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The 1835 treaty that led to the devastating Trail of Tears included a provision that the Cherokee should get a delegate seat in the House.
Kimberly Teehee speaks in front of the Cherokee Nation and U.S. flags after the announcement of her nomination as a delegate to the House, in Tahlequah, Okla., on Aug. 22, 2019. (Sue Ogrocki/AP)
The House Rules Committee, under leadership of Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) and Tom Cole (R-Okla.), a member of the Chickasaw Nation, plans to hold a hearing on the Cherokee delegate debate during the lame duck session after November’s election.
The other House delegates, such as Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D. C.) and Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands), represent regions in which no other representative serves in Congress promoting interests of those constituents.
Hoskin rejected the idea that there’s a partisan tilt to the tribe’s assertion of its delegate rights, noting their long-standing ties to Republicans like Cole, Mullin and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who is the ranking minority-party member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
For Hoskin and Teehee, a new Cherokee delegate would serve as a rare moment of pride from the Treaty of New Echota, which gave the Cherokee nation $5 million and land in present-day Oklahoma. Eventually thousands of U.S. soldiers forced the Cherokee west on a dangerous journey in which an estimated 10 percent to 25 percent died.
Teehee views this effort in the most personal of terms, claiming a long forgotten seat of power that came from an act of Congress that led to such horrors. | 2022-10-06T23:42:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After 187 years, the Cherokee Nation wants its seat in Congress - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/06/cherokee-delegate-seat-congress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/06/cherokee-delegate-seat-congress/ |
Crime is surging (in Fox News coverage)
Traffic on Sixth Avenue passes by advertisements featuring Fox News personalities, including Bret Baier, Martha MacCallum, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, on the front of the News Corp. building on March 13, 2019, in New York City. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Fox News contributor Gianno Caldwell caught up with Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) outside an elevator in the Capitol. His focus was simple: “We just want to talk about the crime crisis in America.” Nadler, who’d suggested that Caldwell contact his office, didn’t reply.
Perhaps Nadler was stymied by the framing. Which “crime crisis” is that, exactly? In Nadler’s hometown of New York City, murder and shooting incidents are down relative to last year, though violent crime in general is up. Last year, the city saw lower crime across the board than two or three decades ago, though, again, it’s now up relative to 2020. Is that what Caldwell meant? Or did he mean something broader?
If so, I’d be interested to know what numbers he’s looking at. Data released by the FBI on Wednesday suggested that violent crime nationally didn’t increase much in 2021 relative to 2020. That comports with recent figures from crime victimization data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), which indicated that reported violent crime was flat in 2021 and down from before the pandemic.
As I noted when those BJS numbers were released, discussion of crime in the United States is hampered by broadly inconsistent and uneven reporting of crime data. Some jurisdictions, like New York or Los Angeles (where violent crime is essentially flat, year-over-year) report data regularly. The national measure compiled by the FBI has seen declining participation (thanks in part to a change in what it collects) even as it operates at a substantial delay.
What’s left, then, is largely anecdotal. Stories of violent incidents, always catnip for newscasts, are used to portray a sense of crime that may or may not comport with reality. And Fox News has been very active in trying to portray exactly that sense.
In 2018 and 2019, Fox News mentioned crime about as often in its broadcasts as its primary competitors, CNN and MSNBC. Then in 2020 — with Donald Trump up for reelection and riots following racial justice protests — mentions briefly climbed.
But that was nothing compared with the surge of mentions in 2021 and 2022, after President Biden was inaugurated. Last year, and so far this year, Fox News has mentioned crime twice as often as its competitors on average. It has talked about crime more often than abortion in every month but one — May, when the draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade was released, not when it was actually overturned.
Fox has mentioned inflation more often than crime, but its competitors have also mentioned inflation at an increasing rate since the beginning of the year. On crime, Fox stands apart.
Americans don’t seem to be convinced that crime is the most important issue facing the country. Gallup polling shows that about 4 percent of Americans cite it as the most important issue, well below inflation and in line with abortion. In August, Republicans were no more likely to say that crime was the most important issue than were Americans overall.
Of course, “most important” and “important” are different things. People may say crime is a serious problem even if it isn’t the most important problem. Polling from YouGov conducted in August found that two-thirds of Americans thought there was a crime crisis in America — though at least half the country said the border, inflation and health care were also crises.
Republicans, a significant part of the Fox News audience, were more likely to say crime is a crisis, though 6 in 10 of Democrats said the same thing.
Again, crime is up over the past three years! The best available data, though, suggest violent crime isn’t up significantly since last year. In some places, in some categories, yes. But people also tend to overestimate both their own vulnerability to crime and the national level of crime. In August YouGov polling, people consistently viewed crime as a problem in the country, though not in their own communities.
The lack of data is an opportunity for those who might find it useful to suggest that crime is out of control. Though it’s hard to contextualize individual acts of criminality, it’s easy to cast those individual acts as representative of broader trends. Fox News and others in the conservative media were effective at portraying the protests during the summer of 2020 as incessantly violent and enormously damaging to a large number of major American cities over an extended period of time, even when that was easily disprovable. Now, with the midterms looming, Fox News is talking about crime more than ever.
Most Americans say there is a “crime crisis.” But what, exactly, are legislators like Nadler supposed to say about it in the absence of any understanding of what that “crisis” actually looks like? How do you counter an endless loop of criminal activity shown on television without knowing whether those crimes are anything more than sensationalism? | 2022-10-06T23:42:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Crime is surging (in Fox News coverage) - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/06/crime-is-surging-fox-news-coverage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/06/crime-is-surging-fox-news-coverage/ |
One charged, another sentenced for threatening election officials
Justice Department action signals an increasingly hostile environment as election day approaches
Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman stands for a portrait in Phoenix, Ariz., on Sept. 27, 2021. (Caitlin O’Hara for The Washington Post)
A Nebraska man was sentenced to 18 months in prison Thursday for online threats he made to the Colorado secretary of state, while in a separate action an Iowa man was arrested for threatening an official on the Maricopa County, Ariz., Board of Supervisors.
The two cases were brought by the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, which was set up last year “to ensure that all election workers are able to do their jobs free of harassment and intimidation.”
They reflect what watchdogs and public officials have described as the increasingly hostile atmosphere that emerged following the 2020 election and in advance of next month’s midterm elections.
Travis Ford, of Lincoln, was sentenced after pleading guilty to sending threats to Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat. The case was the first guilty plea obtained by the new federal task force. Prosecutors alleged that Ford made violent threats multiple times via an Instagram account.
The man charged with threats in Arizona was identified Thursday as Mark A. Rissi, 64, of Hiawatha, Iowa. He allegedly left a voice mail for Clint Hickman, chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, as an Arizona ballot review — ordered by the Republican-majority state Senate — was coming to close.
A majority of GOP nominees for the midterms deny Biden won the 2020 election
“You’re gonna die, you piece of [expletive]. We’re going to hang you. We’re going to hang you,” the indictment said.
Hickman, 57, expressed gratitude in an interview Thursday that an arrest had been made — but said more action was needed.
As board chairman during the 2020 election, he resisted efforts by Trump allies to prevent certification of the results in the county that helped deliver Trump’s loss.
In the days, months and years that followed, Hickman said, he and his colleagues on the board, along with county elections officials, have been flooded with threatening voice mails, emails and social media posts from Trump supporters.
On July 20, Hickman said, he met with two FBI agents and a Justice Department attorney, and said he recognized the chilling voice-mail message they cited in the case.
'We are in harm's way': Election officials fear for their personal safety amid threats, false claims
“The wheels of justice turn awfully slow, including when there’s quite possibly actionable threats to not just me, but to my family, to our co-workers, my colleagues, the recorder, and election staff, people that are just trying to do a job,” he said. “This has been going on a long time, and I know that there’s hundreds, if not thousands, of election officials that have received calls like this.”
“I’m gratified that something is finally happening,” Hickman said. But he called for leaders in Arizona and elsewhere to speak out against the increasing threats.
In August, Justice Department officials told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing that they had reviewed more than 1,000 hostile threats against election workers over the past year, leading to federal charges in five cases and one conviction.
Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite, who leads the task force, said at the time that the problem was becoming increasingly rampant across the country. He detailed graphically violent threats that have targeted election officials in Nevada, Michigan, Arizona and other states.
Sanchez reported from Phoenix. | 2022-10-06T23:51:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Travis Ford sentenced, Mark Rissi charged in separate election-threats cases - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/06/election-threats-hickman-ford-rissi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/06/election-threats-hickman-ford-rissi/ |
In Georgia, Republicans are stuck with a problematic Senate candidate they saw coming but decided they couldn’t stop
Ashley Parker
Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker speaks to workers at the Battle Lumber Company during a campaign event in Wadley, Ga., on Thursday. (Erik S Lesser/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
In early 2021, as football star Herschel Walker considered running for Senate, he approached some of Georgia’s top Republican operatives about advising his campaign. The operatives were warned about political vulnerabilities in Walker’s past — including allegations of violence against women — that were openly discussed in the state’s political circles, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Walker’s reaction to being confronted with the allegations was also troubling, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. When the consultants would ask the candidate about even incidents in the public record, he would often get simultaneously defensive and aggressive, accusing the questioner of being a Democratic plant or ally of Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the minority leader.
Those consultants passed on working with Walker, but he pressed ahead with his campaign. After all, Walker’s overwhelming name recognition in Georgia as a Heisman Trophy-winning football star and backing from former president Donald Trump instantly made him so formidable that state and national Republican leaders didn’t mount a serious challenge in the primary, despite concerns about Walker’s baggage.
Now, less than five weeks before the midterm elections, they’re stuck with him as those liabilities threaten to dominate the news and derail his campaign in a state widely viewed as a must-win for Republicans to retake the Senate.
On Monday, the Daily Beast reported that Walker paid for an abortion in 2009, citing documentation including a receipt, a check image and a get-well card. The Washington Post has not independently verified the allegations. As a candidate, Walker has supported an absolute ban on abortions, with no exception for rape, incest or the health of the mother. Walker’s campaign initially denied the report and promised to sue the next day, but no lawsuit has been filed.
“They keep telling me things like that, and it’s totally, totally untrue,” Walker said in an interview on Thursday with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. Walker added: “If that had happened, I would have said there’s nothing to be ashamed of there. People have done that — but I know nothing about it.”
For now, Republicans are publicly rallying around Walker as his campaign said online donations have skyrocketed. The National Republican Senatorial Committee and the well-resourced Senate Leadership Fund — a super PAC aligned with McConnell that has committed more than $39 million to back Walker — said they would keep supporting him on the airwaves. And Trump, who urged Walker to run in the first place, said he believes Walker’s denials and is widely expected to hold a rally for him, though a close adviser said plans haven’t been finalized.
“This guy is a better-than-even shot to win,” said Curt Anderson, a top strategist for the NRSC. “Herschel Walker has been called everything. Every name in the book. This is not a change in the race.”
More quietly, though, Republican strategists are taking a couple weeks to measure and evaluate the fallout. The impact could take several weeks to register in opinion surveys. Walker was already trailing incumbent Democrat Sen. Raphael G. Warnock in most public polls.
“Even the most staunch Republicans are rattled,” Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R-Ga.) said Wednesday night on CNN. “Every Republican knew that there was baggage out there, but the weight of that baggage is starting to feel a little closer to unbearable at this point.”
This account of Walker’s candidacy is based on interviews with 19 people involved at various times with the Walker campaign, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal matters. The Walker campaign did not respond to a detailed list of questions.
The buzz about Walker running for office in Georgia began even before the current Senate race was open. During the runoff campaigns for Georgia’s two Senate seats leading up to Jan. 5, 2021, Republican operatives were already discussing that if incumbent Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue lost, Walker could challenge Warnock in 2022.
Walker had been a repeat guest in the Trump White House as a member of the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, and he spoke at the 2020 Republican National Convention to vouch for Trump’s character. He also became a regular presence on Fox News as a contributor.
Republican operatives discussed Walker’s potential weaknesses, including his struggles with mental health, which Walker had acknowledged in a book, and a rumored abortion, according to Liz Mair, a GOP opposition researcher working on the runoffs. Mair said she warned others that the abortion rumor would plague Walker as a candidate, but people thought they could keep it hidden.
“Across the board, Republicans in the state knew about it and decided they didn’t care,” Mair said. “I don’t know if it was a moment of collective insanity when a bunch of people all said, ‘Seems like a genius plan.’ ”
In March 2021, Trump went public with an official statement urging Walker to run. “Wouldn’t it be fantastic if the legendary Herschel Walker ran for the United States Senate in Georgia?” Trump said. “He would be unstoppable, just like he was when he played for the Georgia Bulldogs, and in the NFL. He is also a GREAT person. Run Herschel, run!”
Walker’s football stardom made him a living legend in Georgia and overwhelmingly popular with Republican primary voters.
“He comes in with 100 percent name ID, which you just don’t have, and high good will,” said Brian Robinson, a former spokesman for former Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal (R) and a political commentator in the state. “He was my first ever hero. I have not lived in a home where there was not some imagery of Herschel displayed. He was like the Pope for us.”
Despite those advantages, Walker had trouble from the start attracting top political talent. Early on, he and his wife reached out to Nick Ayers, a former chief of staff to Vice President Mike Pence, who was not taking clients at the time. Walker talked to Austin Chambers, a former aide to Perdue and former president of the Republican State Leadership Committee, and Paul Bennecke, a former executive director of the Republican Governors Association, but they didn’t come to an agreement.
The campaign started working with Scott Farmer, who has advised Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), and Heath Garrett, an adviser to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and the late Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), then brought in a local team led by campaign manager Scott Paradise. A few months ago, amid widespread concerns that Republican Senate candidates were falling behind, Walker’s campaign brought on communications consultant Gail Gitcho and Timmy Teepell, a partner at Anderson’s firm, OnMessage Inc.
Before he announced, Walker was made aware by other Republicans about much of the opposition research that was likely to confront him, including the mental health struggles he described in his book and the domestic violence allegations. A person familiar with the vetting process said the alleged abortion reported this week did not surface in the early research, and it is not clear if Walker was directly asked about the rumor.
His family was involved in the early discussions, including his son Christian, who had at one point discussed taking a significant role in the campaign, and his current wife, Julie Blanchard. A Republican involved verified the recent claim by Walker’s son Christian that family members warned him against running. Christian Walker was treated as a constructive adviser early in the process and ultimately decided not to take a role in the campaign. Blanchard also initially resisted a run, though she came around as the candidate showed enthusiasm. Christian Walker did not respond to requests for comment.
Some advisers to McConnell were initially interested in an alternative to Walker, with particular concern about Walker’s documented record of domestic abuse allegations. In the summer of 2021, Republicans made efforts to warn Walker not to mount a campaign before the Associated Press published a report that he had threatened to kill his ex-wife and alarmed associates. McConnell adviser Josh Holmes publicly shared the AP story on Twitter at the time, commenting, “This is about as comprehensive a takedown as I’ve ever read. My lord.”
But challenging Walker in the primary — taking on a folk hero with Trump’s backing — looked futile. The state’s Republican governor, Kemp, stayed out of the Senate race. Kemp was already standing up to the former president in his own reelection, after crossing Trump by certifying Joe Biden’s win in the state.
Analysis: Herschel Walker and the GOP's declining demand for morality in leaders
Walker coasted to the nomination with 68 percent of the vote, overcoming attacks from the distant runner-up, Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, who said Walker’s history of violence was disqualifying.
“Nobody really saw him as beatable,” said Brendan Buck, a Republican consultant who grew up in Georgia. “If he was beatable, there are plenty of people who would love to be United States senators in the state of Georgia. But they all knew that he had the name ID, the general popularity among conservatives, and of course the Trump backing that made it an enormous hill to climb.”
The campaign has struggled to respond to reports since the primary about Walker’s unacknowledged children and, finally, the alleged abortion. Walker was not initially forthcoming with his own advisers about at least some of the out-of-wedlock children, and NRSC staff members did not know about them until they were publicly reported.
After the Daily Beast story about the abortion, Republican operatives discussed the wisdom of sticking with Walker, given the other possible paths to a majority and the concern that more scandals will emerge in the coming weeks. One of the worries is that the public focus on Walker could contaminate other races by distracting from the issues that Republicans want to be talking about in these final weeks.
“Look, this October surprise took place on the first business day of October. What comes next?” said one Republican involved in the Senate races.
The setback came just as Walker’s attacks were showing some success in wearing down Warnock’s favorability ratings. Now local media coverage has turned against Walker and he doesn’t have the money to offset that with his own ads, one Republican in Georgia said.
The campaign has been focused on trying to discredit the Daily Beast’s reporting and finding the sources of the damaging stories rather than dealing with the fallout, a person familiar with the matter said. The campaign team is growing especially impatient with Christian Walker, whose social media posts turning against his father blasted to his huge following are considered more damaging than the news articles themselves. But the campaign has been hamstrung, the person said, because Walker won’t criticize his son.
The person said the campaign is looking for ways to change the subject and land more attacks on Warnock.
Republicans are hoping that the latest revelations won’t fundamentally change the dynamics in the race, since voters were already aware of Walker’s self-described struggles with mental health, as well as unsavory moments from his past.
“I’m going to vote Herschel Walker,” said one Georgia-based Republican consultant. “I don’t care if he performed an abortion himself — I am going to vote for him.”
But Walker was already underperforming Kemp in polls and was at risk of losing educated, suburban, moderate Republicans and independents.
“Every dribble of new stuff between now and the election I think increases the pool who say, ‘Screw this, let’s vote for Brian Kemp and let’s not do the other race at all.’ Those people exist in Georgia,” said Erick Erickson, a conservative radio host based in Georgia. “Everybody is, ‘Are you surprised? Do you believe him? Do you not believe him?’ Does it even matter?”
Walker now stands out in a class of Republican Senate nominees that even McConnell has acknowledged present challenges to the party’s hopes of winning the upper chamber. The bombshell reports also recall past instances of candidates’ flaws upending races, such as Todd Akin’s “legitimate rape” remark that cost Republicans a Missouri Senate seat in 2012, and Trump’s recorded bragging about sexual assault reported by The Post in October 2016.
“I would say this is the Access Hollywood tape all over again, and the only slight difference is Warnock is not as unpopular as Hillary was, so the idea that this race is over because of this is pretty crazy,” a senior Republican official said. “The key part of that is Trump still won.”
Noted: First Proud Boys leader pleads guilty to Jan. 6 seditious conspiracy
11:21 PMThe latest: Cherokee Nation wants its seat in Congress
10:10 PMAnalysis: Crime is surging (in Fox News coverage) | 2022-10-06T23:51:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | GOP crisis in Herschel Walker race was nearly two years in the making - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/06/herschel-walker-senate-abortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/06/herschel-walker-senate-abortion/ |
(Peter Hermann/The Washington Post)
Thirty-seven fired D.C. police officers were reinstated between 2015 and 2021 and collectively received millions in back pay, according to a report released Thursday by the city auditor, who raised concerns about how law enforcement officers are disciplined in the nation’s capital.
The officers were terminated for allegations ranging from the use of derogatory language to assault and child abuse. They were reinstated an average of 8 years later, with the city awarding 36 of them a total of $14.3 million in back pay.
The report found it was relatively common in D.C. for a police officer to resume working on the force despite previous criminal or civil charges. In the 5 1/2 years studied by the auditor, an average of nine officers were terminated and six officers were reinstated each year.
After returning to the force, nine of the 37 officers were either the subject of a complaint or had some kind of new misconduct on their record, the auditor found. Six of the nine were still working at the D.C. police department during the audit; the others had retired or resigned.
“We have individuals on our police force whom a person in the street might not want carrying a gun on their behalf,” D.C. Auditor Kathy Patterson said. “We are trying to hire and retain and train the very best police force we can, and we are not quite there yet.”
Wilberto Flores, a D.C. police officer, was fired in 2011 after he was found guilty in criminal court for exposing his genitals to women in a parking lot — though a trial board recommended suspension instead, the auditor found. He was reinstated five years later, when the Office of Employee Appeals ruled that the police department did not have the authority to increase the penalty that the panel chose. The city paid him more than $362,000 in back pay, according to the auditor’s report.
Since then, Flores has had three instances of misconduct, including crashing a D.C. police vehicle, the auditor found. Efforts to reach Flores for comment were not successful Thursday.
Crystal Dunkins was reinstated on similar grounds, after she was arrested in 2006 for assault, child abuse and other related charges, the auditor found. She pleaded guilty to one charge in a deal with prosecutors, the auditor’s report says, though it does not specify the charge. Dunkins, who, according to the auditor, was paid more than $723,000 in compensation before retiring in 2019, could not be immediately reached Thursday.
The audit found that 32 of the officers were reinstated through arbitration — a process that allows third-party reviewers to decide whether termination was excessive punishment. The city council passed emergency legislation in 2020 that made it easier for the police chief to fire officers by removing the police union’s right to collective bargaining in discipline procedures. The police department has not used arbitration since.
In the audit, Patterson called for the city council to permanently outlaw arbitration. Both D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) and the D.C. police echoed that sentiment on Thursday, vowing to work toward implementing her recommendations.
“MPD is concerned about the reinstatement of any member terminated for misconduct and the impact on public safety and trust,” a department spokesperson said in a statement. “Recent legislation has addressed some of our long-standing concerns about ambiguous laws related to discipline and an arbitration system that has contributed to the return of unsuitable police officers.”
Mendelson said in a statement: “The most common reason for reinstatement was an arbitrator substituting his/her opinion for the Chief. And that’s a problem.”
In 2016, an arbitrator reinstated Jay Hong, an officer who was terminated in 2009 after he crashed his car into another vehicle and pleaded guilty to driving drunk.
Hong, who was given more than $290,000 in back pay, was still working as a D.C. police officer at the time of the audit. Efforts to reach Hong on Thursday were not successful.
The city’s police union, which sued and lost over the 2020 city council provision expanding the chief’s power to discipline officers, blamed the police department for “mountains of wrongdoing, incompetence, and outright failure” and slammed the auditor for her views on arbitration.
In 39 percent of cases, the audit found that a police officer was reinstated primarily because of the D.C. police department’s failure to meet deadlines. Nine officers were rehired largely because of the police department’s failure to provide sufficient evidence in the initial case, the audit said.
“The DC Auditor seems to be jumping on the ‘Anti-Police’ bandwagon and engaging in an effort to eliminate transparency and accountability for decisions made by the Chief of Police,” the union said in a statement. “This completely biased report with its overly broad conclusions is just another political swipe at police officers and their rights.” | 2022-10-07T01:18:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Audit: D.C. police fired for misconduct often got jobs back - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/06/dc-police-fired-reinstated-backpay/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/06/dc-police-fired-reinstated-backpay/ |
Police work at the scene where multiple people were stabbed in front of a Strip casino in Las Vegas, Thursday (Rachel Aston/Las Vegas Review-Journal via AP)
At least two people were killed and half a dozen injured after a man went on a stabbing rampage Thursday near a casino in Las Vegas, police said.
Las Vegas police received a report of a stabbing at 11:42 a.m. Officers arriving at the scene “quickly identified the suspect” and took him into custody “without further incident,” law enforcement said in a statement. The arrest occurred within a “matter of minutes” after the stabbings at 3100 block of South Las Vegas Boulevard, Clark County Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said at an afternoon news conference.
The eight victims included one who was pronounced dead at the scene and another who was pronounced dead at University Medical Center, a hospital a few miles from where the incident occured. Of the six people injured, three are in critical condition, the police said. The victims included both tourists and locals, Lombardo said.
Official’s DNA linked to Las Vegas reporter’s stabbing, police say
“It’s very difficult in one-off events such as this to prevent it from happening without any intelligence that it may occur,” Lombardo said.
The suspect is a man who appears to be in his early 30s and is probably not a local resident, law enforcement said. Police officers were not able to immediately determine the suspect’s motives, but the stabbing appears to have been unprovoked, James LaRochelle, a senior Las Vegas police official, told reporters. | 2022-10-07T01:57:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Las Vegas Strip stabbing leaves at least 2 dead, suspect in custody - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/06/las-vegas-strip-stabbing-suspect/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/06/las-vegas-strip-stabbing-suspect/ |
The awkward visit was justified as necessary to boost ties. Now OPEC is slashing oil production, which will send gas prices up.
President Biden fist-bumps Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, on July 15. Now that OPEC Plus countries have announced cuts in oil production, critics are arguing anew that Biden's visit was a mistake. (Bandar Aljaloud/AP)
U.S. officials now are left grappling with how to respond to a potential price spike that could help finance Russia’s war in Ukraine, compound the major challenges facing the American and European economies, and give Republicans a powerful new argument on inflation.
National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said Biden’s advisers had all agreed to the trip over the summer. “There was consensus across the President’s senior national security team on the importance of this trip to advance U.S. national security interests,” she said in a statement.
Biden’s top aides on Middle East and energy, Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein, pushed for the trip as a means to strengthen the relationship and improve Washington’s ability to project influence in the Middle East at a time when oil-rich states were exploring ties with Moscow and Beijing, according to U.S. officials and congressional aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. policy.
Administration officials had long been sharply divided on how to treat the oil-rich autocracy. Those favoring a cold-shoulder approach pointed to Saudi Arabia’s unpopular war in Yemen, Riyadh’s poor human rights record and the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi as reasons to overhaul the relationship.
Biden heads to Saudi Arabia amid discomfort and criticism
Many officials in senior roles at the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development also said they felt they had room to maneuver, given the United States’ growth as an oil-producing energy superpower. Creating a clean break with former president Donald Trump’s remarkably close rapport with the kingdom also had broad appeal among Biden’s political appointees.
Some U.S. officials said concerns about the Saudi trip were shared by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, even though the top diplomat ultimately supported and participated in the visit.
McGurk and Hochstein’s support for the trip began to gain favor in the White House in September 2021, as the price of oil rose and resentment in the Gulf led the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to rebuff repeated U.S. requests to increase oil output, according to senior officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter. The decisive moment for the push to draw closer to the Saudis came when Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, sending energy prices soaring and turning high gas costs, already a domestic political liability for Biden, into a geopolitical setback.
Some Democrats, already skeptical of the U.S.-Saudi relationship, seized on the OPEC Plus decision to criticize the trip.
“I think it’s time for a wholesale reevaluation of the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate foreign relations subcommittee on the Middle East, told CNBC.
One Democratic congressional aide close to administration officials, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. policy, said: “This trip was hotly debated inside the administration, and I don’t know how one could argue now that it wasn’t a mistake.”
White House officials have strongly denied that the goal of the trip was to spur Saudi oil production. U.S. officials who favor the U.S.-Saudi relationship said critics misunderstood the objectives of the visit and overestimated Riyadh’s ability to reduce gas prices for average Americans. They also emphasized that Saudi Arabia is pumping 11.1 million barrels per day, a rate the country hadn’t sustained in the past.
But the OPEC Plus decision means that increased production will come to an end sooner than U.S. officials hoped.
Energy analysts also say Saudi Arabia faced financial pressures to cut production, since the price of oil fell close to $80 per barrel for about two weeks last month. U.S. officials argued to Saudi counterparts that the risks of letting the price fall below that point were minimal, but the Saudis would not budge, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. Saudi officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The trip’s defenders also said it was justifiable because of the other objectives of the visit, which included bolstering a truce in the long-grinding civil war in Yemen. Aid groups say the truce, which was first agreed to in April, reduced violence as much as 60 percent. However, the warring sides recently failed to extend the six-month cease-fire, and U.S. officials now fear a “return to war,” Tim Lenderking, the U.S. special envoy for Yemen, told reporters Wednesday.
On the trip, U.S. officials also worked to open Saudi airspace to flights serving Israel, and they pressed the United Arab Emirates to stop the construction of a Chinese military base — an effort that is ongoing.
Even the staunchest defenders of Saudi Arabia concede that the timing of the production cut was a major blow to the United States, and that it came despite the strenuous objections of U.S. diplomats who pressed their counterparts through the early hours of Wednesday morning to delay the decision.
Biden recommits U.S. to global alliances, ends support for Saudi-led war in Yemen in first major foreign policy speech
Biden officials across a wide section of the administration — including the Energy Department, State Department and the National Economic Council — raced Thursday to draw up policy responses to the announcement. No obvious solutions are apparent. Energy officials have begun looking at a potential ban on American fuel exports, though such a measure would require the administration to abandon European allies who are dependent on U.S.-produced natural gas.
White House officials have also been exploring the possibility of easing sanctions on Venezuela to supplement some of the oil lost by OPEC’s cut to production. That is a long shot, however: The United States believes Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro needs to engage with the Venezuelan opposition before any sanctions are lifted.
Sullivan and National Economic Council Director Brian Deese said in a statement Wednesday that they will consult with Congress on additional mechanisms “to reduce OPEC’s control over energy prices” — suggesting that the U.S. policymakers could be interested in repealing a long-standing exemption to federal antitrust law that allows the consortium to effectively coordinate on prices. That measure, however, would require congressional approval and faces industry resistance, strongly reducing its likelihood of being implemented.
Yasmeen Abutaleb contributed to this report. | 2022-10-07T02:06:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden Saudi trip faces new scrutiny after OPEC oil cut - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/06/biden-saudi-oil-trip-mbs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/06/biden-saudi-oil-trip-mbs/ |
This image from video provided by the Department of Defense and released on Feb. 3, 2022, shows the compound before a raid where Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, leader of the Islamic State Group, died in Syria's northwestern Idlib province. (Department of Defense via AP/file) (AP)
According to U.S. Central Command, American forces conducted an airstrike in northern Syria on Thursday that targeted and killed Abu-Hashum al-Umawi, a deputy wali, or governor, in Syria, as well as “another senior ISIS official associated with him,” whom the military did not name.
“This strike will degrade ISIS’s ability to destabilize the region and strike at our forces and partners,” Army Gen. Michael Erik Kurilla, who leads U.S. Central Command, said in a statement announcing the raid and al-Umawi’s death. “Our forces remain in the region to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS.”
The raids are the latest in a series of recent operations aimed at killing influential ISIS figures. Over the summer, U.S. military forces killed Hani Ahmed al-Kurdi, a senior ISIS bombmaker known as the “Wali of Raqqa.” That followed the killing of al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, ISIS’s then-leader, who is believed to have rigged his hideout in Atma, Syria, with explosives that were detonated when the structure was raided.
U.S. Central Command’s Thursday announcements about the most recent ISIS raids varied slightly, however, in the certainty with which they proclaimed the operations had avoided causing civilian harm.
“No U.S. forces were injured or killed during the operation, no civilians were killed or wounded, and there was no loss or damage to U.S. equipment,” the press release announcing the al-Shammri killing stated. | 2022-10-07T02:15:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. conducts back-to-back raids in Syria, killing key ISIS operatives - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/06/us-raid-isis-syria/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/06/us-raid-isis-syria/ |
Ask Amy: My son won’t speak to me after I wouldn’t give him money again
Dear Amy: My son has been in trouble with the law for the majority of his life. I have never turned my back on him and at one point even paid an attorney $20,000 to keep him from spending his life in jail. This was a one-shot deal, and I told him that at the time.
His response was quick and vicious. I continue to be hurt and stunned by his remarks. He ended the conversation by telling me not to show up at a planned family function, and then he hung up on me. We haven’t spoken since.
I am so disappointed in him; primarily that he is still breaking the law and secondly for being an ungrateful brat. I am tempted to remove him from my will and just move on — but this is my child. I don’t know what to do.
Sad: Your son does not seem to have adequate control over his own life — do not let him control yours.
You saved his bacon once; now it’s his turn to take full responsibility for consequences flowing from his own choices. If removing him from your will helps you to feel in control of your role in his life, then — do that.
Yes, he does sound like an ungrateful brat, but you should not expect gratitude unless or until he bottoms out, runs out of options, and faces an actual and proportional reckoning. He will always be your son. You don’t need to like him, but I hope you will be able to continue to love him — even from a distance.
Recently my grandson (age 16) made a perfectly rational decision that his father, my eldest son, disagreed with. My son responded by telling my grandson that he could not live with him anymore. This child was then forced to have to leave school and all his friends in his senior year to move hours away to live with his mother.
He went from being a happy and gifted student to being an academically troubled, depressed young man. I let my son know that I disagreed with his decision, and he stopped talking to me. He has since ignored all communication.
Troubled: You should make whatever choices you want to make regarding your will.
I do suggest that you might want to use some assets before your death (if possible) to support your grandson’s growth and positive choices regarding his own future. If you can afford to, you might consider offering to pay his first semester’s tuition at his local community college.
Grateful: I hope your employers and customers show their gratitude to you. | 2022-10-07T04:12:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: My son won’t speak to me after I wouldn’t give him money again - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/07/ask-amy-son-help-money/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/07/ask-amy-son-help-money/ |
Protests in Iran often carry with them a grim sense of fatalism. Uprisings in the recent past that captured global attention were crushed by a state well-versed in the instruments of coercion. There were bloody crackdowns, arrests and disappearances, and online censorship.
When anger roils the streets — kindled by economic woes, political despair and a cascade of other pent-up frustrations in a nation chafing under four decades of theocratic dictatorship — it is muffled by the iron hand of a regime that brooks little dissent.
The unrest of the past few weeks may constitute something different. The death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman who perished in the custody of Iran’s morality piece, has sparked an astonishing youth revolt across the country. City after city has seen protests by students and other ordinary Iranians denouncing the draconian restrictions on what women can wear in public. Videos of crowds chanting “women, life, freedom!” proliferate on social media. So, too, remarkably, do calls for “death to the dictator” — a direct, strident denunciation of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The protests have been met with predictable brutality. As my colleagues in The Washington Post’s Visual Forensics team documented, Iranian authorities have fired indiscriminately on demonstrations in numerous instances. According to rights groups, more than 100 people have been killed so far by security forces. The deaths of two more teenage girls at the hands of local authorities have inflamed passions further. More than a thousand people have been arrested, including dozens of local journalists.
Iran’s protesters seem undaunted. According to researchers, demand for virtual private network apps to circumnavigate the regime’s cyber controls has spiked by 3,000 percent within the country, while demonstrations against the regime and the wearing of the headscarf continue.
“Despite the violence by security forces — and the daily blackouts — protesters are still in the streets. To some, the crackdown has only made them more determined,” my colleagues wrote, pointing to a conversation with an interviewee in the Iranian capital. “The protester in Tehran recalled a scene from a recent protest, where he and his compatriots dragged trash cans into the street and set them on fire.
“As security forces approached on motorcycles, they began to chant: ‘We didn’t have our people killed in order to compromise.’”
The Islamic Republic emerged in 1979 in the wake of a mass protest movement against an autocratic monarchy. Many of its ruling elites are holdovers from that revolutionary era and reflect a status quo that, while entrenched, is also calcifying, seemingly incapable of change. The toll of sanctions, economic mismanagement and years of political overreach in Iran’s neighborhood now dog the regime, whose rhetoric of revolution and resistance to Western imperialists is proving more hollow than ever.
“Something feels like it’s coming undone, as though the project of the Islamic Republic is running out of steam and the black wave unleashed by the 1979 revolution is ebbing, exhausted by recurrent protests, building on top of one another since 2009, and reaching new heights since 2017,” Kim Ghattas writes in the Atlantic. She points to mounting anti-Iranian sentiment building in countries once dominated by Tehran’s proxies, such as Lebanon and Iraq.
Abroad, the ill-will toward the Iranian regime is at its highest level in many years. Solidarity protests with Iranian women have taken place in cities across the world. European parliamentarians have cut their hair in symbolic solidarity. The Biden administration imposed new sanctions on senior Iranian officials involved with the shutdowns on internet access and the assaults on protesters.
This week, Khamenei cast the unrest as “riots” and blamed it on foreign agitators. That age-old scapegoating can hardly assuage a revolt that is being driven by young people who seem fed up with the stultifying, stifling controls placed on them by an aging crop of ideologues. In an interview with the Iranian economic daily Donyaye Eqtesad, sociologist Maghsoud Farastkhah argued that the protesters, who are as online as their contemporaries in other parts of the world, want a normal life that is yet out of reach for them because of their country’s closed political system.
“Generation Z sees itself in a dystopian atmosphere,” Farastkhah said.
The level of fury at the status quo marks a departure from earlier rounds of protests. Consider the uprising in 2009 which followed a presidential election that was widely viewed as rigged in favor of the theocratic regime’s favored candidate. It lionized political actors who were still, in some sense, part of the establishment. “The discourse of that movement was a reformist discourse, it was not calling for a full break from the framework of the Islamic Republic,” Mohammad Ali Kadivar, an Iran scholar at Boston College, told the Los Angeles Times. “Women were present in 2009. … Women’s issues were I think articulated in 2009. But they didn’t have the leading role that they have now.”
Their leading role has crystallized something all the more radical — a more overt rejection of the entire Islamic Republic, built on years of growing disenchantment. “It was with Amini’s death in custody that we heard a certain raw truth enunciated in protest slogans and social media commentary: the idea that liberty for all remained elusive unless there was liberty for women,” wrote Nahid Siamdoust in New Lines Magazine.
The rawness of the rage makes it hard to predict where the protests will go. Analysts see the movement as operating without real leadership and with little coordination or influence from the vast and politicized Iranian diaspora. “One of the most astonishing aspects of the current movement is that it is overwhelmingly composed of young Iranians under age twenty-five who identify themselves as more than just opponents of Islamist ideology — they are also avowedly alien to the mindset of the older generation, including anti-regime politicians,” wrote Mehdi Khalaji of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Their anger may reflect a social explosion more so than a political movement. But that makes it no less potent. “A revolutionary turn does not necessarily depend on the number of active protesters; it arises from a dead-end situation,” wrote Iran-based journalist Mahzad Elyassi. “Following Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech in which he called the protests ‘riots’ and blamed a foreign plot for the unrest, the obstruction has never been clearer.” | 2022-10-07T05:18:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Gen Z rebellion against Iran’s regime - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/gen-z-rebellion-against-irans-regime/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/gen-z-rebellion-against-irans-regime/ |
Ukraine live briefing: Biden warns of nuclear ‘Armageddon’ as pressure on Putin rises
A Ukrainian soldier looks inside a Russian tank along a recaptured road in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine on Oct. 6. (Heidi Levine/For The Washington Post)
President Biden said Thursday that the risk of nuclear “Armageddon” is at its highest since the Cuban missile crisis, warning that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “not joking” about the potential use of nuclear weapons as his army struggles in Ukraine.
Putin may find himself without an “off-ramp,” which could prompt Moscow to deploy weapons of mass destruction, Biden said. (Administration officials have said there is no indication Russia is moving its nuclear weapons in preparation for an imminent strike.) The military setbacks in Ukraine have heightened internal tensions in Russia, with powerful nationalist figures openly criticizing a close Putin ally.
Biden’s blunt assessment of the risk of a nuclear threat largely echoes the position of his administration, which has sent private warnings to Moscow against using a nuclear weapon. Biden said Thursday night that even the use of a smaller tactical weapon could threaten the world. “I don’t [think] there is any such a thing as the ability to easily use a tactical weapon and not end up with Armageddon,” he said.
A top Russian official has voiced disagreement directly to Putin in recent weeks, according to U.S. intelligence deemed significant enough that it was included in President Biden’s daily intelligence briefing. The identity of the official is unclear, though it was included in Biden’s briefing. Questions over Putin’s leadership have been simmering in Moscow of late, even breaking into open criticism of top military officials.
E.U. leaders are meeting in Prague on Friday to discuss the Ukraine war and associated challenges in Europe, including energy shortages heading into winter and rising inflation. Zelensky said in his evening address Thursday that he would address the E.U. leaders. Friday’s talks follow the inaugural meeting of the newly formed European Political Community on Thursday and OPEC Plus’s announcement that it would cut oil production starting in November.
Zelensky had a busy day of diplomacy on Thursday, meeting in Kyiv with Samantha Power, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Grossi said the IAEA recognizes the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as a “Ukrainian facility,” after Putin decreed control over it earlier in the week.
Russia’s Thursday missile strikes on residential facilities in Zaporizhzhia killed 11 people, Ukraine’s state emergency service said early Friday. Rescue operations are ongoing.
Russian forces in Ukraine’s Donetsk region blew up a dam, flooding a nearby area, the Ukrainian General Staff said on Facebook Thursday evening. Strikes in another occupied area, Zaporizhzhia, destroyed an apartment block and killed at least seven people, the regional governor, Oleksandr Starukh, wrote Thursday on Telegram.
Ukrainian forces have reclaimed more than 500 square kilometers of territory in Kherson, Zelensky said Thursday. Still, Ukrainian officials have observed a more strategic and orderly Russian retreat in Kherson than in other regions, signaling what is expected to be a hard fight ahead.
Two Russian nationals fleeing President Vladimir Putin’s call-up of military reservists landed by boat on a remote Alaskan island in the Bering Sea and are seeking asylum in the United States, U.S. officials said Thursday. The unusual incident highlights the lengths some Russians have gone to avoid mobilization, with an estimated 200,000 Russians having fled since the call-up.
A Swedish investigation found evidence of sabotage on the Nord Stream pipelines, which convey gas from Russia to Europe and were damaged in explosions last week. The Kremlin rejected the findings.
Taiwan is looking to build a backup satellite internet network in the wake of the war in Ukraine, its digital minister told The Post. Taiwan is set to begin accepting proposals from service providers for satellite internet as soon as this month. Ukraine has used Starlink, through Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, as a backup internet provider since Russia’s invasion.
Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian opposition politician who is being held in a detention center over comments he made in the United States opposing the war, now faces a new charge of treason. He writes opinion columns for The Washington Post.
Macron’s European Political Community brings in skeptical Ukraine and U.K.: French President Emmanuel Macron’s vision of creating a “European Political Community,” that matches the European Union and an outer circle of like-minded democracies, was realized Thursday, at least symbolically, report Beatriz Rios, Rick Noack and Marisa Bellack. Leaders from the 27 E.U. member states joined 17 non-E.U. leaders at the first gathering of a forum that includes representatives from most countries on the continent. (Russia and Belarus were excluded.)
No significant decisions came out of the meeting, which discussed the Russian invasion of Ukraine and was addressed by Zelensky. But the presence of so many countries was, in many ways, the message, officials said. | 2022-10-07T06:50:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia-Ukraine war latest updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ |
Hong Kong schools tread cautiously in push to make students love China
By Theodora Yu
Students march during a flag-raising ceremony at Hong Kong’s Scientia Secondary School on Sept. 16, 2022. (Theodora Yu/TWP)
HONG KONG — On a September morning at Scientia Secondary School in Hong Kong, the opening bugle call of the Chinese national anthem silenced student chatter in the assembly hall. Eyes ahead, five uniformed students marched onstage to raise and salute the red and gold national flag.
The somber attitude continued as teachers moved to the day’s main purpose: to mark the anniversary of the 1931 Mukden incident, when Japanese soldiers dynamited a Chinese railway as a pretext to invade the country. Faces hidden by masks, the students watched a black-and-white music video, PowerPoint presentation and news clippings, and remained standing for a minute of silence.
Such displays of patriotic allegiance and memorials for dark times in China’s history were rare in many Hong Kong schools only two years ago. After a national security law passed by Beijing in June 2020 put a swift end to pro-democracy protests, China’s leadership has turned its attention to fostering a new generation of Hong Kongers that is loyal to the nation and its Chinese Communist Party rulers. President Xi Jinping, who is expected to extend his rule at a meeting of top officials this month, has said that Beijing’s plan includes “special love and care” for the city’s youths.
China marks Hong Kong handover anniversary, as doubts hang over city
The changes have contributed to a wave of emigration, with some citing fears of their children being “brainwashed.” Interviews with 11 teachers and parents reveal concern that Hong Kongers will no longer be taught to critically examine their society and political system, even as many say the government is treading cautiously so far, adopting a less heavy-handed approach than elsewhere in China.
Although the program in some respects has mirrored a patriotic education campaign conducted in mainland Chinese schools since the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, the emerging approach in Hong Kong focuses less on Marxist and Maoist ideology and more on fostering a sense of Chinese cultural and historical affinity. The goal is to instill a sense of national belonging among the city’s youths and banish the distinct Hong Kong identity — accelerating a campaign that was a motivating factor for students like Joshua Wong to protest Beijing’s tightening grip.
In an interview after the flag-raising ceremony, Wong Ching-yung, Scientia’s principal, said that Hong Kong’s status as “special administrative region” requires a unique approach to national education.
Hong Kongers, he said, are less familiar with Communist Party history and would not accept an overly formal or overbearing approach, which could “easily lead to resentment, especially among teenagers, who are rebellious by nature.” Instead, Wong recommends telling stories that help students connect emotionally with mainland China.
Hong Kong officials, too, have indicated a gradualist approach. At a legislative council meeting in July, Education Secretary Christine Choi Yuk-lin said there is no rush when building a system of “emotion, recognition and values,” adding that “it takes 10 years to nurture a tree, but 100 years to train a man.”
Many schools use supposedly enjoyable activities — such as a competition for students to promote national security by using colorful artwork and uplifting messages — to deliver the pointed message about guarding against security threats. Government-published picture books emphasizing the legitimacy of the security law and police enforcement were given to kindergartens and primary schools as gifts. A patriotic education center, opened in July, holds screenings and talks to teach schoolchildren about the security law and the value of defending the state.
Hong Kong therapists guilty of sedition over cartoons of sheep and wolves
Zheng Wang, the director of the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Seton Hall University, said the government is “testing the waters” with promoting patriotic education and trying to “make their approach more suitable to Hong Kong society.”
The means may differ. But the goal, Wang said, is the same: to transform Hong Kong students into people loyal to China.
Despite the restrained approach, schools have been instructed by the government to infuse national security education into every subject, including physics and mathematics, such as by relaying examples of Chinese contributions to the field. They were “strongly advised” by the Education Bureau to organize events such as screenings of patriotic films or commemorating significant dates including the establishment of the party and the People’s Liberation Army.
Similar introduction of Beijing’s narrative is apparent in Hong Kong’s latest textbooks, which may avoid Marxist theory but are full of messages about Hong Kong’s prosperity being inextricably tied to the rest of China. One for the mandatory Citizenship and Social Development course, which replaced critical thinking-focused Liberal Studies, dedicates chapters to China’s 14th five-year plan, a 2003 economic agreement to boost mainland-Hong Kong trade and the Greater Bay Area plan to bind the territory with 10 mainland cities. Worksheet questions analyzed speeches of government officials, state media news excerpts, and discussed “how to increase the youth’s sense of belonging” to the Greater Bay Area. Instead of mainland China, the term “my country” is frequently used in one textbook.
Speaking in July on the 25th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China from British rule, President Xi said young people must “cultivate a sense of national pride.” His speech was later printed into booklets and distributed to schools.
Some teachers have resigned over the campaign. One, Katherine Lo, told The Washington Post that the new requirements forced teachers to present a whitewashed version of events, and she called that a violation of their professional ethics.
Because parts of the new program of education are not open for discussion, schools have lost a “free learning atmosphere,” said Lo, a liberal studies teacher who left her job this year. “There is no longer a reason for me to be a teacher here,” she said.
The Education Bureau has rewritten textbooks to say Hong Kong was never a colony and staged interschool quiz competitions on Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the territory’s mini-constitution, to which Beijing annexed its strict national security legislation.
One teacher of the Beijing-engineered citizenship and social development course, which was previously known as liberal studies, said the new syllabus omitted the discussion of local social problems that had previously inspired students to take an interest in current affairs. Instead, it spoon-feeds students dry accounts of Chinese law and the Politburo Standing Committee, which are “very abstract for the students,” said the teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of security concerns.
But the teacher still sees room to teach critical thinking, using worksheets, field trips or discussions outside of the required content. “Teachers will put in effort to filter messages and find ways not to make students suffer too much,” the teacher said.
For some parents, even a watered-down version of mainland patriotic education is too much. Elaine Lam left Hong Kong for Britain with her 6-year-old son in December because she feared “brainwashing” in schools. The trigger was when her son came home and said that he and the family were “not Hong Kongers,” after his kindergarten teacher had said the only appropriate term was “Hong Kong Chinese, according to official guidelines.”
“What makes me feel helpless is how [the Chinese government] has the only say. No one else is allowed to say anything different,” she said.
But Alvin Chan, a father of a 1-year-old, has chosen to stay in Hong Kong with his family. Born and raised in the colonial era, Chan, 41, said there is still room for his son to learn critical thinking independently in a restrictive educational environment — much as he did as he devoured history books and comics in his student years.
For now, he remains hopeful, although he acknowledges that this may be a “coping mechanism.”
He also signals resignation to the situation. “If there was an easier path to take, who wouldn’t choose that?” he said. “But in reality, there isn’t one.”
Shepherd reported from Taipei, Taiwan. | 2022-10-07T07:11:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hong Kong schools tread cautiously in push to make students love China - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/hong-kong-schools-education-china/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/hong-kong-schools-education-china/ |
Ukraine live briefing: Biden warns of nuclear ‘Armageddon’ as pressure on P...
Beatriz Rios
Germany's Chancellor Olaf Scholz speaks with the media as he arrives for a meeting of the European Political Community at Prague Castle on Thursday. (Petr David Josek/AP)
BRUSSELS — The mood in European diplomatic circles this week could be summed up in two words: “Really, Germany?”
After years of listening to German government lectures on austerity, and a summer when some turned down their air conditioning in part to help correct a Germany-driven reliance on Russian natural gas, E.U. leaders, officials and diplomats were flummoxed over Germany’s $200-billion plan to protect its residents and companies from high energy prices.
Diplomats accuse Germany of taking a go-it-alone approach and worry that Berlin’s debt-financed spending spree will worsen inflation, exacerbate the rich-poor divide in Europe and unfairly advantage German companies in a way that clashes with the spirit of the E.U.’s common market.
Germany has defended its measures as fair and proportionate — while also opposing proposals for E.U.-wide price caps or joint borrowing. If any country is to blame, German politicians have suggested, it’s France, whose failing nuclear power plants have added pressure to the European energy grid.
The acrimony is expected to continue Friday at an informal summit in Prague, where E.U. leaders will focus on the energy crisis, including measures to control prices and concerns about the recent sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines carrying gas from Russia to Europe.
More than a dozen countries among the E.U.’s 27 members have called for a broad cap on the price of natural gas.
Ahead of the summit, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said she supported consideration of temporary price limits “that would demonstrate that the E.U. is not ready to pay whatever price for gas,” but she also cautioned that “without a common European solution, we seriously risk fragmentation.”
The German announcement appeared to catch the rest of Europe by surprise — and immediately raised eyebrows.
Outgoing Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi — credited for holding the euro zone together in his previous job as head of the European Central Bank — took Germany to task, saying, “we can’t divide ourselves according to our fiscal room for maneuver.”
Similar criticism came from France and Spain, while Hungarian leader Viktor Orban called it “the beginning of cannibalism in the E.U.” in a news conference.
Two powerful E.U. commissioners from France and Italy echoed those points in a joint opinion article published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and other European newspapers on Monday. Thierry Breton, commissioner for the internal market, and Paolo Gentiloni, commissioner for economy, wrote that Germany’s plan posed “a lot of questions.” They called for financial solidarity within the E.U., suggesting that the bloc might turn to the same tool — joint borrowing — that it used in the pandemic.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has defended Germany’s subsidies and pushed back against both a bloc-wide price cap and additional joint debt.
Germany’s plan is a “very balanced, very clever, very decisive package that serves to keep prices down and tolerable for as long as these challenges exist,” he said at a Tuesday news conference.
He further argued that Germany’s move was in line with what other countries have been doing. “The measures we are taking are not unique but are also being taken elsewhere and rightly so,” he said, pointing to neighboring France.
Paris has said it won’t allow natural gas and electricity prices for households to increase more than 15 percent in 2023. Those price caps, though, are expected to cost about $12 billion if special levies on energy companies are taken into account, far less than what Germany may spend, even when calculated per capita.
Meanwhile, less wealthy E.U. countries lack the same means to shield consumers.
On the question of joint borrowing, Scholz pointed to the E.U.’s pandemic recovery fund. “We have a huge program totaling 750 billion euros, most of which has not yet been used, but can be particularly effective right now,” he said.
He also argued that an E.U.-wide price cap would make it more likely that Europe loses out to China and others in the competition for liquefied natural gas.
Germany’s newspapers are firmly following the chancellor’s lead and reading them, there’s a sense that Europe’s energy predicament is France’s fault.
“Macron is taking our electricity — and we foot the bill,” mused conservative weekly Focus, summarizing a widespread sentiment.
About half of the French nuclear power plants are currently under maintenance, which has deprived France of its title of Europe’s largest energy exporter and required it to import electricity from Germany.
“But it seems to be more of a technical, managerial planning failure, as opposed to a political one,” like in Germany, said Elisabetta Cornago, a Brussels-based researcher at the Center for European Reform.
For many Germans, it’s an emotional issue. The country in 2011 decided to exit nuclear energy production and was supposed to disconnect its last reactor by the end of this year. But when German Economy Minister Robert Habeck — a key supporter of that nuclear exit — recently had to announce a delay, he blamed France. Two German nuclear power plants will likely need to run until next spring to compensate for the French production woes, he said.
Another source of German frustration with their neighbor has been its opposition to a natural gas pipeline project between Spain and France via the Pyrenees. The project had been dormant for years. But the Germans, Spanish and Portuguese now view the pipeline as a critical link between LNG terminals in southwestern Europe and central European customers such as Germany.
French officials have argued that existing pipelines between the two countries 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 said.
As he met with European leaders in Prague on Thursday, he took another barely veiled dig at Germany’s insistence to exit nuclear energy even as it struggles to find alternative energy sources.
Rather than another pipeline between Spain and France, he said, Europe needs a strategy for renewables — and for nuclear energy.
Noack reported from Paris, Brady from Berlin and Ríos from Prague. | 2022-10-07T08:30:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Germany’s energy crisis plan criticized as E.U. leaders meet - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/eu-energy-crisis-germany-criticism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/eu-energy-crisis-germany-criticism/ |
Sydney posts wettest year on record — and it’s only October
More than 86 inches of rain have fallen in Sydney in just over nine months, with more rain set to come this week.
