting legislatures change the rules after Election Day could be a step too far, even for this court. Moore might be the one case this term where apocalyptic predictions have been overblown.
Still, three justices have already signaled where they stand, at least on the narrower issue. Alito, joined by Thomas and Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, dissented earlier this year when the court refused to stop the North Carolina map from taking effect. “If the language of the Elections Clause is taken seriously, there must be some limit on the authority of state courts to countermand actions taken by state legislatures when they are prescribing rules for the conduct of federal elections,” Alito observed.
Kavanaugh chimed in, calling the independent state legislature issue an “important” question. And Roberts, dissenting in a 2015 case upholding Arizona’s independent redistricting commission adopted by voter referendum, termed it a “deliberate constitutional evasion” to read the term “legislature” so broadly as to include an independent redistricting commission.
The state lawmakers present the issue as a simple one: Legislature means legislature. “The text of the Constitution directly answers the question presented in this case,” they write in their brief.
Not so fast, perhaps. Former acting solicitor general Neal Katyal, representing Common Cause in the case, told the court the opponents’ arguments “hang on a hyper-literal reading of the word ‘Legislature’ that ignores that word’s context, constitutional structure, and precedent,” adding, “the original understanding of ‘Legislature’ … contemplated a governing body defined and bounded by state constitutional limits.” It’s hard to have much confidence that such originalist arguments will persuade the court’s self-described originalists.
“Fearless.” That’s the adjective that University of Chicago law professor William Baude applies to this court, and in his view, that’s not a bad thing. “The court’s not sitting out the hard cases now,” he said. “Change happens. New justices were put on the court by politics, and that’s how the court’s supposed to work. Everybody understands that putting new justices on the court who are different from the old justices has consequences. That’s never been something the court could or should try to immunize itself from.”
Fair enough — to a point. Other new courts — the dramatic expansion of civil rights and civil liberties under the Warren court of the 1950s and ’60s comes to mind — have ushered in periods of major, even radical, change, and there is an element of turnabout is fair play in the changes being wrought by the court’s new supermajority.
But Baude’s phrase — justices “put on the court by politics” — omits the ugly reality of how they arrived: Gorsuch after Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) blocked action on Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, for nine months; Barrett after McConnell rushed through her confirmation in 30 days, just ahead of the 2020 election.
It ignores the uncomfortable fact that never before in the court’s history has the ideological alignment of the justices tilted so heavily to one extreme — the intended consequence of the conservative legal movement’s 40-year drive to ensure like-minded nominees. “This kind of partisan correlation, where you can plausibly portray the court as an arm of the Republican Party, which is what I think it is, you’ve never seen that before, and that’s obviously a very dangerous situation,” said Harvard Law School professor Michael J. Klarman.
And Baude’s assessment fails to take into account — although he would disagree — that the conservative majority has demonstrated a consistent willingness to employ decidedly unconservative means to achieve its desired result.
Forget the years of Republican railing about activist judges legislating from the bench. This majority is perfectly willing to rewrite laws it doesn’t like (see its work on the Voting Rights Act) and ignore statutory text when that is inconvenient (see last term’s climate change case). It insists that constitutional interpretation must be constrained by history, but it cherry-picks that history (see last term’s gun case) in a predictable direction. It is willing to ignore its own rules about lightly discarding precedents when it has amassed enough votes to do so (see Dobbs).
The Rule of Six: A newly radicalized Supreme Court is set to reshape the nation
Such behavior has consequences. It produces charged moments, such as Sotomayor, at the oral argument in Dobbs, asking, “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” It produces dissents of astonishing ferocity, such as the statement by the three liberals in Dobbs, “Today, the proclivities of individuals rule.”
And it contributes, much as Roberts might like to believe otherwise, to the court’s precipitous decline in public esteem. Echoing the fierce debate between the majority and dissent in Dobbs, Roberts and Kagan have engaged in an unusual public back and forth, polite but pointed, about the genesis of the court’s legitimacy problem. Roberts casts it as a matter of the public misunderstanding the court’s role. “Simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for criticizing the legitimacy of the court,” he told a judicial conference in September.
To Kagan, that misses the point. Of course, the court must issue unpopular decisions — its role is telling “the majority when the majority has transgressed the Constitution, and those decisions are often going to be unpopular,” she said. But the court needs to accumulate a “reservoir of public confidence and good will” — through abiding by precedent, applying its methods consistently and not straining to decide things unnecessarily — to sustain the confidence and faith of the public when handing down unpopular opinions.
“When the court gets involved in things that it doesn’t have to, especially if those things are very contested in the society, it just looks like it’s just spoiling for trouble,” Kagan said in an appearance at Northwestern Law School. “That makes people, again, rightly suspicious that the court is doing something not particularly court-like and law-like.”
Which brings me back to Baude’s description of this majority: fearless. I would choose a different word: heedless. Heedless of any constraints on its power or the effects on the judiciary. Heedless of the real-world consequences of its actions — on women, on minorities, on public safety and, most worrisome, on democracy itself.
As October Term 2022 gets underway, I search in vain for signs of this heedlessness abating. Seeing few, I worry, for the court and for the country whose future it will shape.
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Read other Opinions Essays and see more special features. | 2022-09-30T13:22:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Ruth Marcus: This term, the Supreme Court prepares to veer further right - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/supreme-court-term-conservative-targets/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/supreme-court-term-conservative-targets/ |
Hi Damon: As a person in my 30s, I seem to struggle with the simple act of keeping in touch with friends who live out of town. I tend to lean more toward the extroverted side, which means I have made friends and acquaintances at every stage of life. Friends from childhood, high school, college, grad school who all live in other states … and I feel like the worst friend in the world to all of them.
I’m starting to wonder if there’s something wrong with me, because nobody else in my life ever seems to feel this way. Or maybe they’re just not talking about it, I don’t know. I find myself so wiped out by my day-to-day that I either completely forget to check in with people, or I truly just don’t want to because I’m already so wiped out.
Am I so self-consumed that I forget to think about other people who (seemingly) love and care about me? How can I possibly keep in touch with all of these people who genuinely deserve to be kept in touch with?
— Out of Touch
Out of Touch: So let’s just start with the bad. You can’t possibly keep in touch with all of those people who genuinely deserve to be kept in touch with. I’m sorry.
If your friend group is as robust as you suggest — and congrats on being in your 30s and still having friends from each stage of life — the physical universe we currently occupy just does not have enough hours in a day to work and rest and work out and eat and hobby and consume and love and then stay connected with 20 BFFs.
Also, because your friends are from distinct places in your life, I’m presuming there are distinct dynamics within each group, too. Like maybe, for instance, your relationships with your grad school friends — whom you met as an adult — are different from your relationships with the friends who’ve known you since you were in third grade. Just thinking about the work and bandwidth necessary to be mindful and considerate of all of those distinctions within your friendships is making me tired.
But here’s the good news! Well, it’s not necessarily good news. But it’s sobering, at least. No one else can, either! All your friends — at least the ones with as many friends as you have — are struggling, too.
Of course, their struggles might not be as noticeable, but you can probably attribute that to our strange cultural commitment to the performance of ease, where we offer the world curated snapshots of our lives that project supinity instead of reality. Most of us, however, are barely treading water, just like you are, but pretending to be swimming, just like you wish to. This doesn’t make you a bad friend. Just, unfortunately, an adult.
I have two pieces of advice for you. First, you should make an assessment on each of your friends. Not to measure their “worthiness” as a friend, but to know how much is necessary to nurture the relationship. For instance, in my (much, much) smaller group of close friends, there are some I communicate with multiple times a week, some where we talk maybe once a month, and one where we see each other once a year. Not every friendship can survive the once a year thing, but no relationship is one-size-fits-all, and I think it would be helpful for you (and them) if you made adjustments on the frequency of interaction based on who needs what. (Also, are each of these friends making a consistent effort to connect with you? If the answer is no, this doesn’t necessarily make them a bad friend. Just someone treading just like you are. Just like we all are.)
Before you even do any of that, though, I want you to give yourself some grace. The fact that you have this much anxiety about whether you’re a great friend means that you’re a great friend. And I hope your friends treasure your relationships with them as much as you do.
Have a question for Damon? Submit it below or email askdamon@washpost.com.
Do you have an uncomfortable question? Ask advice columnist Damon Young, who’s comfortable with the uncomfortable.
Damon Young, advice columnist and writer for The Washington Post Magazine, is comfortable answering the questions about about race or sex or even plane-exiting etiquette. Submit your question here.
He is the author of “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker: A Memoir in Essays,” which won the 2020 Thurber Prize for American Humor. He is also the co-founder of the culture blog VerySmartBrothas and was a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and a columnist for GQ. He has written for the Atlantic, Esquire, NY Mag, the Undefeated, Ebony, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Young is the creator and host of a podcast with Crooked Media. | 2022-09-30T13:43:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Damon: I'm terrible at keeping in touch with friends - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/30/ask-damon-friends-keep-in-touch/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/09/30/ask-damon-friends-keep-in-touch/ |
People are already talking about the possibility of a government default next year if Republicans win a House majority in November. According to Axios, one of the Republicans most likely to take over the House Budget Committee is not averse using debt-limit negotiations to win concessions from President Joe Biden on such issues as immigration policy.
The basics are simple: The US will reach the statutory debt limit, last raised earlier this year, in 2023 unless Congress acts to increase it. The obvious move for Democrats is to eliminate the limit altogether during the upcoming lame-duck session, when Democrats still have majorities in both chambers of Congress and can use the reconciliation procedure to do so with simple majorities.(1) So far, however, there’s no sign that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer intend to do so.
There are several important points here.
First, this isn’t a normal blackmail situation. It is a threat is to put the US government into default and thereby destroy the economy, something that presumably neither party wants. This generally means that the blackmailer doesn’t actually have much leverage. (Yes, an even more extreme version of this worked for Sheriff Bart in Blazing Saddles, but presumably that was thanks to the shock value, not actual bargaining power.)
Second, as in 2013, there’s a sense that radical Republicans believe in the principle of hostage-taking. That perverse principle, far more than any specific demand, is what’s driving the potential disaster. In 2013, the combined government shutdown and debt-limit showdown started as an attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act, but Republicans flailed around once it became clear they weren’t going to get a repeal.
Third, the radicals pushing a confrontation refuse to learn from history. Republicans drove the government shutdowns of 1995-1996, 2013 and 2018-2019, and each time polls showed them paying for it in terms of public opinion. What’s more, each time they failed to achieve their substantive goals.(2)Or, at least, they failed to achieve changes in public policy. If their goal was to show they were willing to disrupt the nation … well, they did manage that.
Parties are coalitions, and Republican-aligned business interests want no part of a debt-limit crisis. And yet they don’t seem willing to fight back against the radicals. The US Chamber of Commerce, as Axios reports, is only willing to claim that “divided government” is the potential problem, which is simply not true.
Democrats don’t force confrontations over the debt limit. Traditional business-friendly Republicans don’t force them, either. They’re forced by radical Republicans such as Senator Ted Cruz, a leader of the 2013 fight, and dozens of House Republicans. And even that wouldn’t be a problem if the rest of the party was willing to stand up to them.
It’s not fair that Democrats have to spend time crazy-proofing the nation against what, as Greg Sargent notes, Republicans are saying they will do if they win office. But that’s where we are.
There appear to be no plans to prevent a debt-limit debacle, and legislation to prevent a future Republican president from destroying the civil service also looks uncertain. At least the bill to fix the Electoral Count Act is well on its way to becoming law. Democrats should be hard at work on all three of these issues right now.
• Natalie Jackson on how little we know about Hispanic voters.
• Molly Reynolds on the politics of shutdown showdowns.
• Dan Drezner on Maggie Haberman and access journalism.
• Clare Brock at the Monkey Cage on hunger in the US.
• Seth Masket at Mischiefs of Faction on political parties.
• Julia Azari, also at Mischiefs, on polarization, threats to democracy and more.
• Dave Hopkins here at Bloomberg Opinion on the increase in women running for office.
• Robert Farley on M*A*S*H and the changing US relationship with the military.
(1) Greg Sargent has more of the details about the Democrats’ options. They probably can’t fully repeal the debt limit using reconciliation, but they may be able to peg it to a formula so it will never be reached, and they could certainly raise it to a preposterous number -- either of which would in effect be a repeal.
(2) The same was true in 2018, the closest the Democrats have come to forcing an extended government shutdown. They rapidly retreated. | 2022-09-30T13:43:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Another Absurd Debt Ceiling Fight? Enough Is Enough - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/another-absurd-debt-ceiling-fight-enough-is-enough/2022/09/30/6acc3a2a-40bc-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/another-absurd-debt-ceiling-fight-enough-is-enough/2022/09/30/6acc3a2a-40bc-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Brazil’s first-round presidential election on Sunday pits two larger-than-life figures representing opposite ends of the political spectrum: the incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who ruled the country from 2003 to 2010. While there are nine other contenders in the race, none has a realistic chance of winning. The election outcome will have profound implications for Latin America’s biggest and most populous nation.
The next administration will have to respond to growing public outrage over surging living costs and rising poverty and hunger in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, even as it tries to convince investors that it is committed to sound fiscal policies. Bolsonaro has pledged that, if re-elected, he would privatize state-owned oil company Petroleo Brasileiro SA and the national postal service, cut corporate taxes in a bid to boost investment, pass pro-gun laws, and make it more difficult for women to have abortions. Lula has said he would change rules that limit public spending, reform the tax system so the rich pay more and the poor pay less, ensure Brazil becomes self-sufficient in oil and fuel, and protect the Amazon rainforest. The vote will also be a key test for Brazilian institutions, since Bolsonaro appeared to be laying the groundwork to challenge a result he doesn’t like.
Polling suggests Lula has inched closer to having enough support to reach the more than 50% of valid votes needed to avoid a runoff, which if needed would be held on Oct. 30. A survey released Thursday by Datafolha, Brazil’s most influential pollster, showed Lula’s support right at 50%. While a runoff is still the most likely scenario, the chances of an outright victory have been growing.
Bolsonaro has spent big to ease the impact of Covid-19 and, more recently, to temper rising living costs for vulnerable Brazilians. His popularity hit a record high during the pandemic as the government gave 600-real ($111) cash handouts to the poor. With the inflation rate exceeding 10% earlier this year, Bolsonaro spearheaded legislation to temporarily increase grants for about 18 million families. He is also giving temporary cash handouts to truck and cab drivers to cushion them against higher fuel prices.
The state of the economy is, by quite some margin, the main worry of Brazilian voters, and it’s shown signs of improvement in the past few months. Growth beat expectations in the second quarter, and the unemployment rate dropped in August for the sixth straight month, reaching 8.9%, the lowest level since 2015. Economists see Brazil ending the year with a 2.7% expansion of gross domestic product and inflation slowing to 5.88%, which is a much better outlook than at the beginning of 2022. | 2022-09-30T13:44:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to Know About Bolsonaro-Lula Showdown in Brazil - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/what-to-know-about-bolsonaro-lula-showdown-in-brazil/2022/09/30/c2757b4e-40c4-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/what-to-know-about-bolsonaro-lula-showdown-in-brazil/2022/09/30/c2757b4e-40c4-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy last week unveiled the Commitment to America, a summary of the agenda for what he hopes will be a new Republican majority in 2023. The policy goals it outlines are a mix of traditional Republican positions (pro-life, pro-gun, pro-military spending) and relatively new priorities, such as promising to “confront Big Tech” and “ensuring that only women can compete in women’s sports.”
In both its name and its intended function, the document consciously echoes the Contract with America, the House Republicans’ national platform from the 1994 midterm elections. (To further emphasize this pedigree, Contract With America architect Newt Gingrich has taken an active role in promoting the Commitment to America.) The Contract With America is well-remembered today because the GOP gained more than 50 seats and majority control of the House immediately after its release, making Gingrich the first Republican speaker in 40 years.
Ever since Gingrich’s success, minority parties have hoped that releasing a similar list of campaign promises might grant them a comparable electoral payoff. Congressional Democrats produced a “Six in ‘06” plan before the 2006 midterms, and House Republicans endorsed a “Pledge to America” in 2010. But even though both parties ultimately marched to electoral victory in those years, there isn’t much reason to believe that any of these documents actually helped them do it — or that it’ll be any different this year.
The original Contract With America reflected a sound strategic calculation: By the early 1990s, many Americans had fallen into the habit of voting differently for the president and Congress, often supporting popular Democratic incumbents in Congress even as they preferred Republicans such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush for the presidency.
Gingrich and his allies in the House Republican conference decided that the way to a majority was to nationalize congressional elections as much as possible. They sought to convince citizens to base their vote on their frustrations with Washington as a whole, rather than their warmer feelings toward their local representative.
The Contract With America was part of this nationalization strategy, committing Republican candidates to a common agenda of conservative policy and institutional reform. But there’s no evidence that the plan itself made much of a difference. Only 7% of respondents to a New York Times poll conducted just before the election reported that the contract made them more likely to vote Republican, while 5% claimed that it would make them less likely to support the party, 15% responded that it would make no difference, and 71% admitted that they had never heard of it.
It was the rest of the Republican message that resonated with voters in 1994, communicated through television ads tying individual Democratic candidates to a controversial president, Bill Clinton, and a set of damaging scandals that embarrassed the Democratic leadership in Congress. This aspect of Gingrich’s nationalization strategy, somewhat innovative at the time, quickly became routine in both parties. Every subsequent midterm election has been primarily fought over national issues and figures rather than local concerns, including the Clinton impeachment in 1998, the Iraq War in 2006, the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and the Trump presidency in 2018.
Both sides now routinely encourage voters to focus their attention on ideological policy debates and to treat individual congressional races as proxy battles for control of the federal government. This fall, blaring television ads and eye-catching mailers are urging residents of competitive seats to use their vote to “send Washington a message” about national issues such as inflation or abortion, and to express their rejection of “Joe Biden’s failed policies,” “Mitch McConnell’s extreme views,” or vice versa.
And voters are likely to heed these commands. Party-loyal voting has grown significantly in congressional elections since the 1990s, as citizens have become increasingly aware that their vote influences not only which candidate represents their home community but also which party holds national power.
This perpetually nationalized climate means that McCarthy’s Commitment to America isn’t strategically misguided, just redundant. But his plan could ultimately prove useful for a different purpose. The Contract With America might not have actually won Republicans many additional votes in 1994, but its release ultimately allowed Gingrich to persuade journalists, and even some Democrats, that his candidates’ subsequent victories represented a popular endorsement of its provisions. If Republicans win back the majority this year, they can try to claim that the policy manifesto they issued this fall received a mandate from the public — even if, like the contract 28 years ago, most Americans don’t even know it exists.
• The Republican Party’s New McCarthyism: Robert A. George
• How to Make the House More Representative: Jonathan Bernstein
• Can Republicans Write Climate Plans to Suit Their Voters?: Justin Fox | 2022-09-30T13:44:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | This Republican ‘Commitment’ Is an Exercise in Redundancy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/this-republican-commitmentis-an-exercise-in-redundancy/2022/09/30/99f6532c-40c0-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/this-republican-commitmentis-an-exercise-in-redundancy/2022/09/30/99f6532c-40c0-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Fitch Ratings estimates Ian left between $25 billion and $40 billion in damage to the state, much of which isn’t fully protected by insurance
Flooding and storm damage after Hurricane Ian ravaged Fort Myers Beach, Fla. (Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post)
ORLANDO — The economic devastation left behind by Hurricane Ian in Florida is likely to put further pressure on the state’s fragile insurance system.
About a dozen firms that provide homeowners insurance in Florida have become insolvent in the past two years, according to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, leaving hundreds of thousands of property owners scrambling for coverage. Many Florida homeowners in flood-prone areas don’t carry flood insurance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has said — despite the fact that many policies don’t cover flood damage.
And as insurers assess the impact of the storm and assess future risk as extreme weather events grow more common, coverage could get pushed even more out of reach for Floridians.
