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TCU's Quentin Johnston, left, and Max Duggan had plenty to celebrate this past weekend against Oklahoma. (Washington Post illustration/AP Photo/Ron Jenkins)
Kentucky, Illinois and the Stanford-Oregon over got us to the window this past weekend, giving this column its third straight 3-1 effort. At 9-3 over the past three weeks and 13-7 for the season, we’re off to a great (and hopefully sustainable) start.
No. 17 TCU (-7) at No. 19 Kansas, noon, Fox Sports 1
With their first 5-0 start and first national ranking since 2009, the Jayhawks have been one of the fun stories of the season, and ESPN’s “College GameDay” will be making its first trip to Lawrence for Saturday’s game against the Horned Frogs. Sadly, they’re about to hit a speed bump.
Kansas was lucky to reach this rarefied air. In this past weekend’s 14-11 win over Iowa State, the Jayhawks simply could not get the Cyclones off the field. And were it not for some poor kicking on Iowa State’s part, this game against TCU probably would be taking on far less meaning. The Cyclones had drives of 14, 12 and eight plays end with a missed field goal, including an errant 37-yarder with 32 seconds left that would have tied the score. Iowa State converted on 4 of 5 fourth-down attempts, and Kansas’s opponents have a success rate of 43.96 percent on third and fourth down, which ranks 102nd in the country (TCU’s offense, meanwhile, ranks 13th in that category).
The Horned Frogs couldn’t convert either fourth-down attempt this past weekend against Oklahoma, but it didn’t matter: TCU clobbered the Sooners, 55-24, a score that could have been worse had the Horned Frogs not eased off the throttle in the second half. TCU features four offensive players who average at least 6.5 yards per carry, and three of them — running backs Kendre Miller and Emari Demercado and quarterback Max Duggan — combined to average a gaudy 15 yards per carry and score five times against the Sooners.
When he wasn’t rushing for 116 yards against the Sooners, Duggan somehow found the time to complete 22 of 32 passes for 3o2 yards and three scores, so it’s not as if TCU is lacking balance. Kansas’s defense ranks 96th nationally in passing success rate, and while its offense has been able to put points on the board, I’m not sure that’s going to be enough against a TCU defense that ranks seventh in overall success rate. Give me the Horned Frogs.
No. 13 Kentucky (-10) vs. South Carolina, 7:30 p.m., SEC Network
The Wildcats should have beaten Mississippi this past weekend. Their final three drives all ventured into Rebels territory, but Kentucky turned it over on downs once, fumbled twice, came away with zero points and lost, 22-19. Take away that bum luck and the Wildcats would still be a top 10 team, and they probably would have been favored by more here against a fairly pedestrian Gamecocks squad. Instead, we’re getting some value on the favorite.
South Carolina (3-2) has beaten 1-4 Georgia State, 1-5 Charlotte and 1-3 Football Championship Subdivision team South Carolina State, and it ranks eighth in rushing success rate (one of the few advanced stats where it excels). But much of that is based on the wins over those latter two bad teams, when the Gamecocks averaged 6.7 yards per carry and rushed for a combined 480 yards. In its season opener against Georgia State (a team that now ranks 118th in rushing yards allowed per game), South Carolina managed just 79 rushing yards and averaged 2.5 yards per carry. In losses to Georgia and Arkansas — by a combined 55 points — the Gamecocks averaged a meager 2.2 yards per carry.
Kentucky’s defense ranks ninth nationally in rushing success rate. Yes, the Wildcats allowed Mississippi to rush for 186 yards, but take away Quinshon Judkins’s 48-yard touchdown run in the first quarter and the Rebels averaged only 3.6 yards per carry, two yards below their season average.
South Carolina’s defense ranks 117th in success rate, and I see the Wildcats’ offense getting more into a groove as running back Chris Rodriguez — 6.7 yards per carry and 26 rushing touchdowns over the previous three seasons — works his way back from his season-opening four-game suspension. Rodriguez rushed for 72 yards and a score against a pretty good Ole Miss defense. Add it all up, and Kentucky covers again.
Akron (+11.5) at Ohio University, 2 p.m., ESPN3
We’re going with a bit of a deep cut here; these are two of the nation’s worst teams (Ohio ranks 121st in terms of overall SP+ efficiency; Akron is 127th). But are there 12 points separating them? Probably not.
The Zips have shown some improvement since getting pummeled by Michigan State and Tennessee by a combined 115-6 in consecutive September games. Quarterback DJ Irons left the game against the Spartans with an injury in the second quarter and labored through the pain against the Volunteers, but he threw for three scores and ran for 105 yards and another touchdown in this past weekend’s three-point loss to Bowling Green. Irons might be able to find similar success against an Ohio team that gave up 398 passing yards and 77 rushing yards to Kent State quarterback Collin Schlee this past weekend.
About that game: Kent State needed overtime to beat Ohio despite being a 13-point favorite, but the result was a little deceiving. The Golden Flashes piled up 736 yards and 36 first downs and averaged 7.7 yards per play, but they fumbled six times (losing two of them) and had two other drives end with missed field goals, one of them with the score tied at the end of regulation. The Bobcats also moved the ball plenty — they had a 300-yard passer, 100-yard rusher and 100-yard receiver — but punted eight times and managed all of 24 points, including overtime.
Both of these teams are plainly awful: Akron needed overtime to beat FCS St. Francis (Pa.) in its season opener and Ohio allowed FCS Fordham to score 52 points on Sept. 24, a game in which the Bobcats needed a miracle comeback to win (they scored 14 points in the final 52 seconds, the last touchdown coming on a 42-yard fumble recovery as the clock expired). But I’ll take the Zips to be just good enough to keep it close.
Army at No. 15 Wake Forest, 7:30 p.m., ESPN3: Wake Forest team total over 42.5 points (DraftKings)
The Demon Deacons and Black Knights played a memorably batty game last season, with the Demon Deacons winning, 70-56, in a game that featured more than 1,200 yards of offense (Wake Forest averaged 12.3 yards every time it snapped the ball, while Army averaged a mere 7.2 yards per play).
What if I told you that Wake Forest’s offense is just as spry this season, while Army’s defense has gotten demonstrably worse? The Demon Deacons have scored at least 31 points in all five games this season, and three of those games were against Power Five defenses. The Black Knights, meanwhile, have given up 38, 41 and 31 to the three Football Bowl Subdivision teams it has played, and it’s not like those three teams (Coastal Carolina, Texas San Antonio and Georgia State) are known for having truly dynamite offenses.
This season, Army ranks 130th in defensive success rate, 127th in rushing yards allowed per game, 120th in rushing yards allowed per carry and 108th in yards allowed per pass attempt (8.0). The Black Knights give up 3.86 points per drive, and only four teams are worse.
Wake Forest’s RPO mesh attack should find little to stop it. The Demon Deacons rank 10th in passing success rate, and quarterback Sam Hartman has thrown 15 touchdown passes against only two interceptions (the same number of picks that Army has compiled as a team). Wake Forest’s rushing attack hasn’t done much this season, but now it goes up against an Army rushing defense that’s 130th nationally in terms of success rate. The Demon Deacons probably can score at will here, easily getting over this team total. | 2022-10-08T02:03:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | College football best bets, picks, favorites, underdogs, over/under - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/college-football-picks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/college-football-picks/ |
Daniel Snyder still wants to blame everyone but himself
Washington Commanders owners Tanya and Daniel Snyder before an Oct. 2 game against the Dallas Cowboys. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
What’s important to know about the Washington NFL franchise, which has been owned by Daniel Snyder for more than a quarter of its existence, is that whatever happened there in the past is not at all his fault, but what is happening right now — as the organization tries to reinvent itself — is completely his doing, even though it is happening as the NFL has said he can’t be involved in the franchise’s day-to-day operations because of previous poor judgment about the culture he oversaw.
Get it? Got it.
“The culture is actually damn good,” Bruce Allen, then Snyder’s team president, said on the day the team fired Jay Gruden as coach three years ago. Those words are now printed on T-shirts worn by a fan base that can show its face only if its tongue is firmly planted in its cheek.
Allen, of course, was responsible — wholly responsible — for a culture that was rotten to its core, misogynistic and even racist. How could Snyder have known, what with his office being a full 20-second walk down the hall from Allen’s in Ashburn? What a lowlife this Allen guy was. Had to purge the franchise of him. Only took a decade.
“It is widely acknowledged that the single most significant step the Team took to remedy its toxic workplace was to rid itself of Mr. Allen,” Tom Davis, the former congressman from Virginia who now is representing Snyder’s NFL team, wrote in a letter Wednesday to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. “The fraternity-house culture that Mr. Allen instilled in the Commanders organization is the principal reason that the Commanders came under investigation in the first place.”
Because Allen was so obviously and completely deplorable, it is unthinkable that Snyder would have said, “Bruce Allen is the personification of an NFL winner,” which he did in a team-issued statement the day he hired Allen as general manager in December 2009, or that he would have amplified that sentiment by saying in another team-issued statement, “I think the world of Bruce Allen,” which he did on the day Allen was given a promotion to team president in 2014.
“Giving him both titles is appropriate,” Snyder said back then.
Davis, in his letter to the Oversight Committee that is investigating the culture created by Snyder — excuse me, Allen — pointed out the committee could have interviewed a long list of current Commanders employees whose tenures dated back to Allen’s time.
“Those employees would, almost universally, have identified Mr. Allen’s departure as the date that the Team culture began to turn around,” Davis wrote.
Darn right. At the time of Allen’s departure, he had worked there almost exactly a decade. Snyder had owned the team for only — checks notes — 20 years. How was Snyder to have a handle on the environment in which his employees worked, much less know that the man he hired, promoted and empowered had, as Davis wrote, “racist, misogynistic, and homophobic beliefs he tolerated and espoused in his e-mail conversations with his friends”? That could not possibly have been gleaned by Snyder, who stood side by side with Allen at practice after practice from the time Allen was hired in December 2009 to the day he was fired in December 2019.
Davis’s missive was presented as a letter to the Oversight Committee to raise questions about the motivations behind and methods used in the committee’s investigation of Snyder. In reality, it was a press release. There were victims who endured the culture of the Commanders, sure. The real victim, the public needs to know, is Daniel M. Snyder.
This is who Snyder is: When pushed to apologize for gross misconduct, he apologizes. “On behalf of the organization,” he wrote to his employees in the wake of the initial Washington Post report on the franchise’s workplace culture, “we want to apologize to each of you and to everyone affected by this situation.”
But when the moment has passed and the heat is turned up, he can’t help himself in blaming others. He is a middle-schooler who invites his buddies over to play stickball, and when a window breaks he immediately points at everyone else. He wants credit for anything good and absolution for anything bad.
Look, I’m not here to stand up for the congressional investigation. Maybe Davis is right in pointing out omissions in the pool of interviewees and redactions of presentations that result in misleading conclusions. Given the explosive and thorough reporting on this situation in The Post over the past two-plus years, there can’t be high expectations that congressional staffers with more important issues on their plates and an apparently small witness list will turn up much more.
But this entire affair presented Snyder’s best opportunity to reset his reputation. The steps aren’t that difficult. Just reiterate, over and over: The previous culture was unacceptable and unforgivable. I am responsible. I have to fix it.
Instead, it has devolved to: Look at the culture these other people created and the mess I had to clean up.
It’s instructive that the first headline item in Davis’s nine-page letter reads “Evidence Regarding the Team’s Turnaround and the Current State of Its Workplace,” and the second reads “Disregard Evidence.” Here’s the Snyder playbook in action: Building up the case for him — through team president Jason Wright’s inclusive, progressive approach — can’t help but be followed by the systematic denigration of others. Plus, there’s no acknowledgment — none — that the “Team’s Turnaround” was necessary because of the unsavory management teams Snyder installed over two decades
“That progress has not been easy,” Davis wrote. “Indeed, it has involved terminating many longtime employees who did not embody the culture that the new management team is attempting to foster. Those terminated individuals are, in many cases, resentful about their departure from the Team.”
Those terminated individuals were, in every case, hired by Snyder or Snyder’s hires. The next section of Davis’s letter disparages four former employees, including Allen, who testified before the committee or to committee staff.
Think this is just he-said, she-said stuff? It’s not. Picture a current Commanders employee who is following it all. Wright and his team may be in the midst of creating a safer, more diverse, more welcoming workplace. Snyder still owns the team and seems a scary combination of vindictive and petty. Would you feel comfortable raising red flags about workplace misconduct if your boss’s boss’s boss has such a history of striking back?
There is no divorcing Snyder from his NFL team — not its results on the field, not its environment in the building, not after 23 years. His lawyers’ letter to Congress doesn’t distance him from the culture he created and oversaw. It only draws new attention to his same old delusion. Blame Congress. Blame Bruce. Blame ex-employees with vendettas.
Washington’s NFL franchise has been of and about Daniel Snyder for going on a quarter of a century. The “single most significant step” in creating the team’s culture? It wasn’t hiring or firing Bruce Allen or anyone else. It was the day Snyder purchased the team. | 2022-10-08T02:03:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Daniel Snyder still wants to blame everyone but himself for the Commanders culture - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/daniel-snyder-bruce-allen-letter/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/daniel-snyder-bruce-allen-letter/ |
DeMatha’s Jason Moore quit basketball to wreck football offenses
Senior Jason Moore is the engine of DeMatha's dominant defense. (Scott Taetsch for The Washington Post)
When Jason Moore played quarterback for a Fort Washington flag football league as a 6-year-old, his parents instructed him to throw the ball hard at his receivers’ chests. Moore was bigger than his peers, so his passes were too strong for teammates to catch with their hands.
Moore cried after games, all of which his team lost. He hated the sport and quit after that season. Basketball, Moore thought, was more fun and suitable for his stature and athleticism.
Twelve years later, Moore is one of the best defensive lineman prospects in the country. The senior has spearheaded DeMatha’s defense, which has allowed 11 points in five games and will make the Stags a contender to win their first Washington Catholic Athletic Conference championship since 2016, as league play begins this weekend.
Moore is committed to play football at Ohio State, but he long envisioned competing in the NBA. Basketball is the sport that brought his older brother, Justin Moore, great acclaim, including the 2019 All-Met basketball player of the year award. Justin is now a standout player at Villanova, and at times Jason believed he’d follow his lead.
Through football, Jason, who’s 6-foot-6 and 260-pounds, created his own path.
Now, Moore, who leads the Stags with five sacks and eight tackles for loss, aspires to join DeMatha’s storied history by adding to the football program’s WCAC-record 24 titles. This season may be the best chance in recent years for DeMatha (4-1), which has shut out its past four opponents entering its game at Gonzaga (4-2) on Friday night.
“He hasn’t even touched how good he really can be,” said Moore’s father, Greg, “because he’s never really focused on it.”
Hoops-minded
When Justin began playing basketball on Saturday mornings at Tucker Road Community Center in Fort Washington, Greg and Keli brought their youngest son, Jason, in a stroller. Jason joined when he was eligible at age 5.
During Justin’s workouts and games, Jason practiced on side courts. In 2012, a coach saw him shooting and invited him to try out for his new Amateur Athletic Union team, Maryland’s Finest. Jason won the 8-and-under national championship in Memphis later that year.
He and Justin erected mini hoops on doors in a room in their home to play one-on-one. In their basement, the brothers used the top of window ledges as baskets. Jason used to stay up late to watch the Los Angeles Lakers and his favorite player, Kobe Bryant. Coaches compared him to NBA forward Blake Griffin.
Jason kept growing, forcing his mother to have to keep purchasing new clothes for him. She also carried his birth certificate to games because other parents complained he wasn’t competing in the correct age group.
His uncle, Dwayne, teased Jason that if he didn’t grow to 6-foot-10, he should switch to football. Jason laughed and nodded in response.
Learning football
In seventh grade, a basketball teammate encouraged Moore to play for his youth football team, the Westlake Bulldogs. Moore’s basketball footwork helped him excel as an offensive and defensive lineman. When his coach brought him on a football visit to Virginia Tech with high school players, Moore was excited about the attention coaches presented him.
DeMatha recruited Moore for basketball, and Mike Jones, the Hyattsville private school’s basketball coach at the time, encouraged football coaches to also pursue him.
When Moore was in eighth grade, former Maryland basketball coach Mark Turgeon visited his home for a visit for Justin. There, Turgeon joked with Jason: “I have to take a picture with you. I can take it to the football coach so they can get started with you early.”
While Moore intended to play junior varsity football his freshman year to condition for basketball, coaches lifted him to varsity after he dominated two games. After Moore recorded his first varsity sack in DeMatha’s home win over Saint Ignatius (Ohio) in September 2019, he received a call from Maryland running backs coach Elijah Brooks, who formerly coached DeMatha. Brooks extended Moore’s first college scholarship offer.
The next month, Moore rushed Good Counsel’s passer and intercepted a pass that set up DeMatha’s offense at the 5-yard line. Moore started in the playoffs three weeks later.
“There are a couple games where you’re just watching and you say, ‘Jeez, I can’t believe he’s in ninth grade,’ ” DeMatha football coach Bill McGregor said. “He’s competing with older guys, and if you can do that in the WCAC at such an early age, you know somebody’s going to be really, really good someday. That someday has come now for him.”
Despite beginning to play for the nationally prominent DeMatha basketball team, attention for his football savvy continued. Just about every week, a football program offered him a scholarship.
On the court, Moore contributed as DeMatha won the WCAC title in February 2020. But he felt unsatisfied without a football trophy.
“I was always only known as the basketball player playing football,” said Moore, 18. “As time went on, it kind of switched to, ‘He’s that big football prospect playing basketball.’ It was just something I had to get used to after a while.”
Picking his path
While playing his final games for DeMatha basketball in the summer of 2021, Moore chased a loose ball against an opponent when Moore fouled him.
“Why didn’t you just grab the ball?” his uncle Dwayne asked after the game. “Why did you foul?”
“I didn’t have any fouls,” Moore said with a laugh. “And I was bored.”
“You definitely need to give basketball up,” Dwayne responded.
Toggling to football would also help Jason distinguish himself from his brother after years of teachers mistakenly calling him Justin.
The brothers were always competitive, racing to the car as children and sometimes getting in fights over video games. By specializing in a different sport, Jason could slow comparisons.
When Jones, the former DeMatha basketball coach, left for Virginia Tech in May 2021, Moore took it as a sign to focus on football. He studied NFL defensive ends Chase Young, a DeMatha alumnus, and J.J. Watt and lifted weights in the winter.
Moore’s family believes he displayed early signs of football interest. As a kid, he ran around the house wearing Justin’s oversized red-and-gray football helmet — the same colors Jason will wear next fall at Ohio State. After Justin’s youth football games, Moore was dirtier than Justin from playing football on the side of the field. Jason would just laugh when opponents fouled him in youth basketball games.
It seems he was born to play football, even if it took some time to realize it.
In November 2021, Moore solidified himself as one of the D.C. area’s top players. In a WCAC semifinal against Good Counsel, DeMatha’s offense stalled. Moore took matters into his own hands, totaling five tackles for loss, two sacks, two pass deflections and a touchdown that resulted from Moore knocking the ball out of the quarterback’s arm, recovering the ball and running into the end zone. However, the Stags lost, 17-15.
Before high school, Moore, who earned first-team All-Met honors last season, would have envisioned October as a chance to enjoy himself while prepping for the start of basketball season in November. Instead, Moore yearns to avenge last year’s semifinal defeat.
Still, after DeMatha’s shutout win over Friendship Collegiate on Sept. 16, Moore returned to the locker room at Prince George’s Sports & Learning Complex in Landover and changed into a black DeMatha basketball T-shirt.
“I still think it’s his first love,” Dwayne Moore said. “He’s a naturally gifted athlete. He just wants to be the best in everything that he does.” | 2022-10-08T02:04:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DeMatha's Jason Moore, headed to Ohio State, is a top defensive player - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/jason-moore-dematha-ohio-state/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/jason-moore-dematha-ohio-state/ |
Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James said Wednesday that he would one day like to own an NBA team in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
“I would love to bring a team here at some point,” James said. “That would be amazing. I know Adam is in Abu Dhabi right now, I believe . . . with the [Milwaukee] Bucks and Atlanta [Hawks for a preseason exhibition]. He probably sees every single interview and transcript that comes through from NBA players, so I want the team here, Adam. Thank you.”
While denying a rumor about possible expansion in 2024, Silver said in June the NBA “invariably would expand,” calling Las Vegas, which is home to the NBA’s Summer League, “a great sports market,” and noting the WNBA’s Seattle Storm was “doing spectacular.”
James, 37, has a billion-dollar net worth, according to Forbes, after earning nearly $400 million in NBA salary entering this season and inking a lifetime contract with Nike, among other endorsement deals. He recently signed a two-year, $97 million extension with the Lakers that runs through the 2024-25 season and has said that he wants to continue playing in the NBA until he can team up with his 18-year-old son, Bronny, who will be draft-eligible in 2024.
The NBA, which has had 30 teams since it added Charlotte in 2004, probably will wait to expand until after it reaches a new collective bargaining agreement with the National Basketball Players Association and a new media rights deals with its television and digital partners. The current CBA runs through the 2023-24 season, while the league’s media rights deals will expire after the 2024-25 season. The NBA and NBPA have been engaged in CBA extension talks in recent months. | 2022-10-08T02:04:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LeBron James wants to own NBA expansion team in Las Vegas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/lebron-james-las-vegas-expansion-team/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/lebron-james-las-vegas-expansion-team/ |
Lionel Messi says this World Cup will be his last. Who else might be done?
Paris Saint-Germain teammates Lionel Messi and Neymar have both indicated that the World Cup in Qatar will be their last. (Franck Fife/AFP/Getty Images)
Lionel Messi is reaching the end of his World Cup road. On Thursday, the Argentine icon told Star Plus that next month’s tournament in Qatar will be the last of his celebrated career.
At 35, Messi choosing not to hold out for the 2026 World Cup comes as little surprise. But the announcement further cements the idea that this year’s tournament will mark the end of an era. In addition to Messi, Qatar 2022 will probably be the last World Cup for fellow megastars Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal) and Neymar (Brazil), and could be the finale for several more marquee names.
Like Messi, Ronaldo is simply running out of time. Two years older than Messi, the Manchester United forward is likely to bow out of the world’s biggest competition at the same time. The two players have been compared and contrasted throughout their sterling careers, with both making their World Cup debuts in 2006. Neither has lifted a World Cup trophy, but Ronaldo captured the Euro 2016 title and Messi won the Copa America last year.
As far back as 2016, Ronaldo said he expected the 2022 World Cup to be his last.
“I expect Qatar could be my final World Cup,” he told beIN Sports at the time. “I often go on holidays there, to Qatar as well as Dubai. I am happy because for sure it will be last international tournament.”
Ronaldo recently changed his tune, saying in September that he hopes to represent Portugal in Qatar and the 2024 European Championship.
𝗚𝗢𝗔𝗧 𝗠𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆. 🐐 ♾ @Cristiano pic.twitter.com/e6rl2wdXa9
While Argentina and Portugal are expected to be title contenders this year, the top-ranked team and betting favorite is Brazil. Neymar, the 30-year-old wonder who plays alongside Messi at Paris Saint-Germain, stands at the center of Brazilian hopes.
In October 2021, Neymar told a documentary crew that Qatar will probably be his swan song.
“I think it’s [Qatar for] my last World Cup,” Neymar said in the DAZN documentary, “Neymar Jr. and the Line of Kings.” “I see it as my last because I don’t know if I have the strength of mind to deal with football anymore. So I’ll do everything to turn up well, do everything to win with my country, to realize my greatest dream since I was little. And I hope I can do it.”
This summer, Brazilian teammate Rodrygo told ESPN that Neymar was “ready to leave the national team.”
If Neymar does play his final World Cup at age 30, the decision to make a slightly early exit will have precedent. Brazil legend Pelé played his final World Cup in 1970 at age 29. One of his Brazilian successors, striker Ronaldo, also played in his last competition at that age.
That glitzy trio will surely not be alone in making an exit after Qatar. This World Cup features a bevy of players who have maintained a high level into their mid-30s, meaning they will play a role at this year’s competition but are unlikely to return to the stage. Among the aging stars likely to take the field next month are France forward Karim Benzema (34), Poland forward Robert Lewandowski (34), Croatia midfielder Luka Modric (37), Brazil defender Thiago Silva (38) and Uruguay forward Luis Suárez (35).
German forward Thomas Müller (33) will have plenty to play for next month. Assuming Müller makes the German squad, he will have the highest career World Cup goal total of any player in the tournament with 10. Former German teammate Miroslav Klose holds the record with 16.
Wales forward and former Real Madrid star Gareth Bale, now playing in MLS for Los Angeles FC, told ESPN this summer that he would have retired if his country had not qualified for its first World Cup appearance in 64 years. The promise of next month’s festivities kept him in the game. | 2022-10-08T02:04:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lionel Messi says this World Cup will be his last. Who else might be done? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/lionel-messi-final-world-cup/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/lionel-messi-final-world-cup/ |
British golfers Ian Poulter, left, and teammate Lee Westwood pose for photo on a three-wheeled vehicle at the LIV tournament north of Bangkok. (Rungroj Yongrit/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
The initial LIV reception has been chilly in the United States, where the backlash over LIV’s Saudi benefactors has not necessarily quieted. But the series is not as controversial elsewhere, particularly places where the upheaval of the PGA Tour didn’t make waves or LIV’s golf product isn’t strongly associated with the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
“From Day One, we’ve viewed golf as a global sport,” Atul Khosla, the LIV president and chief operating officer, said in recent interview. “We want to build a global golf lifestyle brand. That’s what we’re looking to achieve.”
Even after the organization’s first five events — four of which were staged the United States — LIV’s ambitious growth plans have received scant attention, overshadowed by the upstart’s legal squabbles with the PGA Tour, its frustrations with the Official World Golf Ranking and the chaos it has unleashed on the golf universe. By intention, this season is more of a soft launch.
While three of LIV’s eight tournaments this year are being played internationally, the events are available to viewers across 180 countries, LIV officials say, through broadcast agreements, not necessarily rights deals. Free streaming services such as YouTube remain the dominant option in places such as the United States, and the group has yet to strike any television rights deals for next year.
In the United States, the LIV product has struggled to stir much interest from traditional networks that broadcast golf, according to multiple people familiar with discussions, or with streaming services, such as Amazon and Apple. A LIV spokesman maintains that the breakaway series “is just beginning its process and is in active discussions with several companies about broadcasting the LIV Golf League.”
LIV says some of its international golfers are taking on active roles and joining discussions with broadcasters back in their home countries (though no deals have been announced). LIV officials contend they were methodical in assembling their roster of golfers, mindful that their product was meant to resonate in all corners of the globe. Twenty-nine of the 48 players teeing off in Thailand on Friday were born outside the United States. The golfers have been sorted into teams that highlight their nationalities and backgrounds.
The Punch GC team, for example, is a group of Australians, led by Cameron Smith. The Fireballs are made up of players of Hispanic heritage, including Sergio Garcia. The Cleeks are group of European-born players, Stinger GC is all South Africans, and the Iron Heads are all players of Asian descent.
“I already have people in India reaching out to me, saying, ‘Oh, is there any Crushers merchandise that we can buy?’ ” Lahiri said. “ ‘I want a shirt. I want to come and rep your team.’ And these are kids in India. They probably would not have followed the team if I wasn’t on it.”
Though the purses at LIV events are more generous for individual play — the top player in Thailand this weekend will pocket $4 million, while the winning team will share $3 million — LIV officials see fans growing attached to the teams and those teams growing in value. The four-man squads aren’t a team in name only, they say, but they’re functioning separately, hiring their own staff, taking control of their own branding and merchandising with the ability to sell their own commercial rights.
In the future, LIV officials can see teams wearing their own corporate patches and even serving as host to the events. The Aussie squad, for example, essentially would be the home team for an event in Melbourne, and the U.K. team could host an event in Scotland.
Eventually, Khosla said that LIV might not function as a centralized organization and the franchises eventually could be sold off and operated independently, like most team sports.
“So far, we’ve had actually some good interest from the institutional investors or single investors that have the funding to be able to own a team, have a desire to own a golf team and are passionate about golf,” he said.
For now, LIV owns the teams while some players have a small equity stake. When teams earn prize money at an event, that money goes into a team pool, and Khosla says the players will draw a salary from their respective teams, earning a percentage of total revenue that team generates.