People view the flooded Windsor Bridge along the Hawkesbury River in the suburb of Windsor on July 4 in Sydney. (Jenny Evans/Getty Images)
Sydney clinched its wettest year on record Thursday as downpours threatened to bring more flooding in a region that has been drenched repeatedly in 2022.
The latest deluge pushed Sydney’s annual precipitation past its previous record of 86.4 inches — or 2,194.6 mm — set in 1950, with three months to spare. Experts predict a rainy rest of the year because of the continuation of La Niña, an ocean-atmosphere pattern that tends to increase rainfall locally.
In an average year, Sydney’s most populous city receives 47.8 inches (1,213.4 mm) of rain.
Experts say climate change has played a role in the record rainfall as Sydney’s average temperature has increased by 2.7 degrees (1.5 degrees Celsius) over the past century.
“That means we can hold a hell of a lot more water in the atmosphere, meaning we’re more likely to see heavy rainfall events,” the Bureau of Meteorology’s Gabrielle Woodhouse told reporters.
Rainfall has been above average in all but two months (June and August) in 2022.
Its annual rainfall received a huge boost early in the year amid an exceptionally stormy stretch in late February and early March. It led to devastating floods in parts of New South Wales and Queensland in which at least 20 people died and thousands were forced to evacuate. Sydney saw its rainiest 16-day period on record — 24 inches (609.6 mm) from Feb. 22 to March 9.
Before and after images show record-breaking flooding in Australia
During that same period, Brisbane saw 26 inches (660.4 mm) in just three days, while the small rural town of Doon Doon, 70 miles to the south, recorded a staggering 41 inches in 48 hours.
Serious flooding also occurred in Sydney in early July, with heavy rainfall once again engulfing eastern parts of New South Wales. Some spots observed more than 28 inches (700 mm) in just five days, while Sydney registered 8.6 inches (200 mm). Notable flooding also occurred in late September, when a 5-year-old boy was killed in the central-west portion of New South Wales after the car he was traveling in was swept away by floodwater, according to the Guardian.
During the flooding in July, officials in Australia also pointed to abnormally warm ocean waters as a cause of the heavy rainfall. Water temperatures climbed to 73.4 degrees (23 Celsius), providing extra moisture to the already potent winter storm.
“Australia has long been a continent of droughts and flooding rains; having said that, projections indicate that climate change will supercharge this variability,” said Chiara Holgate in a July email. Holgate is a researcher with the Australian National University and ARC Center of Excellence for Climate Extremes. “Observations show there’s been an increase in the intensity of heavy rainfall events in Australia, including the short-duration events, which can be associated with flash flooding.”
Several natural climate factors have also played a role in this being Sydney’s wettest year on record. La Niña conditions, a periodic cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean, are linked to increased precipitation in eastern Australia. An associated cooling of the western Indian Ocean is also connected to increased rainfall to southern Australia. Lastly, a positive Southern Annular Mode causes easterly winds to bring moist air from the Tasman Sea toward eastern Australia, which falls as rain.
Sydney has seen some rain in 13 of the past 15 days — which is unusual since September and October are typically the city’s two driest months, when just 2.7 inches (68.1 mm) and 3.0 inches (76.7 mm) of rain are expected, respectively.
Isolated spots around Sydney have measured up to 2.5 inches (63 mm), about a month’s worth of rainfall, in just the past 24 hours, according to figures from Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology. Locations farther to the south, closer to the coastal city of Wollongong, have tallied more than 3.93 inches (100 mm).
Most rivers in New South Wales remain below flood stage, though additional rainfall is expected over the coming days, with Sydney forecast to receive 2.6 to 3.3 inches (65 to 85 mm) over the weekend.
On Thursday, officials feared more flooding as catchments in the state’s central west threatened to overflow.
A slew of flood watches and warnings have been issued for rivers in New South Wales, including along the Lachlan River, which is Australia’s fourth-largest.
Michael Miller reported from Sydney. | 2022-10-07T09:05:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sydney posts wettest year on record — and it’s only October - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/06/sydney-australia-record-rain-precipitation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/06/sydney-australia-record-rain-precipitation/ |
Oil and gas industry’s top lobbying arm considers another climate policy
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! As a reminder, the newsletter won't publish on Friday since Congress is out of town. We'll be back in your inbox on Monday. But first:
American Petroleum Institute weighs clean fuel standard after backing carbon tax
The American Petroleum Institute will hold a workshop Thursday on the merits of a clean fuel standard, a policy aimed at slashing carbon emissions from transportation, the nation's largest source of planet-warming pollution, according to a draft meeting agenda obtained by The Climate 202.
The meeting, which was confirmed by two people familiar with the matter, signals that the oil and gas industry’s top lobbying arm is edging closer to supporting another climate policy after endorsing a tax on carbon emissions in March 2021.
Representatives for automakers, ethanol producers and other industry interests are expected to attend the workshop at a hotel in downtown Washington, according to the two individuals familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly.
“Transportation is the largest U.S. economic sector contributing to [greenhouse gas] emissions and reducing these emissions is essential to achieving the ambitions of the Paris Agreement,” the draft agenda says.
“We will work to propose an outline of a policy concept (and ultimately federal legislation) that can reduce GHG emissions from the transportation sector relatively rapidly and in a cost-effective manner for the end user and society,” the document adds.
Asked for comment, an API spokesman said in an email: “API regularly engages with a broad range of stakeholders on emissions reduction pathways across the economy.”
The spokesman did not respond to follow-up questions about whether the draft agenda was up-to-date or whether the trade group would support legislation creating a national clean fuel standard.
California and Oregon have already implemented a clean fuel standard, which requires fuel suppliers to reduce the carbon intensity of their products, including gasoline and diesel. In May, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) signed legislation to establish a clean fuel standard on Jan. 1, 2023, after suffering several defeats in his years-long quest to enact the policy.
The API meeting marks the second time in a month that the policy has appeared to gain currency in Washington. In September, an initiative representing electric utilities, biofuel producers, environmentalists, electric vehicle charging companies and other interests began calling on the next Congress to pass legislation creating a national clean fuel standard.
Members of the DriveClean initiative, which launched Sept. 19, include the electric vehicle start-up Rivian, the Renewable Fuels Association and the New York League of Conservation Voters. The initiative has hired Lot Sixteen, a bipartisan lobbying and communications firm, to help with outreach.
Transportation is the largest source of climate pollution in the country, accounting for about 27 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, according to data from the Environmental Protection Agency. Gas- and diesel-powered cars and trucks account for the bulk of those emissions.
It's unclear which specific companies plan to attend Wednesday's meeting. A General Motors spokeswoman said the automaker did not plan to send any representatives, while a Ford spokeswoman declined to comment.
Spokespeople for POET, the world's largest producer of biofuels, and the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade association representing automakers, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reasons for some skepticism
In March, when API threw its weight behind a carbon tax, many analysts and lawmakers doubted the sincerity of the move. They noted that it is highly unlikely Congress would pass a carbon tax, “allowing the trade group to appear to support climate action while risking little,” as our colleague Steven Mufson reported at the time.
And when Inslee, the Washington governor, tried unsuccessfully to enact a clean fuel standard in 2020, he faced pushback from a group funded by the oil industry, as Maxine previously reported for E&E News.
On its website, Affordable Fuel Washington portrays itself as a grass-roots group of citizens who worry that the policy will raise prices at the pump. But the group is bankrolled by the Western States Petroleum Association, a powerful trade association that represents the oil and gas industry in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
Biden views damage from Hurricane Ian, says DeSantis has ‘done a good job’
President Biden traveled to Florida on Wednesday to survey the damage from Hurricane Ian, which is shaping up to be the deadliest storm to pound the state since 1935, The Washington Post's Danielle Paquette and Meryl Kornfield report.
While state authorities have documented 72 deaths so far, county sheriffs have reported dozens more, pushing the total to at least 103. That makes Ian more fatal than Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Slightly more than half of Ian's victims drowned, underscoring what experts call a frequently overlooked reality: Water usually kills more people than wind.
Biden told residents of Fort Myers, Fla., that the federal government “will be here until it’s finished,” The Post's John Wagner and Mariana Alfaro report. He added that 100 percent of the bill for debris removal, search and rescue, sheltering, feeding, and other emergency measures will be covered for 60 days, twice as long as an initial disaster declaration.
The trip brought Biden face-to-face with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a potential 2024 White House contender who has sparred with the president on several issues, including immigration. But the two have appeared conciliatory since Ian hit the state, with both promising to put politics aside and deliver relief for hurricane-stricken residents.
“We appreciate the team effort,” DeSantis said at a news briefing Wednesday alongside Republican Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida and Federal Emergency Management Agency Administrator Deanne Criswell.
“What the governor has done is pretty remarkable so far,” Biden told reporters. “The biggest thing the governor has done … [is] recognized there’s this thing called global warming. The world is changing.”
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries said Wednesday that it will reduce oil production by 2 million barrels per day, in a rebuke to President Biden that could drive up gasoline prices worldwide, worsen the risk of a global recession and bolster Russia in its war in Ukraine, The Post's Jeff Stein, John Hudson and Rachel Lerman report.
The move by the coalition of oil-producing nations, led by Russia and Saudi Arabia, could lead to higher gas prices in the United States, potentially imperiling the Biden administration’s determination to lower prices at the pump ahead of the midterm elections.
The decision prompted a blistering response from the White House, which had waged a last-minute push to persuade Middle East allies not to dramatically cut production ahead of the meeting, according to senior administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy. That effort, involving high-level discussions with foreign counterparts, was seen internally as a long shot.
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) on Wednesday seized on the OPEC decision as further evidence that Congress should pass his controversial legislation to speed up the permitting process for energy projects, which was pulled from a government funding bill last month.
“This announcement should serve to further motivate my colleagues in Congress to come to the table to pass comprehensive, bipartisan permitting reform to lessen our dependence on these foreign nations,” Manchin said in a statement.
IRS, Podesta seek public input on clean energy tax credits
The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department on Wednesday announced they are soliciting public input on implementing roughly $270 billion worth of clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act.
John Podesta, a senior climate adviser to President Biden who recently joined the White House to help implement the climate law, said the IRS and Treasury are especially interested in receiving feedback from families, workers and residents of environmental justice communities.
“We’re moving fast on implementation so taxpayers can have certainty so we can fully unlock the potential of this historic law to combat climate change and strengthen U.S. energy security,” Podesta said on a Wednesday call with reporters.
Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said on the call that the agency plans to release highly anticipated guidance on the clean energy tax credits in the coming months, although some information about the electric vehicle incentives may be available as soon as the end of the year.
To take advantage of the tax credits in the climate law, a company must meet certain prevailing wage and apprenticeship requirements. However, these labor rules are slated to take effect 60 days after the IRS and Treasury issue guidance on the rules. If a company begins construction on a project before then, it will be deemed to have met the labor rules.
Florida’s waterways contaminated post-Ian, posing health risks — Kasha Patel for The Post
E.U. agrees on price cap for Russian oil over Ukraine war — Samuel Petrequin for the Associated Press
U.S. plans to ease Venezuela sanctions, enabling Chevron to pump oil — Patricia Garip, Vivian Salama, and Kejal Vyas for the Wall Street Journal
Florida leaders rejected major climate laws. Now they’re seeking storm aid. — Christopher Flavelle and Jonathan Weisman for the New York Times
The U.S. Air Force has released its first plan to reduce its carbon footprint and adapt to climate change — Lucas Thompson for NBC News
Leave your exes and your emissions where they belong: in the past.
— Net Zero Taylor Swift (@NetZeroTSwift) October 5, 2022 | 2022-10-07T09:05:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Oil and gas industry’s top lobbying arm considers another climate policy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/06/american-petroleum-institute-considers-another-climate-policy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/06/american-petroleum-institute-considers-another-climate-policy/ |
“There are places that I don’t know if we are going to be able to get to,” said Tim Persico, executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee
Storm clouds are seen over the U.S. Capitol dome on July 12. (Tom Brenner/For the Washington Post )
Top Democratic strategists have concluded that they lack the funds needed to fully contest all of their potentially winnable House races this cycle, people familiar with the situation said, forcing tough decisions about where to spend on television ads as Republican outside groups flood the airwaves.
Democrats are not favored by nonpartisan analysts to hold the House this cycle, due to the narrow majority they now enjoy and the historical head winds that the president’s party typically faces in his first midterm elections. But some Democrats feel their chances of winning have risen in recent months, given a summer spike in Democratic enthusiasm after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the ruling establishing a constitutional right right to abortion and a recent uptick in President Biden’s approval rating.
David Wasserman, a political handicapper at the Cook Political Report, estimated Thursday that after the decennial redistricting process, Republicans are currently favored to win 211 seats, while Democrats are favored to win 194 seats. That means Democrats would need to win 24 of the remaining 30 seats to retain control of the House.
But $124 million of Democratic spending is being done by candidates, who spend their money where it is raised, meaning the ad buying is not always as strategic as national Democrats would like, compared to just $56 million by Republican candidates.
The outside group advantage results primarily from Republicans having more ultrarich donors. Contributions of $1 million or more, from groups or major individual donors, account for $48.2 million, or about 49 percent of the fundraising for House Majority PAC, the Democrats’ principal outside group for House races, through the end of August. By contrast, contributions of $1 million or more account for $152 million, or about 80 percent, of CLF’s revenue through Sept. 12, according to Federal Election Commission records.
As a result, some long-held Democratic seats are no longer being contested by national Democratic groups at comparable levels to Republican groups, sometimes because new district lines were drawn, including multiple seats in Florida currently held by Democrats and the seat held by Rep. Tom O’Halleran (D-Ariz.).
Retirements have also been an issue for Democrats. Based on current reservations, Democrats are not contesting parts of a district that overlaps areas previously represented by Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.), who lost a primary this year for another nearby seat. Democrats are also projected to be dramatically outspent in the seats held by retiring Reps. Ann Kirkpatrick (D-Ariz.) and Ron Kind (D-Wis.), two places where Republicans predict pickups.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has made the Republican candidate in Kind’s district, Derrick Van Orden, a top priority, even though he attended the Jan. 6, 2021, protests outside the U.S. Capitol, which led to a pro-Trump mob storming the building. An HMP reservation targeting Van Orden for the last two weeks of the campaign, after multiple weeks off the air, could still be pulled.
“He would probably lose a meaningful back and forth about his record and who he is,” Persico said.
In Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, where Democratic Rep. Jared Golden is seeking reelection, Republicans have reserved more than $3 million more in television ads than Democrats for the period between Labor Day and the end of the campaign, according to AdImpact. HMP has no reservations for two weeks in October in the district, compared to about $1 million in CLF spending planned for the same period.
“There has been a significant amount of donor enthusiasm behind taking back the House and ending Democratic Party rule, and I believe Democratic megadonors see the writing on the wall,” Conston said.
Democrats also worry they will not have funds to fully compete in some of the California seats occupied by Republicans, as well as the seat held by Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-Wash.), who lost her recent primary election to Joe Kent, a Republican who has denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election and denounced the legal treatment of Jan. 6 rioters as “banana republic stuff.”
“I think we can win that. It’s a little bit of a reach. I wish I had more money,” Persico said.
Isaac Stanley-Becker and Tyler Pager contributed to this report. | 2022-10-07T09:27:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats sound alarms about funding in battle for House majority - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/house-democrats-fundraising/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/house-democrats-fundraising/ |
Belarusian human rights activist Ales Bialiatski speaks after he and the Belarusian human rights organization Vjasna were awarded the 2020 Right Livelihood Award during the 2020 awarding ceremony in Stockholm on Dec. 3, 2020. (Anders Wiklund/TT News Agency/AFP/Getty Images)
The 2022 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to imprisoned Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski and two human rights organizations — one Russian and the other Ukrainian — in what the Norwegian Nobel committee said was an effort to promote “a vision of peace and fraternity between nations” amid the war in Ukraine.
In addition to Bialiatski, who has been detained in Belarus without trial since 2020, the two organizations sharing this year’s prize are the Russian human rights group Memorial and Ukraine’s Center for Civil Liberties.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee focused on organizations documenting war crimes and human rights abuses. It is the second consecutive year that a Russian entity was celebrated with the prize.
“They have for many years promoted the right to criticize power and protect the fundamental rights of citizens,” Norwegian Nobel Committee Chair Berit Reiss-Andersen said in announcing the winners. “We are in the midst of a war and we are talking about two authoritarian regimes and one nation fighting a war and we would like to highlight the importance of civil society.”
When asked if the prize was directed against Russian President Vladimir Putin, who turned 70 today, Reiss-Andersen replied that the prize was for people and entities and not directed against anyone.
“The attention that Mr. Putin has drawn on himself that is relevant in this context is the way civil society and human rights advocates are being suppressed, and that’s what we would like to address with this prize,” she said.
Russia has a long history of jailing dissidents, going back to Soviet and Czarist times. Among the most prominent were Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who portrayed daily life in Soviet ruler Josef Stalin’s vast system of prison camps and won the 1970 Nobel Prize for Literature; and jailed dissident, peace activist and human rights advocate Andrei Sakharov, who won the 1975 Nobel Peace Prize, described by the Nobel Committee as “a spokesman for the conscience of mankind.”
The other Russian Nobel Peace Laureates were the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev for his role in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful end and newspaper editor Dmitry Muratov last year, who in March was forced to shut down one of the country’s last independent newspapers, Novaya Gazeta due to the restrictions imposed on it during the war in Ukraine.
The prize is a gold medal and an award of $1.14 million dollars.
It was set up by the will of Swedish businessman and inventor Alfred Nobel in 1895 with the aim of celebrating the people or organizations working for “fraternity between nations,” reducing standing armies and promoting “peace congresses.” Over the years, those criteria have been interpreted to also include the promotion of human rights.
Nobel also endowed prizes in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature, which were awarded over the last week.
Unlike the other prizes, which are selected and awarded in Sweden, Nobel chose a Norwegian committee, selected by that country’s parliament, to administer the peace prize. | 2022-10-07T09:53:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Ales Bialiatski and Russian and Ukrainian human rights organizations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/nobel-peace-prize-2022-russia-belarus-ukraine-memorial-bialiatski/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/nobel-peace-prize-2022-russia-belarus-ukraine-memorial-bialiatski/ |
Thousands may die needlessly, some experts fear
Mary Beth Gahan
An empty vaccination site in Lewisville, Tex., on Sept. 29. Fewer than 8 million Americans — or less than 3 percent of those eligible — have received the new bivalent booster shots despite the entreaties of health experts. (Nitashia Johnson for The Washington Post)
Joe Gonzales, 37, said he knows there’s still a risk of contracting covid — he believes he was infected with the virus this summer. But after getting two doses of the vaccine, the Flower Mound, Tex., man doesn’t understand why he needs the third and fourth “booster” shots urged by federal health officials.
“And then the president is saying things like, ‘The pandemic is over,’ ” Gonzales said of President Biden’s comments during a recent “60 Minutes” interview. “That doesn’t help” motivate him to get a shot.
“We have got to explain the value of these vaccines for the American people … [and] why this is probably the single most important health intervention they can make right now to protect themselves and their health for the next three to six months,” Ashish Jha, the White House’s coronavirus coordinator, said in an interview.
Federal officials have spent the past year urging Americans to get booster shots to bolster their protection against the coronavirus, which wanes over time. In early September, they rushed out the first new shots — reformulated to target the still-dominant omicron variants — to give people time to get inoculated before a likely cold weather surge, when respiratory infections increase as people head indoors, and recommended that all Americans 12 and older receive a third and fourth dose of vaccine.
But the campaigns have lagged badly. Only about 105 million U.S. adults — roughly 40 percent — have received the third shot of vaccine initially offered a year ago, according to federal data, a far lower rate than countries like the United Kingdom, where more than 70 percent of adults have gotten a third dose. That figure is also well behind the 200 million U.S. adults who completed their primary series of shots.
Early data shows that fewer than 12 million Americans — or about 4 percent of those eligible — have received the new bivalent booster shots. A third of adults say they eventually plan to get those shots, according to KFF polling.
The lagging booster rate is also blamed as a major contributor to the high covid mortality rate last winter and the continuing deaths of more than 400 Americans on average per day linked to the virus, according to The Washington Post’s coronavirus tracker. An analysis by the Commonwealth Fund, an independent research group, forecasts that more than 75,000 lives might be needlessly lost if the fall booster campaign comes up short.
“Obviously, there’s been a lot of missteps [in the government’s response],” he said. “But to me, this is the most important one: When you have people who were willing to get two shots, and then you lose them to not get a third, or a fourth, or fifth, it’s a travesty. These are people who are willing to get vaccinated.”
The competing sound bites confused and alienated many Americans, and intimidated officials, according to Topol. “CDC was afraid to boost the booster message, thinking that that would diminish confidence in [the] primary series vaccines and give the anti-vax groups fodder,” he said.
“Suggesting that federal agencies’ review of the boosters had some significant impact on their uptake is bizarre and wrong,” said the CDC’s Kevin Griffis. “We know the reasons why people don’t get boosted … It’s not because experts spent a few weeks reviewing the data” but because many vaccinated Americans believe that two shots are sufficient.
“And what we saw was a lot of Americans get very sick and die in the omicron wave because they were unboosted,” he said. “ … There’s more and more data out [now] that shows that when people get their boosters, they’re far less likely to end up in the hospital, far less likely to die.”
Biden officials also have been calling on GOP leaders to better highlight the continuing risks of the virus, citing persistent gaps in vaccinations between Democrats and Republicans. “A lot of [the booster lag] is because of political divisiveness,” Anthony S. Fauci, the government’s top infectious-disease expert, said in an interview Tuesday. “I mean, there’s no secret that red states are under-vaccinated and blue states have a high level of vaccination.”
And mindful that more than 150 million Americans every year receive a flu shot, officials have amped up efforts to link the two vaccines. “I really believe this is why God gave us two arms — one for the flu shot and the other one for the covid shot,” Jha said at a recent briefing.
“Working on the vaccine development early on in the pandemic, I felt … I should just step away and go on tour and just convince people to get the vaccine,” she added. “And I wish I could do that here with the boosters as well.”
Diamond reported from Washington, Gahan from Dallas and Johnson from Fox Point, Wis. Kayla Ruble in Royal Oak, Mich., and Jimmy Magahern in Phoenix contributed to this report. | 2022-10-07T10:58:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Covid booster rates lag ahead of projected winter surge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/07/covid-booster-winter-surge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/07/covid-booster-winter-surge/ |
Long lines have formed outside Social Security offices in Houston and other cities, seen here in July, as coronavirus restrictions kept visitors waiting outside in the heat. (Mark Felix for The Washington Post)
Even as prolonged office closures caused applications for disability benefits to plunge, the sluggish response now of the agency meant to assist the country’s most at-risk citizens has led to delays in processing claims for those who manage to file them, and exhausting waits outside government offices around the country for those trying to. Nearly 20 percent of field offices have had 40 or more customers in line on multiple days when the doors opened, according to data Social Security recently provided to Congress.
From April, when the 1,230 local offices began to reopen, through mid-August, the number of people helped by Social Security staff members had dropped by 46 percent from the 43 million visitors served annually before the coronavirus struck, according to data Social Security officials shared with national disability advocates. Visits have edged up in recent weeks but remain well below pre-pandemic levels, according to internal agency data and congressional offices.
With its offices closed, Social Security disability claimants have few places to turn
Both the decline in claims since the pandemic and the lines of needy Americans reflect that some Social Security offices are now operating at a fraction of their former strength. The April reopenings were only lightly publicized because Social Security leaders feared large crowds, according to congressional staffers, former officials and advocates informed of the reasoning. Of the 27,000 employees serving the public, 45 percent continue to work from home on a given weekday. Service is limited partially or fully to appointments, a challenge for people with mental illnesses and other conditions.
From April through August, a period that featured record heat across the nation, more than 40people waited outside of field offices on at least 90 of 102 days in offices in Houston, El Paso, the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Pasadena and Austin in Texas; Las Vegas and Henderson in Nevada; the Twin Cities; Gwinnett, Ga.; and Orlando and four other cities in Florida, according to data Social Security provided to the House Ways and Means Committee.
The alternatives pushed by the agency have provided little relief. During the first week in September, 21 percent of disabled claimants waited 29 to 45 days for a phone appointment and another 24 percent more than 45 days, according to internal data obtained by The Washington Post. Phone service, after hitting bottom earlier this year when the agency rolled out a new system to modernize its aging communications, is still troubled by extensive waits on hold that often end up in dropped calls. From April to July, wait times for all claimants to speak with an agent, the only statistic available, averaged 33 minutes, up from 20 minutes in fiscal year 2019, the data shows. And field office staff members answered just 66 percent of calls from the start of the fiscal year through August, down from 76 percent in fiscal 2019.
While the offices were closed, the number of SSI awards fell 27 percent in 2021 on top of dropping 18 percent in 2020, agency data shows, with awards to workers who became disabled falling 15 percent last year atop an 11 percent drop in 2020. A modest number have filed new disability applications since the offices reopened, according to internal agency data and outside research.
In July, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote to Kijakazi insisting that she launch a national campaign to spur applications from low-income families with hundreds of thousands of disabled children who are eligible for benefits. Hinkle wrote that Social Security officials have expanded their social media presence to increase awareness and “conduct extensive outreach for people who face barriers accessing our services.”
“[I]n some locations people have been standing outside in the heat for hours at a time, without the guarantee of getting their needs met,” wrote Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) and the committee’s top Republican, Rep. Kevin Brady (Tex.).
The field offices are also confronting staff departures and struggling to attract and keep new hires. The agency lost close to 4,000 employees during the pandemic, Hinkle wrote, a 7 percent drop, about three-quarters of them from local field offices, teleservice phone centers and processing centers. New hires are coming, but Hinkle stressed that years of declining budgets and staff are affecting service. In his Sept. 8 letter asking Congress for more funding, Jeff Nesbit, the agency’s deputy director for communications, cited “disastrous” repercussions without it.
Kijakazi, named acting commissioner by President Biden 15 months ago, was plucked from a role as Social Security’s deputy commissioner for retirement and disability policy into one managing an organization of 56,000 employees. Biden has not named a deputy commissioner or nominated a permanent leader. On Sept. 27, 15 Senate Democrats and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) urged President Biden in a letter to nominate officials to both positions, citing poor morale among the workforce and a need for “accountable leadership” that would “reassure the public of SSA’s commitment to supporting the vulnerable populations that rely on its programs.”
“I’m like, ‘Do you think I would be up here with a 10-day-old baby if you had sent me this information?’” she said after emerging from the office with no answers. “Do these people even want to answer to the public?” | 2022-10-07T10:59:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Social Security system still failing disabled and poor Americans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/social-security-pandemic-failures/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/social-security-pandemic-failures/ |
Before the Beatles played their last official concert in San Francisco in 1966, they sat down to dinner and doodled on a tablecloth
Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr and John Lennon of the Beatles arrive by plane at San Francisco International Airport on Aug. 29, 1966, before their performance at Candlestick Park. (AP)
After the Beatles played San Francisco’s Candlestick Park in 1966, fans hung around to pick up mementos — tickets stubs, an amplifier cord and even cigarette butts from the stage. It turned out to be the band’s final official concert, imbuing those keepsakes with added meaning.
Joe Vilardi, the owner of a catering company in San Francisco, got something more unusual than a cigarette butt. That night, he served the band their preconcert meal — roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, a stuffed baked potato, salad and a French pastry, which the band “devoured” over a white tablecloth they splattered with gravy, the San Francisco Chronicle reported at the time. On the tablecloth, they also drew “doodles of psychedelic persuasion” and signed the impromptu artwork, according to the Chronicle.
Vilardi and his catering company laid claim to the tablecloth and hung it in the window of his business’s headquarters. For about six days it remained there — an attraction that drew crowds, the Chronicle reported — until someone broke into his display window and made off with the cloth. It was seemingly lost forever.
But in a twist of events, Vilardi’s surviving family members say the tablecloth was returned to them out of the blue last year — and on Friday, the piece will be available in a public auction online. It is estimated to be worth between $15,000 and $25,000, according to Bonhams, the London-based auction house.
The tablecloth features a sketch by John Lennon of a “hairy creature on a bike next to a series of wheels,” according to Bonhams. Ringo Starr and George Harrison signed their names, while “Paul McCartney” is spelled out in bubble letters near the words “did not lay a hand on this table.” The tablecloth also features sketched portraits by folk singer Joan Baez, who joined the band for dinner, the auction house wrote.
For Michael Vilardi, Joe Vilardi’s grandson, the tablecloth was the stuff of family legend — a story he frequently heard from his grandfather at holiday dinners. Michael Vilardi was only 6 when the tablecloth was stolen, and he had little recollection of that day, save for a vague memory of sweeping up the glass from his grandfather’s broken window.
The tablecloth’s fate “was always a mystery,” Michael Vilardi told The Washington Post.
After Joe Vilardi died in the late 1990s, Michael’s father and uncle scoured the internet for the cloth but nothing materialized. After they died, Michael began his own searches online, which also turned up nothing.
“She was pretty emotional, and she told me a story that her brother had the tablecloth all these years,” Vilardi told The Post.
While Vilardi described her story as “a little foggy” — and one that may have changed over time — he said the woman told him that her brother got the tablecloth several years after the theft while living in San Francisco. During an argument over money, one of his roommates pulled out the tablecloth, threw it at him and said it was worth enough to settle their dispute. The woman told Vilardi that it remained in her brother’s possession for more than five decades. He never displayed it and took it out only to show family and friends, Vilardi recalled the woman telling him.
“And so it never was damaged, never faded,” Vilardi said.
Last year, the woman’s brother tried selling the tablecloth, she told Vilardi. But a dealer told them that it had probably been stolen, and they might have a hard time selling it. So the woman said she convinced her brother that the right thing to do would be to find the Vilardis, who were documented in news articles as being the original owners, and return it.
“I was elated, and I was trying to keep my composure,” Vilardi said.
A family mystery had, in many ways, come to an end. After they received the tablecloth, they all had a chance to look at it and touch it, but they agreed they didn’t need to keep it, Vilardi said. While the tablecloth was very special to the family, he said they decided to put it up for auction with the hope that it would go on display somewhere.
“It’s kind of a unique piece of history,” Vilardi said. “And, you know, I’ve got the story. I can tell the story. We lived the story.” | 2022-10-07T11:07:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tablecloth from night of the Beatles’ last official show is for sale - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/07/beatles-tablecloth-auction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/07/beatles-tablecloth-auction/ |
Baffert’s legal team said the ‘Bobby’s Secret Horsey Stuff’ labels, a reference to an animal drug-test scandal, were defamatory
Horse trainer Bob Baffert (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
In the 1996 movie “Space Jam,” basketball great Michael Jordan had his blue water bottle of “Michael’s Secret Stuff,” a placebo used to motivate his cartoon team at the end of a high-stakes game against otherworldly alien monsters. This summer, Kentucky drinkers got their own version: a bourbon labeled “Bobby’s Secret Horsey Stuff,” poking fun of Hall of Fame horse trainer Bob Baffert.
The labels featured Baffert, syringe in hand, with a garland of roses and the message, “Just let Ol’ Uncle Bobby blend ya up a batch of that good-good stuff” — an unmissable reference to the trainer’s drug-test scandal at last year’s Kentucky Derby. That satirization, however, landed the design’s masterminds in hot water, leading to a settlement just weeks after its debut. Under the agreement, five remaining bottles of the limited-edition bourbon have been handed over to Baffert.
According to documents obtained by The Washington Post, the Louisville Bourbon Club collaborated with Cox’s & Evergreen Liquors, a Kentucky-based retail chain, to create the stickers, which were slapped onto a limited-edition batch of Pinhook Bourbon released in July.
Is this just good humor or is this taking it too far? https://t.co/f5aERrWeqp
— Bourbon Pursuit 🥃 (@BourbonPursuit) July 7, 2022
Baffert learned that his image was being used after reading about it in the Louisville Courier-Journal, which first reported the story. “He was very sad,” his attorney, W. Craig Robertson III, told The Post. “I thought they had violated federal and state law by placing labels on the bottles and then selling them in commerce. That’s why I made the demands that they ultimately accepted to.”
Under the demands in the settlement, which was reached at the end of August, the companies were required to turn over the remaining bottles of bourbon, remit the over $18,000 made in sales to Baffert, pay his legal fees and donate $50,000 in the trainer’s name to three equine charities: Old Friends, the Permanently Disabled Jockeys Fund and the Edwin J. Gregson Foundation. (The Courier-Journal first reported details of the settlement on Wednesday.)
“In settling this matter, Mr. Baffert is most interested in helping the equine charities as opposed to putting money in his pocket,” Robertson said. “Those are three organizations in the thoroughbred industry that are deeply emotional and personal to him.”
The dark side of Bob Baffert’s reign
Baffert, one of the most legendary trainers in American horse racing, has faced criticism and suspensions after his 2021 Kentucky Derby champion, Medina Spirit, tested positive for an anti-inflammatory drug and was subsequently disqualified. Baffert was prohibited from participating in 2022 Triple Crown races and is in the midst of serving a two-year suspension by Louisville’s Churchill Downs racetrack.
Though Robertson said he was pleased with how the label dispute was settled, he said the campaign “crossed the line in a very defamatory way by casting Mr. Baffert in a very negative light.”
One point of contention was the image of Baffert holding a needle and syringe — one that Robertson said was inaccurate and sensational, adding that “nothing could be further from the truth.” Baffert has said Medina Sprit’s positive test after the Derby was the result of an ointment the horse was being treated with. Race organizers obtained medical records that were consistent with Baffert’s explanation, though any amount of the substance, betamethasone, present on the day of a race is considered to be disqualifying, The Post previously reported.
The Louisville Bourbon Club and Cox’s & Evergreen Liquors — which didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment from The Post — have already made the financial payments required by the settlement, Robertson said. The companies also sent apology letters to Baffert.
However, Pinhook — which also sent an apology letter — wasn’t required to put money toward the settlement costs because the brand wasn’t involved in crafting the labels, Robertson said. In his letter, Mike Fisk, the chief sales and marketing officer at Cox’s & Evergreen Liquors, said Pinhook “didn’t have knowledge of the offending labels.”
“I want to ensure you that no sticker/labels of any kind will ever be put on a bottle again before being sold through our store locations,” Fisk added.
As for the five remaining bottles promising a “new and improved makeumgofast formula,” those remain untouched and secured in Robertson’s home. Asked if he’d put them to good use, the attorney said, “I’m going to do with them whatever Mr. Baffert tells me to do.”
“We have lots of bourbon in Kentucky, though,” he added.
Jessica Lipscomb contributed to this report. | 2022-10-07T11:07:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Settlement reached over unauthorized Bob Baffert bourbon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/07/bob-baffert-bourbon-settlement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/07/bob-baffert-bourbon-settlement/ |
Students arrive at St. Nicholas Cathedral School in Chicago's Ukrainian Village neighborhood. (Jamie Kelter Davis for The Washington Post)
Chicago school embraces Ukrainian students fleeing war
CHICAGO — Principal Anna Cirilli remembers the first Ukrainian refugee who showed up at her school, a week after Russia invaded Ukraine. The 13-year-old had come with his mother straight from the airport to the front door of St. Nicholas Cathedral School.
The boy, Dmytro, had previously attended St. Nicholas but returned to Ukraine to study the Sopilka, a Ukrainian flute, Cirilli said. But when war broke out in February, Dmytro and his mother fled to the United States. And they knew exactly where they wanted to be.
“They came right from the airport [and] only had a suitcase each,” Cirilli told The Washington Post. “Mom was like, ‘I need to go find a place to live. Can I please drop him off?’ ” School staffers hustled to the Ukrainian bakery around the corner to get breakfast for him and the class.
Eight months into the war, St. Nick has become a hub for displaced students, and with good reason. Roughly 80 percent of students at St. Nick are of Ukrainian descent, and nearly a fifth are natives of Ukraine. Several teachers and school staff speak Ukrainian, as do many of the students, who help translate for their new peers. The school has also added language aides and counselors who help support the new students through their trauma.
Riumin Dmytro and Iullia Zamota fled Ukraine in April with their 4-year-old son, Ilya, who now attends St. Nick. Dmytro, who runs an e-commerce business with his wife, was once skeptical that war would come to Ukraine. But when Russia invaded in late February, he knew they couldn’t stay.
“Every 15 minutes, more people were filing out,” he said. “What do you take with you when you’re leaving your whole life?”
His family moved west to Lviv before crossing into Poland and then traveling to Mexico and then the United States. Ilya crossed the Atlantic with 15 soft toys and a carrier specially made to carry his Hot Wheels toy car.
In America, the family moved from San Diego to Chicago, which offered discounted hotel rooms for the displaced.
After a week in a hotel, Dmytro said the family was invited to stay with a Polish family for a few days as they navigated the challenge of finding housing and jobs. One night, exhausted, Dmytro took an Uber to look at apartments and discovered his driver, Volodymyr (“like the president!” he said) was also Ukrainian.
“He drove me around for free,” Dmytro said. When the Polish family found a landlord on Facebook in Ukrainian Village, Volodymyr co-signed for Dmytro’s lease. “It was a miracle,” he said.
At St. Nick, Ilya attends school with other children who endured similar treks. Alina Pakhomova came with her 10-year-old son, David, and 7-year-old daughter, Kira. The children, like other refugees, have received free tuition and school supplies and clothing from the stocks organized by St. Nick.
Cirilli said the school tries to support the families best they can, but she understands how trauma can linger. When a tornado touched down over the summer, prompting sirens, Pakhomova recalled how scared David got, worried they would have to pack up and leave again.
“Why did we go from one war to another?” he asked her.
Dmytro said his son, Ilya, has similar pangs for home — “he thinks our old apartment and car are still waiting for us in Kyiv” — but increasingly he feels settled in Chicago.
Ilya “skips breakfast just to go to school,” Dmytro said. “He loves the kids. And the friends and teachers understand what is going on. But it is sad — to hear 5- and 6-year-olds talking about Kyiv and bombs.”
Cirilli said the school is currently hosting 75 refugees, many of whom left Ukraine with the barest of necessities.
Dasha Diachenko, an employee at St. Nick, worked in public relations in Ukraine before fleeing in 2014. She now channels her energy into fundraising and outreach efforts to support scholarships and wish lists for new students.
So far, most of the donations have come from the community. A local Catholic school stepped up with a student-led “out of uniform” fundraiser, while another did a gift card drive. But as the war drags on, Cirilli wonders how long the school can financially sustain its efforts.
Many families that fled the war in Ukraine could bring only a backpack with them, and arrived in the United States with very few personal belongings. The school has organized donation drives for supplies and clothing for families in need.
“I know we’re getting support now, but I know come January it’s going to be different, Cirilli said.
“And we're still taking in kids as they come,” she added. “You know, the doorbell is still ringing.”
As Cirilli and Diachenko walk the hallways toward the end of the school day, they point out the tall 13-year-old boy who was the first to arrive at St. Nick this spring. For a moment, even as banners alluding to the war hang in the background, the stress and anxiety melt away. The boy, in the middle of a basketball game with his peers, spots the two women out of the corner of his eye, and gives them a happy wave. | 2022-10-07T11:07:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chicago school embraces Ukrainian students fleeing war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/07/chicago-school-embraces-ukrainian-students-fleeing-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/07/chicago-school-embraces-ukrainian-students-fleeing-war/ |
Family of man killed by Rochester police settles lawsuit for $12 million
Video of officers pinning a naked Daniel Prude to the ground sparked national outrage
Armin Prude, left, and Joe Prude hold a photo of Daniel Prude, who died following a police encounter, in Rochester, N.Y., in 2020. (Ted Shaffrey/AP)
Daniel Prude’s son said that when his dad was lying naked on the streets of Rochester, N.Y., on a snowy night in March 2020, what he needed was help with a mental health crisis.
Instead, the police officers called to provide that help handcuffed Prude, shrouded him in a hood and jammed a knee in his back — pressing his chest into the pavement until he vomited inside the hood, stopped breathing and passed out.
Now, more than 2½ years later, his family members said they have successfully held the city of Rochester and its police department accountable. On Thursday, city officials announced it had agreed to pay $12 million to settle a federal lawsuit filed by Prude’s family, who said his death exposed deep flaws in the way law enforcement responds to mental health crises. A federal judge in western New York approved the settlement on Thursday.
Seven police officers were suspended in Rochester, N.Y., after a video showed police officers placing a hood on Daniel Prude, who later died. (Video: The Washington Post)
“Nothing can ever truly compensate me and my siblings for the killing of our father by the Rochester police,” Nathaniel McFarland said in a statement to The Washington Post, but “resolving this case is a step in the right direction.”
“Communities need to know that there will be at least some accountability when police kill people like my dad, whose only crime was needing help,” he added.
Rochester’s mayor, Malik Evans (D), who was not in office at the time of Prude’s death, called the settlement “the best decision” for the city.
Seven police officers suspended after video shows hood placed on head of Black man who later died
About 3 a.m. on March 23, 2020, Joe Prude called 911 to report that his brother, while visiting from Chicago, had just bolted out into the freezing cold without shoes or a coat, according to a release from Prude’s family. Police found him about a half-hour later, walking naked in the street while he was “clearly both disoriented and agitated,” according to his family.
“He was also clearly unarmed,” the release states.
Body-camera video shows an officer ordering Prude to drop to the ground and put his hands behind his back. Prude obeyed and allowed police to handcuff him, but then got upset, according to the footage. When an officer came up behind Prude to put a spit hood over his head without warning, he started rolling on the ground and begging officers to take it off.
“They stood around telling jokes and mocking him while he remained naked on the freezing pavement crying out for help,” lawyers representing Prude’s family said in the release.
Multiple officers then pinned Prude to the asphalt. One placed his hands on Prude’s head, pushing down with his full weight, while another jammed a knee into Prude’s back.
After several minutes, Prude went quiet. Paramedics arrived and removed the hood and handcuffs before doing CPR. Eleven minutes after officers first came across Prude, paramedics took him — by then, unresponsive — to the hospital. He died March 30.
The release of the body-camera video five months later sparked a national uproar. Seven officers were suspended. Then-Mayor Lovely Warren (D) apologized at a news conference, saying that Prude was “failed by our police, our mental health system, our society and me.”
In September 2020, a 10-page report concluded that the Rochester Police Department’s reaction to Prude’s death revealed a “culture of insularity, acceptance and, quite frankly, callousness.” The officers involved displayed a “cavalier and unsympathetic attitude” toward the man they had killed, while their superiors did not seriously investigate their conduct, according to the report, which ultimately led to the police chief being fired and two top-ranking city officials being suspended.
Report: Daniel Prude’s death shows a culture of ‘callousness’ in Rochester Police Dept.
Last year, Prude’s family members filed their federal lawsuit against the city, alleging civil rights violations, gross negligence and wrongful death.
“I placed a phone call for my brother to get help, not for my brother to get lynched,” Joe Prude said at a news conference in September 2020 while wearing a shirt that read “Justice 4 Daniel Prude.”
In February 2021, New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) announced that a grand jury had declined to indict any of the officers involved. James said she was disappointed in the outcome and denounced “a system that at its core is broken.”
On Thursday, Prude’s children said although their lawsuit against the city is over, their work on their father’s behalf is not. One of their lawyers, Adam Ingber, encouraged state lawmakers to pass a bill known as Daniel’s Law, legislation that would provide for trained mental health professionals, rather than police officers, to respond to mental health crises like the one Prude was going through on March 23, 2020.
“Passing Daniel’s Law is an essential reform of a broken system,” Ingber said. | 2022-10-07T11:07:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Family of Daniel Prude settles lawsuit in Rochester, N.Y., police killing - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/07/daniel-prude-death-lawsuit-settlement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/07/daniel-prude-death-lawsuit-settlement/ |
Hurricane-related deaths have generally declined, but Ian shows that our coasts remain perilously vulnerable
By Jacob Feuerstein
Members of Virginia and Tennessee task forces look for victims of Hurricane Ian in Fort Myers, Fla., on Oct. 5. (Octavio Jones for The Washington Post)
The Galveston hurricane of 1900, the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history, crashed ashore much like Hurricane Ian did last week. As a large Category 4 with 150 mph winds, it shoved Gulf of Mexico waters deep into the booming port city.
Just seven feet above sea level, Galveston was steamrolled by an ocean surge nobody saw coming, taking 10,000 lives — about one quarter of its population at the time.
The tragedy of 122 years ago was repeated, to an extent, several times in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Just one year before Galveston’s disaster, extreme wind and rain associated with a Puerto Rico hurricane killed about 3,400 people. In 1893, a pair of storms with enormous surges killed 1,000 to 2,000 people, one in Georgia and the other in Louisiana. A 1928 hurricane killed more than 1,800 in Florida, its deadliest storm to date, when a devastating surge spread from Lake Okeechobee into surrounding areas.
Deaths associated with hurricanes have generally declined since that era because of improved predictions and warning systems. But storms such as Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and now Ian — probably Florida’s deadliest since 1935 — show that our coasts remain perilously vulnerable.
Improved warnings have reduced hurricane tolls
Statistics from the National Hurricane Center show that the overwhelming majority of the deadliest U.S. hurricanes in history occurred before 1960, even as more people move to the Gulf and Atlantic coastlines every year. When the 1928 hurricane struck Florida, for example, it had a population of around 1.5 million. Today, more than 21 million people live there.
Walker Ashley, a professor at Northern Illinois University who researches weather and natural disasters, wrote in an email that the monitoring, detection and forecasting of storms is a “scientific revolution that has saved countless lives.”
Ashley also credited stronger building codes and evacuation coordination between federal and local authorities for keeping people out of harm’s way.
Coasts are still vulnerable
Still, numerous 21st-century hurricanes have caused dozens of deaths. A short list of storms — Ike, Sandy, Katrina, Maria and now probably Ian — have killed more than 100 people each. Drowning due to storm surge caused the majority of the fatalities in these storms, although most of the nearly 3,000 deaths in Maria were related to power outages induced by wind.
Ike made landfall on Texas’s Galveston Island in 2008, the same strip of land decimated a century before. The storm pushed a surge as high as 17.5 feet into populous nooks of the Texas and Louisiana coasts, killing 112.
Sandy, like Ike, produced a towering surge as high as 12.5 feet, this time along the populous Northeast coast. The inundations took a heavy toll: 147 people died.
Katrina produced a surge of 25 to 28 feet, its turbid floodwaters overtaking levees and engulfing entire swaths of coastal Louisiana and Mississippi, leaving behind 1,833 dead.
State authorities have confirmed 89 deaths from Ian in Florida, while the count from county sheriffs is at least 117, more than the number of fatalities from hurricanes Irma in 2017 and Andrew in 1992.
Why, if forecasters are better than ever at predicting hurricanes, have these storms taken such tolls?
“We’ve often put faith in technology and infrastructure to ‘save us’ in these events when, in reality, we need to remove the potential for that hazard to kill us,” Ashley said.
For the tolls of these storms to decline, hurricane-prone residents need to act on warnings, heed evacuation orders or not inhabit areas vulnerable to flooding.
But forecasts aren’t perfect, and warnings are not always understood or received by the people most at risk. Some people refuse or are not able to evacuate for many complicated reasons. And many hurricane-prone, low-lying coastal areas are among the nation’s most attractive for real estate development.
Ashley stressed that the important story of Ian will not be the number of lives lost, tragic as the final count will surely be.
“There are thousands of folks who survived this immense and powerful hurricane by seeking shelter and/or evacuating,” Ashley said. “While much work remains to be done, there are a lot of positives in a system that we take for granted.” | 2022-10-07T11:29:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hurricane deaths have fallen over time, but Ian was a setback - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/06/hurricane-ian-deaths-historic-storms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/06/hurricane-ian-deaths-historic-storms/ |
D.C.'s Narrow House drops price to $3 million
The 18-foot-wide house, designed by Iranian-born architect Djahanguir Darvich, went on the market earlier this year at $3.5 million
The sunroom at the back of the house has 12-foot ceilings and floor-to-ceiling glass on three sides. (JJ Gagliardi / Changeover Media)
Dubbed the “Narrow House” because of its unusual width, this 1985 contemporary home sets itself apart from the many Colonials and Georgian-style houses found in the Foxhall Village neighborhood of Northwest Washington.
The 18-foot-wide house was designed by Iranian-born architect Djahanguir Darvich, who was a painter and sculptor before becoming interested in what he termed “the creativity of structures.”
“I trained [as an architect] in Italy in Torino at the Politechnico di Torino,” Darvich said in an email. “Italy was the ultimate place to train because [of the] Italian aesthetic and [its] functional design is timeless.”
Narrow House | Dubbed the “Narrow House” because of its unusual width, this 1985 contemporary home was designed by Iranian-born architect Djahanguir Darvich. It is listed at just under $3 million. (JJ Gagliardi / Changeover Media)
During his long career, Darvich, 89, has designed schools, car dealerships, monuments, television studios and houses.
“My interest is mostly in resistance by form,” Darvich said. “The one I am most proud of is the Farahabad Stadium [now known as Takhti Stadium in Tehran] that has a structure consisting of cables and pillars with a suspended roof that is still the largest span cable roof in the world, spanning 250 meters.”
Darvich came to Washington to design car dealerships for Darcars in the mid-1980s. It was then that he designed the Narrow House for himself and his family. When searching for a place to build, he discovered a one-bedroom, one-bathroom house on a skinny lot.
“At that time, the price of the lot was convenient, and the house is across from P Street so there are no houses directly in front of the lot so it allows for better views from the street and to the house,” Darvich said. “The biggest challenge was convincing the board of zoning to allow me to remodel and add on [to] a lot that was shorter than the zoning regulations [allowed]. I was able to accomplish that with the shape of the house.”
Darvich said because zoning regulations required a wall from the original house be kept, he incorporated it into his design. Part of a red-painted wall can be seen on the side of the house.
The structural integrity of the house is enhanced by what Darvich calls a “balloon system” — where the outside wall studs that span the three floors of the house are one piece. He also installed six steel beams that cross to form three Xs — two of which are hidden in the walls, one of which is visible. They reduce vibrations and add to the stability. The visible X, which is painted red, is as much a sculptural artwork as it is a practical necessity.
“The structural design of the house prevents any vibration even in high-wind situations or earthquakes,” Darvich said.
A cherry-red door greets visitors to the house. Darvich designed the doors in the home.
“The doors are influenced by my sculpture background,” he said.
Gray granite floors and stark white walls in the foyer create a dramatic entrance. The walls and ceilings are a geometric delight with curves, bows and angles. The curves in the stairs that lead to the upper levels are offset by the sharp right angles that jut from the handrail and underneath.
The living and dining rooms are filled with arches in what appears to be a nod to Moorish architecture.
“I wanted to keep a classical vaulted ceiling set in a modern environment,” Darvich said. “The vaulted ceilings and arches of the dining room and living room are my favorite elements, because I built them myself by hand.”
The kitchen has an exaggerated tray ceiling, Poggenphol cabinetry, a tile floor, a Gaggenau double oven, a double-door refrigerator, a grill and a cooktop. The breakfast nook offers seating for casual dining.
Darvich spent the most time in the sunroom at the back of the house, which has 12-foot ceilings and floor-to-ceiling glass on three sides. He used it as his office.
“I like the view of nature,” he said.
The three-bedroom, five-bathroom, 3,600-square-foot house is listed at $2,999,000.
1452 Foxhall Rd. NW, Washington, D.C.
Features: The 1985 house was designed by Iranian-born architect Djahanguir Darvich. The house is 18-feet wide and three stories high. Six steel beams that cross to form three Xs were installed to enhance the structural stability of the house. The one that was left visible was painted red, creating a sculptural piece of art. Besides the attached one-car garage, there is parking for three additional cars.
Listing agent: Fruwah Chapman, PenFed Realty | 2022-10-07T11:38:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C.'s Narrow House drops price to $3 million - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/07/narrow-house-for-sale/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/07/narrow-house-for-sale/ |
Just as it has in Pennsylvania, Ohio and other states, the Republican embrace of extremism in Maryland is having a dramatic impact on the race for governor and other elected positions.
By Peter Jamison
GOP volunteers Stephanie Dellamura, center, and April Montgomery, right, try to reach voters at the Great Frederick Fair on Sept. 23, in Frederick. Many Republicans in Frederick County, feel embattled as their county becomes increasingly purple and their state becomes an ever-deeper blue. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
FREDERICK, Md. — Perhaps it was the aroma of smoked turkey legs and warm cinnamon rolls, or the pleasant coolness that stole across the fairgrounds as the sun began to set behind the Magic Maze. Whatever the reason, Lisa Nieves was in a fine enough mood on a September evening to make a friendly overture to a man she considers her enemy.
“You want to come to the Republican side?” she called out cheerfully to Richard Kaplowitz, a 70-year-old Democratic activist, clad in blue, who strode by the Republican party’s headquarters at the Great Frederick Fair.
“Only when I’m crazy,” Kaplowitz replied without stopping.
Nieves’s face darkened.
The Republicans of Frederick County do not like it when people call them nuts. And it has not escaped their attention that people aren’t hesitant these days to do so. It is one thing to have your sanity questioned by a Democrat at the local fairgrounds. It is another when the same charge comes from Larry Hogan, the sitting Republican governor, who memorably described his party’s nominee to succeed him this November — Dan Cox, a son of Frederick County — as a “QAnon whack job.”
Yet it is Cox and his supporters, not Hogan, who embody the current direction of Maryland’s GOP. A previously obscure state legislator who helped organize buses to D.C. on the day of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, Cox earlier this year attended a conference in Pennsylvania that promoted fears of a “global Satanic blood cult,” part of a false QAnon conspiracy theory about powerful Democrats engaging in ritual child abuse. He was embraced by many Republican voters after he was endorsed by former president Donald Trump and easily defeated Hogan’s preferred candidate, Kelly Schulz — also of Frederick County — in the July primary. Cox has rejected Hogan’s attacks on his mental stability as “smear antics.”