Tracker: where Ian struck and where it's headed next
“Obviously this is going to be a multibillion-dollar storm, and with the insurance industry already crumbling, this is going to be devastating,” said state Sen. Jeff Brandes, a Republican.
A Fitch Ratings analysis Thursday estimated insured cost losses could be from $25 billion to $40 billion in the state.
A unique confluence of factors makes Florida an exceptionally difficult place for private insurers to do business, and for homeowners to find affordable comprehensive plans from private companies. As Ian has shown, the state is susceptible to dangerous weather events, something that’s likely to increase over time because of climate change. Insurance companies’ risk models, which incorporate thousands of years of weather data, have proved unreliable when it comes to the most recent storms, said Danielle Lombardo, chair of the Global Real Estate Practice at Lockton, an independent insurance brokerage and consultancy.
“It is the most risky piece of land in the world for insurers from a catastrophe standpoint,” Lombardo said.
Lawmakers and industry officials said Ian could doom private homeowner insurers unless the state legislature steps in, while consumer advocates said residents faced getting completely priced out of the market.
More than 400,000 Florida consumers have lost coverage already this year due to failed insurers or policy increases, according to Mark Friedlander, corporate communications director for the Insurance Information Institute, a research and communications nonprofit for the industry.
Already, some consumers “are now in a position where they are having to attempt to try to locate new coverage, and they just simply aren’t able to find any insurance company that is willing to write them,” said Tasha Carter, Florida’s insurance consumer advocate.
Florida’s laws regarding insurance litigation tend to favor plaintiffs, according to industry officials and independent experts, so that insurance companies are constantly dealing with a barrage of lawsuits. According to the state’s Office of Insurance Regulation, Florida accounted for 76 percent of all homeowners lawsuits nationwide in 2021.
Meanwhile the state’s population has continued to grow, creating more demand, even as risk-averse insurers are trying to exit the marketplace, leading to less supply. All of this combines for higher rates for consumers.
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) called a special session in May to address the property insurance crisis, but many say the law he signed does nothing to help consumers now. And some of the elements of the law, such as My Safe Florida Home, which is supposed to offer grants to homeowners who retrofit their homes to add hurricane protection, still aren’t up and running four months later.
In an interview on the Weather Channel this week, DeSantis said the goal was to avoid disputes over damages and make people whole as quickly as possible.
“The goal is to get these claims as quickly as possible. So it’s basically leveraging government to get everybody in line, and let’s get people back on their feet,” DeSantis said.
Florida residents do have recourse to a state-created nonprofit often referred to as the “insurer of last resort” — Citizens Property Insurance Corporation of Florida. Citizens will insure people who can’t find private insurance, and their rates are capped at 10 percent annually — which has kept them lower than some private insurers that have raised rates astronomically.
Citizens has seen exponential growth in demand over the last couple of years, with 1.1 million policyholders, double where it was two years ago, spokesman Michael Peltier said. But there’s a catch: The legislature required Citizens to operate without state funding, so when a big disaster hits and claims pour in, it assesses fees up to 45 percent on its policyholders.
“The true cost of a Citizens policy can increase dramatically following a major disaster,” the company itself notes in its literature.
Citizens is facing approximately 20,000 lawsuits, Peltier said. | 2022-09-30T13:44:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Florida's insurance woes could make Hurricane Ian's wrath even worse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/30/ian-florida-economy-insurance/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/30/ian-florida-economy-insurance/ |
Family says nursing home fatally poisoned woman with juice, cleaner mix-up
Trudy Maxwell, 93, died after she unknowingly drank an industrial cleaner, which ‘essentially melted’ her mouth, throat and esophagus, a lawsuit alleges
Trudy Maxwell was one of three nursing-home residents in San Mateo, Calif., who were hospitalized on Aug. 27 after being served and drinking industrial cleaner, a lawsuit alleges. (Courtesy of Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy)
Residents at a Northern California nursing home expected cranberry juice in late August when staff served cups with a red liquid inside. Instead, 93-year-old Trudy Maxwell and two others swallowed an industrial cleaner — one that severely blistered Maxwell’s mouth, throat and esophagus, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday.
“The toxic chemical essentially melted the lining of Trudy’s digestive tract,” the suit alleges.
Maxwell was taken to the hospital but died two “excruciating days after being poisoned,” it states.
Now, her relatives are suing the nursing home, accusing Atria Park of San Mateo of dependent adult abuse, negligence and wrongful death. The lawyer representing Maxwell’s family said her death was avoidable — calling it “a tragic part of the epidemic of neglect of seniors” — and demanded accountability from the company, which was being paid thousands of dollars a month to take care of her.
“Their job is to keep senior citizens safe, and they did the opposite of that. They snuffed out a life,” attorney Niall McCarthy told The Washington Post.
Maxwell was one of three Atria Park residents hospitalized on Aug. 27 after drinking the industrial cleaner, the suit alleges. Like Maxwell, 93-year-old Peter Schroder Jr. died after spending nearly two weeks in the hospital, KNTV reported, and his family has also filed a lawsuit against Atria. McCarthy said he doesn’t know the fate of the third resident.
In a statement to The Post, Atria Senior Living described what happened as an “isolated” incident in which an employee unintentionally poisoned three residents while violating the company’s policies, although it didn’t specify which ones. Atria said residents are its top priority, which is why “staff are thoroughly trained and able to meet our residents’ needs at all times.”
“We take this incident very seriously,” Atria said in the statement. “We’re continuing to work with authorities and the Department of Social Services to fully review and assess the incident. Our hearts remain with the residents affected, their families, and loved ones.”
The San Mateo County district attorney is reviewing the police investigation into the poisonings at Atria. Stephen Wagstaffe told KGO that his office’s consumer fraud unit is also investigating Atria generally to see whether the company has been “conducting themselves in appropriate, businesslike fashion.”
Maxwell, a lifelong Bay Area resident who was diagnosed with dementia in 2018, started living at Atria Park in October 2020, according to the suit. Her family paid nearly $6,000 a month for her one-bedroom unit. Because of her dementia, Maxwell needed help to change clothes, feed herself and move about the facility.
Around 7:30 a.m. on Aug. 27, an employee at the nursing home escorted Maxwell from her room in the memory care unit to the cafeteria for breakfast, according to the lawsuit. Around that time, an Atria staff member was violating protocol by filling a pitcher with liquid dishwashing detergent that had “a nearly identical consistency and color to cranberry juice,” and planned to put it into a commercial dishwashing machine, the company said in its statement.
Instead, another staff member picked up the pitcher and, mistaking it for juice, served it to three residents, Atria added in the statement.
Maxwell drank it, and her reaction was immediate, according to the lawsuit filed by her family. The liquid burned and blistered her mouth, throat and esophagus, according to the suit. “Trudy was in extreme pain, distress, and agony,” it states.
Atria staff, nevertheless, did not call 911 immediately, instead waiting “over 30 excruciating minutes,” the Maxwell family alleges in its suit. Once they did and Maxwell was taken to a hospital, “doctors noted that she likely would not survive, due to the extent of the injuries immediately noticeable to her mouth and throat,” according to the lawsuit.
Maxwell’s family also alleges that Atria “did nothing” to train staff properly, even though there had been a similar incident at another Atria facility in the Bay Area four days earlier when a dementia patient fell ill after drinking an unknown liquid, the suit claims. The man died eight days later.
Atria said the two incidents are “isolated and unrelated.”
Between the two, Atria should have alerted other facilities and beefed up staff to appropriate levels, measures that might have saved Maxwell, according to the lawsuit. Instead, the “red flag warning” was ignored and Atria did nothing, the suit claims.
The incident with the industrial cleaner was not the first time Atria failed Maxwell, the lawsuit states. Shortly after moving her into Atria in the fall of 2020, family members said they felt that the facility’s care fell short of their expectations. On multiple occasions, they noticed that Maxwell was wearing bandages and hadn’t had her adult diaper changed, according to the lawsuit.
Atria endangered Maxwell and other residents by putting profits over care, the suit alleges. In an effort to cut costs, the company failed to properly vet and train employees, the Maxwell family asserts. To staff its facilities, Atria allegedly employed few permanent workers, instead tapping “a rotating cast” of temps who didn’t have an appropriate amount of safety training and knew little about residents like Maxwell, the lawsuit states.
Those practices made Atria Park “a magnet” for violations of the state’s health and safety codes, the suit alleges, including 12 complaints over the past five years.
McCarthy told The Post that Maxwell’s relatives hope their lawsuit forces Atria to change how it does business by providing better care to its residents.
“She was totally dependent on them, and the staff served her a poisoned cocktail,” McCarthy said, adding that “they want to make sure this same fate doesn’t befall another family.” | 2022-09-30T13:45:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Family sues Atria, says woman was fatally poisoned in juice, cleaner mix-up - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/30/senior-facility-juice-cleaner-poisoning/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/09/30/senior-facility-juice-cleaner-poisoning/ |
The Midshipmen will face Air Force at noon Saturday (CBS)
Navy kicker Daniel Davies (47) made the game-winning field goal in overtime to beat East Carolina. (James Guillory/USA TODAY Sports)
Every day, Daniel Davies wears a blue wristband that his parents made. It reads “Family,” “#WWRD” and “RD 1993-2016.” The wristband is a constant reminder of Davies’s oldest brother who died after a car accident and the hashtag stands for What Would Ricky Do?
“He’s with me all the time,” the Navy kicker said.
Daniel fully believes Ricky was with him last week when Daniel made his debut as the team’s place-kicker and went 3-for-3 on field goals, including a 29-yarder in double overtime to give the Midshipmen a 23-20 victory over East Carolina for their first win of the season. On the way to the game, Davies was listening to Spotify on shuffle when the song “Closer” by the Chainsmokers came on. The song was released in 2016 and their father, Michael, said the song reminded him of Ricky. Every time the song plays, Daniel thinks of his oldest brother. The song came on as the team was riding the bus to face the Pirates at Dowdy-Ficklen Stadium. The same song randomly came on again as the team was walking from the bus to the plane after the game.
“I was like, ‘Yup, he’s right here,’” Daniel said. “That was really cool.”
Navy gets first win with field goal in second overtime
Ricky Davies died six years ago of injuries suffered after being struck by a bread delivery van while walking. He was a soccer player at the Coast Guard Academy and is the reason Daniel is at Navy in the first place. The Davies are a soccer family with Ricky being the eldest and middle brother Eric playing collegiately at Saint Louis University. The brothers weren’t even allowed to play football until seventh grade and Daniel played soccer until dedicating himself to football after his freshman year of high school. The family has no real ties to the military, but Ricky wanted to continue playing after high school and the Coast Guard offered the opportunity. Daniel remembers Ricky constantly calling home to complain about all the responsibilities that came with being at the academy, but he still graduated in 2016 and was an ensign with the Coast Guard. Daniel, who didn’t know much about the service academies, thought the Coast Guard Academy campus was “the coolest thing.” So when Navy reached out, he already an understanding.
Davies had to wait until his senior year to get his first chance to kick field goals in a game as fellow kicker Bijan Nichols was also part of that freshman class. Nichols has been the No. 1 kicker since his freshman year, is second on Navy’s career field goal list, was named second team all-conference in 2021 and voted a captain in 2022. A leg injury, however, has kept Nichols sidelined this season. Evan Warren replaced Nichols in the first two games before Davies, who has served as the holder and held the punting responsibilities in 2020, got the nod last week. He was named American Athletic Conference special teams player of the week after the performance at East Carolina.
The opportunity was slow to arrive, but Daniel always thought of Ricky’s experience.
“He was my greatest role model,” Daniel said. “I’ve never once thought that I was going to leave just because Ricky did it. So it’s kind of one of those things, ‘Oh, my brother did it, I’m going to do it as well.’ And it hasn’t been easy. I’ve definitely had my ups and downs here, but I’ve never once called home like, ‘Hey, I’m thinking about leaving,’ when Ricky did all the time. Which is kind of funny.”
Eric Davies added, “The coolest thing, is like, Daniel’s living in the shoes Ricky did.”
In 2020, Daniel got special permission to honor Ricky by wearing a Coast Guard patch as part of the special uniforms the team wears for Army-Navy games.
Eric and Daniel text daily, but Daniel called after the bye week with some news — he’d be the starting kicker against East Carolina. He added not to tell their parents. The family is used to seeing Daniel punting, but seeing him on TV kicking field goals in overtime just hit different. The realization that Daniel had just kicked field goals for Navy for the first time didn’t come until after the game for Eric, despite the phone call.
“It’s like dude you better not miss this,” Eric said with a laugh. “That boundary between brother, I’m invested in this game, that started to get blended. I was nervous just like any fan. It was wild to me, taking a step back. I’m like, dude, that’s my little brother. I couldn’t be more proud.
“Obviously sometimes it sucked. It’s frustrating as an athlete who’s competitive to not be playing.”
That playing time isn’t guaranteed moving forward as Nichols is considered day-to-day and Coach Ken Niumatalolo said the job will be his when fully healthy. The Midshipmen will face Air Force on the road Saturday in the first game of the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy series between Navy, Air Force and Army. The Falcons boasts the No. 1 rushing offense in the nation at 412.2 yards per game — over 100 yards more than No. 2 Minnesota (294.5 ypg).
There are few secrets between the rivals, but Air Force (3-1) does bring a bit of a different type of option than Navy runs.
“Of all the option teams I’ve gone against, they’re the most creative,” Navy defensive coordinator Brian Newberry said. “From the type of plays they run to the formations that they give you. They don’t run a ton of different plays, but they run them out of a lot of different sets and a lot of different looks. They do a good job with motions. Eye candy to distract you. And they’re really good at what they do.”
Davies was the hero last week as Navy was in danger of falling to an 0-3 start to the season. He became a bit of a celebrity on campus this week and said one professor didn’t even previously know that he was on the football team. The 29-yarder put the Mids up 23-20 in double overtime, preceding East Carolina kicker Owen Daffer missing a 37-yard attempt. The victory, particularly on the road, was much needed for both the standings and confidence.
And it came off the foot of a player who has waited four years for his first opportunity.
“It just embodies who we are,” Niumatalolo said. “Just resilient, tough, young man. He’s been all in. He’s never complained about not kicking or punting or doing the kickoff duties. He’s always come to work every day. He’s bought into the Brotherhood.
“You couldn’t be more happy for a kid like that because he’s what we embody as a program — selfless, all about the team and happy that he was able to go out and contribute in that way. Just happy for him.” | 2022-09-30T13:45:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Navy kicker Daniel Davies leans on memory of older brother - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/30/daniel-davies-navy-kicker/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/30/daniel-davies-navy-kicker/ |
Creator and actor on hit British crime series ‘Sherwood’
The crime series “Sherwood” is inspired by the 2004 murders in the mining community of Nottinghamshire, England that led to one of the biggest manhunts in British history. On Friday, Oct. 7 at 11:00 a.m. ET, join Washington Post Live for a conversation with creator, writer and executive producer James Graham and lead actor David Morrissey about bringing the story on screen.
Creator, Writer & Executive Producer
In partnership with BritBox | 2022-09-30T13:45:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Creator and actor on hit British crime series ‘Sherwood’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/10/07/creator-actor-hit-british-crime-series-sherwood/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/10/07/creator-actor-hit-british-crime-series-sherwood/ |
People gathered in central Moscow ahead of a rally and a concert marking President Vladmir Putin's claimed annexation of four regions of Ukraine on Sept. 30. (Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images)
Amid patriotic pageantry hyped up by the fervor of war, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday proclaimed the annexation of four Ukrainian regions, a flagrant violation of international law that stands to escalate and prolong the military conflict in Ukraine, sharpen Moscow’s a confrontation with the West, and add to the Kremlin’s growing global isolation.
At a ceremony in the gilded Grand Kremlin Palace, attended by senior political and military officials, members of Parliament, and even Russian war bloggers, Putin on Friday signed so-called “accession treaties” to absorb the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
Patriotic music played ahead of the signing ritual, in which Putin sat at one white gold-trimmed desk, and four proxy leaders of the occupied regions sat at another. Once the documents were signed, Putin and the four proxy leaders held hands and chanted “Russia! Russia! Russia!” to admiring cheers applause from the audience.
The annexation move, while already rejected by President Biden, U.N. Secretary General António Guterres, and other world leaders as unlawful and illegitimate, nonetheless laid Russia’s claim to some 40,000 square miles of land or about one-seventh of all Ukrainian territory.
It was a momentous, and remarkably brazen step — a land-grab with virtually no parallel in modern times — and one with potentially dangerous consequences. Russia has warned that it would respond to any attacks on the seized Ukrainian territories as if they were Russia proper, including with nuclear weapons.
The attempted seizure of territory, which Russian forces do not fully control either militarily or politically, also appeared to commit the country to a prolonged war. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pledged to fight until all of his country’s territory, including Crimea, is reclaimed, and Western allies have promised to send additional weapons and financial aid to support Kyiv in repelling the invaders.
Putin’s rapid push toward annexation followed a series of military setbacks, including a failed attempt to seize Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, and topple the government last spring, and a rout of Russian forces from the northeast Kharkiv region during a lightning offensive by Ukrainian troops last month.
Putin signed the documents surrounded by members of the Russian parliament who overwhelmingly supported Putin’s invasion and adopted draconian laws to punish critics of the war, and who were due to ratify the annexation in votes early next week. In a speech, Putin insisted that staged referendums carried out over the last week in the occupied regions had demonstrated legitimate support for annexation.
“This is the will of millions of people,” Putin said. “The choice was made, and Russia will not betray this choice.”
Countries that traditionally have maintained closer ties to Russia, like Serbia and Turkey, have also refused to support the referendums, underscoring their commitment to Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty — and their own.
Guterres, in a statement at U.N. headquarters on Thursday, blasted the annexation plan as stunning violation of the U.N.'s core principles by a country that holds a permanent seat on the Security Council. “Any annexation of a State’s territory by another State resulting from the threat or use of force is a violation of the Principles of the U.N. Charter and international law,” Guterres said.
The annexation move effectively slams the door on any diplomatic resolution to the war in Ukraine, and military analysts are warning of a protracted, increasingly deadly conflict. Russia’s plan to send hundreds of thousands of reinforcements to the front may not be enough to make new military gains, the experts warn, but could enable Russia to halt Ukraine’s advances and hold on to territory already occupied.
Putin’s claim of territory that Russia does not yet control presents numerous challenges for the Kremlin, and those were already apparent on Friday even before the president gave his speech.
“As for the territories of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, I need to clarify this,” Peskov said. “I cannot answer.”
Pressed on the portions of Donetsk that remain under Ukrainian control, Peskov replied: “It is to be liberated.”
“The Western world’s order is not free,” Putin said. “It is hypocritical and full of lies.”
“The collapse of Western hegemony that has begun is irreversible,” Putin said. “And I repeat again — nothing will be the same as before. Fate and history called us onto the battlefield for our people, for great historical Russia!”
“The West continues to look for ways to hit Russia, weaken and destroy us,” the Russian leader said. “This is something they have always wanted to do: pit peoples against each other, doom them for poverty and extinction. They just can’t bear the fact that there is such a great, big country with its territory, natural resources and people who will never live according to someone else’s orders.”
The elaborate signing ceremony took place in the marbled St. George Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace, adorned by twisted columns, ornate golden chandeliers and plaques listing hundreds of regiments that participated in Russia’s historical military conquests.
So far, however, the war in Ukraine, will hardly go down as anything approaching a heroic achievement.
In that sense, Putin’s attempted annexation of the four regions differs sharply from what happened in Crimea, where a staged referendum was carried out with tanks on the streets but no injuries to civilians or widespread destruction of cities.
The stumbles in the war have severely damaged Russia’s image as a major military power, and undercut its reputation as “the world’s second army.”
Politically and economically, Russia paid for its miscalculations with mounting international isolation and unprecedented Western sanctions. Moscow is also facing a strengthened and more united North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is moving to admit two new members, Sweden and Finland.