The business model and LIV’s lofty ambitions, however far-fetched they might seem in this early stage, are scantly visible right now. There are no corporate signage at events and no advertisers on the free broadcasts, and tickets to domestic events were easy to come by and could be had for next to nothing. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has committed at least $2 billion to LIV Golf, and the PGA Tour stated in a recent court filing it believes the competing group “has the luxury of operating at a loss for as long as it needs to accomplish its goals.”
The PGA Tour is the runaway leader both domestically and internationally. Tour officials also have broadened their scope in recent years to make their product more accessible internationally. It has major broadcast deals that ensure tour events are both televised and live-streamed around the world. And earlier this year, the PGA Tour strengthened its partnership with the DP World Tour, increasing its stake in the European Tour Productions from 15 to 40 percent, expanding its own schedule with co-sanctioned events and helping beef up the DP World Tour’s tournament purses.
LIV, meanwhile, has aligned itself with the Asian Tour, investing $300 million and agreeing to co-host 11 events next season. Those events will be part of LIV’s International Series — not its own play. It is expected to feature some LIV golfers and showcase the LIV brand at events across Asia.
“Clearly, the U.S. is the biggest golf market,” Khosla said, “and you’ve got U.K. and Japan. But if you look at where golf courses are being constructed all over the world, 60 to 70 percent of new golf courses are in Asia.”
More on golf
Greg Norman finds friendly faces, harsh criticism on Capitol Hill trip
‘I hate being hated’: LIV Golf’s new recruits face a harsh reality | 2022-10-08T02:04:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | LIV Golf's Thailand event demonstrates its global ambitions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/liv-golf-thailand-global-plans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/liv-golf-thailand-global-plans/ |
The Philadelphia Phillies return to the postseason this year. (David J. Phillip/AP)
The Major League Baseball postseason begins Friday, and for the first time in two decades, the Seattle Mariners are joining the party. For the first time in a decade, the Philadelphia Phillies will, too. And for the first time ever, two division winners in each league will receive a bye into the division series while the others face off in three-game wild-card series to determine who advances.
These crowded playoffs will be longer and less familiar than those that have come before. You probably have questions. Fortunately, we have answers.
Which teams are in the MLB playoffs?
When do the MLB playoffs begin?
How many games are in the wild-card series?
How will the division series matchups be decided?
How will the top two seeds in each league spend their time off?
Are there any rule changes during the MLB playoffs? | 2022-10-08T02:04:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | MLB postseason schedule, game times and other questions, answered - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/mlb-playoff-schedule/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/mlb-playoff-schedule/ |
Juan Soto receives a standing ovation in his return to Nationals Park after being traded to the San Diego Padres in August. Soto is one of several former Nationals in this year's MLB playoffs. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
1Seattle Mariners
2San Diego Padres
3Cleveland Guardians
4Toronto Blue Jays
5Tampa Bay Rays
6St. Louis Cardinals
7Houston Astros
8Los Angeles Dodgers
9New York Yankees
10Atlanta Braves
11Philadelphia Phillies
12New York Mets
The Washington Nationals didn’t qualify for the MLB playoffs but plenty of former Nationals did, including Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber with the Philadelphia Phillies and Juan Soto and Josh Bell with the San Diego Padres. As the postseason gets underway Friday, here’s a Nats-focused rooting guide to the field’s 12 teams, ranked in order of most to least likable.
The Mariners ended a 21-year playoff drought, the longest in major professional sports, by clinching a wild-card berth with Cal Raleigh’s walk-off home run Friday.
After 21 years of pain, Seattle baseball fans feel something new: Hope
Nats connections: Under interim manager Jim Riggleman, the Mariners swept the Oakland Athletics in the final series of the 2008 regular season to finish 61-101. Some 2,500 miles away, the Nationals were swept by the Phillies to fall to 59-102. By virtue of finishing with the worst record in the league, the Nationals secured the top pick in the 2009 draft, which they used to select consensus No. 1 prospect and future World Series MVP Stephen Strasburg. The Mariners used the second pick to draft Dustin Ackley, who hit .241 over six forgettable major league seasons. Thanks, Seattle.
Reasons to cheer or boo: Julio Rodríguez, the presumptive American League rookie of the year and the runner-up to Soto in this year’s Home Run Derby, is one of the game’s brightest young stars. Raleigh has the best nickname — “Big Dumper” — in the playoffs. The Mariners winning the World Series would be the best outcome, by far, for Nationals fans, and there must be a coffee mug somewhere with a curly 'W' over a silhouette of the state of Washington.
Despite Soto, Bell and fellow trade acquisition Josh Hader underperforming, the Padres clinched a wild-card berth and their first playoff appearance in a full season since 2006.
Nats connections: In one of the biggest blockbusters in baseball history, the Padres dealt shortstop CJ Abrams, pitcher MacKenzie Gore, first baseman Luke Voit and three top prospects to the Nationals for Soto and Bell in August. The move came after Soto turned down a 15-year, $440 million contract offer in July, and it paved the way for Washington to set a new team record for losses.
Reasons to cheer or boo: As amusing as it would have been to see the Padres miss the playoffs after mortgaging their future to acquire Soto and Bell for the stretch run, they made it, and now they have the chance to send the New York Mets home in a best-of-three first-round series. Baseball is better when Soto is smiling, shuffling and having fun, even if it’s for another team, so root for him to break out of his second-half slump.
POV: you're cellying with Juan Soto pic.twitter.com/12YFEcvpwP
Manager Terry Francona’s Guardians won their first division title since 2018 and were one of the season’s biggest surprises.
Nats connections: Lacking. Washington acquired World Series champion catcher Yan Gomes from Cleveland in 2018. Cleveland drafted Nationals pitcher Paolo Espino in the 10th round of the 2006 MLB draft.
Reason to cheer or boo: Rookie outfielder Steven Kwan and right-hander Triston McKenzie are part of an exciting core for the youngest team in the league. Cleveland, which has MLB’s third-lowest payroll, also has a new, non-racist name and hasn’t won the World Series since 1948.
The Blue Jays fired manager Charlie Montoyo in July and then went 46-28 under interim manager John Schneider to clinch a wild-card berth.
Nats connections: Vladimir Guerrero Jr.'s dad might one day have his name in the ring of honor at Nationals Park alongside legendary Montreal Expos Gary Carter, Tim Raines and Andre Dawson.
Reasons to cheer or boo: Vladdy is a delight to watch, and the Blue Jays celebrate home runs by donning a terrific jacket. Like an NCAA tournament first-round game between mid-major darlings, it’s a shame Toronto and Seattle are facing each other in a wild-card series.
Ladies and gentlemen, feast your eyes on the 2022 @BlueJays Home Run jacket. 🤩
📸: @thehazelmae pic.twitter.com/FWpCjyBZhp
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) April 6, 2022
The low-budget Rays are in the playoffs for a fourth straight year despite finishing third in the American League East.
Nats connections: Relief pitcher Javy Guerra shares a name with former Nationals reliever and World Series champion Javy Guerra.
Reasons to cheer or boo: Former top prospect Wander Franco was slowed by injuries in his second season, but he could be primed for a Randy Arozarena-like October breakout. Be prepared to be angered by Manager Kevin Cash’s in-game moves.
The Cardinals overtook the Milwaukee Brewers for the National League Central lead in early August and never looked back.
Nats connections: Former Nationals pitching coach Mike Maddux now serves in the same role for the Cardinals, who have some playoff history with Washington. Nationals player of the year Lane Thomas was acquired from St. Louis at last year’s trade deadline in exchange for Jon Lester. Will it go down as the last trade General Manager Mike Rizzo won?
Reasons to cheer or boo: Albert Pujols’s last ride has been remarkable. The 42-year-old slugger hit 24 home runs during the regular season, his most since 2016, and joined Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth as the only players to surpass 700 career homers. It’s hard to muster much hate for the Cardinals after the Nationals swept them in the 2019 NLCS.
The Astros cruised to their fifth American League West title in the past six years behind a dominant bullpen and one of the best rotations in baseball, including AL Cy Young Award favorite Justin Verlander.
Nats connections: Dusty Baker, who was let go by the Nationals despite averaging 96 wins in his two years in D.C., is in his third season with Houston. Washington defeated the cheating Astros to win the 2019 World Series.
Reasons to cheer or boo: As easy as it is to wish ill will upon the Astros for their past transgressions, no one deserves a World Series title more than Baker.
The Dodgers added Freddie Freeman to their already potent lineup in the offseason and went on to post a franchise-record 111 wins.
Nats connections: Shortstop Trea Turner, who was dealt to the Dodgers by the Nationals at last year’s trade deadline, had another all-star season. Dodgers president and part-owner Stan Kasten was president of the Nationals from 2006 to 2010.
Reasons to cheer or boo: The Dodgers’ roster features plenty of likable stars, including Turner, Freeman, Mookie Betts and Clayton Kershaw, but who wants to see the big-spending favorite win, especially only two years removed from its last title?
The Yankees overcame a midseason slump to win the American League East behind one of the greatest individual offensive seasons in franchise history by Aaron Judge.
Nats connections: When Yankees ace Gerrit Cole was with the Astros, Soto took him deep onto the train tracks at Minute Maid Park in Game 1 of the 2019 World Series.
Reasons to cheer or boo: Left-handed pitcher Nestor Cortes is a great story and Judge had a phenomenal year, despite falling 11 dingers shy of Bonds’s single-season home run record. They haven’t won a World Series since 2009, but they’re still the freakin’ Yankees, so it’s best to root for an early exit.
Atlanta went 78-34 from June 1 on to erase the Mets’ 10½ game lead and win the National League East. The Braves are looking to become the first back-to-back World Series champs since the Yankees won three straight titles from 1998 to 2000.
Nats connections: After winning a title with the Braves last year, utility player Ehire Adrianza signed a one-year contract with the Nationals in March. Adrianza hit .179 in 31 games for Washington before being traded back to Atlanta for minor league outfielder Trey Harris at the deadline. Lucky guy.
Reasons to cheer or boo: Nationals 30-year-old slugger Joey Meneses might’ve become one of the most unlikely rookie of the year winners if not for the Braves’ duo of outfielder Michael Harris II and pitcher Spencer Strider. Marcell Ozuna deserves all of the boos and it’s past time to retire the “tomahawk chop,” but the Braves going back-to-back is preferable to seeing one of the other NL East teams in this year’s field experience joy.
Like the Blue Jays, the Phillies got hot after firing their manager midseason. Rob Thompson replaced Joe Girardi in June and led Philadelphia back to the postseason for the first time since 2011.
Nats connections: Former Nats on the Phillies’ roster include Harper, Schwarber and Brad Hand.
Reasons to cheer or boo: One could argue that no individual player was more responsible for Rizzo’s decision to gut the Nationals’ roster at the 2021 trade deadline than Hand, who took the loss in three straight appearances, including two blown saves, during a five-game losing streak in late July. That sparked a fire sale and the beginning of the Nationals’ two-year teardown. One of the players dealt was Schwarber, a fan favorite in Washington who signed with the Phillies in the offseason and hit a career-high 46 home runs. Coming off his second MVP award, Harper was limited to 99 games by a fractured thumb. He already delivered on his promise to bring a title back to D.C. after signing with the Phillies; why would Nats fans want to see him celebrate on Broad Street?
The Mets are in the playoffs for the first time since 2016 and seeking their first World Series title since 1986.
Nats connection: Former Nats great Max Scherzer turned in another dominant season, posting a career-low 2.29 ERA over 145 1/3 innings. He’s gotten less maniacally competitive in his older age, as evidenced by the fact that he didn’t protest when Manager Buck Showalter removed him from an August game after only six innings and 68 pitches with a perfect game intact.
Reasons to cheer or boo: Scherzer in the playoffs is appointment viewing, especially when he goes head-to-head with Soto and probably gives up a first-inning homer in Game 1. Lights-out closer Edwin Díaz’s entrance is fun, but here’s hoping the trumpets don’t sound too often this month. One could argue the Phillies winning the World Series would be worse, but there’s more schadenfreude in watching the division foe with the league’s largest payroll and a longer title drought crash and burn. | 2022-10-08T02:04:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Nationals-focused rooting guide to the MLB playoffs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/mlb-postseason-nationals-fans/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/mlb-postseason-nationals-fans/ |
Rookie Kenny Pickett, right, is the Steelers’ new starting quarterback. (Gene J. Puskar/AP)
The Pittsburgh Steelers made a bold move Sunday when Coach Mike Tomlin pulled struggling quarterback Mitch Trubisky in favor of rookie Kenny Pickett.
Pickett threw three interceptions in a loss to the New York Jets, but the Steelers are sticking with him in Week 5. Fifteen of the NFL’s 32 teams entered the week with a 2-2 record, so there is still time for a 1-3 team such as the Steelers to turn things around. A new signal caller is among the fastest ways a team can shake things up for its remaining games.
Other changes this week are born of necessity. The Miami Dolphins are 3-1, but quarterback Tua Tagovailoa will not play against the Jets as he deals with a concussion or perhaps two. Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott still can’t grip a football well enough to play since having hand surgery, so Cooper Rush will start again against the Los Angeles Rams. And Bailey Zappe will make his first career start for the New England Patriots against the Detroit Lions with Mac Jones and Brian Hoyer hurt.
Elsewhere, keep an eye on Atlanta’s Marcus Mariota, Houston’s Davis Mills, Carolina’s Baker Mayfield and Washington’s Carson Wentz as other quarterbacks whose jobs may not be entirely secure.
With so many games coming down to the wire — through four weeks, 50 of 64 games have been within one score in the fourth quarter — Tomlin might not be the only coach to try for a quick midgame fix. Last year, three teams (the Patriots, Steelers and Philadelphia Eagles) rebounded from 1-3 starts to reach the playoffs, and the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers advanced to the conference championship games after 2-3 starts. It’s not too late.
Here’s a quick look at the schedule for Week 5.
Colts (1-2-1) at Broncos (2-2), 8:15 p.m., Amazon Prime: Nathaniel Hackett’s Denver team leads the league in penalties with 37. But both of its victories have come at home, so the Broncos have that going for them in the battle of teams led by veteran quarterbacks (Matt Ryan and Russell Wilson) who switched from their longtime teams in the offseason. Indianapolis running back Jonathan Taylor will not play because of an ankle injury.
Giants (3-1) vs. Packers (3-1) in London, 9:30 a.m., NFL Network: For the first time in 32 NFL games in London, there’s a matchup of two teams with winning records. But Aaron Rodgers, who has more turnovers (five) this season than he did all of last season (four), thinks the way Green Bay is winning — going into overtime against Zappe, who had a higher passer rating than Rodgers in the Packers’ escape against New England — “may not be sustainable.” With Daniel Jones and Tyrod Taylor hurt, New York is in need of help at quarterback. There’s only so much Saquon Barkley can do.
Steelers (1-3) at Bills (3-1), 1 p.m.: Pittsburgh is now Pickett’s team, which means he’ll face a stretch of games that, after Buffalo, features Tampa Bay, Miami and Philadelphia. Last week, he became the first quarterback with multiple rushing touchdowns in the first game of his career.
Chargers (2-2) at Browns (2-2), 1 p.m.: Los Angeles’s Justin Herbert is tied with Andrew Luck for the most games (19) with 300-plus passing yards in a quarterback’s first three seasons. Maybe his injured ribs are feeling better, because he passed for 340 yards and two touchdowns (113.2 passer rating) last week.
Texans (0-3-1) at Jaguars (2-2), 1 p.m.: Jacksonville’s Trevor Lawrence lost four fumbles last week, the most in a single game by any quarterback since at least 1991, according to NFL research.
Bears (2-2) at Vikings (3-1), 1 p.m.: Minnesota’s Justin Jefferson has the third-most 100-plus-yard receiving games (17) in a player’s first three seasons since at least 1950. Randy Moss and Odell Beckham Jr. each had 19. The Bears are doing something no team has done since 1977: averaging fewer than 100 passing yards per game (97.5).
Lions (1-3) at Patriots (1-3), 1 p.m.: Something has to change for one of these teams. Detroit’s three losses have been by three, four and three points. As for New England, let’s go to CBS analyst Tony Romo: “The Patriots — they can turn this around. They could run off four or five in a row. I really see this team being able to do that.”
Seahawks (2-2) at Saints (1-3), 1 p.m.: Seattle’s win in Detroit was the first game in NFL history with a 48-45 final score, so maybe its mantra should be “let Geno cook.” Geno Smith leads the league with a 77.3 percent completion percentage, and his passer rating of 108.0 ranks third.
Dolphins (3-1) at Jets (2-2), 1 p.m.: In an oddity that nonetheless worked out for the best, Zach Wilson, who recovered from a knee injury to make his season debut and take his job back from Joe Flacco last week, became the first quarterback in Jets history with a touchdown catch. Veteran Teddy Bridgewater is expected to make his first start for the Dolphins in place of Tagovailoa.
Falcons (2-2) at Buccaneers (2-2), 1 p.m.: Forget whether there’s any kind of injury to Tom Brady’s shoulder, because he wouldn’t tell anyone if there were. Tampa Bay’s defense was a concern after giving up its most points (41) in the past three seasons Sunday night against Kansas City, and the running game needs to help a quarterback who shouldn’t be passing 52 times a game whether his shoulder is aching or not. Against Atlanta, Brady will try to avoid his first three-game losing streak since 2002.
Titans (2-2) at Commanders (1-3), 1 p.m.: Washington has trailed at halftime in 23 of 37 regular season games under Coach Ron Rivera. Pressured on 31.7 percent of his drop-backs in the first three games, Wentz was pressured on 40.9 percent last week against Dallas.
49ers (2-2) at Panthers (1-3), 4:05 p.m.: Under Matt Rhule, the Panthers have a 1-26 record when an opponent scores 17 or more points, and they have lost 24 of those games in a row. The former Baylor and Temple coach finds himself on the coaching hot seat just as, conveniently, several major college jobs have opened.
Eagles (4-0) at Cardinals (2-2), 4:25 p.m.: Beware the second quarter, when the Eagles — now a Super Bowl favorite — have caught fire, outscoring opponents 85-14 over four games. With Jalen Hurts operating the same offense for the second year in a row (giving him a “mental Rolodex,” according to Coach Nick Sirianni), Miles Sanders became the first Eagles player to rush for more than 125 yards and score two touchdowns since LeSean McCoy in 2013, and A.J. Brown is the only player in the league with five or more receptions for 65 or more yards in each game this season.
Cowboys (3-1) at Rams (2-2), 4:25 p.m.: There’s no quarterback controversy, but there’s no reason to rush Prescott back to health, either, because Rush is the first Cowboys quarterback to win each of his first four career starts.
Bengals (2-2) at Ravens (2-2), 8:20 p.m., NBC: Paging Joe Mixon. The third-leading rusher in the NFL in 2021, the Cincinnati back has tumbled to a tie for 21st in the league with 224 yards on 82 carries (with one touchdown), and Cincinnati is averaging 3.1 yards per run.
Raiders (1-3) at Chiefs (3-1), 8:15 p.m., ESPN, ESPN Deportes: In the 67th game of his career, Patrick Mahomes became the fastest quarterback in history to pass for 20,000 yards, passing Matthew Stafford’s 71-game mark and doing it with his customary razzle-dazzle. In four games without Tyreek Hill, the Chiefs’ offense has scored 15 touchdowns and been forced to punt 12 times. | 2022-10-08T02:04:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL Week 5 schedule, matchups and five-minute guide - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/nfl-week-5-schedule/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/nfl-week-5-schedule/ |
Saquon Barkley celebrates with his Giants teammates after scoring a touchdown against Tennessee last month. (Mark Zaleski/AP)
As soon as Saquon Barkley caught Daniel Jones’s pass well behind the line of scrimmage Sunday, a Chicago Bears defender was in his face and in position to cause a major loss of yardage for the New York Giants.
Barkley had other ideas.
The fifth-year running back neatly slipped the tackle, reversed field and, with the help of a block from Jones, sprinted past several other Bears defenders for a 15-yard gain on third and nine. The Giants scored a touchdown two plays later, but the significance of the Week 4 scamper was arguably even greater than that.
It underscored one of the most compelling developments of the NFL season: Barkley is back.
After two injury-marred seasons raised questions about whether he could ever regain the incandescent form he showed upon entering the league in 2018, Barkley has returned to the elite tier at his position. Along the way, he has proved to be a desperately needed rock of consistency for a Giants team off to a 3-1 start despite a passing attack struggling to carve out an identity.
“I think he’s really good,” Giants Coach Brian Daboll said after New York’s 20-12 win Sunday over Chicago, in which Barkley had 146 yards on the ground and another 16 through the air on 33 total touches. “You can use him a bunch. You can use him as a decoy a bunch, but he’s one of our better players. I think he touched it about 30 times. … I watch him at practice. He goes out there, he prepares hard, and then he tries to play as good as he can play.”
Barkley was essential in the win. He racked up almost half of the Giants’ 333 total net yards on a day when New York netted just 71 via the pass. Barkley even ran a wildcat offense in the fourth quarter after Jones suffered an ankle injury and backup quarterback Tyrod Taylor suffered a concussion. Fortunately for the Giants, facing Chicago’s ludicrously pass-averse offense meant they did not have to mount much of an aerial assault, but it also made for the fourth straight game to start the season that New York did not reach 170 net passing yards (including lost yardage on sacks).
In theory, the Giants have a dangerous group of wide receivers, including high-priced 2021 free agent signing Kenny Golladay, 2021 first-round pick Kadarius Toney and 2022 second-rounder Wan’Dale Robinson. Daboll, however, has signaled his displeasure with Golladay and Toney by sharply limiting their playing time, and Robinson has been out since he injured his knee early in the Giants’ Week 1 win over Tennessee. Veteran wide receiver Sterling Shepard made an impressive comeback from a torn Achilles’ tendon but then tore a knee ligament in Week 3, ending his season.
Outside of Shepard and Barkley, New York’s leading receivers this season have been the unheralded quartet of wideouts Richie James and David Sills and tight ends Daniel Bellinger and Tanner Hudson. Daboll, in his first season as a head coach after enjoying success as the Buffalo Bills’ offensive coordinator, could be sending a message with his wide receiver usage that he wants a culture change. However, with three of the Giants’ next four games coming against teams ranked in the top 11 in total offense (Green Bay, Baltimore and Seattle), plus an Oct. 23 date with Trevor Lawrence and the Jacksonville Jaguars, New York can’t count on continuing to prevail in low-scoring slugfests.
The good news is that Robinson might be available when the Giants square off with the Packers on Sunday in London. The bad news is that Toney (hamstring), Golladay (knee) and James (ankle) also now have question marks about whether they can play this week and, if so, how effectively. Then there’s the quarterback situation. Jones was able to get in a limited practice Wednesday, but Taylor was still sidelined while in the concussion protocols. If neither can go, New York’s starting quarterback Sunday could be Davis Webb, a third-round pick in 2017 who has seen almost no regular season action.
It all points to another huge workload for Barkley. He has been more than up to the challenge.
Barkley leads the NFL with 463 rushing yards, and his 570 yards from scrimmage and 99 touches also pace the league. The rushing total is the most in Giants history through four weeks, and his yards from scrimmage are second in franchise annals, trailing only the 619 posted by Tiki Barber to open 2004.
“Not to be arrogant,” Barkley said last week of a Week 3 scoring jaunt against Dallas, “[but] when you see plays like … the touchdown run I had on Monday — making that jump cut inside a hole and making those two guys miss and find a way to score — those are the plays where it kind of puts a smile on your face and you’re like: ‘That’s the guy I know. That’s the guy who always was there.’ ”
That guy wasn’t much in evidence last season, when Barkley mustered just 856 yards from scrimmage and four touchdowns in 13 games. It was a far cry from his league-leading 2,028 yards from scrimmage and 15 scores as a rookie in 2018, after the Giants made him the No. 2 pick in the draft out of Penn State. Even while limited to 13 games in 2019 after suffering a high-ankle sprain, Barkley ended up with 1,441 yards from scrimmage, 11th best in the NFL, and eight touchdowns.
Disaster struck in Week 2 of 2020, when Barkley suffered a season-ending torn ACL in his right knee during a loss to the Bears. His 2021 comeback got off to an understandably slow start before another injury arrived in Week 5, this time a rolled left ankle after Barkley accidentally stepped on the foot of a Cowboys defender. That first-quarter mishap cost him most of that game and all of the next four, and even after he returned for the second half of the season, Barkley never quite looked his old self.
“He was there last year, to be completely honest,” Barkley said last week of his seemingly missing rookie of the year form. “I just had a hard time finding a way to bring him out. That’s coming with a mental disconnect. I lost confidence, and it’s human nature — that happens.”
By the end of training camp, after earning praise from Daboll for his “explosive” performances in practice sessions, Barkley not only had his confidence again but also another mental edge.
“Do I feel like I’m back? I feel like I’m better, to be completely honest,” he said on the “2ndWind” podcast in late August. “I’m older now. I’m 25. I’ve been through some stuff, you know, ups and downs. Now I’m in a situation where, you know me, I always have the mind-set of always being counted out, but now it’s actually here. It’s actually real.
“People are really counting me out. People are trying to write me off . . . but now, I have the extra motivation. That extra motivation to push me to go out there and kind of just be like: ‘You know what? Shut everyone up.’ ”
Barkley has delivered and then some.
The Giants have needed all of those highlight-reel plays — and plenty of quieter production — to get off to their best start since 2011. If they start to figure things out in the passing game and give themselves more ways to win, they will have a rejuvenated Barkley to thank for being a somewhat unexpected pillar of strength. | 2022-10-08T02:05:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Saquon Barkley is a star again for the Giants - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/saquon-barkley-giants-comeback/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/saquon-barkley-giants-comeback/ |
Explosive plays are costing Virginia Tech during two-game skid
Virginia Tech takes on Pittsburgh at 3:30 p.m. Eastern on Saturday (ACC Network)
North Carolina quarterback Drake Maye (10) stiff-armed Virginia Tech defensive lineman Cole Nelson (17) and the rest of the Hokies defense for most of a lopsided victory. (Chris Seward/AP)
During the first meeting each morning in preseason camp, the Virginia Tech football coaching staff would use a PowerPoint presentation to list the “explosives” that unfolded in the previous practice and reveal whether the offense or defense won the competition.
That Brent Pry began every day discussing the statistic reinforced to players the significance the Hokies’ first-year coach places on runs of at least 12 yards and completed passes of at least 15 and how those long gains can sway momentum.
With the regular season close to halfway complete, Pry continues to devote increased attention to such plays. Virginia Tech (2-3, 1-1 ACC) is mired in a two-game slide in part because its defense, which had been relatively sturdy over the first three games, has failed to limit explosive plays.
Heading into Saturday afternoon’s game against Pittsburgh (2-3, 0-2) at Acrisure Stadium, Pry has reminded that unit of the importance of being in the proper position to prevent the Panthers from generating chunk yardage that can demoralize a defense.
“We’re certainly talking about it,” Pry said. “We certainly seem to — at least when we put an emphasis on something throughout the week, in my opinion, we’ve trended that way, and we’ve gotten better in that area, and so the explosives are something we’ve talked about all camp. … [and] we’re going to get back to some of that.”
In last weekend’s 41-10 loss to North Carolina in Chapel Hill,, the Hokies surrendered 16 big plays, including completions of 35, 33 and 29 yards and runs of 35 and 18 yards.
Virginia Tech, ranked third in the ACC in total yards allowed (310.2), let quarterback Drake Maye complete 13 passes of at least 15 yards and yielded its most points and yards (527) in its most lopsided defeat this season.
Maye, a redshirt freshman, finished with 363 yards and three touchdowns in completing 26 of 36 throws without an interception or a sack. The Hokies had been able to pressure quarterbacks consistently in the earlier stages of this season.
“When you’ve just got one or two guys that aren’t in the right place, a minimal run or a minimal pass play turns into an explosive,” Pry said. “That’s generally how it happens. Now with North Carolina I think their guys made some plays. That’s another way you garner explosives.”
The trend began during a 33-10 loss to West Virginia a week earlier at Lane Stadium, where the Hokies allowed eight explosive plays, including a 24-yard touchdown pass from JT Daniels to Sam James with 11 seconds left in the second quarter that gave the Mountaineers the lead for good at 13-7.