He is joined atop the ballot by running mate Gordana Schifanelli, a lawyer who played a leading role in the campaign against a Black school superintendent who supported the Black Lives Matter movement, and attorney general candidate Michael Anthony Peroutka, who has said he wishes to dismantle public education and was captured on video strumming a guitar as he led a neo-Confederate group in singing “Dixie,” which he called “the national anthem.”
GOP voters’ enthusiasm for such figures is a remarkable turn in Maryland, a solidly blue state where Republicans who ascend to statewide office have often been centrists with proven appeal to independents and Democrats. That includes Hogan, who is being forced out of the governor’s mansion by term limits after eight years and enjoys a 73-percent approval rating.
The elevation of problematic candidates blessed by Trump has unsettled political races from Ohio and Pennsylvania to Arizona and Georgia this fall. But in Maryland, the trend is all the more striking because of the clarity of the bargain Republican voters are striking. By choosing candidates with impeccably Trumpist credentials, they are all but assuring their party’s trouncing come November, political analysts say. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found Democratic gubernatorial nominee Wes Moore leading Cox among registered voters by 32 points.
“You could easily look around and see the lesson: If you go this route, you’re locking yourself out of power,” said Todd Eberly, a political science professor at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. “But that’s where you come to the fact that voters aren’t always rational actors.”
Those dynamics are especially evident in Frederick County, a rapidly developing part of Maryland that stretches from the Potomac River to the Pennsylvania border. Once a redoubt of rural conservatives, the county has grown to an estimated 280,000 residents, nearly 70 percent of them non-Hispanic Whites, census figures show. Yet it is undergoing a political transformation driven by the arrival of former residents of closer-in D.C. suburbs eager for more space and cheaper homes.
In the 2016 presidential election, when Republicans still held an edge in voter registrations, Trump narrowly won the county. Four years later, registered Democrats outnumbered Republicans, and Biden defeated him there by nearly 10 points.
But as it has statewide, the growing strength of Democrats has led many conservatives here to retreat further to the right. That shift has changed the tenor of ground-level politics in Frederick County, the kind conducted at political club cookouts, American Legion forums — and over the roar of demolition derby at the Frederick Fairgrounds.
These events are the gateway to public life for many who go on to steer cities, counties and states. They may hold some clues to a question that, not long ago, few would have known to ask: Are blood cults and Dixie the future of Maryland’s Republican party? Or are they just a passing phase?
‘We’re in a war’
Jim Olson loves fairs. The 76-year-old army colonel is now retired on a farm in the rolling pastureland southeast of Catoctin Mountain Park, but he grew up on a cattle ranch in Utah, and has fond memories of exhibiting animals.
Along with that nostalgia, Olson carries another legacy of his rural Western childhood: A lifelong devotion to what he sees as the bedrock principles of the Republican Party. Faith and family, self-reliance and democratic ideals — these were the pillars, as Olson saw them, of a party he has supported through the eras of Nixon, both Bushes and Trump.
In this year’s gubernatorial primary he voted and volunteered for Schulz, and is still unsure whether he will cast a ballot for Cox. Olson voted for Trump and favored some of the former president’s policies, but believes he was a divisive figure who harmed the country with his lies about winning a second term. Although Olson is disturbed at the irrationality of those he calls “Trump worshipers,” he still mingles with his party’s activists, as he did on a recent evening at the county fairgrounds, easing his rangy frame into a chair inside the Republican tent.
With him at a table were Nieves, 59, still slightly agitated from her exchange with the passing Democrat, and Stephanie Dellamura, 55, who had been showing a Washington Post reporter a handout — with definitions of various types of government including socialism, Nazism and democracy — that she uses to explain, to those who need convincing, that modern-day Republicans are not fascists.
Both women support Cox and Trump, and doubt the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. But they say their devotion to the GOP has nothing to do with QAnon, a set of beliefs Dellamura calls “ridiculous.”
They are more interested in lower taxes, less crime and reforming a public education system they believe is indoctrinating children on sexual and gender identity issues best left to parents — a topic also driving Republican campaigns for the county school board.
Their small talk with Olson started off well enough, as Nieves complimented his skin (“You must use a lot of cream at night,” she said) and Dellamura opined that abortion “truly is taking a life.” (“Very well said,” Olson replied.) The conversation grew more strained when Olson mentioned the possible usefulness of windmills (“Honey, they don’t work,” Nieves said with a pitying stare) and defended a vision of the GOP in which there was space for moderates.
“I’m more of a big-tent Republican than you guys are,” he said.
“I don’t want people who are undermining the Republican party,” Dellamura said.
Nieves brought up the Internal Revenue Service’s plan to hire more agents, which has stoked right-wing conspiracy theories about the persecution of law-abiding Americans.
“Come on,” she said to Olson. “We’re in a war. You know that.”
Olson, who handled medical logistics for the Gulf War under former president George H.W. Bush, studied his cup of raspberry ice cream.
“Well, if we’re in a war, we’re going to lose,” he said. “Because our party is divided.”
The divisions often seemed to start with Trump, but had cascaded to the lowest tiers of politics. There was, for example, the fate of Michael Blue, a Frederick County Council member elected in 2018 to represent the county’s northernmost — and most conservative-leaning — council district.
A Republican who voted twice for Trump, Blue nevertheless prized his ability to work with Democrats on what he deemed nonpartisan local issues, such as the county’s budget and public-health initiatives. Those efforts made him a target of his party’s hard-right activists, and in July he was defeated in the primary by Mason Carter, an 18-year-old who had graduated from high school less than two months earlier.
Blue, the longtime owner-operator of an auto service shop in Walkersville, said he is supporting Julianna Lufkin, the Democrat running against Carter for his seat. His reasoning is straightforward.
“She’s 31 years old,” he said. “She’s not 18.”
Carter, in an interview with The Post, said Trump had inspired his interest in politics at a young(er) age and that he modeled his approach on that of the former president. He said he would not commit to accepting the results of the November council election if he is not declared the winner.
“How can you rightfully accept something that hasn’t happened yet?” Carter asked.
‘Tired of the lie’
Nearly a third of Americans believe the falsehood that Trump was robbed of a second term because of voter fraud, according to a Monmouth University poll in September. Ron Young, an outgoing Democratic state senator who was born in the city of Frederick and served as its mayor from 1974 to 1990, said he has been astonished to encounter many of them in this part of Maryland.
“The Republicans I knew when I started out in politics, we had philosophical or policy differences. But we didn’t have these far-right crazies that deny the election, that are buying into QAnon and stuff like that,” Young said. “There are people that I have known all my life who I would have never guessed would buy into that kind of thing. But they have.”
Some conservatives say they, like the candidates they have nominated, are unfairly branded as extremists in a state that has always been hostile toward Trump supporters.
“We feel like we’re the minority. We’re unfairly treated,” said Billy Shreve, a member of the Frederick County Republican Central Committee. “That’s what everyone says anytime we have a chance at winning an election — that we’re whack jobs.”
Shreve, who has admired Trump since reading “The Art of the Deal” in the 1980s, said the former president remains a beloved figure among most Republicans he knows.
“Everyone likes him for different reasons,” Shreve said. “TV personality, successful business person, his hot wife: whatever you’re latching onto, there’s plenty of reasons to follow him.”
Some are prepared to follow quite far. Among those who popped into the fair’s Republican tent to say hello was Nicholas Rodean, a 28-year-old from Frederick who was photographed next to the bare-chested “QAnon Shaman” inside the Capitol on Jan. 6 and is now awaiting sentencing for his role in the attack. Rodean declined to speak to a Post reporter and left soon afterward.
Dellamura also traveled to Washington on Jan. 6 to support Trump, though she said she did not join the mob storming the Capitol. As night fell on the Frederick fairgrounds more than 20 months later, she tried to persuade Olson that he was wrong to trust the repeated investigations that had found no evidence the election was stolen.
“They were suppressing information,” she said.
Olson shook his head.
“I’m tired of the lie,” he said.
Dellamura acknowledged that she didn’t like Trump’s tone or his tweets.
“He’s not perfect,” she said. “But look at biblical men. God didn’t choose people who were perfect.”
Olson left unconvinced.
By the time he rose and left, the evening crowds had arrived. The midway was thronged with people, speaking English and Spanish, carrying children or fresh-cut fries. Some walked toward the display of prize bantams, some toward the Full Tilt and Starship 3000. Many passed the Frederick County Republicans’ tent, but few stopped to look inside.
Scott Clement and Erin Cox contributed to this report. | 2022-10-07T11:38:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump, QAnon, Dan Cox: In Maryland, GOP marginalizes itself - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/cox-qanon-trump-gop-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/cox-qanon-trump-gop-maryland/ |
The Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol has officials rethinking what level of violence is possible
Christopher Rodriguez, center, director of the Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency, speaks at the U.S. Capitol with D.C. police Chief Robert J. Contee III, left. (Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency)
As the 2022 midterms and 2024 presidential election approach, analysts at D.C.’s fusion center are scanning social media and browsing the dark corners of the internet, looking for threats against election officials in battleground states and large rallies that could turn violent.
Before Jan. 6, 2021, the analysts thought they were ready for anything. But after a mob of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, hoping to overturn the election, officials say they have reset their expectations about what level of political violence is possible.
“One of the goals that we share in the National Capital Region is that we don’t want to see another Jan. 6,” said Christopher Rodriguez, the Director of D.C.’s Homeland Security and Emergency Management Agency. “That has motivated us to share information and reinforce existing relationships or build new ones, but we should never be complacent about the progress that we’re making.”
D.C. has had a fusion center — where analysts gather threat-related information and distribute it to other local, state and federal agencies — since 2012, but will soon break ground on a new facility in the Navy Yard area. The new facility’s Emergency Operations Center is about 9,000 square feet — three times the size of the previous facility — and will have larger, better-equipped conference rooms, officials said.
Senior Biden administration officials have concluded that the federal government’s Jan. 6 preparations were impeded in part by a lack of high-level information-sharing and a failure to anticipate how bad the day could be. Rodriguez, whose agency runs the fusion center, said he wants his analysts to bring intelligence to agencies that they aren’t getting elsewhere.
“That is important for us to provide early warnings to our decision-makers,” Rodriguez said.
House Jan. 6 committee intensifies focus on law enforcement failures that preceded Capitol attack
With the midterms fast approaching, Rodriguez said analysts are keenly focused on possible politically motivated violence. He said the agency has noticed an uptick in violent and concerning rhetoric, mostly coming from places where contests are highly contested or close.
After the Jan. 6 riot, Rodriguez said that analysts are more attuned to online proclamations and calls for a civil war.
“Analysts take that information and create the threat picture. They’re looking to see if this is becoming a trend or gaining traction,” Rodriguez said. “We saw prior to Jan. 6 that a lot of those calls for violence were gaining traction and followers.”
Rodriguez said analysts are more empowered to discuss scenarios that would have previously been considered outlandish — like rioters storming the Capitol to overturn an election — or how the city would tackle multiple incidents at the same time. For the midterms, Rodriguez said the city has contacts with the other 79 fusion centers in the country that will also be monitoring any possible acts of violence.
“After the midterms are over, the 2024 election kicks up,” Rodriguez said. “It might not cause violence, but it does raise our concern about violence.”
Rodriguez said that analysts prepare for future scenarios like the midterms through “red teaming,” which involves analysts imagining a future scenario and acting out how they’d respond.
“Giving the analysts space to think about those scenarios and challenge each other is a key element of what they do,” Rodriguez said. “We will make sure that we are tuned to a lot of the national trends in violence and violent rhetoric that might emerge after the elections.”
Michael Chertoff, the U.S. Homeland Security secretary under President George W. Bush, said that fusion centers — which came into wider use after the 9/11 terrorist attacks — have allowed intelligence agency representatives to share information and analytical approaches so they could have a better picture of what potential terror threats might be.
“You have to be mindful when you get an escalating drumbeat of what could be efforts to inspire violence,” Chertoff said. “You have to anticipate where that might lead.”
The fusion center does not exclusively track political violence and terrorism. When a shooter rained down bullets in the Van Ness area in April, D.C. police Chief Robert J. Contee III said that while police assessed information on-site at the crime scene, analysts worked behind the scenes to identify the shooter.
Suspect in shooting that injured 4 found dead, officials say
Contee called the fusion center an invaluable resource that aids MPD in assessing and distributing information to ensure the city’s safety.
“You have analysts scouring the internet, and they find a needle in the haystack,” Contee said. “These are the quiet warriors behind the scenes.” | 2022-10-07T11:38:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As midterms near, D.C. fusion center eyes political violence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/dc-fusion-center-midterms-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/dc-fusion-center-midterms-violence/ |
More than 23,000 students in the District do not have all their routine shots
Ballou High School held its graduation ceremony at the Audi Field Stadium in D.C. on June 23, 2021. A mobile station was available to people who wanted to get a coronavirus vaccine. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)
Roughly 23,500 students across the District are still behind on their routine vaccinations, a slight improvement from numbers reported in June but still far from the city’s goal to have every child immunized, the most recent data from the city shows.
Prekindergarten through fifth-grade students have until Tuesday to get fully vaccinated, according to a deadline set by city officials. Children who remain out of compliance face being barred from school, though the Office of the State Superintendent of Education has instructed school leaders to grant a two-week grace period to students with upcoming doctor’s appointments and for families who are waiting to have their documentation processed.
But, as of Sept. 27, about a quarter of students in the city’s public, charter, private and parochial schools remain out of compliance. About 30,000 students were behind in June. The vaccination requirements apply to students in all types of D.C. schools.
Students in sixth through 12th grades who are still behind on routine shots by Nov. 4, the deadline for those grade levels to be fully immunized, could face the same consequences.
The numbers come after the city launched an urgent effort this summer to get every child vaccinated — not only against illnesses such as measles, polio and whooping cough, but also against the coronavirus. Many families fell behind on routine medical visits when they were away from doctors during the early months of the pandemic, officials said.
D.C. schools extend deadlines for covid, routine vaccination mandate
With a renewed focus on vaccinations came a vow from city leaders to enforce a long-standing, but historically ignored, law that stipulates students who are behind on routine vaccines cannot come to school. To help families get caught up, the city hosted pop-up events, ran mobile health clinics and set up booths at back-to-school events. OSSE officials say that they have seen a “surge of families” attend mass vaccination sites and that schools have seen an increase in immunization paperwork.
“The District is working hard to ensure that every student is up-to-date with their routine pediatric immunizations,” OSSE said in a statement Thursday. “Enforcement of the District of Columbia Immunization Attendance Policy aims to both protect the school community and the community at large from dangerous and sometimes deadly infectious diseases that affect children and adults.”
The numbers vary by geographic area. Ward 5, which mostly spans Northeast Washington, has the highest rate of noncompliance for routine shots: 29 percent. Ward 8, largely in Southeast, has the biggest share of students who are not vaccinated against the coronavirus: 62 percent.
Thousands of children are also behind on coronavirus vaccines, though those students have more time to catch up. Overall, about 46 percent of children over 12, who must comply with a citywide mandate, have not reported getting immunized against the virus, according to OSSE.
The mandate, passed by the D.C. Council and a rarity at a time when other districts have moved away from such requirements, has stoked concerns about racial equity, as vaccination rates among Black children in the city have long lagged behind White students. Opponents of the mandate have said the lagging rates could lead to more Black students being barred from school.
Students who are not fully vaccinated against the virus will be notified by their schools on Nov. 21 and will need to comply by Jan. 3. More than 14,000 students are behind, according to OSSE.
D.C. schools to relax some covid protocols ahead of first day
But there have been gains since the summer: 58 percent of Black children ages 12-15 are fully vaccinated, up from 53 percent in late August, according to D.C. Health. White students in that age group have a vaccination rate of 92 percent, up five percentage points over the same time period.
The city has partnered with Children’s National Hospital to operate five “high-capacity” clinics where families can get vaccinated Monday-Friday through Nov. 18. | 2022-10-07T11:38:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Thousands of D.C. students still behind on vaccinations as deadline looms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/07/dc-schools-vaccination-requirement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/07/dc-schools-vaccination-requirement/ |
A demonstrator waves a flag with marijuana leaves depicted on it during a protest calling for the legalization of marijuana, outside the White House on April 2, 2016. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
President Biden offered pardons Thursday to thousands of people convicted of simple marijuana possession under federal law, as U.S. states and other governments around the world reconsider their approach toward the drug, with some moving to decriminalize or legalize it.
“No one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana,” Biden said. He called on senior administration officials to review how the drug is regulated under federal law and whether it should continue to be treated as a Schedule I substance along with drugs such as heroin, LSD and ecstasy.
Here’s what you need to know about how U.S. marijuana policies and laws compare to those of other countries.
What does Biden’s offer of mass pardons for people convicted of simple marijuana possession mean?
More than 600,000 people were arrested for marijuana possession in the United States in 2018, according to the latest available data from the American Civil Liberties Union. (Not all arrests lead to charges and convictions.) But Biden’s announcement applies only to federal prosecutions, a fraction of people affected by possession laws. His pardon power does not extend to those convicted under state law.
“Many if not most people serving time are in state systems,” said Griffen Thorne, an attorney at Harris Bricken, a law firm that works with cannabis companies. (Biden also called on state governors Thursday to offer similar pardons.)
No one is serving time in a federal prison solely for the crime of marijuana possession, White House officials said Thursday, though more than 6,500 people may have such convictions on their records.
How do the United States’ policies stack up against the rest of the world, and which countries have more tolerant marijuana laws?
Possessing or consuming marijuana for any reason is illegal under federal law, but as of February, 37 states and the District of Columbia had authorized it for medical use, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In addition, at least 19 states and D.C. had legalized recreational marijuana for adults as of May.
Technically, “every state-level marijuana program is a complete violation of federal law,” Thorne said, but the federal government has “looked the other way.”
A handful of countries have legalized recreational use of marijuana, though there are many gray areas and caveats. Places where it is legal to recreationally use cannabis include Uruguay, Canada and Malta. In some cases, there are restrictions on age, quantities and transport of the drug.
South Africa decriminalized adult use of cannabis in private, although purchasing or selling it remains illegal. Thailand this year legalized growing and trading marijuana. However, government officials have warned that “nonproductive” use of the drug — such as smoking it outside — could lead to penalties such as short prison terms.
Marijuana is now legal in Thailand. What does that mean for tourists?
Germany’s coalition government pledged before taking office last year to legalize the recreational use of cannabis. Australia allows medical marijuana, but recreational use at home is only legal in the Australian Capital Territory, encompassing Canberra and surrounding townships. Personal use of limited quantities of cannabis is tolerated in the Netherlands, though it’s technically illegal.
“Certainly, there are other countries that have liberal policies and are more consistent about it,” said Robert Mikos, a professor at Vanderbilt University who specializes in drug law. “But because we have so many states that have legalized adult recreational or medical use, I would count the U.S. as one of the more progressive countries.”
Is the world moving toward legalizing marijuana for personal use?
Momentum toward legalizing marijuana is ramping up in Latin America and Africa, Thorne said.
A 2018 Constitutional Court decision paved the way for South Africa to decriminalize personal use, and President Cyril Ramaphosa said this year that his government would work on bolstering its domestic cannabis sector, Reuters reported. Peru legalized medical use in 2017, and Zimbabwe did so in 2018.
Marijuana is one of the world’s most widely consumed drugs, with roughly 147 million people — more than 2.5 percent of the global population — using it annually, according to the World Health Organization. U.S. adults between the ages of 19 and 30 also used marijuana at record levels last year, the National Institutes of Health reported.
But there are pockets of opposition in parts of the world, particularly Asia. In a 2020 referendum, New Zealand voters narrowly rejected legalizing cannabis for nonmedicinal use. It is available there with a prescription. Singapore — whose tough drug laws extend to cannabis — also recently signaled that it would not move to permit medicinal marijuana in the near future.
Does President Biden’s mass pardon for marijuana possession have global significance?
Maybe. U.S. drug policy has long influenced how the world treats marijuana. Since the 1960s, the United States has championed international conventions and treaties that required participating countries to ban recreational cannabis, said Mikos, the law professor.
But now that dozens of U.S. states have legalized cannabis for recreational or medicinal use, several countries “have taken that as a green light to go ahead and start experimenting,” he said. | 2022-10-07T11:46:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After Biden’s marijuana pardon, how do U.S. policies compare globally? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/biden-marijuana-pardon-global-policies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/biden-marijuana-pardon-global-policies/ |
Seven exhibitions around London this fall are celebrating the painter’s achievements in realist portraiture
Perspective by Sebastian Smee
"Girl in Bed," 1952. Lucian Freud's portrait of his second wife, Caroline Blackwood, is one of more than 60 on display at London's National Gallery in "Lucian Freud: New Perspectives." (Private Collection, Courtesy of Ordovas/Lucian Freud Archive. All Rights Reserved 2022/Bridgeman Images)
LONDON — Having passed through the ceremonial stage of mourning the queen, London this fall is eulogizing the life of Lucian Freud (1922-2011) with seven exhibitions marking the centenary of the painter’s birth. The most important is “Lucian Freud: New Perspectives,” a retrospective at the National Gallery.
With just over 60 works (one of them a 2002 portrait of the queen, no bigger than a paperback novel), it is not the biggest Freud show I have seen. But in its emphasis, freshness and concision, it is one of the best.
The show includes iconic early paintings of Freud’s first wife, Kitty Garman, and his second wife, Caroline Blackwood; close-up head portraits of fellow painters Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon and David Hockney; several powerful nudes (or “naked portraits,” as Freud liked to call them); and two late, large-scale masterpieces — “And the Bridegroom” and “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet.”
But if you don’t know Freud’s work and want a sense of what he did best, a good place to start is “Double Portrait,” a midsize 1985-86 oil painting of a woman in a navy shirt alongside a tawny whippet. The image is cropped, bringing the subjects uncommonly close. The dog’s snout lolls in the woman’s open palm. Forepaw and forearm unfurl toward the viewer in an arresting rhyme. Multidirectional brushstrokes mold and dimple the paint, which is gritty with textures, arousing our sense of touch. Both creatures are at rest, possibly asleep.
In the history of art, there must be greater evocations of intimacy. But when I’m in front of “Double Portrait,” I can’t think of any. True intimacy has that effect, I suppose: It removes the burden of comparisons. The world beyond disappears. The contrast between the light in here and the darkness outside turns transparent windows into reflective mirrors. There is just muffled breathing and the soft, warm, proximate presence of another …
Welcome to the world of Lucian Freud.
Over a 70-year career, Freud concerned himself almost exclusively with getting paint to convey the living weight and mortal gorgeousness of the human body and of other things close at hand, living and dead. He was interested in individuality. The attention he lavished on mottled thighs, plump fingers, rash-ridden faces, raw scrotums, tightly curled pubic hair and ropily veined feet was matched by no other modern artist. Devoid of both expressionist histrionics and visceral repulsion, his art was fired only by a sense of tender, patient scrutiny and a conviction that, as the New York poet Frank O’Hara wrote, “the only truth is face to face.”
Freud, who came with his family to London from Berlin in 1933 — the year Hitler came to power — was locally esteemed as an artist from a young age but became internationally famous only after a critically acclaimed show at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington in 1987. This latest show at the National Gallery, London, organized by Daniel Herrmann, takes us from Freud’s hard-pressed, mercurial early style through his glassy smooth, tremblingly intense portraits of the 1950s to the paintings he made over many decades in a more open, thickly textured style, developed under the influence of Bacon and in league, aesthetically, with Rembrandt, Courbet, Degas and Rodin.
In London’s class-conscious tabloid culture, Freud made good copy. A dedicated gambler, he mixed with criminals, aristocrats, novelists, movie stars, performance artists and supermodels. (A film about his friendship with Kate Moss is in the works.) A serial seducer, he had an undoubted gift for intimacy. “To be with him in his company,” said Louise Liddell, a framer who posed for him, “is like sticking your finger in an electric socket and being wired up to the national grid for half an hour.”
To his credit, Herrmann, in the centenary show, has tried to get away from the fascinations of Freud’s life (recently the subject of a brilliant, densely populated and frequently hilarious two-volume biography by William Feaver). The emphasis instead is on the qualities of subtlety and surprise in the paintings themselves.
In a section called “Portraying Intimacy,” for instance, Herrmann has gathered some of Freud’s most beautiful portraits of couples and family members. Among them are “Double Portrait,” “Bella and Esther” (a depiction of two of Freud’s daughters squeezed together on a couch, bare feet touching) and “Two Men.” The latter, painted in 1988 as the AIDS crisis was peaking, shows one man naked and one clothed, lying on a bed. The dressed man’s hand rests on his lover’s bared calf, but their heads are turned away from one another. You are made aware of individual lives at once tenderly shared and poignantly apart.
Arguably Freud’s greatest painting, “Large Interior W11 (After Watteau),” is missing from the show (it will be sold from Microsoft founder Paul Allen’s collection at Christie’s in November) as are the masterpieces “Girl With a White Dog,” “Pregnant Girl” and “Annabel Sleeping” and seven other paintings published in the catalogue. Did loan requests hit unforeseen snags? It’s hard to say. But it doesn’t matter. The intimacy principle wins out: The works that are in the show make comparisons redundant.
For those accustomed to seeing Freud’s paintings in reproduction, encountering them in real life provokes rolling astonishment. He used paint not just to build up a recognizable image, but also to amplify sensations of presence through touch, texture and color. Even relatively small paintings required months of sitting. The queen sat about 20 times. “You probably think I’m going incredibly slowly,” said Freud, “but in fact I’m going at 90 miles an hour, and if I go any faster the car might overturn.”
There was nothing rote about his approach. The variety and density of the brushstrokes is breathtaking, but every mark is doing its work, carrying its load.
Freud’s best works are bound up, emotionally and conceptually, with the time it took him to paint them. Unlike the deft, well-oxygenated portraits of, say, Alice Neel — notable for their citrus-fresh, glancing quality — Freud’s portraits are infused with a dense, almost humid atmosphere maintained over long hours, days and months.
Their great achievement is to combine that scrutiny with a quality of withholding, a refusal to presume to know more about a sitter’s inner life than can be verified. As often as not, his portraits suppress our impulse to psychologize by showing their subjects dead-eyed or asleep.
The six satellite exhibitions scattered around London focus on Freud’s relationship with horses and gambling, his etchings and studio life, his relations with other painters and his pictures of gardens and plants. Perhaps the most remarkable of them is at the Freud Museum, in the north London home to which Lucian’s grandfather Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, moved in 1938 after fleeing Vienna. (Sigmund got away only just in time: His four sisters all died at the hands of the Nazis).
Lucian was fond of his grandfather. But he intuited early on that, to safeguard his own freedoms, he would need to dissociate himself from such a towering cultural figure. The Freud Museum show, organized by Martin Gayford (also the author, with David Dawson, of a new book, “Love Lucian: The Letters of Lucian Freud 1939-1954”), is keyed to the theme of “family connections.” That’s almost funny when you contemplate Lucian’s inclination to ignore (often cruelly) the expectations most people bring to family. But it makes for a fascinating exhibit.
Lucian’s childhood is addressed through early drawings, letters and footage of him with his famous grandfather. The show also delves into Lucian’s complicated relations with his parents and his own children, of whom there are more than a dozen. Several have forged impressive careers in fashion, fiction and poetry. Cover illustrations he made for their books are displayed behind glass.
But the most extraordinary moment of the Freud Museum show occurs in Sigmund’s study, where Lucian’s painting of his recumbent mother has been hung directly above his grandfather’s famous couch. The mind reels.
Lucian Freud’s career unfolded over a period when academic critics were continually updating their ideas about what constituted “radical art” and why. Again and again, they declared painting dead, even as they fretted about the avant-garde’s evermore tenuous connection to wider society.
Whether people found Freud’s realist portraiture contemptibly conservative or reassuringly so depended, of course, on their taste and politics. But both positions hit snags. To conservative collectors aroused by the smell of oil paint and the sight of bare skin, Freud’s refusal to beautify his subjects and his sense that clotted paint and stilted forms might convey more truth than slick virtuosity could be a letdown. To academics and critics scrabbling away in the ideological playpens constructed by the likes of Clement Greenberg, Michael Fried and Rosalind Krauss, Freud’s stubborn devotion to the possibilities of realist portraiture was vexing.
All that now seems irrelevant. In today’s art word, figurative painting is undeniably ascendant. Most contemporary painters of note are concerned with the human body and its surroundings. Style, people have realized, can only ever be superficially radical. If real radicalism and risk exist anywhere, it is in intimacy. Freud’s preoccupations no longer look eccentric or mulish. Rather, he stands as an example of audacity — a reminder of just how deep it is possible to take the game of painting.
“Lucian Freud: New Perspectives”: Through Jan. 22 at the National Gallery, London. nationalgallery.org.uk. | 2022-10-07T12:17:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Painter Lucian Freud is celebrated in seven London exhibitions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/06/lucian-freud-london-exhibits/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/06/lucian-freud-london-exhibits/ |
David O. Russell is the latest face of Hollywood’s workplace abuse problem
Past allegations of Russell’s on-set misconduct have resurfaced ahead of his new film ‘Amsterdam,’ raising questions about why directors’ controversial behavior has historically been tolerated
Director David O. Russell, pictured last month in London at the European premiere of his film “Amsterdam,” has been accused of abuse on set. (Tom Nicholson/Reuters)
Last month, amid the hubbub over rumored drama behind the scenes of “Don’t Worry Darling,” director Olivia Wilde noted that male filmmakers are held to “very different standards” from their female counterparts. Men are “praised for being tyrannical,” she said on a late-night talk show, adding that their behavior can be repeatedly called into question and “it still doesn’t overtake conversations of their actual talent or about the films themselves.”
Her words were put to the test almost immediately with the release of David O. Russell’s latest film, “Amsterdam,” in theaters Friday. As attention shifted from one star-studded project to the next, the conversation pivoted from Wilde to Russell, a five-time Oscar nominee previously accused of being verbally and physically abusive on his sets. The new film, which stars Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington, is Russell’s first in seven years.
While noting that “grandiose stories can eclipse more harmonious sets,” film historian Emily Carman pointed to the cult of the director, which favors men, as a reason more extreme behavior may be indulged. Film is an inherently collaborative medium, but directors exercise a great deal of control and are often placed on pedestals as a result.
“The call to the auteur still persists,” Carman said, “and I think it’s actually much stronger as a marketing tool.”
The stars of “Amsterdam” have described working on the film as a rewarding experience, but not all of Russell’s projects have gone so smoothly. The allegations against him date back to an interview George Clooney gave to Playboy in 2000 about witnessing the director assault an extra who was nervous about doing a stunt on the set of “Three Kings.” Clooney said he stepped in to intervene, and that Russell then head-butted and grabbed the throat of the star himself. In 2003, according to the New York Times, Russell put director Christopher Nolan in a headlock while demanding that he let Jude Law, who had decided to work with Nolan, star in Russell’s project instead. Footage from that same year depicts Russell yelling at actress Lily Tomlin on the set of “I Heart Huckabees” after she expresses frustration with his style of directing: “I’m not here to be f---ing yelled at,” he shouts, swiping items off a desk and referring to Tomlin with gender-specific expletives.
In addition to other alleged outbursts, Russell was accused of sexual misconduct off-set by his 19-year-old niece, who told police that he felt her breasts in 2011. Russell, who confirmed the incident but stated to police that his niece had been acting “very provocative and seductive” and had allowed him to touch her, did not face any charges.
While stars such as Clooney and Tomlin said they later made peace with Russell, others held fast. In 2016, two years after an email leaked during the Sony Pictures hack alleging Russell had “so abused” actress Amy Adams on the set of “American Hustle,” Adams told British GQ that the director had developed “this wild, crazy way of working” that made her cry and become “really just devastated on set.” In a GQ cover story from this month, Bale, who also starred in “American Hustle,” recalled that Russell’s behavior on the project led him to step in as a “mediator” to defend Adams.
On the press tour for “Amsterdam,” Bale said that he would gladly continue working with Russell, long heralded as an actor’s director. (The near-guaranteed attention from the film academy doesn’t hurt; Bale landed an Oscar for “The Fighter,” joining Jennifer Lawrence and Melissa Leo as actors who have won for their work on Russell’s oft-nominated films.) While journalist Jonathan Alter referred in the leaked Sony emails to talk of Russell’s reformed character as “total bulls---,” the director’s subsequent high-profile projects suggest he has continued to receive support from a good number of powerful players in the industry.
A person familiar with the making of “Amsterdam,” who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, told The Washington Post that there were “no incidents on this production.”
“There was a huge cast that loved working with him — they’ve been public with it,” the person said.
From a business standpoint, the question of whether Russell has evolved only matters to the extent that those powerful players act upon the answer. A-list actors have flocked to his projects, some receiving his reputation for unpredictable sets as a creative challenge. Robbie, for instance, said at the New York premiere of “Amsterdam” that Russell’s stars often show up without knowing “what you’re going to shoot that day, which is terrifying and also exhilarating.”
Ambitious actors have always been drawn to collaborators whose established records of dynamic work can bolster the actors’ own profiles, according to Carman, the film historian on faculty at Chapman University. While creative power in the studio era was largely concentrated among moguls such as Louis B. Mayer or Jack Warner, it shifted when the notion of directors as brands emerged with the New Hollywood movement that kicked off in the 1960s.
That idea has persisted and, in today’s concentrated media landscape, carries significant weight.
“David O. Russell and Quentin Tarantino are brand names as much as a movie star,” Carman said. “Maybe even more now, since movie stars still matter but seem to be more attached to a specific brand, like the Marvel franchise.”
Beyond the awards and prestige, there is what Kate Fortmueller, a University of Georgia professor of entertainment and media studies, called “the ‘Devil Wears Prada’ sort of thing: If you can survive being this person’s assistant, your career is made.” She made the comment about Scott Rudin, the producer at the center of a Hollywood Reporter exposé last year that detailed his alleged history of “unhinged” behavior, but extended the logic to other demanding bosses.
“‘Are these conditions markedly worse than the ones I’ve experienced? … Is it worth it for me to do this for an Oscar nomination?’ For some people, it will be worth it,” Fortmueller said. “I think culturally there’s a lot of leeway given, especially to White male directors, in terms of what needs to happen in order to make great art.”
Sometimes things go too far, even for A-list talent with more say than crew members. Speaking to the Times in 2018, actress Uma Thurman recalled how Tarantino persuaded her to do her own driving stunt on “Kill Bill” even though she said she was uncomfortable doing so after hearing the car may have had issues. She wound up in a crash that she said left her with neck and knee injuries, and made her feel disempowered as a creative collaborator.
Tarantino, whose “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” made more than $140 million at the domestic box office the year after Thurman’s interview ran, did not seem to face larger industry blowback for the behavior she described. Money continues to be a determining factor when it comes to accountability in Hollywood, according to Carman, who said that Russell’s last film, 2015’s “Joy,” made just under $56.5 million at the box office compared with the $150 million raked in by its predecessor, “American Hustle.”
Carman said that if “Amsterdam” doesn’t achieve “the same success as ‘American Hustle,’ that’s where Hollywood starts to rein in those behaviors. There’s historical precedent for that.” Fortmueller, who has studied labor practices in the entertainment industry, noted that “Hollywood is a really tricky business because the line between art and commerce is really fluid and kind of hard to parse.”
“There are certain things where, ‘This is the method he needs to create his art’ becomes a justification,” she said. “These things will make a lot of money. It’s hard to think about how unregulated those working conditions can be.” | 2022-10-07T12:17:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | David O. Russell is the latest face of Hollywood’s workplace abuse problem - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/07/david-o-russell-movie-allegations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/07/david-o-russell-movie-allegations/ |
Long before social networks, the Q Score determined the clout of celebrities, athletes, local TV personalities and even cartoon characters. It’s still around.
(Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images; Emma McIntyre/Getty Images; iStock/Photo illustration by Alexis Arnold/The Washington Post)
Early in the 1996 meta-horror movie “Scream,” a group of teens are trying to guess who murdered Drew Barrymore’s character. A nerdy cinephile named Randy, played by Jamie Kennedy, quipped that being the killer “would certainly improve your high school Q.”
Q? What’s that? Someone born in the internet age might think Randy’s a conspiracy theorist, searching for pedophilic lizard people roaming Ventura Boulevard or the corridors of the Capitol — but back then, QAnon didn’t exist. He was referring to the Q Score, that old measure of likability that once shaped the culture. Given how casually he says it, it’s clear that the screenwriter expected the audience to know exactly what it meant.
“Your Q had to do with your visibility, your likability and your invite-ability into people’s homes,” Kennedy said recently, reflecting on Randy’s wisecrack. “Your Q was your hangability, if you will.”
Everyone in the public had — and still has — a Q Score, except for politicians, religious leaders and royalty. Cartoon characters had Q Scores. Brands had Q Scores. Deep Blue, that computer that beat grand chess master Garry Kasparov in 1997, rocked a pretty solid Q. So did Bruce Wayne. Even the dead have Q Scores. Characters, sports figures, local TV news anchors: They all have a Q, and that Q Score was used by advertising agencies, TV studios, Hollywood execs, marketing companies and consultants to put the most-liked people/things/characters in front of eager American audiences and consumers.
And everyone knew what it was. Back then, the Q Score reigned supreme. One could say the Q Score itself had a pretty good Q Score.
But today’s fractured media landscape, increasingly ruled by social media influencers and niche interests, has threatened to turn the Q Score into an artifact. “It’s very different now,” said Kennedy, “since people are becoming famous off of TikTok and so many different things, it’s totally different.”
Different, sure, but dead? Not quite yet.
Invented in the early 1960s by Marketing Evaluations, the Q Score stood out by measuring not only how many people were familiar with a show/celebrity/product/etc. but how they felt about it. They “evolved into the measurement of personality likability, the whole trail of how well-liked our movie stars, TV stars, chefs, musical performers are,” said Henry Schafer, the company’s executive vice president of 33 years. “Eventually every category of personality started to get measured.”
To come by Q Scores, the folks at Marketing Evaluations originally surveyed American households via mail and telephone — checking in annually — but now it’s measured twice a year. The score for every celebrity is calculated from surveys filled out by 1,800 respondents who are at least 6 years old (yes, 6). They rate the celebrities on a trademarked (thus, not shared with a journalist) five-point rating scale. “We found socially and psychologically, even before social media, if anything drastic happens to a celebrity or a TV show, it takes a couple of months before a behavior change happens. Attitudes take a while to develop,” Schafer said. “That’s why we ended up doing it every six months instead of every month. You’d be going crazy because the data would be jumping around too much.”
While the Q Score may no longer be the casual cultural colloquialism it was once, it still remains vital enough for advertising companies and movie studios — among others — to purchase the data. The almighty Q helps determine who sells you toothpaste, who dons the next cape and mask, who reads the nightly news, who you’ll see roughly 100 billion times during breaks in the weekend’s Saints-Falcons game.
A recent list of Top 10 high and low celebrity Q Scores shared with The Washington Post plays out pretty much as one might expect: Famous men with high Q’s include Morgan Freeman, Tom Hanks, Denzel Washington, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Ryan Reynolds. Sandra Bullock is No. 1 among female celebs, with Julia Roberts, Dolly Parton, Meryl Streep, Viola Davis and Michelle Obama also on the list.
Jerry Springer tops the list of men with negative Q Scores, followed by Machine Gun Kelly, Anthony S. Fauci, Chris Brown and Elon Musk. Three members of the Kardashian clan are near the top of the negative scores for women, while the No. 1 negative spot, given recent events, is Amber Heard. (Meanwhile, Johnny Depp, who has always been up there, retains a No. 8 on the most positive scores for men. Make of that what you will.)
In 2022, it may not matter to the celebrities themselves, but there was a time when it probably would have.
“Q scores were really important because that’s how people got cast in things. That’s how networks measured the popularity of an anchor person,” said Diane English, creator of the CBS sitcom “Murphy Brown,” which followed the lives of anchors and producers of a network TV newsmagazine. Years before “Scream” made a Q Score joke, Brown and her merry band of newscasters regularly contended with them. “We incorporated them into our show because we thought it would be fun. People really paid a lot of attention to Q Scores. Sometimes people looked at them on a daily basis.”
“Doing a show about a show, it was just good comedy fodder,” English added. In one episode, Brown gets a copy of the current ratings and unsuccessfully tries using them to sabotage Miller Redfield, a boneheaded colleague with a low Q.
‘Murphy Brown’ is a welcome sight, even when her outrage is too on-the-nose
Alan Weiss watched a similar plot play out in real life when he was a producer at New York City’s ABC affiliate, WABC. It was sometime around 1980. One day, as Weiss tells it, a reporter sauntered into the newsroom to find a piece of paper on the desk of the news director’s secretary “listing all the on-air talent, the reporters, the anchors, weather, sports, everybody who’s on air — and their salaries.” Following his journalistic (err, gossipy?) instincts, he made a copy and pinned it to the newsroom bulletin board.
As tale of the salary list rippled through the newsroom, anger spread, as some of the “heavy hitters … were being paid less, dramatically less than some of the newbie reporters,” ones with large on-screen personalities, Weiss said. The reason, they all figured, came down to Q Scores.
The late newspaperman turned TV personality Milton Lewis, whom Weiss calls “a reporter’s reporter, a bulldog with stories,” felt he was underpaid and told Weiss he planned to change his on-air name to “Pango Pango Lewis” to stand out and perhaps increase his Q — and maybe his salary to boot. Was he kidding? Maybe, but “he was really upset, he was really angry.” Soon thereafter, he stopped reporting his stories in the old, straight Walter Cronkite fashion and instead started acting outlandish on camera, at one point hopping in a pothole while reporting on the state of the city’s streets. He hoped by “overshticking” that he might embarrass management into supporting more serious news.
“The problem was that the management loved it. The audience loved it,” said Weiss, who went on to found an Emmy-winning video production company aptly named Alan Weiss Productions. “And from that day on, he was still a great reporter on the stories that required it, but also we would go to him for shtick.”
While the story has the ring of newsroom legend, it’s not nearly as outlandish as it might seem. Q Scores helped dictate not only which anchors sat at the desk but also the format of the news. Having two co-anchors, for example, could lead to greater anchor appeal and thus became the norm, said Craig Allen, an associate professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Usually, things didn’t work the Milt Lewis way. Studios and networks would hire consultants and talent coaches to help, basically, choreograph the news. And over time, what became clear was the audience didn’t want a proliferation of Cronkite-style, “single male newscasters who had stentorian voices, were very serious and presented the news like tomorrow there’s going to be World War III,” Allen said. Instead, “They wanted warm, friendly anchors, like the person next door. And that quickly caught on.”
One shockingly simple but shockingly important skill for an anchor, as it turned out, was “the ability to effectively smile. Something that simple was difficult to teach, difficult to convey, but this was electrifying to viewers when it first occurred,” Allen said. “And the ones that could simply smile, their Q Scores would go up 10, 15 points.”
As with everything else, today’s Q Scores must contend with social media, which laid waste to the monoculture and created a new type of celebrity.
Q Scores were “reasonably helpful back in the 1990s when I was the editor of People,” said author and former magazine editor Landon Jones. “It would come up in story meetings when we were trying to decide whether to do a cover on someone. We would say, ‘Do we want to do so-and-so?’ And we would check the Q Scores.” But even then, the scores served as something more of a “tiebreaker.” Jones and his team always looked for a bit more than simple likability in the celebs who landed on their covers, some difficult-to-describe quality, something almost ephemeral. “We had our own idea of what the X factor was, “he said. “And it wasn’t a Q. It was an X.”
More recently, from 2019 to 2022, when Dan Wakeford served as People’s editor in chief, Q Scores were even less important. “They’ve become less and less relevant because there’s not one cultural zeitgeist anymore,” he said. “There are thousands. Everything is niche. Consumers don’t consume entertainment in the same way as they used to, so broad-based scores of fame aren’t really useful.”
“There’s only a handful names of people that you only know one name of, and they’re super mega stars,” he added. “And they’re really the same people who were there two decades ago: Tom, Beyoncé, Meryl, Madonna, Bruce, Oprah, Brad, Angelina.” (To wit, take the recent example of the Try Guys scandal, in which a social media influencer named Ned Fulmer, who in part managed to earn money making videos about how much he loved his wife, had an affair that was made public. The Try Guys, a popular creative collective of former BuzzFeed employees, subsequently split with Fulmer. Half of one’s Twitter feed might be people naively asking, what is a Try Guy? The other half is completely clued in and knows which of the four Try Guys is which.)
So what’s the Q Score’s equivalent in 2022? Many, such as Kennedy and English, suggest it’s seen in the number of followers a celebrity has on social media.
“The nature of celebrity has changed over the years because it’s not necessarily whether you’re likable or not, but how aware people are of you and how interested people are in you, whether they’re interested in hating you or liking you or are just fascinated by you,” English said. “Sometimes people love to hate somebody. There are people who like to follow somebody on social media because they’re fascinated by their lifestyle. They may not approve of it, but it’s like watching roadkill in a way. It’s a car accident. You just can’t look away.”
Wakeford agreed: “Celebrity’s been turned on its head by the internet. You used to commit to spending money on a magazine or time watching a TV show, and you would be kind of proud of your choices. Now, there’s more of a guilty pleasure related to the internet. What I am looking at behind closed doors on my phone that nobody knows about leads to a different type of engagement. You have reality stars that you wouldn’t buy a car they advertised or buy a magazine with them on the cover, but you’d spend two minutes reading an article about them. You have personalities who are incredibly engaging, but you don’t necessarily like them in the same way you would with someone who had a high old-fashioned Q Score.”
And that’s where things get a bit tricky.
“The amount of followers doesn’t necessarily mean likability,” Schafer said. “You could be following a celebrity for whatever reasons, based on things happening in their professional career, personal lives. You’re just interested in following them. You don’t necessarily like them, but social media platforms created this whole voyeuristic approach to how celebrities are exposed to the average consumer now.”
Case in point: the Kardashians. The ultra-famous family boasts unbelievable social media numbers. On Instagram alone, Khloé has 275 million followers, Kourtney has 200 million and Kendall Jenner has 258 million. Yet they currently have the second, third and fourth most negative Q Scores among women.
“When advertisers or PR firms or marketing agents want to use celebrities like that, they just have to be well-aware that they’re matching that type of polarizing personality with a brand in the right way,” Schafer said. That’s why if you see a Kardashian promoting a product, it’s likely from a company she owns. Same with, perhaps surprisingly, Martha Stewart. Her brands might be beloved, but she’s deeply polarizing. “You’re not going to see her as a spokesperson for other brands besides her own. And that could be a mistake because there’s such a difference in the perceptions between her and her brands.”
While it’s true Q Scores have fallen somewhat out of favor, at least to the general culture, they’re having something of a moment in 2022, thanks to a pair of high-profile celebrity news events. Will Smith plummeted from his perch in the Top 10 highest Q Scores after he slapped Chris Rock at the Academy Awards for poking fun at Jada Pinkett Smith, Smith’s wife. She neither invited nor condoned the evening’s theatrics, but she nevertheless dropped to the seventh most negative Q Score among women with a 50 percent or higher familiarity among audiences.
Right or wrong, old-fashioned or not, partly true or entirely true — if the culture has a pulse, the Q Score can still detect it. | 2022-10-07T12:17:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Whatever happened to the almighty Q Score? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/07/q-score-what-is-it/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/07/q-score-what-is-it/ |
What to watch with your kids: ‘Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile’ and more
From left, Lyle the crocodile (voice of Shawn Mendes), Constance Wu, Javier Bardem and Winslow Fegley ride a pedal bike in “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile.” (Sarah Shatz/Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures)
Cute singing croc musical has slapstick, a little peril.
“Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile” is a live-action, family-friendly musical based on the beloved picture book series that began in 1962. As in the books, the story centers on the Primm family, who discover that they have a crocodile in their New York City townhouse. This version of Lyle (who’s voiced by Shawn Mendes) sings like a pop performer — but only in front of loved ones, never an audience. The main antagonist is the Primms’ downstairs neighbor, the spot-on-named Mr. Grumps (Brett Gelman) — who would love nothing more than to get the entire family evicted. Expect a bit of peril: Animal control shoots a tranquilizer gun to sedate Lyle, and, in a moment of humor, he accidentally swallows a cat whole. There’s also a lot of slapstick, like when Lyle and Mr. Primm wrestle or a sequence in which two characters are pursued through New York City streets. There are a couple of fart jokes, and two different characters are caught taking a bath or shower, startling other characters. The story depicts a middle-schooler who deals with anxiety and a blended family that’s really close. Younger kids will get a kick out of Lyle’s little adventures, fans of Mendes’s music will enjoy the original songs, and parents will appreciate the messages about teamwork, courage and honesty. (105 minutes)
Rosie’s Rules (TV-Y)
Bilingual show for little ones celebrates multiculturalism.
“Rosie’s Rules” is a bilingual (English-Spanish) animated series for preschoolers. The stories involve a variety of topics related to cultural references to Mexico, family relations and civic concepts, like how the mail works. It also offers lessons on empathy, listening to elders, and basic mindfulness and coping skills as part of problem-solving. In the same line as “Maya & Miguel,” the show is mostly in English, but the dialogue has words in Spanish, and characters use phrases like “adiós, granito de arroz” (“bye, grain of rice”). (12 roughly half-hour episodes)
Available on PBS Kids.
Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo! (Unrated)
Spooky, silly holiday tale has cartoon violence, flirting.
“Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo!” is an animated mystery in which Scooby and the gang must crack a case involving ghosts and ghouls that look like them. If you know Scooby-Doo, you know what to expect here. There’s cartoon violence involving nail slashing and chase scenes set to music, including one in which characters run from floating ghosts attempting to throw fireballs at them. The monstrous-looking ghosts and ghouls might be scary for younger or more sensitive viewers. Characters are also zapped by invisible force fields, but there are no lingering injuries. There’s a bit of mild flirting as Scooby regular Velma (voiced by Kate Micucci) expresses her crush on criminal mastermind Coco Diablo (Myrna Velasco). She blushes, and her glasses fog when Coco is around. As usual, the main characters display teamwork to solve the mystery. (72 minutes)
Available on demand.
Monster High: The Movie (TV-PG)
Live-action monster teens face peril, appreciate diversity.
“Monster High: The Movie,” based on the dolls that also inspired the animated TV series and films, is a live-action high-school-set musical fantasy with some scenes that could frighten very young viewers. Though most of the mild scares are played for laughs (like kids playing football with an actual severed foot), teens are chased and threatened by an evil monster who appears to kill one character at one point. Characters spend time in a cemetery and suffer taunts and bullying for being different. But at Monster High, they find a place where they fit in and they learn the value of inclusion. The cast is racially diverse, and the characters represent all manner of monsters (vampires, ghouls, werewolves, etc.). Other examples of representation include a character who uses the pronouns they/them and the high school’s “all monster” bathroom. (80 minutes)
Available on Paramount Plus. | 2022-10-07T12:17:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Common Sense Media’s weekly recommendations. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/10/07/common-sense-media-october-7/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/10/07/common-sense-media-october-7/ |
Is it the Lutherans? The Europeans? The cold?
Osmo Vanska rehearses with the Minnesota Orchestra in 2014. (Jenn Ackerman for The Washington Post)
Midwestern Airbnb hosts are unusually likely to use the word “orchestra” in their listings, according to our groundbreaking research into the mysteries of regional Airbnb promotion. But why?
Readers sent in a multitude of theories, starting with the most obvious: The Midwest teems with tremendous orchestras, the sort of world-renowned outfits that will draw out-of-town visitors to your Airbnb. Cincinnati reader Dana Harms reels them off.
“There are top-notch organizations in the Midwest: Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Minnesota Orchestra,” she wrote. “(I was surprised too, when I moved here!)”
Others pointed out that even smaller towns in the region tend to have robust symphonies and orchestras. And there’s data to back this up. Reader Stephen Spiewak, a senior digital content manager at ticket marketplace Vivid Seats, kindly ran the numbers on live events in 2022. Midwest states hosted 27 percent of U.S. orchestra performances, even though they were home to only 19 percent of concerts overall.
Our own analysis of nonprofit IRS tax data yielded similar results. The Midwest doesn’t necessarily have more orchestras than the rest of the country, but it does seem to have bigger and more active ones. Led by the powerhouse orchestras listed by Ms. Harms, the region has more orchestra revenue and assets per capita than anywhere else.
Renée Gaarder, a Purdue University musicologist and historian who studies New Deal-era efforts to promote music, said the Midwest was quick to embrace a major federal campaign to establish orchestras and music-education programs. Her research shows cities and small towns that got orchestras back then are more likely to have orchestras or symphonies today.
“There was a lot of buy-in to the Federal Music Project,” said Gaarder, who has sung in a local choir for more than a decade. “What we’re seeing today could be a result of that push for live music and music consumption.”
But that raises an even bigger question: Why was the Midwest such fertile ground for classical music? Let’s take a look at your theories.
More Lutherans
The answer is Lutherans! We have a strong musical tradition in our churches, with singing by everyone throughout the services. And from the mid-1800s through the invention of radio, local music making was a key part of community life, with every hamlet having one or more municipal bands and performance venues for them.
— Peter Schmidt, Lexington, Mass.
Many readers reminded us of Lutheranism’s deep classical music tradition, from the hymns written by Martin Luther himself to the compositions of noted Lutheran Johann Sebastian Bach.
Memphis-born Tesfa Wondemagegnehu conducts choir ensembles (and hosts team-building barbecues) at St. Olaf, a Lutheran college south of the Twin Cities with music programs so famous that multiple readers wrote to cite them for the region’s classical-music compulsion. When he moved to Minnesota, Wondemagegnehu was floored by the funerals.
“Let me tell you, every time I’m inside of a funeral here in Minnesota and these folks open their mouths and sing in perfect harmony — four-parts, sometimes more — I’m like, ‘Where are you people from?’ It’s extraordinary!” Wondemagegnehu said.
It reminded him of the Black churches he grew up with. “If you put a bunch of Black folk in the South together, guess what? You’ll hear the same harmony, too!”
The Midwest is home to far more Lutherans than the rest of the country combined, according to our analysis of the 2010 U.S. Religion Census (the 2020 version has not yet been released). You’re six times more likely to run into a Lutheran in the Midwest than you are elsewhere.
And readers are right, there’s a correlation there. Orchestras tend to have more income and assets in states and counties that are more Lutheran, according to IRS data.