The decision of the previously unaligned countries to join NATO showed how the war in Ukraine had backfired, particularly in terms of Putin’s goal of reducing the alliance’s presence on Russia’s border and ending its eastward expansion.
As the war proved far more difficult than Russian strategists predicted, Putin had to scale back his goals from ephemeral “denazification and demilitarization” of all of Ukraine, presented to the Russian public as a country overrun by “neo-Nazis,” to a more limited “liberation” of Russian-speaking populations in the four eastern and southern regions of Ukraine.
For much of the war, the Russian population was largely apathetic. But the partial mobilization galvanized opposition.
Fighting-aged men spent days trying to cross the border with Georgia and Kazakhstan, often abandoning their jobs and families to run away from potential conscription.
And according to a Friday poll by Public Opinion Foundation, anxiety levels among Russians doubled in the week since mobilization, with 69 percent of those surveyed saying the feeling of angst prevails among their relatives and friends compared to 35 percent on Sept. 18.
Dampening Putin’s Friday celebration annexation were new military setbacks Russian forces suffered around the town of Lyman. The occupied city was “semi-encircled” by Ukrainian forces on Friday, according to the pro-Kremlin leader in the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic, Denis Pushilin.
“[Ukrainian forces] are going all out to overshadow this historical event somehow today,” Pushilin said in his Telegram blog. “At the moment, Lyman is in a semicircle … Very unpleasant news, but we must look soberly at the situation and draw conclusions from our mistakes.”
If Russia loses Lyman, a critical logistic route, the Ukrainian army could seize the moment to break through into Luhansk, another potentially embarrassment setback for Moscow. | 2022-09-30T13:45:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Putin, recommitting to war, illegally claims annexation of Ukrainian regions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/putin-ukraine-annexation-russia-ceremony/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/putin-ukraine-annexation-russia-ceremony/ |
Demonstrators gather near Thomas Sankara memorial with Burkina Faso and Russian flags in support of what they believe to be another military coup in Ouagadougou Friday Sept. 30, 2022. Residents say gunfire rang out early in the morning and the state broadcaster has gone off the air, fueling fears that another coup is underway. The developments Friday come just after coup leader-turned-president Lt. Col. Paul Henri Sandaogo Damiba returned from a trip to the U.N. General Assembly. (AP Photo) (Uncredited/AP)
OUAGADOUGOU, Burkina Faso — Gunfire rang out early Friday in Burkina Faso’s capital and the state broadcaster went off the air, sparking fears that another coup attempt may be underway, nine months after the democratically elected president was ousted from power. | 2022-09-30T13:46:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gunfire heard in Burkina Faso, sparking coup fears - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/gunfire-heard-in-burkina-faso-sparking-coup-fears/2022/09/30/7a370358-40be-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/gunfire-heard-in-burkina-faso-sparking-coup-fears/2022/09/30/7a370358-40be-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
NFL players ask why Tua Tagovailoa was playing after previous injury
Teammates gather around Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa after he suffered a head injury against the Cincinnati Bengals. (Emilee Chinn/AP)
The NFL community was quick to question the Miami Dolphins for letting quarterback Tua Tagovailoa take the field for Thursday night’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Four days earlier, Tagovailoa appeared to have suffered a head injury after taking a big hit against the Buffalo Bills, but he returned to that game a few series later. After the Bills game, Dolphins Coach Mike McDaniel said that Tagovailoa had injured his back injury, not his head. The NFL and the NFL Players Association are conducting a joint review to determine whether the league’s concussion protocols were followed properly in that case.
Tagovailoa started Thursday’s game against the Bengals but took another big hit late in the second quarter, hitting his head on the turf and showing clear signs of a concussion. He left the field on a cart and was taken to a Cincinnati hospital. After the game, the Dolphins said Tagovailoa would be released to travel back to south Florida with the team.
Former NFL quarterback Robert Griffin III retweeted a video of the hit Tagovailoa took against the Bills and said the Dolphins “will have to answer” for their decision to let him start Thursday.
Former NFL offensive lineman Rich Ohrnberger noted the head injuries he suffered during his career and said he was glad that the decision about whether he should have returned to the field quickly was taken out of his hands.
Griffin also said it’s the team’s job to protect the players from further injuries.
Ryan Shazier, a former NFL linebacker who suffered a crippling spinal injury while playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers during a 2017 game in Cincinnati, said Tagovailoa was in good hands at University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
Former NFL safety Ryan Clark said he suspected the injury Tagovailoa suffered Sunday involved more than his back.
New England Patriots linebacker Matthew Judon said Tagovailoa should have been on the sideline Thursday.
A number of NFL players, including Arizona Cardinals defensive end J.J. Watt, were more critical of Amazon’s decision to keep showing replays of the play, particularly its aftermath when Tagovailoa was writhing on the ground after taking the hit.
BRO STOP SHOWING THE REPLAY
The @MiamiDolphins just failed Tua. How could you let him on the field after last week? Especially on short week. Shame on everyone involved. And shame on @amazon for continually showing it.
— Justin Pugh (@JustinPugh) September 30, 2022 | 2022-09-30T14:36:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL players ask why Tua Tagovailoa was playing after previous injury - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/30/tua-tagovailoa-concussion-nfl-reaction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/30/tua-tagovailoa-concussion-nfl-reaction/ |
Trevor Noah to leave ‘The Daily Show’: ‘My time is up’
Trevor Noah attends an Emmys party earlier this month. (Caroline Brehman/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Comedian Trevor Noah announced at the conclusion of Thursday’s episode of “The Daily Show” that he would be leaving the late-night program after seven years at its helm.
“I found myself thinking throughout the time [and] everything we’ve gone through — the Trump presidency, the pandemic, just the journey of, you know, the more pandemic — and I realized that after the seven years, my time is up,” he said. “But in the most beautiful way, honestly.”
Noah, who described his time hosting the satirical news show as “one of my greatest challenges” and “one of my greatest joys,” attributed his decision to leave the gig behind to his desire to devote more attention to other aspects of his life such as live comedy shows and touring, which he currently balances alongside his “Daily Show” responsibilities. He didn’t reveal when his final episode will be but said his departure is “not instant.”
“I’m not disappearing. Don’t worry,” he continued. “If I owe you money, I’ll still pay you.”
In 2015, when Noah took the “Daily Show” reins from Jon Stewart, who hosted the show for more than 15 years, loyal viewers were skeptical. Noah was a little-known comedian from South Africa stepping into a rather high-profile seat. Comedy Central’s president noted then that, as a millennial, Noah could speak authentically to the network’s target demographic.
“I sort of felt like ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,’ ” Noah recalled Thursday. “I came in for a tour of what the previous show was, and the next thing I knew, I was handed the keys.”
Can Trevor Noah’s ‘Daily Show’ cut through the chaos?
On his first night as host, Noah assuaged some of the doubts cast upon him. While sure to note that “there’s no way to judge a brand new ‘Daily Show’ on the strength or weakness of a single episode,” former Washington Post television critic Hank Stuever wrote in a review that Noah’s “seemingly smooth debut” made him wonder why everyone had any worries at all.
“It’s too early for Noah to crush it, but it’s enough for now to just utter a sigh of relief,” Stuever stated. “ ‘The Daily Show’ is back, with its essential wit and irreverence intact.”
In 2017, Noah renewed his contract with Comedy Central for five additional years, lasting through 2022. While his “Daily Show” ratings weren’t quite on par with Stewart’s, the network continued to express faith in Noah’s ability to draw younger viewers to the program.
The comedian’s career has thrived outside of “The Daily Show” as well. In 2016, he released his memoir, “Born a Crime: Stories From a South African Childhood,” which became a bestseller and is set for a film adaptation. He also hosted the past two Grammy Awards ceremonies, the latter shortly before he headlined April’s White House correspondents’ dinner — making him the first comedian to do so since former “Daily Show” contributor Michelle Wolf stirred controversy with her set in 2018. (In an episode of the late-night program airing shortly after, Noah jokingly referred to Wolf’s performance as “disgraceful.”)
“When we first started,” Noah said Thursday, “so many people didn’t believe in us. It was a crazy bet to make. I mean, I still think it was a crazy choice. … And what a journey it’s been.” | 2022-09-30T15:15:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trevor Noah to leave ‘The Daily Show’: ‘My time is up’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/30/trevor-noah-daily-show-departure/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/09/30/trevor-noah-daily-show-departure/ |
NEW YORK, NY - OCTOBER 25: Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks about the new Facebook News feature at the Paley Center For Media on October 25, 2019 in New York City. Facebook News, which will appear in a new dedicated section on the Facebook app, will offer stories from a mix of publications, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, as well as other digital-only outlets.(Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images) (Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images North America)
You can’t control when a recession hits. But although tech platforms like Alphabet Inc. and Snap Inc. are slimming down to cope with the global economic rout, Meta Platforms Inc.’s own restructuring couldn’t come at a worse time for the firm.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff on Thursday to expect job cuts and a smaller company overall in 2023. He is currently grappling with the blow to advertising revenue wrought by Apple Inc.’s privacy restrictions, which could cost the company an estimated £14 billion ($15.4 billion) in ad sales this year. The company is also grappling to build a TikTok competitor, while pivoting to virtual reality in what could be the biggest strategic misfire in Facebook’s history.
It’s sensible to trim costs in the face of a recession, but Zuckerberg has put himself in a difficult position to rejig resources that are vying for very different objectives. It’s no surprise investors are growing tetchy about his iron grip on the company. Meta’s shares are down 60% so far this year. On Friday morning they were trading at $136; around this time last year, they were as high as $378.
Even if shares were to crash below $100, there’s probably little that investors can do to remove Zuckerberg from his position as chairman and CEO since he holds 51% of Meta’s voting power, thanks to its dual-class stock structure. Facebook’s board has been historically pliant, but even if they did start to grumble, he has the power to remove a director “with or without cause,” according to the company’s bylaws.
Zuckerberg’s cuts will be the first since Facebook’s founding in 2004, and will involve a hiring freeze and the restructuring of some teams to help cut expenses, according to comments he made during a weekly Q&A with staff as reported by Bloomberg News.
Recessions can be a mixed blessing in tech. Over the last few years, too many startups have been able to raise money for big ideas that lacked a viable business model, and lean times can force entrepreneurs to be more disciplined in their capital expenditure, building companies in a less exorbitant way.
“Thousands of companies need to go out of business between now and 2023,” Tom Stafford, a co-founder of late-stage tech investing firm DST Global at the Bloomberg Technology Summit this week.” He added that the market for investing in startups, which has slowed down markedly in the past six months, was “much healthier now than it was a year ago.”
But Facebook is hardly a startup, and for years it has offered some of the most competitive benefits in big tech. Stafford also said that as recently as last year, Facebook was approaching staff at his portfolio companies with offers at five times their salary, “which is hard to say no to.”
The company’s multiple big objectives could confuse Zuckerberg’s efforts at effective restructuring. It already appears to be struggling to ape TikTok with its short-form video feature on Instagram called Reels, according to a Wall Street Journal report earlier this month, which cited internal research from Meta. User engagement with Reels declined over the summer, while “most Reel users have no engagement whatsoever.”
Zuckerberg’s expensive shift to the metaverse is also inspiring less and less confidence. He posted a virtual selfie last month that was widely ridiculed for its crude graphics, and the company’s primary focus on headsets as the main gateway to the metaverse looks unwise. The most successful metaverse platforms already exist in 2D, with Roblox Corp. and Epic Games Inc.’s Fortnight, and have managed to attract millions of regular users with incentives around building and sharing experiences.
Meta has instead focused on the immersive sensation of its virtual reality products, which isn’t all that appealing. Its Horizon Worlds doesn’t have the same kinds of built-in incentives as Roblox and Fortnight, either.
Zuckerberg needs to work on fixing all of these issues, in addition to finding ways to offset the billions in lost revenue from Apple’s privacy limits on iPhones.
Facebook was once a trillion-dollar company with seemingly unstoppable growth in digital advertising, but that ad growth is slowing, and the company’s other attempts at generating revenue are floundering. Restructuring will help see Meta through, but an economic recession may ultimately accelerate the company’s decline. | 2022-09-30T15:15:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Facebook’s Age of Austerity Couldn’t Come at a Worse Time - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/facebooks-age-of-austerity-couldnt-come-at-a-worse-time/2022/09/30/b06c5058-40c9-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/facebooks-age-of-austerity-couldnt-come-at-a-worse-time/2022/09/30/b06c5058-40c9-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
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 2021, 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 February 2023.
(Corrects second answer to reflect that September 2021 was when the junta declared itself a union government.) | 2022-09-30T15:15:48Z | 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/2022/09/30/eca92a4a-40cf-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/myanmars-path-from-junta-rule-to-democracy-and-back/2022/09/30/eca92a4a-40cf-11ed-8c6e-9386bd7cd826_story.html |
Jamal Khashoggi and lessons on standing up to power
A man passes in front of a screen showing Jamal Khashoggi during a commemoration event in November 2018 in Istanbul. (Ozan Kose/AFP/Getty Images)
This week marks four years since Global Opinions contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi was assassinated at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. As his editor at the time, I worked hard to raise public awareness of Jamal’s murder and advocated for just punishment for those responsible. So did many others.
Four years later, I still struggle with the question: Did we fight so hard, only to obtain no formal justice for Jamal? Did we go about it in the right way?
On Wednesday, I caught up with French human rights activist Agnès Callamard, who in 2018 was the U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings and is now the secretary general of Amnesty International. She produced the report that found the Saudi government responsible for Jamal’s murder and pointedly called for an investigation into the role of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman — the country’s de facto ruler.
Just this week, MBS, as he is known, was named Saudi Arabia’s prime minister — a position that could give him “sovereign immunity” from a lawsuit brought against him in the United States by Jamal’s fiancee, Hatice Cengiz.
In our conversation, Agnes and I reflected on the past few years, and whether there is reason for hope. I got some surprising answers.
Karen Attiah: This time of year can be difficult — it reminds me of the horror of it all, just how hard so many of us pushed to get justice. And now we see MBS doing a rehab tour, his “fist bump” with [President] Biden — I don’t want to say our efforts didn’t matter, because of course they did, but it can feel like we didn’t get justice.
Agnès Callamard: Of course it matters. It always matters because you cannot let any murders go, or for them to be insufficiently investigated.
With Jamal’s killing, Turkey, me, your newspaper, Al Jazeera — the media did a lot of investigation that was super important. It points to the fact that where formal justice fails, all those can intervene. All of the media, all the individuals, the books — you’ve never seen that for one single journalist before. And, in fact, you haven’t seen it since.
That was a defining moment. We became very conscious of the fact that we do have power. We are not government, we are not police, but we have power to keep the issue on the agenda. We have power to reveal things. We have power to scare people off, you know?
Attiah: I want to make sure people understand: When you were the U.N. special rapporteur you were acting largely on your own accord.
Callamard: My choice to work on this case was not popular within the U.N. I did it because it’s important for the U.N. at least to have given the impression of being involved in what has turned out to be, in my view, a turning point for the protection of journalists.
Attiah: Jamal’s murder was also happening when there was a lot of skepticism about the “new direction” of Crown Prince MBS.
Callamard: It’s getting worse now, actually. I think the skepticism has unfortunately materialized. The last six months have been very tough for dissidents in Saudi Arabia. And that Biden visit [to Saudi Arabia in July] was bad, but how he did it was worse — the fist bump, the meetings. That’s what MBS wanted. He’s desperate for recognition, he wants to be someone the U.S. can’t avoid. That’s why he was made —
Attiah: — prime minister.
Callamard: The U.S. is going to produce something probably very problematic on head of state or sovereign immunity [in the civil case being brought by Jamal’s fiancee]. So, at that level, we’re stuck.
Attiah: I remember after the U.N. report came out, you came under a lot of intense scrutiny, abuse and attempts to discredit you and your work, especially from the Saudi side. How do you think about your safety? I believe there was even the time when one of the Saudi officials said he ...
Callamard: ... he had some people who could “take care of me.” I am not naive. But you know, I was thinking, am I such a threat? I did not think that I was frightening enough to ... to be hurt or killed. I do know they hold their grudges very long. So that is something that is always in the back of my mind. There’s a lot of crap right now on social media against me and against others, and you cannot control how people are going to react.
Attiah: I think about that a lot, too.
Callamard: Karen, you are very public. You’re very present in the African American community, you know, in the fight against racism and all of that. And in my experience, some of the vilest stuff I got was from so-called cultural warriors.
Attiah: I’m glad you brought this up. I’ve said it before; it was scary to do what I was doing for Jamal’s case. But there [was] a sense that I had the whole media world, the journalism community, behind me.
Honestly, it feels more scary to speak out against racism and white supremacy here at home. A lot of the same kind of groups were super vocal when it was Saudi Arabia. The summer of 2020 put a lot of that into perspective. I mean, even in terms of seeing journalists who were trying to cover the protests [after the murder of George Floyd] who were being brutalized by our own “state security” agents. I saw a lot more equivocation from my colleagues in the media when it came to that sort of thing.
Callamard. Interesting reflection.
Attiah: Is there anything that you’d want people to ponder, reflect on, in the wake of Jamal’s case?
Callamard: How crucial it is to build networks.
And it’s like Jamal is not with us but he is everywhere, in the discussions about Saudi oil and money, democracy around the world. Jamal is, still, unavoidable.
Global Radar: Women fighting back against police
Women have been the center of anti-government protests in Iran ever since 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in police custody on Sept. 16. Her family said she had been arrested, then tortured and killed by Iran’s “morality police,” reportedly for the offense of wearing her headscarf in an “improper” manner. As well as taking to the streets, women have been cutting their hair and burning their headscarves in protest of Iran’s compulsory hijab law and the state’s control of their bodies. The protests in Tehran and dozens of other Iranian cities have been the largest in the country since 2009, capturing the world’s attention.
I stand in solidarity with women and their right to bodily autonomy, and their outrage over being abused and killed by state forces. But I can’t help but think about our situation here in the United States. I have written before about how the abuse or death of women, especially Black women, in police custody in this country has not inspired a “true national reckoning” — not the same level of in-the-streets protests for justice as we see elsewhere, say in India or Argentina. Will Americans ever have a #MahsaAmini moment where women take to the streets against police brutality against women? Would citizens of other countries stand up for solidarity with us if we were to take to the streets massively against our own police? I’d hope so.
Nevertheless, I realize that women-led challenges to policing are, in fact, going on here, just in a different way: American women, especially Black American women, have been at the forefront of trying to change how we imagine policing and safety. Black women have been the intellectual foremothers of the arguments to defund police and challenge the prison-industrial complex.
Watching all the U.S. cheerleading of women in Iran against abusive police forces, let’s also make sure we are willing to be just as brave when it comes to police brutality and control of our bodies at home.
Protests continued in several cities across Iran against the death of Mahsa Amini in police custody, as a human rights group said at least 83 people had been killed in nearly two weeks of demonstrations https://t.co/DIDEcTNuG7 pic.twitter.com/YT38crcN6C
Home Front: The kids will be all right
Speaking of standing up to power, America’s students have been making their voices heard in the churn of the increasing onslaughts against LGBTQ students. In Grapevine in North Texas, not far from where I grew up, high school students walked out of classes last month in protest of new policies that put restrictions on bathroom use and banned teachers from talking about gender and sexual orientation until after fifth grade. In Northern Virginia this week, hundreds of students walked out in protest of Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s new rules targeting transgender students.
It’s a good thing that students are standing up for what they believe in. But it’s a tragedy that parents and politicians are using schools as political playgrounds — which they are free to do because students under the age of 18 have no say at the ballot box. As someone who has covered a few school board culture war skirmishes among adults, I think teenagers should have more of a voice in our society. Last year, U.S. Rep. Grace Meng (D-N.Y.) introduced a bill to lower the national voting age to 16. Young people have been leading voices on issues such as climate change, gun safety and, now, efforts to protect inclusion within our education system. Sixteen-year-olds can work, drive and pay taxes. I say it would be a boost to our democracy if they were also able to vote. | 2022-09-30T15:16:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Q&A with Agnes Callamard on the anniversary of Jamal Khashoggi's murder - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/agnes-callamard-jamal-khashoggi-anniversary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/agnes-callamard-jamal-khashoggi-anniversary/ |
I was hard on Justin Fairfax. Then I was canceled, too.