West Virginia managed a 24-yard run and two rushes of 18 yards in amassing 218 yards on 46 carries. An inability to stop the run left the Hokies, ranked fifth in the ACC in rushing defense (100.8), at a deficit of more than 17 minutes in time of possession.
Virginia Tech also logged just one sack in losing for a second straight time to its border rival.
“The film don’t lie,” Hokies defensive tackle Josh Fuga said. “We couldn’t get pressure as we wanted to on the quarterback, so we were challenged this week to get pressure throughout practice, and the thing I like about the group that I’m in is we have guys who are willing to embrace that challenge and take it head-on.”
Virginia Tech, however, probably will have to do so without starting cornerback Dorian Strong, who is nursing an injury and did not play against the Tar Heels. Following practice Wednesday afternoon, Pry called the junior from Upper Marlboro a “long shot.”
Pittsburgh, meanwhile, is coming off a 26-21 home loss to Georgia Tech, a game in which it reeled off 10 explosive plays, seven of which came during the fourth quarter, when the Panthers scored touchdowns on two straight possessions over the final two minutes.
Quarterback Kedon Slovis, a senior transfer from Southern Cal, finished 26 for 45 with 305 yards and three touchdowns, drawing support from Coach Pat Narduzzi amid speculation his starting job may be in jeopardy. He ranks third in the conference in passing at 249.3 yards per game.
“We’ve got to get pressure on the quarterback,” Pry said. “I think the D-line as a whole and [defensive line] coach [J.C.] Price were disappointed last week. We just didn’t tee off and play on edges, and we’ve done that, so we know we can do it. We just got twisted up and sideways on some things, but I think we’ve got a group that can do it, and it was a big emphasis this week.” | 2022-10-08T02:05:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Explosive plays costing Virginia Tech during two-game skid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/virginia-tech-defense-explosive-plays/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/06/virginia-tech-defense-explosive-plays/ |
South Carolina State Coach Buddy Pough led the Bulldogs to the 2021 HBCU title with a win over Deion Sanders and Jackson State. (Austin McAfee/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
ORANGEBURG, S.C. — Man, that face. That was some face now, Dec. 18 in the rowdy spaceship of a stadium in downtown Atlanta. That face, 68 years old as the game clock struck 0:00, could reach right out of a TV screen and lasso your whole damned heart with all its disbelief and striving and pinnacle. Even the tears, so rare on that face, got out of the ducts and roamed.
Now here’s the same face nine months on in a golf cart parked at the 35-yard line at unpretentious Oliver C. Dawson Stadium just after a practice that ended at 8 a.m., like always, and if there’s a better place around the psychedelic trail of American college football than the passenger seat of Buddy Pough’s golf cart, please do alert. There’s a train whistle in the distance and a fine rasp of a voice up close, a voice in season No. 21 of helming the South Carolina State Bulldogs, a legend around here who ought to be a legend around everywhere.
Pough’s 20th team spent Dec. 18 kicking the shiny behinds of Deion Sanders’s wildly favored Jackson State all over the Celebration Bowl, and a green sign just off Interstate 26 entering this town of 13,563 — between Columbia and Charleston — boasts of the 2021 historically Black college and university national champions. But it’s September 2022 by now, so the voice tells of a team “finding itself,” of 18 starters returning but stalwart corners Cobie Durant and Zafir Kelly gone to the NFL and a deathless menace: “Depth always worries you.” He says: “You know, we had all these plans of grandeur. And we might fall flat on our face. And that worries me.” Then he laughs that deep laugh people know from the Lowcountry to the Upstate, the one that makes Brad Scott, who hired Pough as running backs coach in 1997 at South Carolina, stop mid-thought and say, “That little laugh, that little smile of his, is pretty dang special.”
As HBCU football deals with realignment, the Celebration Bowl still holds its appeal
Yet it’s a Thursday morning, and the Bulldogs must play up at rival North Carolina A&T on Saturday, so this walking, cycling library of a man steeped in verve and intelligence and wit and two replaced hips and one replaced knee says, “I’m as nervous now” as back in 2002 when he began in a whole different generation and felt he could outrun half his roster.
It’s a Thursday morning, so he also has the meeting of the local Touchdown Club he helped to found, honoring local high school players among other endeavors. He’s also in Rotary. He’s also on at least one hall of fame committee. He also arranges speakers for various local clubs. He also gets up at 3 or 3:30 or 4. He also says he hasn’t had a good sleep in 20 years and can’t go to sleep until he has learned the nightly fate of his cherished Atlanta Braves. He also has battled the durable strain of stretched resources, spearheading scholarship drives and whatnot.
He also has eight Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference titles, one HBCU title, a 144-83 record, a trek through at least six athletic directors and at least 11 presidents (counting acting and interim), and a passage through some bumpy rapids of the past decade when some around here craved his exit. He also has a 48-12 record in the past 19 Novembers, which tells a whole lot about a whole lot. He also has a giant heart. He’s also an artful cusser. He’s also a presence standing before his team and introducing a pastor at a voluntary team chapel on a game eve.
“He’s a community guy, and if it were not for him, his church would fold,” says Willie Jeffries, the fellow legend who preceded Pough and coached Pough when Pough was a Bulldogs math major and offensive lineman who could pull like pure hell.
“We have a little radio network,” said Ernest Robinson, the Bulldogs’ play-by-play voice, “and we have a coach’s show. Up until two years ago, you know who our number-one sales person was?”
He’s also something of a genius in the area of human relations, mandatory humility included.
Clemson Coach Dabo Swinney calls Pough “just one of the better people you’ll ever meet.” Former Clemson assistant and current Virginia head coach Tony Elliott, who assisted Pough in 2006-07, tells of “the biggest heart you’d ever be around.” Another former Pough assistant, Florida Coach Billy Napier, begins a paragraph of plaudits as follows: “There’s only one Buddy Pough.” Local businessman Rob Hibbits, who helped found the Touchdown Club where the remarkable Jeffries, nowadays 85, throws a penalty flag at any rambling speaker, says of Pough, “He’s quite a fellow.” Scott sees “an overcomer” and “a survivor.” South Carolina Coach Shane Beamer likens Pough to Beamer’s father, Frank of Virginia Tech, in terms of longevity and goodness.
Jeffries notes Pough’s sense of people — “The kid from a two-parent brick house, he knows how to talk a little more softly to them” — and says, “He can go to England and talk to the Queen and he can go right down to the basement and start a craps game, and he can be at home in both.” Jamie Scott, who owns fitness centers in Columbia and played running back for Pough at both South Carolina and South Carolina State, says: “What’s interesting about these relationships, that Coach Pough has fostered, he does this effortlessly. You want to stay in contact with him.” He recounts the vividness of a running backs film session from way back in 1998, when Pough said to a player of a missed block, “Steve, it’s just like you were in the woods, and you and the running back were being attacked by a bear, and you turned around and helped the bear.”
The players roared.
You know that old warning about not meeting your heroes? Here’s an antithesis. “What I’d want people to know,” said Robinson, the play-by-play man, “if there is a person that you look to from afar and you admire or you would like to get to know and you said, ‘Man, if you can get to know that person, I’d want them to be like this,’ he is the kind of person that when you meet him, he’s just as if you hoped he would be from the standpoint of appreciating your company, acknowledging you and making you feel better when you talk to him than you did before you talk to him.”
He’s also a roving font of stories, such as the one about the time Lou Holtz kept him on at South Carolina in 1999 but referred to Pough errantly as “Bubby” in a coaches’ meeting, and Holtz had to leave, and Pough had to announce to the other coaches that if any one of those four-syllable words ever called him “Bubby,” he would have to kick somebody’s one-syllable word.
He also, okay: “I was a single-digit handicapper back before I started getting my body parts replaced. My hips, the knees — I’ve got two hips and a knee. And see that knee [the left one] right there? I would do that knee there, too, but after I got three of these things I couldn’t figure out how to get them all to work together. I figured you just got to keep this one because that’s the only thing that keeps me from falling apart, I think. I think that might be the last piece of the puzzle. If I get that fixed, I won’t have any coordination at all. I used to be really be able to swing the golf club, and now I can’t. Something about, I can’t. I’m a hundred golfer now. And there might not be any more frustrating a process than going from being a 70-something, low-80s golfer, to being a hundred.”
Asked to describe Pough’s significance, Elliott began, “Oh, man,” which might have covered it somehow.
Yet it’s still college football with all its demanding rhythms, so picture the face in the ruthless darkness along Interstate 85, three nights after the morning light on the field. He’s driving back from Greensboro with his wife, Josie; director of operations Gerald Harrison; and Harrison’s wife, Valerie. The Bulldogs have just lost, 41-27, at North Carolina A&T at the latter’s home opener in an exhilarating setting. They have been unable to stop the run. There has been some sort of mix-up near halftime in which the Aggies might just have benefited from getting a fourth timeout.
He’s driving along in the silence, mulling “every kind of thing you can imagine,” he said.
Asked four mornings later whether losing feels the same in 2022 as in 2002, he hurriedly answers: “It’s worse. It gets worse. It gets worse now because I don’t have as many left,” and there he lets out that laugh. Soon: “And it’s just all the other stuff, and my university is kind of, sort of dependent upon us. We feel a responsibility to go out and be kind of the bell cow for the [renown] of this university. Between our group and the band — you know, our band went out and played in Indianapolis [at the Colts game] this past weekend — you know, we do a lot of goodwill for this university. Athletics, maybe in general. So you know, you just kind of feel this kind of responsibility for it all to go well, and if it doesn’t, you feel just that much more hurt.”
Take that lurk of hurt, then, and take it all back to Atlanta, where Jackson State (11-1) clearly would whomp South Carolina State (6-5), which once had been 1-4. Hear Jeffries say, “They were leading the cows to slaughter.” Hear Jeffries say: “They didn’t know the little school that was playing Jackson State. ‘What are you, the Tigers?’ ‘Or the Wolves?’ ‘No, we’re the Bulldogs.’ ” Picture the NFL alums of a small school with four Pro Football Hall of Famers — Marion Motley, Deacon Jones, Harry Carson, Donnie Shell — dining that week and Carson and Robert Porcher vying to pay a check.
See the slighted South Carolina State players forge their 31-10 upset romp. See a 6-foot-5 wide receiver luring NFL eyeballs, Shaquan Davis, hoard three touchdowns. See the seconds run down and the camera zoom in on that face, and know Pough rarely cries unless you count the time in 1996 he won a state title at 15-0 at Fairfield Central High.
“I couldn’t, I couldn’t believe it,” he says. “I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. I really couldn’t. I mean, I knew that we could play with them, and I thought that we had a good shot, but I didn’t see that coming,” as the dominance “added to the disbelief.”
Think of Jeffries in that audience, then still a robust 84, taken back to his win over Delaware State in 1974 for his first MEAC title. “And I know how Buddy felt,” Jeffries says of that face. “It was time to cry.”
A previous version of this article misspelled the last name of a local businessman. He is Rob Hibbits, not Rob Hibbens. The article has been corrected. | 2022-10-08T02:05:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Football coach Buddy Pough is a legend in South Carolina - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/buddy-pough-south-carolina-state/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/buddy-pough-south-carolina-state/ |
Washington Commanders quarterback Carson Wentz looks to throw during Sunday’s loss to the Dallas Cowboys. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder was feeling upbeat during an August Zoom meeting with members of the Maryland Lottery and Gaming Control Commission, part of the application process for a retail sportsbook license at FedEx Field. He raved about his team’s “dramatically upgraded” stadium and promised “big-time attendance” would follow. He added that he was “very, very optimistic” about the coming season, at least in part because Washington had traded for Carson Wentz in March.
“We finally have ourselves a quarterback,” Snyder said.
It’s possible Snyder still believed that as he posed on the field for a photo alongside Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones before Sunday’s game at AT&T Stadium, but Wentz’s ensuing dismal performance must have at least sowed doubt in the owner’s mind as he left the building hours later in a police-escorted motorcade. It’s fair to wonder whether Washington’s search for a serviceable signal caller, let alone a franchise quarterback, is really over.
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Through four games, Wentz has been underwhelming by almost any measure, including both traditional and advanced statistics. He has completed 62.2 percent of his passes for 1,031 yards, eight touchdowns and five interceptions, and he has been sacked 17 times, more than any other quarterback. Wentz’s completion rate ranks 21st among qualified passers, and he is 25th in completion percentage over expected (CPOE), which adjusts for the complexity of each throw based on factors such as the receiver’s separation from the nearest defender and where the receiver is on the field. His 82.3 passer rating is below the league average (90.2) and in the bottom 10 among qualified passers.
Wentz ranks 21st out of 31 qualified passers in ESPN’s total quarterback rating (QBR), which “values the quarterback on all play types on a 0-100 scale adjusted for the strength of opposing defenses faced.” Those who chart games at Pro Football Focus rank Wentz 27th — ahead of only Joe Flacco, Baker Mayfield and Justin Fields — among qualified passers through four games. The former measurement is objective, and the latter ranking is subjective, but both come to the same conclusion: Wentz has been a woefully below-average quarterback with Washington.
“I got to be better. I got to be more consistent,” Wentz said after throwing for 170 yards and two interceptions in the Commanders’ 25-10 loss to the Cowboys, which dropped Washington to 1-3.
For a franchise that cycled through 25 starting quarterbacks between when Snyder bought the team in 1999 and Wentz arrived in March, the No. 2 pick in the 2016 draft must at least be an improvement over many of the castoffs who wore burgundy and gold before him, right? Not exactly.
According to the expected points added (EPA) metric, which accounts for the down, distance and field position of each passing play, the Commanders have scored 19 points fewer than expected in four games with Wentz at quarterback, per data from the website TruMedia. Among Washington quarterbacks since 2000, the first year for which EPA data is available, only Dwayne Haskins had a worse cumulative EPA (minus-31 in 2020) over the first four games of the season. Haskins was benched after Washington started 1-3.
Despite the rocky start to Wentz’s tenure with Washington, his EPA through four games is far from the worst over a four-game stretch at any point in a season for a Commanders quarterback since Coach Ron Rivera was hired three years ago. That distinction belongs to Alex Smith, who led Washington to 39 points fewer than expected from Week 11 to Week 14 in 2020. (Incidentally, Washington won all four of those games.) Wentz had multiple four-game stretches with Philadelphia in 2020 in which the Eagles scored 21 to 50 fewer points than expected, volatility that led to his benching in favor of Jalen Hurts and eventually a trade to the Indianapolis Colts.
Washington tried Case, Kirk, Colt, Kyle, Rex, Robert and Ryan. Enter Carson Wentz.
In the pass-heavy modern NFL, an inaccurate quarterback who holds the ball too long can drag an entire offense down. In addition to being tied for the second-most interceptions, Wentz is tied with Detroit’s Jared Goff, Cincinnati’s Joe Burrow and Buffalo’s Josh Allen for the third-most turnover-worthy throws (eight) this season, per Pro Football Focus, and only one of those came in the face of pressure. That’s not to say Wentz hasn’t been under duress. Injuries along the offensive line, including to center Chase Roullier, have affected Washington’s ability to protect Wentz, who was sacked a career-high nine times against the Eagles in Week 3.
Wentz acknowledged responsibility for some of the sacks he has taken. Pro Football Focus rates Washington’s offensive line as an average pass-blocking unit and left tackle Charles Leno Jr., who is charged with protecting Wentz’s blind side, as the 12th-highest-rated pass-blocker. Still, Wentz’s time to throw has decreased in each of the Commanders’ past three games, and he has faced pass pressure on 36 percent of his dropbacks, the sixth most in the NFL. Haskins, by comparison, faced pressure on fewer than 30 percent of his dropbacks during the first four games of the 2020 season. Wentz’s completion rate is 23 percent when facing pass pressure this season, well below the league average of 47 percent.
“We’ve got to build on the positives,” Wentz said Sunday. “… Try not to think the sky’s falling or the world’s ending or anything crazy. What did we do well? How do we build on those [things].”
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Wentz’s early chemistry with Terry McLaurin is encouraging, though Washington has struggled to get its No. 1 wide receiver involved in the first half of games. The two have connected on 14 of 27 targets for 250 yards and a touchdown, good for a 103.8 passer rating between them. Curtis Samuel has 26 catches on 37 targets for 219 yards and two touchdowns. It hasn’t helped Wentz’s cause that McLaurin, Samuel and rookie wide receiver Jahan Dotson all rank in the bottom 10 of ESPN’s new “Open Score” tracking metric, which, for every route run, assesses the likelihood a receiver would be able to complete a catch if targeted.
One of the reasons Washington’s front office traded for Wentz was his arm strength, which gave him the ability to throw the deep ball. Washington completed 32.4 percent of its passes deeper than 20 air yards last season, 23rd in the NFL. Wentz entered the season with a 36.3 percent career completion percentage on such passes and has completed 32 percent of his attempts of 20 or more yards with Washington. Wentz also has six “big-time” throws — a pass deemed by Pro Football Focus to have excellent ball location and timing, generally thrown further down the field or into a tighter window. That’s one fewer than Tom Brady, Lamar Jackson and Hurts and is part of the reason Wentz ranks 10th among quarterbacks in fantasy leagues using a standard scoring format.
For now, Washington remains committed to Wentz figuring things out and using his big-play ability to achieve real-world success. Don’t expect a potential switch to Heinicke to fix Washington’s offensive struggles. In 15 games with Heinicke under center last season, Washington’s offense averaged almost two fewer points per game than expected. He ranked 23rd among 31 qualified passers in QBR in 2021 and was rated 26th among 30 qualified passers by Pro Football Focus. Heinicke’s 2021 campaign is also proof that you can’t judge a quarterback’s season by a four-game stretch; his 26 expected points added over the first four weeks were the most by a Washington quarterback in the Snyder era. | 2022-10-08T02:05:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carson Wentz has been one of Washington's worst quarterbacks under Dan Snyder - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/carson-wentz-struggles-commanders/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/carson-wentz-struggles-commanders/ |
Highly paid Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher has the Aggies off to a lackluster 3-2 start this season. (Vasha Hunt/AP)
Instead, after two losses to unranked teams, Texas A&M limps into Tuscaloosa on Saturday as a 24.5-point underdog to top-ranked Alabama, facing the near certainty of a 3-3 record that is the very definition of mediocrity and irrelevance in the national polls.
Frustration abounds among Aggies fans who expected so much more.
But in a twist of irony, Fisher’s greatest job security amid widespread disappointment may be the record 10-year, $75 million contract he signed in 2017, when Texas A&M lured him away from Florida State, one that Texas A&M proceeded to sweeten in September 2021 with a four-year extension that takes him through 2031 and an annual raise to $9 million to ensure that no rival poached him.
All told, Fisher’s contract carries a $95.6 million buyout, according to USA Today’s annual salary database, should any deep-pocketed Aggies boosters insist on his firing at season’s end.
That simply won’t happen, in the view of Billy Liucci, a Texas A&M graduate and co-owner of Aggies website TexAgs.com,who is widely regarded as having his finger on the pulse of Texas A&M power brokers and fans.
In the first five weeks of this season, five Power Five coaches were fired with buyouts exceeding $55 million, according to the Knight Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics.
That followed Nebraska’s $15 million buyout of Scott Frost, Colorado’s $11.4 million buyout of Karl Dorrell, Georgia Tech’s $11.3 million buyout of Geoff Collins and Arizona State’s $8 million buyout of Herm Edwards.
During the 2021 season, eight Power Five coaches were bought out at a total of roughly $92 million, according to the Knight Commission, bringing the total payouts for not coaching — or “dead money” — to more than $140 million in the past season and a half.
Auburn’s second-year coach Bryan Harsin could be next after his team was routed at home by Penn State on Sept. 17 and suffered another home loss to LSU last weekend. That would compound the dead money Auburn is still paying Gus Malzahn, whom it fired three seasons into a seven-year, $49 million extension.
“You hear athletic directors say, ‘This is the cost of business,’ ” said Len Elmore, co-chairman of the Knight Commission, who is also an attorney and former NBA player. “But it’s really not. What it is is that there is more money than ever available for them to throw at these coaches. With this windfall, it’s almost like ADs — and even the college presidents who okay it — are playing with Monopoly money. It’s just setting a trend that is spiraling out of control.”
Both revenue sources are trending in one direction — straight up, with no end in sight.
Revenue from the four-team College Football Playoff represents roughly $500 million annually for each of the major football-playing conferences. The looming expanded 12-team playoff could triple that annual windfall to $1.5 billion.
With input from Mariner, the organization in 2021 proposed a new financial model for college sports that would include a system of disincentives, crafted and policed by individual conferences, that would penalize member schools for excessive coaching compensation and buyouts.
Mariner explains: “In baseball, we put in place a luxury tax that basically says: ‘You can spend as much as you want. But the more you spend, the more it’s going to cost you in terms of other incentives and disincentives.’ ”
Under the Knight Commission’s proposal, conferences would distribute more money to schools that invest in programs that directly benefit student-athletes, such as academic support, health services, mental health services, diversity and gender equity. Conversely, they would award less money to schools that overspend on multimillion-dollar coaching salaries and lavish facilities.
Said Elmore: “I don’t begrudge anyone from trying to make a good living. But we have to keep this in context. We’re not talking about professional coaches and professional sports; we’re talking about college sports. These institutions are not-for-profit. So the funding has to go toward objectives and goals that are primary in their mission. And that primary goal has to be education, health and safety.”
Fisher’s offense is sputtering, and even ardent Texas A&M fans view defeat as a foregone conclusion. According to Liucci, many believe Fisher is still the man for the job — an offensive genius whose genius just hasn’t yet shown up on the field. And they will be watching, Liucci said, to see what changes Fisher makes as the season winds down.
As for Fisher’s record-setting contract in 2017, Robert Cessna, executive sports editor of the Bryan-College Station Eagle, believes it was a positive. With it, Texas A&M thrust itself into the sport’s vanguard, he argues, setting a bar for salaries that other universities strove to match. Boosters poured millions into facility upgrades, and top recruits followed, culminating with the No. 1 recruiting class in 2022.
“There’s no doubt they got their money’s worth, so to speak, but now if you decide you have to make a change …” Cessna said, recapping the math with and without last year’s four-year extension and raise.
Buying out Fisher was a scenario no one considered when John Sharp, chancellor of the Texas A&M University System, presented Fisher with a national championship plaque — with the year left blank — in February 2018. Fisher hadn’t yet coached his first game, but that’s how confident the Aggies were that football glory was around the corner. | 2022-10-08T02:05:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Buyouts for college football coaches keep going up - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/college-football-coaches-buyouts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/college-football-coaches-buyouts/ |
England defenders Millie Bright, left, and Lucy Bronze battle for control with American forward Megan Rapinoe during Friday's 2-1 England win at Wembley. (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
“If we’re not protected in the right ways, then nothing else really matters,” U.S. star Megan Rapinoe said. “For us to come together and take a moment on a night like this, I think it’s really important and powerful.”
Teammate Crystal Dunn said, “It’s important we realize this is a global issue that is deeply rooted in women’s sports. Both teams coming together shows we are fighting this together.”
The harmonious occasion came before an audience of 76,893, a reflection of growing interest in women’s soccer in England, where, this summer, the national team won the European Championship for the first time.
The good vibes continued into the evening as the fourth-ranked Lionesses defeated the No. 1 United States, 2-1, extending the hosts’ winning streak to 15 and ending the visitors’ run at 13.
Entering the day unbeaten in 21 straight, the Americans lost for the first time since the 2021 Olympic semifinals in Japan.
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Lauren Hemp scored for England in the 10th minute, and after Sophia Smith tied in the 28th, Georgia Stanway restored the lead four minutes later on a penalty kick.
Washington Spirit star Trinity Rodman scored an apparent equalizer in the 36th minute, but after video review detected an offside violation by the narrowest of margins during a terrific U.S. buildup, the goal was nullified.
Both teams are preparing for the World Cup, which will take place next summer in Australia and New Zealand. Friday’s friendly offered a glimpse at a possible final.
“The fear factor has gone,” said Anita Asante, who played for England from 2004 to 2018. “There’s still a high degree of respect for the USA — the players and the talent.”
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The Lionesses, she added, came into the game thinking, “We can compete with the best in the world.”
Asante was among the former Lionesses invited onto the pitch before kickoff in honor of the program’s 50-year anniversary. The Football Association, the sport’s governing body in England, banned women’s soccer in 1921, saying it was “quite unsuitable for females.” The team’s first official match took place in 1972 on a muddy pitch in Scotland.
The last time the Lionesses played at Wembley was at the end of July, when they lifted the European trophy. And there were many reminders of that victory Friday. The stadium announcer mentioned it several times, prompting the crowd to go bonkers. There was also a sea of banners outside the stadium featuring the players with a “European Champions” message.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of that in this soccer-mad country. England had not celebrated a major international trophy of any kind since the men’s team won the 1966 World Cup. The women this year not only exorcised that ghost but also connected with the public and young girls on an emotional level.
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Linzi Burnside, 30, a nursery schoolteacher, snagged tickets on the first — and only — day they were available before all general admission tickets were gone. She brought three wannabe professional players — two age 10, one age 9 — with her, saying she was inspired to come following England’s recent success and to show her girls “what they can do if they work hard.”
She added, “It’s always been a boys’ game; there’s such a stigma about girls playing.” But she said that is changing. “Little girls are saying, ‘I’ll give that a try.’ ”
There was a girl-power vibe in the stadium. At halftime, fans were on their feet singing along to Shania Twain’s hit song, “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”
Not long after kickoff, they had plenty to celebrate. England counterattacked with pace and precision on the right flank. Beth Mead curled a low cross into the penalty area. U.S. defender Alana Cook failed to defuse the situation with her sliding effort, leaving the ball for Hemp to tap past goalkeeper Alyssa Naeher.
It marked the first U.S. deficit since the 1-0 setback to Canada at the Olympics 14 months ago.
The Americans drew even on a team-leading 10th goal of the year by Smith, 22, a natural winger who started at striker in place of injured star Alex Morgan.
Lindsey Horan created the opportunity, pressuring Stanway from behind deep in England’s end. Horan tapped the ball ahead to Smith, who turned at the top of the box and drove a low shot past diving goalkeeper Mary Earps and into the left corner.
England answered. U.S. defender Hailie Mace raised her foot and caught Lucy Bronze in the face. Play continued, but after video replay, a penalty kick was awarded. Stanway converted.
Four minutes later, at the end of an end-to-end sequence, Rodman appeared to tie it with a 10-yard shot, set up by Smith and Rapinoe. Again, there was video review, and referee Reim Hussein ruled Smith was slightly offside.
“I’m not sure that second goal was offside — the pictures look a little [suspect],” Rapinoe said, laughing.
In the second half, Hussein awarded the United States a penalty kick, but after reviewing the play, she changed the call. It was the proper decision because the ball had struck Hemp in the back side, not the arm.
The Americans created some decent chances in the second half but didn’t seriously test English keeper Mary Earps. Despite the defeat, U.S. Coach Vlatko Andonovski said the match proved beneficial ahead of Tuesday’s visit to No. 8 Spain and two home friendlies next month against second-ranked Germany.
“We came here to face a good opponent; we got that,” he said. “We came here to experience adversity; we got that. We came here to experience a hostile environment; we got that. So [the game] definitely checks all the boxes. Now we’ve got to get back to the drawing board and get better from it.” | 2022-10-08T02:05:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | England tops USWNT on a night of girl power and unity at Wembley - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/england-uswnt-friendly-wembley/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/england-uswnt-friendly-wembley/ |
Months into their marriage, the New York Times and the Athletic are still learning to live with each other. (Washington Post illustration; iStock; AP)
Not long after the New York Times bought the Athletic earlier this year, the founders of the popular sports website held an all-staff call.
Most Athletic staffers were pleased with the purchase. A six-year-old start-up, the Athletic had spent a year courting a buyer, discussing a merger with Axios and fielding interest from gambling companies and private equity firms. But the Times ponied up $550 million, and now the Athletic was part of America’s most storied journalism institution.
Still, there was an important matter the Athletic’s founders, Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann, needed to clarify with their newsroom of 400-plus journalists. Despite the fact that the Times now owned the Athletic, the founders reminded their employees, they were not to start telling sources that they worked for the Times.