But other factors correlate with Lutheranism as well.
More Germans and Scandinavians
Having grown up in northern Indiana, I can attest it has a strong German, Scandinavian and all-around Baltic-sea heritage. That heritage includes a love of community music, be it city bands or city orchestras — or better yet, both! Classical music overlaps with church music, waltzes, marches and oompa-pa music to be a bedrock positive element in a Mid-Western community.
— Ann McNulty
While many in classical music are working to push the art form beyond its European roots, the genre arrived in the United States as an import from the Old World. It makes sense, then, that it would be popular in the region with the highest concentration of immigrants from such Northern and Central European countries as Germany, Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Finland.
Indeed, we found states that have an abundance of people of Scandinavian ancestry to have a somewhat higher number of orchestras. States with higher German populations, on the other hand, tended to follow the broader Lutheran pattern: more revenue and assets for music, but not necessarily more orchestras.
Early European immigrants created institutions that still uphold their classical music traditions. One of them was, of course, Wondemagegnehu’s St. Olaf College, founded by Norwegian immigrants in 1874. The college brought longtime American Public Media producer Vaughn Ormseth from Montana to Minnesota decades ago to sing in the choir. He never left the state.
Ormseth said he’s drawn to Minnesota’s community spirit — and to its music. Compared with other parts of the country, he said, the Midwest has a tradition of cooperating and investing in the common good.
“It goes back to the origins of the state, particularly the Scandinavians,” Ormseth said. “There’s this co-op tradition, which is unusual for America, which is so individualist.”
Ormseth sees the community’s civic engagement play out in support for public media. Local public-radio outfits, particularly Minnesota Public Radio and its parent organization American Public Media, produce some of the most popular classical-music programming the nation.
Longer, colder winters
We spend six months in cold that would make the rest of the country roll over and die. We like to spend those months doing nice things in the great indoors. Thus we have a surprisingly large per capita expanse of museums and orchestras and theaters.
— Rachel Hiltsley, Minneapolis
The wind will slice through you like a scalpel, thus limiting outdoor recreation options.
— Lauren Holst, Iowa
For six months of the year — especially during the three months of peak winter — the Midwest beats out the Northeast as the coldest and darkest part of the Lower 48 states where people actually live. (The Northeast has a few cold and dark corners in the northern reaches of New York and New England, but fewer folks live in them.)
The Midwest runs up the score with smaller cities in the frigid northern plains — think Fargo, N.D., or Duluth, Minn. — but when we looked at the 10 coldest and darkest cities of more than a million people, most of them were in the Midwest, too. And in the depths of winter, it gets even worse: The Midwest is home to five of the top six coldest, darkest cities during the three peak winter months — hello, Chicago and Detroit — with nearby Buffalo the lone outlier.
The Midwest is also home to all of the 10 coldest and darkest counties in the country, concentrated in Minnesota and North Dakota. Almost any way you slice it, the most miserable county by this measure is Lake of the Woods, a Minnesota county of about 3,800 people famous for its goofy Northwest Angle, a stranded peninsula that marks the northernmost point of the contiguous United States.
The darker parts of the United States do tend to have more orchestras and orchestra per person, as do the colder parts. But it’s hard to make too much of this. The variables we looked at tend to run in tandem. The most German and Scandinavian places tend to be the most Lutheran, which also tend to be the coldest and darkest.
So, are we describing the ideal conditions for a classical music hotbed, or are we just describing the Midwest? Perhaps both!
What about conservatories?
Dedicated readers will recall that our research into Airbnb listings identified the most Midwestern words in the world. In a trend potentially related to the popularity of orchestras, we found that “conservatory” ranked as the third most Midwestern word, behind only “walleye” and “heartland.”
But after reading and classifying hundreds upon hundreds of Airbnb listings, we discovered that hosts use the word to describe three very different kinds of amenities.
A conservatory might be a music school. But it might be a sun room. And it is even more likely that your friendly Midwestern Airbnb host is referring to a nearby garden or park — especially a botanical garden with a glass hothouse. Midwestern hosts were about seven times as likely to mention this type of conservatory than hosts elsewhere in the country.
The fine folks at the American Public Gardens Association — the go-to trade group for botanical gardens, arboretums and the like — tell us that of the 11 U.S. members who use the word “conservatory” in their name, nine are in the Midwest. The others are in Tacoma, Wash., and San Francisco.
Interestingly, they also have a field in their membership database that flags member gardens with a conservatory, even if it’s not part of their name. Those are 1.4 times more likely to be in the Midwest, adjusting for population. That sounds impressive until you realize that, adjusted for population, gardens that do use the word “conservatory” in their name are a full 17 times more likely to be in the Midwest!
All of which is to say that Midwesterners are slightly more likely to have conservatories than other Americans, but far more likely to call them conservatories. They just love the word! But it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with their impressive and unrelated love of classical music.
Howdy, friends! The Department of Data needs your fun facts! We need to know what you’re curious about: Where are the windiest places in America? What’s the most abundant animal in U.S. zoos? What’s the most common ancestry in each county? Just ask!
To get every question, answer and factoid in your inbox as soon as we publish, sign up here. If your question inspires a column, we’ll send an official Department of Data button and ID card. This week’s ID cards go to the folks who submitted the theories we used above, as well as Minnesota reader Jenel Farrell, who graciously offered to put us in touch with some of the region’s many classical-music enthusiasts and luminaries. | 2022-10-07T12:26:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why does the Midwest love orchestras so much? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/07/midwest-orchestras-conservatories-airbnb/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/07/midwest-orchestras-conservatories-airbnb/ |
Borrowers have until Oct. 31 to apply to receive credit for payments that previously did not qualify for the program
Activists at the White House after President Biden unveiled his plan to cancel student debt. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Maldonado said she tried several times to determine whether she qualified for the federal government’s Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program. The complexity of the program was overwhelming, she said.
White House shares more on student loan forgiveness application
A 2018 report from the Government Accountability Office found that the Education Department rejected 99 percent of loan forgiveness requests. Since then, the Education Department has been trying to simplify the process. As part of an effort to address problems with the process, it introduced a time-limited waiver last year that would count previously ineligible payments toward PSLF.
As of late August, more than $10 billion in debt relief for over 175,000 borrowers has been given through the PSLF program, the Education Department said. You can find out more about the waiver at studentaid.gov/pslf. If you haven’t checked already, hurry to do so. You might qualify for the credit if you worked in public service dating back to Oct. 1, 2007.
Administration narrows the eligibility for student debt cancellation
This makes sense. Work productivity can be impacted by workers stressed about their financial situations, such as a heavy debt load. “Student loan debt is a major challenge in the country today. We at Fidelity have been working on a number of solutions in this space,” said Debra Frey, head of marketing and analytics for nonprofits at Fidelity.
A potential beneficiary is Kellie Latesky, whose employer, Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo, Mich., is helping her with her student loans as part of Fidelity’s partnership with Summer. She just started the process. She has $88,000 in student loans that she has been paying off for 10 years.
Confusing student loan forgiveness terms resulted in high denial rate | 2022-10-07T12:26:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Waiver for public service loan forgiveness ends October 31 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/07/pslf-loan-forgiveness-deadline/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/07/pslf-loan-forgiveness-deadline/ |
Justin Mutawassim tweeted photos labeled “How it started” and “How it’s going”
Justin Mutawassim, left, while working as a ramp agent in August 2016. Mutawassim, right, after he completed his first cross-Atlantic flight as a pilot for Delta Air Lines. (Justin Mutawassim)
Justin Mutawassim was 5 years old the first time he took a flight. The Delta pilots on board invited him to explore the cockpit, “and I was just absolutely enamored,” he said.
“I remember sitting there and being fascinated by all the buttons,” said Mutawassim. “From there, I just caught the bug.”
By age 6, he had decided: “I wanted to be a pilot.”
His pull toward aviation intensified as the years passed, but he did not see a clear path to becoming a pilot, so at age 19 he found himself working as a ramp agent. He wanted to be close to the planes he loved.
This spring, though, he achieved his long-held dream: He became a Delta Air Lines pilot.
“It feels incredibly surreal still,” said Mutawassim, 26, who is based in New York City.
His road to becoming a pilot was less linear than he had envisioned as a child.
Mutawassim’s middle school teacher — who was in the United States Air Force — wrongly informed him that perfect vision was a requirement to become a pilot.
“When I heard that, I was really defeated,” said Mutawassim, who wears glasses. “I didn’t really have the ability to fact check that.”
He graduated from high school in 2014, and decided to pursue a career in broadcasting. Mutawassim worked part time as a technical director for a few minor league sports teams and applied for a communications degree at a community college in Dallas. He enjoyed broadcasting, he said, but it didn’t fulfill him the way he knew aviation would.
In December 2014, about a year into his studies, Mutawassim decided to drop out.
“I didn’t want to waste my time or my money on something I wasn’t truly invested in,” he said.
Mutawassim took a semester off school and got a job as a ramp agent hauling bags for Delta Air Lines.
“Next thing you know, it turned into a year and a half of an awesome job,” he said, adding that he quickly progressed from agent to supervisor, and later, instructor. “I just absolutely fell in love with the technical aspect of aviation.”
“It was physically the hardest job I’ve ever done,” Mutawassim continued. “Manual labor is no joke.”
During his time as a ramp agent, Mutawassim’s desire to pursue a career in aviation became stronger, but he said he didn’t have the confidence to make it happen.
That changed when he met his mentor, Ivor Martin, in 2016. Martin was then a pilot for Virgin America, and now a captain for Alaska Airlines.
While riding an employee bus — which transported staff from the parking lot to Dallas Love Field Airport — Mutawassim struck up a conversation with Martin. He told him about his hope to one day become a pilot.
Martin’s response: “Justin, come over to my house. We’re going to sit down and talk about it.”
So they did, and Martin sketched out a path Mutawassim could take to become a pilot.
“I set out everything that he had to do, and he followed it to a T,” said Martin, 54.
As a Black person, Martin said, it was difficult to find relatable role models in the industry.
“I didn’t really have anyone to mentor me when I was going through the process,” he said.
According to 2021 data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 3.9 percent of people in the category of “pilots and aircraft engineers” identify as Black.
“When I was coming up, I didn’t see hardly anybody that looked like me,” Martin said.
He helped Mutawassim prepare for written tests and eventually apply for flight school. He sat down with Mutawassim’s parents to discuss financing and urged his mother to co-sign a loan so Mutawassim could pay for the degree.
While at ATP Flight School in Dallas, Mutawassim soared — both literally and figuratively. He breezed through the curriculum and was able to complete the necessary licenses in 11 months.
Mutawassim earned the 1,500 hours flight time required to become a commercial pilot by working as a flight instructor, and he was also able to co-pilot some private flights. He was hired as a pilot for a regional airline, Republic Airways, in 2018, and worked there for three years.
In summer 2021, Mutawassim moved to Breeze Airways, a start-up airline, and spent six months as a pilot there. In spring 2022, after he learned Delta dropped the college degree requirement for pilots, Mutawassim eagerly applied for a position.
A few days after he sent in his application, he received a call from the airline, asking to set up an interview time.
“I was absolutely shocked,” said Mutawassim.
To his delight, he was offered the job and started the position in May. He had several months of training and just finished his final qualification flight Oct. 1.
It was a surreal moment, Mutawassim said. He reflected on how far he had come in only six years, from carrying luggage to flying a Boeing 767.
His story is somewhat parallel to Patrick Burns’s — Delta’s vice president of flight operations and system chief pilot.
“My path to the flight deck of a Delta jet was similar to Justin’s,” Burns said in an email to The Washington Post. “I also got my start on the ramp loading bags onto our flights, and after college I worked hard to build flight hours and experience with other airlines before returning to Delta as a pilot.”
Mutawassim shared a tweet Sept. 29 showcasing his progress: “This one has been 6 long years in the making.” He added “how it started” and “how it’s going” photos — one of him as a Delta ramp agent in August 2016, and the second as a Delta pilot in September 2022.
The post “absolutely blew up out of nowhere,” said Mutawassim, who is completing college courses in his spare time, and is working toward a degree in aviation science.
Comments poured in, including from strangers sharing similar success stories.
Mutawassim said he is “dumbfounded” by the response to his post, which he initially expected only a handful of friends to see. He encouraged people who were touched by his story to consider donating to the Organization of Black Aerospace Professionals (OBAP) — which both he and Martin volunteer for. Delta has also partnered with OBAP for more than two decades.
“Delta is working hard to make all pathways equitable and to remove barriers for qualified candidates,” said Burns.
In addition to his work with OBAP, Mutawassim volunteers as a mentor for Professional Pilots of Tomorrow, which offers networking and mentorship opportunities for pilots. He works as a mentor for both organizations.
“It’s been really rewarding for me to start giving back to the community, and educating people about the profession,” he said.
Martin, who has mentored several prospective pilots, said the one thing he asks in return is that his mentees “pay it forward.”
“He’s doing that,” Martin said of Mutawassim. “I am beyond proud of him.”
Mutawassim, for his part, said being a pilot for a major airline is “even better than I imagined.” He is already looking ahead to the future and is working toward his next goal of becoming a captain.
On a recent morning, while walking through the airport terminal in his Delta uniform, he saw a little boy point to him and say: “Look, there’s a pilot!”
In that moment, Mutawassim said, “it all came full circle.” | 2022-10-07T12:56:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | He started his career as a ramp agent. Now he’s a Delta pilot. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/07/delta-airlines-pilot-justin-mutawassim/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/07/delta-airlines-pilot-justin-mutawassim/ |
Seven bleak takeaways from Showtime’s ‘The Lincoln Project’ miniseries
Analysis by Roxanne Roberts
Keith Edwards and Stuart Stevens in “The Lincoln Project” miniseries on Showtime. (Showtime)
Showtime’s “The Lincoln Project” is not for the faint of heart. The five-part miniseries, which debuts Friday, is an intimate, bare-knuckled take on the 2020 presidential campaign through the eyes of the Lincoln Project, a super PAC created by Republican political consultants to defeat Donald Trump. As an inside look at the world of political messaging, it’s fascinating. As an inside look at the future of democracy, it’s terrifying.
In the last two months before the election, filmmakers followed the key players of the organization as they created the viral ads that attracted millions of clicks, followers and dollars. The ads attacked Trump and his followers with a ferocity that liberals cheered. The goal was to persuade a tiny sliver of Republican voters to vote for Joe Biden.
And it worked — until it didn’t. The Lincoln Project won the battle and lost the war; instead of taking a victory lap, it was riddled with infighting, betrayals, financial disputes and charges of inappropriate sexual advances by one of the co-founders.
Even for political junkies, the documentary is revelatory for the way it depicts brutal truths of modern campaign warfare. It posits that anyone who thinks the election result battles were confined to 2020 hasn’t been paying attention to the dystopian ads for the midterms this year. Democracy is at risk, and no one knows that better than the founders of the Lincoln Project because they helped lay the groundwork. Now they’re frightened; as co-founder Stuart Stevens ominously put it: “I’ll never look at 1930s Germany and wonder how it happened again.”
Here are the takeaways from the series:
These guys are not liberals’ perfect heroes
The Lincoln Project was co-founded by longtime political consultants who worked for decades to elect Republican candidates. They developed, as they like to joke, a “particular set of skills” that they deployed to devastating effect.
Did they create Trump? No, but they freely admit that they manipulated the modern political landscape that made Trump a viable candidate — exploiting race and fear for political gain. They opened Pandora’s box and made elections not just about policy differences, but about motives, patriotism and loyalty.
Then Trump happened and they were horrified. The remorse is palatable, as is their determination to preserve whatever is left of democracy. Too little too late? Better late than never? Democrats embraced the Lincoln Project ads like long-lost friends; the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
“There’s nothing noble about us in the least; the cause is noble,” says Stevens. “You don’t have to think we’re good people. You don’t have to agree with us. You don’t have to like us. But we’re useful.”
Trump was easy to troll
Early on, the Lincoln Project understood that the best way to attack Trump was to get under his very thin skin, and it was ridiculously effective.
The group specifically targeted the president by buying ad time on Fox News, knowing that Trump watched the network incessantly. They knew he couldn’t stand being called a “loser,” and so that’s exactly what they did. A more sophisticated candidate might have rolled with the punches; Trump reflexively hit back.
The president went on Twitter calling them “losers” and repeated the insult to White House reporters. That free publicity resulted in $2 million in donations to the Lincoln Project in 24 hours.
And they didn’t just target the president. After debating the best way to use a prime billboard in Manhattan’s Time Square, the group decided to mock Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. The billboard depicted the smiling couple dismissing New Yorkers suffering from covid-19 — which Kushner waved off as “that’s their problem,” in a March 2020 meeting with business leaders, reported Vanity Fair.
Predictably, the couple threatened to sue the Lincoln Project, demanding that the billboard come down. The group responded with delight, pointed out that Kushner had, indeed, expressed that sentiment and they were White House officials. The Lincoln Project immediately raised $1.5 million, and put a copy of the billboard on a boat circling Mar-a-Lago. Said co-founder Rick Wilson: “It’s offensive that they think we’d be intimidated.”
The Lincoln Project’s plan for preserving the union: Drive Trump out of office by driving him nuts
The group was about more than viral ads
It was the social media ads — specifically “Mourning in America” — that catapulted the Lincoln Project into the national spotlight. Behind the scenes the operation functioned less like a media shop and more like a traditional campaign war room.
There was no shortage of egos in the room
The Lincoln Project was a profane, testosterone-heavy workplace. There were egos, clashes, backstabbing — just like most political campaigns. Plus a pandemic. Staffers were exhausted, frustrated, excited, marginalized, hopeful and angry — the series shows them high-fiving one day, threatening to quit the next.
In short, the series is a crash course in modern political consulting. Cockeyed optimists need not apply.
It’s the money, stupid
One subtext: America’s campaign finance system is broken, and there’s no fix in sight.
Political consultants used to get a fee from the campaign; now they form political action committees and get a percentage from media buys — a multimillion enterprise with few rules. The Lincoln Project paid Facebook $450,000 for just seven days of advertising; the group raised a total of $90 million to defeat Trump. There was even talk that it would spin off into a high-powered media company after the election, which did not happen.
Trump supporters called the founders grifters and “self-serving RINOS” — charges they called ridiculous in light of Trump’s fundraising. But, inevitably, there were questions about where the Lincoln Project spent the money and who got rich — disputes that ended in accusations, denials and finger-pointing among the leadership. They were united when it came to Trump; they fell apart when it came to dividing the spoils.
John Weaver became a huge problem
John Weaver, one of the co-founders, is an offstage character in the miniseries, discussed but not followed by any cameras. When the series begins, he’s recovering from a heart attack and essentially ignored by the other principals who reject his request to pour $10 million into Texas. It isn’t until 2021 that the New York Times reported he had made online sexual overtures to a number of young men while offering help with their careers in politics. (Weaver issued an apology and stated that he believed his interactions were consensual; he left the organization.)
The other founders immediately disavowed him and any knowledge of his actions. Former staffers claim the founders must have known and buried it. There were more resignations; Weaver became the flash point for all the pent-up grievances within the organization.
The fall of John Weaver, a Lincoln Project co-founder whose political career was shrouded in mystery
Trump lost, Trumpism won
The Lincoln Project staff recognized early on that Trump’s claims of a rigged vote — long before Election Day — was more than rhetoric. It was the groundwork for what in the series they repeatedly call a “coup.” So the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021, was shocking but not surprising, but the ability for the group to weigh in was crippled by internal battles and the fact that the political team was dismissed after the election.
At its core, the miniseries is about Trumpism as much as it is about the Lincoln Project. A stripped down version of the organization still exists, fighting, say the founders, for the future of democracy. The political well has been poisoned; the digital age of misinformation may be the downfall of the American experiment, they warn. The pot calling the kettle black? Sure, but that doesn’t mean they’re wrong.
What it all means for 2022 — and 2024 — remains a question this documentary cannot answer. | 2022-10-07T12:56:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'The Lincoln Project’ miniseries on Showtime: Seven bleak takeaways - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/07/lincoln-project-series-showtime/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/07/lincoln-project-series-showtime/ |
With so much untapped U.S. oil, why does Biden beg dictators to add production?
President Biden speaks in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building's South Court Auditorium on June 22. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
So, let’s get this straight: When the price of gasoline was going up this spring, President Biden blamed Vladimir Putin. Then, when prices went down this summer, Biden launched an all-out campaign to take credit. Now, gas prices are going up again, and the White House is — you guessed it — blaming Putin. Sorry, but before the war in Ukraine, Biden presided over the largest year-over-year gas price rise in at least 30 years. He needs to take responsibility for his role in driving up prices.
Case in point: After channeling his inner Jimmy Carter, and begging OPEC Plus to increase oil production, Biden suffered a diplomatic humiliation this week when the oil cartel announced it was cutting production by 2 million barrels a day — a move that the White House, in draft talking points obtained by CNN, called a “total disaster.”
Why was Biden rebuffed? Maybe because he promised that on taking office, he would make Saudi Arabia a global “pariah” and stop arms shipment to Riyadh — only to abandon those promises and fist-bump the Saudi crown prince while groveling for increased production. Or maybe because he spent his first two years in office distancing the United States from its Persian Gulf allies while desperately courting our enemy, Iran, in the hopes of striking a nuclear deal that would have given Tehran hundreds of billions of dollars to fund terrorism throughout the region and threaten the security of Gulf states. Whatever the reason, Biden’s oil production diplomacy failed miserably — and he owns that defeat.
Worse still, the Wall Street Journal reports, Biden is preparing to lift sanctions on Venezuela’s narco-socialist dictatorship to allow Chevron to resume pumping oil there, paving the way for a potential reopening of oil exports from Venezuela. So much for his promise to lead the forces of freedom in the “battle between democracy and autocracies.”
Eugene Robinson: Biden gave Mohammed bin Salman a fist bump. His reward? A gut punch.
Why is Biden begging foreign dictators to increase production? The United States is sitting on 264 billion barrels of untapped oil — more than any other country on the planet. We should be unleashing our own domestic production, not asking Saudi Arabia and Venezuela to do so.
The White House said the OPEC Plus decision is “a reminder of why it is so critical that the United States reduce its reliance on foreign sources of fossil fuels” by “increasing our reliance on … clean energy.” In fact, Biden’s war on fossil fuels at home has done more to make the United States more dependent on energy from foreign despots than any president in memory.
While President Donald Trump opened 100 million acres of public land and water to exploration, Biden has leased fewer acres of federal land for oil and gas drilling than any president since the end of World War II. He suspended all oil and gas leases in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reversing a drilling program approved by Trump. This summer, Biden announced plans to block new offshore oil drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, as well as a backdoor plan to ban fracking in parts of the Permian Basin by using ozone standards to force Texas and New Mexico to curb oil drilling — a move that Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Tex.) warns would “jeopardize the production of 95,000,000 gallons of gasoline per day — 25 percent of our nation’s supply.” And Biden might be preparing to make things even worse, by implementing a ban on exports of gasoline, diesel and other refined petroleum products — a move that energy groups warn would backfire by reducing domestic refining capacity and further raising prices for U.S. consumers.
Guest Opinion: Price caps on Russian oil aren’t ideal. But they’re our best option.
Here’s the dirty secret: Prioritizing climate change means that Democrats actually like high gas prices. They don’t like the political blowback. They no doubt wish gas prices were not rising alongside the largest rise in food prices since 1979, the largest rise in the cost of shelter since 1984, the largest drop in real wages in 40 years and the worst overall inflation in four decades — all of which threaten their congressional majorities in November. So they are taking temporary steps to reduce gas prices — such as opening up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, issuing a waiver allowing summer sales of higher-ethanol gasoline and begging foreign despots to produce more gas.
But as Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg admitted on Fox News this week, they are only taking steps that will provide “short-term relief.” In the long term, Buttigieg said, “we’re all going to be better off when American-made clean energy is dominating the way that we fuel our transportation system.”
If Biden cared about reducing gas prices in the long term, he would be doing everything in the White House’s power to increase domestic oil and gas production. He’s doing the opposite. Because higher gas prices are part of their plan to force Americans to abandon fossil fuels. Just as government deliberately raised the cost of cigarettes to curb smoking, Democrats want to raise gas prices to curb our use of fossil fuels.
They don’t want to lose the midterm elections, so they are taking steps to try to temporarily lower prices. But Biden won’t do anything to increase domestic production in the long term. Because his overarching goal – as he promised during the campaign – is to “end fossil fuel,” regardless of the cost to our economic prosperity and national security. | 2022-10-07T13:01:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Sure, Biden is concerned about high gas prices — until the election - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/biden-gas-prices-election-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/biden-gas-prices-election-russia/ |
(Washington Post staff illustration; images by iStock)
Can we have order in the House?
Not if this crowd takes over.
Much of the public focus in the midterm elections has been on the, er, exotic nature of the Republic nominees in Senate and gubernatorial races, and understandably so. There’s Mehmet Oz’s crudite, Doug Mastriano’s white supremacists, and Herschel Walker’s … well, pretty much everything he says and does. But GOP nominees for the House are no less erratic — just less well known.
There’s the woman from North Carolina who was accused of hitting one husband with an alarm clock, trying to hit another with a car (and also menacing him with a frying pan) and punching her daughter. She denies that, though she also invoked a conspiracy belief that alien lizards control the government.
There’s the man from Ohio who lied about his military record, lavishly promoted QAnon themes, acknowledged bypassing police barriers at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and with 120 gallons of paint turned his entire lawn into a Trump banner.
There’s the man from Michigan who claimed that Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman participated in a satanic ritual, who once disparaged women’s suffrage, and who, though Black, raised concern about Democrats “eroding the white population.”
Then there are: the Texas woman accused by her estranged husband of cruelty toward his teenage daughter; the Colorado woman who backed an effort to secede from her state; the Virginia woman who speculated that rape victims wouldn’t get pregnant; and the Wisconsin man who used campaign funds from his failed 2020 race to come to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, where he apparently breached Capitol barricades.
What they all have in common is that they’re in competitive races, which means they could well be part of a Republican House majority in January. And that’s on top of a larger group of GOP nominees in deep-red congressional districts who are a motley assortment of election deniers, climate-change deniers, QAnon enthusiasts and Jan. 6 participants who propose to abolish the FBI and ban abortion with no exceptions, among other things. Some won nominations despite efforts by party leadership to stop them and continue without financial support from the National Republican Congressional Committee.
Maybe this is why Kevin McCarthy, the man who as House speaker would have the task of leading this rogues’ gallery, calls his agenda a “Commitment to America.” Many members of his new majority might be good candidates for commitment.
J.R. Majewski, the Trump-backed lawn painter from Ohio, has a different agenda: He wants to “abolish all unconstitutional three letter agencies,” including the CIA. He has said he’s willing to fight a civil war, and he made a campaign video in which he carried a rifle and said he would “do whatever it takes” to “bring this country back to its former glory.”
In North Carolina, Sandy Smith is folding into her plans for the country the domestic-abuse allegations against her: “I never ran over anyone with a car and I never hit anyone in the head with a frying pan. … I am bringing a frying pan to DC, though,” she tweeted in May. (Disclosure: My wife, a pollster, is a consultant to Smith’s Democratic opponent.) Smith also wants “executions” of those who, she falsely claims, stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump.
Maybe this is what John Gibbs, the Michigan Republican who questioned women’s suffrage, had in mind when he wrote as a Stanford student that women don’t “posess [sic] the characteristics necessary to govern” because they rely on “emotional reasoning.”
McCarthy will surely have to put down many an uprising from what might be termed the Insurrection Caucus. Wisconsin nominee Derrick Van Orden, like Majewski and a few other GOP nominees, was outside the U.S. Capitol that day — and was photographed inside a restricted area, though he says he left when things turned violent. And Kelly Cooper, a nominee in Arizona, wants “the prisoners of January 6th … to be released on day one.”
George Santos, a nominee in New York, claimed he was the victim of election fraud in his failed 2020 bid. Sam Peters, a nominee in Nevada who has used the “#QArmy” hashtag and embraced being called the “male” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, characterized those facing charges for the insurrection as “civically engaged American citizens exercising their constitutional freedoms.” And Iowa nominee Zach Nunn, who found it suspicious that Capitol Police couldn’t “stop a bunch of middle-aged individuals from walking onto the floor,” argued that “not a single one” of the defendants was charged with and convicted of insurrection. (That’s because the charge is “seditious conspiracy.”) Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, a nominee from Ohio, was precocious in her false claims of election fraud: She claimed in 2018 that a voting machine had switched her vote in the Ohio Senate race from Republican to Democrat.
Overlapping with the Insurrection Caucus are those with qualifications that might, at best, be called unconventional. Monica De La Cruz, a Texas nominee and top GOP recruit, was accused in a court filing a year ago of “cruel and aggressive conduct” toward her then-husband’s 14-year-old daughter, including pinching the teen to stop her from crying; she denies the claim. In Colorado, nominee Barbara Kirkmeyer once led an attempt by 11 counties there to secede and become their own state. In North Carolina, nominee Bo Hines (who wants a 10-year moratorium on immigration) spoke of a “banana republic” as though the common term for flailing democracies was actually referring to the clothing store of the same name.
Of course, the People’s House has always attracted the eccentric, and even the shady, from both parties. But the would-be Republican Class of ’22 is extraordinary in the number of oddballs and extremists in its ranks. This is no accident: The trend in Republican primaries, accelerated by Trump, has favored those with the most eye-popping tapestry of conspiracy theories and unyielding positions. GOP primaries are dominated by a sliver of the electorate on the far right.
That’s why they produce figures such as Erik Aadland, a Colorado nominee who claims that the 2020 election was “absolutely rigged” and that the country is “on the brink of being taken over by a communist government” and who has followed various extremist groups, including the Proud Boys, on social media. In New Jersey, Frank Pallotta is again a Republican nominee, after declaring during his 2020 run for the same seat that he stands by the Oath Keepers, a group whose leaders are now on trial over Jan. 6.
Starting in January, a likely narrow Republican majority might have to find consensus among a freshman class that can’t agree on basic facts. Karoline Leavitt, a nominee in New Hampshire, claims that “the alleged ‘existential threat of climate change’ is a manufactured crisis by the Democrat Party.” In Virginia, nominee Yesli Vega argued that it was less likely for a rape victim to become pregnant because “it’s not something that’s happening organically.” Also in Virginia, nominee Hung Cao asserted that more “people get bludgeoned to death and stabbed to death than they get shot,” which is wrong by an order of magnitude.
But these nominees have offered unique policy ideas! Robert Burns of New Hampshire said in 2018 that he would allow abortion only to protect the “life of the mother” — but “we would need a panel in this sort of situation” to decide whether the ailing woman can get the lifesaving procedure.
A real-life death panel! Challenged recently on this position, Burns replied last month: “In response to the death panels, I believe women of color and low economic status deserve second and third opinions before being forced into abortions.” Put another way, a woman would need a second and third opinion before she’s allowed to save her own life.
The House Republican Class of ’22 will be many things, but “boring” is not one of them. | 2022-10-07T13:01:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The 2022 House Republican midterm candidates give 'crazy' new meaning - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/republican-house-candidates-2022-crazy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/republican-house-candidates-2022-crazy/ |
The Supreme Court building in Washington. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has overseen the Supreme Court’s steady dismantling of the nation’s core voter-protection law, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. So it was a bad sign when the court took a case on a discriminatory Alabama congressional district map that lower courts had condemned. Judging from how the oral arguments proceeded on Oct. 4, the court might well weaken the act further, based on an implausible reading of the law, with potentially dire consequences for minority voters’ ability to elect candidates who represent them.
The case should be simple — a “slam dunk,” as Justice Elena Kagan put it. Alabama’s legislature drew a congressional district map that packed Black voters into one district and dispersed the rest into majority-White districts. Though the state is 27 percent Black, African Americans had a reasonable chance of electing a candidate of their choice in only one of the state’s seven congressional districts, given how strongly the state’s voting patterns correlate with race.
Those who are challenging the legislature’s redistricting plan generated maps showing that the state could have created a second district in which Black voters had a shot at electing someone who represents them — and that these alternative maps still respected traditional redistricting principles, such as keeping districts compact. This is a crucial step in such lawsuits, because it shows that the state has viable alternatives that are fairer to Black voters.
Alabama’s lawyers argued that these fairer maps are irrelevant, because the challengers considered race to draw them. The state’s mapmakers did not use race as an explicit factor in drawing their lines, they argued, and the court should insist that the challengers show that they can create fairer maps based solely on race-neutral factors.
In other words, the state argued that those challenging a congressional map for having racially discriminatory effects, which Alabama’s plainly does, should have to do so without taking race into account in a key part of the process. Yet Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965 explicitly to help minority voting groups gain power at the ballot box. “Indifference to racial equality is exactly what [the act] is barring or prohibiting,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor emphasized.
Though the court’s conservative justices appeared unreceptive to some of Alabama’s most sweeping arguments, they seemed ready to uphold the state’s map, anyway. If they do so, the way that they rule could have vast consequences for minority voting rights. The court has already neutered the Voting Rights Act’s Section 5, which contained the law’s most robust check on states seeking to impose discriminatory voting policies. Then, last year, the justices weakened the act’s Section 2, which allows minority voters to challenge such policies in court. In this latest voting rights case, the court is poised to erode Section 2 still further, raising yet more barriers to those asking federal judges to restrain states from diminishing their ability to participate meaningfully in the political process.
A further assault on the Voting Rights Act would undermine both the intent of a law that was a signature achievement of the civil rights era and the meaningful participation of all Americans in the democratic system.
The Editorial Board on the Supreme Court
Opinion|The Roberts court should end its assault on the Voting Rights Act
Opinion|Good on the Supreme Court for keeping live audio. Now it’s time to go further.
Opinion|One way to repair the Supreme Court | 2022-10-07T13:01:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Supreme Court should end its assault on the Voting Rights Act - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/roberts-supreme-court-voting-rights-act-assault/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/roberts-supreme-court-voting-rights-act-assault/ |
Hi Damon: My son is engaged to a woman who loves to organize parties, and now she’s hired a wedding planner. Wedding planned for March 2024, last I heard. I told my son, I really don’t want to hear anything about it. Told the fiancee that too.
I hate weddings. I get sweaty palms thinking about playing any role at all, and get very anxious thinking about being on display. But what I really hate about weddings is the rank consumerism, the fact that people buy into all the hoopla (literally), and that they’re a big showoff event for a marriage when half of them will end in divorce. Makes me say no to all of it.
Here’s the twist: I am White. My son is biracial. My husband is an immigrant from the Caribbean and is a real loner. We do not socialize much at baseline, and not at all since the pandemic hit. My son is highly social and so is fiancee. Her family is huge, very close, very rooted in Black identity.
I feel my son choosing “them” over “us,” and that’s adding another layer of hurt on top of anxiety. Her grandmother swooned over him the first time she met him. They all just love him to pieces. Which I’m not complaining about, don’t get me wrong!
It just feels like rejection. How do I address the wedding jitters while holding a feeling inside of being rejected for being an anti-wedding person as well as a White one? Instead of who I am, which is a fiercely independent, nonconformist since childhood, highly intelligent and successful professional with a life that’s so full of joy I get on my knees daily in gratitude.
— Future mother-in-law who hates weddings
Future mother-in-law: I’m curious if you actually read the question you asked me before sending it. In the first paragraph, you reveal that you told your son and his new fiancee that you literally don’t give a damn about what might be the biggest day of their lives, and you forbade them to even share any details of it to you, and you’re wondering why you feel left out?
We don’t even have to get to the race part — I will eventually, but not yet — but it seems as if they’re doing exactly what you asked them to. You don’t want to be included in the planning of a wedding that undoubtedly will involve myriad opportunities for your families to meet and laugh and dine and bond, and so they’re not including you.
Now, to your future daughter-in-law’s family, you’re the cold White woman who wanted nothing to do with her son’s wedding with a Black woman. Even if race has nothing to do with this — it does, but let’s pretend it doesn’t — the optics here are terrible, and I don’t envy the uphill climb you’ll need to make to make amends if you want to be included in family stuff going forward.
I’m not saying you have to be Martha Stewart. I think most people, even those who want or have had weddings, agree that they can be overpriced and ostentatious spectacles with minimal impact on the actual marriage. But you’re so committed to the pretension of “free thinking” that you’re not actually thinking. If you were, you’d see there’s a world of difference between “Planning large events gives me anxiety, and I wouldn’t be offended if you didn’t involve me. But if there’s anything else I can do to assist, let me know!” and “My name is CHRIS and I don’t give a damn about THIS!”
I think your best path forward is to just apologize to your son and his fiancee for being so cold. And explain to them that it’s your anxiety about weddings that’s caused your behavior, not your feelings about the actual marriage. I’d also suggest you see a therapist to maybe help you unpack why you were so adamant about being so dismissive of their big day.
Also, are you sure your actions have everything to do with your feelings about the wedding and nothing to do with your feelings about the marriage? Because I’m not. You seem to have some anxiety about your son embracing this new Black family and leaving his White mom behind. But your fear seems to be an anticipation of behavior instead of actual behavior, because nothing about your letter indicates that your son has shunned you.
I think it would be helpful for you to ask yourself some hard questions about race and how that’s contributing to your unease. For instance, you refer to him as biracial. Which he is, technically. But historically, in America, your son is Black. That’s just how the construct of race has worked here, and it impacts every aspect of your son’s life, and I hope you realize that. Maybe you feel like him choosing a Black partner is a reinforcement of that reality and a distancing from you. The former may very well be true, but the latter doesn’t have to be.
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. | 2022-10-07T13:27:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Damon: I told my engaged son I hate weddings. Now I feel left out. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/07/ask-damon-wedding-mom-left-out/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/07/ask-damon-wedding-mom-left-out/ |
Businesses have clamored for legal clarity after a prior data pact was struck down overseas
By Cristiano Lima
President Biden speaks Thursday after a tour of IBM’s site in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. (Tom Brenner/Reuters)
President Biden issued an executive order Friday expanding privacy protections for data transferred between the United States and Europe, a move aimed at addressing long-standing concerns about U.S. surveillance practices that spawned a series of high-profile legal bouts overseas.
The order puts into practice a preliminary deal struck between Biden and European Union leaders in March, creating added checks on the collection of Europeans’ personal information by U.S. intelligence agencies and allowing them to seek redress if their data is unlawfully intercepted.
U.S. and E.U. officials have sought for years to come to terms on a legal mechanism to replace Privacy Shield, a data pact that allowed businesses to safely transfer data across the Atlantic that was struck down by European courts in 2020 over U.S. surveillance concerns. But a deal proved elusive, even as businesses clamored for clarity around the legality of data flows.
U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said the order “fully addressed” the issues raised by the European Union’s top court when it struck down Privacy Shield, featuring “robust commitments to strengthen the privacy and civil liberties safeguards for signals intelligence.”
“This is a culmination of our joint efforts to restore trust and stability to transatlantic data flows and is a testament to the enduring strength of the U.S.-E.U. relationship and our shared values,” Raimondo told reporters on Thursday.
Senior administration officials, who briefed reporters to preview the order on the condition of anonymity, said they used the European Court’s “lengthy” decision and rationale for striking down the prior pact as a road map for the new agreement in a bid to stave off challenges. Top E.U. officials have also expressed confidence in its ability to overcome any legal battles.
The order bars U.S. intelligence agencies from collecting email, text messages and other electronic data transferred across the Atlantic outside of the “pursuit of a defined national security objective” and requires that any collection be “proportionate” and “necessary” to execute a priority objective, according to a fact sheet provided by the White House.
Under the plan, E.U. residents who believe their data was improperly accessed may file complaints for review with a civil liberties officer within the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, who is authorized to issue a binding decision to remedy the situation. The order also sets up a secondary independent review process through a data protection court within the Justice Department, staffed by nongovernmental appointees, who can also issue binding rulings.
The new data pact will now undergo a ratification process in Europe, which could take months. It’s unclear whether the pact would withstand a likely challenge in European courts.
Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist whose legal challenges ushered in the end of Privacy Shield, had said in March that he did not see how the preliminary deal “would remotely pass the test,” citing the lack of congressional surveillance reform and the use of executive action to mitigate concerns.
“The E.U.-U.S. data privacy framework will provide a durable and reliable legal foundation and certainty for transatlantic data flows and create greater economic opportunities for companies and citizens on both sides of the Atlantic,” Raimondo said. | 2022-10-07T14:24:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden limits U.S. collection of Europeans’ personal data in effort to end dispute - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/07/biden-data-transfer-executive-order/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/07/biden-data-transfer-executive-order/ |
The United States added 263,000 jobs, marking 21 consecutive months of job growth
A help-wanted sign in Philadelphia. (Matt Rourke/AP)
Job growth continued to slow in September, in another sign that the labor market is cooling from its red-hot peak earlier this year, while remaining an area of strength for the U.S. economy.
Employers added 263,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department announced in its monthly jobs report Friday, ticking down from August and following months of strong job growth that has defined the pandemic recovery economy. It’s the lowest monthly increase since April 2021.
The unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent, back to its level in February 2020, before the pandemic.
Even as other economic indicators soured in recent months, the labor market continued to boom. But the jobs outlook is shifting, with workers seeing moderated wage growth and employers slowing down hiring in anticipation of a slowdown in sales.
“Employers are mainly hiring for replacement rather than growth and expansion, and they’re focusing on essential roles,” ZipRecruiter economist Julia Pollak said. “But when push comes to shove, they’re still having to hire because they’re still seeing customers walking through the door and healthy sales.”
Ahead of Friday’s report, Wall Street forecasters had predicted a September figure of 250,000 jobs added.
The largest job gains were seen in leisure and hospitality, with 83,000 jobs added in September, one of the few sectors that has still not returned to its pre-pandemic levels — the industry is still 1.1 million jobs below its February 2020 level. Health care rose by 60,000 jobs, with strong gains in hospitals and ambulatory health services.
Professional and business services added 46,000 jobs. Temporary help services added 27,000 jobs. Losses in the temp industry are typically a bellwether for economic downturns.
Manufacturing, construction and wholesale trade continued to see strong growth. Transportation and warehousing, retail, government, and mining showed little change. Financial services employment declined slightly.
Nick Bunker, director of North American economic research for job site Indeed, said a slowing job market should not cause alarm.
“We have to change our expectations,” Bunker said. “The gains of earlier this year were astronomical, because we were in a very, very large hole when it came to jobs, and we are now getting something akin to full employment.”
Anxieties have flared over a potential downturn as the stock market has tumbled, inflation has soared and the housing market has cooled down. Nearly two-thirds of economists recently surveyed by Bankrate, a consumer financial services company, predicted a recession by mid-2024.
The Federal Reserve has warned that households and the labor market will experience some pain, as officials continue to raise interest rates to temper demand and thereby lower inflation. So far, the labor market has remained resilient, but it is far too early to see the full effects of the Fed’s monetary policy.
Other indicators suggest that the Fed is achieving its goal of softening the labor market without widespread layoffs.
Average hourly earnings continued to increase, but at a slower rate of 0.3 percent this month, to $32.46 an hour. Slower wage growth suggests that low-wage workers in particular are feeling the pinch of inflation even harder while employers have been able to attract workers without further increasing pay.
“To the extent that employers already raised wages earlier this year, those higher wages are still working to attract workers,” said Elise Gould, a senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank. “Wages aren’t falling, but they aren’t rising at the same rate.”
The labor force participation rate was little changed at 62.1 percent, an area where economists hoped to see more growth to ease labor shortages.
Employers in August had 10.1 million job openings, down about 10 percent compared with the previous month, according to a Labor Department report released Tuesday.
The continued tightness of the labor market has allowed workers to flex their muscles to demand better pay and working conditions. Last week, a three-day strike at San Francisco International Airport resulted in $5-an-hour raises for some 1,000 food service workers. Meanwhile, Amazon will face a union election next week at a warehouse near Albany, N.Y., which could result in the second unionized shop in the e-commerce giant’s vast logistics empire. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
But workers’ wage gains are still being wiped out by high inflation, which has disproportionately affected low-income households that devote a larger share of their income to food and housing, where prices have continued to rise sharply.
Jamika Ruffin, 29, makes $10 an hour as a cashier at a McDonald’s in Detroit, after seven years at the fast-food chain. She received a 25-cent raise in January but said that raise hasn’t gone far.
“We’re not living on these wages,” said Ruffin. “We’re surviving. The cost of living has gone up so much this year.”
Ruffin said she can’t always pay her phone bill and has to borrow money so that her daughter can go on field trips with her school. And at the end of the month, they visit soup kitchens for food.
The latest shifts in the labor market have helped some employers.
Jeff Ulmer, the owner of Action Hardware in Wilmington, Del., said he is having an easier time hiring after months of struggling to compete with larger employers for retail workers. High school students, he said, could find jobs at other places that start at $15 an hour, much more than he could afford to pay.
“We’ve had better luck recently,” Ulmer said. “The power between owner and employees had shifted, but it’s starting to go back the other way.” | 2022-10-07T14:28:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.S. economy adds 263,000 jobs as labor market growth slows - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/07/september-jobs-report-labor-market/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/07/september-jobs-report-labor-market/ |
By Tom Jurkowsky
The Greenbury Point Conservation Area on July 11 in Annapolis. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
Tom Jurkowsky is a retired Navy rear admiral who served on active duty for 31 years, including as a member of the U.S. Naval Academy staff for three years. He is the author of “The Secret Sauce for Organizational Success: Communications and Leadership on the Same Page.” He lives in Annapolis.
The Naval Academy Athletic Association (NAAA) should drop its plans for a new golf course at Greenbury Point. Despite concern from a range of political leaders and displeasure from local citizens, the NAAA persists in pursuing plans for the course.
It’s time for the Navy’s leadership in Washington to step in and tell Naval Academy officials to “cease and desist” with these plans. The Naval Academy does not need a new course. It already has one very near the proposed course at Greenbury Point. The existing course is quite beautiful and was renovated recently. It serves the military community and the Naval Academy athletic program very well. Also, a second golf course does nothing to support the mission of the Naval Academy: to develop midshipmen mentally, morally and physically.
Constructing another course on Greenbury Point would be a true loss for the community. One does not have to be an environmental engineer or expert to appreciate the beauty of Greenbury Point. It’s a very popular destination for those who love walking, running, fishing or simply being with their families to enjoy its natural beauty and wildlife.
Greenbury Point is also one of the few places in Anne Arundel County that allows public access to the Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake Bay has almost 12,000 miles of shoreline, and only 2 percent is publicly accessible. Quite simply, most people do not own waterfront, making access to the bay a challenge.
As a 31-year Navy veteran, I’m embarrassed to see our local Navy leadership be so supportive of such an idea. Good and effective leaders earn those qualities because they know what’s the “right thing” to do. In this case, leaders should ask themselves: “Is alienating the Annapolis and Anne Arundel communities worth a new golf course? Is the Navy’s reputation of being a good neighbor worth being tarnished? Is constructing a new golf course the right thing to do?”
The Naval Academy is looked upon very favorably in the community. It has a solid reputation that has been earned over 175 years. Perhaps Benjamin Franklin said it best: “It takes many good deeds to build a good reputation, and only one bad one to lose it.” I’m afraid that’s what will happen if plans for a golf course on Greenbury Point proceed.
There are supporters of the proposed golf course who will say that it’s not the Navy that is pushing for the new course; it’s the NAAA. Unfortunately, this is a specious argument. It’s the Navy that will pay the price reputation-wise for going in this direction. As with the current course that is referred to as the “Navy course,” the new one would be referred to as “the Greenbury Navy course.”
Also of concern is the Navy’s focus on such an initiative while our operational fleet continues to decline in both quality and quantity — all in the face of a growing threat from China. Our Navy is on a path to decline from 298 ships today to 280 in 2027. Meanwhile, China, which already has the world’s largest navy, continues to produce warships at an unprecedented pace. It has about 355 ships and is expected to expand to 420 within the next three years. By 2030, China is expected to have 460 ships.
Sadly, the chief of naval operations said recently that our nation’s shipbuilding industrial base is so weak that we cannot build three destroyers a year. We simply do not have the capacity. Accordingly, the Navy I love is in an in extremis situation.
Our leaders needs to put its heads on straight and focus on the things that truly matter for our Navy. A new golf course is not one of them. | 2022-10-07T15:25:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Annapolis residents don't want another Navy golf course - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/annapolis-doesnt-want-new-navy-golf-course/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/annapolis-doesnt-want-new-navy-golf-course/ |
A demonstration in favor of marijuana legalization outside the White House. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
At a 2019 presidential primary debate, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J) mocked Joe Biden for his opposition to legalizing marijuana, a position that most of the other candidates had embraced. “I thought you might have been high when you said it,” said Booker, to huge laughter from the audience as a look of discomfort and befuddlement crossed Biden’s face.
Three years later, Biden, once the squarest of Democrats, has done what no previous president has done on the issue: He offered mass pardons for those convicted of possessing marijuana.
Why was the most significant presidential step toward ending marijuana prohibition taken by Biden, and not, say, the considerably less square Barack Obama or Bill Clinton? Because this president’s ideological flexibility has intersected with the force of party politics and public opinion to finally move toward something that should have happened long ago.
On Thursday, Biden announced pardons for anyone with a federal conviction for simple possession of marijuana; similar pardons for residents of Washington, D.C.; and an expedited review of the rule that classifies cannabis as a Schedule I drug under federal law, the most restrictive classification.
The White House says 6,500 people with federal convictions from the last three decades will be eligible for pardons, plus thousands more from D.C. Biden also urged governors to follow his lead and issue pardons for those convicted of possession, since most such convictions happen in state courts.
There’s an irony in Biden making more progress against marijuana prohibition than any president before him. Unlike most of his immediate predecessors — all of whom are younger than he is — Biden has no known personal experience with recreational drugs. This distinguishes him from his vice president as well.
What’s more, Biden was nowhere near the counterculture that emerged in the 60s, when marijuana use became so common. When the kids gathered at Woodstock in 1969, Biden was a married father with a law degree who would make his first run for elected office the next year.
And Biden has never shown any particular enthusiasm for this issue; instead, he has always appeared to be pulled along reluctantly. In explaining during the 2020 campaign why he didn’t support legalization, he suggested marijuana might be a “gateway drug” to more addictive substances, an old trope from the “Just Say No” days. Democrats everywhere groaned.
Biden didn’t show any urgency about the issue when he took office. When Democratic leaders introduced a bill last year to end the federal prohibition of marijuana, Biden declined to endorse it. Early in his administration, White House staffers were still being fired for admitting to past marijuana use, even in states where it’s legal.
Nor was Biden eager to correct the absurdity of marijuana being classified as Schedule I, which means it has “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse." Other drugs in that category include heroin and LSD, while cocaine and methamphetamine are classified in the less restrictive Schedule II, showing how divorced from reality the scheduling system is. Rescheduling a drug is a bureaucratic process that can take years; had he wanted to, he could have ordered that process to begin 21 months ago when he took office.
So what has changed for Biden?
Biden appears sincere on the question of how to approach those with possession convictions. He surely believes it’s unacceptable that thousands of Americans have a criminal record — which makes it harder to access education, employment, and housing — because they were arrested for something that is now legal to one degree or another in most of the country.
After all, 37 states allow marijuana for medical use, and 19 allow recreational use. There are initiatives to allow recreational use on the ballot in five more states this November.
And as Biden noted in his video message announcing the new policy, though members of all racial groups use marijuana at about the same rates, members of minority groups are far more likely to be arrested for possession.
With a midterm election looming, Biden may have finally succumbed to the force of public opinion: Over the past 20 years, support for legalizing cannabis has doubled, an extraordinary evolution in public sentiment, and today over two-thirds of Americans favor legalization. Over 8 in 10 members of Biden’s party support legalization.
There’s another irony here. Public opinion on marijuana has changed in part because people around Biden’s age, who are most likely to support prohibition, have been dying off, to be replaced by younger people for whom it makes no more sense than alcohol prohibition did. According to the Pew Research Center, those over 75 make up the only age group in which a majority doesn’t support legalization. Biden turns 80 next month.
So there are plenty of good political reasons to take the action Biden has. And this is more evidence that ideological flexibility is one of his most important characteristics; this is just one of many issues where he has moved further in a progressive direction than many expected.
Were there no pressure from his base and no particular advantage to be had, he probably wouldn’t have taken this move. But that’s how politics is supposed to work, with the public nudging presidents where they might not otherwise go. And in this case, it’s better late than never. | 2022-10-07T15:25:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Joe Biden, the squarest of presidents, gets hip on marijuana - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/biden-marijuana-decriminalization-hip-square/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/biden-marijuana-decriminalization-hip-square/ |
The case for legalizing marijuana in Maryland
By Eugene Monroe
Dave Myrowitz harvests cannabis on Oct. 1, 2019, by clipping the plants' top flowers at Maryland's first legal outdoor medical marijuana grow at Culta in Cambridge, Md. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
Eugene Monroe, the campaign chairman for the ballot question to legalize marijuana in Maryland, is a former Baltimore Raven who lives in Maryland.
I grew up in a home where I saw cannabis’s potential to improve lives — and in a neighborhood where its criminalization repeatedly ruined them. For years, my father used marijuana to alleviate the pain that resulted from his chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Down the street, where the government discriminately waged its war on drugs against Black and Brown communities, police arrested people who possessed small amounts of the same plant — tearing families apart and making it even more difficult for hard-working people to earn a decent living.
It doesn’t have to be this way anymore. In November, by supporting Maryland Question 4 and allowing adults to legally use cannabis, voters across the state can put an end to the era of failed marijuana prohibition and bring freedom and opportunity to our communities.
The legalization question puts racial equity front and center, giving deserving people hope their lives will get better. Its passage would end future incarceration for cannabis possession convictions and expunge the criminal records of people whose only charge is cannabis possession.
The economic benefits behind the question would also make a meaningful difference in many Marylanders’ lives. Eliminating the illicit marijuana market and building a well-regulated, safe and legal market for marijuana sales would create tens of thousands of well-paying jobs. It would also open doors for hundreds of new small-business owners and create opportunities for workers in other industries, including those in real estate, construction and manufacturing.