Then-Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) presides over the state Senate on Feb. 7, 2019, in Richmond. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Sophia A. Nelson, a former House Republican Congressional Committee counsel, is the author of “Be the One You Need: 21 Life Lessons I Learned Taking Care of Everyone but Me.”
Former Virginia lieutenant governor Justin Fairfax (D) was once a shining, rising star in Virginia politics. A young, well-educated Black man with a lovely wife and beautiful children, all by his late 30s. A former federal prosecutor, with a spotless personal and ethical record and a great future ahead. Until the bottom fell out in early 2019, when two accused him of sexual assault decades prior.
He became a target for the #MeToo movement. But evidence has emerged recently that Fairfax might have been the victim of a coordinated smear campaign. A July Post article reported that the FBI is looking into the allegations. Fairfax has been appearing on any platform that will have him to clear his name. Unfortunately, he has had very few takers.
Thankfully, I was among the journalists who reviewed the new information, and I was stunned by what I learned. As a Black woman who was a victim of sexual assault as a young girl, I had immediate empathy for the women who accused Fairfax. After all, we should believe women when they share their stories. Right? Of course, but looking back now at how hard I was on Fairfax, I think I was wrong. I think we all were.
Like millions of women, I bought into the sensationalism. The sordid tale of alleged violence and Machiavellian political intrigue. What sealed the deal for me, though, was the “CBS This Morning” interview with Gayle King. Now, I see how cruel what we did to Fairfax and his family was. He was presumed guilty. He was labeled a “rapist.” He received no due process. No trial. No hearings. No investigation. He could not clear his name. To this day, he’s still trying.
That is the point: Once we get whipped into a media frenzy, common sense goes out the window. Fairfax isn’t the only one who has been hurt here in Virginia by our modern cancel culture. Another example is Monique Miles, a smart, Black female lawyer and former Virginia deputy attorney general, who claims in a recent lawsuit that she was the victim of a concerted conspiracy to defame and push her out of the attorney general’s office over a Facebook post supporting the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington. Ironically other elected state GOP officials and staff attended the Jan. 6 rally. None was forced to resign. They were all White.
And then there is me: Three weeks into a historic scholar in residence at a Virginia public university with a poor record of enrolling Black students and hiring Black faculty and staff, I found myself embroiled in controversy, protests and petitions over a tweet about a question I asked during the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election in Virginia (which was partly decided on parental rights issues) about a Superman DC comic book character coming out as bisexual. It was, without a doubt, the worst experience of my over thirty year professional career.
We are three middle-aged African American professionals. We are a political mixture of moderate, liberal and conservative. We were all at the top of our professional careers, until we were not. For me, it was the “tweet” heard round the commonwealth, followed by an angry mob. For Fairfax, it was far worse: One day, he was likely going to be the next Virginia governor; then he was a political pariah.
Each of us had our stories go public in ways that were not what we deserved. Our reputations and future career prospects have been hard hit. Our once-unimpeachable characters and professionalism besmirched. People think because we still function, show up and keep living that somehow what was done to us is okay. It is not. However, as is our legacy, Black people under attack have perfected the art of resilience and perseverance. Yet, make no mistake, we three have suffered. We have been traumatized. Our families have been traumatized.
So what does it all mean: In Virginia, there are three Black women in positions of power: Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R), state Sen. L. Louise Lucas (D-Portsmouth) and Commonwealth Secretary Kay Coles James (R) — the latter two are in their 70s. We have two Black members of Congress, both older than 60. We have yet to see a Black attorney general or a Black U.S. Senator in Virginia. And all of Virginia’s universities — other than our five historically Black colleges and universities and George Mason University and Old Dominion University, which have Black presidents — are sorely lacking in racial diversity of faculty and leadership.
More than 20 percent of Virginia’s population is Black. Virginia is the birthplace of American slavery. Virginia is one of only two states to elect a Black governor post-Reconstruction. Thus, Virginia must lead the way in how it protects racial diversity, free speech, and in how it treats its best and brightest. Giving three promising Black leaders the instant “career death penalty” is not a good example to set.
Sure, politics and academia have always been rough. Yet, something is now deeply amiss. We now play a game of gotcha. We silence differing views. We ban books we do not like. We tell women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies. We tell people they must conform to the prevailing view no matter their own beliefs or moral code. That is simply unsustainable in a free democratic society.
Shaming people and canceling careers never advanced civility or fostered mutual respect. Once someone is labeled a racist, a rapist or a homophobe, it’s over — without due process. Cancel culture is more than some catchy political phrase. It’s happening to people every day, and its effects are damaging and lasting. Trust me. I know. | 2022-09-30T15:16:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | I was hard on Justin Fairfax. Then I was canceled, too. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/cancel-culture-justin-fairfax/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/cancel-culture-justin-fairfax/ |
Crime, punishment and redemption in a tough Baltimore neighborhood
By Richard B. Karel
The Rocky K. Brown Sr. mural in Baltimore's Bocek neighborhood. (Richard B. Karel)
Richard B. Karel is a freelance writer in Baltimore.
The prospect of redemption is a hope dashed time after time, so it is worth celebrating when someone lives a redeemed life after a life of crime — and a decade in a federal penitentiary. That was the life of Rocky K. Brown Sr., who died Aug. 8 in Baltimore at 68.
His stature in the community is clearly evidenced by two murals in East Baltimore’s Bocek neighborhood, which he helped transform after his stint in prison. A dramatic, two-story mural adorns the side of a rowhouse just off Monument Street, the major east-west thoroughfare bisecting the neighborhood. Brown’s likeness stares intently into the distance as a lion looms over his shoulder. The mural was created in 2018 by artists Elise Victoria and Justin Nethercut of the Baltimore-based Arts & Parks organization. The pair painted a similar image of Brown’s sister, Maxine Lynch, on a rowhouse at the other end of the block.
It was in his Bocek neighborhood that Brown caused, in his own words, “chaos and corruption.” Repeatedly arrested and facing a potential sentence of 30 years-to-life in a federal prison, Brown vowed that if he ever got out, he would do everything he could to give back to the community where he had caused so much harm. He was released after a decade for good behavior, and he made good on that promise.
I came to know Brown early last year when he moved into a rental house I own in the Ellwood Park neighborhood of East Baltimore. Brown and his longtime companion, Bernice Moreno, and her son needed stable housing when the dilapidated house they were renting a few blocks away in the Bocek neighborhood was put on the market. I did not initially realize that Brown had become a near-legendary force for good in his Bocek community.
At the time Brown moved into my rental home, he had suffered a stroke and was in declining health, but his powerful and caring personality remained vibrant. At his funeral in August, I said that whenever I encountered Brown (always in my role as a landlord), he projected love and gratitude. That is not an overstatement — and, as any landlord could tell you, those are sentiments rarely encountered in the landlord-tenant relationship.
Before he was arrested, Brown had commanded respect on the street, but he kept his family at arm’s length from his criminal activities. When he got back home after a decade in prison, he began doing everything within his power to help his community — earning for himself an entirely different kind of street cred.
Brown learned to lobby political, nongovernmental and business leaders to take an interest in his neighborhood. The community recreation center had been closed, and the field behind it was overgrown and enclosed by a locked fence. Brown cut the chains on the fence and brought various city officials there to make his point. He personally undertook cleaning up that and other areas around his community, sometimes using a borrowed lawn mower to cut the grass.
Not a day went by when he was not doing something to make life better for himself and his neighbors, Lynch, his sister, said. On many days, he was out patrolling the streets and alleys for trash by 5 a.m.
Brown’s life led me to reflect long and hard on the theme of redemption. Like many who are imprisoned, Brown became well-versed in the Bible, and it is fair to say that helped him through his ordeal and subsequent acts of grace for his community. At his funeral, there were many expressions of faith surrounding the notion of afterlife redemption in the Christian tradition. But Brown chose to redeem himself in this life, every day, in a poor, tough neighborhood.
When I was asked to speak at his funeral, I said I could not speak to life after death, but that Brown would live on through the many lives he had touched in a positive way after his release from prison.
Brown — who had once feared law enforcement — coordinated with local police officers, who in turn, took an active part in mentoring kids in the community. In December 2014, the Bocek/Madison East End Community Association was formed, and in early 2015, Brown became its first president.
As someone who once struck fear in his neighborhood, Brown brought an authority borne of experience when he decided to focus on at-risk youths as a path to a better future. He received many commendations in the years after his release from prison. And, at his funeral, dignitaries and government officials, including the Baltimore City district attorney, praised him as an example of someone who had truly turned his life around.
One anecdote heard at the funeral came from Bill Atkinson, a public relations executive. Atkinson recalled meeting Brown at a community cleanup event. Then-13th District Baltimore City Council member Shannon Sneed had helped secure a $130,000 beautification grant from Coca-Cola, a client of Atkinson’s, to improve the community. Atkinson took a personal interest in Brown’s efforts, and one day, coming straight from work and wearing a suit and dress shoes, he stopped by to see how things were going. Brown stuck a rake in his hand and told him to pitch in and help — dress clothes notwithstanding — which, of course, he did. As Atkinson recalled, nobody said no to Brown.
In his later years, Brown told many friends and acquaintances that he wanted to see the Bocek Recreation Center reopened before he died — and on April 22, 2021, that dream came true when he cut the ribbon at the recreation center’s official reopening.
Redemption may be in the eyes of the beholder, but it is clear that in his community at least, Rocky K. Brown Sr. was redeemed.
Opinion|Wes Moore’s plan for a service year is an old idea | 2022-09-30T15:17:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Rocky Brown kept his promise to make his Baltimore community better - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/rocky-brown-baltimore-bocek-redemption/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/rocky-brown-baltimore-bocek-redemption/ |
The pandemic and apps are fueling a surge of interest in Yiddish
Students perform a song at the YIVO Summer Program graduation ceremony in July. (Melanie Einzig/YIVO Institute for Jewish Research)
Oy, schlep, shpiel, schmuck, shtick and glitch.
Yiddish words have long made their way into English, but the language, spoken by Ashkenazi Jews across Europe for over a thousand years, was considered to be a dying language for decades after the Holocaust, in which two-thirds of European Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. Adding to the loss of speakers, like many immigrant groups in the United States, the language was not passed down outside Hasidic and other strictly Orthodox Jewish communities and their yeshivas. In the Soviet Union, Yiddish was repressed by “forced acculturation and assimilation,” according to YIVO, an organization focused on preserving East European Jewish culture founded in 1925 with support from Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud.
However, in the past two years, there has been a surge of new Yiddish learners. During the pandemic more than 300,000 people registered to learn Yiddish on Duolingo, a language-learning app. Data from the Department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University shows that figure is equal to about half the total number of Yiddish speakers in the world today. And 61 percent of users on Duolingo, who self-reported their age, said they were under 30. Additionally, YIVO reported a 500 percent increase in enrollments during that time period and now offers 10 times as many courses — mostly Yiddish courses — as it did before the pandemic.
“There is a deep and profound hunger for knowledge of this history, culture and language,” said Jonathan Brent, director and CEO of YIVO. “What we are seeing is not simply nostalgia for a lost world but a repossession of it, and with that, a reassertion of a stubborn, proud, deeply held Jewish identity.”
He said for American Jews, Yiddish is a part of their heritage they may not know much about even if they went to Hebrew school.
Ben Kaplan, YIVO’s director of education, said that many people were interested in learning Yiddish before the pandemic, too, but were limited, as was YIVO, by geographic constraints. “There was this audience that was just lying in wait … but it was hard to get people together,” Kaplan said, noting that most YIVO students before the pandemic were from New York, where YIVO is based, New Jersey and Connecticut.
For Duolingo, the uptick in Yiddish learners fit into a larger trend. In the first six weeks of the pandemic, Duolingo saw 30 million new registrations. Currently, the app has 49.5 million active users.
The app began offering the language in April 2021. It had been planning for a few years to offer Yiddish, which has several dialects composed mostly of Hebrew and German, along with some words from Polish, Russian, and other Slavic and Romance languages. “Something that’s really important to us is that we are offering courses that represent all humanity: geographically diverse, linguistically diverse. … Yiddish also offered us the chance to work with dedicated and committed speakers,” said Cindy Blanco, managing editor of learning content and a senior learning scientist at Duolingo. Blanco and her team deferred to their Yiddish-speaker contributors when it came to picking which dialect to use. Ultimately, they decided on a Hungarian Hasidic pronunciation dialect along with grammar and vocabulary from YIVO’s version of Yiddish, noting that it would be the most intelligible across most Yiddish dialects.
“You could easily make five to 10 Yiddish courses,” said Blanco, who credited mass interest in Spanish and French with allowing Duolingo to offer languages with a niche audience, such as Yiddish, Navajo and Zulu.
For many new learners of Yiddish, the language offers a kind of connecting thread to loved ones, along with a past world and its lost culture. Lauren Modery, 39, a writer who lives in Colorado, is a new Yiddish learner who said she found it hard to find a way to learn Yiddish before the pandemic. In one attempt, she said she never heard back from a Yiddish meetup at a local community center. But in January, she saw that Duolingo was offering Yiddish and signed up. “My interest level is really high, and I’ve stayed engaged in a way that I don’t always stay engaged with things,” Modery said. Modery, who is Jewish, grew up in a nonpracticing Jewish family but wanted to reconnect to her roots. “When my great grandparents came over [to the United States] they did what a lot of Jews did and assimilated into America. They dropped Yiddish, and the descendants weren’t given much of a chance to be Jewish,” Modery said. “I just had a really strong interest for the past two decades of learning where my family came from … I wasn’t handed down a lot of things or traditions or language, and this is my way of filling in those holes. This has been very meaningful to me.”
For Jeremy Price, 49, a professor of education at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, learning Yiddish on the app has reconnected him with his grandparents, who he used to visit every weekend in Brooklyn. “I grew up hearing it all the time. They spoke Yiddish when they didn’t want anyone to understand what they were saying to each other,” he said. Price said he has taken to dropping Yiddish words in his everyday speech. A favorite in discussions with colleagues is “tachles.” “I could say, ‘where the rubber meets the road,’ but it’s not ‘tachles,’ ” he said.
Hayley Rae, 22, who recently earned a master’s degree in text and performance, said she began learning Yiddish to better explore and engage with Yiddish language plays, none of which were offered during her studies. She has also started translating pages from Yiddish scripts per day. “Yiddish to me, as a diasporic language, carries a lot of power and strength. It’s really its own distinct language. It has its own rhythm and pace and way of existing,” she said. “At the moment for me it’s more for cultural study, but the future is a long and wide thing.”
The wave of interest of Yiddish has also been reflected in new Yiddish-based businesses. Bubuleh, a clothing label, features Yiddish words and phrases on its trendy clothing items. Its founder, Jordan Star, said he decided on the brand’s theme as a tribute to his grandparents. “Yiddish is the medium by which I’ve experienced unconditional love and support that a lot of us don’t really have when we get older,” Star said. Star said he chose Yiddish over Hebrew since he sees it as less obviously associated with Judaism — a relevant consideration, he said, during a time of record-high antisemitic incidents.
Star, who is gay, said these days he feels more accepted in society as a gay man than he does as a Jew. “A lot of people don’t feel safe wearing visibly Jewish clothing. … A lot of Jews grew up in this country learning to whitewash their Jewish identity,” he said. “We’re in this moment of a Yiddish resurgence and connecting with our roots. For a lot of people, it’s a connection to important people in their lives who they don’t have anymore.”
Renewed interest in the language extends to the performing arts. In November, the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene is putting on a revival of a Yiddish-language production of “Fiddler on the Roof” that it originally performed in 2018. The Yiddish Arts and Academics Association of North America last year opened Yiddishland California in La Jolla, Calif., a space for concerts and performances, among other things. Events at longtime institutions such as the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Mass., and the number of klezmer music festivals, continue to grow as well, both in the United States and abroad.
Kaplan also noted new TV shows on Netflix that feature significant amounts of Yiddish, including “Unorthodox” and “Shtisel,” which both feature Haredi, or strictly Orthodox, characters. A Swedish unscripted miniseries from last year, “Woodski’s World,” is also in Yiddish.
Just as the language apps are making Yiddish more accessible to more people, technology is doing the same for research into Yiddish culture and history. YIVO recently completed a massive online archive, the Edward Blank YIVO Vilna Online Collections Project, featuring 4.1 million pages of documents and books from Yiddish culture that were saved from the Nazis and Soviets. YIVO data shows more than 20,000 users accessed the site within the first six months. Among them were academics studying, variously, Eastern and Central European history, Jewish history, Yiddish language and culture.
This is not the first major revival of Yiddish since the Holocaust, according to Brent, who said the fall of the Soviet Union ushered in a new era of scholarship and growth, including by non-Jewish scholars in Eastern Europe. Most new Yiddish speakers are Jewish or of Jewish decent. But people who aren’t Jewish, especially in former Soviet countries, now also seek to learn the language to better understand their own history, according Brent.
“Young people — Jewish and non-Jewish — around the globe are discovering through the Yiddish language unknown ways of expressing their ambitions and interests and taking a stand against the brutality and cruelty that sought to annihilate it,” Brent said, referring to the Holocaust.
YIVO’s Kaplan said he does not see interest in Yiddish abating any time soon. Brent was more reticent when asked about the future, given past prophesies about the language. “People predicted 10 years ago Yiddish would be a dying language,” he said, “and now obviously it’s not.” | 2022-09-30T15:17:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The pandemic and apps are fueling a surge of interest in Yiddish - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/09/30/yiddish-pandemic-dua-lingo/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/09/30/yiddish-pandemic-dua-lingo/ |
Week 5 college football preview: N.C. State faces biggest game ever
Plus, the wreck at Georgia Tech, five teams with the most at stake and Heisman Watch
Cyrus Fagan (4) and North Carolina State will take on No. 5 Clemson on Saturday. (Lance King/Getty Images)
Nothing in sports — not the New York Yankees, not the Dallas Cowboys, not anything — is more inescapable as we approach the middle half of the 21st century than the constant chatter of what is or was the greatest or best or most important player or team or event of all time.
These exercises are largely harmless and uninteresting, except for those who take the yammerings of people paid to talk on various broadcast outlets far more seriously than they should.
These are also discussions that claim to be “this was the greatest ever” but in effect are “this was the greatest ever … since I started paying attention.”
So with that well-honed cynicism firmly in place, it seemed odd this week to hear about how North Carolina State’s visit to Clemson on Saturday was the most significant game in the Wolfpack’s football history. N.C. State (4-0) hasn’t won an ACC title since 1979 and has enjoyed puzzlingly few notable peaks, but surely the program had a bellwether game in its past with a greater spotlight than this.
The invaluable College Poll Archive notes this week is only the 12th time the Wolfpack has landed in the top 10 of the Associated Press rankings. It happened twice in 1957 (when N.C. State split consecutive games with unranked foes), six times in 1967 (at the tail end of an 8-0 start before losses to unranked Penn State and Clemson) and twice in 1974 (with a loss to unranked rival North Carolina spoiling a 6-0 start).
This leaves one top-10 cameo in 48 years before this week. It was the reward for a 9-0 start in 2002 during the Philip Rivers era, and the Wolfpack promptly lost three in a row (all to unranked teams) to tumble out of the rankings entirely.
And so it is that No. 10 N.C. State, armed with an imposing defense and a Devin Leary-led offense that still has some questions to answer, visits No. 5 Clemson (4-0, 2-0 ACC) in what might just be the most high-profile game in program history. Every now and then, the hyperbole isn’t quite as hyperbolic as it seems.