Times sportswriters had worried to higher-ups that Athletic reporters, potential competitors, had been introducing themselves as Times journalists. One Athletic staffer, who had snapped a photo in front of the Times building in Manhattan and called it his new office, was asked to take it down.
Eventually, the Athletic created a policy clarifying the issue: “Always identify yourself specifically as a representative of The Athletic (and not the New York Times).” But nearly 10 months after the purchase, the question at the heart of that conference call, of what the Athletic will become as it is integrated into the Times, remains largely unanswered. How it is answered will help shape the sports media landscape for years to come.
The Athletic was founded in 2016 on a simple premise: That if you created online versions of local sports sections and gave them the resources to exhaustively cover teams, readers would flock. It launched in Chicago and spread across the United States and Canada, then added robust Premier League coverage in the United Kingdom, helped by $140 million in venture funding. It weathered the pandemic and, by 2021, boasted 1 million subscribers. Like start-ups do, it went looking for an off-ramp, culminating with the sale to the Times.
Mather once bragged — to the Times, no less — that the Athletic would let local papers "continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing.” Now that the Athletic was owned by a newspaper, the jokes were easy to make. But the Times isn’t (just) a newspaper anymore, and it’s certainly not a local one. It’s a games company and a recipes app, a consumer advice site and a podcast producer, all with a side of news.
Perhaps a greater irony of the purchase was that the Times several years ago decided that it didn’t want to be in the business of aggressively covering local sports and de-emphasized much of its traditional sports coverage. With the Athletic, the Times was now very much in the business of local sports. And critically so.
The Times wants the Athletic to be profitable in three years, but it’s losing money now: $6.8 million in February and March of this year and another $12.6 million in the second quarter, according to the Times public filings, which is a significant drag on the company’s bottom line.
“This is a very big bet,” said David Perpich, the publisher of the Athletic. “It’s a very big investment that we believe in, and that we’re going to get right.”
A million reasons
Part of the Sulzberger family that owns the Times, Perpich was working as a management consultant when he urged the Times to adopt a paywall in 2011. He then joined the company full-time and helped create the product division that launched the cooking and games apps. In addition to the Athletic, he is the publisher of Wirecutter, another Times acquisition, which offers advice and reviews for consumers.
In a conference room at the Times headquarters on a recent afternoon, Perpich said the Times’s internal research shows 100 million people in the United States read sports journalism, including 24 million with a willingness to pay for it. Seventeen million of those are open to paying the Times for it, he said.
As a company, the Times has set lofty goals for subscribers. It wanted 10 million by 2025 and delivered ahead of schedule, reaching that mark this year after adding around those million Athletic subscribers. (About 120,000 of the Athletic’s million paying customers were already Times subscribers, Perpich said.) Now the Times wants to hit 15 million by 2027, drawing users to news, cooking advice, games and, now, coverage of their favorite teams.
“The space for what the Athletic does is massive,” Perpich said. “And when you think about the different moments in somebody’s life, as you’re building an essential subscription, there’s the news; there’s food; there’s games. Sports is one of those big things as well. And that’s why we made the largest acquisition we have in 30 years."
Perpich’s first order of business is to integrate the Athletic into the Times bundle. Recently, the company began allowing Times log-in credentials to be used for the Athletic, helping users realize the value of the larger bundle the Times offers (cooking, games and Wirecutter) for $25 every four weeks. The Athletic, alone, costs $8 per month or $72 per year.
The Times would also like to get the Athletic in front of more people. To that end, it has done some management shuffling, moving some of its search engine and ad sales brainpower to the Athletic. (The site is also currently looking to hire a new executive editor.) The Athletic, which earned less than $10 million in advertising last year, also announced a big expansion of the ad sales business this month. Perpich said other popular sports sites earn in the hundreds of millions of dollars, which the Athletic should use as a benchmark.
The Athletic can help bolster the Times’s international aspirations, Perpich said. He raved about the popularity of the site’s soccer coverage in the U.K. As for what has surprised him the most thus far, Perpich said it was the type of sports coverage that readers most want.
“The interest in what I would call roster construction — free agency, the draft, trades, player movement in general," he said. "It’s just bigger than I think we realized. I think we thought like, oh, the Super Bowl is really big, but actually the NFL draft [is bigger].”
‘Dazzled’ by scoops
During a particularly futile New York Knicks season in 2015, the Times sports desk, which had dutifully covered the local teams for years, pulled its Knicks writer off the beat, announcing that the team was so bad it wasn’t worth their time. Instead, the paper ran a “Not the Knicks” series that sent its basketball writer across the globe, including to Australia and the lower divisions of college basketball, looking for other basketball stories.
That strategy became an ethos of the Times sports desk, which focused less on more traditional sports coverage and more on, as one person in the newsroom put it, “ethereal stuff.” The paper today doesn’t have anyone traveling or attending games full-time for the Mets, Yankees, Knicks, Jets or Giants, though it does offer wall-to-wall coverage of tennis, the Olympics and the playoffs of major American sports.
While the section expanded internationally and does strong investigative reporting, New York sports fans have been less thrilled with the daily report. “A full page on some soccer stadium in Milan, Italy, 2/3rds of a page on a soccer team in England and nothing about the hometown @Yankees or @Mets games,” Ralph Nader tweeted earlier this year.
Perhaps it didn’t make sense for the Times to throw resources into local sports coverage as it added more national and international readers, but several people in the newsroom wondered if there had been an overreaction to the small readership on stories recapping that night’s game. It wasn’t that fans didn’t want coverage of their favorite teams; they just didn’t want to read recaps of what they could digest in a two-minute highlight video. (A Times spokesman said pageviews don’t drive newsroom coverage decisions.)
Several Times staffers noted the Athletic has been beefing up some of those missing hometown beats, putting multiple reporters on the Mets, Yankees and Giants, an acknowledgment that there is a demand for that coverage. To the Times, the difference is the intended audience.
“The Athletic is trying to get the attention of hardcore sports fans,” said Jason Stallman, a former Times sports editor who has helped with the Athletic’s transition. “The Times is targeting general interest readers who are curious about the world. Yes, there will be some overlap of those Venn diagrams, but they are generally not competing.”
The Times may not do all of what the Athletic does, but the Athletic does do plenty of the investigations and national features that the Times does; that kind of work can drive subscriptions, too: A revelatory Athletic report on abuse in the National Women’s Soccer League last year delivered more than 3,200 subscriptions.
Times sports staffers have also asked repeated questions about standards at the Athletic, the Times staffers said. The Times has created a team to examine Athletic policies. Going forward, the Athletic will limit or at least need to sign off on journalists authoring books with players they cover, as some British soccer reporters have. And some Athletic reporters chafed at the Times implementing restrictions on political donations and commentary on social media, as Defector reported.
There is tension over sourcing requirements, too, best personified by leading NBA reporter Shams Charania, who specializes in his lightning fast and exhaustive reporting of transactional news, which he always delivers first to his nearly 2 million Twitter followers. Indeed, the Athletic’s own reporters have raised concerns about his reporting when it veers beyond the narrow lane of transactions. Within the Times, there was some intrigue about whether Charania would re-sign with the Athletic, as a signal of whether the Times would embrace his kind of reporting. Perpich said breaking news was important for more visibility and that retaining Charania was a key priority, and he re-signed this month; the New York Post reported the deal was for a year.
At the same time, Charania also re-signed his TV deal with the network Stadium, which, according to a person with knowledge of it, was for seven figures. According to multiple familiar with the discussions, he has spoken to gambling companies, including FanDuel, about working for them as well. Asked if the Times would allow a reporter to be paid by a gambling company, Perpich said, “We allow gambling companies to advertise on the website. As long as someone isn’t putting themselves in danger of violating journalism and independence ethics, we would be supportive of that situation.”
As for whether insider reporting could exist within Times standards, Stallman said, “When we learned more about Shams and his methods, we were really, really impressed at how rigorous he is. Not only was there not any lingering concern over whether that worked under the Times imprimatur, but we were kind of dazzled by it.”
A test in Qatar
When the Athletic was sold, the cash trickled down to every writer at the site. Each received at least $5,000, while those with the largest equity stakes received upward of $1 million, according to several staffers. For many, it was justification for putting their faith in the company’s founders. That faith has been one key reason the newsroom has not unionized, staffers said, even amid a wave of organizing across digital media newsrooms.
The NewsGuild has worked with Athletic staffers on an organizing drive. At one point, amid the sales negotiations last year, Hansmann, one of the founders, expressed concern that a union campaign might interfere with a sale, according to a person who spoke with him. But multiple people familiar with the efforts said, as of today, unionization was not imminent. (The Times went through a contentious organizing effort after it acquired Wirecutter.)
One reason to unionize would be job protection, though Perpich was adamant the Times intended to keep the Athletic’s head count steady. But there is a bottom line to meet, and writers have felt the pressure of cost-cutting. The Athletic once had aspirations to blanket every professional and college team with beat reporters, but those have been scaled back. According to staffers, around 12 NBA and six NFL teams are without dedicated beat reporters, including the Miami Dolphins and Memphis Grizzlies. Several baseball teams who had been in the playoff hunt, including the Milwaukee Brewers and Houston Astros, don’t have beat writers, to the chagrin of those teams’ fans.
As beats are lost there is reason to worry about competition. ESPN has a subscription streaming service that includes writing from 32 NFL beat writers and a team of regional and national NBA and MLB writers. And while it is more expensive than the Athletic, it offers thousands of live games.
Rigorous beat reporting is also expensive. Ahead of the NBA playoffs, a number of writers were given short notice that they couldn’t travel, causing some to miss playoff games. Ahead of this coming season, NBA writers have each been allotted $2,100 for their entire travel budgets — flights, hotel and per diems — for the remainder of 2022, a paltry amount for any writer hoping to offer best-in-class beat coverage of a team. Writers have had to make hard decisions about how to budget the funds and when to travel, knowing they will have to miss most road games. For some, there is concern about what it signifies, while others are confident the budgets will be restored next year, as promised.
Perpich said that on aggregate, travel budgets for the entire site had been restored to pre-pandemic levels. He said he had no knowledge of the specifics of the NBA budgets.
More clues to how the newsrooms will coexist could come this fall during the World Cup, an event that the Times has thrown extensive resources into covering in recent years. Perpich said it will be a major priority for the Athletic, too, with plans to send around 20 reporters to Qatar and have more covering from the U.K. and the United States.
But even if the two newsrooms are watching each other intently, Perpich said he is only watching one of them. “Honestly, I’m only really focused on the Athletic,” Perpich said. “I don’t make the decisions on what the [Times] newsroom does or does not cover."
Correction: An earlier version of this story identified David Perpich as the head of new products. He is the publisher of the Athletic and Wirecutter. It also incorrectly stated that the Times would limit or sign-off on book deals for Athletic writers with players they cover. Athletic editors will review such deals. | 2022-10-08T02:05:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At the Athletic and New York Times, a marriage with promise and tension - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/new-york-times-athletic-subscribers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/new-york-times-athletic-subscribers/ |
Concussion protocols to change once NFL, NFLPA work out details
Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa is sacked by Bengals defender Josh Tupou on Sept. 29. (Joshua A. Bickel/AP)
The NFL and the NFL Players Association said Friday they expect to modify their concussion protocols to close a loophole that allowed Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa to be cleared to return to a game late last month.
But the league and union made their pronouncement in separate statements, rather than agreeing to official changes to the protocols and formally enacting them. That came amid an apparent disagreement on whether the exiting protocols were followed properly in Tagovailoa’s case.
“Our union has agreed to change the concussion protocols to protect players from returning to play in the case of any similar incident to what we saw on September 25,” the NFLPA said in its statement, attributed to its board of player representatives and its ruling executive committee. “We would like these changes to go into effect before this weekend’s games to immediately protect the players and hope the NFL accepts the change before then as well.”
Statement from the NFLPA, calling on the NFL to adopt the modified concussion protocol before Sunday’s games. pic.twitter.com/bofROM8Ft2
The NFL and NFLPA previously had said they’ had agreed to modify the protocols to eliminate an exception related to “gross motor instability.” Under the exception, a player can be cleared to return to a game — as Tagovailoa was during a Sept. 25 game against the Buffalo Bills in Miami Gardens, Fla. — if doctors determine his motor instability was not neurologically caused.
“As we have discussed with the NFLPA, we agree that changes to the joint NFL-NFLPA protocols are necessary to further enhance player safety,” the league said in its statement Friday. “We have already spoken to members of the NFL Head, Neck and Spine Committee and the leadership of the Unaffiliated Neurotrauma Consultants and Independent Certified Athletic Trainers who serve as spotters to discuss these likely changes.”
The joint review between the league and union over the level of compliance with the protocols in Tagovailoa’s case is ongoing. Richard Sherman, the former NFL cornerback who is an NFLPA vice president, said during Thursday night’s coverage of the Broncos-Colts game that “the union’s position is that the protocols were not followed” while the league “says they went with an abundance of caution.”
The NFLPA did not respond to requests Thursday night for further comment on Sherman’s assertions. The NFL declined to respond.
The NFLPA previously said it was focused on the medical judgments made in the case, considering errors in medical judgment to amount to noncompliance with the protocols. The union exercised its right to remove the unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant involved in clearing Tagovailoa during the Sept. 25 game. The NFL previously said the preliminary indications were that the protocols were followed, in its view.
Tagovailoa left the game against the Bills and was evaluated for a head injury. He stumbled after getting to his feet following a first-half play on which he was shoved to the turf and appeared to hit his head. Tagovailoa returned to the game to start the second half. He and Dolphins Coach Mike McDaniel said that day Tagovailoa was plagued by a back injury. The NFLPA initiated the joint review then.
Four days later, Tagovailoa was taken from the field on a stretcher during a game at Cincinnati. He struck his head on the turf on a first-half sack. He was transported by ambulance to a local hospital and, according to the Dolphins, was diagnosed with a concussion. He was released from the hospital that night.
The Dolphins have said Tagovailoa will not play in their road game Sunday against the New York Jets. He is being evaluated and treated under the league’s concussion protocols. | 2022-10-08T02:06:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL concussion protocols may change soon after Tua Tagovailoa incident - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/nfl-concussion-protocols-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/nfl-concussion-protocols-change/ |
State agencies can suspend concussed fighters. Why not NFL players?
Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa is taken off the field on a stretcher during a game against the Cincinnati Bengals. (Joshua A. Bickel/AP)
It should not be the Miami Dolphins who announced early this week that quarterback Tua Tagovailoa would be held out of Sunday’s game against the New York Jets in New Jersey, held 10 days after the Bengals’ 6-foot-3, 340-pound defensive lineman Josh Tupou whipped Tagovailoa, 100 pounds lighter, down hard. The tackle banged Tagovailoa’s head off the ground.
And then, as he slowly rolled over with his hands in front of his face mask, his fingers stiffened and, grotesquely, pointed in different directions. It was what we’d imagine an electrocution to look like.
Tagovailoa was eventually secured to a stretcher. And with the hands of six men on his gurney like pallbearers guiding a coffin, surrounded by that all too familiar prayer circle of gloomy NFL players when one of their own has been incapacitated by their violence, he was carted off the field, out of sight.
The diagnosis was concussion.
“We’re just focused on making sure he’s at optimal health and then crossing that bridge, so it’s a little early for a definitive timeline beyond that,” Dolphins Coach Mike McDaniel said Monday in explaining why Tagovailoa wouldn’t play this week.
But were Tagovailoa a combat sport athlete — a boxer or mixed martial artist — there would be a timeline for return as perspicuous as if he were found to be taking banned PEDs. He wouldn’t play this month. Probably not next month, either. And it wouldn’t be the team or league’s decision.
Because as brutal, as barbaric as fighting sports are, athletes in the ring or the octagon who are rendered impaired by knockout — i.e. concussed — are protected by state laws that govern their activities. Those laws err on the side of extreme caution — keeping fighters out of competition, and even practice, for a month or more.
In New Jersey, where the Dolphins will travel this weekend to play, state law for concussed combat athletes would’ve forced Tagovailoa to the sideline. “Any boxer who is knocked out in a boxing match,” New Jersey law states, “shall be suspended from boxing for a minimum 60-day period. The knocked-out boxer shall not be permitted to participate in a bout until a thorough medical examination is completed and submitted …”
Even for the two weeks after Sunday’s contest — when the Dolphins are to return home to Miami for a pair of games — Tagovailoa would be a mere spectator. To be sure, when a 58-year-old Evander Holyfield was KO’d a little over a year ago in an boxing match in Hollywood, Fla., the Florida State Boxing Commission medically suspended him from fighting in the state for 30 days.
That’s what should await Tagovailoa, if football’s claim about protecting its players from the dangers that lead to mentally debilitating CTE is genuine: regulation outside of the sport. It’s time for the game to accept the same drastic actions as fighting sports to keep the injured brain out of more harm’s way, no matter what the team doctor, or outside physician working for the sport, decides.
At 58, the long-diminished champion boxer Holyfield shouldn’t have been granted a license to fight. But Tagovailoa probably shouldn’t have played against the Bengals on a Thursday after having been diminished the Sunday before when a hit left him looking like a Bourbon Street reveler at 3 in the morning.
What happened to Tagovailoa in the span of those few days elicited criticism that the NFL’s directives for handling concussed players were inadequate. But the league isn’t at fault alone. It is all of us. That’s football’s protocol problem.
It’s the players who see themselves as gladiators. “It’s war,” tight end Kellen Winslow Jr. infamously expressed long before he was convicted as a rapist. “They’re out there to kill you, so I’m [going] to kill them. If I didn’t hurt him, he’d hurt me. They were gunning for my legs. I’m going to come right back at them. I’m a f---ing soldier!”
It’s the parents and guardians who see their sons as Lotto tickets and sit quietly by while they amble about the field despite injury.
It’s the fans who grow up imagining players as cyborgs in a computerized game, as supermen who can’t be broken, and increasingly as mere fantasy characters on a spreadsheet or website.
It’s those of us in the media who prop up those prototypes, as sport scientists Eric Anderson and Edward M. Kian observed in a 2012 journal paper titled “Examining Media Contestation of Masculinity and Head Trauma in the National Football League”: “The image of the emotionally and physically impenetrable football player has been reified by the dominant sporting media. Media-portrayed sporting narratives of heroic disposition, even in the face of debilitating injury or risk of death, are produced as part of orthodox notions of commitment to sport and victory. This is for several reasons. Foremost it is because the preponderance of individuals in sport media is men.”
We’re all enablers.
Combat sports and football aren’t waged, of course, with the same purpose in mind. It is the explicit aim of a fighter to discombobulate his or her opponent, with the coup de grace being to concuss.
But football has always been a collision sport, with getting one’s bell rung — as old coaches once called what they didn’t know was brain trauma — a frequent consequence. And despite all the rule changes, precautions and equipment improvements meant to decrease brain damage, players are bigger and stronger and seem to play with a greater esprit de martyrdom than ever before. More than a dozen players who joined Tagovailoa on the NFL’s injury list for this weekend were indicated as concussion victims.
But they all could be cleared for kickoffs shortly, no matter how much we’ve learned in recent years about the long-term dangers of head injuries in (and out of) sports. Because the game needs its stars. Because the stars are the heartbeat of the biggest, richest, most addictive sport on the planet. Because the players earn the league and its broadcast partners and Madden game-makers bazillions. Because we just can’t get enough.
So if we can’t control ourselves and the game to which we’re all addicted, some entity outside of it should. | 2022-10-08T02:06:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The NFL's concussion problem needs an external solution - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/nfl-concussions-policy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/nfl-concussions-policy/ |
Don’t count out the Cardinals this postseason
Yadier Molina, Albert Pujols (pictured) and Adam Wainwright’s last ride together has taken them to the postseason. (Joe Sargent/Getty Images)
The St. Louis Cardinals do not begin their first-round series with the Philadelphia Phillies as the favorites to win the National League pennant. The Los Angeles Dodgers and Atlanta Braves have far better records. The New York Mets and San Diego Padres have garnered far more attention. The Cardinals were winners in a weak NL Central Division, the fittest of the unfit. This is not their title to lose.
Yet the Cardinals do begin their postseason lit by the unmistakable glow of destiny — though in fairness, every playoff team believes it has that shine before a pitch is thrown. But other postseason teams have not seen baseball fates converge in their clubhouse the way the Cardinals have this season. Few teams ever have. Perhaps few teams ever will.
Yadier Molina, Albert Pujols and Adam Wainwright’s last ride together — though Wainwright, unlike Molina and Pujols, insists he isn’t done after this year — has made every stop of the Cardinals’ season a moment for ceremony. Pujols’s spellbinding chase of 700 career homers in some ways obscured the magical offensive seasons of Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt, both of whom bring credible MVP candidacies into October.
All of it combined with the emergence of a new Cardinals prototype in rookie utility man Brendan Donovan and the offensive evolution of infielder Tommy Edman to give the sense that the next generation might slowly be falling into place, even as Dylan Carlson and Tyler O’Neill, whose disappointing regular season was followed by not being named to the Cardinals’ roster for their first-round series, continue to evolve into the everyday players the team hopes they will be.
Injuries have limited promising young starters to bullpen duties in recent years, but now the Cardinals enter October with a handful of flame-throwing young pitchers piled up in their bullpen. Wainwright will join them there, at least for the first two games of the first-round series, meaning the Cardinals will have veteran starting pitching depth if they need it. José Quintana, another deadline acquisition that turned out to be much splashier than it seemed, and Miles Mikolas will start Games 1 and 2, respectively.
The whole thing could have blown up long before this under a young manager whose first dealings with Pujols and Molina were as a minor leaguer in Cardinals camp two decades ago, when they spoke to him and his peers as examples of what should be. It could have fallen apart after injuries picked apart a rotation that was never exactly dominating but built to allow the team’s defensive prowess to shine. The surprising deadline deal in which St. Louis sent Harrison Bader to the Yankees for lefty Jordan Montgomery could have yielded regret instead of better innings than Montgomery had ever thrown in New York. He will begin the series in the bullpen and will probably be a starter in the next round if the Cardinals advance.
More talented or more expensive teams see themselves undone by injuries or happenstance every year. And the Cardinals know better than anyone that all any franchise can do is build a roster and cross its fingers.
Since the start of the 2005 season, only two teams — the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers — have won more regular season games than the Cardinals. St. Louis has won two World Series titles since then. The Yankees and Dodgers have just one apiece. Only the Dodgers have played more postseason games in that span than St. Louis. Molina and Wainwright have played in nine postseasons together. They are legends because of it.
“I always say this: ‘Seasons are long. Careers are short,’ ” Cardinals President of Baseball Operations John Mozeliak said. “When you think about a season, how many times do you have a player who has taken 600 at-bats or makes 30 starts? Adam has missed seasons. Yadi has missed time. These things happen. But we’ve really surrounded ourselves with guys who know how to do it because they’ve done it. At the very least, you hope other guys realize what it takes.”
What it takes to get to October one more time, particularly for people who have spent two decades focused on just that, may be impossible for those who do not have to do it to explain. Paul DeJong hit 30 homers in 2019. By midseason this year, he was struggling so much he found himself in the minors.
“The longevity piece is incredible. I think that’s why there’s so many guys that get to that level because of how hard it is,” DeJong said before doing some impromptu math.
“Albert has 2,200 RBI, and he’s played 22 years. He’s averaged 100 RBI for 22 years. It’s incredible to see that.
“It’s amazing to see how any all-time record is set or achieved. Like, you can hit 30 home runs one year, but these guys are hitting 30 home runs for 20 years! More than that. When you start adding it up like that, it really blows your mind.”
DeJong said Pujols was one of the first people to greet him when he got back to the majors, aware of — if not exactly able to relate to — how difficult sticking around at this level can be.
“To have those types of careers, there’s a certain level of adversity that you have to face and overcome,” Cardinals Manager Oliver Marmol said. “Most just face it. They don’t overcome it.”
From May: In St. Louis, a young manager leads the last ride of Cardinals legends
Marmol remembers a day in May 2018 when Wainwright, coming off offseason elbow surgery, tiptoed through 2⅓ innings against the Padres with a sinker he couldn’t throw much harder than 86 mph.
“The conversation was, ‘I think I’m done,’ ” Marmol remembered one September afternoon. But Wainwright wasn’t done. So that the 41-year-old ended this season with a 7.23 ERA in his last four starts is concerning, sure. But it is not, he has proved, decisive. Wainwright finished this season with a 3.71 ERA. He owns a 2.83 ERA in nine postseasons. He has gotten back up before.
Who knows how Molina would have chosen to end his career if Wainwright hadn’t gotten up the first time. As revered as he is in St. Louis, everyone can tell Molina was not completely present for this Cardinals season. He arrived late to spring training. He left the team when the basketball team he owns in Puerto Rico played in the championship game. He played in fewer games this year (77) than any full season since he debuted in 2004.
But he was there all the same, there to catch Wainwright for the record-breaking 325th time last month, there when the mayor of St. Louis declared Oct. 4 “Yadier Molina Day” in honor of the number he wore for years with the Cardinals — there, or at least certain to be there, when his good friend Pujols was deciding where to sign in free agency this winter and opted to come home. Pujols erupted in the second half, rediscovering the kind of form he hadn’t shown in half a decade, blasting his way to 700 homers and beyond as the Cardinals (93-69) cruised to a division title.
From September: How Albert Pujols pulled himself to the cusp of 700
“Having the three of them functioning at a high level for so long, it’s incredibly unique and special. To say I wasn’t thinking about the touchy-feely part of this — I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t. I did think that would be a really cool story,” Mozeliak said. “What’s made it an even cooler story is how competitive they’ve all been.”
But importantly, those three haven’t had to be everything. Arenado used an offseason walkabout to rejuvenate himself and finish the season a tenth of a wins above replacement point behind the Padres’ Manny Machado among all third baseman. If it weren’t for Aaron Judge, Goldschmidt would be in the spotlight for having one of the best all-around offensive seasons in the last few years, including the third-highest on-base-plus-slugging percentage in baseball. The Cardinals’ rotation, despite its soft-tossing reputation, has been good enough. Defensive statistics are notoriously fickle, but St. Louis is in the top three in almost all of them.
“It’s unique: We have two all-star-MVP type players in Goldy and Nolan. Then we have this younger group of players who can watch what Albert and Waino and Yadi do every day,” Mozeliak said. “We all talk about leadership and mentorship and making sure we have some sort of succession plan. We’re blessed with it. The young guys can look up and see it in five-ninths of our lineup. That’s remarkable.” | 2022-10-08T02:06:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why the St. Louis Cardinals could surprise some this postseason - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/st-louis-cardinals-postseason-hopes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/st-louis-cardinals-postseason-hopes/ |
Marcin Gortat played five seasons with the Wizards and is with them this preseason in a temporary coaching role. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
“No filter, no filter,” Gortat said, laughing as he took a familiar stance in front of a scrum of reporters. “No filter right now.”
Gortat — who served as the ever-steady, always outspoken frontcourt anchor during the best years of the John Wall-Bradley Beal partnership in Washington — joined his old team this week for the first time since he was traded for Austin Rivers in 2018.
His role, having accepted an invitation from President and General Manager Tommy Sheppard, is to work with the Wizards’ big men through the end of the preseason. His desire is to throw down wisdom that goes beyond the confines of the court.
“I personally was 57th pick in the league, for the people that don’t know. There’s only two players in the history of the game that survived with the 57th pick — it’s me and Manu Ginóbili,” Gortat said. (Only one other player drafted at that spot, Frank Brickowski, lasted more than five seasons in the NBA.) “I wasn’t as gifted as Manu; I don’t have a championship, unfortunately. But I did survive as the 57th pick in this league.”
The lessons Gortat wants to impart are strategic, tactical and physical, no doubt. He and center Daniel Gafford worked together for much of the morning Wednesday and dedicated the end of practice to setting screens.
The Polish big has one named for him, after all: the “Gortat screen,” which is when the roller screens his man, the help defender, by posting up or cutting into him to open a lane for the ballhandler.
If someone had told the 57th pick he would one day have a signature move?
“I would say you’ve got to change your drugs, man,” he said.
But Gortat also wants to educate the Wizards’ young players on managing a long career. The points he hammered home Thursday were less about screens and more about work ethic, showing up to the gym 30 minutes early, not letting setbacks or missed shots or limited playing time distract from long-term goals.