Legislators in Annapolis already passed bills that will take effect on the amendment’s passage to further address historical inequities. One provision would create a Cannabis Business Assistance Fund to support minority- and women-owned small businesses seeking to enter the legal cannabis market. Another establishes a community reinvestment fund to assist organizations serving communities disproportionately harmed by the war on drugs.
Right now, we’re leaving valuable tax revenue on the table. Independent analysis suggests marijuana legalization would provide the state with over $135 million in tax revenue, which could help fund vital investments to strengthen the middle class, such as expanding access to high-quality education and health care. That figure doesn’t even include the savings from the more than $100 million Maryland spends each year enforcing marijuana possession laws.
Instead of wasting time and money on nonviolent marijuana citations and arrests, law enforcement should focus its limited resources on preventing the serious, violent crimes that actually put our communities in danger. Possessing small amounts of marijuana is not one of them.
Police chiefs in Maryland are facing hiring shortages and rising homicide rates. You might think enforcing the ban on marijuana possession would be low on their priority list. Yet Maryland is home to three of the 10 counties in the United States with the highest marijuana possession arrest rates — Worcester, Dorchester and Calvert. That doesn’t make any of us safer.
In fact, particularly in Black and Brown communities, cannabis prohibition and its unequal enforcement have resulted in decades of harm. I’ve seen firsthand how marijuana criminalization can upend lives and ruin families — and I’m certainly not the only one to notice this disturbing trend. While White individuals are more likely to use marijuana than individuals of any other race, Black people in Maryland are more than twice as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession.
The war on drugs has actually been a war on people — especially people from communities of color. A criminal record can cast a long shadow and follow someone for the rest of their life, devastating entire families and communities. Because of marijuana prohibition, simply possessing a small amount of cannabis can make it far more difficult to obtain housing, education and employment. That will change in Maryland when we pass Question 4.
Some Marylanders might have concerns about whether cannabis use encourages abuse of other, more dangerous drugs. Yet the most comprehensive study on the subject recently found “there is little evidence to suggest that recreational marijuana laws … encourage the use of harder substances or violent criminal activity.” In fact, some researchers have found that legalizing marijuana coincides with “decreases in alcohol and cigarette use and pain reliever misuse.”
Rather than giving in to outdated scare tactics, Maryland residents know marijuana criminalization has been an abject failure. The discrimination resulting from marijuana prohibition will be a dark stain in our history books. Come November, we can turn the page and unlock a new era of freedom, equity and opportunity. | 2022-10-07T15:25:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Eugene Monroe: Legal marijuana in Maryland would expand racial equity - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/eugene-monroe-legalizing-marijuana-maryland-expand-racial-equity/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/eugene-monroe-legalizing-marijuana-maryland-expand-racial-equity/ |
Kanye West, Herschel Walker and the politics of toxic Black men
Kanye West and Herschel Walker. (Getty Images)
America seems to love tragic, toxic Black men.
This week, the dusty behavior of two of them in particular provide a sad look into the way that toxic masculinity gets rewarded in this country.
Exhibit A: Kanye West.
I first started paying attention to West because of his 2004 album “College Dropout.” That was back when Kanye was one of the “conscious rappers” who made it into the mainstream. One of his hit songs, “All Falls Down,” took aim at the dangers of consumerism for Black people, along with the perils of aiming for Whiteness.
He rapped: “And for that paper, look how low we’ll stoop / Even if you in a Benz / You’re still a n----- in a coupe.”
I loved everything about that album, and that song in particular. Looking back, however, West seems to have been foretelling his own tragic fall from what he once was.
West has now reached the pinnacle of access to the White fashion world, something he begged for publicly, and pathetically. Now, he has “made it,” and so what does he go and do? During a surprise fashion show for his line “Yeezy,” West and conservative Black provocateur Candace Owens wore shirts that said “White Lives Matter.” Some of the models also walked the runway in “White Lives Matter” shirts. West then proceeded to post “Black Lives Matter was a scam” on his Instagram, causing an online furor.
Owens and West have this in common: They are Black public figures in the business of providing a lot of shock but little substantive value.
The stunts have been increasing in West’s case, from his posing with President Donald Trump in a Make America Great Again hat to his pronouncing that “slavery was a choice.” He has cyberharassed ex-wife Kim Kardashian, and aimed violent and menacing messages at Kardashian’s ex Pete Davidson. When a Black female editor at Vogue criticized his “White Lives Matter” shirt as “violence” on Instagram, West fired back blasting her fashion choices on Instagram. The magazine issued a statement in her defense.
On to Exhibit B: Herschel Walker.
The former NFL star is now running as a Republican for U.S. Senate in Georgia. It’s well-documented that the man says painfully dumb things that *should be* politically disqualifying. On climate change, he has observed that Georgia’s “good air” could float over and replace “China’s bad air,” which would need to be cleaned up before the air got back to Georgia. He has questioned evolution, asking “Why are there still apes? Think about it?”
But there are far more serious issues with his candidacy. His ex-wife has said he abused her, including holding a gun to her head; Walker says that he suffered from dissociative identity disorder at the time and does not recall making any threats. This week, the Daily Beast reported — and it literally has receipts — that in 2009 he paid for an abortion for a former girlfriend. Walker has denied the allegation “in the strongest possible terms” and called the story a “repugnant hatchet job.”
His son, conservative social media influencer Christian Walker, also had something to say about the story:
Are any of these scandals enough to be disqualifying? Alas, no. Quite the opposite: Walker’s campaign says it has raised more than $500,000 since the abortion story was published and Christian Walker’s tweet went live.
I’ve written it before, I’ll write it again: Especially in our MAGA era, anti-Blackness and misogyny are profitable in America, especially if you’re a rich and famous man of any color. (So much for cancel culture, right?) West will get the publicity, the outrage clicks, a spot in the news cycle. Stores will carry his designs. He will be invited to the boardrooms of the fashion world, and when he releases his music, he will be platformed. People still line up to buy Yeezys. He’ll still get “that paper,” no matter how low he stoops.
In Walker’s case, he got the MAGA-activating endorsement of Trump. And he’s getting even more cash and support from other Republicans.
But what can be done? I think it’s worthwhile and necessary to reward Black men who are doing good in society with our attention, votes and money when we can. (More on that below.) For my part, I try not to allow West to profit off my attention. That’s what’s within my control. And Walker? It’s on Georgia voters to do the right thing — and keep him away from the Senate.
But no matter what happens, as long as our culture rewards anti-Blackness and misogyny, we will be sure to see more Wests and Walkers. It’s a dark state of affairs, for sure.
Home Front: Black men doing the right thing
The deeply corrosive thing about Walker and West is that the attention placed on their antics sucks up all the oxygen from the Black male public figures who are pushing the culture and society forward, rather than dragging us back. Here are three of them that are in the news this week:
Ryan Coogler: Marvel has released the trailer for the long-anticipated “Black Panther” sequel, “Wakanda Forever,” directed by Coogler. The movie is due for release on Nov. 11. The original “Black Panther” film, released in 2018, was not just the highest-grossing superhero film of all time. It also represented a real shift forward for Afrofuturism on screen. Coogler’s work also includes “Fruitvale Station” and “Creed.”
Trevor Noah: The South African comedian and host of “The Daily Show” has announced that he is stepping down from the show after seven years. After taking over from John Stewart, Noah brought a global perspective to issues in the United States, particularly when it came to race. I will always remember his hilarious and deadly accurate segment that called Trump America’s first African president.
Sen. Raphael G. Warnock: And let us not overlook Georgia’s Warnock, the person that Walker is running against. Warnock is the first Black Democrat to win a Senate seat from a Confederate state, as well as the senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. preached. Warnock’s public service has been drama-free, and he has focused on issues that matter in people’s lives — including increasing access to health care for Georgians and support for veterans.
For the Culture: A Black father’s love iconic
Chugging along on the positivity train here. For anyone who needs a masterclass in love, check out this iconic clip from the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
After his son, Derek, injured himself during an Olympic race, Jim Redmond hopped onto the track. Watch as he helps his son finish, waving away pesky officials and giving his son a shoulder to cry on. Many athletes know what it’s like to train for years for a single moment only to feel the agony of defeat. Redmond coming to the emotional aid of his son in front of a global audience is one of the most beautiful things I have seen. I dare you not to cry.
Jim Redmond passed away this week at the age of 81. Rest well, sir. You will be remembered as a shining example of compassion and courage. | 2022-10-07T15:25:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Kanye West, Herschel Walker and the politics of toxic Black men - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/karen-attiah-newsletter-kanye-west-herschel-walker-toxic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/karen-attiah-newsletter-kanye-west-herschel-walker-toxic/ |
Turkey and Armenia just gave the world a welcome bit of good news
By Asli Aydintasbas
Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, left, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday in Prague. (Armenian Government/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
It’s nice to report something positive for a change. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan met in Prague on Thursday — possibly opening up a path to ending one of the modern world’s most intractable conflicts.
We aren’t quite there yet, though.
Though neighbors, Turkey and Armenian have been separated for nearly a century by the Cold War and the weight of the past — the mass killing of Armenians in Anatolia in 1915 that historians view as the first genocide of the 20th century. A Western-brokered attempt at reconciliation more than a decade ago failed, and the border between the two nations has remained sealed for decades. The two neighbors have virtually no relationship — leaving them sharing one of the last remaining padlocked borders of Europe.
To make reconciliation even harder, in 2020 a short but devastating war between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan resulted in thousands of casualties on both sides — with many Armenians blaming Turkey for its military support of Azerbaijan. The landlocked Armenia, with its old Soviet weapons and a small population of nearly 3 million, is no longer a match for oil-rich Azerbaijan, whose powerful friends include Turkey and Israel. During the 2020 war, the Armenians lost several thousand men and much of the Azeri territory they had occupied in the 1990s after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The cease-fire between the two countries remains fragile, and a border flare-up last month resulted in a death toll of more than 200.
All this should only increase our respect for Pashinyan’s willingness to shake Erdogan’s hand. Pashinyan understands that for Armenia to survive, it needs to have peace with its neighbors — and that it can’t rely solely on Russia, as it has for many years, to come to its aid in times of trouble. Since his rise to the top after a revolution against the pro-Russian elites in 2018, Pashinyan has consistently been messaging his desire to normalize relations with Turkey with no preconditions — shorthand for saying that Yerevan, making a clear break with past Armenian governments, was not seeking Ankara’s recognition of the 1915 genocide as a prerequisite for establishing relations.
The Armenian leader is being a realist here. Three generations of Turks have learned a warped version of the 1915 genocide that denies any official Turkish responsibility, and the country’s approach to the issue is unlikely to change. To be clear, Erdogan’s decision to meet with the Armenian leader has more to do with Ankara’s desire for regional influence than an urge to face Turkey’s past. But if there is a better climate between the two countries, historians and scholars in Turkey and elsewhere who think otherwise can be free to express their views — as was the case a decade ago, when Turkey was freer. If there is normalization, Turks and Armenians can revive acquaintance with each other through trade and travel — and discover how similar they are.
Restoring relations between Turkey and Armenia is also the key to stability in the Caucasus — and potentially undermine Russia’s supremacy in the region as the only power-broker. Reestablishing ancient trade routes could give an economic boost to Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and the poor regions of eastern Turkey. We know from Russia’s war on Ukraine that economic interdependence does not always prevent aggression — but it can help lift people out of poverty. That would be significant for a region struggling with internal rivalries and Russian influence.
More important, a real reconciliation between Turkey and Armenia might help reduce tension between Armenia and Azerbaijan and invigorate the painfully slow peace negotiations between the two. Erdogan should make this a priority. There is no doubt that Turkey is party to the conflict here. With ethnic ties and the slogan “One nation, two states,” Ankara is firmly on the Azeri side; Turkey supported Baku in the recent 2020 war. But the war in Ukraine has convinced Turks that regional peace can no longer be taken for granted — and that it makes sense to push back (gingerly) against Russian influence on their eastern flank.
Erdogan should push for peace. He has been keen to reposition himself as a skillful negotiator who can secure tough deals, such as the recent grain agreement or the prisoner exchange between Ukraine and Russia. (Turkey played an important role in both.) If Turkey can use its influence over Azerbaijan to advance peace talks and secure the release of remaining Armenian prisoners of war held captive by Baku, the result could be a huge step forward.
Russian President Vladimir Putin will not be happy with Thursday’s meeting. Historically, Russia has used ethnic tensions and internal rivalries among post-Soviet states to increase its power in the far corners of its former empire. The Caucasus has long been Russia’s backyard. But countries in the region, though understanding the importance of good relations with Moscow, do not want to be mere peons in Russia’s sphere of influence or peg their future solely to Putin.
Erdogan and Pashinyan must recognize the symbolism of the moment — but also the strategic importance of this handshake for their nations. They must forge ahead and open the border between the two countries, allowing others to build cultural bridges. Over the long run, that could turn out be an important move in the global chess game on Europe’s borders.
Opinion|Liz Truss displays limousine conservatism | 2022-10-07T15:25:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Turkey and Armenia meet to reduce tension, conflict - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/turkey-armenia-erdogan-pashinyan-meeting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/turkey-armenia-erdogan-pashinyan-meeting/ |
A D.C. police vehicle. (Peter Hermann/The Washington Post)
Protesters demanding that President Biden declare a climate emergency briefly shut down southbound Interstate 395 on Friday in Washington during a demonstration.
Southbound lanes were closed near the Seventh Street NW exit from about 9 a.m. to 9:22 a.m., according to D.C. police tweets. Sean Hickman, a D.C. police spokesman, said three people were arrested.
Protesters wore yellow vests as they walked in front of moving vehicles on the highway, according to a video from News2Share’s Ford Fischer, a documentarian who has filmed political activism since 2014.
Climate protesters on I395 in DC demand Biden declare climate emergency https://t.co/AC6osvQ4ch
This was one of several demonstrations from members of the climate advocacy group Declare Emergency, whose protesters often block traffic in the region, resulting in arrests. The group said in a statement this was the fourth time protesters blocked the highway. D.C. police did not immediately confirm that number.
“It is civil disobedience. We need to disrupt business as usual and affect peoples’ lives to wake them up to the atrocity that is coming at us,” Michelle Wehner, a Declare Emergency spokeswoman, said after the demonstration. “We’re not done. … We are going to keep doing actions until the administration declares a climate emergency.”
A climate activist also climbed on the stage at the Kennedy Center on Thursday night during a concert featuring the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir and the National Symphony Orchestra, unfurling a banner that read “DECLARE EMERGENCY,” according to a video posted by Fischer. The activist got onstage at the beginning of the show, was quickly escorted off the stage and premises but was not arrested, according to the Kennedy Center. | 2022-10-07T15:47:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Climate protesters briefly shut down I-395 in D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/climate-protest-dc-395/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/climate-protest-dc-395/ |
What Kanye West and Tucker Carlson reveal about the struggle for power
Rapper Kanye West meets with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on Oct. 11, 2018. (Calla Kessler/The Washington Post)
As far as I can tell, Fox News host Tucker Carlson had never interviewed Ye, the musician born Kanye West, before Thursday. Carlson has hyped West’s politics in the past; the musician’s slow shift into Donald Trump’s broader orbit has been hailed by many on the right. But it wasn’t until this week, it seems, that Carlson granted Ye airtime for an extended conversation.
This is also the week in which Ye made an international splash while wearing a T-shirt to Paris Fashion Week that proclaimed, in large block letters, “WHITE LIVES MATTER.” And Carlson reached out.
As he opened his show, Carlson framed the interview around the shirt and its message. Ye, Carlson said, had become “a kind of Christian evangelist” whose embrace of the “obviously true” phrase had infuriated the left, to Carlson’s glee. And, speaking to Carlson, Ye hit the notes that you might expect from a Carlson guest: Trump was great, the left is toxic, etc.
We’ll get back to Carlson’s interest in the news of the week, but we should start by explaining the ways in which Ye’s commentary was unintentionally revealing. He conveyed a consistent sense of betrayal — by his mother, by his ex-wife Kim Kardashian, by her family and allies — that was conflated with politics.
For example, Ye went on an extended riff about the ownership stakes of Skims, Kardashian’s shapewear line, and how he learned that Jared Kushner’s brother Josh had an unexpectedly large stake in the product. The average Tucker Carlson viewer is probably not intimately familiar with the celebrity world Ye inhabits; casual references to Kris Jenner’s boyfriend may not have landed. But once Ye’s presentation is disentangled, the story about the Kushners is a very old-fashioned one overlapping jealousy and the tensions of going into business together. An old-fashioned story Ye then extrapolates out to suggest that Jared Kushner’s effort to craft a peace deal in the Middle East was about enriching himself — and that Kushner wasn’t primarily “serving my boy Trump.”
There’s no question that Ye is deeply religious and religious in a way that aligns with conservative politics at the moment. His articulation of his frustrations with liberals, though, are almost uniformly expressed as frustrations with people who happen to be liberals. Anti-elitism is a powerful conduit to a political worldview, as Trump himself realized. The elite against whom Ye and Trump are rebelling are ones who are also Democrats. The line between person and politics is certainly not always bright, but if Ye were surrounded by wealthy, famous people who he felt had wronged him and who were also staunchly conservative — there are certainly many such people — it would be interesting to see whether his politics were affected.
“When Trump was running for office and I liked him and every single person in Hollywood, from my ex-wife to my mother in law, to my manager at that time, to, you know, my so-called friends-slash-handlers around me, told me, like, if I said that I like Trump, that my career will be over, that my life would be over,” Ye claimed. But, he said, “God builds warriors in a different way. … He made me for such a time like this.” He then compared himself to the biblical David, the shepherd who killed Goliath.
Grandiosity aside, Ye articulated a dichotomy that’s central to the presentation Carlson likes to make. There are the “elites” themselves — a nebulously defined group that expands and contracts conveniently — who are an easy foil and an increasingly left-leaning one (particularly once it expands and contracts). Then there are systems that hold power in the United States, systems that are facially controlled by the elite but are themselves deeply conservative (in the nonpolitical sense). Carlson is a fan of the systems; he fights every night to maintain the status quo in which a particular iteration of American benefits. His most-discussed view in the past year or two is the idea that Democrats are importing new, non-White voters to reshape America — in other words, he is rising to the defense of the way America is now because he understands, if only intuitively, how it is weighted in his favor and in the favor of his allies.
Carlson liked Ye’s “White lives matter” T-shirt because it’s useful as a tool for protecting that system. We’re a few steps down the line here, so let’s work backward. “White lives matter” is a rejection of “Black lives matter,” a more forceful rejection, even, than “all lives matter.” It’s not just an effort to dilute the “Black lives matter” phrase but to suggest that saying “Black lives matter” suggests that White ones don’t. The point of the “Black lives matter” movement, though, was to call attention to ways in which Black people were systematically disadvantaged, particularly in the criminal justice system. It was saying that Black people deserved not to be unfairly targeted, not that they deserved special accommodation.
But Carlson is one of the leading voices in the right’s robust sense of victimization. As Black and Hispanic Americans and gay and transgender Americans have been increasingly able to advocate for themselves or point out biases (in part a function of how technology allows people to capture events and help people organize), the right has interpreted calls for leveling the playing field as demands for preference. All of this gets blurry at the edges, too, of course, but polling has repeatedly shown that White Republicans view themselves as targets of discrimination equivalent to non-majority groups. Carlson and Trump, sharing that sense, highlight anecdotes that reinforce that sense and push back against the group that’s most forcefully calling for the playing field to be leveled.
The left. The new elite.
So Carlson sees Ye wearing a shirt that explicitly casts Whites as victims and understands the opportunity. Here’s a member of the inner circle of the elite — a Black man — who’s willing to elevate the idea that White lives are disadvantaged in a way equivalent to Black lives. To validate the victimization and discomfort. Let’s set up an interview.
At one point in the discussion, Ye praised right-wing voices such as the commentator Candace Owens (who joined him at the Fashion Week event) for being willing to challenge the dominant voices within the celebrity ecosystem. The problem, he said, was that those elite were too scared to be honest.
“They have people that are around them at all times telling them what to be afraid of,” Ye said. “It’s like not what to do or say specifically, it’s what to be afraid of.”
Neither the show’s host nor his audience probably caught the irony of Ye saying that on Carlson’s program.
The latest: GOP Senate bill seeks to reverse steps to cut drug prices | 2022-10-07T16:22:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Kanye West and Tucker Carlson reveal about the struggle for power - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/carlson-fox-news-kanye-west-elites/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/carlson-fox-news-kanye-west-elites/ |
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) lays a wreath at the end of a “Back The Blue Bike Tour” in honor of National Police Week at the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial on May 12, 2022, in Washington. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Schneider first drafted a censure resolution last summer after Greene repeatedly compared the coronavirus vaccine and mask mandates to the Holocaust. But Schneider dropped the resolution after Greene visited the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and issued an apology for what she called her “offensive” remarks.
In a statement provided to The Washington Post, Schneider said Greene’s latest comments “demonstrate that clearly, she has not learned, or worse perhaps, she doesn’t care.”
Schneider introduced the resolution with Reps. Nikema Williams (D-Ga.), Brenda L. Lawrence (D-Mich.), Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) and Kathy E. Manning (D-N.C.). The House will not be able to vote on the resolution until after midterm elections, as lawmakers are out of session until mid-November.
Greene’s two years in Congress have been marred by controversy: She was stripped of her committee assignments during her second month in office over her history of support for violence against Democratic officials and adherence to QAnon ideology.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) took the rare step of condemning Greene last year after she compared coronavirus protections to the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. But he has largely embraced Greene and other far-right members of his caucus, and he plans on restoring her committee assignments if Republicans win back the House majority in November.
McCarthy’s office declined to comment on the resolution. Greene’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The latest: GOP senators introduce bill to reverse law’s steps to cut drug prices | 2022-10-07T16:22:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marjorie Taylor Greene faces House censure over antisemitic comments - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/mtg-censure-house-democrats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/mtg-censure-house-democrats/ |
Asked to reject false election claims, Blake Masters elevates them
Arizona Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, left, and his Republican challenger Blake Masters, right, pause onstage before a televised debate in Phoenix on Thursday. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)
If you go to venture capitalist Blake Masters’s Twitter feed, you can still see the ad he posted in November 2021 as he first began his campaign for the Republican nomination for Senate in Arizona. It begins unequivocally, with Masters speaking to the camera: “I think Trump won in 2020.”
His flat assertion almost certainly contributed to Donald Trump’s eventual endorsement of Masters, which probably contributed to his primary win. But the sentiment, that Trump won, carries a different tone in the general election — and it came up in the first general election debate including Masters and incumbent Sen. Mark Kelly (D).
“Is Joe Biden the legitimately elected president of the United States?” moderator Ted Simons asked.
“Joe Biden is absolutely the president,” Masters replied. “I mean, my gosh, have you seen the gas prices lately?”
This pivot — from “was his election legitimate” to “is he president” — is a hoary one and one that didn’t fool Simons. But it was appropriate as an introduction to the subject as Masters then proceeded to try to simultaneously suggest that elections were imperiled by fraud, deny that 2020 was derailed by fraud and elevate a dishonest alternate theory for how the election was stolen from Trump.
It was, in short, a useful encapsulation of how Republicans want to keep telling their base that the election was suspect even as they try to pretend that they’re simply defending elections.
Simons responded to Masters as you would expect, highlighting the word “legitimate” in his question.
“I’m not trying to trick you,” Masters said, which is true since he was trying to trick viewers. “He’s duly sworn and certified. He’s the legitimate president, he’s in the White House — unfortunately for all of us, right?”
This admission that he was “legitimate” — qualified as it was by the mechanisms that installed Biden in the White House — was celebrated as a retreat from his hardline rejection of the election results. But it was quickly followed by a reiteration of false claims about what happened in 2020.
“Now, how did he get there? Okay. Let’s talk about that,” Masters said. “I think it’s a problem that the FBI forced Facebook — they pressured Facebook and other big tech companies to censor true information about Hunter Biden’s crimes in the weeks before the 2020 election. And so millions of Americans didn’t get to read about that.”
First of all, this is nonsense. Masters is elevating an incorrect narrative about an October 2020 story from the New York Post centered on a laptop reportedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter. Both Facebook and Twitter limited how broadly the story could be shared on their platforms out of concern — expressed by former members of the intelligence community — that it might be an effort by Russia to influence the 2020 election as it had influenced the one in 2016.
In a recent interview with Joe Rogan, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook had warned the company that it was expecting a similar move that year and that Facebook determined that the Post story “fit that pattern.” In statements, both the FBI and Meta denied that the Bureau had requested any restrictions on the laptop story. But in the right-wing conversational bubble, the Zuckerberg explanation (a fairly obvious one, in fact) became an admission.
Masters then looped the media into his depiction of what happened, claiming the media “lied to us" about the story. This, too, is an exaggeration. The media did report on the intelligence-community claims, but didn’t restrict coverage of the story. The ability to verify what the New York Post reported was limited by the inaccessibility of the material, which wasn’t shared. The Washington Post and other outlets did write about it. And when we got a copy of the material (earlier this year), we dug into it.
What Masters is doing is nothing more complicated than alleging a broad conspiracy incorporating various actors that the right hates to stoke the idea that the election results were dubious.
“I suspect that if the FBI didn’t work with big tech and big media to censor the Hunter Biden crime story,” he said when Simons asked if the election had been “rigged” in any way: “Yeah, I suspect that changed a lot of people’s votes.”
Beyond the indefensibility of his conspiracy theory and beyond the fact that the election was obviously not “rigged,” notice that his assertion is unfalsifiable. He just “suspects” that a lot of votes were changed, as though it was impossible to read the New York Post’s report — Hunter Biden generated half as much search interest in mid-October 2020 as did Joe Biden himself — and as though the meta-story about limiting the reach of The Post’s report didn’t itself get wide coverage. The idea that a significant number of Biden voters, a large percentage of whom turned out to vote to oust Trump, were unaware of the controversy and would have changed their minds about it is simply not credible.
But if you want to both tap into anger about the election and remain at a distance from the falsifiable (and falsified) claims of fraud, this is the route you take. This is why this route exists! In the aftermath of Trump’s 2020 loss, people who wanted to stay close to his base but didn’t want to align with the more deranged claims about fraud settled on this “well, the system worked against him” line as a middle ground.
During the debate, Masters was asked if there was actual voter fraud, and in fact, he admitted there hadn’t been. And yet his purported solutions to ensure “common-sense election integrity,” as he put it, focused on the idea that somehow voter fraud was a problem. One day of voting — implying that there was some risk in counting mail-in ballots. Requiring voter ID — suggesting that in-person fraud is a significant problem, which it isn’t. Even as he denied that there was anything suspect about the actual votes, he had to parrot the proposals his party has offered, proposals that are centered on fraud. He’s saying that he sees no evidence of poltergeists but assures voters that, if elected, he’ll invest heavily in the Ghostbusters.
So, no, Blake Masters no longer says “I think Trump won in 2020,” as he did when the voting population was Republicans. Now he says, “I suspect President Trump would be in the White House today if big tech and big media and the FBI didn’t work together to put the thumb on the scale to get Joe Biden in there.”
In both cases, he has no credible evidence to bolster his assertion. But the latter, at least, has the benefit of vagueness, of not having been disproven 280,000 times in the last two years.
Take a Look: Ryan, wife discuss finding ‘common ground’ in Ohio campaign ad
1:56 PMNoted: Republican who opposes abortion wishes ‘women could make this decision’ | 2022-10-07T16:22:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Asked to reject false election claims, Blake Masters elevates them - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/senate-arizona-trump-masters-false-election-claims/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/senate-arizona-trump-masters-false-election-claims/ |
Blogger and human rights activist Hossein Ronaghi was arrested by Iranian authorities on Sept. 24. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
The security agents came for Hossein Ronaghi while he was in the middle of a live television interview in Tehran.
The Iranian blogger and human rights activist was talking to the host about the protests sweeping the nation when, suddenly, he heard a noise behind him and turned around. “They’re here, they’re here,” Ronaghi said with a jittery laugh, footage from the London-based Iran International channel shows.
At least 92 members of civil society — including activists, journalists and lawyers — have been arrested in the three weeks since demonstrations broke out over the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI), a New York-based advocacy group. It is a well-honed strategy that Iran’s leaders have used for years to crush dissent and prevent protest movements from threatening their grip on power. Like Ronaghi, 37, many of those detained have been jailed before.
He managed to give the agents the slip the day of the interview but decided to turn himself in two days later, on Sept. 24, at the courthouse of Evin prison where he had been summoned. As soon as Ronaghi and his two lawyers arrived, security agents attacked and beat him. Families waiting for news of their loved ones outside the prison intervened and helped him get into the building.
But the situation did not improve inside the court: Within minutes, the prosecutor assigned to his case asked security guards to detain Ronaghi, as well as his lawyers. “That an accused person goes to the courthouse of his own will and they arrest him and his lawyers is unprecedented,” said Masoud Kazemi, a journalist and close friend of Ronaghi’s who knows his family.
Ronaghi called his mother two days later to confirm that he was in Evin and to deliver some grim news. “He said, ‘Mom I can’t talk now; they’ve broken my legs’ and then the connection was cut,” said Kazemi, 41, who also has served time in Evin, the country’s most notorious prison.
Dozens of people have been killed by security forces during the nationwide demonstrations, according to rights groups, and the government has sought to blame foreign powers for the uprising. But the protesters — almost all of them young, many of them women — appear undeterred and continue demonstrating in the streets.
“They want to put anyone who can become a voice of the protesters or play a role in how these protests develop behind bars right now,” said Hadi Ghaemi, the executive director of CHRI. “The protests are leaderless and grass-roots. The impact will be determined when there’s a collective voice. And these are the kind of people that can be that collective voice.”
Journalists also have been rounded up in the crackdown, with at least 29 detained since Amini’s death in mid-September, according to CHRI. Among those detained was Niloufar Hamedi, from the Shargh daily newspaper, who was one of the first to report on Amini’s case and is now in solitary confinement in Evin, according to a tweet from her lawyer.
These targeted arrests have a chilling effect, civil society members say, scaring others into silence. One newspaper journalist in Tehran contacted by The Washington Post said he had been asked not to discuss any recent issues with foreign media.
The arrests have had the same effect on lawyers, at least four of whom have been arrested since Amini’s death; that number includes Ronaghi’s two lawyers. Once news of the arrests spreads in the legal community, other lawyers become reluctant to represent protesters, according to Saeid Dehghan, a human rights lawyer who no longer lives in Iran.
After successive crackdowns on lawyers in Iran over the past 12 years, the number willing to take on human rights cases has dwindled from more than 50 to fewer than 10, according to Dehghan, 50, who left the country two years ago because of cases against him and now lives in Canada.
“We do not have an independent judicial system in Iran, and the judicial authorities handling political cases are completely under the control of the security agencies,” he said.
Before and after the arrest of someone from Iranian civil society, which is usually planned and differs from the indiscriminate arrests of protesters in the streets, authorities often cast a broad net, trying to intimidate or otherwise silence their family and friends.
On the day Ronaghi was arrested in Tehran, agents from the Ministry of Intelligence also detained his father in Malekan, a small town in northwest Iran, according to Kazemi, Ronaghi’s friend, who is in Turkey. They gave the father a clear message, Kazemi said: Do not publicize your son’s case or you will suffer the same fate. Ronaghi’s father was released a few hours later, shaken by the experience.
The pressure campaign did not stop there. On Thursday morning, security agents went to the office of Ronagh’s friend Samaneh Mousavi, a dentist and former activist involved with women’s rights. When she arrived at the office, the security agents detained her on the spot, said Kazemi, who also knows Mousavi, 39, and has been in touch with her sister.
The Post had spoken with Samaneh Mousavi on Wednesday, 24 hours before her arrest. She had described an incident from the early hours of Sept. 24, when 11 plainclothes security agents came to her office looking for her in the middle of the night.
They were armed with a sledgehammer and a crowbar and showed the doorman pictures of Mousavi and Ronaghi. When asked in a telephone interview on Wednesday from Tehran if she feared for her safety, Mousavi replied, “Of course.”
Mousavi called her sister after her arrest Thursday and told her that she was being held at Evin and that her detention was related to Ronaghi, Kazemi said. No official charges have been announced yet for Ronaghi, his lawyers or Mousavi.
Kazemi said he thinks a lot about Ronaghi and about his own time in Evin, where he was jailed in 2018 and 2019 on charges of spreading propaganda against the system and insulting the supreme leader. He fears his friend and other detainees are facing the same grueling interrogations and psychological pressure that he endured in solitary confinement.
“It’s worrying,” Kazemi said. “It’s not clear what his health situation is, what they have planned for him and what kind of case they’ll create for him.” | 2022-10-07T16:22:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iran arrests journalists, lawyers, activists over Mahsa Amini protests - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/iran-protests-mahsa-amini-arrests/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/iran-protests-mahsa-amini-arrests/ |
The idea was inspired by an atypical source: the final words of convicted murderer Gary Gilmore
By Phil Davison
Dan Wieden in 2012. (Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images)
Although scooter sales did not experience a major uptick, Knight began investing vastly more in the upstart advertising company. Mr. Wieden and his creative team had made ads for Nike featuring shoes for different types of sports and athletes, but they felt they needed a unifying slogan to bind them all together. Mr. Wieden, who was always quick to credit teamwork for many successes, said he came up with “Just Do It" largely on his own.
“The reason it lasted so long was that he didn’t build an ad agency, he built a culture,” senior Wieden+Kennedy executive Karl Lieberman told the Oregonian. “Curious, driven, welcoming and lacking deference, … it’s a place that in a lot of ways reflects him.”
“He was a warm and gentle character, a complete contrast to the top dogs that he spent his career competing against," Marcantonio added of Mr. Wieden. "No flamboyance, no flannel, no fuss. He just did it.”
In the London-based magazine Creative Review, Mr. Wieden wrote this advice for creative teams: “Look, if you are driving for excellence, let me suggest you tell your left brain to take a break now and then. And give your right brain permission to let all hell break loose. I am not kidding. … You have to allow disorder and … foster a relationship with anxiety. With unpredictability. ... The goal is not to march forward in lock-step harmony. … Excellence is not a formula, excellence is the grand experiment.
“It ain’t mathematics," he added. "It’s jazz.” | 2022-10-07T16:35:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dan Wieden, adman who coined ‘Just Do It’ for Nike, dies at 77 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/07/dan-wieden-just-do-it-nike-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/07/dan-wieden-just-do-it-nike-dead/ |
Michele White called the corruption charges against her a “good show” intended to justify a new “Election Integrity Unit” in the state
Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, left, and Attorney General Jason Miyares. (Steve Helber/AP)
The former head of a Virginia county election’s office who is facing corruption charges said her prosecution is a politically motivated effort by the state’s Republican leadership to try to justify the creation of a unit to investigate voter fraud in the state.
Michele White, the ex-Prince William County registrar of voters, said in her first comments on the criminal charges against her that the case is an attack on Virginia’s election officials and could have a chilling effect on their ability to do their job.
White said she did nothing “wrong or illegal” in conducting the vote, but she has not yet been told the exact nature of the allegations.
White was indicted last month on two felony counts of corrupt conduct and making a false statement as an election official, as well as a misdemeanor for willful neglect of duty by an elected official. The conduct is alleged to have occurred during the 2020 election season.
White resigned from her job in April 2021, following an emergency meeting of the Prince William County elections board. White said the board asked for her resignation, but did not explain why.
“Now that we have a Republican governor, who is out campaigning for other Republican governors who claim the election was stolen, I feel that my unexplained resignation and the personal agendas of a few aggrieved staff have created an opportunity for the Governor to use me as a way to show a need for the Election integrity Unit,” White wrote in a text message. “It’s just a good show.”
The office of Attorney General Jason Miyares, who is handling the case, denied any political motivations behind the prosecution. Miyares’s office has declined to release any details about the allegations against White. A spokesman for Gov. Glenn Youngkin said maintaining confidence in elections in the state is “paramount,” but referred all questions to Miyares.
Former Prince William County registrar indicted on corruption charges
“The three indictments were issued by a grand jury,” Miyares spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita said in a statement. “It is utterly false to say they are politically motivated.”
Miyares’s office announced the charges against White two days before rolling out an “Election Integrity Unit” dedicated to investigating allegations of voter fraud and other election irregularities in the state. The move was blasted by Democrats and some voting rights experts, who said the state has no widespread election issues and accused Miyares of trying to suppress the vote.
LaCivita said in her statement the announcement of the “Election Integrity Unit,” which will be staffed by 20 attorneys and other officials, was timed to the start of early voting in Virginia not White’s indictment.
“It should be easy to vote, and hard to cheat,” Miyares said in a previous statement about the unit. “The Election Integrity Unit will work to help to restore confidence in our democratic process in the Commonwealth.”
Virgnia Attorney General creates 'Election Integrity Unit'
White tied her prosecution to nationwide efforts by Republicans to cast doubt on election outcomes and the integrity of voting systems.
“This is an attack against me, other Directors of Election, Electoral Board members and Election Officers who serve the voting public and manage elections in Virginia,” White said in a statement. She added in an interview: “I would take pause if I were an election officer and really think, ‘Do I want to run elections and run the risk of possibly being charged myself?’ ”
White said she was interviewed by state investigators in late July, but declined to discuss what they asked. She said she came away from the meeting with the impression that the investigation had to do with grievances of some employees in her office and she had addressed the issues.
Eric Olsen, the Prince William registrar who succeeded White, said in an interview last month that he triggered the criminal probe in April when he discovered some “discrepancies” while going through some documents in the office and reported them to the state.
Olsen declined to discuss what those discrepancies were citing the ongoing criminal case, but said they potentially affected a small number of votes in the 2020 election. He said the issues did not change the outcome of any race.
The next hearing in White’s case is scheduled for Oct. 21 in Prince William Circuit Court. | 2022-10-07T17:05:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ex-Prince William election official Michele White says her prosecution is political - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/prince-william-election-michele-white/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/prince-william-election-michele-white/ |
Anyone can submit filings to a court docket. The Mar-a-Lago probe proves it.
Dockets provide a glimpse into a quirky corner of U.S. court proceedings, highlighting the intense interest in Trump investigations
Pages from a September ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit that lifted a lower-court order barring the Justice Department from examining documents seized by the FBI at former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. (Jon Elswick/AP)
O’Rane Cornish Sr. was reading yet another article about the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Florida residence when he decided to send the presiding judge a letter. The 70-year-old great-grandfather from Tennessee wrote that he was “offended and repulsed” that Judge Aileen M. Cannon allowed lawyers to refer to the ex-commander in chief as “president” in their legal filings. He suggested she recuse herself from the case.
Cornish’s three-page letter — technically called an amicus curiae, or a “friend of the court” submission — became filing No. 63 on a public docket that has grown to 128 documents, which together chronicle the significant and the mundane in Cannon’s appointment of a special master to review some 11,000 documents seized in the Aug. 8 search.
Most of the submissions to Cannon’s docket are filings by Trump’s legal team and government prosecutors, or orders from Cannon and the special master she appointed, a federal judge, Raymond J. Dearie of Brooklyn. But listed between all those official court documents are at least a dozen filings from others including Cornish — people who have no standing to participate formally in the case through legal filings but are nonetheless permitted by the U.S. legal system to submit documents that become part of the court record.
They are law school dropouts, self-appointed political pundits or ambitiously litigious Americans, all seeking to make their way onto one of the most high-profile dockets in the country. They submit often bombastic and rambling missives, hoping that Cannon will read them and take their free-of-charge legal advice. In some cases, they have been threatened in response by others who have taken an interest in the case.
Together, the filings highlight the intense interest among people of all political leanings in the investigation into the potential mishandling of classified information at Mar-a-Lago, while also providing a glimpse into a quirky corner of American court proceedings. It happens even in the country’s highest court. On Monday, the satirical faux news website the Onion filed a briefing in a Supreme Court free-speech case about a man who spent four days in jail after he made fun of his local police department on Facebook.
“I found what is being done in this case rather offensive,” Cornish, a Vietnam veteran and retired meteorologist who frequently writes letters to judges, said in an interview about why he weighed in with Cannon. “And the notion that there are those out there that seem to sanction that, just simply weighed on me, and I thought, let me write her a letter.”
In a high-profile case such as the Mar-a-Lago investigation, in which the Justice Department is probing the possible mishandling of classified information and the possible hiding, tampering with or destruction of government records, these passionate but mostly meaningless filings can attract legions of readers.
In Trump White House, classified records were routinely mishandled, aides say
Each day, journalists, lawyers and Trump document investigation die-hards scour the Trump documents docket on Pacer, an electronic service that catalogues federal court documents, searching for any new submissions. For 40 cents, anyone with a Pacer account can download the letter Cornish wrote to the judge — even if they landed on it accidentally in the hope that it was a document from Cannon or participating lawyers that would advance the case.
“Cheers to you, sir, for inserting your best, most curmudgeonly snark into this national moment — I dig it,” an anonymous user wrote about Cornish on Reddit in a discussion about the hodgepodge of people submitting filings to the Trump docket.
In theory, anyone with time and a little cash can add their filings to a court docket, said Steve Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor. Rules often vary by judges, but if people adhere to court procedures, they can submit their musings. Some file their documents as appeals or as letters to the judge, but Vladeck said that because those people are not parties to the case, their filings are all considered “friend of the court letters.”
Lawyers can be disciplined for filing frivolous lawsuits, so the people who file letters to judges are typically not lawyers. And the larger federal courts are, the more likely they are to accept these extra filings, according to Vladeck, since these courts typically have legal clerks and more staffers to help sift through the submissions.
Vladeck argued a case in the Supreme Court a few years ago about a fatal cross-border shooting of a Mexican teenager by a U.S. Border Patrol agent that also drew filings from a number of people not involved in the litigation. Vladeck said that he read all the submissions but that they did not change how he viewed or approached any aspect of the case.
“If John Smith sends a letter to the Supreme Court tomorrow about a pending case, chances are that letter will be reflected on the docket — and that doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” Vladeck said. “When it comes to President Trump, everything increases by a factor of insanity.”
Cornish said he did not realize that his letter to Cannon would be publicly viewable. He was just hoping to persuade the judge to be tougher on Trump, he said. Since submitting the letter, he said, he has received more than a dozen threats from people who found his cellphone number listed on his filing.
Raj K. Patel, 30, who has filed multiple documents to Cannon’s docket, said in an interview that he filed a “motion for intervention,” writing that “the present civil action contains a lawsuit against the United States to determine whether executive Privilege was violated by a former President of the United States.”
Trump’s lawyer refused his request in February to say all documents had been returned
Patel also wrote that he wants to be president someday and therefore has great interest in knowing if these executive privileges extend beyond a president’s term in office.
In the Trump document case, Patel said he submits the filings in person because he thinks it gives him a better chance of them landing on the docket — a potentially pricey obstacle, since he lives in Indianapolis. To hand-deliver them, Patel mailed his filings to someone in Florida whom he hired online through the app TaskRabbit to file the documents with a clerk in the federal courthouse in West Palm Beach. The total cost so far? Around $500, he said.
“I think President Trump should have been making the arguments that I am making,” said Patel, who says he attended law school for two years and has multiple lawsuits making their way through federal courts. “I want to make sure that future litigants and President Trump have the Constitution govern this debate instead of politics.”
When Cannon ruled that she would appoint a third-party special master to sort through the 11,000 seized documents, four people wrote letters urging the judge to select them for the high-profile job.
“My requirements, as I quickly muster the courage to submit this motion, include a Military Motorcade (Triple Canopy or National Guard) to safely transition me from Nevada to the case files, with an intermediary stop in Massachusetts to pick up my things,” wrote one special master hopeful who said he has a PhD in philosophy.
Cannon did not select any of the volunteers, instead picking Dearie, a longtime federal judge whom Trump’s lawyers and the Justice Department agreed was a suitable choice for special master.
Merril Hirsh, the executive director of an association of special masters, said his group is working to make the special master process more transparent and accessible by creating public rosters of qualified special masters listed with their areas of expertise.
But would he encourage aspiring special masters to write a public letter to a judge making their case?
“It’s not the way you would think an experienced lawyer would do it,” Hirsh said. “Would you do your PhD thesis in crayon? You wouldn’t stop someone from doing it, but you can’t imagine it’s a real good way to do it.” | 2022-10-07T17:05:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge Cannon's docket for Trump Mar-a-Lago case draws letters from the public - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/07/cannon-docket-trump-filings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/07/cannon-docket-trump-filings/ |
Biden’s scary invocation of nuclear ‘Armageddon’
A military aide carries the “nuclear football” for President Biden on the South Lawn of the White House last month. (Al Drago for The Washington Post)
Generally, the right venue to warn that we face the biggest threat of Armageddon in 60 years wouldn’t seem to be a political fundraiser. But for whatever reason, that’s where President Biden on Thursday night decided to offer some of the scariest comments uttered by a U.S. president in decades.
Speaking at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee event, Biden said that for the “first time since the Cuban missile crisis we have a direct threat of the use of the nuclear weapon if in fact things continue down the path they are going.”
Biden has certainly shown himself capable of speaking unintentionally — or “getting over his skis,” to borrow a phrase — but he said a version of this warning not once, not twice, but three times.
“We have not faced the prospect of Armageddon since Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis,” he reiterated at another point.
“We’ve got a guy I know fairly well,” he added of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “He’s not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons because his military is, you might say, significantly underperforming.”
It’s valid to ask where these comments are coming from. Certainly, the nuclear saber-rattling from Putin is on a level not seen in many years, if ever, with Russia threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons. Putin is also in a position he’s never really been in, with the war in Ukraine going poorly and threatening to embarrass him and his country. Biden is serving notice that we shouldn’t treat this as a bluff.
“There is no example since 1962 that comes even close to the concrete threats that Putin has been making,” said Paul D’Anieri, an expert on the relationship between Russia and Ukraine at the University of California Riverside. “Similarly, the U.S. has never voiced anything like the current level of concern that a nuclear weapon might be used.”
But why roll out this kind of talk at a political fundraiser? At the very least, that would risk playing into the idea that this is somehow about politics — exactly how, it’s not really clear — rather than a serious warning to the American people.
If we take Biden at face value, though — that the prospect is something he truly fears, and to this extent — it’s worth putting in historical perspective.
The Cuban missile crisis was indeed the most serious threat of open nuclear war during the Cold War. But there were plenty of other scares — often due to mistakes or misinterpreted signals.
In 1967, the U.S. military prepared nuclear-equipped aircraft for launch after wrongly surmising the Soviet Union had jammed U.S. surveillance radars, according to a 2016 paper published by journal Space Weather. The problem was later found to have been the result of a major solar storm instead.
In 1973, at the tail end of the Yom Kippur War, Egypt and Syria’s offensive drew Israel into a possible nuclear response — though precisely what kind is disputed. While some have said Israel readied nuclear missiles to attack, renowned expert Avner Cohen has written that Israel’s defense minister instead floated detonating a nuclear warhead over the desert as a show of force.
In 1979 and 1980, there were multiple false alarms of potential Soviet ballistic missiles headed toward the United States.
In 1983, the Soviet Union readied nuclear-equipped planes in East Germany during a NATO exercise. U.S. intelligence released last year said the Soviets had launched “preparations for the immediate use of nuclear weapons.” In one instance, a Soviet squadron was asked to forgo use of an electronic jamming pod because of “an unexpected weight and balance problem,” according to U.S. military intelligence, which feared this meant the Soviets were loading a new type of weapon.
(This was also the year President Ronald Reagan launched the Strategic Defense Initiative — commonly and often derisively known as “Star Wars” — a hugely expensive initiative to try to prevent the Soviets from striking the United States with nuclear weapons.)
And in 1995, even after the end of the Cold War, Russian President Boris Yeltsin activated his nuclear briefcase over fears of an inbound ballistic missile from Norway that Russia believed might be a strike from the Americans. The Washington Post’s David Hoffman noted it was the first time a Russian or Soviet leader had taken that step.
As George Bass wrote for Retropolis back in January, these post-1962 threats proved to be less serious than initially thought, or not serious at all. But the concern about them reinforced the very real fears of nuclear war, particularly with the Soviets.
The war in Ukraine differs from all of them in that this time a heavily nuclear-armed country has been backed into something of a corner (through an invasion of its own choice). And the threats to use nuclear weapons are very much out in the open. D’Anieri noted that in none of the post-1962 examples “was there serious talk by serious people that nuclear weapons might be used. In that sense, today’s situation really is unprecedented.”
Biden’s motivations for speaking as he did Thursday night are difficult to parse. On the one hand, perhaps he’s received some information that makes him particularly concerned right now. Lodging such a concern at a political fundraiser — rather than at an official White House event — could be an attempt to keep Russia guessing about just how intentional his comments were.
It’s worth noting, though, that the Defense Department told Politico on Friday that “we have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture nor do we have indications that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons”; the spokesperson said the president’s comments simply expressed that the United States was taking Putin’s threats seriously.
And it’s also worth noting that Biden has shown a real capacity for just saying things — things that White House officials then have to walk back. (Certainly, many politicians have found themselves speaking a little too freely at political fundraisers, where they’re surrounded by people who support them and pay money to see them.)
But Biden isn’t just a first-term president. He also has real experience in these matters. Elected to the Senate in the mid-1970s, one of Biden’s biggest priorities early in his tenure was arms control. He communicated directly with high-ranking Soviet officials, including leading a delegation in 1979 for talks about the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT).
And as recently as late 2020, after his election as president, Biden reflected on the very real threats of that era. He cited the “long twilight struggle against Soviet tyranny that could have ended not in the fall of the Berlin Wall, but in nuclear Armageddon.”
The A-word is now back in Biden’s public rhetoric — for the first time, at least in this foreign affairs context, since that Thanksgiving 2020 speech. And a major question in the coming hours and days will be why it reappeared, and how deliberate it was.
The latest: Democrats are once again trying to censure Greene for antisemitic comments
4:58 PMAnalysis: No real surprise as Biden’s Saudi outreach falls short
4:51 PMLatest: White House says ‘no change’ in nuclear posture despite Biden’s ‘Armageddon’ comment
4:27 PMThe latest: White House says jobs report is evidence that Biden’s strategy is working | 2022-10-07T17:05:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden’s scary invocation of nuclear ‘Armageddon’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/biden-armageddon-nuclear-comments/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/biden-armageddon-nuclear-comments/ |
Developing hurricane to slam Nicaragua with high winds and flooding rain
Julia is expected to remain in the Caribbean and Central America and is not a threat to the gulf or the Lower 48.
The National Hurricane Center's forecast for Julia. (NOAA/NHC)
It’s been two weeks since the system that would eventually become catastrophic Hurricane Ian churned through the Caribbean, and now it looks like a new tropical system could be developing in its wake. Newly-formed Tropical Storm Julia is bringing heavy rain and gusty winds to northern Venezuela and Colombia, and could become a hurricane as it churns toward Nicaragua this weekend.
Unlike its predecessor, Julia won’t pose the threat of recurving to the north and affecting the Gulf of Mexico or Lower 48. High pressure over North America will act as a guardrail that will steer it farther west.
But damaging-to-destructive winds will buffet coastal Nicaragua over the weekend, with up to 15 inches of rain and the potential for “life-threatening” flash flooding and mudslides, according to the National Hurricane Center.
A hurricane warning is in effect for San Andres, Providencia, and the Santa Catalina Islands in Colombia, with a hurricane watch in effect for coastal Nicaragua between Bluefields and the Honduras border.
In the nearer term, a tropical storm warning covers Colombia from Riohacha to the Venezuela border.
Until the start of September, tropical activity in the Atlantic was only hovering around 10 percent of what’s typical for a season to date; August was the first in 25 years to pass without a single named storm forming. Since then, Ian and Fiona both peaked at Category 4 strength, and activity has lurched to 77 percent of average.
By a metric of ACE, or Accumulated Cyclone Energy — a figure that estimates how much energy storms expend in the form of strong winds over their lifetimes — September 2022 was more active than September 2020 or 2021.
Julia was named a tropical storm as of 11 a.m. Friday. Maximum winds were estimated at 40 mph in the core. The storm was 110 miles west of the northern tip of the Guajira Peninsula, and was moving west at 18 mph.
As of midmorning, the NOAA GOES East weather satellite captured a burst of convection, or shower and thunderstorm activity. That’s a sign of a strengthening system.
An Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter aircraft investigating the system found winds of 38 mph, 1 mph shy of tropical storm force, a few-thousand feet above the ground. Considering that the mission had just started, the National Hurricane Center was confident that tropical-storm-force winds were bound to be present elsewhere inside the storm, and it was subsequently named Julia.
Julia was working to fend off shear, or a disruptive change of wind speed and/or direction with height. There are signs that shear should abate over the next 24 to 36 hours, which would allow Julia to take advantage of warm Caribbean Sea surface temperatures and intensify.
Forecast going forward
While the ocean waters are plenty toasty to support strengthening, rapid intensification, as was the case with Ian, is not anticipated.
Ian had clockwise-spinning high pressure sitting on top of it, which helped fan air away from the system at upper altitudes. That aided in Ian’s outflow; the more air a storm evacuates from above, the more its air pressure can plummet and the more it can ingest warm, humid air from below. That aids in strengthening.
For Julia, high pressure will remain banked up to the north and it probably won’t strengthen as quickly.
Moreover, Julia is drifting west more swiftly than initially forecast, limiting the window for intensification. As such, it will probably make landfall in Nicaragua by Sunday morning. By then it should be a Category 1 hurricane. That means coastal gusts could reach 85 mph. A 2- to 4-foot storm surge, or rise in ocean water above normally dry land, is also possible.
Far more concerning is the potential for torrential rains amounting to 5 to 10 inches or more in parts of Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize.
The storm will dissipate into a remnant low as it heads into the Pacific early next week. | 2022-10-07T17:53:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tropical storm Julia forms, to threaten Nicaragua as hurricane - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/07/tropical-storm-julia-hurricane-nicaragua/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/07/tropical-storm-julia-hurricane-nicaragua/ |
A mother holds her child diagnosed with cholera in a hospital in Deir el-Zour, Syria, on Sept. 29. (Baderkhan Ahmad/AP)
BEIRUT — A recent outbreak of cholera in Syria has hit nearly all the country’s provinces and spread to neighboring Lebanon, triggering alarms in both countries where economic crises have exacerbated deteriorating health conditions.