The wreck at Tech
Georgia Tech made it three Power Five coaching changes in as many weeks, following the lead of Nebraska and Arizona State in creating a job opening before October.
The Yellow Jackets wanted something different after 11 seasons of option football under Paul Johnson. Geoff Collins delivered it, going 10-28 in three-plus seasons and offering little reason to think things would get better. In three games against FBS opponents this season, Georgia Tech (1-3) was outscored 110-20. That’s after losing by a combined 100-0 to Notre Dame and Georgia to close out 2021.
While a switch from the option to a more conventional 21st century scheme was bound to take time, the Yellow Jackets should have shown progress by now. To describe things in Atlanta as “not good” is an understatement.
There wasn’t incentive to wait any longer like there should have been at Nebraska; Collins’s buyout decreased by January, but not October (as was the case for former Cornhuskers coach Scott Frost). And unlike Arizona State’s hire of Herm Edwards, Georgia Tech didn’t entirely try to reinvent the wheel in how it ran its program, though it did attempt to reinvent its brand.
It was just a failed hire, and the guy who made it (athletic director Todd Stansbury) also lost his job this week.
This all raises the question: What is the Yellow Jackets’ brand, at least when it comes to football?
Frankly, it’s one of steady competence, or at least it was before Collins’s arrival. From 1997 to 2018, Georgia Tech went to 20 bowl games in 22 seasons. It finished with at least 10 victories in 1998, 2009 and 2014, which matches the number of times it finished below .500 (2010, 2015 and 2017) in that span.
The Yellow Jackets had three consecutive coaching tenures — under George O’Leary, Chan Gailey and Johnson — that saw them usually finish 4-4 or 5-3 in the ACC. Sometimes, they were better. Only once in those 22 years were they worse. It’s the sort of reliability fans and administrators tend to take for granted until they spend four years as a doormat.
Georgia Tech has some assets (geography) and some challenges (the academic options of a school largely known for its offerings in engineering, one of the few areas of study that might be more time-consuming than football). It probably isn’t going to annually contend for league titles. But it sure shouldn’t be 10-28 since the start of 2019, either.
Weathering change
Hurricane Ian’s arrival in Florida this week was the source of plenty of actual damage, but it didn’t deliver a severe wallop to major college football’s relatively rigid schedule (at least not as of Thursday night, anyway).
South Carolina’s game against South Carolina State was moved up to Thursday, with the Gamecocks authoring a 50-10 rout. East Carolina’s trip to South Florida was shifted from Tampa to Boca Raton. And a pair of games — Eastern Washington-Florida and SMU-Central Florida — were pushed back a day to Sunday.
Hurricane Ian: Bucs-Chiefs will be played, but NCAA football games affected
Nonetheless, it was a reminder the southeastern portion of the country is subject to hurricanes in September and October, and with an expanded playoff with first-round games probably ticketed for mid-December on the horizon, it might be time to look at building in a greater cushion for scheduling flexibility.
There are three ways to realistically do that. One is to eliminate conference championship games, and another is to reduce the number of regular season games each team plays. Considering the amount of money at stake — from television rights fees to ticket sales, among other things — both are probably non-starters.
Which leaves the option of beginning the season earlier, which is already occurring thanks to the modest offerings of Week 0 every August. If roughly 10 of those games can be played every season, why not 70 or so?
An obvious downside is demanding players who aren’t directly paid to cut their summers short by a week (though many are already on campus, anyway). However, the addition of an extra open date in the middle of the season, especially if there is a way to guarantee one of them comes either in late October or early November, would probably be a plus for players.
Considering an expanded playoff makes it possible (if not especially likely) that a team could play 17 games in a season (12 regular season, one conference championship and four playoff contests), finding ways to spread things out more would presumably be a plus. The fact it could create extra scheduling flexibility to deal with severe weather would be a bonus.
1. N.C. State. Win in Death Valley, become the biggest target in the ACC the rest of this year. Control of the Atlantic Division is on the line as the Wolfpack looks for its first victory at Clemson in 20 years.
2a. Kentucky and 2b. Mississippi. This might be the weekend’s most interesting game. No. 7 Kentucky (4-0) has won 16 of 19 since late in the 2020 season and would be well-positioned to get to 7-0 heading into an Oct. 29 date at Tennessee if it can win in Oxford. The No. 14 Rebels (4-0) have won 18 of their last 22 and might just be Alabama’s greatest threat in the SEC West.
3. Oklahoma State. The No. 9 Cowboys (3-0) come off an open date to open Big 12 play with a game at Baylor. Oklahoma State is one of three undefeated Big 12 programs (along with 4-0 Kansas and 3-0 TCU), but the Cowboys are the ones playing on the road this week in a rematch of last year’s conference title game (a 21-16 Baylor victory last December).
4. Florida State. So just how for real are the No. 23 Seminoles (4-0, 2-0 ACC)? It’s time to find out. They have the Labor Day weekend defeat of LSU, and they handled Louisville and Boston College the last two weeks. Now comes the heart of the Atlantic Division: A visit from No. 22 Wake Forest, a trip to N.C. State and a home game against Clemson. Beat the Demon Deacons this week, and there’s extra validation for QB Jordan Travis and Co.
5. Arkansas. A week after a disappointing, top-of-the-goal-post-aided loss to Texas A&M, the No. 20 Razorbacks (3-1, 1-1 SEC) get a crack at No. 2 Alabama in their only October home game. The Crimson Tide has won 15 in a row in the series, and while no one would be stunned if their streak extended to 16, it’s still a huge opportunity for Sam Pittman’s bunch.
1. QB C.J. Stroud, Ohio State (1,222 yards, 16 TDs, 1 INT passing). Torched Wisconsin for 281 yards and five touchdowns in the Buckeyes’ Big Ten opener, though he did throw his first pick of the season. Still, it’s been a fine opening third of the regular season for Stroud. (Last week: 1)
2. QB Bryce Young, Alabama (1,029 yards, 13 TDs, 2 INTs passing; 150 yards, 2 TDs rushing). Ho-hum. Just a 385-yard, four-touchdown day against Vanderbilt in the Crimson Tide’s SEC opener. The defending Heisman winner has done nothing to take himself out of contention through four games. (LW: 2)
3. QB Hendon Hooker, Tennessee (1,193 yards, 8 TDs passing; 175 yards, 3 TDs rushing). The touchdown total isn’t gaudy, but it is consistent — two scoring strikes in each of the Volunteers’ first four games, including last week when he threw for a season-high 349 yards against Florida. (LW: Not ranked)
4. QB Michael Penix Jr., Washington (1,388 yards, 12 TDs, 1 INT passing). The Indiana transfer just had his least efficient day of the season. The Huskies will be perfectly content if Penix’s off days feature 22 of 37 passing for 309 yards and two scores, which is what he managed against Stanford. (LW: 5)
5. QB Caleb Williams, Southern California (1,054 yards, 9 TDs passing; 100 yards, 2 TDs rushing). The sophomore was largely contained at Oregon State, completing 16 of 36 for 180 yards and a touchdown. But he played well in the Trojans’ go-ahead drive late, converting a fourth down on the ground and then later finding Jordan Addison for the game-winning touchdown. (LW: 3)
6. LB Will Anderson, Alabama (20 tackles, 7.5 TFL, 4.5 sacks, 1 INT). Had a hand in three third-down sacks last week against Vanderbilt, and was also responsible for a fourth-down stuff early in the second quarter. It’s only a matter of time before he generates more Heisman chatter. (LW: 6) | 2022-09-30T15:17:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Week 5 college football preview, Heisman watch - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/30/college-football-preview-heisman-watch/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/09/30/college-football-preview-heisman-watch/ |
The new 50 pence coin featuring King Charles III. (Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg)
LONDON — The first images of King Charles III on British currency were released by the Royal Mint on Friday and the new coins that will soon be jingling around in people’s pockets look a little different.
Of course, there is a new monarch. But Charles’ effigy is different from his mother’s in other ways. In his portrait, Charles is not wearing a crown. He also faces to the left, unlike his mother, who faced to the right. The tradition of each monarch facing in the alternate direction to their predecessor dates back to the reign of Charles II.
The first 50-pence coins featuring the king will start appearing in general circulation before Christmas. His portrait will also feature on a new 5-pound commemorative coin, which, on the reverse side, will feature two new portraits of Charles’ mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II. That memorial coin range will be released next week.
Switching Britain’s coinage over will take some time. There are an estimated 27 billion coins currently circulating in the United Kingdom that feature the image of Elizabeth. The Royal Mint, the official coin maker and the oldest company in Britain, said that coins featuring the king and the late queen will “both circulate in change for years to come.”
The Royal Mint has made coins featuring monarchs for more than 1,100 years. The first was Alfred the Great.
The Charles coin was designed by the British sculptor Martin Jennings, who worked off photographs to devise his design. | 2022-09-30T15:18:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | King Charles III without a crown in first coins unveiled by Royal Mint - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/king-charles-coin-royal-mint/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/king-charles-coin-royal-mint/ |
Russia, drawn deeper into Ukraine, loses grip on conflict on its periphery
Armenian army volunteer Armen Tadevosyan, 56, walks around the border town of Jermuk on Sept. 15. (Karen Minasyan/AFP/Getty Images)
As Russia moves deeper into the Ukraine quagmire, the Kremlin is losing its military and diplomatic ability to mediate the long-running conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan — and the Biden administration is moving to fill that void.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan this week hosted what he called “direct and constructive talks” with Armen Grigoryan and Hikmet Hajiyev, his counterparts from Armenia and Azerbaijan, respectively. The meeting followed on-the-ground mediation efforts by Philip Reeker, the State Department’s senior adviser for the Caucasus region.
The White House meeting produced a “road map” for further peace negotiations between the two countries, according to Lilit Makunts, Armenia’s ambassador to Washington. The next step, she told me, will be a meeting in early October in Geneva between the two countries’ foreign ministers, joined by Reeker and a European Union diplomat. The talks were “evidence of strong engagement with the U.S.,” Makunts said.
Armenia and Azerbaijan have fought a series of bitter battles over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Azerbaijan lost the territory in a 1994 war, but it regained control of broad swaths after heavy fighting in 2020. Russia negotiated a cease-fire that November and subsequent peace talks. But Moscow has failed to contain the conflict since then. Azerbaijan invaded Armenia this month, opening another bloody round.
Russia’s failure to broker peace in the Caucasus might be the clearest sign yet of how the Ukraine war has enfeebled Moscow’s power to enforce solutions along its borders. The Russian military, badly stretched, hasn’t been able to play the peacekeeping role it promised between Armenia and Azerbaijan. And its diplomatic efforts are now mistrusted by both sides.
Moscow is having similar problems in other spots around its periphery. Sweden and Finland have abandoned neutrality and moved to join NATO. Kazakhstan’s president has denounced the Ukraine war as a “hopeless situation” and opened his border to Russians fleeing President Vladimir Putin’s military mobilization. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan welcomed visits by Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, this summer despite Russian objections. The post-Soviet “empire” is visibly fraying at the seams.
Russia’s disarray appears to be pushing Armenia toward greater cooperation with the United States. The Armenians, surrounded by hostile neighbors, have long looked to Moscow for protection, despite their country’s democratic, pro-Western political orientation. When Azerbaijan attacked this month, Armenia requested urgent help from the Collective Security Treaty Organization, Moscow’s attempt to create a NATO-like regional alliance. But the CSTO did nothing.
Grigoryan, the secretary of the Armenian security council, explained in an interview the purpose of his visit to Washington this week: “I’m here to discuss how we can strengthen U.S.-Armenian relations.” Areas of potential cooperation included security, energy, diplomacy and economic relations, he said. The foundation of the relationship would be “democracy strengthening democracy.”
Whether the expanding U.S.-Armenian relationship will extend to military cooperation remains unclear. Armenia’s defense minister visited the Pentagon in September. Armenia needs better training and equipment for its military, which was badly outmatched in the last war with Azerbaijan. But there’s no visible sign of U.S. military assistance.
A catalyst for improved U.S.-Armenian relations was the visit to Yerevan on Sept. 17 by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which came soon after Azerbaijan’s attack. Grigoryan said Pelosi’s trip checked further escalation. “That visit gives hope that Armenia is not alone in its struggle,” he said.
David Ignatius: An unlikely peace process takes shape in Armenia. Could it help Ukraine?
On the visceral question of Armenia’s relationship with Turkey, there are also small glimmers of change. Ankara continues to deny the 1915 Ottoman genocide, the darkest event in Armenian history. But Grigoryan said discussion of “normalization” with Ankara has begun, and the leaders of the two countries have agreed in principle to open their borders to transit, initially by third-country nationals.
“We expect it to happen as soon as possible,” Grigoryan said of this border opening. But as always in such diplomatic gambits, the devil is in the details. | 2022-09-30T16:12:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Russia, drawn deeper into Ukraine, loses grip on conflict on its periphery - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/armenia-azerbaijan-conflict-putin-control/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/armenia-azerbaijan-conflict-putin-control/ |
Readers critique The Post: Outlook is an incredible loss for readers
I am incredibly disappointed to learn that the Outlook section will no longer run in print on Sundays. I have looked forward to reading Outlook every week for as long as I can remember. Reading articles online does not provide the same experience and engagement as reading the print edition. This is not an issue of a curmudgeon railing against digital transformation. I am 20 years old, born to an online generation, and yet I deeply appreciate print journalism.
Outlook provided something not found in any other section: a weekly anthology dedicated solely to analysis and essays that provided a perspective not often heard. Dispersing these pieces into the Opinion subdivision of the A section and online will lose this unique focus. As I have formed my worldview, I have found that I’ve looked to the Outlook section to provide perspectives that challenged my opinions. I might not have clicked on an article with a headline with which I disagree, but when I came face to face with it on paper, I was forced to reckon with it. I hope The Post will reconsider the decision to abandon the print version of Outlook.
Anjali Sardana, Vienna
I was shocked and saddened to learn that The Post will no longer publish the Outlook section. Besides the quality enterprise journalism that The Post still produces, the Outlook section, in my mind, was the most valuable section of the paper. It was the one section that sought to lift readers out of the morass of daily news and present them with a variety of perspectives, a bigger picture, a greater context with which to make sense of the world.
We need these views and perspectives more than ever given how complex our lives and the world we live in have become.
Steven Watkins, Fairfax Station
The thrill is gone. All week I’d wait for, anticipate and rush to open it. But someone decided to discard it, to lop it off. Decided The Post didn’t need it. Decided we readers didn’t need it, either.
I refer to The Post’s decision to eliminate the Sunday Outlook section. So now I find there is less to distinguish The Post from lesser newspapers. And I marvel at the explanation The Post gave: “The Post now plays in a different league.” Maybe. But there is a big difference between the major and minor leagues. Which league will The Post end up playing in?
Thomas Bickerton, Vienna
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The New York Times, faced with the same demographic challenges as The Post, manages to reconceive its Sunday Opinion page and maintain a wonderful book review section. The Post, on the other hand, takes one of its most laudable accomplishments and turns it into a poor cousin of the New York Times Book Review section.
We have no full-time editorial cartoonist (long promised), no replacement of writers for Reliable Sources (again promised) and now no Outlook section. Is this progress?
Ross Simons, Alexandria
My favorite part of The Post is the Outlook section, and I’m sorry to hear it was discontinued. In their Sept. 18 Outlook essay, “Last words,” Robert G. Kaiser and Steve Luxenberg wrote that “the ‘brains section’ fulfilled its mission, a mission designed for a print audience.” What the heck does that mean? When I read the online version of The Post, there are several categories of articles presented: investigations, opinions, sports, etc. Why not keep Outlook as one of those categories?
I like the print format of a newspaper because it’s the format I grew up with, and I’m familiar with the layout and feel of it. I also like the online version because I can read it when I’m away from home, I can search it, and I can send article links to people who will be interested. I don’t think Outlook is any more suited to the print edition than the online edition.
While Kaiser and Luxenberg called Outlook “the brains section,” a better description would be “the interesting section.” Its combination of essays and nonfiction book reviews was a unique collection of views, and it was always fun.
Don Harrington, Gainesville
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In learning that the Sept. 18 Outlook was its final edition, I was disappointed, as I’m sure many others were. Outlook had existed for 68 years. The section provided information and insight into so many topics and was, for me, The Post’s feature I most looked forward to on Sundays.
The editor’s note indicated that nothing would be lost by incorporating the essays into the opinion portion of the A Section, and a separate book review section would be published. After so many successful years with Outlook as currently formatted, I don’t see any reason to change, and I think The Post should reconsider its decision.
Howard Walderman, Columbia
I was dismayed to learn that The Post dropped its Outlook section. It was the only thing in The Post corresponding to the “feuilleton” section of major European newspapers (the part that gives the reader an in-depth analysis of the headlines and thoughtful commentary on the state of the world in general). On Sundays, I used to hungrily turn to the penetrating essays in the Outlook section even before reading the headlines.
Winston Davis, Gaithersburg
I await a Five Myths column on the demise of Outlook.
Bill Coffin, Silver Spring
Providing inspiration to visit the zoo
Thanks so much to the team of writers, the photographer and zoo staff for the fantastic article on new residents at the National Zoo, “19 new faces at the National Zoo” [Weekend, Sept. 23]. The photographs were stunning, and the descriptions of the critters were so creative and alive, conveying an appreciation for the unique qualities of all the animals. What a tribute to the important conservation work being done by the zoo in showcasing the planet’s diversity of animals, and giving us all a reason to visit the zoo in person. I might even make the trek from Richmond to watch the leaping frogs, bickering binturongs, sedentary rock hyraxes and singing siamangs.
Thanks for making my day.
Molly Sprouse, Henrico, Va.
Snarkiness isn’t very becoming
Molly Roberts’s opinion of those of us who didn’t listen to the “Serial” podcast was outrageous [“The queasy part of Adnan Syed’s release” op-ed, Sept. 21].
Everyone does not know “Serial,” contrary to her snarkiness. I have not been living under a rock. I subscribe to the print version of The Post and the digital version of the New York Times and read other news online as well as listening to broadcast news. I have no time or inclination to listen to podcasts. Roberts could have made her point about the meaning of Adnan Syed’s release without her demeaning comments.
Annette Lando, Potomac
Not a good look in deriding appearances
How incongruous to read Monica Hesse’s Sept. 16 Style column, “This royal romance was real, if not divine,” labeling a young Camilla Parker Bowles, now queen consort, “dowdy” three times. Many would consider this woman lovely then and now, but that is beside the point.
In this 21st century, there has been a shift toward celebrating diverse looks, and a notion that previous stereotypes of female beauty might be outdated and unattainable. Correspondingly, media reporting derisively on a woman’s appearance is on the wane, but apparently not enough because a columnist who explores gender’s impact on society defines this multifaceted woman as a frump rather than conveying the sum of all her parts.
Patty Sheetz, Alexandria
You won’t find milkweed in the forest
I was happy to see the focus on monarch butterflies in the Sept. 18 “Mark Trail” comic strip. As a citizen scientist involved in a study of monarch migration, I am concerned about their new designation as an endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Publicity of their significance as a species and their current condition is useful because there are things that can be done by the general public that will help.
Earlier in the strip, the information about milkweed as a necessary food source was correct. Milkweed is the only food source for monarch caterpillars, and milkweed is threatened by the loss of agricultural land and the widespread use of herbicides such as Roundup.
Unfortunately, the information in the last panel of the comic was misleading. It stated, “Conservation efforts to fight deforestation have helped maintain the milkweed.” Milkweeds are not forest plants. They grow in fields and meadows.
Actions that are helpful are planting native milkweeds in gardens and discouraging the use of herbicides as well as pesticides that affect a wide range of insect species. Let’s get the science right.
Nan Shapiro, Silver Spring
‘Pillow talk’ that leaves you laughing
Dana Milbank’s crafty lexicology in his Sept. 18 op-ed, “Putting the ‘big lie’ to bed — in luxurious comfort,” caused me to laugh beyond control until the tears came.