Gortat, who spent five years with the Wizards and has since retired to Orlando, returned with the perspective of a man nearing 40 who has spent the past three years outside an NBA locker room. Small-scale drama such as his acrimonious split with Wall years ago no longer seems to matter — “I’m rooting for him,” Gortat said. He made sure to remind players just how lucky they are.
“Might be deep stuff what I’m about to say, but you’ve got to understand, man, you’re in an unbelievable position to do what you do. You play basketball. I don’t have to remind everybody else what’s going on in Ukraine right now — people are dying over there,” said Gortat, whose native Poland has welcomed millions of Ukrainian refugees.
“Families are losing homes and everything. If you come in here and you complain about a little pain or about missed shots or touches? Man, you got issues. You’ve got to understand. This is the best job you ever had. Come here and do your work. That’s the only thing you’ve got to do. If someone asks you to come here at 7, you’ve got to come here at 6:30. You do that? Life’s going to be beautiful.”
Coach Wes Unseld Jr. appreciates Gortat’s coaching both because of his longevity and for the simple fact that he isn’t a coach. Lessons stick differently when they’re passed from player to player. Gortat can teach Gafford and the other bigs the details, angles and in-game tricks you learn from spending years matching up chest to chest with other centers.
Gortat did admit that his hands-on teaching style might be part of what keeps him from a full-time coaching gig. At 38, he no longer has all the energy required to play the way he prefers day in and day out.
“We have a lot of young cats on the team that like to go at me,” Gortat said with a smile. “I like to go at them, too.”
Gortat plans to stay with the team until Oct. 15, at which point, “we’ll see” about sticking around, he said. It sounds like the man once known as “The Polish Hammer” has an open invitation.
“As long as he wants to stay,” Unseld said, “I love it.” | 2022-10-08T02:06:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marcin Gortat is coaching with Washington Wizards during preseason - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/wizards-marcin-gortat-coach/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/wizards-marcin-gortat-coach/ |
Abortion rights supporters rally in Tucson, on July 4. (Sandy Huffaker/AFP/Getty Images)
An Arizona appellate court halted enforcement of the state’s near-total abortion ban late Friday, staying a lower court’s decision to reinstate an older law that does not allow victims of rape or incest to have the procedure at any time.
The order by the Arizona Court of Appeals came after Planned Parenthood Arizona, a reproductive health organization, appealed the September ruling by Pima County Superior Court Judge Kellie Johnson. The stay is in place until the appellate court can hear the appeal. The lower court had lifted a decades-long injunction on the total-near restrictions, which have their roots in an 1864 law which only allows abortions if they are needed to save the life of a pregnant person.
Judge Peter J. Eckerstrom, writing for the three appellate judges that issued the stay, said the lower court may have erred in resurrecting the Civil War era law, because it conflicts with more recent laws that provide abortion seekers with more leeway. A law that permits abortions for up to 15 weeks took force last month, putting it in conflict with the 1864 near-total ban. Arizona’s GOP Attorney General has previously said he plans to enforce the older law.
“Arizona courts have a responsibility to attempt to harmonize all of this state’s relevant statutes,” Eckerstrom wrote in a one-page order, adding that the “acute need of [health care] providers, prosecuting agencies, and the public for legal clarity” had prompted the order. | 2022-10-08T02:11:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Arizona appeals court halts enforcement of near-total abortion ban - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/arizona-abortion-law-planned-parenthood/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/07/arizona-abortion-law-planned-parenthood/ |
The economic downturn hasn’t been canceled for next year, but it may have been pushed back by another month or so. That’s the latest takeaway from US payrolls data, which showed resilient hiring and persistent wage increases in September. It marks yet another round of short-term good news for workers that’s bad news for companies and the Federal Reserve.
Ultimately, it’s hard to imagine how any of this ends well for anyone. Workers continue to quit jobs for higher-paying ones at elevated rates, which led to average hourly earnings in the private sector rising 5% in September from a year ago, still well above the rate that would be consistent with the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target. On a three-month basis, the picture is only marginally better at an annualized pace of around 4.4%.
The labor market just isn’t experiencing the sort of cooling that would allow the Fed to slow the pace of interest rate increases, which materially raises the risk of a recession. Indeed, even if wage pressures were ebbing in the data, there’s an argument that another bump could be in the offing in the coming months as companies head into performance review season and workers notice that inflation has eroded their purchasing power. Many workers took advantage of the hot job market to find a new role in the past year, but those who stayed will expect fatter-than-usual raises. If that happens, either companies will raise prices further (damaging brand loyalty and incurring the wrath of the Fed); profit margins will shrink; or workers will be forced to suffer and, as a result, the consumer economy will sputter.
Economic orthodoxy has long suggested that labor markets need to soften to tame inflation. While there are plenty of reasons not to treat that as an article of faith, the evidence from average hourly earnings takes the debate out of the realm of theory. The best-case scenario for the economy now is probably one in which workers decide to accept the loss in real wages — that’s just the cruel reality of how monetary policy is conducted, at least until central bankers find a better way. That might be the most likely path to a “softish landing,” as Fed Chair Jerome Powell has referred to it, in which the Fed is able to restore stable prices without causing a serious recession.
But it’s far from clear that the US economy is truly heading in that direction. Many employers are apparently still playing catch-up after the pandemic hiring challenges, and they added a seasonally adjusted 263,000 workers in September, well above the average of 190,000 a month in the five years before the pandemic. The unemployment rate fell to 3.5%, matching a five-decade low.
Optimists have long held that an improvement in labor supply could help bring wage increases to a more sustainable pace without necessarily driving up unemployment, but the prime-age employment to population ratio — the ratio of workers to people in the 25-54 age group — actually slipped a hair to 80.2% in the most recent month. Labor force supply looks like a nonstarter at this point, unless you believe that older workers will suddenly reconsider their retirements or that a change in immigration policy is in the offing.
Unfortunately, the stock market isn’t prepared for materially shrinking profit margins, much less a significant recession. Margins narrowed a bit in 2022, but they’re still relatively strong by historical standards. Until recently, companies have been able to pass along rising costs, but that won’t be the case indefinitely. Yet analysts and the market don’t seem to be discounting much more margin deterioration. In fact, projections compiled by Bloomberg suggest they’re expecting margins to bounce back in 2023 and 2024.
In the end, none of this bodes well for the broader economy, which is why the S&P 500 Index was sinking about 2% Friday. As Bloomberg Intelligence Chief U.S. Economist Anna Wong wrote, the labor market data “significantly bolsters” the case for another 75-basis-point increase in the fed funds rate next month, potentially bringing the upper bound of the target range to 4%. The Fed’s decision will ultimately hinge on the consumer price index release expected Thursday. But with the job market this resilient, even a striking improvement in CPI would still leave the Fed to worry about what’s coming several months down the line. For companies and workers alike, it’s getting harder to see how any of this has a happy ending.
• Fed Splits the Difference on Labor Market Pain: Jonathan Levin
• Fed Must Show It’s Willing to Cause a Recession: Editorial | 2022-10-08T02:15:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Labor Market Is Coming for Profit Margins — or Worse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-labor-market-is-coming-for-profit-margins-or-worse/2022/10/07/b53acebe-465c-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-labor-market-is-coming-for-profit-margins-or-worse/2022/10/07/b53acebe-465c-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html |
U. of Arizona professor fatally shot; former student charged
Court documents say the suspect ‘has been the subject of several reports of harassment and threats to staff’
University of Arizona police escort students from the scene of a shooting at the John W. Harshbarger Building on the campus in Tucson. Campus police said Thomas Meixner, a popular hydrology professor was fatally shot in an office. (Rebecca Sasnett/Arizona Daily Star/AP)
A University of Arizona professor was shot and killed in an office on campus Wednesday, university police said. A former student at the university has been charged.
The shooting devastated those who knew Thomas Meixner, the head of the Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences Department at the university, who was described by many as a kind and brilliant man. It frightened the campus community as students fled classrooms and tried to barricade themselves into rooms when the university sent alerts. And it reignited concerns nationally about some of the risks that can arise in the intense, and sometimes fraught, world of academia.
Murad Dervish, 46, was taken into custody hours after the shooting and charged Thursday with first-degree murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to the University of Arizona Police Department. A campus-police spokesman said Thursday that the motive is not yet known.
The incident unfolded quickly. A man entered the John W. Harshbarger Building just before 2 p.m. Wednesday, according to university police. Someone called police at 1:59 to say a former student who was not allowed in the building had entered, and requested that police escort the man out.
Documents filed in Pima County Justice Court stated Dervish had been expelled in February and staff were advised to call 911 if he were to return to campus.
“Dervish has been the subject of several reports of harassment and threats to staff members working at Harshbarger,” according to court records, and was prohibited from possessing a firearm because of a previous unrelated protection order.
A campus exclusionary order had been filled out to ban Dervish, but it had not yet been served because police could not locate him, Sgt. Sean Shields, a spokesman for the University of Arizona Police Department, said Thursday.
The department then received another call that there had been a shooting in the building. At 2:07 p.m., police were told the suspect had run out of the building’s main entrance, campus police said.
Meixner was struck by approximately four 9mm bullets, according to court documents. Another man in the office was struck by a bullet fragment and was treated and released. A person who knows Dervish identified him as the shooter, authorities said in the court document.
Meixner was taken to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Three hours later, Dervish was stopped by police while driving toward Mexico about 30 miles south of Gila Bend, Ariz., according to the court documents. A 9mm handgun was found in his vehicle, loaded with ammunition consistent with the approximately 11 shell casings found at the scene in Tucson, according to the documents.
An attorney for Dervish could not immediately be located.
According to the court documents, before police questioning, Dervish said: “I hope he’s okay, probably wishful thinking.”
Dervish said he had considered taking his own life.
And he said, “I just felt so disrespected by that whole department,” the documents state.
On campus, many mourned Meixner, a longtime presence at the university.
“Tom was always smiling — when I think of Tom, that’s my first impression,” said Xubin Zeng, a professor in the department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, who said Meixner had been a colleague and friend of 15 years. “He was always kind to everybody.”
Zeng said he had taught Dervish, and that members of the department are shocked, saddened and angry.
Purdue student arrested after allegedly stabbing roommate to death
The broader scientific community shared memories and tributes to Meixner’s research contributions but even more so to his personal contributions as a mentor, friend, role model and family man.
Paul Brooks, a professor of hydrology at the University of Utah, had been friends with him since graduate school. “He really was a gifted interdisciplinary scientist who could connect chemistry, hydrology and biology together for really meaningful, insightful work,” Brooks said.
“But the most important thing about Tom is he was such a powerful force for good in science and academia in a very competitive world where things often aren’t fair, and where people work very hard and maybe aren’t acknowledged to the level they should be. He was incredibly unselfish and supportive of everyone.”
Rebecca Barnes, an AAAS science technology policy fellow with the National Science Foundation, said she first met Meixner as a star-struck postdoctoral student. “One of the amazing things about being a scientist is knowing people in all these different stages of our lives,” Barnes said. “But it also means that our community, we feel these losses really hard.”
She said Meixner was warmly supportive of efforts to make science more equitable and inclusive, and remembered him enthusiastically — in all caps — promoting a colleague’s work when Barnes was creating Wikipedia pages to highlight women in STEM fields.
“He was one of those people who is both very smart and very nice, and that’s who you want in science,” she said. “That’s who you want training the next generation.”
Adam Ward, the head of the biological and ecological engineering department at Oregon State University, said the incident shocked and upset him not only because he liked and admired Meixner, a fellow hydrologist, but because he saw it as part of the threat that scientists are increasingly facing.
He said police had once intervened when a student Ward had known moved from talking about killing Ward and his family members to showing up at his home and their workplaces. He had to talk to his children’s school principals, he said, about court orders banning the stalker from the area.
Faculty and students can have complicated relations, Ward said, because they often work closely together and faculty can have so much influence over a student’s future. Graduate school “is a complicated and emotionally charged time in people’s lives,” he said.
Meixner, who grew up in Maryland, graduated from the University of Maryland in 1992, according to his faculty homepage, and earned his doctorate in hydrology in 1999 from the University of Arizona.
Christopher L. Castro, the associate department head, did not immediately respond to a request for comment but posted on social media about the loss, writing that he was devastated. “Beyond his professional contributions to hydrology, Tom was a father and an exemplary human being. Praying all who mourn, especially his family. I will miss you forever, my dear friend.”
Arizona’s governor, Doug Ducey (R), said in a tweet that the state is praying for Meixner’s family and friends.
The campus resumed in-person classes Thursday.
On Friday evening, the university planned to hold a candlelight vigil to honor Meixner.
In a video to campus Friday, university president Robert C. Robbins said Meixner’s contributions to the university and the lasting impressions he made on countless students would not be forgotten.
“He was a devoted husband and father whose work focused on saving the world’s most precious resources,” Robbins said. “One of the last things he shared with his community was the quote, ‘Hope is not optimism, which expects things to turn out well, but something rooted in the conviction that there is good worth working for.’ ”
Razzan Nakhlawi contributed to this report. | 2022-10-08T02:15:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | University of Arizona professor shot and killed; ex-student in custody - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/06/university-arizona-professor-shot-campus/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/06/university-arizona-professor-shot-campus/ |
This combination of photos show Simon Cowell, from left, Heidi Klum and Howie Mandel at the “America’s Got Talent” season 15 red carpet in Pasadena, Calif., on March 4, 2020. (Photos by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP) (Uncredited/AP)
LOS ANGELES — A global version of “America’s Got Talent” that will bring together past contestants from the U.S. show and other countries is coming to NBC. | 2022-10-08T02:16:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'America's Got Talent' going global with all-stars version - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/americas-got-talent-going-global-with-all-stars-version/2022/10/07/fcd11e82-4692-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/americas-got-talent-going-global-with-all-stars-version/2022/10/07/fcd11e82-4692-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html |
They join a string of other high-profile Trump allies and advisers who have been called to testify in the probe. Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trump attorney who’s been told he could face criminal charges in the probe, testified in August. Attorneys John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro have also appeared before the panel. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham's attempt to fight his subpoena is pending in a federal appeals court. And paperwork has been filed seeking testimony from others, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. | 2022-10-08T02:17:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Flynn, Gingrich testimony sought in Georgia election probe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/flynn-gingrich-testimony-sought-in-georgia-election-probe/2022/10/07/49353780-468a-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/flynn-gingrich-testimony-sought-in-georgia-election-probe/2022/10/07/49353780-468a-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html |
The Georgia spending is particularly notable, coming as Trump’s hand-picked Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker's campaign has been rocked by reports alleging he encouraged and paid for an ex-girlfriend’s 2009 abortion. Walker, a longtime football icon, backed a national ban on abortion during his primary, and has said he does not believe in exceptions even in cases of rape, incest or when the health of a pregnant woman is at risk. | 2022-10-08T02:18:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump super PAC reserves millions in airtime in key states - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-super-pac-reserves-millions-in-airtime-in-key-states/2022/10/07/6aa779b4-4685-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-super-pac-reserves-millions-in-airtime-in-key-states/2022/10/07/6aa779b4-4685-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html |
New York Mets Starling Marte (6) motions to the umpire for a timeout after stealing second base against the San Diego Padres during the second inning of Game 1 of a National League wild-card baseball playoff series, Friday, Oct. 7, 2022, in New York. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)
NEW YORK — All-Star right fielder Starling Marte was in the New York Mets’ starting lineup for their playoff opener Friday night against San Diego, back from a broken finger that sidelined him the past month. | 2022-10-08T02:18:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marte in Mets lineup, Álvarez also on playoff roster vs Pads - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/marte-alvarez-on-mets-roster-for-wild-card-series-vs-pads/2022/10/07/99c007d6-4660-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/marte-alvarez-on-mets-roster-for-wild-card-series-vs-pads/2022/10/07/99c007d6-4660-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html |
EPA targets lead airplane fuel, citing children living near runways
Morning light begins to appear at the Reading Regional Airport in Reading, Pa. (Lee Powell/The Washington Post)
The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday took a major step toward finding that lead in aviation fuel endangers public health, citing the risk to hundreds of thousands of young children who live near airport runways.
Environmentalists first petitioned the agency to make an “endangerment finding” 16 years ago, prompting further examination of the risks and protracted legal action, but the agency hadn’t proposed doing so until Friday.
“Aircraft that use leaded fuel are the dominant source of lead emissions to air in the country,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said in a statement. “Exposure to lead can cause irreversible and lifelong health effects.”
If the EPA’s proposed endangerment finding is finalized next year — after months of public comment — the agency said it would move to issue new emission standards that, working with the Federal Aviation Administration, could affect a broad swath of the nation’s general aviation industry.
While lead gasoline has been banned for most uses for decades, much of the nation’s vast but aging fleet of small aircraft runs on fuel containing added lead, which increases octane and prevents problems with piston-powered aircraft engines, the EPA said. Piston-powered aircraft produce 70 percent of the total lead emitted into the air nationwide, the EPA said.
The agency said 363,000 children age 5 and younger live within 500 meters of an airport runway, and cited two studies that “reported increased blood lead levels in children with increasing proximity to airports.” “There is a potential for substantial implications for children’s health,” according to the EPA’s regulatory filing.
Marcie Keever, program director for Friends of the Earth, which petitioned for the endangerment finding in 2006, said the group is “pleased that the EPA has finally acknowledged what’s been true for decades: there is no safe level of lead for the communities burdened by general aviation pollution.”
The removal of lead-based fuel could lead to disruptions for thousands of pilots and others. The EPA noted that piston-powered planes “play an important role in transportation in the U.S., particularly in Alaska,” and that it and the FAA would work with stakeholders “to determine the appropriate subsequent regulatory actions.”
Eric Blinderman, a spokesman for the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, which advocates for the general aviation industry, said it is reviewing the EPA action.
The association previously argued that lead has been needed in fuel because most general aviation aircraft “were designed to operate with fuel formulated to prevent damaging engine detonation that can result in a sudden engine failure.” Moving to “an unleaded high-octane fuel that meets the need of the entire fleet is complex, but progress is being made,” it said.
The FAA said in a statement Friday that in September it “cleared the way for an unleaded aviation fuel to be used throughout the nation’s fleet of piston-powered aircraft — a major step forward.” It said that it is pressing ahead with an initiative to develop new fuels, as well as the networks needed to refine and distribute them, and that its priority is safety.
The EPA pointed to FAA forecasts showing that the consumption of leaded airplane fuel is expected to total 185 million gallons in 2026 and 179 million gallons in 2041. | 2022-10-08T02:20:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EPA targets lead airplane fuel, citing children living near runways - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/07/epa-leaded-fuel-airplanes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/07/epa-leaded-fuel-airplanes/ |
Atlanta DA seeks testimony from Flynn, Gingrich
Investigation into possible 2020 election interference continues to expand
Prosecutors in Georgia are seeking testimony from Michael Flynn, former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, in the election interference investigation. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez, File)
The Georgia prosecutor investigating whether Donald Trump improperly interfered in the 2020 presidential election filed court papers Friday to obtain testimony from Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and former House speaker Newt Gingrich.
Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis also requested testimony from other potential witnesses including former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann.
The requests to compel testimony were filed on a day that marked the beginning of a “quiet” period for Willis’s investigation in advance of the midterm elections.
Willis asked that Flynn, Gingrich and others testify in mid- to late November, a sign that the inquiry will be in high gear after the election.
The Atlanta grand jury investigating the alleged election interference has already heard testimony from several of Trump’s lawyers, including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman and Boris Epshteyn.
Willis has previously requested appearances from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and from Sen. Lyndsey O. Graham (R-S.C.). Graham has sought to toss out his subpoena and his case is under review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. It is not clear whether a date has been set for an appearance by Meadows.
The petition seeking Flynn’s testimony cites a Newsmax interview from December 2020 in which Flynn said Trump “could order — within swing states if he wanted to — he could take military capabilities and he could place them in those states and basically re-run an election in each of the states.” The filing also notes that Flynn met with Trump, lawyer Sidney Powell and others “known to be associated with the Trump campaign” at the White House on Dec. 18, 2020.
According to the filing, the meeting “focused on topics including invoking martial law, seizing voting machines, and appointing Powell as special counsel to investigate the 2020 election.” Willis has also sought testimony from Powell, though it is not clear whether a date has been set.
A lawyer for Flynn did not respond to a request for comment.
The Associated Press first reported the new filings Friday.
The petition for Gingrich’s testimony relies on “information made publicly available” by the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The filing cites a letter the panel sent to Gingrich in September.
The committee letter discussed emails the panel obtained in which Gingrich made suggestions about television ads that “repeated and relied upon false claims about fraud in the 2020 election.”
Herschmann, also a witness before the Jan. 6 committee, had described meetings he attended with Trump and others promoting theories of election fraud. In his testimony before the committee, Herschmann said some of the allegations of massive election fraud were “completely nuts.”
Willis’s investigation was initially spurred by a telephone call Trump made to Georgia’s secretary of state asking him to “find” additional votes that could overturn Joe Biden’s victory in the state. Since then, it has expanded to include inquiries into whether false statements were made by Trump allies when they appeared before the state legislature, multi-state efforts to send would-be Trump electors to Washington, possible breaches of election systems in Coffee County, Ga., and efforts to intimidate election workers. | 2022-10-08T04:52:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Atlanta prosecutor seeks testimony from Flynn, Gingrich in 2020 election interference - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/07/atlanta-da-seeks-testimony-flynn-gingrich/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/07/atlanta-da-seeks-testimony-flynn-gingrich/ |
Thousands of demonstrators march to the Supreme Court during the “Bans Off Our Bodies” abortion rights rally in D.C. on May 14. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
Thousands of people will march in cities across the country, including the nation’s capital, to rally for reproductive rights on Saturday, one month before the midterm elections.
This is part of a “Women’s Wave” day of action, organized by the Women’s March and other organizations, to emphasize to supporters that this year’s midterm elections are a crucial time to cast ballots for candidates who support abortion rights.
“Now, everything feels very much like a fight for everything we love,” said Rachel O’Leary Carmona, executive director of the Women’s March. “It’s the first election since Roe has fallen in this new era of American democracy, and it’s really important that women turn out as a voting bloc.”
In D.C., people will start gathering at 11 a.m. at Folger Park for a noon rally. At 1:30 p.m. the march is scheduled to travel from there to Union Square, a public park near the Capitol Reflecting Pool, according to the Women’s March.
Organizers expect 2,000 people at this demonstration, according to a permit issued by the National Park Service. Comedian and actress Lea DeLaria will emcee the event and artists Milck, BIIANCO and Autumn Rowe will perform. Nee Nee Taylor, who is a co-conductor for Harriet’s Wildest Dreams, a local Black-led mutual aid and community defense organization, is scheduled to speak at the D.C. rally.
The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the 49-year-old decision that guaranteed a person’s constitutional right to have an abortion in June, and midterm elections will determine the future of abortion access in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, where Democratic governors have blocked antiabortion legislation proposed or passed by Republican-led legislatures. The results will also determine which party controls Congress and how much power election deniers could secure in key battleground states ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
On Saturday, there are hundreds of events planned across the country, including in states that have banned or mostly banned abortion, including Arizona, Texas, Louisiana and Idaho, according to the Women’s March. Other organizers include groups like UltraViolet, All* Above All, the National Women’s Law Center, the American Federation of Teachers and local activists.
The first Women’s March, after Trump’s 2016 election, drew millions of protesters to D.C. and marches like it across the country. Thousands of protesters marched in D.C. this May following the leaked draft of an opinion by the Supreme Court signaling that it was positioned to overturn Roe.
Abortion rights advocates with Our Rights DC, a group that has been organizing protests outside the conservative justices’ homes for months, are planning simultaneous protests on Saturday at 6:30 p.m., after the Women’s March, at the homes of Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and justices Samuel A. Alito Jr., Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. | 2022-10-08T10:06:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Women's March: Protesters rally for abortion rights ahead of midterms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/08/womens-march-dc-abortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/08/womens-march-dc-abortion/ |
He rowed solo from New York to Ireland in 112 days — and he can’t swim
Former professional rugby player Damian Browne arrives in Galway, Ireland, on Oct. 4, 2022. (Niall Carson - PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images)
LONDON — After 112 days of near solitary existence among ferocious waves with only the odd passing whale for company, Irish adventurer Damian Browne this week returned to land, becoming the first person to row unsupported across the Atlantic from New York City to Galway, according to his team.
The feat is all the more notable because Browne cannot swim — and he doesn’t plan to learn anytime soon.
After training sessions in New York’s Hudson River in which he dodged ferries and passed the Statue of Liberty, Browne, 42, left Chelsea Piers in Manhattan in June, traveling almost 3,000 miles to his home in Galway, western Ireland, across the Atlantic Ocean.
“You really have to know what you’re doing, mentally, while you’re out there,” he told The Washington Post on his return to land and a hero’s welcome.
“It feels great to be back,” he said. “It’s nice to be alive.”
He had set off with his rowing partner, Fergus Farrell, who in his own personal feat relearned to walk after suffering a catastrophic injury. The two men aimed to smash the world record for the fastest unsupported row across the Atlantic, successfully completed only about a dozen times, according to his team. But on Day 13, Farrell fell ill and had to be medically evacuated, leaving Browne alone with a daunting task ahead.
The expedition then turned from a world record attempt to a grueling test of personal endurance, pushing Browne to his limit, he said.
“Physically, it’s incredibly arduous. It’s just a relentless task, the workload everyday was absolutely enormous,” he said. “There were moments of loneliness and moments of euphoria — it’s an emotional roller coaster.”
He had good training as a former professional European rugby player, but since retiring, he has shifted his focus to extreme expeditions and says he does it for the mental agility as much as the physical challenge.
“My whole outlook around extreme adventures and dealing with the stressful state they elicit is to stay as neutral as possible,” he explains. “It’s about controlling your mind and true self-awareness.”
A tricky feat when battling giant waves, freezing temperatures and hours of intense, solitary rowing.
While in his 6.2 meter bespoke rowing boat, affectionately named “Cushlamachree” (“sweetheart” in Irish), Browne lived on 10,000 calories a day of rehydrated rations, had a small desalination unit onboard allowing him to drink clean water and slept a few hours each night in a tiny two meter cabin he called his “sanctuary,” where he also stowed his GPS and radio gear.
But the main focus was the sea — rowing long and hard for more than 11 tough hours a day.
Britain’s grid warns of winter blackouts if Europe’s energy crisis escalates
One particularly worrying moment came on Day 24, he said, when the moon was covered by clouds, plunging him into total blackness and leaving him barely able to make out the end of his oar. A major storm hit about 800 miles off the New York coast and capsized his boat three times.
“That was scary,” he recalls, adding that the storm raged for some 19 hours. “Those hours were the longest of my life” he said, waiting in dread and anticipation for the next time he’d be hurled into the sea.
“You can’t win against the Atlantic … but you can survive it,” he said, calling the sea an “overwhelming opponent.”
Again, he found solace in mental strength.
“I find concentrating on the task at hand helped,” he told The Post. “You can’t be stressed or anxious … just be present.”
Reunited with his partner and 13-month-old baby in Ireland, Browne told The Post he was looking forward to spending time with his family and enjoying the luxuries of a bed, toilet and good food.
But his finish did not go exactly to plan.
Just as he prepared to enter Galway docks, he was washed onto rocks and had to be rescued by emergency personnel, who helped him finally crawl onto dry land Tuesday — after 2,686 hours at sea and over 3,450 nautical miles rowed.
His epic journey, which took 3½ years to plan, is also raising funds for a variety of charities, supporting health, homelessness and rescue dogs. The take so far totals about $70,000. He is also coaching others on building self-discipline and pushing themselves in their own lives and challenges.
“We want to give other people the opportunity to take on oceans,” he said.
In the 1850s, the Irish faced the same hostility as today’s immigrants
He has run ultramarathons in the Sahara desert, rowed from San Sebastian, Spain, to Antigua in the Caribbean and climbed Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro. More recently, he tried to scale Mount Everest before getting the coronavirus meant he missed out on reaching the summit. Next year, he plans to lead a mountain climb in Kyrgyzstan.
What does his family think of his adventurous streak? They “take it in their stride,” he said with a laugh. His mother, who has a fear of the sea, was less pleased with this particular challenge, he added. “She was very happy both times when I eventually set foot on land.”