Syria’s cholera outbreak was declared on Sept. 10, and by the end of the month, surveillance data showed more than 10,000 suspected cases across the country, UNICEF said this week.
By Friday, Lebanon had recorded two cholera cases in Akkar province, the northernmost part of the country bordering Syria, according to Lebanon’s Minister of Public Health Firass Abiad. There are currently no available cholera vaccines in the country, Abiad told The Washington Post.
Syria and Lebanon are currently mired in twin economic meltdowns that have wreaked havoc on every facet of life, including health conditions and water sanitation.
Cholera, a waterborne disease, has so far been concentrated in the north of Syria, said the United Nations children’s agency, but is “rapidly spreading” across other governorates.
Syria, especially its northern areas, has a growing, severe water crisis due to the large-scale damage inflicted on water and sanitation infrastructure over the course of an 11-year war that has ravaged much of the country. The current economic crisis, persistent fighting, displacement of people and prolonged drought has left 47 percent of the population reliant on “alternative and often unsafe water sources,” said UNICEF.
“At least 70 percent of the discharged sewage is untreated which presents major risks for disease outbreaks, including cholera,” the agency reported, estimating that the conflict had damaged two thirds of the country’s water treatment plants, half its pumping stations, and one third of water towers.
Syrians fleeing desperation at home flock to the United Arab Emirates
Lebanon’s fate is in many ways tied to Syria. Their economies are intertwined, and shortages of goods in Lebanon reverberate across Syria, and vice versa. Wheat, oil, medicine and foodstuffs are frequently smuggled across the border both ways, more typically from Lebanon into Syria.
Lebanon was famed for its medical care. Now, doctors and nurses are fleeing in droves.
The World Health Organization, or WHO, is working with the Lebanese government to provide vaccines, said Abiad, the health minister. Alissar Rady, WHO’s team lead in Lebanon, said it is working alongside the ministry, UNICEF and other partners to put in place a plan that focuses on surveillance and early detection, and to prep hospitals to receive cases that require advanced care. Community engagement is also key, she added. “And there is a lot of work with the national authorities to see how we can enhance water quality monitoring and periodical water testing.”
Lebanon has long had water sanitation issues. Running water — now just a dream in the most economically-hit parts of the country — has not been drinkable for decades. The coastline, especially around the capital Beirut, contains high levels of contamination and fecal matter.
And the health care system has been struggling to stay afloat as the economy collapses and hordes of medical professionals leave. The WHO estimated last year that nearly 40 percent of Lebanon’s doctors and 30 percent of nurses had departed since 2019. | 2022-10-07T17:53:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Syria’s cholera outbreak spreads across country, hits neighboring Lebanon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/syria-lebanon-cholera-outbreak-water/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/syria-lebanon-cholera-outbreak-water/ |
The National Gallery thought this painting was a Vermeer. Now? Not so much.
Experts had long wondered whether “Girl With a Flute” was really one of the world’s few paintings by the Dutch master. The pandemic gave the museum a chance to investigate.
“Girl With a Flute,” one of four paintings in the National Gallery's collection attributed to Vermeer, has been determined to have been painted by someone else. (National Gallery of Art)
The NGA’s tronies both show young women with similar faces and expressions. Both subjects wear unusual hats and large pearl earrings. The backgrounds of both are rather summarily sketched in. Both show a tapestry on the wall and a chair with lion’s-head finials. And both are painted on wooden panels, which was extremely unusual for Vermeer.
The new analyses seem to have confirmed the doubters. “At pretty much every level in the buildup of the painting,” said Wieseman, “it’s ‘close, but no cigar.’ ” | 2022-10-07T18:41:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Vermeer at National Gallery of Art is not a Vermeer, museum confirms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/07/vermeer-national-gallery-girl-flute/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/07/vermeer-national-gallery-girl-flute/ |
An Afghan family’s daunting resettlement, and the local parents who want to help
Mohammad, and Zar, who are refugees from Afghanistan, look at an ultrasound photo of their baby at home in Alexandria on Sept. 29. (Shuran Huang/FTWP)
They learned they were expecting their second child on a cold January afternoon, in the fifth month that Mohammad, his wife, Zar, and their then-4-year-old son, Mubariz, had spent in hiding from the Taliban in the northern Afghan city of Mazar e-Sharif. I think I am pregnant, Zar told Mohammad that day. Though he had grown a long beard and tried to avoid being seen outside by someone who might identify him, he quickly went to a nearby pharmacy to buy a test that confirmed the news.
They were simultaneously elated and utterly terrified. Zar, who had worked as a primary schoolteacher before the new regime seized power, prayed for another son; she knew what the future would be — or what it couldn’t be — if she delivered a little girl under Taliban rule.
But Mohammad was gripped by a conviction that they were expecting a daughter. “I knew that her future will be black in Afghanistan,” he says. “I knew we had to leave there, at any cost.”
The cost would be high: A sudden flight from the home they’d always known and the many family members they loved; an arrival in a foreign country, with no belongings to their name; a complete reliance on others to help them find community and reorient themselves in a new life as they prepared to welcome their baby in early October.
Eight months later and 7,000 miles away, on an overcast September afternoon, Mohammad, 30, Zar, 27, and 5-year-old Mubariz watch through the window of a small one-bedroom apartment in Alexandria, Va., as the visitor they’re awaiting pulls into the parking lot below. Michelle Cooper’s car is packed with bags of clothing, furniture, toys and baby gear she has been carefully collecting for days, destined for the modest home on the second floor where the young family of refugees has lived since June.
Honored to do a little something to help, just like others helped my family a few generations ago, Cooper wrote to Mohammad when they were introduced, and she explained that she would help equip his family with the nursery supplies they needed.
This is called humanity, Mohammad replied. We are so thankful to all of you.
Mohammad and Zar are no longer living in constant fear for their family’s safety; before the United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan, Mohammad had worked for an American international development company, which made him a target of the Taliban. (The family is being identified by first or middle names only to protect the safety of relatives who are still in Afghanistan.)
But the transition to a new life in an unknown country has been daunting. When they stepped off the plane at Dulles International Airport on June 2, there was no one waiting to meet them. It took several days for an aid agency caseworker to return their calls and finally visit them at their hotel, and two more months before Zar was able to see a doctor, who confirmed that her pregnancy was progressing normally. The family has often felt left adrift as they’ve tried to adjust to this new reality, Mohammad says, and despite his qualifications and fervent desire to work again, he has yet to find a job that will allow him to provide for his growing family.
In the midst of what has been a chaotic and stressful resettlement for so many refugee families, networks of local parent volunteers — including Cooper, a 48-year-old mother of two in D.C. — have emerged, working furiously to help bridge some of the gaps left by understaffed and overwhelmed aid agencies. These parents have furnished apartments, assembled nurseries, helped with job applications and school enrollments, driven people to doctor and dental appointments, delivered groceries and diapers and collected countless hand-me-down clothes and new toys. They have also spent time listening to the families who have not often had an opportunity to share all they have endured.
Reaching Md. was an odyssey. Now, an Afghan family marks a quiet milestone.
After carrying their deliveries to Mohammad and Zar’s apartment, Cooper and her 11-year-old daughter, Raleigh, sit on a couch in the tidy living room, sipping from cups of juice offered by their hosts. “Your home is beautiful,” Cooper says. “You’ve settled in so quickly.”
“When we left Afghanistan, we had nothing,” Mohammad says. “We had —” he tugs gently at the collar of his shirt; they had only the clothes they were wearing.
They talk for a while about their life before, and their life now — how happy their son is to go to school, and how quickly he is already learning words and phrases in English after just one month in kindergarten. His parents are no longer afraid to see him leave in the morning, they explain: Beyond the threat posed by the Taliban, children in Afghanistan were sometimes kidnapped and held for ransom. Every day, Mohammad says, he would call Zar from his office to make sure Mubariz had come home safely.
“There were criminals who would kidnap the children, for just a small amount of money, and if they don’t get it, they kill,” he says. “They don’t care.” As he speaks, Raleigh slips quietly from the couch to the floor to sit beside Mubariz, helping him sift through a box of new toys.
“I can’t imagine,” Cooper says softly. “I am so glad you’re here.”
Mohammad’s gaze settles on his little boy as he happily wheels a small blue and white truck over the carpet.
“We are here today,” Mohammad says, and again, as if to truly believe it: “Now we are here.”
In the waning days of the Afghanistan war in August 2021, as desperate masses swarmed the airport in Kabul, Lydia Weiss found herself unable to turn away from the news.
Weiss, a 48-year-old mother of two in Northwest D.C., was about to embark on a sabbatical from work. “I thought: This is what I want to do,” she says. "I want to help.”
She connected with Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, one of the agencies that has been helping to resettle Afghans in the region, and signed up to furnish a new apartment for a refugee family. Weiss found the experience so fulfilling, she says, that she assembled a growing network of local parents who also offered to volunteer time, supplies and funds.
“I really tapped my kids’ school community, big-time," she says. "I used the neighborhood Facebook page, and the Buy Nothing page. I used local listservs. I emailed everyone.”
About 150 volunteers have joined her efforts, she says, nearly all of whom are parents, and most are working mothers. This, she feels, is at the heart of what compels them: the universality of wanting a better life for one’s child, and the empathy to imagine how it might feel to endure such trauma as a family.
“We help with job résumés, we set up playdates with their kids, we bring them the things they need when a new baby is coming, we help get them oriented with how to use public transportation in their neighborhoods,” Weiss says. “What drives my group of women is just that we’re always trying to think like a mom; we know how to solve these kinds of problems.”
Those moments of exchange and connection “still choke me up every time,” Weiss says. “Often there is no language in common. All that is in common is parenthood.”
When Megan Flores, executive director of the Immigrant and Refugee Outreach Center, recently offered Weiss a list of expectant families in need of nursery supplies, Weiss paired Mohammad and Zar with Cooper, who was among Weiss’s circle of volunteers but had yet to coordinate a donation drive herself. Cooper was both nervous and eager to take it on, she says.
“As somebody who is Jewish, I think about the plight of migration from the beginning of time all the way through to when my own ancestors were coming to this country,” Cooper says. “I know that I am a beneficiary, generations later, of someone else's kindness. And I love being able to pay that forward a little bit.”
Flores says this sort of matchmaking — pairing individual volunteers or groups of volunteers with refugee families — has been especially vital over the past year, as aid agencies have been overwhelmed.
It is a complicated situation, she adds, because she knows the aid agencies are grappling with extraordinary demand, often while balancing staffing shortages. But “some of these refugee families have never seen their caseworker,” Flores says. “There’s no excuse for the way that some of these families have been treated.”
A spokesperson for Lutheran Social Services noted the unprecedented increase in demand that the agency has faced since last summer. “We went from accepting 500 people for an entire year for resettlement, to 500 a month for resettlement,” the spokesperson said. In a written statement, the agency added, “Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area continues to proudly provide resettlement services to the largest number of Afghan Allies on the East Coast since last summer.”
Flores says it has been deeply gratifying to see how more personal interactions between local residents and refugee families can change lives, for all involved.
“It’s one thing to write a check to an organization, but it’s another thing to go to someone’s house and really see their situation firsthand," she says. "These families have been shuffled through the system ... to have someone stop and say, ‘Hey, how are you doing? What do you need? What have you been through?’ That means so much.”
It was the night of Aug. 9, 2021 when Mohammad stood on the roof of his family’s home in Mazar e-Sharif, watching as Taliban fighters swarmed the streets. One week later, he and Zar packed Mubariz into a car with relatives from Kabul and traveled nine hours south to the capital city, threading through a panicked crowd of thousands outside the airport gates, only to turn away without hope of getting through.
“The Taliban kept shooting, a rain of bullets was coming down from the sky. I was not worried about myself, but I was worried about my son and my wife,” Mohammad said. “My son, he had never seen such terrible things before. I think he will never forget.”
Before the American withdrawal, the family had never imagined leaving their country. “I had a good salary, I had all my family there,” Mohammad says. “We had a hope that one day all people there will live under peace.”
For many months, they didn’t know if they would be able to escape. But a call came at last from the U.S. State Department one April morning, with instructions for Mohammad and his family to travel immediately to Kabul. There was no time to prepare, and they were not permitted to bring any belongings. Mohammad’s father was at work; he couldn’t make it home in time to hug his son goodbye.
Mohammad’s voice breaks when he recounts their abrupt departure, and their fear for the family left behind. “These things are not in my control,” he says. “I want to cry, but I want to be strong.”
But there was also tremendous relief as they left, he says. Bound first for Qatar, he and Zar kept willing themselves to believe that they were finally flying to freedom. “We were laughing on the plane,” he says. “We had nothing, but we were so happy.”
For several months spanning their departure from Afghanistan and their arrival in the United States, they had no access to medical care, and Zar went without prenatal appointments, Mohammad says. It was mid-August before they finally met with a new doctor, who told them that they were expecting a little girl. They looked at each other and laughed; this time, Zar says, the thought of a daughter brought them only joy.
“I am so happy now, that she [will be] born here,” Zar says, “because here, I think her future is bright.”
Her own future feels brighter, too. Zar was studying English in Afghanistan, and she has already made plans to join classes at a local library after her daughter is born. There is a quiet determination to her voice when she speaks of this — “Soon, I will get started studying again, to improve myself,” she says — and Mohammad smiles proudly.
“She is a very hard-working lady," he says of his wife, “and she can do whatever she wants.”
A wooden crib is waiting for their daughter in the little bedroom where the family of four will sleep side by side. Cooper helps carry a donated changing table into the room, placing it carefully in one corner.
More deliveries will follow, Cooper promises — winter coats, and a few other items that didn’t fit in her car on this first trip. “We’d love to stay in touch, if there are things we can do to make sure you’re okay and comfortable and have what you need,” she says.
“Thank you so much for all you are doing,” Zar says.
Before their visitors leave, Mohammad shares a final memory from Afghanistan: One frigid winter morning as he walked to work, he says, he passed an unhoused family huddled together on the frozen ground. “They had a child, like my son,” he says. “They had no jackets. Sleeping on the snow. It was so cold.” The sight of them tormented him, he says, “so I went to my work, and I shared the story with my colleagues, and I said: ‘If we don’t help them tonight, they will be no more.’ ” His co-workers banded together, he says, and bought plentiful supplies to deliver to the family — tents, mattresses, dishes, food, clothing.
“We became so happy, from here,” he says, smiling and placing his palm over his heart. There is a symmetry that resonates now, as he remembers that other version of his life, when he was the one in a position to give: “We helped them like you are helping us.”
“Oh,” Michelle says, mirroring his own gesture, placing her hand on her chest. “What you did was amazing, what we did was just a small —”
But Mohammad gently interjects, shaking his head. “I believe helping is not something ‘big’ or ‘small,’ ” he says. “It is always big.” | 2022-10-07T19:25:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | An Afghan family finds support from local parents as they welcome a new baby - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/07/afghan-family-welcomes-new-baby/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/07/afghan-family-welcomes-new-baby/ |
Game developers are socially conscious, and they’re starting to ask: "All right, what do we need to do?” says Dr. Benjamin Abraham.
Earlier this year, at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Dr. Benjamin Abraham found himself gazing out at a dispiriting scene. The climate-focused researcher and author walked onto the stage for his “Making Room for Climate Justice” talk, only to be greeted by a sea of empty chairs.
“I was hoping this session would be packed like the NFT ones,” he said to attendees at the time.
But a presentation — even at one of the largest gatherings of game makers in the world — was always only a small part of the plan.
At the tail end of August, Abraham launched AfterClimate, a business intended to aid smaller game developers on their journey to decarbonization by doing the legwork of figuring out how to reduce emissions for them. Why video games, though, when industries like transportation and energy are (literally) polluting up a storm? Because at this point — with U.N. reports bearing grim tidings and extreme weather submerging one third of Pakistan in floodwater, driving millions from their homes — every bit counts.
“I look at the Pakistan floods, and I wish they were a surprise,” Abraham said in an interview with The Washington Post. “But that’s exactly what scientists have been saying for decades is going to happen, and it’s going to happen to more people. … The game developers I’ve talked to are some of the most socially conscious people I’m aware of. I think they’re starting to go, ‘All right, what do we need to do?’ ”
Journey inside Pakistan’s flood zone reveals how poorest were hit hardest
AfterClimate offers different tiers of service depending on how ambitious developers want to get with their decarbonization efforts. To begin, the company will collect data from electricity bills, power sources and conversations about a studio’s work/workplace to ascertain overall emissions and how they compare to similarly sized video game companies. If emissions are on the steep side, AfterClimate will then offer suggestions — for example reducing how much a studio relies on specific power sources or switching to renewable energy in places.
If a developer or studio is especially committed, AfterClimate also offers a full audit of all up- and downstream emissions, including purchasing new equipment — the manufacturing and delivery of which produces emissions — and players accessing a game, which involves both drawing power on players’ ends and potentially taxing data centers.
“We can look at that and go, ‘What’s the full scope of that? How do we best reduce those emissions?’ ” said Abraham. “Is it by making hardware last longer? Is it by changing something about the way the game works? Is it shifting more and more computational power into the cloud? It might be moving into streaming games, or it might be the reverse. It depends on where people are in the world, where the players are; the whole world has varying levels of emissions intensity for the electricity we receive.”
Despite a firm belief that climate change became an “everybody” problem decades ago, Abraham is picking his battles. As in other industries, the heaviest hitters — the Microsofts and Sonys, in this case — are almost certainly spitting out more CO2 than the little guys. But many of those companies are already working (slowly) toward net zero emissions targets, and according to recent GDC surveys, small teams collectively make up a large chunk of the industry. The result of this, at scale, verges on mind-boggling: Thousands of new games come out on PC and mobile platforms every month, the majority of which come from smaller teams rather than Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Tencent or any number of other household names.
“Indie gaming is not going to have the same footprint as Triple-A gaming, but it will still have a footprint,” said Abraham. “And just the sheer number of people making games in the world these days is intimidating. I don’t know what the answer is for those people other than to have some kind of service they can use to help guide them to reduce emissions.”
The remainder of the equation, to Abraham, is simple: Big companies have resources to invest in this problem; small teams do not. That’s where AfterClimate comes in.
“Game developers don’t have a whole lot of free time,” Abraham said of an industry in which overwork remains a pervasive issue at studios large and small. “So rather than having every single indie dev in the world spend a couple months figuring out what they need to do to reduce their emissions, I would be more than happy to do that for them.”
Given that the project is only just getting off the ground, AfterClimate currently works with just one client: A Melbourne-based studio called Paper House which, itself, is making a game about climate change called “Wood & Weather.” It’s been a challenge because Paper House staff often work from home, which can make development-related emissions difficult to measure precisely. But in an industry that’s increasingly embracing work-from-home and hybrid models, that’s exactly the sort of data more creators need.
“We’re trying to devise a way to use smart power meters to measure the devices they’re working on — to get a sense of what the footprint from work-from-home game development is,” said Abraham. “Because at the moment, we’ve really only got some estimates.”
This is not to say Abraham has his sights set exclusively on the indie end of the pond; he just believes that wrangling the video game industry’s biggest fish is a different sort of task. He thinks companies like Unity — which has hired renowned sustainability expert Marina Psaros as its head of sustainability — are making good faith efforts to improve.
But should companies like Microsoft and Sony fail to hit carbon-negative targets of 2030 and 2050, respectively, or give up on converting worryingly energy hungry cloud gaming data centers to renewable energy, Abraham believes only a collective effort will force them back on track.
“We can hold them to account,” he said. “If they don’t hit their targets, we’ll nail them to a wall.”
Abraham also hopes to use AfterClimate as a means of advocating for larger, more systemic changes in the video game industry and beyond. With a problem this big, greening up individual companies — even at what Abraham hopes will eventually become a large scale — will only get you so far.
“We’re trying to cobble something together out of what we can do when really we should have overarching frameworks that allow us to take more structured interventions,” he said, pointing to California’s Title 20 regulations, which limit the amount of power gaming and computer systems, among other devices, can use in a given year, as an example. “I think regulation is going to be one of the main ways we [solve this problem]. We’re not going to be able to govern everyone otherwise. People don’t just voluntarily change how they live.”
One thing the video game industry can’t afford to do, though, is wait any longer. Abraham has spent years watching well-intentioned developers create games about climate change without practicing what they preach. The time for that sort of thing, he says, “was 20 years ago.”
“There is a long history of wanting to use games to persuade players, to change minds,” he said. “We could waste a lot of time doing those things when we really need to be reducing the millions of tons of CO2 that games are making every year, rather than trying to spend time getting players to live more green — whatever that means. We can do both, but we have a finite amount of time and effort.” | 2022-10-07T19:29:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Afterclimate helps game developers fight climate change - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/10/07/afterclimate-video-games-climate-change-ubisoft-microsoft/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/10/07/afterclimate-video-games-climate-change-ubisoft-microsoft/ |
Man slain in Prince George’s, police say
The homicide occurred in the 50 block of Queen Anne Bridge Road, police said
A man was found slain inside a home in Prince George’s County Friday morning, county police said.
Officers responded to the 50 block of Queen Anne Bridge Road at about 7:10 a.m. for the report of an unresponsive male. When officers arrived, they found the man “suffering from trauma,” Cpl. Unique Jones, a county police spokeswoman, said.
He was pronounced dead at the scene. Police have not yet released the name of the victim.
Detectives are investigating the circumstances of the killing and do not think it was random, police said. | 2022-10-07T19:29:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man slain in Prince George's, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/prince-georges-homicide-fatal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/prince-georges-homicide-fatal/ |
The building code focus should be on older homes
An aerial view of homes and flooded streets after Hurricane Ian caused widespread destruction in Punta Gorda, Fla., on Sept. 29. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters)
The Oct. 2 news article on why many homes and buildings in Punta Gorda, Fla., remained standing after the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Ian, “Recovery from Charley in 2004 helped Punta Gorda weather the worst of Ian,” clearly illustrated two key points: First, modern building codes are doing their job. Second, continuing to push for stringent, costly upgrades to the codes that provide limited additional protection from natural disasters makes housing prohibitively expensive for hard-working families at a time when the country is already suffering through a housing affordability crisis.
As the article reported, properties built to modernized building codes from 2007 and beyond fared extremely well from the ravages of this powerful storm while many structures built to older codes were either destroyed or suffered significant damage.
More than 90 percent of the country’s housing stock — 130 million homes — were built before 2010. As policymakers seek to mitigate the effects of future extreme weather events, they need to focus on improving the older homes, structures and infrastructure that are less resilient to natural disasters because they were built when there were no national model codes in existence or constructed following codes that are now outdated.
As many in the insurance industry already know, new homes built to modern code standards are doing the job.
Jerry Konter, Washington
The writer is chairman of the National Association of Home Builders. | 2022-10-07T19:38:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The building code focus should be on older homes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/building-code-focus-should-be-older-homes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/building-code-focus-should-be-older-homes/ |
Cameras in the Supreme Court would be a step toward accountability
The Supreme Court on Sept. 30. (Elizabeth Frantz for The Washington Post)
The recent draconian decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has unleashed a crisis of legitimacy at the Supreme Court. For the first time, the American people are grappling with the realization that an established constitutional right has been ripped away. Secrecy and a lack of transparency will only further that mistrust.
The Oct. 3 editorial “Put cameras in the Supreme Court” appropriately calls for modernization of the court, but such modernization cannot be painfully incremental. The Roberts court is not some mystical priesthood that can operate outside the public view. It is a coequal branch of government that must be accountable to the American people. That’s why I have continuously introduced the Cameras in the Courtroom Act. Placing cameras in the Supreme Court will not fully absolve the institution from well-deserved criticism, and more reforms, such as term limits, must be explored. But cameras in the court will finally force it to operate in the 21st century.
In today’s digital age, it strains credulity to think that this modest effort at transparency would prove impossible to implement or somehow inhibit the ability of our justices to hear cases in a fair manner. It’s time we put cameras in the court.
Gerald E. Connolly, Washington
The writer, a Democrat, represents Virginia in the U.S. House of Representatives. | 2022-10-07T19:38:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Cameras in the Supreme Court would be a step toward accountability - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/cameras-supreme-court-would-be-step-toward-accountability/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/cameras-supreme-court-would-be-step-toward-accountability/ |
Does anyone hail the Commanders?
Washington Commanders quarterback Carson Wentz is sacked by Philadelphia Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham on Sept. 25 at FedEx Field. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
As a native Washingtonian, I once reserved my Sunday afternoons in the fall for one thing: watching pro football. Now, I work in the yard or wash the car. Unfortunately, the sad Commanders bear little resemblance to our once-beloved Redskins.
It starts with their record. In those glorious 20 seasons before Daniel Snyder, the Redskins won nearly 57 percent of their games. Under Mr. Snyder, the team has a winning percentage of .422. Only four teams have worse records during this time. And we haven’t won a playoff game in 17 years. Our cherished team has become a depressing bottom-dweller.
It’s not just the record. In 2020, USA Today ranked the management of all 32 National Football League teams. Mr. Snyder ranked dead last. The organization paid millions to settle sexual harassment complaints. The NFL had to step in to investigate a toxic workplace culture. Mr. Snyder’s cartoonish, entitled arrogance used to be amusing. Not anymore. There’s even talk of NFL owners forcing him out.
But the stadium is nice, right? Um, no. FedEx Field is considered a dump around the league. In August, it was ranked the worst stadium in the NFL. When I was a kid, Redskins tickets were nearly impossible to get. Last season, FedEx Field ranked 31st out of 32 teams in attendance.
By any reasonable standard, Mr. Snyder is an utter failure as an owner. So, until we’re free of his incompetence, maybe I’ll start following the Ravens.
John Christmas, Alexandria
It’s time for Daniel Snyder to take his motorcade and head out of Washington. The Commanders slithered to a new low on Oct. 2 in Dallas. Black uniforms that made fans wonder whether they had tuned into the right television station, combined with another embarrassing performance, had many fans deciding to abandon this once-proud franchise.
I, for one, have been a fanatical supporter for 50 years. No longer. Mr. Snyder should either sell this team voluntarily or be forced by the NFL to sell. When there were seemingly more Eagles fans in the Commanders’ home stadium, when there are serious allegations about the culture of the team, when the identity of the team has been destroyed with the rebranding, when there are allegations about financial malfeasance, when the owner can’t find a locality willing to build a new stadium, the NFL needs to consider that this ownership is having a deleterious effect on its product.
Can they fall any lower? If there is a way, Mr. Snyder will try hard to find it. Maybe he’ll sail away on his yacht. Maybe the descent will end with him trying to sell and no one wanting to buy. The destruction will be complete.
Sally Wright, Round Hill, Va. | 2022-10-07T19:38:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Does anyone hail the Commanders? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/does-anyone-hail-commanders/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/does-anyone-hail-commanders/ |
The FDA should label medications, too
A worker sweeps outside of the Food and Drug Administration headquarters in White Oak on Aug. 29, 2020. (Andrew Kelly/Reuters)
Regarding the Oct. 6 editorial “Demystifying the grocery aisle”:
The Food and Drug Administration has given much attention to what appears on food packaging. We not only know whether a food contains an allergen, but we can also read if it has been produced in a facility that processes other allergens. Now it’s time for the FDA to do the same for prescription drugs.
An example of the agency’s woeful lack of oversight is the fact that all oral medications to treat osteoporosis contain lactose, but there’s no sign acknowledging the presence of lactose on the outer packaging of these medications. In the long sheet of information folded tightly and crammed into a box of pills, lactose is identified as an “inert” or “excipient” ingredient. Ask lactose-intolerant people whether lactose in any form is inert, and they’ll laugh at you.
Medications to treat osteoporosis are not the only ones that contain lactose. I did an informal survey of oral medications often prescribed to older adults, the most likely population that is both lactose-intolerant and needing these meds. Of oral drugs to lower cholesterol, 63 percent contain lactose. Of oral drugs to treat underactive thyroid, 66 percent contain lactose. Of oral drugs to treat blood pressure, 85 percent contain lactose. There is no sign on the outer packaging of these medications to alert the patient.
I’m not advocating the removal of lactose from these drugs. But I think it’s time for the FDA to require clear labeling of allergens on the outer packaging of drugs. Why should our breakfast cereals be safer than our prescription medicines?
C.R. Krouse, New York | 2022-10-07T19:38:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The FDA should label medications, too - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/fda-should-label-medications-too/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/fda-should-label-medications-too/ |
Justice Thomas should step back from the Mar-a-Lago documents case
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in D.C. on Oct. 21, 2021. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
Five weeks before the 2020 presidential election, I argued that Justice Clarence Thomas should recuse himself if the Supreme Court had to decide the electoral fates of President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden. That pivotal moment, fortunately, was never reached.
I called for Thomas’s recusal because I believed his impartiality in any such proceeding could be reasonably questioned. Thomas had spelled out his resentment of Biden in his memoir, “My Grandfather’s Son,” written 16 years after Thomas became a Supreme Court justice. The book delved into his feelings about the treatment he received at the hands of then-Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Biden during his 1991 confirmation hearings — one of the most acrimonious and polarizing congressional events in decades.
Thomas, simply stated, believes Biden to be untrustworthy and duplicitous. Thomas said so himself: “Senator Biden’s smooth, insincere promises that he would treat me fairly,” he wrote, “were nothing but talk.”
Before the Judiciary Committee’s vote on his nomination, Thomas said the two got on the phone.
“Biden came on the line. I held the receiver sideways so that Virginia could hear him speak as we stood together in the kitchen,” Thomas wrote. Biden explained why he couldn’t vote for him, and Thomas said he replied, “That’s fine. It’s doesn’t matter to me whether I’m confirmed or not. But I entered this process with a good name, and I want to have it at the end.”
“Judge,” Thomas said Biden then told him, “I know you don’t believe me, but if any of these last two matters come up [referring to Anita Hill’s allegations as well as a leaked draft opinion he had written as an appellate judge that had drawn criticism], I will be your biggest defender.”
“He was right about one thing,” Thomas wrote. “I didn’t believe him. Neither did Virginia. As he reassured me of his goodwill, she grabbed a spoon from the silverware drawer, opened her mouth wide, stuck out her tongue as far as she could, and pretended to gag herself.”
In a later documentary, Thomas charged that Biden and the other Democratic senators opposing him viewed him as the “wrong” African American for the high court.
That anti-Biden animus serves as part of my basis for requesting, once again, that Thomas recuse himself. This time, it involves the case brought by Trump over the Biden Justice Department’s investigation of his handling of White House documents. On Tuesday, Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to intervene in the Mar-a-Lago documents-seizure case. Their petition was filed with Thomas, who oversees emergency requests from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Thomas instructed the Justice Department to file a response to the court by Oct. 11.
With that formality accomplished, Thomas should step out of the picture.
Because, since 2020, the questions about Thomas’s impartiality in any matter that puts Trump and Biden in direct conflict have only deepened — given the involvement of Thomas’s wife in attempts to overturn the 2020 election.
We have learned that Ginni Thomas, as she is best known, actively tried to keep Trump in the White House by participating in attempts to have him, and not Biden, declared the winner. She lent her name to emails sent after the election to legislators in Arizona and Wisconsin urging them to dismiss the popular votes in their states and, instead, choose electors who would cast electoral college votes for Trump.
That grave impropriety would be seen right away as compromising the appearance of a judge’s independence, and thus a disqualification from him hearing the case. But Justice Thomas continues to turn a blind eye to her misconduct, as well as his own stated anti-Biden bent.
Unfortunately, Thomas is off the code-of-conduct hook. Because Supreme Court justices sit on the nation’s court of last resort, their decisions on recusal are not subject to review.
The Judicial Conference’s Code of Conduct applies only to lower federal courts. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., however, insists that all justices should consult the code for their ethical obligations. The code states: “A judge shall disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” That is the case, the code states, when “the judge has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party” in the proceedings.
Thomas’s personal animus against Biden, now so severely exacerbated by Ginni Thomas’s efforts to reverse an election’s outcome, is where the demand for Justice Thomas’s recusal should kick in, yet again.
However, his bullheadedness stands in the way. At the cost of the Supreme Court’s already battered reputation. | 2022-10-07T19:39:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Justice Thomas should step back from the Mar-a-Lago documents case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/justice-thomas-recuse-mar-a-lago-documents-case/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/justice-thomas-recuse-mar-a-lago-documents-case/ |
Musk will likely buy Twitter. Now he has to run a company he doesn’t want.
To recap, for those who have not followed the twists and turns: In April, Musk announced that he had become Twitter’s largest shareholder and was planning to buy the company for $44 billion, or $54.20 per share. The board initially did the things boards do to resist hostile takeovers; then, apparently, someone looked at the books and realized that $54.20 a share was more than the company was worth. Twitter agreed to sell itself … whereupon Musk almost immediately got cold feet, saying that Twitter had too many fake user accounts.
Beyond that, from a social perspective, Twitter has a lot of influence, if not the profits to match, because journalists, politicians — and oh yes, tech titans — tend to congregate there. It seems unfortunate to force the “digital town square," as Musk has called it, into the hands of a somewhat cash-strapped billionaire who is already running a bunch of other companies, and apparently doesn’t want to be bothered with this one.
Courts, however, tend to take the legal perspective — which is why Musk was widely expected to lose. Perhaps realizing this, he has made yet another about face; this week he announced that fine, if Twitter was going to be that way about it, he’d buy their stupid company. The judge in the case has given him until Oct. 28 to actually close the deal. (Will he actually go through with it? Umm … probably? But three weeks is an eternity in Musk years.)
Opinion|Musk will likely buy Twitter. Now he has to run a company he doesn’t want.
Opinion|Why are Trump and Musk feuding? They’re the same.
Opinion|Twitter is fixable. But pity the fool who does the next deal with Elon Musk. | 2022-10-07T19:39:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Buying Twitter, Musk will have to run a company he doesn't want - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/musk-buys-twitter-hostile-sale/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/musk-buys-twitter-hostile-sale/ |
Parody is an act of optimism
The U.S. Supreme Court building on June 27. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
One great thing about being alive right now is that it is very easy to tell parody from reality, which is why it might have escaped your notice that the actual satirical newspaper the Onion honestly did file a real amicus brief before the Supreme Court — in defense of a man who got arrested for parody. In the United States! In the present day! I wish I were making that part up.
The man in question maintained a fake social media page for his local police department and wound up spending four days in jail in 2016 after the page made the department mad and he was charged with “using a computer to disrupt police functions.” The jury found him not guilty, but he subsequently sued, saying his constitutional rights were violated.
The Onion, self-styled in the brief as the “single most powerful and influential organization in human history” with a “daily readership of 4.3 trillion,” agrees. As someone else whose job hinges on the ability to write parody without being detained by the state, I also wanted to chime in.
“Ah,” you are saying. “Thrilling! The only thing better and funnier than actual comedy: people talking earnestly about the social importance of comedy!" You are right. I will try to keep it brief, as the Onion did. “Even better,” you are saying, “Puns!” You are saying a lot. If it weren’t for you, I would already have gotten to my thesis.
As is customary in arguments of this kind, I am now going to quote an ancient writer. I have chosen Horace, the ancient Roman satirist: “When you live in a time like this, it’s impossible not to write satire.” The world is so bizarre that you wind up writing satire whether you want to or not. One man’s ominously heightened, on-the-nose parody is another man’s straightforward accounting of the news. When the world is continually absurd without being funny, you want to turn to a form that tries to allow other people to recognize the absurdity with you.
Unfortunately, when you write parody, or try to, people do not usually say, “Ah! Thank you for this vital service! Just like Horace! You are elevating the culture.” Instead, for as long as people have been writing satire, other people have gotten mad about it — both its targets (such as the police department!) and others. Or, sometimes worse, people have been … not mad. If Jonathan Swift’s inbox was anything like mine, he had to deal with a few, “Solve the famine by eating the Irish babies? FINALLY! SOMEONE SAYING WHAT WE’RE ALL THINKING!!!!”
The Onion’s motto is “Tu stultus es” — you are dumb. Its filing says the slogan gets to “the very heart of parody: tricking readers into believing that they’re seeing a serious rendering of some specific form … and then allowing them to laugh at their own gullibility when they realize that they’ve fallen victim to one of the oldest tricks in the history of rhetoric.”
To me, that second piece is even more crucial than the first. It’s not actually that the reader is a fool — but that the reader is capable of being fooled, recognizing it and laughing at it.
Fundamentally, parody is an act of optimism. As the Onion says, it depends upon the “reasonable person” standard. Have you met the country, recently? Have you met the world, recently? Only an optimist would look around right now and feel convinced that there existed such a thing as a “reasonable person,” let alone one who could be used as a standard in legal cases.
But if you stop believing in reasonable person — even a person who is occasionally, initially fooled by something parodic — you stop believing that democracy is possible. If you don’t believe that most people are ultimately reasonable, why on Earth would you want them to be in charge of everything?
Democracy, like parody, presumes that people are capable of noticing when someone is trying to dupe them. I have to think this is among the reasons autocrats distrust parody; not just because it shows them in a bad light, but because its underlying assumption is that people can see what is in front of them.
Obviously, bad satire exists. Sometimes, if people don’t understand what you’re doing, it is not because they are goofs but because you haven’t done your job as a satirist correctly.
But, broadly, we write parody with the belief that people can laugh, and laugh at themselves. Satire says that deep down, we are reasonable. At its best, it’s like the package of art and music and scientific facts we put into the Voyager capsule and sent into space: a vote of confidence that someone out there is capable of understanding what we’re putting down. And, we hope, not showing up to arrest us. | 2022-10-07T19:39:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | As the Onion's amicus brief says, parody is essential - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/onion-amicus-brief-supreme-court-satire-essential/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/onion-amicus-brief-supreme-court-satire-essential/ |
A Virginia political novice shows the GOP how to stop obsessing about 2020
Hung Cao is running to represent Virginia's 10th Congressional District in the U.S. House. (Hung Cao campaign)
Whether he wins this November or loses, Hung Cao, the Republican candidate for Congress in Virginia’s 10th District, should run a training camp for other GOP candidates.
The question “who won the 2020 presidential election?” should not be a hard one for elected GOP officials and candidates. Alas, a significant chunk of self-identified Republicans still contend that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected. Whatever Republican candidates actually believe about the 2020 presidential election, many feel that they need those election skeptics to come out and vote in November — so they try to finesse their answers to the question, with cringe-inducing results.
Even Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a fairly heavy favorite in his reelection bid against Democrat Beto O’Rourke, felt the need to defend a state audit of 2020 presidential election results in four counties. Recall that it was an audit demanded by Donald Trump, who had officially won the state by more than 630,000 votes.
Cao might be a political novice, but he’s taking a smarter approach. During his first live debate with incumbent Democrat Rep. Jennifer Wexton on Oct. 2 at the Dar Al Noor Mosque in Manassas, Cao was asked, “Do you believe the 2020 election was free, fair and untainted, and Joe Biden is the duly-elected president of the United States? And do you feel confident about the election process this year?”
Cao responded clearly, emphatically and with a bit of a smile: “Sir, Joe Biden is the president of the United States. If you don’t believe me, go to your gas pumps or go to your grocery stores, and that’ll tell you who is.”
Boom! Perfection. People in the audience responded with whoops and applause. Even the most devoted MAGA-hat-wearing Trump fan could get on board with Cao’s reply without demanding to know where he stands on the legal theories of Sidney Powell and Lin Wood or the menaces of Venezuelan hackers and bamboo in the paper of Arizona’s ballots.
Cao’s line wasn’t just a good zinger; an answer like that urges Republicans to refocus and stop thinking about the 2020 election and Trump’s delusional fantasies of being declared “the rightful winner.” Better to think about what should be done in the here and now.
In addition to the not-so-small point that the 2020 presidential election conspiracy theories aren’t true, for a 2022 Republican candidate, they’re a waste of time. Every minute spent on rehashing 2020 is a minute not spent making the case against President Biden and congressional Democrats’ economic policies, border policies, crime policies, and so on.
If Republican candidates are going to argue about what should have been done two years ago, they might as well spend time denouncing the invasion of Iraq or the bailout of General Motors or the cancellation of “Firefly.” What’s passed is past. Tell us what you’re going to do if you’re elected and you start work in January.
In a year when it seems Republican nominated many candidates who are not the sharpest knives in the drawer, Cao might be the best of the lot. He brings a sterling résumé — immigrating to the United States in 1975 as a refugee from Vietnam, graduating from Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax County and then the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. Deployed in combat to Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia, serving alongside Special Forces and SEAL teams, and returned from his last deployment in January 2021.
In the Manassas debate, Cao also showed a flair for political theater, holding up a Wexton flier that labeled him an extremist and countering that the incumbent was stoking xenophobia.
“ ‘Extremist.’ Where have you heard this word before?” he asked the audience at a mosque. “Where have you heard this word before? I fought [for] and served this country. I bled for this country. And I’m being called an extremist. I’ve served honorably for every American. I know lots of people that served with me didn’t agree with my politics, and that’s fine. I served them anyway. I served them as a commanding officer, I served them in combat, to preserve life. And now I’m being called an ‘extremist.’ Where have you heard that before? This is how we tear people apart. I deserve to be called an American. I’ve earned that right. We’ve all earned that right.”
Cao is no shoo-in. While the redrawn district lines are a little friendlier to Republicans than before, Wexton has plenty going for her — she’s an experienced prosecutor and former state senator, elected to the House in the 2018 Democratic wave, comfortably reelected in 2020. She’ll almost certainly outspend Cao.
But win or lose, Cao has given Republicans in Northern Virginia and elsewhere a much better, and more competitive, model for campaigning — and for moving past the exhausted and pointless arguments about 2020. | 2022-10-07T19:39:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Virginia's Hung Cao shows the GOP how to stop obsessing about 2020 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/republican-hung-cao-stolen-election-reply/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/republican-hung-cao-stolen-election-reply/ |
Employment has rebounded across racial groups — except for Whites
A “We Are Hiring” sign is posted Aug. 17 in front of a restaurant in Los Angeles. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP)
Americans — particularly in the vicinity of 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington — exhaled with relief Friday morning when the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) published its estimates of employment for the month of September. The country continues to add employment, despite the turbulence of the national and global economies, and to add them faster than analysts expected.
By now, the United States has regained all of the jobs lost in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. In February 2020, the high-water mark before the emergence of the coronavirus, there were 152.5 million people working. In August, the first month to pass the February 2020 level, there were 152.8 million employed. In September, the figure topped 153 million for the first time on record.
Yet digging into the numbers, we see that the recovery has not been uniform. White Americans, male and female, are still employed at lower rates than they were before the pandemic emerged.
The BLS provides individual breakdowns of employment by race and (for Black, Hispanic and White Americans) by gender. In broad strokes, the pattern for all of these groups is similar: a giant drop followed by a decelerating return of employment.
The group that’s rebounded the most is Asian Americans, now seeing employment 5.6 percent higher than in February 2020. The group that’s gained employment since that month but at the slowest rate is Black Americans, for whom employment is now 1.4 percent higher than it was then. That’s because of Black men, for whom employment is 4.5 percent higher than in February 2020.
Black women have still not recovered all of the jobs lost during the pandemic; employment of Black women is 1.5 percent lower than it was in February 2020.
That’s just above White women, for whom employment is 1.6 percent lower than it was that month. Overall, White employment is still 0.8 percent below February 2020 levels.
You might notice that White Americans also saw a smaller drop in employment during the pandemic than other groups. It’s worth noting that employment data for smaller demographic groups tends to be more volatile, which is probably playing a role here. Overall, though, nearly a million fewer White people are working now than before the pandemic began.
Some of that may be a function of how race and age overlap. Older Americans are more likely to be White and previous months have shown that many White people, particularly baby boomers, are aging out of the workforce.
That said, the unemployment rates by demographic, which incorporate workforce participation, still show White Americans trailing. Again, the overall pattern is similar across groups.
But the unemployment rates for Whites overall and White men are still higher than they were in February 2020. (Rates are also higher for Hispanic men and Black women.)
Overall, of course, the news is good — even if that trend isn’t expected to continue. More Americans are working now than ever before and, for most groups, employment has recovered since the pandemic began.
Americans (and the White House) can breathe a bit easier. At least until the first Friday of November, when there’s a new jobs report.
The latest: Giuliani avoids jail for failure to pay ex-wife in divorce settlement | 2022-10-07T19:42:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Employment has rebounded across racial groups — except for Whites - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/jobs-racial-groups-gender-biden/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/jobs-racial-groups-gender-biden/ |
One of the rooms in a house used by the Russian occupiers as a command center where prisoners were held, whch was discovered by Ukrainian police in the center of Pisky Radkivsky, Ukraine, on Oct. 6. (Wojciech Grzedzinski/For The Washington Post)
PISKY RADKIVSKY, Ukraine — It wasn’t the sort of house that neighbors gave much thought to in peacetime. With its white brick walls and metal gate, it looked much like the others.
But when Russian forces arrived in the springtime, it turned into a place that residents looked away from as they hurried past. Asking questions might lead them to be the ones whose screams rang out at night, locals said.
Civilians and soldiers were tortured on Parkova Street, according to the Ukrainian police investigators now combing the towns and villages from which Russian forces beat a hasty retreat last month. But what is stark about this place is how unremarkable its horrors have become.
Across at least five different provinces, Russian troops left the remnants of an archipelago of torture in their wake, often in buildings where families had lived or children had played.
In Lyman, 100 miles to the southeast, a key transport hub for Russian forces before the Ukrainian army recaptured it last week, the local governor said another 39 “burial sites” had been uncovered. It was unclear how many bodies were buried there, or how they had died. The youngest was born last year.
Under Russian occupation, Ukrainians learned that even the most mundane of locations could become a stage for terror. Police have found torture sites across basements, living rooms and in gardens. In the Kyiv suburb of Bucha, men were abused and executed in the basement of a children’s summer camp. In Izyum, the soldiers used a kindergarten and a medical clinic.
Bolvinov said that his investigators have found 22 sites that were used for torture in the Kharkiv region.
The house in Pisky Radkivsky, a small village east of Izyum, was used as a base for around 10 Russian soldiers, including a commander, and they interrogated civilian and military prisoners there, police said.
Ukrainian National Guard uniforms are still lying in the long grass. Investigators found a gas mask that they believed had been placed on the heads of detainees as they were beaten. There was a dildo and a box of extracted teeth in one room. The items have been sent for DNA analysis to ascertain whether they were used at the site.
The house’s owner watched quietly from the street. “We don’t know what to do with this place now,” said Ivan, 40, who gave only his last name for fear of reprisal should the Russians return. “This was our home.”
He was carrying his one year old son in his arms, and the child kept staring at the house, and the strange men with clipboards inside. One of the victims, the janitor of the local school, Andrei Dimitriev, was giving them his testimony, and he spoke in a monotone, exhausted.
Dimitriev said that he had been arrested in the street by Russian soldiers, and held for seven days in the house’s dank basement. There were five other men shivering in the dark with him there, but he did not know them, and with soldiers milling around in the garden, they were scared to be heard speaking among themselves.
The beatings were savage, Dimitriev recalled. Soldiers slammed his body with sticks and wooden bats. They were frequently drunk and their questions were unfocused, as if they themselves did not quite know what information they were seeking. They accused him of being a member of the Ukrainian army, but he said that he was not. The military badge they had found among his belongings was a present from a friend.
“It didn’t matter what you said, they just kept hurting you,” he said.
When he finished speaking, the investigator handed him a pen for what is now a well worn ritual: the signature on another page testifying to the war crimes that ordinary people endured.
Ukraine’s judicial system is now almost wholly devoted to investigating them. But the thousands of investigators fanned out across the country are struggling to keep up.
In liberated areas, every street has a story. Victims have often fled. Eyewitnesses they do find often say that they did their best to ignore the horrors unfolding around them, for fear of being arrested themselves.
On Parkova street, neighbors locked their doors when they heard noises from the house. Parents told their children not to ask questions. “You didn’t want to get on their bad side. It was easier that way,” said Tatiana, 48. But her 9-year-old daughter would not ignore it. At night, she would ask who was screaming. Tatiana didn’t know what to tell her.
Residents interviewed by The Washington Post said that Russian forces occupied the house for two months, and that they heard shouting, swearing and the sound of gunshots most days.
One woman said that she saw two men in civilian clothes being led inside with bags over their head. Shots rang out shortly afterward. “It was just after midday,” she recalled. “I didn’t see them again.”
Serhii Korolchuk contributed to this report. | 2022-10-07T20:35:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine reports finding bodies and torture sites after Russian retreat - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/ukraine-dead-torture-sites-victims/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/ukraine-dead-torture-sites-victims/ |
Uvalde district suspends school police department amid protests after shooting
Parents and community members in Uvalde, Tex., file out of a meeting where school district police Chief Pete Arredondo was dismissed on Aug. 24, 2022. (Eric Gay/AP)
HOUSTON — Uvalde’s school district has suspended its police force, which has faced escalating criticism over its response to the deadly shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers in May.
“As a result of the recent developments, Lt. Miguel Hernandez and Ken Mueller have been placed on administrative leave, and the district has made the decision to suspend all activities of the Uvalde CISD Police Department for a period of time,” the district said in a statement Friday, noting Mueller would retire and other officers will “fill other roles in the district.”
Department of Public Safety (DPS) troopers will be stationed at Uvalde schools and extracurricular activities, the statement said, noting, “We are confident that staff and student safety will not be compromised during this transition.”
It wasn’t clear how long the school police department would be suspended. A district spokeswoman did not return calls or emails.
The district didn’t specify what prompted the decision, but the announcement came a day after officials said they had fired school police officer Crimson Elizondo. CNN reported Elizondo had been hired despite still being under investigation for her conduct during the massacre, when she was employed by DPS. The decision to hire Elizondo had sparked outrage among victims’ parents.
“We are deeply distressed by the information that was disclosed yesterday evening concerning one of our recently hired employees, Crimson Elizondo,” the school district said in a letter released after the firing. “We sincerely apologize to the victim’s families and the greater Uvalde community for the pain that this revelation has caused.”
Elizondo was the first DPS trooper to enter the hallway at Robb Elementary School after the shooter, but did not bring her rifle or protective vest, according to an internal review reported by ABC News.
As a result of potential failure to follow standard procedures, she was among seven DPS staff who had been suspended while being investigated by the agency’s inspector general, ABC reported. Elizondo resigned from DPS to work for Uvalde school police, meaning she was no longer subject to internal discipline or penalties by the state agency.
The Uvalde school district did not say when Elizondo was hired, but they said at a school board meeting on Aug. 8 that “four officers have been recommended for hire.” It's unclear if Elizondo was one of them.
Shooting victims’ relatives have been gathering outside the school district administration building for more than a week to protest school police.
Javier Cazares, father of 9 year-old victim Jacklyn Cazares, called suspension of the school police force, “one of the battles that have been won.”
“At the same time, it should have been sooner,” he said. “It’s a small battle. There’s a lot more to do.”
Cazares, who’s running for county commission, said families are committed to holding local and state leaders responsible in the wake of the shooting, even as some neighbors who see them protesting urge them to give up.
“The people who say that are the ones who’ve not been affected. Yesterday, a truck driver opened his window and said ‘Y’all move on.’ We can’t move on. Our babies are gone,” Cazares said. “It’s a fight that we can never stop. We can’t even properly grieve because we’re doing this. It’s depressing that they have that attitude: We’re doing it for their kids.”
Cazares said he plans to attend the next school board meeting Monday, where he expects this week’s announcements to be discussed.
“More stuff is coming to light, and there’s still a lot more,” he said, including improvements to school windows, doors and locks. “There’s still a lot of stuff that needs to be done that they promised.”
State Sen. Roland Gutierrez (D) who represents the Uvalde area, credited victims’ relatives — especially Brett Cross, who raised his nephew, Uziyah Garcia, 10, like a son, and camped outside Uvalde school offices to protest — with forcing the district to act. Parents and other relatives have held marches in the small South Texas town, filed grievances and spoken at countless school board meetings, demanding accountability.
“Uvalde families have gotten nothing from their own government but lies, misinformation, and a complete disregard for their welfare,” Gutierrez said in a Friday statement. “Thanks to the persistence of Brett Cross and all of the Uvalde families, a step toward accountability has been made today. UCISD has suspended its officers. This cannot be the end; we still need full transparency and justice from every agency and every level of government that failed us in Uvalde.”
Adam Martinez, whose 8-year-old son survived the shooting, was outside the school administration building with Cross on Friday, protesting, when he heard the news that the school police had been suspended.
“That’s what basically caused this to happen,” he said of the protests.
But Martinez said suspending the school police wasn’t enough corrective action. After the shooting, he filed a grievance with the Uvalde school board against the superintendent, but no action was taken. Martinez wants the superintendent removed, too.
“Ultimately, he was the person that was in charge of overseeing the hire and he allowed that hire to happen,” Martinez said of Elizondo, the former DPS trooper. “He allowed many of these things to happen. The first question you ask when you hire a police officer to take care of these kids should be was this police officer on the scene when this happened? Please do not put anyone at that school who was there at that time.”
Martinez said it shouldn’t matter whether the superintendent knew Elizondo’s record: “Either way: If he didn’t know, shame on him. If he did know, shame on him.”
Martinez said his son Zayon is still coping with trauma from the shooting, going to school at home where he’s spooked by small sounds, like the dog scraping at the door.
“I talked to my wife about it today and we’re going to put him in counseling. There’s a lot of things that trigger him,” Martinez said.
But he said the district’s announcements this week, combined with the earlier departure of Pete Arredondo, former Uvalde school police chief and city council member, encouraged him and other families.