Giving full credit to MyPillow founder Mike Lindell’s Trumpian obsessions while holding true to a vocabulary of heady “pillow talk,” Milbank produced a worthy description of this cross-bearing pundit with no faith at all in the voting machines of our time.
Milbank deserves the highest of awards for his ability to capture the depths of political devotion at its worst.
Frederick Schwenker, Fairfield, Pa.
The false narrative that educators are untrustworthy
Could it be that journalists chasing eyeballs are doing public school teachers and public education the greatest harm by mischaracterizing polling data and giving excessive print space to anecdotes and reports grounded in motivated reasoning?
As a public school teacher, I was angered by the misleading statement that “Americans are losing faith in their schoolteachers” in the Sept. 8 front-page article “Awash in scrutiny, teachers losing public’s trust.” Though the article correctly cited Gallup polling data about the decline in the public’s trust of grade-school teachers and even shared the figures showing decline from 75 percent in 2020 to 64 percent in 2021, it left out critical context and reported the narratives promoted by Republican governors, conservative think tanks and the audience they seek to scare.
The real story is that Gallup’s poll shows teachers are the third-most-trusted group. Similar polling by Ipsos finds similarly high public trust in teachers. The Pew Research Center, too, finds high, albeit declining, trust in K-12 principals. Conflict entrepreneurs and politicians, who consistently are least trusted by the American public (Gallup reports an average for politicians of 10.5 percent trust, and Ipsos reports 9 percent trust), are narrating a story of distrust and securing it with restrictive legislation.
These polls show the tragic decline of trust across American society. Misinformation by the media, whose trust numbers are truly dire — Gallup reports 16 percent, and Ipsos reports 26 percent — deepens that distrust. Why not report what teachers really do each day to help students become their best selves?
Monte Bourjaily, Alexandria
A devoted legal giant, Silbert was so much more
The legal profession recently lost Earl J. Silbert, one of its true giants and a lawyer widely admired by his peers for his exceptional kindness and integrity. The Post noted his death in the Sept. 15 obituary “Prosecutor pursued Watergate burglars, 2 co-conspirators,” but we believe it missed his essence.
Silbert was best known as the first Watergate prosecutor. We who worked with him during the Watergate investigation observed how his knowledgeable, meticulous and careful stewardship of that momentous case from its inception through its initial year, and his exhaustive case status report to his successor, Archibald Cox, established the foundation that enabled those who came after to bring the case to a historic and successful conclusion.
But Silbert was much more than a great lawyer. He was a public servant and private person focused on giving back to his profession and his community and making them both better. More than 50 years ago, Silbert was a seminal figure in drafting the legislation that created one of the most respected and innovative court systems in the United States: the District of Columbia Courts. He was dean of the white-collar defense bar and was elected president of the most distinguished group of trial lawyers in the United States, the American College of Trial Lawyers. He was a leader, board member and fundraiser for the Fishing School in Washington, devoted to tutoring young inner-city students after school. He was president of the D.C. Council for Court Excellence and effectively led its efforts to improve the court system. And until his 75th birthday, Silbert was one of the oldest ice hockey players in Washington, noted for his skills and strategy, even after, as one teammate whispered to a reporter, “his reflexes are gone.”
Shortly before he died, Silbert assured family members who were with him that he was feeling at peace about his deteriorating health because he was so lucky to have lived a life blessed with family and friends. Then he added with a twinkle, “And I got lucky with my work, too.”
But we always felt we were the lucky ones because of our good fortune to know, work with and learn from Silbert. He will be so greatly missed.
Paul L. Friedman, Washington
Henry F. Greene, Washington
What determines which lockdowns are newsworthy?
The Sept. 16 Metro section had two references to the lockdown at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School because of a reported gun in the school. The article, “Lockdown scary, no matter outcome,” and Petula Dvorak’s column, “The terror of a possible school shooting,” added to the conversation about school safety. As a parent of twin eighth-graders in a Montgomery County public school, I understand the fear. As a career educator, I weep when reading articles going back to Columbine High School. The question of more needing to be done about guns in the United States is not debatable.
What concerns me is a clear bias in The Post’s coverage. On July 6, the first day of summer school in Montgomery County Public Schools, a lockdown happened at Takoma Park Middle School. Because of construction at local elementary schools, Takoma Park was hosting summer school for students in kindergarten through eighth grade. That means that on the first day when students were choosing to attend school to improve their instruction, children as young as 5 years old had to participate in the same drills as the high school students at Bethesda-Chevy Chase on Sept. 15.
The lockdown was because of a called-in threat, and it lasted more than three hours. Similar to the situation at Bethesda, no credible threat was determined. And yet when I searched “Takoma Park Middle School lockdown” in The Post for articles on the situation, none were found. No one talked to the school, the parents, etc. On my local email group, some parents, similar to the Bethesda-Chevy Chase parents interviewed in the article, were similarly concerned about the vague voice mail from MCPS about the lockdown. Yet no one from The Post talked to them.
Lockdowns are real across this area. Yet I wonder why it took a situation in Bethesda for The Post to consider writing about it. Such situations have been happening in the relatively less affluent eastern part of the county. Perhaps, then, The Post should ask itself why such incidents didn’t warrant an article. I am sure it is not because The Post considers the lives of some families more valuable than others. Perhaps a more in-depth story on lockdowns (gun-related, other-related) in all of Montgomery County should be written. I truly hope The Post will do better.
John Seelke, Silver Spring
Ignoring the obvious when it comes to countering tribalism
The Sept. 17 op-ed by federal judges Bernice B. Donald and Don R. Willett, “How to counter today’s tribalism,” had several good suggestions of ways to counter today’s tribalism, but, unfortunately, it ignored the most obvious and significant reason our country is so polarized.
Donald and Willett correctly cited that ignorance and social media play important roles, but there was no mention that one of our two political parties follows the lead of a demagogue who falsely asserts that the last presidential election was stolen. With many Republican voters still believing the “big lie,” there is little hope for a less divided civil society. Until the Republican Party and its leaders demonstrate that they can accept basic truths such as that their candidate lost the presidential election fair and square, too many of their supporters will never accept our government institutions, and we will continue to remain deeply divided.
Daniel I. Oshtry, Washington | 2022-09-30T16:12:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Readers critique The Post: Outlook is an incredible loss for readers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/reader-critiques-outlook-discontinued/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/reader-critiques-outlook-discontinued/ |
Off-duty D.C. police officer struck by driver, critically hurt in Md.
Dana Hedgpeth
An off-duty D.C. police officer was struck and critically injured by a driver Friday morning at a shopping center in Maryland, authorities said.
Officials said the incident happened in the 10500 block of Martin Luther King Highway near Annapolis Road in Prince George’s County.
A D.C. police spokesman said the officer was in critical condition. The officer has not been identified. | 2022-09-30T16:21:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Off-duty D.C. police officer struck by vehicle in Maryland - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/30/dc-police-officer-struck-by-vehcile/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/09/30/dc-police-officer-struck-by-vehcile/ |
Have we forgotten what a public library is for?
By Deborah E. Mikula
Loren Khogali
The Patmos Library on Aug. 11 in Jamestown, Mich. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
Deborah E. Mikula is executive director of the Michigan Library Association. Loren Khogali is executive director of the ACLU of Michigan.
Imagine a town without a library.
In August, people in Jamestown, Mich., just outside Grand Rapids, signaled with their votes that they would rather defund — and possibly shutter — their only public library than keep books with LGBTQ themes on the shelves.
The impact of such a vote is deeply concerning. And the place from which it stems — a small but vocal minority trying to dictate what others can and cannot read — is even more troubling.
Libraries fill a role central to any functioning democracy: upholding the rights of citizens to read, to seek information, to speak freely. As champions of access, librarians are committed to curating collections that allow everyone who enters the library to see themselves in the books and resources the library provides. It is especially crucial to serve people who belong to traditionally marginalized groups — such as the LGBTQ community — which have historically been underrepresented in the publishing industry.
Distressingly, the episode in Jamestown is not an isolated incident.
Across the United States, there has been a rising tide of efforts to undermine fundamental tenets of the First Amendment by suppressing intellectual inquiry and the right to read. As of August, the American Library Association (ALA) had documented 681 challenges to books this year, involving 1,651 different titles; in all of 2021, the ALA listed 729 challenges, directed at 1,597 books. Most of those challenges targeted non-White or LGBTQ authors or subjects. And because the ALA relies on media accounts and reports from libraries, the actual number of challenges is probably far higher, the library association believes.
Azar Nafisi: Book bans signal the dangerous direction society is moving
A chilling indicator of just how extreme these would-be censors can be is found in their willingness to go far beyond accepted norms — political or social — to get what they want. In Jamestown, the library director resigned earlier this year because of online harassment she had been subjected to by a small, well-coordinated group. The interim director who replaced her also resigned, citing harassment.
Describing an “alarming increase in acts of aggression toward library workers and patrons,” the ALA in June issued a statement condemning “violence, threats of violence and other acts of intimidation increasingly taking place in America’s libraries.”
This is what the censors refuse to grasp: Librarians are not trying to force your children to read material you don’t want them to read. They are fulfilling their role as information professionals tasked with upholding the constitutional promise of access to information for all.
Alexandra Petri: All these book bans are like something out of, uh… ‘Goodnight Moon’?
Fortunately, the vast majority of Americans understand this. A March survey by Hart Research Associates and North Star Opinion Research on behalf of the ALA found that 71 percent of voters “oppose efforts to have books removed from their local public libraries,” adding: “Most voters and parents hold librarians in high regard, have confidence in their libraries to make good decisions about what books to include in their collections, and agree that libraries in their communities do a good job offering books that represent a variety of viewpoints.”
Also encouraging is the nationwide support library board members in Jamestown received for refusing to compromise their ethical principles and, frankly, their humanity.
A GoFundMe campaign, started soon after the aforementioned vote, has already exceeded its goal of raising $245,000, an amount equal to the library’s annual budget. This outpouring of donations is a heartening indicator of the value Americans place in protecting First Amendment rights. But funding a local library through crowdsourcing is not sustainable in the long term.
It is important to note the precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court on this topic. In 1982, the court determined that removing books from a school library because certain people simply disliked the ideas contained in those books violated the First Amendment rights of students. Simply put, if a board decides to remove materials from a library’s collection based on subject matter, they are putting the library at risk of lawsuits alleging unconstitutionality.
Thankfully, library board members in Jamestown have refused to succumb to the intimidation. Rather than remove the roughly 90 books with LGBTQ themes from a collection that numbers some 67,000 items, they have decided to provide their community with a second chance to do the right thing, by putting the funding question in front of voters again this November.
It is up to all of us who support free speech to resist book banning. Attend meetings and voice support for intellectual freedom and inclusion. Write letters to your local news organization supporting officials who refuse to concede to censors. Run for local office. Join and become active in groups supporting the First Amendment.
The way to combat vocal attacks on free speech is with even more free speech. Otherwise, the censors win. And we all lose. | 2022-09-30T16:25:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Book bans raise the question: Have we forgotten what a library is for? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/02/jamestown-patmos-library-defund-book-bans-lgbtq/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/02/jamestown-patmos-library-defund-book-bans-lgbtq/ |
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech in the Georgievsky Hall of the Great Kremlin Palace in Moscow on Sept. 30. (Sputnik/Grigory Sysoyev/Kremlin via Reuters)
In an angry, conspiratorial address Friday, amid grand fanfare, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered the Kremlin’s justification for Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian territories, presenting an anti-Western worldview that accused “Anglo-Saxons” of neocolonialism and sabotage.
The half-hour speech was delivered at the ornate Georgievsky Hall in the Grand Kremlin Palace on Friday, where Putin announced that Russia would formally incorporate Ukraine’s Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions after staged referendums in the Ukrainian territories.
“People have made their choice, an unambiguous choice,” Putin said,
The staged plebiscites came amid condemnation by world leaders and a Ukrainian military push that means Russia does not control all of the regions it now claims as it own.
Here are seven key points from the speech.
1. Russia will never give up annexed regions
Putin vowed to welcome the citizens of the Ukrainian provinces to Russia but suggested that Moscow would never give up the annexed regions.
“I want the Kyiv authorities and their real masters in the West to hear me, so that they remember this. People living in Luhansk and Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are becoming our citizens. Forever,” he said
Putin also said that he was justified in accepting the territory as the first article of the United Nations’ founding charter allows for self-determinization.
Russia has annexed Ukrainian territory before; in 2014, it took control of Crimea after a similar staged referendum. However, most of the international community still considers the peninsula part of Ukraine and Kyiv has pledged to regain control of it.
2. Ukraine must give in
Putin demanded that Ukrainian authorities begin peace talks, telling the “Kyiv regime to immediately end hostilities, end the war that they unleashed back in 2014 and return to the negotiating table. We are ready for this.”
Ukraine has consistently demanded that Russian forces give up any land seized after the Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, as well as Crimea, as a condition of peace talks. Speaking at the opening of the United Nations General Assembly last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Russia needed to be punished for its actions.
“A crime has been committed against Ukraine, and we demand punishment,” said Zelensky, who appeared at the top diplomatic gathering via video.
3. Accusation that the West is trying to destroy Russia
Though the annexation of Ukrainian states was the subject of the speech, much of its running time focused on attacking the West — and the United States in particular. The Russian president repeated many of his most conspiratorial views included in the “golden billion” theory.
Putin accused the West of creating a “neocolonial system” that aimed specifically to destroy Russia, later arguing that the West had been “drowned in an ocean of fakes” and that they lie like Joseph Goebbels, the chief propagandist of Nazi Germany.
“It is worth reminding the West that it began its colonial policy back in the Middle Ages, and then followed the global slave trade, the genocide of Indian tribes in America, the plunder of India, Africa, the wars of England and France against China, as a result of which it was forced to open its ports for trade of opium,” Putin said.
“I emphasize that one of the reasons for the centuries-old Russophobia, the undisguised malice of these Western elites towards Russia is precisely that we did not allow ourselves to be robbed during the period of colonial conquests, we forced the Europeans to trade for mutual benefit,” he said.
4. Claim that the United States, not Russia, poses a nuclear threat
Russian officials have repeatedly made thinly veiled references to nuclear weapons during the conflict with Ukraine, with Putin himself suggesting just last week that the country would “use all the means at our disposal” to protect Russian territory — which in Putin’s eyes may now include the annexed Ukrainian regions.
But Putin said Friday that it was the United States that posed a nuclear threat to the world, referencing the use of nuclear weapons against Japanese cities during World War II.
“The U.S. is the only country in the world to ever use atomic weapons. They destroyed the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. By the way, that created a precedent,” Putin said.
“Let me also remind you that the United States, together with the British, turned Dresden, Hamburg, Cologne and many other German cities into ruins without any military necessity during World War II. And this was done defiantly, without any, I repeat, military necessity. There was only one goal: just as in the case of the nuclear bombings in Japan, to intimidate both our country and the whole world,” he said.
5. ‘Anglo-Saxons’ accused of sabotaging the Nord Stream
“Sanctions are not enough for the Anglo-Saxons, they have switched to sabotage, in fact, they have begun to destroy the Pan-European infrastructure,” Putin said, appearing to refer to damage to the Nord Stream pipeline.
The pipelines, which were built to carry Russian natural gas to Europe, were damaged by dual explosions off the coast of Denmark on Tuesday. Some European officials have privately said they blamed the Kremlin for the blasts, arguing that only Russia had a clear motive for such an attack.
The Russian government has denied responsibility for the blasts.
6. Condemnation of LGBT rights
In another detour, Putin railed against gay rights in the West and suggested that Russia would never follow the same path.
“Do we want children from elementary school to be imposed with things that lead to degradation and extinction? Do we want them to be taught that instead of men and women there are supposedly some other genders and to be offered sex change surgeries? This is unacceptable to us, we have a different future,” Putin said.
Under Putin, Russia has passed several laws that target the LGBT community, including a so-called “gay propaganda” law that drew widespread international criticism.
7. In conclusion: A quote from controversial theorist Ivan Ilyin
At the tail-end of the speech, Putin quoted Ivan Ilyin, an anti-Communist theoretician who was exiled to Switzerland.
“And if I consider my homeland to be Russia, it means that in the Russian way I love, contemplate and think, in the Russian way I sing and speak; that I believe in the spiritual forces of the Russian people and accept its historical destiny with my instinct and my will. Its spirit is my spirit; its destiny is my destiny; its suffering is my grief; its flourishing is my joy,” Putin concluded his speech.
Historians often refer to Ilyin as a fascist. He is known for an idiosyncratic worldview that combined more traditional Christian and monarchist views with conspiracy theories and quasi-mystical views of the power of leaders.
As Putin concluded his speech, he signed so-called “accession treaties” to absorb the Ukrainian regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia along with Moscow’s proxy leaders for the regions.
To cheers, the leaders held hands and chanted:
“Russia! Russia! Russia!” | 2022-09-30T16:30:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 7 key moments in Putin’s annexation speech - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/putin-speech-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/30/putin-speech-ukraine/ |
While Ian is not done impacting the United States, the storm’s strike on Florida already puts it in the record books
Boats are piled on top of each other after Hurricane Ian passed through the area on Thursday in Fort Myers Beach, Fla. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
The devastation from Hurricane Ian’s direct hit in Southwest Florida is still being tallied, but the storm’s sheer force as it crashed into the coastline has already placed Ian in the upper echelon of hurricanes to strike the United States.
When Ian made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on Cayo Costa Island, it carried with it maximum sustained winds of 150 mph and a minimum central pressure of 940 millibars.
Ian became the 37th major hurricane — a designation reserved for storms of Category 3 intensity or greater — to have ever struck the state of Florida, and just the 15th to be rated a Category 4 or higher. Records of hurricane intensity date back to 1851.
By measure of sustained winds at landfall, Ian is in an eight-way tie for the fifth-strongest storm to strike the United States. Over the past two years, two other storms pummeled the United States with winds up to 150 mph: Hurricane Ida, which just last year carved a path of destruction from Louisiana to New York, and Hurricane Laura, which also slammed into Louisiana and brought with it a 17-foot storm surge.
Another storm that packed 150 mph winds with it was Hurricane Charley, which made landfall in 2004 in nearly the exact same spot that Ian did — though Charley was significantly smaller when it careened into the coastline.
The strongest storm to ever strike the United States was the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, which came ashore in Florida with sustained wind speeds of 185 miles per hour — making it a high-end Category 5 storm. The storm also had a central pressure of 892 when it hit the coast, something that is extraordinarily rare in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, let alone at landfall.
Ian’s central pressure of 940 millibars put it in 18th-place historically — edged out by recent major hurricanes like Hurricane Harvey (937 millibars), Hurricane Ida (931 millibars), Hurricane Katrina (920 millibars) and Hurricane Michael (919 millibars).
When looking just at Florida, Ian enters a 3-way tie for the fourth strongest hurricane to ever make landfall in the state by maximum sustained winds, surpassed in order by the Labor Day Hurricane (185 mph), 1991′s Hurricane Andrew (165 mph) and 2018′s Hurricane Michael (160 mph).
By the measure of minimum central pressure, Ian becomes the ninth-strongest hurricane to ever hit Florida, surpassed by both historical cyclones and recent storms like Hurricane Andrew (922mb), Hurricane Michael (919 millibars) and Hurricane Irma (931 millibars).
While it is too early to tell where Ian will stack up in terms of lives lost — Florida has had a history of deadly hurricanes, with fatalities generally dropping in recent years due to improved building codes and much greater warning in advance of storms.
The deadliest storm in the modern record to strike Florida was the Okeechobee Hurricane of 1928, which is estimated to have killed at least 2,500 people, with some estimates taking the death toll markedly higher, according to the National Weather Service.