For now, Browne is relieved to be on terra firma and looking forward to downtime and recovery, with no plans to do this again “any time soon.”
“It takes a lot, but I am pretty proud of this one,” he added. | 2022-10-08T13:53:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Damian Browne rowed from New York to Galway, Ireland in 112 days - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/08/damian-browne-ireland-rowing-galway-atlantic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/08/damian-browne-ireland-rowing-galway-atlantic/ |
ARVADA, Colo. — Not long after the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to abortion, Robin Kupernik and Elizabeta Stacishin met for lunch and then went for a walk through the Denver Botanic Gardens. “We were both angry,” Kupernik later recalled. “We both said at the same time, ‘This is not about babies, this is about keeping women down.’”
Kupernik, 57, and Stacishin, 53, were spurred to political activism by the election of Donald Trump in 2016. But for much of this year, they had been sensing a lack of energy on the left — an absence of the kind of commitment on the part of voters like themselves who had propelled Democrats to victories in 2018 and 2020. Then came the June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Both women said the abortion case persuaded them to redouble their efforts for the 2022 campaign.
“I really didn’t see, you know, a very positive path forward … ,” Stacishin said over coffee in this suburb northwest of downtown Denver. “People have protested so many times and so many different things, it’s not even that meaningful anymore. But I think that everyone is feeling in their bones, especially women, the insult and indignity of what the Supreme Court has done. … And that is in no small part why I am working as hard as I’m working for the midterms right now.”
“But I think that everyone is feeling in their bones, especially women, the insult and indignity of what the Supreme Court has done.”
Elizabeta Stacishin, 53
Elizabeta Stacishin, rollerblading through Denver’s Washington Park, was spurred into political activism by Donald Trump's election. The abortion rights supporter is similarly engaged this year, following the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Stacishin and Kupernik pointed not only to the Supreme Court decision but also to the overwhelming voter turnout in Kansas in August to keep abortion rights as part of the state constitution. They also mentioned summer legislative victories recorded by President Biden and the Democrats in Congress, including the big package focused on climate change, health care and taxes.
“I haven’t felt this good in a long time,” Stacishin said. “I feel lighter. I feel happier.”
In the 2018 midterm elections, women like Kupernik and Stacishin were part of a women-led army that changed politics. Women who had never been particularly active politically worked phone banks, wrote postcards and sent text messages to voters. They were repulsed by Trump and determined to do something about it.
They met in small groups, marched in the streets and went door-to-door to encourage people to vote for Democrats. Their passions were palpable. Many of the congressional candidates they were supporting flipped Republican-held seats, all part of a political tide strong enough to flush the GOP from control of the House, dealing Trump a major defeat. The Pew Research Center has estimated that 62 percent of White women with college degrees backed Democrats for the House four years ago.
“This is not about babies, this is about pushing women down.”
Robin Kupernik, 57
Robin Kupernik, giving treats to her dogs in her Arvada, Colo., home, sees the midterms as a harder read this year than in 2018, when Trump’s election made political choices more “obvious.”
For much of this year, the political dynamics appeared to be the reverse of 2018 — a rebellion against Biden poised to eliminate Democrats’ slim majorities in the Senate and House. History alone suggested that. But the crosscurrents are more varied than they were four years ago. Earlier predictions of sweeping Republican gains have been tempered by the changing political climate, thanks in large part to the Dobbs decision, though the GOP remains favored to take control of the House. In the final weeks, with concerns about the economy still dominant, elections could turn on how much sustaining energy the Dobbs decision provides for Democrats or whether it fades in the face of bread-and-butter concerns.
Biden’s approval ratings remain well below 50 percent, though his average rating is not as low as it was a few months ago. Inflation continues at decades-high levels. Crime in major cities and some suburban areas is up. The influx of undocumented immigrants gnaws at many voters. All that continues to push toward Republican victories.
But the midterms are shaping up to be more than just a referendum on the president. Trump remains a central, and polarizing, figure at center stage. He continues to claim falsely the 2020 election was stolen and has remained in the news because of investigations into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and his handling of classified documents. He maintains a tight grip on the GOP base and, as election deniers have won many GOP primaries this year, this Trumpian Republican Party is seen by many voters as a growing threat.
Women have voted at higher rates than men in every presidential and midterm election since 1984
Share of eligible voters who reported voting in elections since 1978
Presidential year turnout
Midterm year turnout
Center for American Women and Politics
Midterm elections typically see lower voter turnout than presidential elections.
Turnout during
Men 65%
Women 55%
Men 51.8%
Turnout among
spiked in 2018
Source: Center for American Women and Politics
AADIT TAMBE/THE WASHINGTON POST
That the 2022 election comes with high stakes goes without saying. A Republican takeover of the House, the Senate or both would blunt the president’s agenda for his next two years in office while challenging the GOP to put forth a governing agenda. The November election is also a prelude to what now looks to be a combustible election in 2024, one that could produce a rematch between Biden and Trump — and that looms as a potentially more decisive moment, not only for the nation but also for some of the women interviewed for this story and their families.
In conversations, what comes through from people of different ideologies and different parties is a general sense of powerlessness. For Republicans, it’s seeing Washington in the hands of the Democrats and fearing for the direction of the country. For Democrats, it is threats posed by a Supreme Court that took away a constitutional right and the fear that the loss of control of the House or Senate would stymie any further progress on their agenda.
No single group of voters holds the key to the midterm elections, but both parties see the following demographic blocs as critical.
Black voters are the Democrats’ most important and reliable constituency, particularly Black women. Democratic candidates will need another big turnout from them, though some Black men have been receptive to Trump’s appeals.
Competition for Latino voters has intensified as they have shown a greater tendency to drift from their Democratic moorings. Republicans think they can register gains among Latinos in Nevada, Texas and some other states.
Working-class White voters — men and women — have become a key constituency for Republicans. GOP candidates will need their strong support, as has been the case since Trump was elected.
White women with college educations, the focus here, are another key to November. Will they stay with Democrats in the way they did four years ago? Will some shift back toward Republicans, as happened in the Virginia governor’s race in 2021? Will many of them choose not to vote, conflicted by their choices or simply out of disinterest or exhaustion with politics?
In the coming weeks, The Washington Post will be looking at some of the voters who will decide the fate of the next Congress, and assessing whether Democrats can maintain the coalition that propelled them to victories in 2018 and 2020. This “Deciders” series begins with a look from Colorado and how some women in Denver and its suburbs view the country, the issues, their families and themselves.
Colorado’s suburbs have been vibrant with political activity for years as the state has trended blue. In 2018, The Post wrote about women here and in other suburban areas who were mobilizing to deal Trump a defeat in those midterms. This story includes interviews with some of those same women, with their perspectives affected by four more years of political upheaval, along with others with their own viewpoints relevant to this year’s midterm campaigns.
In 2018, the political dynamics were clear. As Kupernik said, “It was such a strong shock to the country to have a person like Trump win the election. And so the backlash against that was so aligned and unified and obvious.” Now, four years later, this election year has become more difficult to read, even if historical patterns say the Republicans start with many advantages.
With so much swirling, Democrats are braced for losing control of the House and nervous about the Senate. But Republicans know they could end up disappointed with results that fall short of what they once thought likely.
The reaction to Dobbs
Katie Skinner, walking with her son outside their home in Littleton, Colo., was deeply disappointed by this year's Supreme Court's abortion ruling.
In most polls, inflation tops the list of concerns to voters. Recent economic data, which showed continued high levels of inflation, will keep it there. Nearly every household is grappling with higher costs.
But in conversations, the issue of inflation doesn’t always translate immediately to the political advantage or disadvantage of one party or the other. Some women reflexively blame Biden; others see the problem as more complex, caused by global economic disruptions from the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. In contrast, the Supreme Court’s abortion decision is, for many, more visceral. Democrats believe that difference might be enough for the party to hold down expected losses in the House and maintain their Senate majority. The issue is whether Republican advertising in the final weeks and more bad economic news will override the initial energizing effects from the Dobbs decision.
One afternoon in the Denver suburb of Littleton, Katie Skinner, Corie Detwiler and Nikki Carpenter were talking politics in a study room at the Columbine Public Library. Skinner, 41, and Detwiler, 34, are married and mothers of two young children; their oldest share a kindergarten class. Skinner works as a hair salon sales professional, while Detwiler is in health care. Carpenter, 37, is not married and works as marketing director for a home builder.
When talk turned to the Supreme Court, the tone grew more animated. None of the three disguised their anger or disappointment with the court. To them, what the justices in the conservative majority did was personal. “I think it’s just none of anybody’s business,” Skinner said. “It should be private between a person with a uterus and their doctor and/or their partner to make those decisions.”
“It should be private between a person with a uterus and their doctor and/or their partner.”
Katie Skinner, 41
Katie Skinner, clockwise from top, plays with her son and daughter before dinner, hangs out with her children and husband, Matt Skinner, on the couch and works on an art project with her children.
Carpenter followed, saying she was in tears when she heard about the Dobbs ruling. “To me, it’s so much more than just the abortion,” she said. “I mean, I’m not valued as a human anymore, like I don’t own my uterus.”
Detwiler works part-time as a physician assistant at an urgent-care facility. She said she worries about women in states with especially restrictive laws, like Oklahoma, where she lived and worked previously. She cited the example of a woman with an ectopic pregnancy, who without restrictive laws could be treated simply and effectively, but who now faces potential delays and complications as doctors weigh with lawyers what they are allowed to do.
“We’re going to let her go from perfectly functioning, could take some medicine, walk out, go home, be okay, to now we’re going to wait until she’s had a ruptured fallopian tube and has bleeding into her abdominal cavity and is going to need ICU care to actually intervene,” Detwiler said. “It’s creating these dangerous health outcomes.”
The Kansas vote highlighted the potential power of the abortion issue to motivate voters, though comparisons between how people respond to ballot initiatives vs. a partisan choice between two candidates are imperfect. Kansas saw a surge in registration among women after the Dobbs decision, on top of an already-robust organizing effort by a broad coalition that sought to reach beyond partisan lines to defeat the referendum.
“[The abortion ruling is] creating these dangerous health outcomes.”
Corie Detwiler, 34
Clockwise from top: Corie Detwiler, right, picks up her daughter Avery, 5, from school and is joined by Skinner, left, who also has a child at the school. Detwiler breastfeeds her 1-year-old son Elliot while petting her dog Gus. Detwiler plays with her children in their Littleton home.
Ashley All, who was a leader in Kansans for Constitutional Freedom, said the Dobbs decision acted as a wake-up call for many moderate voters. “We saw a significant increase in our volunteer engagement,” she said. “We went from averaging about 50 volunteers a week to over 500 after that decision” in metropolitan counties where her group was concentrating. Other volunteer action was taking place throughout the state.
Other states have seen a gender gap in post-Dobbs voter registration. But some experts say the registration gains among Democrats are at the margins, while others are cautious about predicting abortion’s ultimate impact in November.
“Maybe someone else will give you the quote of, like, ‘Dobbs is going to be decisive in November 2022, but I’m not optimistic enough to do it,” said Jennifer M. Piscopo, chair of the department of politics at Occidental College.
‘Mama bears are climbing out of the cave’
In the Denver area, voices of women being moved one way by abortion and another by issues like inflation, crime and education offer insight into voters who may decide the 2022 midterms.
Women will influence the November elections in two ways. One is how they vote: for Republicans or Democrats. The other is how many will vote. The combination of the two will shape the outcome.
Republicans hope to move some White suburban women who supported Democrats in 2018 and 2020 back to their column. Democrats hope to prevent that from happening. But Democrats also need sizable participation by the women who powered them to victory in 2018, a year when turnout for a midterm election was the highest in a century.
The challenges for Democrats are evident in the views of two women in Colorado, roughly the same age, each with three children, who describe themselves as moderate. One is a registered Republican who says the country is crumbling. The other is registered as a Democrat but sees herself more as an independent and isn’t sure this election will change much either way.
The former, Julianna Dixon, goes by her childhood nickname of “Boo.” She is a founder of Ladies For Liberty, a network for women. She lives in Denver, is 36, and her children are 7, 5 and 2½. The issues motivating her are the same as those that Republican candidates are trumpeting. “Crime rates, cost of living, education and immigration are all on the top of Mount Rushmore,” she said.
On education, she sees serious problems in the quality of teaching and the performance of schoolchildren. Asked how students should be taught the history of race and racism in America, Dixon said history can sometimes make people uncomfortable and that is okay, but she also has reservations about instruction that she said is putting children into categories based on race. “Because of your race, you are now a suppressor, because of what happened decades ago; or because of your race, you are now at a disadvantage, and you need to be aware of that,” she said. “That inhibits their abilities and kind of dampens their light.”
On the issue of abortion, Dixon said she is “pro-life with exceptions” and knows that the Supreme Court “kicked the hornet’s nest,” but argues there are bigger problems facing the country right now.
Dixon said she voted twice for Trump, and while there were “sketchy” aspects to the 2020 election, she accepts the outcome. “How much energy, how [much] taxpayers’ money, how many lawyers do we need to keep going into the past when again, [problems with] immigration, cost of living, crime, education, all these things are really, really detrimental to our country and they’re happening at an exponential rate?” she asked.
As she looks to November, Dixon has judged Biden to be “the worst president in my lifetime, if not in history.” Republican victories in the midterms, she said, “would definitely bring some much-needed balance that is lacking right now.” Pointing to Glenn Youngkin’s victory as a Republican in the Virginia governor’s race last year, she said she sees similar stirrings among the women she knows. “I feel like politics is the Wild West right now,” she said. “Energy is through the roof, and the mama bears are climbing out of the cave.”
By that, she meant that the shifts among suburban voters that affected the Virginia race could materialize nationally in November to the advantage of Republicans.
Dixon’s characterization of the “mama bears” is one reason Democrats remain in a challenging position. The mobilization of White suburban Republican and independent women who may be worried about the cost of living, school decisions or rising crime could more than neutralize the impact of those who are mobilizing over abortion.
“Inflation’s huge, right? I think we talk about that every day.”
Jenny Rementer, 38
The other Colorado woman is Jenny Rementer, 38, the mother of children ages 5, 3 and 6 months. She lives in Highlands Ranch, a Republican-leaning suburb south of Denver. Her parents emigrated from South Korea. She said she voted for Biden “because I think Trump is not a good person. It had nothing to do with politics.”
Rementer said she is not particularly active in politics. She does not see the November election as an inflection point for the country, nor does she think it will have great consequences for her family. “My life does not change very much based on who’s president or who’s in Congress,” she said.
Asked what issues she sees as most important, Rementer responded, “Inflation’s huge, right? I think we talk about that every day. A trip to the grocery store used to be between, like, $100 and $150 because my kids are little. Now it’s like $200 to $250.”
Still, she is reluctant to pin the blame on the administration. “I’m on a text chain with a bunch of moms, and somebody was like, ‘Thanks, Biden.’ And my husband and I joke about it, but I personally think that it’s probably as a result of a lot of things,” she said. “I don’t know that any one person has that much power in such a short period of time to make such an impact on the economy.”
Rementer said Democrats spent freely to help boost the economy during the pandemic and said she believes that has contributed to distortions in the labor market. She and her husband are searching for an au pair because the cost of a nanny has skyrocketed. “People are demanding outrageous amounts,” she said. “It was never this bad before, and this all kind of started with the stimulus payments.”
When Rementer talked about immigration, as the daughter of immigrants, she focused first on the controversial separation of families that took place during the Trump administration. She called Trump’s effort to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border “the dumbest waste of money.” But having seen refugee issues up close in the Denver area as part of her work in health care, she said she wonders whether cities and states can manage. “It takes a lot of resources,” she said, “and I just I don’t know if we have that infrastructure to take in all that. … Do I think about it every day? No.”
Asked how she views the choice in this election, she replied, “I’m always a huge supporter of split power. I don’t like it when one side or the other has too much control over stuff.” But she also isn’t sure she wants Republicans in control of the House or Senate. She has concerns about what Trump has done to the party. “He has kind of made it acceptable for people to be so open about how terrible they are,” she said.
Women are not a monolith
Colorado Democrats Monica Duran, left, a state representative seeking reelection, and Lisa Cutter, a state representative running for a state Senate seat, knock on doors in Lakewood, a suburb of Denver, as part of a get-out-the-vote effort.
Four women were seated together at a Starbucks in Arvada one afternoon in August. They are old enough to remember a time before 1973, before the Supreme Court legalized abortion with its Roe v. Wade decision. In the wake of the Dobbs decision, they decided to do what they can to mobilize other women to vote in November. They call themselves Women Organizing for Women — “WOW” for short.
“We’ve got to do something besides talk about it,” said Cheryl Fay, as she and the others worked on a mission statement for their group.
A few weeks later, more than four dozen women were gathered for lunch at a restaurant in Lone Tree, Colo., south of Denver. Their organization, Ladies for Liberty, and the concerns motivating them were entirely different from the earlier discussion in Arvada. The luncheon speakers included Molly Lamar, a Republican and mother of four children who is running for the state school board. “All of us are facing so many of the same issues,” she said, “whether it’s aging parents, prices at the gas pump, prices at the grocery store, and now additionally, we have the burden of knowing that our education system is not serving our children. Parents really need to have a voice. We’re being dismissed. We’re being locked out.”
Scholars who have studied the voting patterns of women say there is no such thing as the women’s vote. “In the same way that we don’t assume men vote as a bloc, we shouldn’t assume women do that,” said Kelly Dittmar, a political science professor at Rutgers University and research director at the school’s Center for American Women and Politics.
Still, as she noted, there are differences between the voting patterns of men and women, some of which have become more pronounced in recent decades. For many years after American women earned the right to vote in 1920, men were more likely to cast ballots. Over time, however, the gap reversed itself.
“The story of turnout for women is one of constant advance,” said Christina Wolbrecht, a political science professor at the University of Notre Dame. “Beginning in 1980, women become more likely to turn out to vote than are men, and that remains true.”
“I do think especially the Roe versus Wade overturning is making women want to have their voice heard even more. I think that this coming election, women are going to be out in full force.”
Lindsey Zaback, 35
In 2020, for example, 68.4 percent of eligible women cast votes compared with 65 percent of eligible men. In raw numbers, 82.2 million women voted in the presidential election compared with 72.5 million men. This pattern cuts across all races, whether White, Latino, Asian American or Black. The biggest disparity is between Black women and Black men. In 2020, for example, that gap was eight percentage points.
Over the past three decades or so, another change has taken hold: Women as a group now vote more Democratic than Republican. That wasn’t always the case. Around 6 in 10 women supported Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956, and for all the talk about the charm of Democrat John F. Kennedy in 1960, a bare majority of women supported Republican Richard M. Nixon.
But while White women vote more Democratic than do White men, as a group they tilt to Republicans. In 2016 and 2020, Trump won 52 percent and 55 percent of White women respectively, according to exit polls.
“Gender gap” is a phrase that came fully into the political lexicon in the 1980s. The original gender gap, however, was not the result of what women did; it came about because White ethnic males were leaving the Democratic Party.
Jane Junn, a political science professor at the University of Southern California, said that the gender gap “is being pushed by women of color being super Democratic. ... White women haver never been Democrats.” In 2016, 94 percent of Black women voted for Hillary Clinton, and in 2020, 90 percent of Black women backed Biden. Nearly 7 in 10 Latino women backed Clinton and Biden.
“I would say I maybe know one or two people who are totally pro-life, but for the most part women are practical, they’re problem solvers. And it would never be easy to have an abortion.”
Ruth Edmondson, 73
Top: Norma McGraw, left, and Ruth Edmonson walk through a neighborhood in Broomfield, a suburb north of Denver. Bottom left: McGraw and Edmonson stop to talk to local residents.
Suburban women have been given various labels over the years and have drawn the interest of campaign strategists because they are seen as swing voters (though some scholars question whether they are). At one point, these suburban voters were called “soccer moms,” at another, “security moms.” But the recent focus on women owes largely to the divergence in partisan support between White women with college degrees and White women who do not have college degrees.
In recent elections, college-educated White women moved toward the Democrats; White women without college degrees, who make up a larger share of the electorate than those with degrees, moved toward the GOP. In 2014, 47 percent of White women with college degrees voted Democratic, according to calculations by Catalist, a Democrat-aligned data firm; by 2018, 57 percent backed Democrats.
White college-educated women have been described as a core part of the Democratic coalition, based on this shift. But the question of whether there will be movement back toward Republicans in November is of prime interest to campaign strategists.
Democratic worries about that possibility have been heightened by what happened last year in Virginia. One of the factors in Youngkin’s victory over Democrat Terry McAuliffe was a shift toward the GOP among suburban voters. Suburban women, who had broken strongly for Biden in 2020, swung back toward Youngkin, according to exit polls.
Kristin Davison, who was a lead consultant in Youngkin’s campaign, said Republicans have strong issues working in their favor that she contends will prove more powerful than abortion.
“We’re at a point, I think, given where the economy is and, really, a void of leadership at the top, where these household, kitchen-table issues [are] bringing these suburban women home [to Republicans],” she said. “Now, our side can mess it up. We can risk going too far in one direction or another and getting distracted.”
Fears about democracy
Colorado state Sen. Jessie Danielson, a Democrat, holds her 1-year-old son, Callum, while waiting on daughter Isabelle, 5, to be released from kindergarten in the town of Wheat Ridge.
For many women who became politically active after Trump was elected in 2016, another issue has become more urgent in the past two years. That is the state of democracy and what they see as a radicalized Republican Party.
The hearings by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack have helped elevate those fears, as has the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation into efforts to overturn the election. Meanwhile, in state after state, Republicans have nominated election deniers for statewide and other offices, setting off alarms about what that could mean for future elections if those candidates are successful in November.
Jessie Danielson, 44, is a Democrat who was elected to the Colorado state Senate in 2018 after serving in the state House. She is the mother of two young children. She has advocated for many issues and causes, but nothing seems to animate her more than what she sees as the fragile state of democracy.
Just back from a family camping trip and sitting in her living room as her baby son clamored for attention, Danielson explained, “To my friends and neighbors, women like me, they’re really worried. When you have the Republican Party [that] is willing to embrace this violence, this effort to basically overthrow government, take power, upend our democratic process, it’s a really dangerous path that they seek.”
For the final prime-time hearing of the Jan. 6 committee, she gathered her family in front of the television. “I just said to my husband, I don’t care if they [the children] fuss,” Danielson recalled. “I don’t care whose bedtime [it is]. We’re all going to watch this.”
Four years ago, when she was first interviewed by The Post during her campaign for state Senate, Danielson’s concerns focused more on Trump as a norm-breaking president. Today those worries are far more serious because of what she called “violent extremism.”
“I feel this is an unprecedented embrace of that extremism by the Republican Party.”
Jessie Danielson, 44
Clockwise from top: Colorado state Sen. Jessie Danielson, center, attends an early September get-out-the-vote gathering in Lakewood, a suburb west of Denver, with fellow Democrats Duran, left, and Cutter, plays with her son and daughter at their home in Wheat Ridge and speaks to a union member at an AFL-CIO event in Denver.
“I feel this is an unprecedented embrace of that extremism by the Republican Party,” she said. “I don’t think this kind of thing has happened before, and that is what I believe voters across the country will reject — an armed mob storming the United States Capitol to overthrow the elected government. And that mob was driven by Trump.”
Still, Danielson is hopeful that things can change. “I have to believe that now that we’ve gone through this and it’s been over and over and over, that the majority of Americans will say, ‘This is not okay with me, … that is not American,’” she said.
The choice, through the lens of one district
A new residential development in Thornton, Colo., where the state’s newly created 8th Congressional District is seen as a toss-up in this year’s election.
After the 2020 census, Colorado gained a congressional seat through reapportionment thanks to the state’s population growth. The boundaries of the new 8th Congressional District stretch from Denver’s northern suburbs of Adams County to the more remote Weld County, whose economy is reliant on agriculture and energy. The district, which has the highest percentage of Latino voters of any in the state, is rated a toss-up by the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter.
The Democratic nominee is Yadira Caraveo, 41, a pediatrician and the daughter of Mexican immigrants. She first ran for office four years ago, winning a seat in the Colorado state House. The Republican nominee is Barb Kirkmeyer, 64, a fourth-generation Coloradan, who currently is a state senator and, before that, was a Weld County commissioner.
No single race offers a microcosm of the country this fall, but the campaign in Colorado’s new district showcases the contrasts between how Republicans and Democrats are trying to appeal to undecided voters while at the same time mobilize their party bases.
Barb Kirkmeyer, a state senator and Republican nominee for the new 8th Congressional District, talks at a meet-and-greet in Thornton. Kirkmeyer is campaigning on issues such as concerns about inflation and crime and Democrats’ climate agenda.
Kirkmeyer, who is not an election denier, is running a traditional Republican campaign. On a recent evening, she talked about her policy priorities to a dozen people on the patio of a home in a golf course development in Thornton. “We are bankrupting this nation,” she said, arguing that the Democrats have overspent. She mentioned inflation and then said, “Thank you, Joe Biden.” Some nodded their heads in agreement.
She shifted to rising crime rates, which are a growing problem in and around Denver, including a rash of car thefts. “Right out in front of my house,” a woman in the audience volunteered.
Kirkmeyer blamed the increase in crime on the availability of fentanyl and said it is time to “secure our borders … to stop that flow of drug trafficking.” During a question-and-answer period, she was critical of the Democrats’ climate agenda and environmental regulations. She blamed higher gasoline prices on Biden’s push to end reliance on fossil fuels.
Caraveo, in an interview at a Thornton restaurant, agreed that inflation is a major issue. Her strategy to defuse it is to talk about what she and other Democrats have done in the state legislature to help families, including by lowering some taxes and reducing health care costs.
She said immigration and border security are not so salient in a district whose agriculture sector relies on immigrant labor. “Republicans bring it up, but I haven’t heard it resonate a whole lot among voters,” she said. Crime is a problem “to some extent [but] not nearly as much as [in] Denver.” By contrast, she said, the issue of democracy “is huge.” She called Kirkmeyer “a climate denier.”
Caraveo said the most important change in the political landscape has come as a result of the Dobbs decision. “I’ve noticed a difference,” she says. “[People] were concerned about voting rights and democracy and abortion access, climate change and everything before,” she said. Now abortion is “the one topic to their minds. And some people are simply asking, ‘Are you pro-choice?’ And if you say ‘yes,’ it’s like, ‘You’re a woman, you’re a Democrat, you’re pro-choice, you got me.’”
Pediatrician Yadira Caraveo, the Democratic nominee for Colorado’s new 8th Congressional District, examines members of a family at her clinic in Thornton. The daughter of Mexican immigrants says abortion is a much bigger issue than immigration in the district, whose agriculture sector relies on immigrant labor.
Kirkmeyer says she has seen no sign that the high court’s abortion decision has significantly mobilized voters. “When I go to the door, people are not talking to me about abortion,” she said. “They’re talking to me about the price of gas and the price of food. And they’re worried about their jobs.”
In August, Democrats drew attention to a change in Kirkmeyer’s campaign website, which removed references to abortion. She is one of several Republican candidates who have scrubbed their websites ahead of the general election in what seems an effort to play down the issue.
Earlier this year, Kirkmeyer’s website talked about her determination to “Defend the Sanctity of Life.” Now the focus is on inflation and spending, energy and crime. In an interview, she said that the issues she highlighted during her primary, and the contrasts she drew with her Republican opponents, are not the issues and contrasts she wants to highlight in her general election race against Caraveo.
“I haven’t changed my position on anything,” she said.
Liberal political activist Jen Helms works at her desk in her Denver home.
Four years ago, Jen Helms threw herself into election work, helping to convert a Republican-held congressional district in the Denver suburbs, which is now held by Rep. Jason Crow (D). She even traveled to Texas to canvass for Democrat Beto O’Rourke in what turned out to be a losing campaign for the Senate. (O’Rourke is now running for governor of Texas.)
Then came 2020 and the pandemic. Helms, now 60, hunkered down with her husband. She stopped traveling, rarely went out and let her hair go naturally gray. “I was very, very afraid,” she said. “The virus, for sure, but also just the fact of the way Trump was handling it.”
And then in September 2020, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. Helms heard the news while on the phone with her sister, a call that quickly ended as the women began to absorb the implications. “I knew that my daughter’s life would never be the same,” she said. She saw the times as a perfect storm of trouble: Trump, the pandemic and now the Supreme Court.