“As we’ve continued to stay strong and go to the meetings and voice our opinions, it has made a difference,” Martinez said. “At first, people say nothing’s going to change. In Uvalde, there’s a status quo. Now, I hope people see things can change. We just have to stay strong, united and not give up.” | 2022-10-07T21:10:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Uvalde district suspends school police department amid protests after shooting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/07/uvalde-district-suspends-school-police-department-amid-protests-over-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/07/uvalde-district-suspends-school-police-department-amid-protests-over-shooting/ |
Biden’s pardons for marijuana possession inject issue into midterms final stretch
President Biden steps off Air Force One upon arrival at Philadelphia International Airport on Oct. 7. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
President Biden has injected a long-held policy dream of fellow Democrats into the final stretch of the midterm elections, announcing pardons for anyone convicted of a federal crime for possessing marijuana, and urging governors to do the same.
“The Democrats have put cannabis reform on their party docket and everyone is waiting for them to come through on that,” she said. “This is a big opportunity.”
Biden’s action — the fulfillment of a 2020 campaign promise — comes weeks before voters head to the polls, with some casting early ballots in a matter of days. Midterm elections traditionally are base contests, with the enthusiasm of the party’s core voters crucial to the outcome. The stakes couldn’t be higher this November, with Democrats clinging to razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate that could be reversed based on a handful of seats.
Sarah Gersten, executive director of Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit working on cannabis criminal justice reform that lobbied the White House on this issue, called Biden’s announcement “really bold and unprecedented action.” She also said the timing of the announcement “shows that he sees this as something that can really energize his base in the Democratic Party.”
The president’s decision on marijuana also comes on the heels of his plan to cancel as much as $20,000 in student loan debt per borrower — two moves certain to resonate with young voters who typically vote less than older Americans.
Erik Altieri, executive director of a grass-roots marijuana consumer advocacy group, NORML, called Biden’s move “incredibly historic,” since no sitting president had previously initiated a formal review of marijuana’s classification.
Politically, “This hits all the demographics they need,” Altieri said of Democrats, calling marijuana reform popular with Black and Hispanic voters, voters under 40, and independents.
Biden also urged governors around the country to consider issuing pardons similar to the one he rolled out at the federal level. “Too many lives have been upended because of our failed approach to marijuana,” Biden said in a statement. “It’s time that we right these wrongs.”
North Carolina’s top two Democratic officials, Gov. Roy Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein, said Friday that they support Biden’s move and urged the Republican-led state legislature to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana.
Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf (D) immediately announced plans for a “a one-time, large-scale pardon effort” for people with certain nonviolent marijuana convictions. In the announcement, Wolf also wrote, “I’m doing everything I can to right the wrongs of the failed war on drugs.”
Republicans appeared less eager to act. The office of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who is in a highly visible reelection race this year, was asked, but did not directly answer, whether it would follow Biden’s lead and pursue marijuana pardons in the state, the Texas Tribune reported.
In 2019, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed legislation legalizing “the use of smokable medical marijuana.” His office did not immediately respond to an email asking whether he would consider similar pardons in Florida.
More than three dozen states allow marijuana use for medical reasons, and more than a dozen states — including Alaska, California, Colorado and New York — have laws allowing adults to use it recreationally, according to the Cannigma, a news site that tracks the issue.
Five states — Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, North Dakota and South Dakota — have initiatives on the ballot this fall seeking to legalize the recreational use of marijuana, according to Ballotpedia, which tracks elections around the country.
Biden’s move comes amid growing support for marijuana legalization, and worrisome signs that a core bloc of likely Democratic voters may not show up to vote in this nonpresidential election year. In a Washington Post-ABC News poll last month, 56 percent of registered voters ages 18-39 said they were certain they would vote, compared with 76 percent of voters ages 40-64, and 87 percent of seniors.
L. Joy Williams, a Democratic consultant in New York, said Biden is raising an important issue for Black voters, many of whom have been directly impacted by years of strict enforcement of anti-marijuana laws. And with the midterms approaching, Democrats “need to overperform among the tried and true Black Democrats.” She added: “The only way to do that is to answer Janet Jackson’s question: ‘What have you done for me lately?’ ”
Since 1970, marijuana has been listed by federal officials as a Schedule 1 substance, among drugs that are considered to have “high potential for abuse” with “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.” Two years after the classification, Biden was elected to a Senate seat in Delaware.
Much has changed since then, except the reclassification of marijuana. “We need de-scheduling, we don’t want rescheduling,” Frederique said.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), who are both in jeopardy of losing their narrow majorities in their respective chambers, cheered the move. Pelosi called it “historic”; Schumer wrote that he hoped it would be “a catalyst for more change.”
Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who is in one of the nation’s most competitive races for Senate, described it as “a BFD,” an acronym for an extremely supportive but unprintable statement of approval.
The offices of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment about the issue. In 2020, McCarthy mocked Democrats for pushing to legalize marijuana. In 2018, McConnell backed the legalization of hemp but not marijuana, saying they are “entirely separate plants.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who is not up for election this year, was an exception. “In the midst of a crime wave and on the brink of a recession, Joe Biden is giving blanket pardons to drug offenders — many of whom pleaded down from more serious charges,” Cotton wrote on Twitter. “This is a desperate attempt to distract from failed leadership.”
“I want to give credit where credit is due. I don’t always agree with the Biden administration, I’ve been very vocal about that, but this is a step in the right direction,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) told Fox Business Network’s “Kennedy” on Thursday.
Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio), a Republican co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus, praised Biden’s action.
“Today’s announcement from the White House recognizes two truths: that continued and complete federal cannabis prohibition is no longer the will of the American electorate, and that the President knows his party’s all-or-nothing approach to cannabis reform has failed to produce results in Congress,” Joyce said in a statement.
In April 2019, the head of a marijuana reform organization told Rolling Stone that Biden had an “abysmal record when it comes to marijuana law reform, ending our failed war on drugs, and addressing mass incarceration.” That November, Biden said there had “not nearly been enough evidence” to determine whether marijuana was a gateway drug, Business Insider reported.
“It’s a debate, and I want a lot more before I legalize it nationally,” he said.
Karina Elwood contributed to this report.
Noted: Biden takes quick detour to Penn with granddaughter | 2022-10-07T21:18:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden’s pardons for marijuana possession inject issue into midterms final stretch - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/biden-marijuana-midterm-elections/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/biden-marijuana-midterm-elections/ |
Joseph Buzzetti, right, a campaign worker, directs the setup of signs before a rally on the lawn of the library in Madison, Va., on Oct. 22, 2020. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
The last time Open Secrets compiled an analysis of how much members of Congress were worth, the results were striking. More than half of those who served in the House and Senate were worth more than $1 million; many had net worths that stretched into the tens of millions.
There are a lot of reasons for that. People come to Congress from a range of backgrounds and experiences. But two things are safe to say. The first is that no one in Congress became a millionaire solely on a congressional salary. And second, it seems safe to assume that one reason there are so many millionaires in Congress is that they’re better able to get by on what Congress pays.
It is true that congressional salaries are higher than they’ve ever been. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) reviewed the history of annual salaries for the House and Senate, allowing us to illustrate how those incomes have changed over time.
But of course, a $3,000 salary in the 1850s had a lot more buying power than it would today. If we adjust those salaries into 2022 dollars (using the consumer price index and historic data from Oregon State University), we see that congressional salaries were higher than they are now for most of the past century. Since about 1993, there’s been a fairly consistent downward trend in the inflation-adjusted salary of a member of Congress.
Look, I’m certainly not going to say that a $174,000 annual salary is peanuts. It’s still more than twice the median household income. But that, too, is down since the early 1990s. Congress used to earn more than four times the median income nationally.
Members of Congress have an encumbrance that most Americans don’t: They need to have residences in both their home districts and in Washington. When considered as a function of median incomes in D.C., Congress’s salary is even lower, less than twice the median in the city.
We can look at this a different way. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) calculates incomes for managers and professional workers. From the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, members of Congress made about twice the pretax income of professionals in general. Now congressional salary is only about a third higher.
When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was first elected to Congress in 2018, she observed that she couldn’t afford to move to Washington until her congressional salary kicked in. Many members of Congress have been known to simply live in their congressional offices since they can’t afford housing in the city. These are real constraints that clearly have more of an effect on people who aren’t already wealthy. It’s much less of a strain for someone rich to be elected to Congress than it is for a member of the lower or middle class: less of a strain to afford transit, to afford housing — even less of a strain, it seems safe to assume, to find peers willing to write big checks for your campaign.
Put another way, coming to Congress won’t make you rich. But being rich will make it easier for you to come to Congress.
Noted: More than 500 children separated from families during Trump administration have been reunited, DHS says | 2022-10-07T21:18:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why it’s easier to serve in Congress when you’re rich - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/why-its-easier-serve-congress-when-youre-rich/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/why-its-easier-serve-congress-when-youre-rich/ |
So Vermeer didn’t paint ‘Girl With a Flute.’ Why think less of it?
The National Gallery says the painting is not by the Dutch master, but the work is still in vast and often stellar company
The National Gallery of Art has now determined that “Girl With a Flute” was not actually painted by Vermeer. (National Gallery of Art)
The National Gallery of Art’s painting “Girl With a Flute” has been hovering on the edges of the authentic Vermeer canon for decades. Friday’s announcement that new research, including sophisticated imaging analysis, has definitively proved the work to be the product of someone likely close to Vermeer, but not the painter himself, may finally push the work out of contention for authenticity. Or maybe not. It has been in and out of the canon for so long it is unclear whether any research would ever convince all the skeptics.
Since the rediscovery of the 17th-century Dutch painter’s work in the 19th century, the authentic Vermeer catalogue has both shrunk and occasionally grown, though the larger trend has been to get smaller. In 1866, the painter’s great early champion, Théophile Thoré-Bürger, published a list of Vermeers that ascribed more than 70 painted works as possibly by the artist, though the author felt confident about only 49 of them. Today, that number is around 34 or 35. Just as the National Gallery’s “Girl With a Flute” has long been suspect, another painting, “Young Woman Seated at a Virginal,” also has a long history of both doubt and support.
National Gallery thought this was a Vermeer. Now? Not so much.
Authenticating paintings is increasingly a scientific process, with scholarly judgment making the final call. But for centuries, authenticity has also been a matter of desire and suspicion, avarice and fraud, and vast amounts of honest confusion and uncertainty. In the 20th century, the Dutch painter Han van Meegeren created forgeries that he passed off as the work of Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch and Vermeer. He managed to convince even top Vermeer experts that a 1937 painting called “The Supper at Emmaus” wasn’t just by Vermeer, but was also one of the greatest works the artist ever produced. Thus, the Vermeer canon grew, for a while, before the fraud was detected and definitively debunked.
Passing off a forgery as authentic can bring enormous financial rewards to the con artist. But there are other motivations, too. Artists learn by copying, and copying is a form of deep looking. Faking an artist’s work is a way of understanding it, even loving it, paying it homage through the flattery of imitation. It may also be a form of aggression, as the deceiving artist proves himself equal to the master, or even superior (at least in his eyes). The sale of the work, or its accession into a respected public or private collection, only affirms the triumph of overcoming another artist’s genius.
The Dutch painter Vermeer among his contemparies and competitors
But works are also copied for perfectly legitimate reasons. The artist may make the copies himself or oversee the work of disciples and assistants in the studio. They may also make multiple versions, with small changes, of the same work. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Titian’s “Venus and the Lute Player” is one of a number of paintings that depict the same basic scene: a young man making music for the voluptuous goddess. But the details and sometimes the instrument (the young man also plays an organ) change from work to work, along with subtle psychological details.
At the Prado, a version of Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is often overlooked or ignored by visitors. It isn’t the actual Mona Lisa, which is at the Louvre, but a very fine iteration that, according to recent scholarship, was likely made in da Vinci’s studio around the time of the original painting. Unlike the hordes of adoring pilgrims that throng the original, you can have the Prado’s version to yourself most days.
News accounts of “newly discovered” paintings — in an attic, the dusty backroom of an antique store or a rummage sale — delight us because of the basic element of desire that colors so much of how we respond to art. We want there to be more Vermeers, not just because it adds to the storehouse of artistic treasure, but because it promises the possibility of understanding what remains enigmatic about the artist. Art can be described, analyzed and subjected to X-ray fluorescence imaging. But none of that fully satisfies the desire for understanding. Nor will any new Vermeer, if any ever appear. But the possibility is there, and that inspires hope, and hope is impossible to resist.
The desire to contract the canon is also bound up with authenticity. The fewer works attributed to an artist, the more seemingly sacred (and financially valuable) any particular one becomes. But it isn’t just about the value of the work, or its power to attract visitors to a museum that owns it. The more tightly authenticity is controlled, the more intensely we may engage with the work. When the thing defined by the German critic Walter Benjamin as an artwork’s “aura” seems to increase in intensity, the intensity of our own engagement may increase as well.
It is curious that the process of authentication has become more rigorously scientific even as authenticity is an increasingly suspect or disdained category. Authenticating work empowers scholars, and now scientists, and seems to be part of the gatekeeping apparatus that makes museums feel like zones of exclusion, or patriarchy. It may also support dubious or problematic categories, like genius, which are too often used to limit the canon to great men (almost always men) canonized by centuries of reflexive admiration.
But just as forging or faking a work is a form of deep looking, so, too, is authenticating it. Since the rediscovery of Vermeer, it’s been tempting to attribute the work of other artists to him, including the magnificent, intimate scenes of Ter Borch. But the process of authenticating a work by one artist can lead us to look more deeply at the work of other artists. The paintings of Jacobus Vrel, who was contemporaneous with Vermeer (and had the initials J.V.), have sometimes been attributed to the more famous artist. But they are strikingly beautiful and haunting in their own right, and any work by J.V. that is Vrel but not Vermeer is no loss to the world.
Authenticity remains powerfully contentious in the contemporary art world. Artists have questioned why the original should be more valued than a copy, why a work should be limited to the physical presence of an object rather than freely present and transmissible like an idea or a concept, and why art should function like currency or luxury objects, with its value determined as much by scarcity as quality.
A look at Elaine Sturtevant, master artist, at Museum of Modern Art
Conceptual art often eliminates any idea of an original work. In the 1960s, Elaine Sturtevant started reproducing the works of other pop artists, including Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns and Andy Warhol. The originality of her work lay in the audacity of her ideas, even as the copies were good enough to be enjoyed in their own right, as objects with their own definition of originality.
“Girl With a Flute,” formerly attributed to Vermeer, is having a perilous moment. It is now officially (at least at the National Gallery) “not by Vermeer,” which is a black hole of attribution. It is not yet a work by someone known, nor even by someone with a known relation to Vermeer. It could be a student, imitator, copyist, colleague or competitor. And part of determining that it isn’t by Vermeer was critical, meaning that it seems to be a work that isn’t up to Vermeer’s standard. It is orphaned.
Which puts it in vast and often stellar company. The world’s museums are full of works by “the studio of” or attributed only to a “master” who worked anonymously in some isolated city or church. There may be among these works as many great paintings and sculptures with no attribution as there are great works firmly attributed to known artists. Yet we resist them. They are relegated to storage or passed by in the gallery by visitors seeking the terra firma of artists whose names they recognize.
But that says more about how we think about and process art than it does about how we experience it. We love art by adopting it, not by looking for its birth certificate. | 2022-10-07T21:19:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vermeer didn’t paint ‘Girl With a Flute.’ Why think less of it? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/07/vermeer-girl-flute-imitations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/07/vermeer-girl-flute-imitations/ |
This year’s winner of the Nobel Prize for literature writes scorching and closely observed books about experiences that often go unrecorded or unexamined
Perspective by Meghan O'Rourke
Annie Ernaux, winner of this year's Nobel Prize for literature, at a literary festival in Rome in 2016. (Alesia Paradisi/Sipa USA/AP)
When, not too long ago, I began trying to write the story of a sexual assault at the hands of a person I had once loved, I turned to the genre-defying French writer Annie Ernaux — for permission, for a model, for the rigor needed to neither sentimentalize nor overdramatize nor reductively explain the event I was describing. In particular, I thought often of a line that Ernaux wrote in her novel “A Simple Passion,” about an older woman’s affair with a younger married man: “I do not wish to explain my passion — that would imply that it was a mistake or some disorder I need to justify — I just want to describe it.”
Ernaux’s command of sentences and structure makes her work feel at once meticulously crafted and unnervingly heated. Ernaux, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature on Thursday, was born in 1940 in Normandy and grew up in the town of Yvetot, where her parents ran a grocery store and cafe in a working-class area. Her mother, she writes in “A Woman’s Story,” “knew all the household tips that lessened the strain of poverty.” Not so Ernaux, a talented student who made her way to university and to a life in literature: “This knowledge — handed down from mother to daughter for many centuries — stops at my generation,” she writes. “I am only the archivist.”
Over her lifetime, that archivist has produced a succession of slender, scorching and closely observed books about experiences that usually go unrecorded or unexamined, including an abortion, an affair, a rape that she is not sure can be called rape, and her own sense of shame at and alienation from her lower-class origins. Ernaux’s novels and memoirs are slim but flashingly deep; they possess the shocking pain of a paper cut. (“How could one sentence hurt so much?” one often wonders while reading her work.)
It would be false to call Ernaux a novelist or a memoirist. Although in the strictest sense she has written both novels and memoirs, her books unstitch our sense of genre, leaving us with threads and messy seams rather than tidy garments. Better to simply call her a writer: a person who must put into words that which preoccupies her; not for therapeutic ends, not for consolation, but with a probing concern about that which wounds us.
Her novels draw on her life; her memoirs are novelistic. “A Woman’s Story,” about her mother’s death from Alzheimer’s, summons up its subject’s life in the early 20th century as immersively as fiction might. It also depicts a formative mother-daughter relationship. Growing up in Yvetot, inhaling books, the young Annie was both doted on and dismissed. Her mother called her “beast” and “slut” as easily as “poppet,” and wanted more for her daughter while simultaneously resenting her: “Look at everything you’ve got, and you’re still not happy!”
What unifies all her writing is its combination of an almost clinical remove with its access to the immediate feeling of great pain. While Ernaux writes explicitly and vividly about herself, she does so as “an ethnologist of myself,” as she has put it. In “Happening,” she describes an illegal abortion she underwent in the 1960s in France. Much of the book concerns her trying to figure who will give her an abortion. She finds a woman who will give her a “probe” to insert. It results in a hemorrhage that almost kills her, landing her in a hospital. As she is anesthetized for an operation to stop the bleeding, her feet strapped in the stirrups, she asks a doctor what he is going to do; he retorts, in more colorful language than presented here, that he is “no plumber!” The next morning, a nurse stiffly asks her: “Last night, why didn’t you tell the doctor that you were like him?” — meaning, why didn’t you let him know you were educated, and not just another lower-class girl from town.
Ernaux debrides the debris from the illusion that we remain a single person our whole life. Reflection on past events, and how they stay with us and change us over time, undergirds her work: The central events of her life are the starting point for a meditation on what remains elusive; she is able to get at the contingency of existence as well its steadiest currents.
In “A Girl’s Story,” she writes about her first foray away from home, as a counselor at a summer camp, where she had a sexual encounter with a boy called “H” that she cannot quite bring herself to call a rape. It induced in her a need to be seen that led to sexual promiscuity; the book is uncomfortable to read for the ways it frankly acknowledges how challenging it is for the author to write it. Ernaux uses the third person to write about “the girl of ’58” she once was, a girl she cannot quite imagine being now: “The girl in the picture is not me, but neither is she a fictional creation. There is no one else in the world I know in such vast and inexhaustible detail.” And yet she is not her. “The girl in the picture is a stranger who imparted her memory to me,” she writes. “This girl is not me, but is real inside me.”
How, the writer asks, did we once end up in situations that do not make sense to the self we now are? Revisiting the camp where she was demonized socially — after a lifetime of success as a writer, after writing about and forcing herself to look at what happened with “H” — doesn’t free her. Rather, it leaves her with an insight: that a writer can simply “explore the gulf between the stupefying reality of things that happen” and, decades on, “the strange unreality in which the things that happened are enveloped.”
Because Ernaux writes so often about stigmatized private experiences, one could imagine turning to her for permission to write confessionally; and yet what distinguishes her exploration of abjection and self-abnegation is that one never feels it is performative, as so much writing of selfhood is. Never in her work do you find the glittery sense of narcissism or self-enthrallment so common in personal writing; rather, the cool restraint is directed compulsively at something else, at trying to understand, or link, or otherwise simply describe, what others might try to explain.
In “A Simple Passion,” she writes that it is a “mistake” to “compare someone writing about his own life to an exhibitionist,” since the latter wants “to show himself and to be seen at the same time” while the writer can describe shameful things only “because of the time which separates the moment when they are written … from the moment when they will be read by other people.”
In every sentence of Ernaux’s books is an intensity of purpose, an urgency: She has to write. The work is something more than self-exploration. It is lived philosophy, prayer, a need to enact. Writing served as “a kind of morality for me,” she writes in “Getting Lost.” “I forgave my husband’s pleasure seeking because he didn’t write. What else is there to do when you don’t write? Eat, drink, and make love.” Or, as she puts it in “Happening”: “These things happened to me so that I might recount them. Maybe the true purpose of my life is for my body, my sensations and my thoughts to become writing; in other words, something intelligible and universal, causing my existence to merge into the lives and heads of other people.”
It is this quality of synthesized existence, the way she combines narration and thinking, that has me reading her over and over, as if I were looking in the window of her books and seeing a person looking back at me, merging book and life. It is an act of reading in which nothing is restored, but something is gained.
Meghan O’Rourke is a poet, writer and editor of the Yale Review. Her most recent book, “The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness,” is a finalist for this year’s National Book Award in nonfiction. | 2022-10-07T21:19:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Annie Ernaux, Nobel Prize winner, unstitches genres - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/07/annie-ernaux-appreciation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/07/annie-ernaux-appreciation/ |
Nobel Prize winners made lonely choice to speak out against dictatorship
Berit Reiss-Andersen, head of the Nobel Committee, announces on Friday the winner of this year's Peace Prize in Oslo. (Heiko Junge/NTB Scanpix/AP)
Living under an authoritarian state — with the fear, uncertainty, voicelessness — is the fate of millions. They sense the ever-present corruption, the centralized power, the empty slogans. But very few are fearless enough to stand up and fight. The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded Friday to one individual and two organizations that are champions of civil society in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus at a time of war.
The individual winner, Ales Bialiatski, has been detained without trial in Belarus since last year. He founded the human rights organization Viasna in 1996 after Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko rammed through constitutional changes that gave him broad authority and dissolved parliament, leading to mass protests. Viasna, or “Spring,” supported the jailed demonstrators and their families. A quarter-century later, the organization continues to defend free speech and liberty. It has kept a spotlight on thousands of protesters and dissidents in Belarus, who have been jailed and beaten since Mr. Lukashenko stole the 2020 presidential election and forced the true winner, Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, into exile. Viasna has documented the victims of Mr. Lukashenko’s terror, people such as Danuta Peradnia, a 20-year-old student serving time for an antiwar social media post, and Volha Zalatar, 38, a mother of five imprisoned for organizing tea parties and being the administrator of a local chatroom.
There are thousands of others who exhibit bravery in the face of despotism and are now jailed for dissent. One of them is Post opinions contributor Vladimir Kara-Murza. The Russian authorities first detained Mr. Kara-Murza in April on a spurious charge of spreading “false information” about the Russian military. According to his lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov, the Russian authorities have now leveled a new charge of treason at him, which could result in a prison sentence up to 20 years, based on a series of speeches he gave criticizing the Kremlin. This is outlandish and reprehensible; Mr. Kara-Murza, whose views have been expressed often in our pages, argues for democracy and against President Vladimir Putin’s reckless invasion of Ukraine.
Mr. Bialiatski, Ms. Peradnia, Ms. Zalatar, Mr. Kara-Murza and all others facing the bleak prison walls should know that their selfless choice to speak out — an exceptional act — was not in vain, and the struggle to defend and protect human dignity will go on, ceaselessly. | 2022-10-07T21:36:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Nobel Peace Prize goes to dissidents fighting authoritarianism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/nobel-peace-prize-bialiatski-memorial-center-civil-liberties/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/07/nobel-peace-prize-bialiatski-memorial-center-civil-liberties/ |
Amid assault charge, D.C. deputy mayor under review for residency status
Christopher Geldart, D.C.'s deputy mayor for public safety and justice. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
The D.C. government is reviewing whether D.C. Deputy Mayor of Public Safety and Justice Christopher Geldart is meeting the requirement that high-level officials reside within city limits, D.C.'s mayor said Friday, after a police statement about an assault allegation against the deputy listed his address as being in Virginia.
“I am looking into all of the matters that have been brought up this week,” D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said at a news conference. “We have a process here, and I’m going through the process.”
Questions about Geldart’s residency emerged after a personal trainer alleged Geldart grabbed him by the neck in the parking lot of a Gold’s Gym in Arlington on Saturday. Days after the encounter, the trainer reported the matter to police and swore out a criminal complaint with the county magistrate’s office, alleging assault and battery.
An Arlington County police statement on the incident said Geldart lived in Falls Church, Va., prompting concern among community leaders that the deputy mayor was violating D.C. law. Under District code, high-level appointees to the executive branch must be city residents during their time in office.
Geldart, who did not respond to requests for comment, is scheduled to appear in court on Oct. 17 for an arraignment hearing on the criminal charge. He is on leave, and Bowser said City Administrator Kevin Donahue will oversee the city’s public safety agencies in the interim.
D.C. law allows the mayor to grant waivers to the residency requirement for “exceptional circumstances beyond the employee’s control,” but Bowser said Friday that she does not recall ever reviewing such a waiver for Geldart. She said she was previously aware that Geldart had a home in Virginia where his family lived.
The mayor asserted “people can have second homes,” but stressed that “our expectations are that people will meet the requirements of the law for residency.”
Under the city code, a “resident” is defined as any person who “maintains a place of abode in the District of Columbia as his or her actual, regular, and principal place of occupancy.” Public records show D.C. addresses associated with Geldart. In 2019, when Bowser nominated him to be the director of the Department of Public Works, his address was listed as being in D.C.'s Ward 6, according to a document filed in the city’s legislative management system, first reported by Washington City Paper.
The District has long struggled with questions over where government employees can live while serving the nation’s capital. In the 1980s, a law requiring city employees to reside in D.C. sparked outrage among unions for D.C. police and public schools, who said the requirement hampered the city’s efforts to hire and retain the best workers. Decades later, former D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier came under fire for owning a home in Maryland during her tenure.
Kathy Patterson, the D.C. auditor who also served three terms on city council, said there have been periodic efforts to impose a residency requirement on all D.C. government employees but they have always been met with resistance. The latest legislation in D.C. requires those earning more than $150,000 per year and hired after 2019 to reside in the city.
“There has been tension as long as I’ve been in D.C. government,” Patterson said. “Does someone have to be a D.C. resident, or do you want to get the best person for the job no matter where they live?”
D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D) said Friday that he was concerned about Geldart’s residency.
“There is only one truth, and that needs to be sorted out, and there is a process for dealing with a violation if there is a violation,” he said. “I think I’ll leave it at that.”
Bowser’s office initially downplayed the assault allegation against Geldart, saying in a statement that “it sounds like something that happens to a lot of people” and that “we hope it is resolved quickly.” But her tone shifted by Friday, when the mayor said she had “some concerns about that interaction.”
Dustin Woodward, the 29-year-old personal trainer who said he was assaulted by Geldart, said the dispute began when the deputy mayor hit his girlfriend’s car with his own vehicle’s door. Woodward alleges the deputy mayor grabbed him by the throat, and video footage obtained by Fox 5 shows Geldart appearing to push him before Woodward shoves his arms away.
Woodward filed a criminal complaint against Geldart with the county magistrate’s office on Tuesday.
“There’s a lot of mixed emotions,” Woodward said. “At the same time, the man has got to be able to feed his family. There is a part of me that shouldn’t feel bad, but I do.”
Meagan Flynn and Salvador Rizzo contributed to this report. | 2022-10-07T22:41:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amid assault charge, D.C. deputy mayor under review for where he lives - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/christopher-geldart-residency-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/christopher-geldart-residency-review/ |
D.C. officials unveil first-ever urgent care center in Ward 8
From left, D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8); Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D), George Washington University Hospital CEO Kimberly Russo; Ward 7 Democrats chair Wendell Felder and Ward 7 Council member Vincent C. Gray (D) cut the ribbon on the new Cedar Hill Urgent Care Center in Anacostia. (Michael Brice-Saddler/The Washington Post)
D.C. officials on Friday unveiled the first-ever urgent care center to open in Ward 8, in an area of the city where residents have faced notable disparities in both access to health care and health outcomes.
The new Cedar Hill Urgent Care, located along the rapidly-growing Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE corridor in Anacostia, will open Monday and be available to residents from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. seven days a week, officials said. It is owned and operated by Universal Health Services in partnership with the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences and the GW Medical Faculty Associates.
Officials said the facility will provide access to treatment for an array of minor health ailments like asthma, colds, sore throats and urinary tract infections. Previously, residents in the area faced with these issues may have had to travel to other areas of the city for treatment, or even go to a hospital or emergency room.
D.C. Council member Trayon White Sr. (D-Ward 8) said the lack of such facilities created a “big imbalance” in the District’s health care system while exacerbating issues like infant mortality. Wards 7 and 8 have the highest levels of infant mortality in the city.
“The urgent care center will meet the immediate needs to focus on some of those things that residents don’t need to go to the hospital for,” White said. “Our residents have long waited for the same access to amenities as the rest of the city; access to health care is a fundamental human right.”
The $1.8 million full-service care center is part of a larger hospital system slated to arrive east of the Anacostia River; earlier this year, city officials broke ground on the Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center, GW Health facility, based in Ward 7. D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said the city is scoping out locations for a second urgent care center as part of that larger project — which will also include an ambulatory center with physicians’ offices — that is also aimed at providing more robust health care services to communities east of the Anacostia River.
Bowser estimated that the new urgent care center in Ward 8 will serve 9,000 residents per year.
“Patients can get X-rays and bloodwork; this is the place to go if you’re not feeling well,” Bowser added. “This urgent care center is what the community asked for.”
Barbara Bass, CEO of GW Medical Faculty Associates, said that the urgent care center will accept all insurances “and will not turn anyone away” if they are uninsured. Much of the urgent care center’s staff, including practitioners and physicians, will be provided by GW Medical Faculty Associates and the GW School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
The Cedar Hill Regional Medical Center, GW Health is expected to open in early 2025, replacing the United Medical Center, which for decades was beset by financial problems and mismanagement. The second urgent care facility will open in 2024 in Ward 7.
“We’re creating a true health care system on the District’s east end for the first time ever,” said D.C. Council member Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7). “We’re opening the door for so many people who just haven’t had the chance to be able to have these services — we’ve had the United Medical Center and other services available, but we know we can do better than that.” | 2022-10-07T22:41:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. set to open urgent care center in Ward 8 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/dc-ward-8-urgent-care/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/dc-ward-8-urgent-care/ |
Man charged with murder in Prince George’s shooting
Marx Carlton Jackson, 25, is charged with murder in a May homicide, police say
A 25-year-old man has been arrested and charged with murder in a fatal shooting in May, Prince George’s County police said.
Marx Carlton Jackson of District Heights is charged with first- and second-degree murder and related counts in the killing of Donnie McMillan, 32, of Forestville, police said. He is being held without bond at the county jail.
At about 8:05 p.m. on May 6, police found McMillan with a gunshot wound outside an apartment in the 7100 block of Donnell Place in the Forestville area, police said. He was taken to a hospital, where he died.
Police said Jackson shot McMillan during an attempted carjacking, according to an initial investigation.
It was not immediately clear whether Jackson has an attorney. | 2022-10-07T22:41:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marx Carlton Jackson charged with murder in Pr. George's homicide - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/man-charged-murder-prince-georges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/man-charged-murder-prince-georges/ |
Md. appeals court disagrees with Cox, allows early mail-in vote counting
Canvassers for the Montgomery County Board of Elections take an oath at the start of counting for mail-in ballots for the 2022 gubernatorial primary. (Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
The Maryland Court of Appeals will allow early counting of mail-in ballots in November’s general election, over objections from Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox.
The ruling comes after an expedited legal battle between Cox and the State Board of Elections over a petition to suspend an outdated law that prohibits election officials from canvassing mail-in ballots until two days after the election — the only law of its kind in the country.
A Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge sided with the state board and suspended the law, allowing counting to begin on Oct. 1. A panel of judges on Friday upheld that decision, which Cox had appealed, arguing among other things that the state legislature and not the judiciary should control changes to election rules.
Under the ruling, local election workers can count mail-in ballots as they trickle in. As of Friday morning, no local election board had started the canvassing process; voters only began receiving ballots by mail at the end of September. Montgomery County, the state’s most populous county, which had the longest delays during the primary, plans to start counting on Oct. 15.
The State Board of Elections sought the relief after a primary cycle plagued by delayed results as more voters opted to vote by mail. Warning that the delays could be even longer during the general election, the board of elections sought relief from the court.
The board welcomed the court’s ruling on Friday in a statement, saying it would be “instrumental” in helping local election workers “complete the timely canvassing and tabulation of these ballots and meet all relevant statutory deadlines.”
While the ruling from the court does not change when or how voters can cast ballots, it will expedite counting, yielding quicker results. It also leaves open the question of whether Cox will accept the results of his race against Democrat Wes Moore, who has a 32-percentage-point lead just over a month before Election Day according to recent Washington Post -University of Maryland polling.
Cox, who is endorsed by former president Donald Trump and has described the 2020 presidential election as “stolen,” said he would accept results if the law prohibiting early counting stayed in place. He has not committed to accepting the results if mail-in ballots are counted early.
“I certainly will respect the court’s decision,” Cox said in a news conference after the court heard arguments Friday. “And in terms of the election, we’re going to make sure that we uphold the process of the Constitution and law.”
Cox argued that a problem the State Board of Elections saw coming doesn’t constitute an emergency that would warrant judicial intervention. His attorneys also argued that the ruling was unconstitutional because the power to make this kind of change to the law rests in the hands of the state legislature — not the court.
As the coronavirus spread in 2020, Gov. Larry Hogan (R) allowed early mail-in ballot counting under an emergency order. The law prohibiting early counting went back into effect after the order expired. State lawmakers passed a bill that would have permanently removed the provision earlier this year. But, Hogan, who said he supported counting mail-in ballots early, vetoed the bill over other concerns.
“I want to thank the Court of Appeals for upholding the decision to allow early canvassing for the general election,” Hogan tweeted after the ruling. “This means we will have the same process that I instituted for the 2020 election.”
“This discussion already happened this year in the appropriate branch of the government,” Cox’s attorney, Ed Hartman, said in the Annapolis courtroom on Friday. “We don’t get to do it over again here.”
The panel of seven judges pressed both sides with questions about their positions on the circuit court’s ruling.
Daniel Kobrin, an assistant attorney general representing the State Board of Elections, told the court that while the board knew there would be an increase in mail-in ballots, they could not know the scope and toll it would have on local election boards.
Board of elections lawyers estimated that more than 1 million mail-in ballots could be cast in the general election; delaying that count until two days after the election, the board argued, could delay election results by weeks. Those delays could bump up against federal, state and local certification deadlines, such as terms in office for county executive and council positions in some counties. Some elected officials are slated to begin their terms the first Monday in December, and Congress is scheduled to convene Jan. 3.
During the primary races this summer, voters submitted more than 345,000 mail-in ballots, and the State Board of Elections took nearly a month to certify results. Montgomery County, which received more than 74,000 mail-in ballots, took nearly four weeks to complete its canvass.
As of Thursday, more than 550,000 Maryland voters had requested mail-in ballots, according to a report from the State Board of Elections. Voters can request mail-in ballots by mail until Nov. 1 and in-person at election offices until Election Day. | 2022-10-07T22:41:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland Court of Appeals ruling allows early mail-in ballot counting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/maryland-early-counting-court-appeal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/maryland-early-counting-court-appeal/ |
Montgomery Planning Department head fired amid planning board controversy
The Montgomery County Planning Board announced that it removed the Planning Department’s director, Gwen Wright, after an unscheduled closed board meeting Friday afternoon, the latest episode in a series of controversies to hit the county’s planning board and department amid a contested development plan.
In a statement, the planning board did not give a reason for Wright’s dismissal. Deputy Director Tanya Stern will serve as acting director effective Friday, according to the statement.
Four of the board’s five members voted to remove Wright — vice chair Partap Verma and commissioners Gerald R. Cichy, Tina Patterson and Carol Rubin, Wright said. The board’s chair, Casey Anderson, recused himself from the vote.
The meeting that led to Wright’s dismissal came a day after Wright spoke to WJLA in defense of Anderson after the outlet’s reporting on a leaked email in late September that accused Anderson of inappropriate language and behavior in the workplace. Anderson denied the allegations.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Wright said she was fired without cause but felt her removal was connected to her defense of Anderson. On Sept. 30, Wright sent an email, undersigned by several planning department employees, to the Montgomery County Council expressing her support for Anderson after allegations had been raised against him.
“I believe their main reason for dismissing me was that I supported Casey Anderson in a number of the difficulties that he’s recently been in,” Wright said.
Verma confirmed that the board voted 4-0 to dismiss Wright but said he couldn’t comment on personnel matters or on Wright’s assertion that she was dismissed without cause.
“Conjecture on any other parts of this issue are merely just that, conjecture,” Verma said.
Rubin did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday afternoon.
Anderson came under fire last month after an investigation found he kept a bar of alcoholic drinks in his office and shared them with other employees, including once with Verma and once with Rubin. Anderson apologized, and the Montgomery County Council announced Wednesday that they would dock four weeks of his pay as punishment. The board members who were found to have accepted a drink from Anderson were docked one day of pay.
Questions about planning and development have long been among the most controversial political issues in Montgomery.
Wright’s firing and the allegations against Anderson come as the county council considers Thrive 2050, a plan that will guide the county’s growth and development over the next 30 years. Wright and Anderson have been the face of the plan for the county’s planning department as it has been debated publicly since mid-2019.
Supporters of the plan say it will provide more housing for different income levels and help the county grow in an environmentally sustainable way by concentrating development around transit lines. Opponents say it would lead to too much dense development, which would overwhelm schools and traffic-clogged roads while destroying tree canopy and worsening flooding.
Wright was due to retire in December and had served as planning director for nine years.
Katherine Shaver contributed to this report. | 2022-10-07T22:41:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Montgomery Planning Department head fired amid planning board controversy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/montgomery-planning-chair-gwen-wright-fired/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/montgomery-planning-chair-gwen-wright-fired/ |
Montgomery teachers union, schools delay contract talks over disagreement
Montgomery County's superintendent and its teachers union are blaming each other for delays in beginning contract negotiations. (Robb Hill for The Washington Post)
Contract negotiations between Maryland’s largest school system and its teachers union are being held up over a disagreement on the ground rules, and both entities are blaming each other.
The Montgomery County Education Association — which represents about 14,000 educators — wants the entire negotiation process for its next three-year contract to be open to all of its members, similar to how it was conducted in 2019, union leaders said. Montgomery County Public Schools has offered five virtual open sessions and two virtual town halls.
The union hosted a news conference this week in front of the county’s Board of Education, where three union members shared testimonials of low morale among teachers due to high and unsustainable workloads. They argued teachers have left the profession at alarming rates and called for the school system to send a negotiator to the table.
But roughly an hour before the news conference, Superintendent Monifa B. McKnight sent an email school system staff, stating that “an unwillingness on the part of the teacher association leaders to agree on basic ground rules is preventing us from moving forward.”
“Have no doubt, my team and I are working for you,” McKnight wrote. “A fair negotiation process is part of how we do so.” She pointed to previous negotiated terms as evidence, like covid leave, an increased rate for teachers covering classes when substitutes weren’t available and a permanent substitute program.
McKnight also noted that the school system had already started negotiations with its other two unions representing administrators and other school staff.
Montgomery teachers union concerned with timing of teacher transfers
The union’s president, Jennifer Martin, said in an interview Friday that many of the initiatives McKnight pointed to had expired in June, since they were a part of a separate agreement made with the union due to the coronavirus.
When the union and school system reached an agreement for its current contract, which expires June 30, 2023, the union had some of the “best rates of ratification that we had ever had,” Martin said. She attributed that to the open negotiations, stating that members were able to “better understand the issues from both management and our own members’ perspective.” During that negotiation process, there were more than 20 sessions, she said.
Negotiations for the upcoming contract are set to begin by Oct. 18 at the latest, Martin said. Many of the proposals the union has revolve around working conditions, school safety and how the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future would impact growth opportunities and salary structure.
Martin said she wants the union and the school system to return to a partnership, rather than the union being viewed “as an obstacle.” If the issue is not resolved, Montgomery County’s union said it is prepared to file an unfair labor practice charge with the state. | 2022-10-07T22:42:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Contract talks delayed between Montgomery teachers, school system - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/07/montgomery-teachers-union-contract-negotiations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/07/montgomery-teachers-union-contract-negotiations/ |
Charles Bowsher in 2002. (Ray Lustig/The Washington Post)
Mr. Bowsher’s death was confirmed by his son, Stephen. No cause was given.
Mr. Bowsher emerged as a reality check, placing the GAO in the unfamiliar glare of high-stakes politics. In reports and testimony on Capitol Hill, Mr. Bowsher repeatedly described the massive extent of the crisis in U.S. thrifts (think the building and loan in “It’s a Wonderful Life”) and how much it would eventually cost the public.
“This is a huge scandal,” Mr. Bowsher said in 1990, “and to a large extent it was allowed to grow because of the way this town does business.”
From 1991: A watchdog with a bite
“He was someone who insisted on telling the truth and resisted pressure from those who wanted to help the White House,” said Kathleen Day, a lecturer at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and a former Washington Post journalist whose 1993 book, “S&L Hell,” detailed the savings and loan crisis and its aftermath.
During his tenure at the GAO (now known as the General Accountability Office), Mr. Bowsher’s views on government spending and priorities often took on a finger-wagging quality. He told the Senate Government Affairs Committee in 1993 that waste and fraud were so pervasive that “there are hardly any government agencies that are well managed.”
“It’s a shock to hear that,” replied Sen. William V. Roth (R-Del.).
Mr. Bowsher could at times appear in sync with liberals, raising warnings about a U.S. health-care system that leaves millions uninsured. “Universal access to health care is achievable, but the costs are considerable,” he wrote. He also sided strongly with deficit hawks, describing budget imbalances as one of the country’s more serious long-term threats.
Mr. Bowsher’s appeals helped bring landmark legislation, the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, designed to eliminate the federal budget deficit by restricting spending for five fiscal years. If deficit targets were exceeded, automatic cuts would kick in, requested by the comptroller general.
“You are talking to an unconstitutional comptroller general,” Mr. Bowsher told the Boston Globe after the ruling.
A Wall Street Journal editorial derided him as “President Bowsher” for his apparent political sway. “Who elected him?” it said.
Mr. Bowsher graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1953 with a degree in accounting. After two years in the Army, he earned his master’s in business at the University of Chicago in 1956, then joined the Chicago office of the Arthur Andersen & Co. accounting firm.
Announce Mr. Bowsher’s nomination as comptroller general in 1981, Reagan said he had “the expertise of an insider with the perspective of an outsider.”
In 2007, he was part of panel that issued a blistering report on financial mismanagement in the Smithsonian system, which includes museums, galleries and the National Zoo. He blasted an “imperialist and insular” culture set by the former Smithsonian top official, Lawrence Small, who resigned amid allegations of billing more than $1.1 million in fraudulent housing costs and using funds for lavish personal trips.
Mr. Bowsher also served a behind-the-scenes role advising Natwar Gandhi, the District’s chief financial officer from 2010 to 2013 and a former GAO colleague.
“Whenever an issue came up, [Mr. Bowsher] would be there to help talk it through,” Gandhi said. “He had a great sense of history and a keen sense of public service.” | 2022-10-07T22:59:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Charles Bowsher, fiscal watchdog during 1980s S&L crisis, dies at 91 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/07/charles-bowsher-gao-comptroller-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/07/charles-bowsher-gao-comptroller-dies/ |
Ga. Senate candidate Herschel Walker urged second abortion, according to report
A woman interviewed by the New York Times said the former football star ended their relationship after she refused his request
Georgia Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker speaks to workers at Battle Lumber Company during a campaign event in Wadley, Ga., on Thursday. (Erik S Lesser/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
The mother of one of Herschel Walker’s children has said that the Georgia Republican Senate candidate ended a relationship with her in 2011 after she refused to have a second abortion as she had done two years earlier, according to an account in the New York Times. Instead, the woman gave birth to the child, according to the report.
The Washington Post has not independently confirmed the account, which builds on a story published earlier this week by the Daily Beast reporting that Walker, who is campaigning on an antiabortion platform, paid for the woman to have an abortion.
Walker denied paying for an abortion and said he did not know what woman was making the allegation.
“I know nothing about any woman having an abortion,” Walker said Thursday to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.
The woman, who has not been publicly identified, has not responded to multiple inquiries from The Post.
Walker’s campaign did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment about the Times’s report.
The revelations threaten to further complicate one of the most competitive Senate campaigns in the country and confirm fears among some Republicans that Walker’s chaotic personal history, including allegations of domestic violence, will continue to attract attention and scrutiny in the final weeks of the campaign.
Also on Friday, Walker’s campaign fired a political director over accusations that he had unauthorized contacts with reporters, according to a person familiar with the events, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal campaign matters.
Republicans have sought to go on offense in Georgia, releasing a new political advertisement that highlights Democratic Sen. Raphael G. Warnock’s history of opposition to abortion and other issues.
The candidates are set to debate next Friday.
Alice Crites and Michael Scherer contributed to this report. | 2022-10-07T23:12:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ga. Senate candidate Herschel Walker urged second abortion, according to report - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/walker-abortion-georgia-senate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/walker-abortion-georgia-senate/ |
Judy Tenuta, stand-up comedy’s freewheeling ‘Love Goddess,’ dies at 72
Stand-up comic Judy Tenuta in 2019. (Lisa O'Connor/AFP/Getty Images)
Judy Tenuta, the absurdist, accordion-playing “Love Goddess” of stand-up, who broke into the male-dominated 1980s comedy world while wearing Grecian gowns, preaching the gospel of “Judyism” and derisively addressing men as “pigs” and “stud puppets,” died Oct. 6 at her home in the Studio City neighborhood of Los Angeles. She was 72.
A gum-snapping comedian with one of stand-up’s most distinctive voices — she might deliver the setup in a cooing falsetto, then use a husky growl for the punchline — Ms. Tenuta deployed a campy brew of insult comedy, physical humor and acerbic wit, lampooning everyone from Yoko Ono and the pope to Southerners, mimes and Vice President Dan Quayle. Sending him to San Francisco to comfort earthquake victims was like “sending Ronald McDonald to Tiananmen Square,” she said.
“My boyfriend said, ‘Judy, I’d like to see you in miniskirts.’ I said, ‘Yeah? Well I’d like to see you in Mason jars,’ ” she quipped at one set. At another, she joked, “My mother always told me I wouldn’t amount to anything because I procrastinate. I said, ‘Just wait.’ ”
During her heyday in the late-1980s and early ’90s, Ms. Tenuta was sometimes carried onstage by a bodybuilder or borne aloft in a thronelike chair, raised on the shoulders of several muscle-bound men. Wearing gold lamé pants or a gauzy floor-length cape, she would introduce herself as “a shy, innocent petite flower” before revealing another, brassier side of her personality.
“Hey pigs, let’s party,” she would shout. “You know you’re begging for abuse from the Goddess of Love.”
Raised in the Chicago suburbs, where she said she was taught in Catholic school that women were meant to be subservient to men, she went on to subvert traditional gender roles while spreading a self-styled religion called “Judyism.”
“Women are love goddesses, and men are slaves,” she explained to the Los Angeles Times. Not that she despised men altogether: “I love all stud puppets — and I think they all should have a chance to be our furniture,” she said, outlining what she described as her vision of a new “ottoman empire.”
Ms. Tenuta often performed with an accordion strapped to her chest (among other monikers, she called herself the “Aphrodite of the Accordion”) and incorporated music into her sets. “Bring me your tired, your poor and your dumb,” she sang in one accordion-backed number, “and keep their mouths open while I spit out my gum.” By the end of the night, she had usually spit her gum onto a man in the audience, then commanded him to swallow it.
“To complain that this woman is hostile is like complaining that a hurricane shouldn’t be so mean,” journalist Ellen Hopkins wrote in a 1990 article for the New York Times. “Whether she’s taunting male members of the audience about their masturbation habits or referring to herself as a Goddess of Love, her greatest gift is her ability to take male fantasies and transmogrify them into the stuff of nightmare.”
Ms. Tenuta began touring the country in the 1980s, and rose to national prominence after performing on “Late Night with David Letterman” and starring in an HBO comedy special, “Women of the Night,” with Ellen DeGeneres, Paula Poundstone, Rita Rudner and Lizz Winstead. She was named the best female comedy club performer at the 1988 American Comedy Awards — the male winner was Jerry Seinfeld — and went on to receive two consecutive Grammy nominations, for her mid-90s comedy albums “Attention Butt Pirates and Lesbetarians” (recorded at the Los Angeles LGBTQ pride festival) and “In Goddess We Trust.”
Ms. Tenuta also appeared in plays and musicals, performing in a Chicago production of “The Vagina Monologues” with former “Gilligan’s Island” star Dawn Wells, and acted on-screen, playing a showgirl-turned-marriage officiant on “General Hospital” and making a cameo in the Hilary Duff teen comedy “Material Girls.”
But she remained best-known for her live stand-up sets, making headlines even when a show was canceled, as when she was dropped as a headliner from the 1989 White House correspondents’ dinner, apparently because she was considered too controversial. (They still paid her $5,000, she told the Chicago Tribune: “It’s like I’m a farmer. They’re paying me not to grow my jokes.”)
Ms. Tenuta traced her appeal in part to the unpredictability of her stand-up sets, which sometimes ended with an extended bit of audience participation. At a 1992 set in Georgia, she brought a yuppie, Oxford-shirt-wearing audience member onto the stage and persuaded him to don “a pink negligee and shower cap,” according to the Tribune, before having him go down on all fours. Then she rode on his back “while everyone, on stage and off, sang along with a tape of the Village People’s ‘YMCA.’ ”
“It was good for him,” Ms. Tenuta said of the audience member. “He became free not to be in the closed stereotypical box that society has labeled for him.”
“What I’m doing is releasing people from their psychological barriers,” she added. “I’m indoctrinating them into Judyism, but they’re not restricted, they’re free.”
One of nine children, Judy Lynn Tenuta was born in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Ill., on Nov. 7, 1949. Her mother was Polish, her father Italian, and she grew up in the nearby town of Maywood, later joking that she attended a Catholic school called “St. Obnoxious in Bondage.”
Ms. Tenuta became the first member of her family to graduate from college, majoring in theater at the University of Illinois Chicago, according to her publicist. She held odd jobs, wrapping meat and working at a shop selling Catholic religious attire, before getting into comedy in the 1970s, when she took an improv class at Second City and then dressed as the Virgin Mary for her first stand-up show.
She often performed at gay bars, acquiring a devoted following in the LGBTQ community, and became an advocate for gay rights. Eventually she offered to officiate same-sex marriages as a self-described “ordained minister of Judyism,” according to her website.
Although she was initially known for her outlandish, X-rated comedy sets, she started entertaining younger audiences by the late 1990s and 2000s, playing a psychic named Madame Judy on “The Weird Al Show” — she often collaborated with the host, comedian “Weird Al” Yankovic — and guest-starring on children’s TV shows including “Cory in the House” and “Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide.”
She also contributed voice work to animated shows such as “Johnny Bravo” and “Space Ghost Coast to Coast,” wrote books including “The Power of Judyism” and “Full Frontal Tenudity,” and produced and starred in an independent film, “Desperation Boulevard” (1998), as a former child star struggling to make a comeback. “I really want people to see it,” she told the Tribune. “I don’t have the kind of box-office clout that Jackie Chan has, that pig. But I do all my own stunts too.”
Ms. Tenuta said she saw herself as something of a “spokeswoman for women,” telling the Tribune in 1992, “I represent women to elevate them.” She got letters from girls who wanted to emulate her, including one who complained about a boy who, in the parlance of Judyism, wasn’t “worshiping me properly.” Her reply: “Just continue to treat ’em like the trolls that they are.” | 2022-10-07T23:16:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judy Tenuta, stand-up comedy’s freewheeling ‘Love Goddess,’ dies at 72 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/07/comedian-judy-tenuta-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/07/comedian-judy-tenuta-dead/ |
Haiti set to seek aid from foreign forces amid crises, officials say
A protester carries a piece of wood, simulating a weapon, during an anti-government protest in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Monday. (Odelyn Joseph/AP)
Haiti’s government is set to seek the assistance of foreign security forces, amid compounding crises that have plunged the country into deepening chaos, two Haitian officials told The Washington Post.
The move comes as the government struggles to secure a semblance of order. Gangs control a major port and have stifled the flow of oil and other essential goods, hospitals are short on supplies, violence remains rampant, anti-government protests sparked by a plan to cut fuel subsidies have filled the streets for weeks, access to potable water is under strain and cholera cases have sparked fears of a new outbreak.
The government intends to ask “international partners” for “a specialized armed force” to shore up basic services, according to a resolution signed Thursday by a council of top ministers, sent to The Post by Jean-Junior Joseph, a communications adviser to Prime Minister Ariel Henry. The resolution authorized the prime minister to ask for such assistance.
The goal is to “achieve a secure climate that should make it possible to fight cholera effectively, promote the resumption of the distribution of fuel and drinking water across the country, the functioning of hospitals, the restarting of economic activities, the free movement of people and goods, and the reopening of schools,” the resolution reads.
Joseph did not say what manner of forces would be sought, or which partners would be asked.
A State Department spokesman told reporters on Friday that U.N. officials in Haiti have called for a humanitarian corridor to facilitate the distribution of fuel throughout the country and that the Biden administration, in consultation with Henry and U.S. partners, is considering the request. He declined to say whether those discussions entail the potential deployment of any military assets. He did not say how the request would interact with any additional request from the Haitian government. The U.S. Defense Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The involvement of foreign military forces would be a fraught topic in Haiti, met with deep skepticism: The country has a long history of destabilizing foreign interventions.