Since 2000, the deadliest storms to have hit the state of Florida are Hurricane Irma, which killed 77 people when it made landfall in 2017; Hurricane Michael, which killed 50 people in 2020; Hurricane Frances, which killed 37 people in 2004 and Hurricane Charley, which killed 29, also in 2004.
It is also too early to tell if Ian will rank among the costliest hurricanes to hit the United States, but it seems likely to do so. According to NOAA, the top 5 costliest cyclones in U.S. history are Hurricane Katrina ($186.3 billion), Hurricane Harvey ($148.8B), Hurricane Maria ($107.1B), Hurricane Sandy ($81.9B) and Hurricane Ida ($78.7B). All of those storms, with the exception of Katrina, have struck the United States within the past 5 years.
To be one of the 10 costliest hurricanes in U.S. history, Ian would have to beat or tie the $29 billion dollars in damage caused by Hurricane Michael, something early estimates suggest it could do. An analyst with Fitch Ratings estimated that insured cost losses in Florid could be anywhere from $25 to $40 billion, with more damage set to come along the Southeast coast when Ian makes landfall in South Carolina.
Speaking of South Carolina, if Ian makes landfall in the state as a hurricane as it is currently forecast to do on Friday afternoon, it will be the first storm to do so since 2016, when Hurricane Matthew made landfall in the state, according to Phillip Klotzbach, a meteorologist at Colorado State University.
The last storm to make landfall in both Florida and South Carolina as a hurricane was Hurricane Charley in 2004.
Ian will be far from one of the strongest hurricanes to make landfall in South Carolina, though the storm is still quite hazardous. Ian’s massive size means it will bring widespread tropical-storm-force winds to both North Carolina and South Carolina.
Storm surge is also a threat for nearly the entire Southeast coastline, with 2-4 feet of surge expected from northern Florida to the surge-vulnerable Outer Banks, with 4-7 feet of surge forecast in South Carolina from Edisto Beach to Little River Inlet.
Ian regains hurricane strength and is poised to strike South Carolina | 2022-09-30T16:47:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hurricane Ian already ranks among the top storms in U.S. history - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/30/hurricane-ian-historical-ranking-florida/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/30/hurricane-ian-historical-ranking-florida/ |
Biden expresses gloom about Italian election
Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. On this day in 1822, Joseph Marion Hernández became the first Hispanic American to be elected to Congress.
President Biden has repeatedly diagnosed the world is at an “inflection point” in the tug-of-war between democracies and autocracies or their hard-right populist cousins. In the aftermath of the right-wing victory in Italy’s elections, he’s sounding decidedly gloomy about the results.
Speaking at a Democratic Governors Association fundraiser on Wednesday, Biden fell back into familiar warnings that “democracy is at stake” around the world, and his usual tale about Chinese leader Xi Jinping arguing rule by the people, for the people cannot succeed.
“You just saw what’s happened in Italy in that election. You’re seeing what’s happening around the world. And the reason I bother to say that is we can’t be sanguine about what’s happening here either,” the president said.
“What’s happened in Italy” is Italian voters unenthused by the arguments of a divided left — including the kind of a stop-the-extremists message that has worked to stave off the far-right in France — elected their first woman prime minister and embraced a coalition government that will be the farthest right since Benito Mussolini’s two decades of fascist rule.
“What’s happening around the world” is, presumably, right-wing election victories in places like Sweden, a deepening of anti-democratic power in places like strongman Viktor Orban’s Hungary, and significant inroads by the far-right at the legislative level in places like France.
“What’s happening here” is the coast-to-coast Republican effort to put people who deny Biden’s 2020 victory in charge of the machinery of future elections, while playing down the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol that interrupted certification of his victory, and electing officials who embrace former president Donald Trump’s “big lie” that he was cheated out of a second term.
Taking the measure
Biden hasn’t called Meloni yet — that’s not a big deal, he wouldn’t be expected to do so until she formally takes over as prime minister and forms a government, steps expected in October.
And, officially at least, his administration has adopted a very cautious wait-and-see approach, notably scrutinizing her approach to Ukraine to see whether she’s inclined to pare back Italy’s aid to Kyiv as winter looms with Europe worried about Russia cutting off oil and gas flows.
“The fact is that we stand ready and eager to work with any Italian government that emerges from the electoral process to advance our many shared goals and interests,” State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters Monday. “We’re partners, we’re friends.”
Without ever referencing Meloni by name, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said “we will work with the new Italian government on the full range of shared global challenges, including supporting Ukraine as they defend themselves against Russia's aggression.”
One week earlier, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, a senior administration official told reporters “whoever ends up as the new prime minister of Italy, the president will have to have an early conversation and then take measure of that person.”
The official, who briefed journalists on the condition of anonymity, dismissed “this kind of ‘sky-is-falling’ narrative” about the Italian election’s impact on Ukraine policy.
“What I will say is this: We do not believe that, no matter how this turns out, Italy is somehow going to drop out of the Western coalition of countries supporting Ukraine, and I don't think our key partners in Europe believe that either,” the official said.
Where does Meloni stand?
That premise will face two immediate tests.
First, a European Union summit today to discuss the continent’s energy crisis, triggered by Russia’s expanded invasion of Ukraine. Meloni has called for a “common solution” to the challenge, at a time when soaring fuel costs have badly hurt Italy’s economy.
Second, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision to go ahead with seizing four Ukrainian regions after counterfeit referendums set the stage for Russia to absorb them.
Unlike other right-wing leaders in Europe — in Hungary, France, or even others in Italy — Meloni has not explicitly signaled sympathy with Moscow or a desire to sharply cut back on support for Ukraine, or to push Kyiv to make territorial concessions in order to end the war.
In both cases, though, Meloni will be transitioning from campaign rhetoric to the work of governing. What she does is something of an open question because of her past rhetoric, as my colleagues Chico Harlan and Stefano Pitrelli reported recently.
“In her decade as leader of Fratelli d’Italia — Brothers of Italy — Meloni has espoused some extreme positions. She has advocated for the dissolution of the euro zone. She has warned, conspiratorially, that unnamed forces are guiding immigrants en masse to Italy in the name of ‘ethnic substitution.’”
That was then, her supporters might say. But the real test is now.
U.S. imposes new sanctions over Russia’s illegal annexation
“The Biden administration announced a new round of sanctions on Russia for President Vladimir Putin’s illegal annexation of four Ukrainian territories. The sanctions target government officials and family members, Russian and Belarusian military officials and defense procurement networks,” Yasmeen Abutaleb reports.
“The United States also said it was sending a ‘clear warning’: that there will be costs for any individual, entity or country that provides political or economic support to Russia. Three U.S. agencies — the Treasury, Commerce and State departments — are imposing “swift and severe costs” on Russia.”
More: Putin illegally claims annexation of Ukrainian regions, escalating war
Electoral count bill gains co-sponsors, including Schumer and McConnell
“A Senate bill that would overhaul an 1887 law that President Donald Trump and his allies tried to use to overturn the 2020 election results is picking up momentum, even as Congress heads into recess until after the midterm elections,” John Wagner and Mariana Alfaro report.
Biden declares emergency in South Carolina as storm intensifies
“President Biden declared an emergency in South Carolina hours ahead of Ian’s expected landfall as a Category 1 hurricane near Charleston around midday Friday. The White House will dispatch federal assistance to supplement local response efforts, and the National Hurricane Center warned of ‘life-threatening flooding, storm surge and strong winds’ in the Carolinas,” Jason Samenow and Kelly Kasulis Cho report.
“As special assistant to the president for climate policy, for the past two years, David Hayes — who served as deputy interior secretary during the Clinton and Obama administrations — has largely focused on coping with climate impacts and making the country more resilient. Hayes, 68, whose last day in his post is Friday, has led efforts to implement climate-resilience interagency working groups dedicated to extreme heat, drought, wildfires, floods and coastal impacts; worked to expand offshore wind power; and helped to develop and carry out President Biden’s ambitious plan to conserve 30 percent of U.S. lands and waters by 2030,” Allyson Chiu reports.
“About a dozen firms that provide homeowners insurance in Florida have become insolvent in the past two years, according to the Florida Office of Insurance Regulation, leaving hundreds of thousands of property owners scrambling for coverage. Many Florida homeowners in flood-prone areas don’t carry flood insurance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has said — despite the fact that many policies don’t cover flood damage,” Lori Rozsa and Erica Werner report.
“As the leader of the European Union’s third biggest economy, Meloni will have a powerful role in shaping the bloc’s responses to these crises as they unfold. So many in Brussels and capitals beyond will be asking who she really is. What shaped her values? Where does she come from? How does Meloni think?” Politico EU's Hannah Roberts reports.
New book: Nancy Pelosi resisted effort to impeach Trump on Jan. 6
“According to the new book ‘Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,’ leading Democrats pushed hard to impeach then-President Donald Trump the day of the insurrection. But they were beaten back by a reluctant House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who instead decided to gavel the chamber out of session once it had finished the business at hand — certifying the election — in the early hours of January 7,” the Intercept's Ryan Grim reports.
“For a large portion of Biden’s presidency, he has sought to limit harsh partisan rhetoric as he courts a handful of Republicans to help enact his agenda. But as he shifts into a rawer campaign mode, he has started fine-tuning his attacks on this particular trio of Republicans who, while well-known to political junkies, are not exactly household names,” Matt Viser reports.
“In Washington, Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) unveiled legislation Thursday that would cut off military and economic aid to any country that recognizes the ‘annexed’ territories as part of Russia. The legislation would also pressure the Biden administration to swiftly punish Russia, and could be attached to the annual defense policy bill in the coming weeks,” Politico's Alexander Ward, Paul McLeary, Lara Seligman, Andrew DeSiderio and Jonathan Lemire report.
“Borrowers whose federal student loans are guaranteed by the government but held by private lenders will now be excluded from receiving debt relief. Around 770,000 people will be affected by the change, according to an administration official,” CNN's Katie Lobosco reports.
“The proposal would streamline a training and assistance system that was created on the fly after the Russian invasion in February. The system would be placed under a single new command based in Germany that would be led by a high-ranking U.S. general, according to several military and administration officials,” the New York Times' Eric Schmitt reports.
The Nord Stream spill, visualized
“The two explosions in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea resulted in what could amount to the largest-ever single release of methane gas into the atmosphere, but it may not be enough to have a major effect on climate change, experts say,” Meg Kelly, Ellen Francis and Michael Birnbaum report.
“The overall electoral environment might be improving for Democrats, but O’Rourke is still a serious long shot. FiveThirtyEight’s 2022 midterm-election forecast gives Abbott a 95-in-100 chance of besting his ubiquitous Democratic challenger. But is it possible that after his closer-than-expected Senate race against Ted Cruz in 2018 and rise to national prominence after a nearly eight-month campaign in the 2020 presidential election, a narrow loss against Abbott in November could be a victory for Texas Democrats in the long run?” FiveThirtyEight's Alex Samuels reports.
Ginni Thomas’ opening statement to the Jan. 6 committee
“Regarding the 2020 election, I did not speak with him at all about the details of my volunteer campaign activities. And I did not speak with him at all about the details of my post-election activities, which were minimal, in any event. I am certain I never spoke with him about any of the legal challenges to the 2020 election, as I was not involved with those challenges in any way,” Thomas said at the beginning of her testimony Thursday, the Federalist's Tristan Justice reports.
At 4 p.m., the Bidens will host a Hispanic Heritage Month reception.
On Sept. 28, meteorologists faced dangerous conditions while covering Hurricane Ian in Punta Gorda, Fla. (Video: The Washington Post)
“It’s not enough to simply point a camera at nature’s fury and let viewers soak in the awesome mix of water, wind and property destruction. For decades, the cliche in television coverage has been to place a reporter in the picture, letting viewers see just how dangerous the storm is,” Paul Farhi writes. | 2022-09-30T16:48:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden expresses gloom about Italian election - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/biden-expresses-gloom-about-italian-election/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/30/biden-expresses-gloom-about-italian-election/ |
Experts worry he is at higher risk of severe, long-term problems if he suffered more than one concussion.
Medical staff tend to quarterback Tua Tagovailoa of the Miami Dolphins after an injury during Thursday night's game against the Cincinnati Bengals in Cincinnati. (Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
A high-profile NFL injury has put the spotlight back on football’s persistent concussions, which are linked to head trauma and a variety of long-lasting symptoms, and can be worsened by rushing back to physical activity.
Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa, who appeared to suffer head trauma in a prior game Sunday afternoon that was later described as a back injury, was diagnosed with a concussion Thursday night following a tackle in his second game in several days. After Tagovailoa’s head hit the turf on Thursday, he remained on the ground and held his arms and fingers splayed in front of his face — which experts said evoked conditions known as “decorticate posturing” or “fencing response,” where brain damage triggers the involuntary reaction.
“It’s a potentially life-threatening brain injury,” said Chris Nowinski, a neuroscientist and co-founder of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit group focused on concussion research and prevention, adding that he worried about Tagovailoa’s long-term prognosis, given that it can take months or years for an athlete to fully recover from repeated concussions. Nowinski said he was particularly concerned about situations where people suffer two concussions within a short period — a condition sometimes known as second impact syndrome — which can lead to brain swelling and other persistent problems.
“That’s why we should at least be cautious with the easy stuff, like withholding players with a concussion from the game and letting their brain recover,” Nowinski said.
The Dolphins said that Tagovailoa had movement in all of his extremities and had been discharged Thursday night from University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
The NFL’s top health official said in an interview on Friday that he was worried about Tagovailoa’s health, and pointed to a joint review the league and its players association was conducting into the Dolphins’ handling of the quarterback’s initial injury on Sunday.
“Obviously, I am upset and concerned just like any fan and just like any physician is any time one of our players suffers any type of injury,” said Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer. “We want to be thorough, and we want to be consistent and be fair to everyone involved and make sure that we have all the data on hand before we reach a final determination.”
How athletes — and the rest of us — get concussions
The causes and symptoms of concussions vary widely. Some athletes compete for years in contact sports like football without suffering a concussion, while other people can be concussed from a sudden jolt, such as whiplash from a car accident, without even hitting their heads.
But in many cases, the condition is triggered by a blow to the head, which can lead to days or weeks of headaches, memory problems, mood changes and sleep disorders. People recovering from concussions may be unable to balance themselves, see clearly or control their emotions. Neurologists also have warned that repeated concussions appear to be a contributor to a neurodegenerative disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.
“When you’ve seen one concussion, you’ve seen one concussion … there’s just such wide variability,” said Jennifer Wethe, the lead neuropsychologist for the Mayo Clinic Arizona Concussion Program, adding that it’s a common problem beyond professional sports. “Most of us at some point in our life probably will have a concussion … and if it’s managed appropriately, and [you’re] not having one concussion on top of another, we’ll end up recovering fine.”
More football leads to worse CTE, scientists say. Consider NFL great Willie Wood.
Medical experts who treat concussion say it can be difficult to diagnose, particularly in athletes who may conceal their injuries because they fear losing playing time and opportunities, or because they don’t experience symptoms for hours after the initial blow.
“This is a subjective injury until you get something like” Tagovailoa’s visible symptoms, said Dustin Fink, head athletic trainer for the Mount Zion, Ill., school district, who also runs The Concussion Blog. “As medical professionals, we are so reliant upon the athlete telling us what’s going on with them, to help us make a judgment or decision. Because they can pass tests that we give them.”
Fink said that on Thursday night — as millions of people tuned in to watch the Dolphins face the Cincinnati Bengals — he was working as a trainer at a freshman football game in Illinois where a 14-year-old player visibly stumbled after getting hit, but was initially evasive about his symptoms.
“He was afraid that this was concussion number X and he was done for his career,” Fink said. Under the school’s concussion protocol, Fink said the player was held out of the game and will be reevaluated Friday within 24 hours after the apparent injury.
Experts also say that the risks tend to be cumulative; a person who has suffered repeated blows to the head, such as a football or rugby player, is more likely to suffer a concussion and also incur long-lasting symptoms. A person healing from a recent concussion is also more susceptible to suffering another concussion.
“On rare occasions, receiving another concussion before the brain has healed can result in brain swelling, permanent brain damage, and even death, particularly among children and teens,” the Department of Health and Human Services warns.
The consequences are particularly severe for mental health, with experts warning of a strong association between head injuries and potentially lifelong neurological problems.
“Concussions are a cause of novel mental health disorders like anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidal ideation,” said Nowinski.
In rare cases, a concussion can lead to a blood clot forming on the brain, creating pressure in the skull and requiring surgery to remove the clot.
The NFL finalized a new concussion protocol in 2011 and has repeatedly updated it amid intense scrutiny and lawsuits filed by thousands of former players, alleging the league downplayed head injury risks for decades.
How ‘race-norming’ was built into the NFL concussion settlement
Under the current protocol, a player must be immediately removed from a game and evaluated for a concussion if he reports symptoms, or if a trainer, coach, teammate or others tasked to observe the game suspect a concussion. The player then must undergo a series of quick exams, such as repeating words back in a memory test, showing coordinated eye movement and demonstrating balance.
Those diagnosed with concussion must undergo a five-step process before returning to play, which includes being able to complete football-related activities without any symptoms — a hurdle that some players complete within a week, but that has ended others’ careers. The player must also be cleared by a team doctor, as well as by an independent physician jointly approved by the league and its players’ union.
But Nowinski noted potential “gaps” in the NFL’s protocol: A doctor can send a player back into a game, for instance, if he concludes that signs of an apparent concussion — like a player stumbling to stand after a blow to the head — are caused by something besides a head injury.
NFL players also are initially evaluated for concussion in a blue tent on the sideline of the field, which is intended to provide privacy for a diagnosis, but has often led to players returning within a few minutes of a blow to the head.
“Maybe it’s time to reconsider whether the protocol is not strong enough and that every player who’s suspected [of concussion] needs to be out and do a full 15-minute locker room evaluation,” Nowinski said, although he noted Tagovailoa did go through a locker room evaluation before returning to play.
Sills, the NFL’s medical officer, on Friday defended the protocols, saying the league had developed them through recommendations from experts on brain and spinal trauma, most of whom do not work with NFL teams. “We’re constantly updating and looking to modify the protocol as we learn more from our own data and also as we learn more from the scientific community,” he said.
Concussion care has rapidly evolved in recent years, as experts learn more about the brain, Wethe noted. For instance, she said the maxim “rest is best” was a cornerstone of concussion therapy for years, with patients urged to cloister in dark rooms for days until their symptoms resolved.
“Now, we recognize that too long of that rest and kind of cocoon therapy can almost be detrimental,” Wethe added, saying that “one to three days of relative rest followed by a gradual return to normal activities is best. And we’ve even realized that past those acute stages, exercise can actually be rehabilitative.”
Wethe said that she and her colleagues have worked to develop a program to train parents and coaches on how to check young athletes for head injuries. “When in doubt, check them out,” she said.
Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.), who founded the Congressional Traumatic Brain Injury Task Force, said Tagovailoa’s injury underscores the need for better concussion funding, awareness and care at all levels. The congressman has spent more than a decade pushing legislation to improve concussion care, including reintroducing a bill this spring that would standardize how public schools treat athletes who have suffered concussions.
“Concussions are devastating and as a nation we must do more to protect people with brain injury — that starts with our pro sports leagues,” Pascrell wrote on Twitter.
Why Tagovailoa may have been at higher risk
Heading into Thursday night’s game, Nowinski had called for the Dolphins to bench their quarterback, arguing the team was hiding a concussion that Tagovailoa suffered just days earlier and was rushing him back to competition, elevating the risk of a more serious brain injury.
“If Tua takes the field tonight, it’s a massive step back for #concussion care in the NFL,” Nowinski wrote on Twitter on Thursday, several hours before the game.
Nowinski said he took no pleasure predicting Tagovailoa’s injury.
“Frankly, it didn’t take a genius to figure out that this was possible,” he said.