“No matter what is said or done by Republicans, it doesn’t seem to matter.”
Jen Helms, 60
Top and bottom left: Jen Helms and her husband, Richard Helms, sit in their Denver home Aug. 16, watching the televised concession speech of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a fierce critic of Trump who lost her primary for reelection. Bottom right: Jen Helms writes campaign postcards.
A former teacher who now is an education consultant, Helms was sitting outdoors at a coffee shop in Denver this summer as she replayed events and her reactions to them. “For me, that was sort of when all my hope kind of went away,” she said.
She looks toward the November elections with a mixture of anger over the Supreme Court’s abortion decision and fear about a Republican takeover of Congress. She vowed to write more postcards and do some other work, but she admits that she looks at politics differently than she did four years ago. Now she finds herself questioning, at times, the efficacy of political activism that she enthusiastically embraced in the past.
“I don’t know that I will ever get back the kind of energy I had in 2018, to work, to be active in politics,” she said.
“I think just everything that has happened,” Helms replied. “I don’t know how else to put it. Seeing that no matter what is said or done by Republicans, it doesn’t seem to matter. … I just don’t have the hope that I had. … And I feel, I feel guilty saying that.”
Helms offered an insight to an underlying issue that others may be asking, which is: To what end? In other words, will the energy required to remain active politically bring real change in a divided country, a country where the former president and his allies are seeking retribution for the loss in 2020?
The choices for November
Colorado Democrats have their picture taken at a get-out-the-vote event in Lakewood.
As summer turned to fall, Kupernik and Stacishin, the two activists, ramped up their work, sending out postcards, seeking to register new voters and canvassing, particularly in Colorado’s new 8th Congressional District, where the race remained tight.
Kupernik recounted a conversation with a voter while she was knocking on doors, a young mother who was not fully aware that there was an election in a matter of weeks. “I think that’s what it really is going to be about,” she said. “This is a midterm — it’s not a presidential election — and getting people to recognize the importance of it [may be hard]. … We really are voting on our democracy itself. You can disagree about tax policy or all the typical things that you might argue about in a more stable period. But that’s not what this election is about.”
The two women remained hopeful that Democrats will be able to overcome some of the obstacles they face, but they were not without some concerns. Republicans have redoubled efforts to focus voters’ attention on issues like crime and immigration and away from abortion. Rising prices remain a factor everywhere. “We are in a news cycle that is just so fast,” Stacishin said. “Who knows what we’re going to be talking about a week or two before the election? That’s what I fear.”
Graphics, design and development by Aadit Tambe. Design editing by Madison Walls. Photo editing by Natalia Jimenez. Graphics editing by Kevin Uhrmacher. Story editing by Philip Rucker. Copy editing by Christopher Rickett. | 2022-10-08T14:11:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Will Supreme Court abortion ruling drive women to vote in 2022 election? - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2022/supreme-court-abortion-ruling-midterm-elections/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/interactive/2022/supreme-court-abortion-ruling-midterm-elections/ |
Cassie holds the Guinness world record for the fastest 100-meter dash for a bipedal robot, paving the way for robots to become more lifelike
Cassie the robot sets a 100-meter record. (Kegan Sims)
On a crisp May day in Oregon, it wasn’t an Olympian but a robot called Cassie that broke a Guinness world record for the 100-meter dash.
The robot, which researchers say resembles an “ostrich without a head,” started the day with a few stumbles, but ultimately prevailed — running 100 meters in 24.73 seconds, slower than Usain Bolt’s record-setting 9.58 seconds, but still a Guinness world record for a bipedal robot, Oregon State University announced last week.
Cassie’s roughly 40 supporters were elated, cheering when it crossed the finish line. Its success was a seminal moment in robotic history, they said. Cassie’s speed and agility, honed by artificial intelligence training, showed that bipedal robots could maneuver in taxing real-world situations while maintaining balance, a problem that has plagued designers in the past.
The race built on Cassie’s 2021 successful completion of a 5K in roughly 53 minutes, which first showed Cassie could stay upright for long periods. It was also the capstone to about five years of work by engineering and machine learning researchers at Oregon State University and a spinout company, Agility Robotics, paving the way for more advanced designs.
Elon Musk debuts Tesla robot, Optimus, calling it a fundamental transformation
“This is the first big step to humanoid robots doing real work in the real world,” said Alan Fern, an artificial intelligence professor at Oregon State University who helped train Cassie. “Because [now], we can get robots to robustly move around the world on two legs.”
Since 2017, the team has been training Cassie how to walk properly, using algorithms to reward the robot when it moves appropriately. “This is all inspired by Pavlovian psychology,” Fern said. “It just learns to anticipate these rewards and do the right thing.”
Once the team got the remote-controlled robot working well in simulation, the next step was seeing how it would handle real-world environments, where surfaces are uneven, friction can change and a robot’s mass can shift.
In 2021, when the team had Cassie run a 5K, it learned a few things. The robot was being “too stompy,” Fern said, and researchers started rewarding the robot when it smoothed out its gait. With this year’s successful 100-meter dash, the team is moving on to the next step: putting a torso and head on Cassie. (Agility Robotics is working on one called Digit.)
Humanoid robots with heads propped onto Cassie’s leg design will need the peripheral vision to navigate tricky terrain. “Now, Cassie has to look around the world,” he said, “understanding what objects are there and not running into them.”
Most important, these robots must walk with intention. “When you’re in the real world,” Fern said, “sometimes you do have to actually pay attention to where you step.”
“What they’re lacking is really complex cognition,” Cooke said. “There’s still a deep understanding of humans that’s needed to interact with humans that they don’t have.”
Cooke also said it’s laudable that robots like Cassie are advancing the robotics industry, but it seems unnecessary to build machines that simply replicate what humans do. It might be more worthwhile, she said, to create robots that can do things humans cannot.
“Why [do] we want to rebuild ourselves?” she asked. “I think it’s a sci-fi thing, but other than entertainment value — I think it’s an overkill.” | 2022-10-08T14:20:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Meet Cassie, the Usain Bolt of robots - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/08/cassie-bipedal-robot/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/08/cassie-bipedal-robot/ |
Britain's King Charles III and his wife, Camilla, sign a visitors' book in Dunfermline, Scotland, on Oct. 3. (Andrew Milligan/Pool/AFP via Getty Images)
Will the Climate King be quieted? That’s a critical question emerging from news that Britain’s King Charles III would not attend the COP27 climate conference in Egypt next month. The Times of London reported last weekend, citing anonymous sources, that Prime Minister Liz Truss had “told him to stay away.” Follow-ups focused on whether the king had been “ordered” not to attend. (Such suggestions are not true, a Truss Cabinet official said.) “The Palace said advice had been sought by the King and given by Ms. Truss,” BBC reported, with agreement reached in “ ‘mutual friendship and respect.’ ”
During his long tenure as heir to the throne, Charles shared many opinions and built a reputation for green activism. “In damaging our climate we become the architects of our own destruction,” he warned at the COP climate gathering in Paris in 2015. “Global warming, climate change and the devastating loss of biodiversity are the greatest threats humanity has ever faced,” he told the World Economic Forum at Davos in 2020. “We now have a dangerously narrow window of opportunity in which to accelerate a green recovery,” he said last October.
In his first address as king, Charles acknowledged that he would have less freedom as monarch — traditionally an apolitical role — to engage in “the charities and issues for which I care so deeply.” Royal fans and critics alike are watching to see whether he is more circumspect in his new role.
Additional context: The royal family’s official overseas trips are coordinated with the British government. Even if Prime Minister Liz Truss might not agree with Charles’s climate advocacy, opposition here could have been rooted in arranging a more diplomatically strategic early trip abroad.
One way that Charles might stay above the fray but signal royal backing for green measures? Send the new heir to the throne, Prince William, to the Egyptian gathering.
ICYMI: Not so fast with that “climate king” label, cautions Post reporter Shannon Osaka.
Here’s video of Charles’s first address as king:
King Charles III addressed the United Kingdom in a prerecorded speech for the first time after his mother, Queen Elizabeth II, died in Scotland at age 96. (Video: The Washington Post)
Coronation update: Yes, we have heard the rumors about early next summer, but: Buckingham Palace has yet to confirm a date. We’ll let you know when the timing is official. Some factors do favor early June: The weather might be kinder to large crowds (thousands are expected to line the procession route), and that timing could dovetail with a spring bank holiday already on the books. The sovereign’s official birthday is marked each June with a military parade.
So long, consort: The Times of London has reportedly instructed its writers to stop referring to the wife of the king as the queen consort in favor of “the queen.” Technically, consort is correct: Because Charles is the sovereign, his wife is his consort. There’s no derision in that fact, but some see references to Queen Consort Camilla as throwing some majestic shade, a way to qualify her status as queen. There’s sensitivity around the term because when Charles and Camilla got engaged, out of deference to fans of his first wife, Princess Diana, the couple said it was intended that Camilla would take the title Princess Consort on Charles’s ascension to the throne. In February, however, Queen Elizabeth II announced that she hoped Camilla would one day be known as queen consort, effectively smoothing the path for her daughter-in-law to be queen once Charles became king.
Core four: Buckingham Palace released a photo last weekend of the four most senior royals as formal mourning for Queen Elizabeth ended. The king and queen consort and the new Prince and Princess of Wales (better known as Prince William and Kate Middleton) are seen standing in front of a portrait of George III. Americans might recognize the name as the king we revolted against; here, he’s symbolic as Britain’s longest-reigning male monarch, adding to the image’s message of continuity. Charles’s relaxed confidence — hand in pocket, arm around his wife — is notable, but so is the dark clothing that makes the portrait an unusual choice to mark the start of a new reign. The picture was taken Sept. 18, before a reception for world leaders in London for the queen’s funeral.
Out and about: With the royals’ mourning period over, public activities have resumed. Events this week include Charles and Camilla marking the new city status of Dunfermline, Scotland. The king signed a visitors’ book — and made light of his past frustrations with a leaky pen. Props to him for being able to laugh at himself; that’s both appealing and a way to undercut circulation of less flattering moments.
William and Kate headed to Northern Ireland on Thursday, where they visited a suicide-prevention charity in Belfast as well as a street market. What’s the royal spin on shaking things up? A mixology competition. See the video they posted to Twitter about who mixed fastest. Outdoors, while shaking hands with people in the crowd, Kate was heckled by one woman but kept her cool.
Earlier this week, William attended a United for Wildlife summit in London, where he gave his first speech since becoming Prince of Wales. “Our natural world is one of our greatest assets,” the prince said. “It is a lesson I learned from a young age from my father and my grandfather, both committed naturalists in their own right, and also from my much-missed grandmother, who cared so much for the natural world. In times of loss, it is a comfort to honor those we miss through the work we do. And I take great comfort then from the progress we’re making to end the illegal wildlife trade.” Watch the address on YouTube.
On Wednesday, Kate visited a hospital maternity ward in Surrey, England. Sophie, Countess of Wessex (wife of Prince Edward, the queen’s youngest son), traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo, where she sought to call attention to the impact of sexual and gender-based violence in conflict and anti-poaching initiatives. On this side of the Atlantic, Princess Anne, the Princess Royal, took a ride on the Staten Island Ferry during a visit to the Big Apple.
Online again: Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, resumed her Spotify podcast. (The latest episode looks at “conversations with Margaret Cho and Lisa Ling about the archetypes that try to limit and define Asian women.”)
Precious pooches: Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York (ex-wife of Prince Andrew, the scandal-clouded second son of the late queen), said at a literary festival Wednesday that it was a “big honour” to care for two of the queen’s dogs and called the corgis “national treasures.” (Quiet clap for Fergie: Her Instagram post about her late mother-in-law was personal but not uncomfortably syrupy.)
The Post’s Jennifer Hassan analyzes how Netflix’s “The Crown” depicted Queen Elizabeth II through her decades-long reign. (Video: Allie Caren/The Washington Post)
👑 alert! With season five of “The Crown” due to return Nov. 9 — some of us really aren’t going to sleep much after midnight on Election Day — many fans are rewatching the Netflix drama to be primed for the next set of stories. (Remember: It’s a scripted series, “broadly based on historical events,” not a documentary.) The Post’s Retropolis feature, which looks back at historical events, has done several articles pivoting off the show. Of potential interest to royal watchers: episodes centering on the late queen and a fact-check of whether a KGB spy really worked at Buckingham Palace.
RePosted
Prince Harry co-authored a Post op-ed last October, warning against corporate oil drilling in the Okavango watershed in southern Africa. “The Okavango is a force of life, providing the main source of water for nearly 1 million Indigenous and local people and some of the planet’s most majestic wildlife,” argued Harry and Namibian environmental activist Reinhold Mangundu. “Drilling is an outdated gamble that reaps disastrous consequences for many, and incredible riches for a powerful few. It represents a continued investment in fossil fuels instead of renewable energies.”
Some European monarchies are downsizing — and some royals aren’t taking it well. Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II recently revoked the royal titles of prince and princess from four of her grandchildren. “Her demoted grandchildren and their father made their disappointment clear,” writes London-based reporter Ellen Francis. Interestingly, the 82-year-old queen (the continent’s longest-reigning monarch since the death of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II) acknowledged the spat and apologized — but she’s not changing course. Handy context: The Danish grandchildren aren’t suddenly (gasp!) commoners; they’ll still have titles such as count and countess. A few years ago, Sweden’s king also stripped titles from some of his grandchildren. Such changes are meant to signal that taxpayers won’t be supporting scads of royals who aren’t close to the throne.
We continue to be charmed by this video clip from ITV royal reporter Chris Ship. In early February, on the eve of marking 70 years on the throne, Elizabeth II was shown items given to Queen Victoria in honor of her 60th anniversary on the throne. Then, something — err, someone — else caught the queen’s interest.
A post shared by Chris Ship (@chris.ship.royal)
Opinion|Post Elizabeth: Will King Charles be silent on environmental issues? | 2022-10-08T15:25:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Post Elizabeth: Will Charles be silent on environmental issues? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/08/post-elizabeth-charles-environmental-conference-sidelined/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/08/post-elizabeth-charles-environmental-conference-sidelined/ |
Real people — moms, grandfathers, students — came up with plans to stop shootings, and the city gave them grants to put their ideas into action
Eljah Harsley talks about gun violence while participating in S.O.A.R Project DC. (JustoShoots Productions)
Asiyah Timimi expected to spend these years traveling, seeing places outside of the nation’s capital, where she has lived and worked and raised three sons. But then in March, eight bullets tore through the body of her youngest child.
Two hit him in the head. Three struck him in his back. And the others pierced his side and leg.
The 27-year-old is now paralyzed from the waist down, and Timimi has no plans to leave the city. She is staying put because of circumstance and choice. She wants to be there for her son. She is also determined to help D.C. in its fight against gun violence.
“This is personal to me,” Timimi said. “The guns, they have to come off the streets. It just takes one bullet, it just takes a piece of metal that costs 26 cents to destroy a family or a community.”
Timimi is not anti-guns. She worked as a firearms instructor for law enforcement and is a licensed bounty hunter.
But she also has seen too many times, and too up close, how guns in the hands of the untrained and unrestrained harm and kill.
“There were four victims in my community murdered in a two-and-a-half-week span,” she said. “Can you imagine what that does to a community? It has affected my son so bad. He can’t even mourn with his friends. He’s in between four walls, paralyzed and mourning.”
In D.C., another measure of gun violence: Men in wheelchairs
D.C. officials have spoken passionately about the need to stop shootings in the city, and they have dedicated resources and staffing aimed at achieving that. In an article The Washington Post published Tuesday, my colleagues wrote about a key initiative D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s administration put in place as part of its strategy to reduce homicides, which are barreling toward a two-decade high. Officials labeled 230 D.C. residents who were considered at risk of committing violent crimes or becoming victims of them as “People of Promise,” and put their names on a list.
The intention was to offer those on the list — at least those still alive since some have already been killed — intense government services. But, as my colleagues pointed out, that’s not how the list was perceived by people on streets the city hoped to make safer. It was seen as a “hit list.”
Distrust of the police and government officials runs deep in some city neighborhoods, for good reason. That’s what makes another, lesser known initiative the city has put in place intriguing. It doesn’t require gaining trust. It comes with that already built in.
In the past year, Timimi has become part of an unseen force of community members who have each received $5,000 grants from the city to turn their ideas for combating gun violence into action. They are moms and fathers and grandparents. They are regular people who come from different neighborhoods with different ideas but share a motivation: They stand to lose the most if the city fails to get gun violence under control.
The grant program recognizes that within neighborhoods that have been most affected by shootings are residents who have been trying to help but have little resources. The Office of Gun Violence Prevention and Progressive Life Center have worked together to provide more than $600,000 in mini grants and guidance to those who have received them.
With the money, recipients have created programs that offer job training, gardening lessons, healing sessions and, in one case, a trip to Wall Street. One grant allowed a group of young men and women to create a documentary about gun violence that left people crying when it was shown recently at Busboys and Poets in Anacostia.
I talked with three mini-grant recipients and all described the money as allowing them to help their communities in a way they couldn’t have otherwise. They also spoke of feeling hopeful about what other grant recipients were doing with the money.
Linda Harllee Harper, director of D.C. Gun Violence Prevention, described the grants as acknowledging that the “answer to this gun violence is in the communities.”
“We are not the answer,” she said. “We need to support community members who know their communities. What the answer is in one community is not the same as in another community.”
Her office has a team of credible messengers who monitor the programs that the grant recipients have put in place. On that team is Reginald Mathis, who grew up in D.C. and lost his father, younger brother and other people in his life to gun violence.
“I can’t tell you the last time I’ve been to a natural-causes funeral,” he told me on a recent evening. “I have equity in this issue. I have equity in this fight. I wouldn’t continue this work if it wasn’t successful. I’ve lost too much.”
He said he has witnessed grants go to people who once saw them as out of reach and he has watched them inspire people to consider turning neighborhood endeavors into nonprofits.
“I’ve seen some transformational things go on with these grants,” he said. “I’m seeing healing circles. I’m seeing yoga. I’m seeing tons of things you’d never see east of the river.”
Of Timimi's life skills class, he said: “I’ve seen her get guys off the corner that you couldn’t get off the corner if 10 police cars were on that street.”
Der’Shay Lane and Kiah Lewis used their grant to help fund the filming of “Soaring Through Trauma,” a documentary made by teenagers from Southeast Washington as part of S.O.A.R Project DC. Lane said even though the program ended at 8 p.m., the teenagers who participated often wanted to stay for hours longer.
“It was a safe haven for them,” she said. Learning about the filming process also gave them media knowledge and a way to share their stories. “Most of the parents were shocked they opened up as much as they did.”
Video from the filming of the documentary shows a 14-year-old boy sitting in front of a camera, explaining that he lost his father to gun violence. When asked if he felt safe, he says, “No. No I don’t feel safe in D.C.”
Thandor Miller used his grant money to hold workshops aimed at building up the self-worth of young people. He said he was able to reach 60 of them.
“I have learned how to meet them where they are without holding them hostage to where they’ve been,” he said.
He said he understands them because he grew up in a household where grown-ups were in survival mode: “Even though I never missed a meal, I never got a hug.”
Timimi said the idea for a life skills class came to her years ago, after she had a conversation with a man who was leaving prison. She told him to stay out of trouble. He told her that would be hard because he was illiterate and had no legitimate way to support his son. After that, she started asking other people in her neighborhood what was stopping them from applying for jobs.
In her class, participants receive a meal and work on setting goals, building up their vocabularies and improving their interview skills. They also hear from a mother who lost her teenage daughter to a drug overdose.
“I’ve had 22 students in the classroom and one was drunk and one was high and nodding,” she said. “I didn’t turn them away. I know what they are going through, and why they are pacifying their pain.”
When she first started talking about holding the class, and was searching for a way to fund it, one young man in the community was eager to join. He didn’t get the chance, she said. Before she received the grant, he was shot and killed. | 2022-10-08T16:04:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The unseen and creative way D.C. is fighting gun violence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/08/unseen-creative-way-dc-is-fighting-gun-violence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/08/unseen-creative-way-dc-is-fighting-gun-violence/ |
By helicopter, ATV, even bicycle, a door-to-door hunt for Ian victims
Residents of Sanibel Island, Fla., are moved to a U.S. Coast Guard helicopter on Sept. 30, 2022, after enduring Hurricane Ian on the island. (Steve Helber/AP)
FORT MYERS, Fla. — Holding out hope that dropping anchor in Estero Bay would keep him safe, Jay Burki hunkered down in his 37-foot sailboat as Hurricane Ian screamed ashore. But as the ocean surged and winds surpassed 100 mph, the anchor ripped away from the vessel, Burki said, flinging the slender, longhaired mariner and his sloop ashore over the tops of trees and shrubs.
“It’s not the first time that I’ve washed ashore, and it won’t be the last,” Burki said, sitting on the porch of a storm-ravaged beach bar here on San Carlos Island. “But I never dreamed I’d end up in the woods. Not with a sailboat of that size.”
Burki, 76, said he was rescued after the storm by a Coast Guard helicopter, becoming one of more than 1,000 people the service has rescued or assisted since the storm made landfall on Sept. 28. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Thursday that first responders had rescued more than 2,500 people have been rescued across the state.
The deadly storm has prompted a sprawling search-and-rescue effort that could continue for days, with first responders canvassing neighborhoods with cadaver dogs, knocking on doors looking for people who need help, and using axes, pry bars and sledgehammers to force their way into homes with possible storm victims.
The effort is directed by local authorities but has included the Coast Guard and out-of-town search-and-rescue teams, many affiliated with fire departments in other parts of the country. Many arrived in Florida before the storm, hunkering down on the eastern side of the state as the storm arrived so they could respond as soon as it had passed.
In interviews, first responders described an environment along Florida’s western coast that appeared post-apocalyptic. Dozens of people have been killed in the state’s deadliest hurricane since 1935, but rescue teams said they encountered many other Floridians who survived brushes with death. The death toll is expected to rise as rescue teams move through additional neighborhoods.
“It’s surreal,” said Coast Guard Petty Officer James Lowen, a rescue swimmer who helped evacuate survivors from Sanibel Island, off the coast of Fort Myers. “You couldn’t help but feel for them. I was wondering who these people were, whether they’re ever going to come back to it, and what I would think if it was my house.”
A door-to-door hunt
Among the teams staged in advance to help local authorities were two urban search-and-rescue teams from Virginia. Virginia Task Force 1, of Fairfax County, deployed with 45 people, and Virginia Task Force 2, of Virginia Beach, sent about 80. They report to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which coordinates outside support.
The Fairfax County team staged in Miami ahead of the storm, traveling west on Interstate 75 through the Everglades to get to storm-ravaged areas the following morning. Team members initially joined the effort in Charlotte County, paddling on small boats to reach Little Gasparilla Island, a tiny coastal community with no bridges linking them to mainland Florida. A few people rode out the storm there, the firefighters said, but no one needed help.
Elsewhere in Charlotte County and in Lee County, to the south, the Fairfax County team focused heavily on trailer parks at the request of local officials.
“We get a lot of intel from folks living in the neighborhoods,” said Lt. Brian Gillingham, a member of the team. “The first thing we ask, is: ‘Hey, how high did the water come up? Do you know of anybody who didn’t evacuate? Do you know of anyone who is missing?’ And that’s how we kind of figure out how we’re going to deal with that neighborhood.”
In the coastal Iona neighborhood of Fort Myers, the team visited the Tropicana mobile home neighborhood. Residents told them that a large alligator — a “double humper,” they were told — had been kept as a pet in a fenced-in area. But storm surge had washed away the fence, and it was not clear whether the alligator was lurking nearby.
In the same neighborhood, residents said they helped a disabled man who did not wish to leave ahead of the storm by leaving him with inflatable “floaties” and life preservers. The man survived and was evacuated, neighbors told the team, after floating in water four or five feet high in his home at the height of the storm, said Capt. Rob Clement.
“This wasn’t just floating,” said another member of the team, Capt. Mark Menton. “He was floating in a washing machine of all of his furniture, all of his belongings, everything circulating around.”
The Fairfax County team did not encounter any human remains in the first several days after the storm. But they were informed that other authorities had responded to a death in an area they also canvassed, they said.
On Tuesday afternoon, members of the Virginia Beach team searched through the rubble of Fort Myers Beach’s Red Coconut RV Park with hand tools and cadaver dogs. Rescuers wondered whether anyone had stayed behind at the beachfront park and was swept away by storm surge. But they couldn’t be sure, because they had no list of the missing.
On Wednesday, the team received a large-capacity end loader, a nimble excavator that could move layers of debris and a skid steer that could move quickly to push debris out of the way. But they still didn’t know whether anyone was under the rubble.
Cadaver dogs ran over the piles, barking when they thought they detected human remains. The rescuers would follow, looking — and smelling — for any hint that a body might be present. By the end of Wednesday, the team had found only a dead cat.
“We don’t know where anyone is,” said Daryl Funaiock, a task force leader. “You can assume that everyone evacuated, but you don’t assume that. You assume they stayed.”
Funaiock compared the search on Fort Myers Beach to the team’s work at the site of the 2021 condominium collapse in Surfside, Fla. There, teams had split into 12-hour shifts, working through the night, carefully digging for residents. Because of the way the building had pancaked, rescuers could pinpoint which floor and unit fell where. They knew who should have been in each apartment and which room they could have been in, getting detailed information from family members about each victim.
In Fort Myers Beach, the wind and water had pushed homes into each other, blending bits and pieces of buildings and depositing the stacks far from their points of origin. Team members guessed who might have lived where. Because there weren’t as many toys as there were in the rubble at Surfside, they surmised that more retirees lived in the community.
On Friday, the Fairfax County team was searching around Pine Island on house boats and other structures that were difficult to reach by land, said Adam Hall, a member of the team.
Searches also continued Friday on Sanibel Island, with members of Florida Task Force 1 involved, said Lt. Jairo Rodriguez, a rescue manager on the Florida team. That team had carried out cursory “hasty searches” for several days, he said, but moved Thursday to more deliberative efforts that included using dogs and breaching homes with hand tools.
Searchers have been able to do more in the past couple of days while collaborating with the Florida National Guard, Rodriguez said. Guard personnel have delivered all-terrain vehicles and other heavy equipment.
“The damage is a lot of muck, a lot of structural wind damage,” Rodriguez said. “A lot of the structures have been completely wiped out from their foundations.”
An unusual mission
In the Coast Guard, 42 small-boat teams and 37 helicopters, some from out of state, were staged to respond to the storm, said Adm. Kevin Lunday, the commander of the Coast Guard Atlantic Area. Some went into action before the storm had completely cleared the area.
“They made a very deliberate decision to launch with one of our most experienced pilots and crews ... during the middle of the night while the storm was raging,” Lunday said.
In one of the first rescues that night, a 43-foot civilian vessel was taking on water off the coast of North Bradenton, Fla. Its occupants called 911 to say they were abandoning the vessel, said Lt. Cmdr. Dan Schrader, a Coast Guard spokesman.
The rescue crew went out in an MH-60 helicopter in winds gusting to 45 mph, recovering three people from the water and taking them to Tampa General Hospital, Schrader said.
The Coast Guard continued helicopter rescues for several days. In one case, Lowen, a rescue swimmer dispatched from his usual assignment in Traverse City, Mich., landed on Sanibel Island on Sept. 30 and encountered a man who said he knew where there was someone who needed help.
Lowen borrowed a bicycle — a beach cruiser complete with basket on the handlebars — and drove with the man more than a mile through the devastation, he said. They stopped at several other houses along the way, passing flipped-over cars, a house that had burned and other sites that had been ravaged by the storm surge, all as the Coast Guard helicopter assessed the neighborhood from above.
“The tires were good, the brakes were good,” Lowen said. “So I looked at him and said, ‘Okay, let’s roll. Show me what you can show me.’”
The man stopped him at a three-story home less than a mile from the Sanibel Causeway, which was destroyed in the storm. Inside were an elderly man and woman and a dog, sitting on their couch surrounded by debris. The man, who walked with a cane, and the woman agreed to leave with Lowen.
Lowen, who has since returned to Michigan, said he has heard some jokes from colleagues about taking a bicycle as a rescue swimmer. But it seemed like a good idea.