“We are not requesting for an occupying force,” Bocchit Edmond, Haiti’s ambassador to the United States, told The Post. “We’re just requesting national assistance as a member of the international community who is facing such a tough time.”
“That’s why we have international organizations like U.N., like OAS. It’s to come to the rescue of the members states when there is an issue,” he added. “The situation, if we leave it that way, that can lead us to human catastrophe.”
Béatrice Nibogora, a spokeswoman for the U.N. in Haiti, said that the U.N. had not received a request from the government as of Friday.
A foreign government official with knowledge of a meeting at the Organization of American States (OAS) on Haiti that took place Thursday, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter, said Haitian officials made no request then.
OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro tweeted in French Thursday that Haiti “must request urgent assistance from the international community to help resolve security crises, determine the characteristics of an international security force.”
In recent weeks, the situation has grown increasingly dire, as the cabinet resolution released Friday indicates.
Looters last month stormed a warehouse in the city of Gonaïves, stealing enough food to feed 100,000 schoolchildren through the end of the year, the World Food Program said. Even as the government seeks aid abroad, its support at home is eroding swiftly: Critics are accusing Henry of delaying new elections, and protesters, enraged by his announcement that the government could no longer afford fuel subsidies, and by the general chaos and lack of access to necessities, are calling for him to step down.
Amanda Coletta contributed to this report. | 2022-10-08T00:00:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Haiti set to seek aid from foreign forces amid crises, officials say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/haiti-military-assistance-us-un-crisis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/07/haiti-military-assistance-us-un-crisis/ |
‘Armageddon’ warning reflects Biden’s instincts about Putin
The president’s stark comments were not prompted by Russia’s on-the-ground actions, aides say
Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during the signing ceremony for the annexation of four Ukrainian regions at the Kremlin on Sept. 30. (Getty Images Europe)
President Biden’s warning this week that Russia’s threats to use nuclear weapons amounted to the most serious “prospect of Armageddon in 60 years” was not based on any new intelligence or information collected by the government, U.S. officials said Friday, but rather Biden’s own assessment of what Russian President Vladimir Putin could be capable of.
Biden and other U.S. officials have harbored concerns in recent weeks that as the war continues to go poorly for Moscow, Putin would resort to increasingly drastic measures, said a senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
U.S. officials stressed on Friday that they had seen no evidence that Russia had taken the measures necessary to use its nuclear arsenal and that the United States has no reason to change its nuclear posture. But several officials said they are taking Putin’s threats seriously and have said the United States is engaged in direct back-channel conversations with the Russians about the repercussions of taking steps such as the use of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons.
“We have not seen any reason to adjust our own strategic nuclear posture, nor do we have indications that Russia is preparing to imminently use nuclear weapons,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said on Friday. She added, “The kind of irresponsible rhetoric we have seen is no way for the leader of a nuclear-armed state to speak, and that’s what the president was making very clear about.”
Biden startled many Americans by saying at a fundraiser Thursday night that Putin, who he knows “fairly well,” was “not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons.” He added, “I don’t think there’s any such thing as the ability to easily [use] a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”
Biden suggested that the threat was reminiscent of the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, when the United States and Soviet Union came close to nuclear confrontation during the Cold War.
“My sense is this is clearly weighing really heavily on President Biden, and we can all say intellectually the risk of the use of nuclear weapons is low, but the reality is the risk has gone up,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, senior fellow and director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
“At a very human level, he now has the potential to be a president who has to manage nuclear use for the first time in 70 years,” Kendall-Taylor said. “I maybe would have preferred he didn’t use the phrase 'nuclear … Armageddon,’ but I think it’s useful for the president and the administration to be having a conversation with the public about the risk.”
Why the world cares about Putin's tactical nukes
Biden’s comments were reflective of the long-held distrust he has harbored against Putin and his understanding of what Putin is willing to do to carry out his goals, U.S. officials and outside experts said. His skepticism about Putin began long before he became president — and long before Putin became one of the United States’ biggest adversaries.
Biden’s bleak assessment of Putin dates back at least to 2001, when President George W. Bush met the Russian leader for the first time shortly after he had come to power. While Bush heaped praise on him — describing him as “very straightforward and trustworthy” — Biden, then a senator from Delaware, disagreed, stating that he did not trust Putin.
Biden, who has focused on foreign policy throughout his career and chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, places a high value on his own instincts and assessments when it comes to evaluating foreign leaders and landscapes. During his presidential campaign, he often spoke of how many foreign leaders he had met personally, for example citing the long travels he took with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
While Biden’s mention of “Armageddon” was his most vivid warning yet, the president has been raising the alarm for weeks about Putin’s actions in Ukraine, including his staging of sham referendums in four Ukrainian territories and then annexing them. In a speech at the U.N. General Assembly last month, Biden addressed the referendums and nuclear threats directly, saying Moscow had “shamelessly” violated the core of the U.N. charter by forcefully invading its neighbor.
Annexations bring nuclear war closer
Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons since the beginning of the conflict in February, but officials said they have long recognized that the threat of such a strike would rise if Putin’s military position became imperiled in Ukraine. In recent weeks, Ukrainian forces have launched a counteroffensive and made significant gains on the battlefield.
But U.S. officials were at pains Friday to stress that nothing they have seen on the ground in recent days has prompted them to expect a potential nuclear strike in the short term.
“We have been doing contingency planning for a wide range of scenarios throughout the conflict,” a senior State Department official said. “But have not seen reason to adjust our strategic nuclear posture.”
State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel added, “We’ve not seen any reason to adjust our own nuclear posture, nor do we have any indications that Russia is preparing to imminently use weapons.”
Other senior U.S. officials said they believe any movement of Russian nuclear warheads would not only be detected through various monitoring methods, but would require detectable internal coordination and could be observed by U.S. surveillance in real time.
Still, a range of officials acknowledged that such methods are never 100 percent certain.
Asked Sunday whether the United States would actively enter the war if Putin used a nuclear weapon, national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN, “I have said before that we have had the opportunity to communicate directly to Russia a range of consequences for the use of nuclear weapons and the kinds of actions the United States would take. I have also said before that we are not going to telegraph these things publicly.”
Some leaders suggested Friday that Biden’s comments were needlessly provocative. French President Emmanuel Macron said that “we must speak with prudence” on issues like nuclear weapons.
Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, also questioned Biden’s tone, saying it would be better for U.S. officials to make limited, calm statements in response to Putin’s nuclear threats.
“When you get into this kind of language of ‘Armageddon’ and ‘World War III’ as an official, I think you are raising the anxiety without actually conveying the deterrent threat,” Lewis said. “The primary message that the White House should be conveying at this point is strength and confidence.”
Still, he added, Putin could always miscalculate even if the White House messaging was flawless. “Even if they were doing it perfectly, there is going to be a risk that he misreads them, because he already did it with Zelensky,” Lewis said.
Other European officials noted that Putin is unpredictable and dangerous, saying Russian losses on the battlefield are creating a kind of pressure he has rarely faced before. For months, the war has not gone according to plan for Putin, and he has resorted to ever more brazen and far-reaching measures to try to stem his losses.
After making a failed run at Kyiv, the Russian military retreated from the Ukrainian capital in early April and refocused its efforts on taking more territory in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions, an area known as Donbas.
The regroup shifted the conflict into more of a traditional artillery war. Russian troops seized a string of new cities and towns in June and July in a dispiriting moment for Ukrainian forces, which found themselves outgunned by Russia’s longer-range artillery.
But the United States and other European allies armed the Ukrainians with more sophisticated weapons, including the U.S.-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), and found ways to alleviate some ammunition shortages, helping to level the playing field.
By the time Kyiv launched its counteroffensive in late August, Putin’s forces had suffered significant losses and lacked the personnel to defend such a wide swath of territory. Russia’s front-line defenses in the Kharkiv region swiftly collapsed, and Ukrainian forces retook thousands of square miles in a rapid advance that has thrown Moscow off-balance.
In recent weeks, as Ukrainian forces have pushed farther, Putin resorted to a move U.S. intelligence sources had said he would try to avoid at all costs: ordering a partial military mobilization of up to 300,000 reservists. Putin had been reluctant to take the step earlier, cognizant that it could hamper domestic support of the war, and since the announcement, many Russian men have tried to flee the country to avoid conscription.
At the same time, Putin moved up the timeline for the sham referendums and annexations, declaring that the people living in the annexed regions would “be our citizens forever” and warning that the land now belonged to Russia and would be defended as if it were any other part of the country.
These urgent — some say desperate — actions form the backdrop for Putin’s escalation of his nuclear threats. Some analysts say the Russian president may see the threats as a way to make the United States and Europe think twice about letting Ukraine advance far enough to provoke the Kremlin into potentially using a weapon of mass destruction.
“If the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we will without doubt use all available means to protect Russia and our people,” Putin said Sept. 21. “This is not a bluff.”
Ukrainian forces have nonetheless continued advancing into territory Putin now claims as Russia’s. In a fiery speech last Friday during the ceremony to formally annex the Ukrainian territories, Putin warned that the United States had “created a precedent” when it used nuclear weapons against Japan in 1945.
“President Biden has a really good pulse on Putin and understands what Putin is capable of,” Kendall-Taylor said. “He deeply understands him, unlike a lot of Western leaders, and it makes this moment graver in his eyes.”
John Hudson contributed to this report.
The latest: First lady shares story of friend who had illegal abortion in the 1960s | 2022-10-08T00:35:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | "Armageddon" warning reflects Biden's view of Putin's character - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/biden-putin-nuclear-armageddon/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/biden-putin-nuclear-armageddon/ |
GOP chair Kelli Ward said in a text message the party had no plans to fund the review, despite what it was telling supporters.
Kelli Ward, chair of the Arizona Republican Party, holds a news conference at the Maricopa County Elections Department on Nov. 18, 2020, in Phoenix. (Ross D. Franklin/AP)
Arizona’s Republican Party raised record sums in 2021 with repeated appeals to supporters for money to help audit the 2020 presidential election. “Pitch in to Help Us Finish America’s Audit!” and “Help America’s Audit” were among the dozens of pitches from the party.
But Kelli Ward, the state party chairwoman, was sending a very different message to top Republicans in Washington at the time.
“We have not been raising money to pay for the audit,” Ward wrote in one June 25, 2021, text message, according to a person with knowledge of the message, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal details. “We were expressly told that we could/should not raise money for the audit and auditors before the audit began.”
Instead, Ward wrote in the text, the party was going to “keep the pressure” on for an audit and “communicate” about an audit.
The text message suggests that Arizona GOP leaders had no intention of using donations to help pay for the audit effort, despite what it had been telling its supporters in fundraising pleas. In the end, the $6 million audit was bankrolled through a separate fundraising effort by election denier groups, along with $150,000 in initial taxpayer money.
The final report, which was prepared by private contractors and submitted to Republican leaders of the state Senate, reaffirmed President Biden’s victory in the battleground state over former president Donald Trump.
Arizona GOP spokeswoman Kristy Dohnel did not address questions about the text message, but said in a statement that the state party “contributed to covering costs for security to ensure the safety of those who participated in the nonpartisan audit.”
“The Republican Party of Arizona has been able to raise millions of dollars under Chairwoman Kelli Ward’s leadership with amazing partners and relentless grass roots donors,” Dohnel said. “They know that Dr. Ward is honest, operates with integrity, and because of this, they trust her team with their resources. The role of the state party is to keep the political pressure on different entities.”
Arizona Republican officials discovered that raising money off the audit was a smashing success. From May to September 2021, at least 92 emails mentioned the audit as a reason to give to the Arizona GOP. The state party secured almost $1.1 million during that five-month period of a non-election year, compared to about $865,000 for 2020 and 2022 combined.
“In order to be on track to finish this historic, thorough, nonpartisan effort to strengthen our republic, we’ll need to raise $40K before the end of the month!” read one June 24, 2021, email. “We know these sound like lofty goals, but we’re fighting for our very right to have strong, secure elections. Will you rush in your support with everything that’s on the line?”
The pattern was evident around the country. In total, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol found that more than $250 million was raised off fraudulent claims that the election was stolen. Trump’s campaign continued to raise money for an “Election Defense Fund” that did not exist. Trump’s PAC has raised more than $100 million, much of it on claims the election was stolen, and he has largely hoarded the money while spending some on candidates and some on his own lawyers.
Throughout her tenure, Ward has steered the party in a rightward direction and has deepened her ties to Trump while promoting herself. People close to Trump say he views her as an ally, though they are not particularly close. She was one of the figures who sued Vice President Mike Pence in late 2020, in a bid to stop him from certifying the results of the election.
She was deposed by the Jan. 6 committee but did not answer questions, citing her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. She has also received a subpoena in a Justice Department investigation into fake electors organized in Arizona and some other states; she and her husband were on a slate of fake electors for Trump in Arizona.
During the audit process, Ward starred in video updates viewed by thousands that were posted on Twitter. She gave updates on the status of the review and sometimes referred viewers to her website.
In one video, text appeared on screen that asked viewers to “Donate Now” and referred viewers to the online platform, WinRed. “Support the Maricopa County forensic audit,” the website said.
“The Republican Party of Arizona, working together with the Arizona Senate, has accomplished something no other state has achieved,” the page said. “That’s why we need your help. We have made it clear by leading the charge since election day, that when it comes to Election Integrity, we will not be intimidated. Join us in supporting our work. We aren’t finished fighting. And we won’t be until we get the answers we deserve.”
The page also said contributions would benefit the state party.
Another state party post touting the ballot review referred supporters to a WinRed site and to “DONATE NOW TO SUPPORT THE ELECTION INTEGRITY FUND.” | 2022-10-08T01:01:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Arizona GOP raised record money with misleading pitches on election audit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/arizona-republicans-audit-fundraising/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/arizona-republicans-audit-fundraising/ |
The Garfield Terrace housing complex. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
Inadequate management, poor oversight and faulty governance drove the D.C. Housing Authority’s failure to provide “decent, safe, and sanitary” housing for its residents in violation of federal requirements, HUD investigators have concluded.
A damning, 72-page report the agency authored portrays a housing authority in disarray and at risk of defaulting on its agreement with the federal government. Auditors catalogued 82 findings of deficiencies that DCHA must make substantial progress on within three months or risk escalating actions by HUD, which delivered its findings to DCHA in recent days.
The sweeping findings detailed in the report, a copy of which was reviewed by The Washington Post, reveal dangerous conditions at properties that form one of the last lines of defense for District residents who cannot afford homes, including violence, lead-paint hazards, out-of-code plumbing, water damage and mold. A DCHA maintenance foreman told HUD evaluators that emergency work orders are not addressed at night due to safety concerns. Prospective tenants turn down units for fear of crime, the report states.
HUD noted that DCHA’s occupancy rate is the lowest of any large public housing authority in the nation, with one in four of its roughly 8,000 physical units vacant. The vacancies result in fewer people housed and millions of dollars every year in forgone income, the report said. It attributed the issue to management failure and said the vacancies have accelerated the agency’s steadily deteriorating financial condition.
D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) appoints seven of 13 members on the DCHA board and selects the chair. The commissioners include the deputy mayor for planning and economic development, now John Falcicchio, who serves as an ex officio member, giving Bowser’s appointees majority control.
Some board members believe Bowser-appointed members “vote as a group without individual review of the action requested,” the report says, and don’t feel they receive sufficient information to make decisions at meetings.
Falcicchio on Friday referred specific questions about the report to an agency spokesperson and said the board is to be briefed on it Wednesday. LaToya Foster, a spokesperson for Bowser, said the mayor would await DCHA’s official response to HUD before commenting.
The housing authority has 60 days — until Nov. 30 — to respond to the findings and recommendations. The housing authority’s director, Brenda Donald said she and her staff received the report this week and are “in the process of putting together our responses.”
HUD spokesperson Shantae Goodloe said Friday that the federal agency would not speculate on any future consequences for DCHA.
“The goal of any monitoring review is to provide the findings, provide technical assistance to the Public Housing Authority (PHA) as needed, and for the PHA to resolve the findings timely,” Goodloe said in an email.
Board member Bill Slover, whose seat is selected by the D.C. Consortium of Legal Services Providers, has long said HUD needs to place the agency under its direct control, or that of an appointed receiver, to turn it around.
“The HUD report makes it clear that DCHA needs to reclaim its independence through wholesale change in leadership at both the executive and board level," Slover said Friday. “Only by doing this will the agency be able to focus on its core mission of serving its residents first, something this agency has long neglected to do.”
The report recommends that Donald, whom the board brought on last year without a national search, receive training in critical housing authority functions, including “the overall role of the Executive Director and the Board,” procurement, HUD policies, and financial management. Donald “has no experience in property development, property management or managing federal housing programs,” evaluators noted.
“My goal, my mandate was to rebuild the public trust and to stabilize the organization,” Donald said Friday. “But clearly I inherited an organization that was in disarray. It didn’t get there overnight, and I don’t think it’s reasonable to think that it would be fixed overnight, even though we’ve had some major accomplishments in this past year.”
Donald previously served as director of the city’s Child and Family Services Agency and was credited with making improvements there. She said Friday that she’s never pretended to have a public housing background. “I am certainly amenable to and will take the specific training that they recommend, which is also the specific training they recommend for my board,” she said.
DCHA has 8,084 traditional public housing units. The report notes occupancy has been “on a continual decline” in recent years. In June, 1,628 units were vacant, the report says. A HUD dashboard online shows that number has climbed in recent months to 1,973, bringing the occupancy rate below 74 percent.
Part of the problem, according to the report, is that DCHA lacks an accurate system of keeping track of vacant units. Nor does it have adequate procedures for turning around empty units and selecting new tenants. The agency’s property management staff members “lack knowledge of unit turnaround procedures and could not provide the status of vacant units,” the report said.
The report notes that DCHA’s waiting list for public housing and vouchers was frozen in 2013. The agency “was unable to provide documentation of the number of persons on its Public Housing waiting list,” has not updated the list in ten years, and “could not provide the method it used to remove families from” it, the report said.
The report includes photos of a vacant unit encountered by HUD during its assessment. It had black mold and green moss growing inside it due to “an active leak” that had gone unrepaired, the report said. “DCHA must inspect each unit in every building that contains at least one occupied dwelling unit and create a list of mold units and units with active leaks.”
Illustrating that DCHA is not adequately addressing crimes on its properties, the report said housing authorities sent police escorts with a HUD assessor to “make sure nothing happened” during an inspection. “Multiple housing managers indicated some applicants turn down units in their developments due to high crime,” the report said. “Additionally, one maintenance foreman informed HUD that emergency work orders are not addressed, at night, due to safety concerns.”
The report also took aim at the housing authority’s procurement systems, saying that “systemic problems exist” because of “lack of appropriate oversight by the executive leadership and the Board.” It recommended DCHA “hire an integrity monitoring firm to review all existing contracts to determine if they are in compliance with its procurement policy and HUD requirements.”
D.C. Council member Anita Bonds (D-At Large), who chairs the legislative body’s housing committee, said in an interview Friday that she’d not yet read the report in full. But she said she was “not totally surprised” at its contents.
“I’m glad HUD is being upfront with us,” she said. “I wasn’t expecting it to say we were operating on all burners … But I am expecting that we will grow from this and continue to do everything we can to make the properties quality living.”
Bonds said her history with Donald “has been one where she has been able to problem-solve, embrace an issue and actually turn around agencies.”
In the 1990s, the agency was deemed the poorest-performing housing authority in the nation by HUD. Advocates for the homeless sued the District on behalf of families then on the waiting list. Because of the lawsuit, a D.C. Superior Court judge removed the agency from the city government’s control and turned it over to a receiver.
The receiver, David I. Gilmore, spent five years overseeing a dramatic turnaround. | 2022-10-08T01:32:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DCHA mismanagement detailed in HUD audit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/hud-report-dcha-failures/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/hud-report-dcha-failures/ |
Authorities in Va. searching for man mistakenly released from jail
The Loudoun County man is charged with concealing a dead body
A man charged in connection with the death of a young woman was mistakenly released from jail on Thursday — and the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office and the local prosecutor are offering conflicting accounts of how it happened.
Authorities are searching for Stone L. Colburn, 25, of Round Hill, who initially had been charged with second degree murder in the July 2021 stabbing of Natalie L. Crowe, 24, who had a child with Colburn’s brother, the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office said. Prosecutors this week dropped the murder count and charged Colburn with concealing a dead body in the same case.
Commonwealth’s Attorney Buta Biberaj said in an interview she intended to refile a murder charge in the future and made the move to seek a new mental health evaluation of Colburn. But Loudoun County Sheriff Mike Chapman said the shift in charges caused confusion and led to the release.
The Sheriff’s Office said in a press release that prosecutors dropped the murder charge against Colburn on Thursday and he was released from the Loudoun County jail, before prosecutors refiled a charge for concealing a dead body against him Friday morning.
Biberaj, who blamed the sheriff’s office for dropping the ball, said her office dropped the murder charge Thursday and refiled the new charge the same day. She said that obligated the Sheriff’s Office to hold Colburn.
“They should have held him on the new circuit court charge,” Biberaj said.
Loudoun County Circuit Court records back Biberaj’s account that she filed the concealing charge on Thursday.
Michele Bowman, the communications director of the Sheriff’s Office, said authorities are investigating the circumstances of Colburn’s release, but for the moment have scrambled sheriff’s deputies to try to track him down and are following leads.
Colburn is described as a White male and is approximately 5-foot-10, 160 lbs., the Sheriff’s Office said. He was last seen wearing a gray and black flannel shirt over a black sweatshirt, maroon knit hat, gray sweatpants, and black shoes.
“We’re looking at every avenue as to the why and how there was lapse between when his charges were dismissed by the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office to when they were refiled,” Bowman said.
Biberaj said Colburn has mental health issues and a competency evaluation was done on him. She said the evaluation found Colburn was “unrestorably incompetent,” but because of the severity of the charges and the violence of the slaying she wanted a second evaluation.
“We felt from a community perspective and a safety perspective that we could not rely on one report,” Biberaj said.
Biberaj said her office petitioned a judge to grant a second evaluation, but it was denied.
The case was scheduled for a hearing on the competency evaluation on Thursday and Biberaj said she was concerned that Colburn would be permanently committed to a mental hospital and would never face the murder charge, so her office took steps that would allow the case to be considered by another judge in circuit court and preserve the right to seek another competency evaluation.
Once she learned of Colburn’s release Friday morning, Biberaj said, she went to court and got an arrest warrant for him so he could be taken back into custody.
Chapman declined to comment on Biberaj’s account, but said the moves made by the prosecutor’s office were unusual.
“I don’t think finger pointing is the thing to do right now,” Chapman said. “There was some confusion with regards to the process there. It was very unusual in the way the move was done in court. We are in the process of going through the documents right now to sort out what happened.
An attorney for Colburn did not immediately respond to a request for comment. | 2022-10-08T01:32:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Authorities in Va. searching for man mistakenly released from jail - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/loudoun-murder-charge-released/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/loudoun-murder-charge-released/ |
Fatal police shooting in Prince William was lawful, authorities say
Jaiden Malik Carter, 19, right, was shot Sept. 1 during an exchange of gunfire with police in Woodbridge, Va. (Family photo) ( and Family photo/Family photo)
Four police detectives in Prince William County, Va., acted lawfully Sept. 1 when they opened fire on three men, killing one of them, as the men allegedly tried to rob an undercover officer during a drug operation, authorities announced Friday.
The deadly encounter occurred about 7 p.m. in the parking lot of a residential complex in Woodbridge, where the three men met with the undercover officer to sell the officer 1,000 pills of the synthetic opioid fentanyl and possibly a firearm, authorities said in a statement. Instead, the officer was robbed of the drug-buy money at gunpoint.
As backup officers converged on the scene, a brief gunfight erupted between officers and at least one of the suspects, according to police. One of the men, Jaiden M. Carter, 19, of Woodbridge, was killed, and another, Shane D. Pollard, 30, also of Woodbridge, was wounded.
The office of Prince William Commonwealth’s Attorney Amy Ashworth (D) announced Friday that it had found no “criminal liability” on the part of the officers after reviewing a report of the incident prepared by a “critical incident response team.” The team included “investigators from multiple law enforcement agencies in the Northern Virginia area,” police said in a statement. “No agency involved in the shooting was part of the independent criminal investigation.”
The undercover drug operation involved Prince William police, officers from the Manassas and Manassas Park police forces and agents of the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Authorities said in a statement that those agencies are “continuing their separate independent investigations into the shooting” to determine if their internal deadly-force policies were violated.
Police said at the time of the incident that shots were fired by two county detectives and two Manassas detectives as the three men were trying to flee in a vehicle in the 14700 block of Fox Glove Court. Joshua Wilson, a lawyer for Carter’s family, has said that Carter was killed unnecessarily and that shooting was “another example of police brutality.” Wilson did not return a phone message seeking comment on Friday’s announcement.
Calling the officers’ actions “heroic,” Prince William Police Chief Peter Newsham said in a statement: “I’d like to express our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of Mr. Carter. This is a tragedy, and any loss of life, regardless of the circumstances, is difficult.” Manassas Police Chief Doug Keene added, “The officers involved were trying to remove dangerous narcotics, fentanyl, and guns from our streets when they were faced with a life-threatening situation while being fired upon.”
Pollard, the wounded suspect, is being held on a charge of robbery resulting in death. No lawyer for him is listed in online court records. The third suspect, Jalil M. Turner, 18, of no fixed address, is being held on charges of robbery resulting in death, distribution of a controlled substance and using a firearm to commit a felony. His attorney had declined to comment on the case.
Online court records show neither Pollard nor Turner has been arraigned yet or entered a plea. | 2022-10-08T01:32:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fatal police shooting in Prince William was lawful, authorities say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/virginia-shooting-police-cleared-misconduct/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/07/virginia-shooting-police-cleared-misconduct/ |
The sanctimonious baseball purists want to elevate Aaron Judge. Don’t let them.
Aaron Judge and Barry Bonds. (Adam Hunger/AP and Liz Hafalia/San Francisco Chronicle/AP) (AP)
Because of historical denialism, it was reported in some places that New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge on Tuesday broke Major League Baseball’s single-season home run record with his 62nd blast. He didn’t. The record is 73, set by should-be Hall of Fame outfielder Barry Bonds on Oct. 7, 2001. Much of the sports journalism profession should regret the error.
But it is not surprising that the keepers of the sport have not made this clear. They rarely do. Over the years, they’ve selectively disguised dishonesty in baseball under the cloak of folklore and corrected the record only under duress.
Cap Anson’s Hall of Fame plaque venerates him as the greatest hitter and player-manager of the 19th century but ignores his role establishing the game’s color line. Many around the game still celebrate Babe Ruth as the greatest player and slugger despite his excelling during the 60 years when Black athletes weren’t allowed to play the game — under a racist policy spearheaded by Anson that the game’s historians neutered in description as a mere “gentlemen’s agreement.”
For half a century, the game celebrated Bobby Thomson’s 1951 walk-off, pennant-winning home run for the New York Giants as “The Shot Heard ’Round the World” until Joshua Prager exposed in the Wall Street Journal in 2001 that a Giants coach with a handheld telescope stole signals and electronically relayed to the batter what pitch he would be thrown.
And now much of baseball’s cognoscenti would have you believe Roger Maris has been the home run king, given the 61 homers he hit in 1961 — one more than Ruth smacked in 1927 against all-White competition — though if Maris accomplished his feat during a later era, it might have raised all manner of suspicion. After all, it was an anomaly of a season for Maris; he tallied one-and-a-half times as many home runs as he had or would in any other campaign of his career. It also came during a season when Yankees superstar Mickey Mantle was forced out of part of the pennant race by an infection he suffered after being injected by Max Jacobson, a doctor described at the time as an amphetamine dispenser, a quack. Jane Leavy’s Mantle biography, “The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle and the End of America’s Childhood,” said the injection was described as a “vitamin” shot. Speculation over the years suggested the shot was a cocktail of steroids and amphetamines, but Leavy said she did not believe it contained either.
New York Yankees star Aaron Judge became the most prolific single-season home run hitter who did not play in baseball's steroid era on Oct. 5 in Arlington, Tex. (Video: Jackson Barton/The Washington Post, Photo: Ron Jenkins/Getty Images/The Washington Post)
But somehow, some way, Maris and Mantle, Thomson and Ruth, and all those who’ve excelled in between and around them — except for Bonds and a few of his peers — still pass baseball’s purity test. They accomplished what they accomplished, but Bonds somehow did not, according to the baseball intelligentsia and its manufactured sense of holiness about a game for which so many records are built upon a reality as sturdy as a heap of sawdust.
If there has ever been a sport more sanctimonious than baseball, I don’t know it. The keepers of the game have found more religion than the greatest evolutionary anthropologists.
Many of their targets committed supposed crimes against the game — not crimes against humanity, like those committed by the crooks and violent offenders, including Klansmen, who are among baseball’s honored.
Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader, is still held out of the Hall of Fame because he bet on baseball, but the other greatest hitter in the game — Ty Cobb, also a jerk by all accounts — was commemorated in the inaugural class in 1936 despite being implicated in a game-fixing scheme years earlier.
Gaylord Perry was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1991 despite admitting in his 1974 memoir, “Me and the Spitter,” that he illegally doctored the ball with spit, Vaseline or K-Y jelly.
As John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball, told the New York Times years ago: “Plaster saints is not what we have in the Hall of Fame. Many were far from moral exemplars.”
John Feinstein: Aaron Judge is chasing real history, not Barry Bonds’s phony version
The perpetration of Bonds as an unworthy holder of the home run title — single-season and all-time — didn’t begin when his former wife accused him of physical abuse. It didn’t commence when he was sentenced for misleading a grand jury investigating charges of steroid use. It began when he was anointed the leader in the steroid era clubhouse, an era that lasted who knows how long but probably not as long as baseball’s Jim Crow era. The national nausea was summed up perhaps most disturbingly by now-retired longtime sports columnist Jim Reeves of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, who wrote upon Bonds’s successful ascent: “It is now officially a national day of mourning. Black bunting should hang from every ballpark in America. A riderless black horse, its saddle empty, its stirrups filled by a pair of Hank Aaron’s cleats turned backward, should be led around every warning track tonight. The greatest record in sports has fallen to a liar and a cheat.”
But all Bonds did was what the others before him did: He was the best among his contemporaries, no matter what theoretical ills defined that contemporary period. Unless and until those before him are so cited, the game’s keepers haven’t a leg to stand on in disqualifying Bonds. To do so is the height of disingenuousness.
Judge pointed out as much as he approached Maris’s mark.
“[Bonds’s 73 is] the record,” Judge told the San Francisco Chronicle last month. “I watched him do it. I stayed up late watching him do it. That’s the record. No one can take that from him.”
Still, some of those Judge spoke to will try to diminish Bonds. They will ignore Judge’s observation, no matter how truthful, to continue maybe the greatest tradition in baseball — upholding the mythology of its greatest mileposts. | 2022-10-08T02:02:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Barry Bonds, not Aaron Judge, remains the home run king - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/05/aaron-judge-barry-bonds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/05/aaron-judge-barry-bonds/ |
Hans Niemann, here playing in St. Louis, has been accused of cheating by five-time world champion Magnus Carlsen. (Lennart Ootes/The Grand Chess Tour)
In a 72-page report released Tuesday night, a major online chess platform found that Hans Niemann “likely cheated” on its site more frequently and at a later age than he has publicly acknowledged.
A 19-year-old American grandmaster, Niemann has been at the center of a storm in the chess world since early last month, when an upset victory over world No. 1 Magnus Carlsen was followed by Carlsen hinting that something nefarious had occurred. Niemann subsequently said he had cheated in matches on Chess.com when he was 12 and 16 years old but insisted he had not since then repeated what he described as “an absolutely ridiculous mistake.” Niemann added he had never cheated “in a tournament with prize money.”
Carlsen, a Norwegian grandmaster, then staged a protest of Niemann by withdrawing from a rematch after playing just one move. Late last month, Carlsen gave voice to his actions and accused Niemann of having “cheated more — and more recently — than he has publicly admitted.” Tuesday’s report from Chess.com, which bills itself as “the No. 1 platform for online chess,” added some backing to Carlsen’s unspecific accusations.
Pointing to its “best-in-class” cheating-detection system, the website claimed Niemann “likely cheated” in more than 100 online games, including some that occurred after he had turned 17 and took place in prize-money events.
In chess, a long history of cheating, chicanery and Cold War shenanigans
At the same time, Chess.com said its investigation failed to turn up an abundance of “concrete statistical evidence” that Niemann cheated in his over-the-board (i.e., in-person) win over Carlsen or in a number of other OTB games. However, the site added that it found “suspicious” certain aspects of that victory, which broke Carlsen’s 53-game OTB winning streak despite Niemann playing from the slightly disadvantageous black position and noted his “statistically extraordinary” rise in the sport.
In his first public comments following the release of the Chess.com findings, which were first reported by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Niemann said Wednesday that he was “not going to back down … regardless of the pressure that I’m under.”
Speaking in St. Louis at the U.S. Chess Championships, where he won a first-round matchup with 15-year-old Christopher Yoo, Niemann referred to a cryptic comment he made in August, right after he defeated Carlsen in a game at the FTX Crypto Cup in Miami. “Chess speaks for itself,” he told an interviewer then before walking away.
After his win Wednesday against Yoo, Niemann said, “I think that this game is a message to everyone. You know, this entire thing started with me saying, ‘Chess speaks for itself,’ and I think this game spoke for itself and showed the chess player that I am. It also showed that I’m not going to back down, and I’m going to play my best chess here, regardless of the pressure that I’m under.”
Officials with the Saint Louis Chess Club, which is hosting the OTB tournament, did not specifically address Niemann in response to a request for comment but expressed the club’s commitment to preventing cheating more generally.
“We take great pride in being able to host the top chess players from across the world at the Saint Louis Chess Club,” executive director Tony Rich said in a statement Wednesday morning. “As with all events, it’s imperative that we maintain high standards for fair tournament play. We always have — and will continue — to implement extensive anti-cheating measures.
“As we prepare for the upcoming U.S. Chess and U.S. Women’s Chess Championships, we anticipate hosting another successful event, complete with rigorous protocols to ensure the best chess players in the country can continue to compete on an even playing field.”
The U.S. Chess Federation addressed the controversy Wednesday, saying in a statement: “We have every confidence in our trusted partners at the Saint Louis Chess Club, along with their world-class arbiting team, to ensure that fair play standards in the U.S. Championship and other events they organize are met.”
Chess.com said it removed Niemann from its platform and disinvited him from a major competition it is staging. The site said it dealt with him confidentially, keeping with its regular policy, and only began to make public statements on his situation after he spoke about their dealings. Niemann served an earlier suspension from the site and admitted to cheating, Chess.com said, after its “cheating-detection software and team uncovered suspicious play” at that time.
“We believe Hans is an incredibly strong player and a talented individual,” Chess.com stated in its report. “That said, given his history on our site, we did not believe we could ensure that he would play fairly in our online events until we could re-evaluate the evidence and our protocols. Nevertheless, and to be clear, it is not our position that Hans should be limited or banned from OTB chess.”
Niemann: "After the game against Magnus...I get an email from https://t.co/bYjFcPulIk saying that they have privately removed access to my account and that they have uninvited me to the Global Chess Championship."
(5/10) pic.twitter.com/5bS9Nvilmv
The International Chess Federation (FIDE), the sport’s governing body, announced in late September that it was launching an investigation of Carlsen’s accusations of cheating and Niemann’s comments on the matter. FIDE said its probe would be led by members of its Fair Play Commission and would include “the possibility to call for a consultation with external experts wherever analysis is required.” Chess.com indicated it was prepared to cooperate with FIDE’s investigation should it be asked to do so.
Carlsen said that during his loss last month, he “had the impression that [Niemann] wasn’t tense or even fully concentrating on the game in critical positions, while outplaying me as black in a way I think only a handful of players can do.”
Arousing suspicion from others was Niemann’s adroit counter after Carlsen made a relatively unusual opening. Niemann said afterward that “by some miracle” he had looked into the possibility of that sequence earlier in the day, adding, “It’s so ridiculous that I checked it.”
In its report, Chess.com pointed to other postgame comments by Niemann, in which he proposed a move that could have been made and then requested to see an engine’s evaluation of the move.
“This analysis and dependence on the engine,” the report stated, “seem to be at odds with the level of preparation that Hans claimed was at play in the game and the level of analysis needed to defeat the World Chess Champion.”
Chess.com claimed its cheating-detection system — which uses comparisons to both engine-recommended moves and a given player’s competitive profile, as well as input from “a panel of trained analysts” — had led to confessions of wrongdoing from four players in the FIDE top 100. In addition, the system was said to have resulted in the closure of online accounts of “dozens” of grandmasters, plus those of hundreds of other notable players.
The site reiterated that it was “unaware of any concrete evidence proving that Hans is cheating over the board or has ever cheated over the board.” Chess.com added that while some of Niemann’s recent online play appeared suspicious, it was not aware of evidence that he had cheated after August 2020. Chess.com also downplayed the possibility of widespread cheating on its platform, saying it estimated fewer than 0.14 percent of its users engage in such behavior.
Unhappy days are here again for D.C. pro sports | 2022-10-08T02:02:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chess.com investigation alleges ‘likely’ cheating by Hans Niemann - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/05/chess-com-investigation-cheating-hans-niemann-magnus-carlsen/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/05/chess-com-investigation-cheating-hans-niemann-magnus-carlsen/ |
Nationals Manager Dave Martinez takes the ball from starter Erick Fedde after the right-hander failed to make it out of the third inning in the final game of the season. (Frank Franklin II/AP)
César Hernández and Lane Thomas were both in the starting lineup for Washington in its season finale at Citi Field in New York, a small fact that earned the pair the distinction of being the only two Nationals to start April’s season opener and Wednesday’s closer.
Being on the field for the bookends of a 107-loss season is testament to staying power — and to the roster tumult that such a campaign brings. Hernández and Thomas took up different positions in the 9-2 loss to the Mets than they had in April, a 5-1 loss at Nationals Park, but they were present for the start and for the end, which came after a two-hour rain delay on a gray afternoon in Queens.
The losses were the most in club history; 59 of them came against the NL East, a division they had dominated during their dominant run of the past decade.
“This division’s good, this division’s going to be tough,” Manager Dave Martinez said. “In order to compete, we’ll need some pieces but we’re going to give an opportunity to our younger players. And what I saw from our younger players is that they’re not afraid. And they’re going to go out there and compete.”
Erick Fedde’s final start was short and included nine earned runs in just 2⅓ innings. In the first, he allowed a three-run homer to Mark Canha. In the second came Francisco Lindor’s three-run double before James McCann blasted another three-run shot in the third. Terrance Gore — who hadn’t recorded a hit since 2019 — singled in the third to end Fedde’s outing. Fedde’s season ended 6-13 with a 5.81 ERA.
Hernández, playing third and hitting sixth, went 1 for 4. Thomas, who led off and played right field, finished 0 for 4. Alex Call hit a two-run homer in fifth to account for Washington’s runs.
The rest of Martinez’s lineup was made up of three players who were in Class AAA Rochester to open the year (Luis García, Joey Meneses and Ildemaro Vargas). Another started with High-A Wilmington (Israel Pineda). The remaining three were with different organizations when the season began (Call, Josh Palacios, Luke Voit).
It was a stark contrast to the beginning of the season, when hope sprung that a lineup of place-holding veterans could produce until the team’s young prospects were ready. At best, the offense was expected to hit for power with a core of Hernández, Josh Bell, Nelson Cruz, Maikel Franco, Keibert Ruiz in his first season and, of course, Juan Soto.
But the team went through cold spells at the plate for long stretches of the season. Only Bell and Soto hit for power, but even Soto never quite found his rhythm at the plate. Cruz struggled for most of the season and he’s been sidelined for nearly a month with eye inflammation and will require surgery. Hernández, who hit 21 homers in 2021, hit just one this season.
They were hardly alone in their struggles. But
that’s not to say there weren’t bright spots. The bullpen performed well as the Nationals took gambles on injury-plagued relievers that paid off.
The silver lining, of course, is that some of the Nationals’ young core got meaningful reps in the majors, even if there were growing pains. Ruiz improved as a game caller and showed flashes of potential at the plate. CJ Abrams, acquired in the Aug. 2 deal with San Diego that sent Soto and Bell to the Padres, and García have established a double play duo up the middle.
Josiah Gray flashed at points on the mound with strong breaking pitches, though his propensity to allow the long ball is a cause for concern. Cade Cavalli made his debut, though the excitement was dampened by shoulder inflammation that kept him out for the remainder of the year after just one start. But Gray, Cavalli and left-hander MacKenzie Gore — who rehabbed from elbow inflammation after coming over in the Soto/Bell trade — should form the core of next year’s rotation.
“Our starting pitching needs to get better, that’s for sure,” Martinez said. “Our season’s over right now, for the players. But the work is just beginning for myself, (General Manager Mike Rizzo) and the front office. We got a lot of work to do to get to spring training. I’m looking forward to this winter, getting things done and being ready for spring training.”
And while this season provided glimpses of the future, it also left a handful of questions unanswered. To name a few: Will Victor Robles — who suffered a groin strain Tuesday — find himself at the plate? Will Patrick Corbin regain the form he pitched at in 2019? Will Stephen Strasburg ever pitch again? Can any of them contribute to the team’s next playoff run?
The answers to those questions will play a large part in determining just how quickly such a run will come. Rizzo reiterated his message Tuesday afternoon that he’s seen the bottom of a Nationals rebuild before. And he’s right. Rebuilds take time. Hernández and Thomas were there at the start and end of 2022. Who will be there at the end of this rebuild? | 2022-10-08T02:02:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nationals close the season how they opened it: By losing to the Mets - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/05/nationals-mets-season-over/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/05/nationals-mets-season-over/ |
The Cavaliers host Louisville at noon Eastern on Saturday (ACC Network)
Virginia Coach Tony Elliott has struggled in his first season as a head coach. (Ben McKeown/AP)
Nearly halfway through his inaugural season as coach of the Virginia football team, Tony Elliott finds himself in an unfamiliar situation. It is one that could jeopardize the Cavaliers’ prospects of extending their streak of bowl eligibility to six seasons given a backloaded schedule.
Virginia’s two-game losing streak marks the first time Elliott has been part of a staff that has dropped consecutive games since 2011, when he was in his first season at Clemson as an assistant under Dabo Swinney, the architect of the ACC’s winningest program during the College Football Playoff era.
So Saturday’s homecoming showdown against Louisville features somewhat of a playoff atmosphere. Not only are the Cavaliers (2-3, 0-2 ACC) seeking to end their slide, but they also know opportunities for victories down the stretch figure to be far more demanding.
The Cardinals (2-3, 0-3) enter with uncertainty surrounding the status of starting quarterback Malik Cunningham, who is being monitored for concussion-like symptoms, according to Coach Scott Satterfield. Cunningham was injured during last weekend’s 34-33 loss to Boston College, giving way to backup Brock Domann, and is listed as day-to-day.
“I really think this is a big game for us, just to get our momentum going into the bye week,” said Cavaliers cornerback Anthony Johnson, who transferred to Virginia after beginning his career with Louisville. “That’d be really big, and then we’re in Scott Stadium. We’ve got to make sure we defend our home.”
The Cavaliers are hosting a Power Five school for the first time this season on the heels of a 38-17 defeat last weekend at Duke. They fell behind by 21-0 early in the second quarter and never recovered.
A similar blueprint plagued Virginia one game earlier. It trailed Syracuse 16-0 at halftime at JMA Wireless Dome before rallying to take a 20-19 lead late in the fourth quarter. The Cavaliers failed to complete the comeback when a costly penalty contributed to Syracuse kicking a field goal with 1:14 to play for a 22-20 triumph.
Self-inflicted errors proved costly in both games. Virginia committed 12 penalties for 105 yards against the Orange and six for 87 yards against the Blue Devils, who limited the Cavaliers to 295 yards of total offense, including just 93 rushing.
“We’ll get a good indicator of where we are kind of going into the bye week and get some identity for ourselves,” said Virginia tight end Grant Misch, a native of Sterling who played high school football at Potomac Falls. “It’s a good middle point, a good ACC stretch coming up, a good way to find ourselves.”
Exactly who this iteration of Virginia is remains unclear, at least offensively given the statistical regression of quarterback Brennan Armstrong. The dual-threat southpaw elected to come back for a fifth year to fortify his NFL draft stock, but Armstrong’s production has tailed off dramatically from the record-setting numbers he posted over the previous two seasons.
The Cavaliers’ career and single-season leader in total offense ranks 10th out of 14 quarterbacks in the conference this year in passing yards per game (210.0). Last season Armstrong led the ACC in that category (404.5).
Perhaps most alarming is Armstrong’s dip in completion percentage, which this season stands at 52.0. He ended 2021 with a completion percentage of 65.2, good for fourth in the ACC.
Also troubling have been Armstrong’s five interceptions, representing half of his total for all of last season.
“I think everyone just doing the little things on their job, whether it’s not running the route precisely enough or dropping the ball or the timing with the quarterback,” Misch said when asked for an explanation of Armstrong’s statistical decline. “That’s what we’re trying to work more on every day is precision and just getting that timing and chemistry with BA.”
A leaky and inexperienced offensive line, meanwhile, has compelled Armstrong to release the ball sooner than he had been accustomed to while he continues to develop a command of the principles Elliott and first-year offensive coordinator Des Kitchings have installed.
In addition, the rushing attack has provided only modest support. The Cavaliers are ninth in the conference at 154.4 yards per game and average 94.7 against Power Five opponents this season.
“I’m not looking at the schedule,” Elliott said. “Right now I’m trying to figure out schematically what we need to do as a staff to be successful against Louisville. What do I do in conjunction with the staff to help find the right motivation for these guys to be detail oriented, focus on the little things, not listen to the voices on the outside?
“Focus on what they can control. They can control their attitude they come to work [with] every day, the quality of the work they put in, then how prepared they show up on Saturday to play.” | 2022-10-08T02:03:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia can end two-game skid against wounded Louisville - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/05/virginia-louisville-football/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/05/virginia-louisville-football/ |
Fernando Gomes (left) and Luis Rubiales welcome Ukraine Football Federation President Andriy Pavelko (right) in a 2030 World Cup bid. (Martial Trezzini/Keystone/AP)
Ukraine has joined the 2030 World Cup bid by Spain and Portugal, with the Spanish federation saying it reflects “not an Iberian bid but a European bid” in its announcement.
“We’ve taken a step forward today,” Luis Rubiales, president of the Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) said Wednesday, via Reuters, at the Nyon, Switzerland, headquarters of UEFA, the governing body for European soccer.
Fernando Gomes, president of the Portuguese Football Federation (FPF), added that the move has “the full support” of UEFA, saying, “football is more than football. It’s a logical and natural decision.”
The 2022 World Cup will begin Nov. 20 in Qatar, and the 2026 tournament will take place in the United States, Canada and Mexico. Gomes noted that, although 2030 seems distant, “Ukraine cannot disappear from our minds once the war is over. We have to give them hope.”
The FPF praised “the example of tenacity and resilience set by the Ukrainian people” in a statement. “This proposal aims to contribute through the power of football to the recovery of a country undergoing reconstruction.”
Other likely bids could come from a collaboration of Egypt, Greece and Saudi Arabia or from a South American group of Uruguay, Argentina, Paraguay and Chile. By 2030, the World Cup will have expanded to a 48-team tournament, adding 16 teams to the current format starting in 2026.
In February, Russia invaded Ukraine in the largest military invasion in Europe since World War II, with many nations standing with Ukraine. At the moment, the partnership is more symbolic and aspirational, sending a message to citizens of the war-torn country.
“The candidacy [of Spain, Portugal and Ukraine] strengthens ties with Europe by generating hope,” the RFEF said, “and providing reconstruction tools to the Ukrainian people, who have expressed their pride and gratitude for participating in this project.” | 2022-10-08T02:03:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine, Spain and Portugal join forces for 2030 World Cup bid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/05/world-cup-2030-bid-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/05/world-cup-2030-bid-ukraine/ |
Maryland hosts Purdue at noon Eastern on Saturday (Big Ten Network)
Maryland Terrapins running back Antwain Littleton II has scored five touchdowns in six games this season. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Before barreling down the field, leaping over linemen and developing this scoring habit, Antwain Littleton II had to change. The young running back nicknamed Baby Bus leans on his power and physicality; that’s why defenders have such a hard time tackling him to the ground and how he manages to fall forward, past the first-down marker, for an extra few yards. But all these touchdown runs have roots that stretch back to over a year ago when Littleton decided to transform his body and committed to see it through.
If he hadn’t done so, “I’d probably still be on scout team trying to prove to the coaches that I could play or even be a running back in college,” Littleton said.
The Maryland redshirt freshman has shown he can excel at this position, reinforcing that belief each time he plows into the end zone. He arrived in College Park at 299 pounds and couldn’t pass the return-to-campus conditioning test. This season, he’s playing at around 240 pounds after overhauling his habits and revamping his mind-set.
The reward has come in the end zone: In the Terps’ 4-1 (1-1 Big Ten) start, Littleton has scored six times, picking up nearly seven yards per carry — a mark boosted by a handful of explosive runs. He also scored in last season’s bowl game, giving him the longest active streak of rushing touchdowns in the Football Bowl Subdivision, according to Maryland, and he could extend it Saturday at home against Purdue.
One injury, two struggles: How a football play left lasting impacts
There’s no question now: He’s a running back — a dynamic and dependable Big Ten running back.
When Littleton enrolled at Maryland in the summer of 2021, he knew he would need to work on his nutrition and conditioning, even though he never expected this radical of a change. The coronavirus pandemic upended his normal routine and activity. His younger brother has asthma, so his mom wanted the family to be careful not to contract the virus, which can particularly effect people with respiratory issues. Littleton played only one game in a shortened spring season his senior year, so he had hardly spent time in shoulder pads as he prepared to begin his Maryland career.
“Before I came to college,” Littleton said, “I was very lazy.”
He played video games, binge-watched TV shows and snacked while hanging out with his dog, Seven. Like most high-schoolers, he had heard of the food pyramid, “but it’s never anything that you really paid attention to,” he said. Littleton loved sugary drinks, especially apple juice and fruit punch, and he would have pizza a couple of times a week: “Almost a whole box,” he said, describing his preferred pie as one with “chicken, bacon, spinach, things like that,” rather than “a bland pizza with just one topping.”
Littleton had always been a big, strong running back, playing at St. John’s College High at around 260 pounds, but his health deteriorated during that pandemic-altered senior year, just before he headed to Maryland.
Ryan Davis, the director of football strength and conditioning, “did nothing but keep it real for me from the start,” Littleton said. “He basically was telling me, ‘At this weight, at this level, you won’t be able to sustain the workouts or the practices.’”
So Littleton went straight to Lauren Antle, the director of football nutrition. She remembers Littleton, a freshman at the time, saying: “I want to get on top of this. I want to change. I know I came in heavier than everyone thought.” His desire to improve, she said, became the root of his success.
Before Maryland players are cleared to participate in team runs, they have to meet a certain threshold, determined by their position, on the PACER test — something that “98 percent of our team can come in the first day and they can do it in their sleep,” Davis said. After Jordan McNair died in 2018 from suffering a heatstroke during a summer conditioning workout, Maryland players take this test indoors after extended breaks away from campus because, if a player doesn’t pass, Davis said, it wouldn’t be safe for him to run with the others.
Littleton kept trying to pass every day — “one of the worst things I probably went through because it’s a real mental thing,” he said. When he finally reached the benchmark for running backs, he felt relief and wanted to cry. He called his mom, overjoyed he could participate in the full team workouts.
Davis focused on micro-level goals with Littleton. First: Pass the PACER test. Then: Develop consistency. Davis could tell the running back had a high upside because he didn’t have a history of regimented strength training. But for a while, when Littleton still clung to those inactive weekends on the couch, “I was like the bad guy chasing him around,” Davis said.
Eventually, Littleton settled into a groove. He never considered changing positions and instead remained devoted to changing himself. Antle, who plans all of the team meals, is often available in the cafeteria and always reachable via text or FaceTime. Littleton asked her constantly: “What do you think I should eat for breakfast today?” And then he would do the same for lunch and dinner.
“It was a very constant communication cycle,” said Antle, who focuses on guiding players through decisions so they can learn what foods make them feel and perform their best.
Littleton practiced with the scout team throughout last season, appearing in just two games. When he scored in the Pinstripe Bowl, he was around 260 pounds and already months into the slow transformation process. After that season, when he knew he would have a chance to grab a larger role, he dialed in on his mission.
The staffers who accompanied Littleton on this path shift all credit to the player. He decided he wanted to be a Power Five running back, and he turned into someone who would pop into Davis’s office to say hello early in the mornings. Davis thinks Littleton wanted to make sure his coach knew he had arrived early. Rarely does a player go through a change of this magnitude. It took a year, but that’s how he managed to lose the weight — and maintain his muscle — in a healthy way.
“I just never want him to forget how hard it was and how well he did it and how well he handled it,” Antle said. “I try to tell him that I'm proud of him all the time.”
This season, Littleton is working to replenish his body properly after practices so he can maintain his weight. He loves watermelon and knows it helps him stay hydrated, and if he has pizza, “I can’t even eat past three big slices.” The box sits in his refrigerator for the next couple of days. He talks about the benefits of stretching and how abandoning his “lazy habit” improved his mental state and his academic performance. When he returned to campus in the winter and again in the summer, he had no problem with the conditioning test.
Littleton embraces a phrase he adopted during high school: “last of a rare breed.” He knows his physical qualities make him special. A running back with size is hard to stop. And now that he learned how to optimize his abilities, he can thrive.
“It’s not great because you’re good at what you do,” Davis said. “It’s not great because you had a 100-yard game or you scored a touchdown. It’s great, to me, because you are doing the very thing that you said you wanted to do when you got here.” | 2022-10-08T02:03:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Slimmed-down Antwain Littleton II is a touchdown machine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/antwain-littleton-touchdowns-weight-loss/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/antwain-littleton-touchdowns-weight-loss/ |
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