Tagovailoa on Sunday afternoon had visibly stumbled and appeared to have trouble standing following a tackle where his head snapped back into the ground. While the Dolphins initially said the quarterback had suffered a head injury, the team quickly reclassified it as a back injury and Tagovailoa returned to Sunday’s game. The move prompted an outcry from public health experts, and the league and its players association opened an investigation, although the NFL on Wednesday said the Dolphins appeared to follow the league’s concussion protocol and properly care for Tagovailoa.
A new study shows that hits to the head, not concussions, cause CTE
Nowinski said that Tagovailoa’s injury on Sunday “showed five separate signs of concussion,” and that it was not plausible he was suffering only from a back injury.
“First, he grabbed his helmet after his head hit the ground. Then he stood up and had [to] … step backwards because he was off balance. Then he shook his head side-to-side in a classic shaking off the cobwebs motion, which I do not know another reason why you do that unless you’re having a visual disturbance after concussion. Then he fell. Then when he stood up, he was gonna fall again if … his teammates didn’t hold him up,” Nowinski said.
How common are football concussions?
More than 100 NFL players per year report concussions, with the true number considered to be well higher.
“I’ve definitely had concussions,” star quarterback Tom Brady acknowledged in a 2020 interview with Howard Stern in 2020, several years after his wife, Gisele Bündchen, claimed that Brady had suffered multiple concussions despite never being diagnosed with the injury.
While many athletes rapidly return to play after concussions — potentially lured by the incentives or the fear of losing opportunities — others can struggle to make it back. Former NFL players like Austin Collie, Kyle Fitts and Jordan Reed have retired in recent years, citing multiple concussions.
Donald Parham, Jr., a tight end for the Los Angeles Chargers, was injured in a nationally televised game in December 2021, where — like Tagovailoa — he rigidly positioned his arms after impact and was admitted to a hospital.
Prayers for Donald Parham Jr. Certain #concussion with loss of consciousness & posturing, hopefully not a neck injury too. 🙏 pic.twitter.com/XHhwVyePir
— Chris Nowinski, Ph.D. (@ChrisNowinski1) December 17, 2021
While Parham, Jr., has said he has recovered from that concussion, he has not played in the NFL since that game, with the team citing a hamstring injury this season.
Why experts are concerned about Tagovailoa
Nowinski, who played football at Harvard University before becoming a professional wrestler with World Wrestling Entertainment, said he was worried about Tagovailoa’s long-term prognosis following Thursday night’s injury.
“The problem is Tua has two brain injuries in four days, which may end his career,” Nowinski said. “And I know this because I had two concussions in a month 19 years ago, and that ended my [professional wrestling] career. And I now have met dozens and dozens of people who had their career ended by too many concussions in a row.”
Physicians, lawmakers and other experts cite progress in the NFL and other leagues in combating concussions, but say athletes and teams still have incentives to hide injuries.
These puffy helmet caps are the next big thing in NFL player safety
Following Tagovailoa’s removal from Thursday’s game, the announcers on Amazon Prime did not immediately address his injury on Sunday, and avoided using the term concussion. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
“When are we finally going to put our foot down and say that enough is enough? ” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who has spent years pressing the NFL on its concussion protocols, said in a statement to The Washington Post. “So long as this game is played, more resources must be devoted to prioritizing player safety, The NFL must take full accountability for the harms inflicted on its players, and anyone in the Dolphins organization, including leadership, found to have broken concussion protocols must be held accountable.” | 2022-09-30T17:22:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tua Tagovailoa's head injury puts NFL concussion protocol under scrutiny - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/30/tua-concussion-protocol-nfl/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/09/30/tua-concussion-protocol-nfl/ |
Trump’s legal team divided over how to handle Mar-a-Lago case
New lawyer’s advice to seek an ‘off-ramp’ with Justice Department is not being heeded, people familiar with discussions say
Trump attorney Christopher Kise leaves the federal court in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022. (Eva Marie Uzcategui/Bloomberg)
After attorney Christopher Kise accepted $3 million to represent Donald Trump in the FBI’s investigation of government documents stored at Mar-a-Lago, the veteran litigator argued that Trump should adopt a new strategy.
Turn down the temperature with the Department of Justice, Kise — a former Florida solicitor general — counseled his famously combative client, people familiar with the deliberations said.
Federal authorities had searched Trump’s Florida residence and club because they badly wanted to retrieve the classified documents that remained there even after a federal subpoena, Kise argued, according to these people. With that material back in government hands, maybe prosecutors could be persuaded to resolve the whole issue quietly.
But quiet has never been Trump’s style — nor has harmony within his orbit.
Instead, just a few weeks after Kise was brought aboard, he finds himself in a battle, trying to convince Trump to go along with his legal strategy and fighting with some other advisers who have counseled a more aggressive posture. The dispute has raged for at least a week, Trump advisers say, with the former president listening as various lawyers make their best arguments.
A Wednesday night court filing from Trump’s team was combative, with defense lawyers questioning the Justice Department’s truthfulness and motives. Kise, whose name was listed alongside other lawyers’ in previous filings over the past four weeks, did not sign that one — an absence that underscored the division among the lawyers. He remains part of the team and will continue assisting Trump in dealing with some of his other legal problems, said the people familiar with the conversations, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal private talks. But on the Mar-a-Lago issue, he is likely to have a less public role.
It is a pattern that has repeated itself since the National Archives and Records Administration first alerted Trump’s team 16 months ago that it was missing documents from his term as president — and strongly urged their return. Well before the May 11 grand jury subpoena, and the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago by the FBI, multiple sets of lawyers and advisers suggested that Trump simply comply with government requests to return the papers and, in particular, to hand over any documents marked classified.
Trump seems, at least for now, to be heeding advice from those who have indulged his desire to fight.
The approach could leave the former president on a collision course with the Justice Department, as he relies on a legal trust that includes three attorneys facing their own potential legal risks. The first, Christina Bobb, has told other Trump allies that she is willing to be interviewed by the Justice Department about her role in responding to the subpoena, according to people familiar with the conversations. Another, M. Evan Corcoran, has been counseled by colleagues to hire a criminal defense lawyer because of his response to the subpoena, people familiar with those conversations said, but so far has insisted that is not necessary. The third, longtime Trump adviser Boris Epshteyn, saw his phone taken as part of the Justice Department’s probe of Trump’s fake elector scheme, and appeared before a Georgia grand jury Thursday.
Bobb, Kise, Corcoran and Epshteyn either declined to comment for this story or did not respond to requests for comment. Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich replied to a detailed list of questions about their roles with a statement that did not directly answer the questions. “While the media wants to focus on gossip, the reality is these witch hunts are dividing and destroying our nation,” Budowich said. “And President Trump isn’t going to back down.”
Mar-a-Lago search appears focused on whether Trump, aides withheld items
Trying to find an ‘off-ramp’
Kise has worked for multiple elected officials in Florida and argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in his role as solicitor general. He has long been close to Susie Wiles, a Republican political operative from Florida who plays a key role in Trump’s orbit, and Brian Ballard, a high-powered Florida lobbyist who also is close to Trump.
After the search of Mar-a-Lago, in which FBI agents seized some 11,000 government documents, about 100 of them marked classified, Wiles and Ballard were among those who recommended Kise to help defend Trump in an investigation focused on the potential mishandling or destruction of government material.
Hired in late August with an upfront retainer, which people familiar with the matter said was paid by Trump’s Save America PAC, Kise told others he wanted to de-escalate the Trump team’s pugilistic approach to federal prosecutors, according to three people familiar with his comments.
Continuing to attack the Justice Department and the FBI, he argued, was likely to cause federal authorities to be more aggressive. Kise has suggested to other Trump advisers that the best solution would be to try to find an “off-ramp” with the Justice Department before a possible indictment or trial; he has said he thinks Trump can avoid criminal charges.
In private, those familiar with the conversations say, Kise has questioned the wisdom and experience of some of his colleagues, arguing that they do not have extensive experience with this type of litigation — and could face legal trouble themselves. He also argued privately that their counsel had deepened Trump’s problems and that they would have had fewer problems had he started representing Trump earlier in the summer. Whether those lawyers were, in fact, acting on specific instructions from their client, the former president, is not yet clear.8y
Trump is rushing to hire seasoned lawyers — but he keeps hearing 'No'
Kise’s influence on Trump’s team can be seen by comparing some of the court filings lodged by the team. A motion filed before he was hired, asking a judge to appoint a special master to review the seized documents, mixed political and legal arguments and characterized the court-approved FBI search as a “shockingly aggressive move.”
“President Donald J. Trump is the clear frontrunner in the 2024 Republican Presidential Primary and in the 2024 General Election, should he decide to run,” the filing read.
Later filings appeared more restrained, with fewer direct attacks on the Justice Department.
“As this Court correctly observed, a criminal investigation of this import — an investigation of a former President of the United States by the administration of his political rival — requires enhanced vigilance to ensure fairness, transparency, and maintenance of the public trust,” reads a court document signed by Kise.
Even as Kise has urged moderation, his rivals have pushed Trump to maintain an aggressive stance — in part because they believe combativeness plays well with supporters and could force welcome delays. Some of Trump’s other lawyers also have badmouthed Kise to the former president, saying he is not a team player.
Among Kise’s critics, according to three Trump advisers, is Epshteyn, a longtime Trump ally who worked on his inauguration and his 2020 campaign and has cleaved to Trump in the post-presidency, helping to push false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and attempt to overturn the results.
Epshteyn, a polarizing force in Trump’s orbit and a graduate of Georgetown Law School, has taken a leading role in hiring lawyers and developing the legal strategy for the Mar-a-Lago probe, even though he has little experience battling with the Justice Department or arguing in court. Some of Trump’s advisers and other lawyers think Epshteyn empowers some of the former president’s worst instincts and have argued for months to for his role to be reduced. But Trump has appreciated his loyalty, advisers to the former president say.
One potential test of Trump’s legal strategy was eliminated Thursday, when Judge Aileen M. Cannon overruled the special master she appointed, who had ordered Trump’s attorneys to state in court whether they believe FBI agents lied about the documents. Trump has said on social media and in interviews that FBI agents planted items when they searched Mar-a-Lago, and he has declared that he had declassified the materials he was keeping there. His attorneys have not directly echoed those claims in court, where they have ethical obligations to be truthful.
Special master Raymond J. Dearie’s order had threatened to put them in a legal bind until it was overruled by Cannon. If the lawyers had confirmed that the government’s inventory list is accurate — meaning that the documents were classified and that no evidence was planted — that would have exposed a gap between Trump’s public claims and the attorneys’ own assertions. But if they made statements not backed up by evidence, the attorneys would have exposed themselves to potential professional sanction.
Peril posed by a subpoena response
Kise was added to the team in part because Bobb and Corcoran were considered legally vulnerable on a different front. Together, they told the Justice Department that Corcoran had led a diligent review of Mar-a-Lago documents to respond to the May subpoena and had identified and handed over all classified records at the former president’s club.
The two attorneys met investigators there in June, giving them a taped-up file folder containing 38 documents collected in response to the subpoena.
In court documents, prosecutors have called that response “incomplete” and said they have collected evidence that “obstructive conduct” was involved with the failure to fully comply with the subpoena.
According to people familiar with the probe, Bobb signed a document swearing that she had been told that “a diligent search” was conducted of boxes of records shipped from the White House to Florida when Trump left office. The signed document said the file folder being handed over contained “all documents that are responsive to the subpoena.” Corcoran, the people said, then told the visiting federal officials that he had been advised that all of the records that were shipped to the club from the White House had been placed in the storage room — nowhere else — and that all available boxes had been searched in response to the subpoena.
Court documents describe the June meeting with Trump advisers and show that investigators obtained video surveillance at the club and conducted additional interviews with Trump staffers. Investigators then sought a search warrant from a judge, saying they had evidence there was still sensitive material at Mar-a-Lago and were concerned about whether it was secure. When agents searched, they found additional documents with classification markings in the storage room and Trump’s office, mixed in with thousands of other government papers, news clippings and other items.
The discovery solidified the legal peril facing Trump and his team. The Justice Department is far more likely to file criminal charges alleging that Trump illegally hoarded classified documents if they have clear evidence that he took steps to conceal or hide them in response to a grand jury subpoena demanding their return, legal experts said.
Trump hired Corcoran in April with no vetting, after being introduced to him on a single conference call, The Washington Post has reported. Corcoran was at the time representing former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon, who was charged with contempt of Congress for failing to respond to a congressional subpoena in the House’s investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Bannon, who was convicted at trial in July, was one of Corcoran’s earliest clients after he joined a small Baltimore law firm last year, ending a seven-year break from working as a lawyer. During that absence from the law, he worked for Fortress Investment Group, an investment management firm.
A former congressional staffer and the son of a former Illinois congressman, Corcoran spent eight years early in his career at the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. Lawyers who worked with him there said he was assigned primarily to handle local violent crimes. In 2000, he joined the esteemed D.C. firm Wiley Rein, where his caseload included insurance litigation involving the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in the 9/11 attacks.
He left Wiley Rein after 15 years amid financial and personal difficulties related to his pending divorce from his first wife, according to two people familiar with his departure. A Wiley Rein spokesperson declined to comment on Corcoran’s departure or his work for the firm.
Willing to cooperate
Bobb’s history with Trump goes back much further. A former lawyer in the Marine Corps, she worked as an executive secretary in the Department of Homeland Security while Trump was in office, handling classified documents that were needed for the department’s secretary to make policy decisions, said people who knew her there.
Bobb has told others close to Trump that she believes the certification she signed was accurate. She has hired her own lawyer, Tampa-based former prosecutor John Lauro, and has made it known to Trump allies that she is willing to cooperate and be interviewed by the Justice Department, people familiar with the situation said.
Asked last week whether she was negotiating to sit for an interview with prosecutors, Bobb declined to comment, saying: “I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to talk about it.”
After leaving DHS, Bobb was hired as a host for the pro-Trump One America News, starting in June 2020. Following the 2020 election, she volunteered her services to Trump’s legal team challenging the election results. Documents released through public records requests show that she exchanged emails with the president of the Arizona Senate regarding documents the Republican leader had requested of Rudy Giuliani, who was spearheading Trump’s election challenges.
An email obtained by The Post shows that Bobb also served as the note taker during a Dec. 12 call that focused on planning detailed logistics for “fake electors” to gather in states won by Biden and declare Trump the winner in those states. The email has been turned over to federal investigators exploring the fake-elector scheme.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Bobb huddled with Giuliani at the campaign’s informal headquarters at the Willard hotel in Washington as a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol, The Post previously reported.
After Trump left the White House, Bobb resumed full-time work at OAN, becoming one of the network’s most vocal on-air cheerleaders for a Republican-led effort to recount more than 2 million presidential ballots in Arizona’s largest county. She also founded a nonprofit group to raise money to fund the effort, using her on-air job to encourage viewers to contribute. And she began communicating about the effort, The Post has reported.
In March of this year, Bobb told viewers that she was leaving the network and would be doing legal work for Trump. Campaign finance records show she has been paid more than $67,000 by Trump’s Save America PAC since then. Since May, she has returned to the world of conservative broadcasting, covering Trump rallies as an on-air reporter for the pro-Trump Right Side Broadcasting Network.
Despite giving numerous interviews in the days immediately after the FBI search in which she was identified as a lawyer for Trump, Bobb told a fellow RSBN anchor during a Sept. 23 broadcast that she was not acting as a Trump attorney while serving as custodian of the records in responding to the subpoena. The difference is important: the Justice Department team investigating the handling of the documents would face few hurdles to compel her to testify if she had not been serving as Trump’s lawyer at the time.
“I think people were a little bit confused,” Bobb told her fellow anchor. “I am on President Trump’s legal team. I do work for him on election issues. I was never on the legal team handling this case, just to be clear on that. Which is why I came in as the custodian of records — because I wasn’t on that team.”
Isaac Arnsdorf, Devlin Barrett, Alice Crites, Amy Gardner and Nick Miroff contributed to this report. | 2022-09-30T18:19:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump’s legal team divided over how to handle Mar-a-Lago case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/30/trump-lawyers-kise-corcoran-bobb/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/30/trump-lawyers-kise-corcoran-bobb/ |
Migrants used as political pawns deserve more humanitarian aid
A screengrab shows migrants who were bused from Texas arriving at the Naval Observatory in D.C. on Sept. 15. (Marat Sadana/Reuters TV) (Staff/Reuters)
Without so much as a “Thanks but no thanks,” this week Congress ignored the request of D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and several of her House Democratic colleagues to provide $50 million in additional humanitarian assistance for migrants fleeing desperate situations in their home countries. Since April, thousands of these migrants have been bused or flown without notice to our nation’s capital, to New York City, to Chicago and to communities in Massachusetts. That cynical Republican governors in Texas, Arizona and Florida are behind the callous and outrageous scheme should have aroused the attention of a Democratic-led Congress. Instead, federal lawmakers left the emergency request for migrants in the waste can, even as their continuing resolution funding the federal government through Dec. 16 provides an additional $12.35 billion in emergency assistance for Ukraine.
About 10,000 migrants have been sent to D.C., where Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) declared the city has a public emergency on its hands. She has gone so far as to create a city government office to tap $10 million from a contingency fund to host the unexpected arrivals. The mayors of New York and Chicago say they face a similarly dire situation. “We need federal support, resources, communication and collaboration,” declared Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D). New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) called it “a humanitarian crisis created by human hands.”
Up north, Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) also found himself pressed into action by the descent of migrants flown to Martha’s Vineyard on the orders of Florida’s governor, the supreme political opportunist Ron DeSantis (R). Citing the Vineyard’s lack of resources to provide long-term care, Baker arranged for the arrivals to move voluntarily to a military base on Cape Cod. Boston, which has seen an uptick in asylum-seeking families over the summer, is facing similar issues. The city’s nonpartisan mayor, Michelle Wu, is trying to play host but has stressed the need for federal and state support.
Joining Norton and some 20 other members of Congress in the request for increased funding for asylum seekers was Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García (D-Ill.), who spoke of the political games being played by conservative governors even as people “will not receive the shelter, food and health-care services they need.” And Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) claimed pride in New York City being a haven for asylum seekers fleeing violence and persecution — but he warned that “the emergency infrastructure of sanctuary cities is being stretched thin.”
Their concerns are not surprising. What does appear out of nowhere, however, is a Democratic-led Congress’s detachment from problems of hungry and homeless migrants in our country.
And, sadly, congressional passivity is matched by the mildness with which Norton and the other Democrats seeking migrant assistance accepted the out-of-hand rejection.
Said Norton, “We are disappointed that the continuing resolution does not provide increased funding.” Echoed García, “I’m disappointed that supplemental funding to assist asylum seekers … has been dismissed.” From Espaillat: “I share my disappointment with my colleagues to learn that the [emergency migrant program] received no supplemental funding.”
“Disappointed”? How about a tad outraged?
The same continuing resolution that did not support $50 million in migrant assistance provided:
$2.5 billion to bolster recovery efforts following the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire in New Mexico.
$2 billion in block grants to help communities that experienced major natural disasters in 2021 and 2022.
$1 billion in low-income home emergency energy assistance ahead of the winter.
Let’s be clear. Those are worthy programs. The continuing resolution funding the federal government and keeping crucial services running is essential. Humanitarian aid to Ukraine is a must. The legislation also extends beneficial programs such as child-care services, nutrition programs, affordable care for America’s veterans, and relief funds for communities in crisis. But the emergency food and shelter humanitarian program for migrants needs supplemental funding, too. And it’s not forthcoming.
The White House said it is continuing to do “everything we can to support cities as Governor Abbott and Governor DeSantis intentionally create chaos and confusion with their cruel political stunts.”
Dear White House: Words won’t help. Cities, local agencies and migrants need money.
People being moved around the country shouldn’t find themselves kicked to the back of the bus when it comes to receiving lifesaving federal services.
Congress, there is no excuse for that. | 2022-09-30T18:19:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Migrants used as political pawns deserve more humanitarian aid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/migrants-bused-humanitarian-aid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/30/migrants-bused-humanitarian-aid/ |
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