“It’s not like anyone has ever heard of a rescue swimmer being on a bicycle,” he said, but “it would have taken way longer to just walk.” | 2022-10-08T16:31:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | By helicopter, ATV, even bicycle, a door-to-door hunt for Ian victims - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/08/by-helicopter-atv-even-bicycle-door-to-door-hunt-ian-victims/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/08/by-helicopter-atv-even-bicycle-door-to-door-hunt-ian-victims/ |
Starbucks’s CEO saw his unionizing baristas as a threat to his life’s work. They said he didn’t understand how the country and their lives had changed.
By Greg Jaffe
Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, during an event for investors in Seattle in September. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
SEATTLE — Howard Schultz, the billionaire founder of Starbucks, stood alone beside the auditorium stage at the company’s global headquarters. The room was packed with 200 of his top executives, all waiting for him to speak.
But first Schultz wanted them to hear from their employees across the country. The lights dimmed and their recorded voices filled the room.
“My last three shifts I’ve cried,” said one barista.
“We’re stressed out at work. We’re stressed out at home,” said another.
“I was told by a customer that I was a disgrace to my heritage,” said a third as Schultz walked onto the stage and settled into a chair.
The 69-year-old CEO had always seen himself as the good guy of American capitalism, believing that his own wealth and Starbucks’s rise to become one of the most ubiquitous brands on the planet was a direct outgrowth of the company’s concern for its workers and their well-being.
Only now all of that was being challenged. Across America, workers who had labored through a once-in-a-century pandemic were concluding that they deserved better and were quitting or demanding more from their bosses, or in the case of some Starbucks workers, unionizing. An organizing effort that began in Buffalo in August 2021 with a handful of cafes had, by the time Schultz took the stage in early July, spread to more than 225 of Starbucks’s 9,000 U.S. stores, sparking hopes of a revived labor movement.
On picket lines outside the stores, pro-union workers were slamming Schultz as a greedy, out-of-touch billionaire with a $130 million yacht. The National Labor Relations Board was accusing Starbucks in court filings of carrying out a “virulent, widespread and well-orchestrated” anti-union campaign that relied on firings, threat and surveillance. Democratic senators who once praised Schultz as a “pathbreaking” and humane leader were now castigating him for undermining his workers’ rights.
To Schultz, the unionization drive felt like an attack on his life’s work. In previous speeches to his employees, he had cast the union as “a group trying to take our people,” an “outside force that’s trying desperately to disrupt our company,” and “an adversary that’s threatening the very essence of what [we] believe to be true.”
The stress of it all was weighing on Schultz, who had been back on the job for three months and had told Starbucks’s board that he didn’t have the energy to stay for more than a year. That gave him 12 months to convince his nonunion workers that his version of benevolent capitalism could offer them more than any union. In his mind, he had 12 months to save his company.
“Why is this so personal to me?” he asked the executives in the room. Schultz stared down at the ground, his arms resting on his knees and his shoulders bent.
“I know what it has taken to build this place. I know what’s at stake right now,” he continued, struggling to get the words out. “And we have to show — … to show up in a different way.” The room fell silent. Schultz steadied himself.
“And let me be honest with you,” he told them. “Time is not on our side.”
‘Filling souls’
From the beginning, Schultz said he was building a different kind of company, unlike anything that had ever existed for low-wage, service workers. In the early 1990s, he offered health insurance and stock options to his employees — even the part timers — and insisted they be called “partners” to show that they had a stake in the company’s success. He worried that his employees were carrying too much student loan debt, so Schultz teamed with Arizona State University to offer free online college to all of his employees.
He told his baristas that they weren’t merely selling drinks, they were creating a sense of belonging for customers in an increasingly atomized world. In interviews, he cast Starbucks’s mission in spiritual terms.
“We’re not in the business of filling bellies,” he told Scott Pelley on “60 Minutes” in 2006. “We’re in the business of filling souls.”
If Schultz’s evangelizing about “achieving the fragile balance between profit and benevolence” sometimes came off as paternalistic, it was because Schultz had seen the way his father, a truck and taxi driver in New York City, had been treated by his employers. They had broken him, Schultz believed, turning him into an abusive man who was unable to provide for his family. Schultz told his employees that he wanted them to find meaning in their jobs and that he was offering them a pathway to the American Dream that had been denied to his dad.
His vision was also shaped by the 1990s when he came of age as a CEO and everything in America seemed possible. Profits were rising, wages were growing and globalization seemed to promise an era of endless prosperity. In those days, a Starbucks cafe with its fancy Italian drinks was something new and sophisticated, a sign that your city or town had arrived.
Starting in 1992, Starbucks recorded 190 consecutive months of comparable store sales growth. The company went from 165 U.S. locations to more than 15,000 scattered across the world. Every year brought a new market: Japan, Malaysia, Qatar, Lebanon, Chile and China.
In 2018 Schultz cut ties with Starbucks to explore a run for president that never got off the ground. Three years later he was overseeing his family’s philanthropic endeavors when the first stores in Buffalo filed for union elections. The pandemic had exhausted Starbucks workers, driving attrition to the highest levels in the company’s history. At the same time, a nationwide labor shortage had given the baristas some real negotiating power.
Kevin Johnson, a former Microsoft executive who succeeded Schultz as CEO in 2018, never visited Buffalo, but Schultz, who held no official position with the company, made two trips to the city in the fall of 2021. On his first, store managers told him of broken equipment that the company never seemed to fix and flooding in their cafes: “things that I had never heard before,” Schultz recalled in an interview.
A month later Schultz returned to beg a ballroom full of baristas to give Starbucks a chance to fix the problems without a union. His plea failed, and in December 2021 the first Buffalo stores voted to be represented by Starbucks Workers United. By early April Schultz was back as CEO, explaining to tens of thousands of his employees watching online and in person at Starbucks’s headquarters his understanding of the problem. It wasn’t that Starbucks was losing money or that demand for its beverages was waning, but that corporate executives hadn’t listened to their employees. They hadn’t understood the strain the pandemic was putting on their lives.
Almost immediately Schultz hit the road to meet with baristas, shift supervisors and store managers across the country. The sessions typically began with an admission from Schultz that the company had failed them and a plea that they speak frankly.
“I need to hear everything,” Schultz began a session in San Jose, “as much as you can share.”
Baristas told him that they weren’t making enough money to pay their bills. They complained about equipment that had been broken for weeks, understaffed stores, insufficient training and supply chain snarls.
Some of the problems seemed bigger than Starbucks, rooted in a country that had taken a dark turn during the pandemic, Schultz said. He visited Nashville, Phoenix and Long Beach, Calif. Workers routinely told him that their customers had grown angrier, more aggressive and demanding. He traveled to New York, Chicago, St. Louis and Denver. He heard more and more from baristas about frightening encounters with homeless people and drug addicts in their store’s bathrooms.
“I didn’t know it existed,” he said. “I didn’t know our people didn’t feel safe.”
All the while the union was growing. In Schultz’s first month back, 65 stores petitioned for votes. Union officials, who had hoped that Schultz might reluctantly make peace with their movement, were baffled by his increasingly hostile tone. “I’ve never met a businessman like him,” said Richard Bensinger, a longtime organizer who was working with the Starbucks baristas. “He hates unions more than he loves money.”
Schultz struggled to see his unionizing employees as real workers with actual grievances. After the Starbucks Reserve Roastery in Seattle, a sprawling store that serves freshly prepared food and alcohol, voted 38-27 to unionize, Schultz alleged in an interview that 20 employees had gone to work there just to vote for union.
Union leaders at the store said they had no idea what he was talking about. “Maybe there were 20 people that quit, but literally nothing else he said is true,” said Melissa Slabaugh, a nine-year Starbucks veteran who led the roastery organizing effort.
To Schultz, unions existed to protect workers from bad companies, like the ones who had abused his father. “That’s why unions were created,” he said in an interview. A union had no place at a company that cared about its workers like Starbucks, Schultz believed. It would pit employees against their bosses, turning partners into adversaries.
It was “anathema,” he said, to the culture of shared success that he had sought to build over the course of decades, and he was determined to stop it.
‘A hero amongst us’
If any visit had reminded Schultz of what Starbucks at its best had been and what he believed it could still be, it was a trip he made to Texas in July.
Schultz or his top executives had already taken part in about 60 listening sessions when his jet touched down in San Antonio. His day began at a conference room by the airport where about two dozen Starbucks baristas, shift supervisors and store managers were waiting for him.
A young woman with a nose ring and a long braid told Schultz about her struggle to get the 30 hours a week that she needed to “survive.” “It’s really hard to pay bills, buy groceries and take care of my son,” she told Schultz. “My paycheck — it’s so inconsistent.”
Others complained about the chaos in their cafes. “I found meth in the bathroom,” a shift supervisor said. “And after we closed, the person came back and was beating on the windows and doors. He was obviously on drugs.” She said she called the police three times before they came.
“How long did it take?” Schultz asked.
“Over two hours,” the young woman replied.
Schultz told them that he had just announced the shutdown of 16 profitable stores because local police and elected officials weren’t able to keep them safe. And he worried that more closures could be on the way.
“These aren’t the kind of issues that Starbucks has ever faced before,” he said. “They’re systemic. They’re societal.”
The San Antonio session ended and Schultz, after a short flight across west Texas, touched down in Uvalde, a small ranching community still recovering from one of the worst school shootings in U.S. history. Starbucks had one store in the town, and Schultz wanted to check on his people there.
At Robb Elementary he walked past pictures of the 19 dead schoolchildren and their two teachers, surrounded by big piles of flowers, stuffed animals, candles and crosses. More than a month after the shooting, clusters of mourners were still gathering to offer quiet prayers. Then Schultz visited the town’s Starbucks — a stand-alone building that shared a parking lot with the town’s Dollar General and a farm supply store.
There the store manager, Nancy Martinez, told him how in the hours after the shooting she had rushed with boxes of coffee to Uvalde’s civic center where parents had gathered to find out if their children had survived. She said she had spotted one of her regulars, the father of 9-year-old Ellie Garcia, standing alone. She cautiously approached him and wrapped him in a hug.
Later that evening, she continued, she had scoured Facebook for news and learned that Ellie was among the victims. In the days that followed, Martinez told Schultz that she had delivered drinks to Ellie’s parents at their home. To honor their slain child on what would have been her 10th birthday, she gave away hundreds of free cake pops with the message, “Live Like Ellie” stuck to the stems. She said that another parent who had lost a child had passed through her drive-through every day for a week after his daughter’s funeral to order her favorite drink, a vanilla bean Frappuccino, which he took to the cemetery. Martinez and her baristas decorated the cups with messages. They helped to cater all of the funerals.
Schultz listened. He called the 41-year-old manager “a hero amongst us.” But, in Schultz’s mind, the story that Martinez was telling him was bigger than just her, her workers or her store. To Schultz, it was also the story of Starbucks, which had helped make Martinez and her team great.
“The country and the world need Starbucks,” Schultz often said.
He’d seen it so many times in just the last few months. He had seen it, he believed, in Switzerland when an Ethiopian coffee farmer cornered him on the sidewalk outside the company’s corporate office. “He could not stop talking about the positive impact Starbucks had on his life and on the coffee farmers within his community,” Schultz said.
He had seen it, he believed, in Anacostia, a historic, Black Washington neighborhood that has struggled, amid high poverty and crime rates, to attract retailers. Starbucks had opened a “community store” there that Schultz knew might never turn a profit.
He had seen it, he believed, in a TikTok video recorded by a stressed-out mother of an autistic son who had been anxious about his swim lesson until a Starbucks barista handed him a free cake pop. “You have to see it,” Schultz had said as an assistant pulled up the video. On the assistant’s phone, a woman in a green tank top was saying that Starbucks had restored her “faith in humanity.’ ”
And now he believed he was seeing it in Uvalde, where Martinez’s baristas were racing to fill drive-through orders. Schultz wanted his executives at the corporate headquarters to feel what he was feeling too, so he pulled Martinez aside and invited her to visit Seattle.
Before he left, Schultz posed for pictures with Martinez and her staff. He chatted with a mom and her two daughters, who were sipping blended drinks topped with swirls of whipped cream and drizzles of dark chocolate. “Are you going to put those on Instagram?” he asked. They nodded. Soon Schultz was gone.
‘Petty and bullying’
It was another store visit to the Starbucks just blocks from Schultz’s Seattle home that showed what he was up against.
Elise Whisler was still half-asleep when she looked up at 5:30 a.m. and saw Schultz standing on the opposite side of the counter. Schultz ordered his regular drink: a double short latte, three-quarters full. He didn’t know it at the time, but Whisler, the 25-year-old barista making his drink, was the lead organizer at her store.
She and her co-workers were just days away from learning the outcome of their union election. Schultz asked Whisler if her cafe had received the new cold beverage that the company was rolling out for the summer and how it was selling.
“Yep, the Pineapple Passionfruit Refresher,” Whisler replied. “It’s popular so far.”
Since his return in April Schultz had barely spoken with pro-union workers who weren’t invited to any of his listening sessions. Whisler had contacted the union earlier this year after the company’s algorithm, which predicts customer demand, had slashed her and many of her co-worker’s hours. Several workers, unable to pay their bills, found other jobs. Some, Whisler said, were forced to choose between rent and food.
“Starbucks says we’re ‘performance-driven through the lens of humanity,’ ” she recalled thinking. “But where’s the humanity in that?”
In May, the day after Whisler’s store petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for its union vote, Schultz announced new raises for some hourly employees. But he refused to extend the pay increases to workers, such as Whisler, whose stores had unionized or were in the process of petitioning for elections.
Union officials complained that Schultz was punishing workers out of spite, and federal regulators said Schultz’s decision violated the law. Starbucks countered that workers like Whisler had made a choice to form a union and bargain with the company for a formal contract. Starbucks said it was honoring their decision. Ultimately, a federal judge would have to decide the matter, a process that could take months or even years.
To Whisler, Schultz’s decision to deny unionizing workers the seniority raises seemed “petty and bullying.” She stepped behind the bar to steam milk for his drink. Schultz, was standing just a few feet away in the mostly empty store checking his phone.
Tensions between Starbucks and the union had been building all spring and summer. Union officials accused Starbucks of firing more than 120 pro-union workers in retaliation for organizing. The dismissals spanned the country and, in several instances, drew the condemnation of the National Labor Relations Board. In August a federal judge ordered Starbucks to reinstate seven pro-union employees who were fired in February at a Memphis store.
Schultz denied that anyone had been dismissed for union activity. He alleged that Starbucks Workers United was harassing store managers and infiltrating the company’s workforce with paid activists.
The firings and Schultz’s portrayal of the union grated on Whisler and her co-workers. In May, when they petitioned the NLRB for their store election, they aimed a tweet at Schultz. “Dear Howard, you may like your coffee ¾ full, but we like ours union made,” it read. The goal, Whisler said, was to show Schultz that they weren’t outsiders or paid activists. They were the people who made his coffee and knew his regular order.
“I don’t understand why he’s so emotional about all of it,” Whisler said. “That’s one of the really frustrating parts.”
As Whisler handed Schultz his drink, she weighed whether to vent her frustrations. She didn’t see her decision to back the union as an attack on Starbucks or Schultz. To her, it was an acknowledgment of the facts of their lives as she saw them. He was a billionaire CEO who was under pressure from “shareholders and this massive corporate network” to sell more beverages and grow profits. She was getting by on $17.86 an hour, worked a second part-time job as a pet sitter and was struggling to pay her bills amid spiraling inflation.
“I’m not sure that’s something you can overcome with good intentions,” she said in an interview.
She imagined what she would tell Schultz: “You say you value community and courage. Well, we’re a community of people who are being very courageous in asking for change and you’re refusing to negotiate with us and painting us as outsiders in your own organization.”
But she didn’t say any of it. “What does it do other than put him in a bad mood?” she reasoned. “What does it do other than tell him it’s a personal attack, when it is not?”
Schultz left the store. Whisler walked into the back room where one of her co-workers was waiting for her. “I’m sorry I left you alone out there,” she recalled her colleague telling her. “I just couldn’t bear to look him in the eye right now.”
A few days later, Whisler’s store voted 6-1 to unionize.
‘The epitome of the American Dream’
In September, Schultz took the stage at Starbucks’s headquarters to lay out what he and his team had learned in more than 200 sessions with the company’s hourly workers across the country.
This time, the all-day gathering was for Starbucks’s biggest investors. It was probably going to be Schultz’s last big public appearance as CEO. Two weeks earlier, he had announced that Laxman Narasimhan, the 55-year-old head of Reckitt, a British consumer goods company, would take over for him in the spring after an unusual six-month orientation. Schultz wanted to make sure that his successor understood exactly what made Starbucks so special and different from other businesses.
“I have the distinct honor an absolute privilege of introducing our iconic founder!” Starbucks’s head of investor relations announced.
Schultz bounded to the stage. Projected on a giant screen behind him were photos of Starbucks stores from around the world. “If I had to pick one word to describe what we’re going to share with you,” Schultz began, “it would be ambition.”
Outside in the parking lot several hundred Starbucks workers and supporters from other unions were marching, shouting and accusing Schultz of trying to crush their efforts to organize. “What’s outrageous? Poverty wages!” they chanted. A few held up “Wanted” posters with his Schultz’s face, begging to negotiate with the union.
Starbucks’s security team taped sheets of brown paper over the ground-floor doors and windows to block the protesters from view.
Inside, Schultz was introducing Narasimhan, who talked about his humble origins in India and his arrival decades earlier in the United States with nothing. “Sitting in front of you,” he told the investors, “I am the epitome of the American Dream.”
Schultz and his team then outlined and all they were going to do to “restore trust” with their employees who increasingly wondered if that dream still applied to them. Last year, two months after the first stores in Buffalo petitioned for union votes, Schultz’s predecessor announced $1 billion in raises. The extra pay, which included a $15-an-hour minimum salary, began hitting baristas’ paychecks in August of this year. In small towns, such as Uvalde, the boost registered as a 25 percent raise. In bigger cities such as Seattle where workers were already making more than $15 an hour, the 3-to-7 percent pay increases didn’t cover the cost of inflation.
Now Schultz was promising his employees more.
“There’s a word that’s not used very often in business, and the word is ‘love,’ ” Schultz said. “I spent my life at Starbucks, and my love for the company — my responsibility to our partners — is at the highest level possible.”
Schultz and his team said they were committed to giving employees more stable hours each week, a steadier paycheck and clearer pathways to salaried jobs at the company for those who wanted them.
Schultz had been shocked to learn that, despite the company’s free online college program, many Starbucks employee still carried tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt that they’d built up before being hired. So, Starbucks was teaming with a company to help its workers refinance their debt and manage their payments.
He’d heard from workers about their struggle to save for unexpected expenses, such as car trouble. Schultz’s answer: a new program that would dole out $25 to $50 incentive payments, up to $250 in total, to encourage employees to build up their bank accounts. Schultz was denying these new benefits to unionizing workers.
At virtually every stop on Schultz’s tour, baristas had complained about how harried their jobs had become as they scrambled to make increasingly complicated cold, blended drinks. Now new technology was on the way that would help baristas work more efficiently. Among the innovations: new blenders and store designs that would cut the time to make a Frappuccino from 86 to 35 seconds.
The changes, Schultz promised, would be good for not only workers but also Starbucks’s profits. Better pay and benefits would cut down on turnover. Better technology would make baristas’ work less exhausting. Both would give baristas more time to get to know their customers, who spent more money when their baristas knew their regular drinks and a bit about their lives.
Between speeches, Schultz, his gray hair swept back, worked the room like a politician tending his base. He draped an arm over the shoulder of one major investor. A few seconds later he was cupping his hand on the nape of another’s neck and pulling him close. Soaring inflation, which was dragging down other companies, seemed to be sparing Starbucks. “So far, we’ve been immune, immune!” Schultz was telling them.
During a quiet moment, Schultz told Narasimhan to call his mother in Britain, so that she could wish her son luck. “It’s like Christmas here,” Narasimhan mused. “Everyone’s so happy.”
Sometimes Schultz struggled to understand why his unionizing workers were so angry. “They’re angry at the world. They’re angry at their situation, which I understand,” Schultz said in an interview. “Our responsibility is to do as much as we can to overcome that, but there are limitations, unfortunately.”
In other instances, he cast the movement in darker terms, as a meticulously planned power grab by organized labor aimed at undermining his company. He accused them of lying and bullying store managers and their fellow baristas. “There’s so much fiction versus truth,” he said. “At some point the entire story will come out.”
To Schultz, the proof of his and Starbucks’s goodness was in its past actions. “We have a 51-year history of building this company the right way,” he said. It was in places like Uvalde and store managers like Martinez. And it was in the numbers. In early September, Starbucks’s U.S. operation recorded one of its strongest weeks in company history. Employee retention numbers were finally returning to pre-covid levels, and the number of stores filing for union election was down from a high of 71 in March to only 10 in September. For the first time his return as CEO, Schultz was sure he was winning.
The day’s events were over. The protesters had vacated the parking lot. The investors were headed to the airport.
Whisler, the barista from Schultz’s neighborhood store, had skipped the demonstrations. “I’d been so burnt out at work lately,” she said. Schultz’s resistance to the unionization push had left her and many of her co-workers doubtful they’d ever get a contract. She wasn’t even sure the union would survive. “I’d love a stable, long-term union, but I don’t know if it’s super likely,” she said. “For me, the be-all and end-all is that people feel supported and can earn a living wage.” She went to sleep a little before 9 p.m. so she’d be able to wake up at 3:30 a.m. for her morning shift.
A few miles away Schultz was also ending his day. Before he turned in for the night, he typed out a message to his staff. “Over my four decades with Starbucks, I’ve been so fortunate to experience so many defining moments for the company,” he wrote. “Today was certainly one of them. What you all accomplished will go down as one of the most important days in Starbucks history.”
“It was a return to the soul of the company,” Schultz said. “A seminal day. A seminal day.”
A Rhodes scholar barista and the fight to unionize Starbucks | 2022-10-08T16:31:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's fight to stop a union uprising - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/08/starbucks-union-ceo-howard-schultz/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/08/starbucks-union-ceo-howard-schultz/ |
Will old rules of politics apply to Herschel Walker? They did 2 years ago to a N.C. Democrat
Personal scandal was the death knell for Cal Cunningham in North Carolina. But in Georgia, Walker is barreling ahead as if nothing happened.
Cal Cunningham, left, lost to U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) in a tight race in 2020. (Gerry Broome/AP)
A candidate running in a critical Southern battleground state got caught in a personal scandal that threatened to upend his campaign just a few weeks before Election Day.
His supporters dug in, saying voters viewed the campaign as a parliamentary type of race to determine the Senate majority and predicted that the personal foibles would have no impact.
Herschel Walker this month in Georgia? No, Cal Cunningham, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in North Carolina two years ago.
In the fall of 2020, Cunningham emerged with a clear lead over Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), in part because of his biography as an Army prosecutor who served in Iraq. But in early October, he acknowledged that he had sent sexually explicit messages to a woman who was not his wife, and, a few days later, she told the media that they had an intimate affair. Cunningham, a married father of two, refused to answer questions about whether he had had other affairs.
In 25 public polls after the revelations and before Election Day, Cunningham led in 22 and was tied in two others.
But his campaign had collapsed. Cunningham lost by nearly two percentage points, falling considerably short of the vote tallies of Democrats Joe Biden in the presidential race and Roy Cooper in the gubernatorial race in the Tar Heel State.
“It’s a self-inflicted wound,” said J. Michael Bitzer, an expert in state politics and a professor at Catawba College in Salisbury, N.C. “You’ve thrown a monkey wrench into your campaign.”
Cunningham’s fate is, by no means, a definitive prologue about what will happen to Walker, the former football star who faces allegations of paying a woman to abort his child in 2009, after he said he became a born-again Christian who was opposed to abortion rights.
Walker has been locked in an extremely close race against Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.), one of the most critical contests for determining the Senate majority. The abortion story broke on Oct. 3, two years and a day after Cunningham’s affair allegations.
Walker, a first-time candidate, has denied the assertions but has looked unsteady in several media appearances trying to explain his past. He has taken a familiar path of accusing Democrats of trying to distract voters from real policy.
“They can keep coming at me like that, and they’re doing it because they want to distract people,” he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday.
The woman has since accused Walker of encouraging her to have a second abortion a couple of years later, but she said she refused and gave birth to their now 10-year-old son.
Cunningham took the same approach in his first media appearance after hunkering down for a few days. “People are tired of hearing about personal issues. They want somebody focused on them,” he told reporters.
Cunningham had offered an apology to his family in a statement but then demanded “that my family’s privacy be respected” and said the affair was not an issue.
In that regard, Cunningham and Walker followed a page from the Donald Trump playbook: Barrel ahead when scandal happens, don’t focus on the issue, and accuse your opponents of worse. It worked in 2016.
Although GOP officials in Georgia and Washington remain strongly behind the Heisman Trophy winner, some unaffiliated Republican strategists in the Peach State find themselves miffed by how Walker cruised through the primary with the blessing of Trump and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
“He gets propelled into this Senate race without ever having been vetted,” said Jay Morgan, who worked in Georgia politics for the late Sen. Johnny Isakson (R) and advised former governor Nathan Deal.
Walker has been forced to acknowledge fathering several children out of wedlock and has discussed violent acts toward his first wife, prompting concern that some moderate Republicans and right-leaning independents will happily vote for Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and then take a pass on Walker.
“I think it’s more a case of who’s going to vacate that race — who is going to vote for Kemp and then skip over the Senate race,” Morgan said.
That is precisely what happened to Cunningham two years ago.
Which is its own irony, because for months before, both parties’ strategists had thought that Tillis, who had a rocky relationship with Trump, would lag too far behind his party’s presidential nominee as MAGA voters abandoned him.
Tillis fell 93,000 votes shy of Trump’s totals in the state, and he even fell about 20,000 votes behind Biden’s losing performance in North Carolina.
But Cunningham fell 115,000 votes shy of Biden — and 265,000 votes off Cooper’s victorious vote tally in the governor’s race.
The stench factor was big in the Senate race that year. Almost 50,000 voters who cast their ballots in the presidential race declined to vote in the Senate race.
And almost 240,000 voters chose one of the two fringe candidates in the Senate race, triple the number who voted for a third-party alternative in the presidential contest.
The Cunningham allegations landed at the worst possible moment, just two weeks before early voting started; anyone who had their doubts had enough time to rethink their vote.
“That is when everyone is paying attention,” Bitzer said.
His post-election analysis showed Cunningham took the biggest hit in cities and urban areas, lagging Biden there by 65,000 votes, and by 27,000 votes in the state’s competitive suburbs.
Those results suggest that core Democrats, many of whom did not have deep ties to Cunningham, abandoned him.
Of the 12 candidates to win statewide races in North Carolina two years ago, Tillis received the fewest votes. Cunningham now practices law in Raleigh, with just a single sentence mentioning the 2020 campaign in a more than 800-word biographical section of his website.
In Georgia, establishment Republicans do not expect core conservatives to abandon Walker, despite the inherent contradiction of their strong antiabortion beliefs and the possibility that Walker, 60, paid for a girlfriend to have the procedure.
Cole Muzio, the president of a Christian conservative organization outside Atlanta, sent his supporters a memo Thursday that highlighted, in bold font, that “much about Herschel Walker’s past is extremely problematic” and that the candidate so far had “oscillated between political answers” on the topic.
But the other choice was another Warnock term, Muzio told his fellow Christians, highlighting this portion in bold. “Policies voted for and supported by Raphael G. Warnock harms my neighbor’s family, their business, and their right to worship freely.”
Some Republicans privately are hoping that Walker gets a pass for being a celebrity, so that his past behavior is taken as akin to Trump’s pre-White House days in Manhattan, especially after a video of him making crass comments about assaulting women came out shortly before the 2016 election that he still won.
But others fear that public polls had already shown Walker consistently trailing Kemp’s position, and these latest stories, on top of the initial stories about his personal life, could further drive Republican-leaning voters away from the former football star.
“I think they’re scratching their heads about what to do,” Morgan said.
Georgia also is home to millions of new voters — 1.6 million in just the past four years — many of whom have no allegiance to Walker’s heyday 40 years ago when he was a star athlete at the University of Georgia.
Georgia election law requires someone to clear 50 percent in the election or else head to a December runoff involving the top two finishers. Strategists already thought that was a distinct possibility in the very close race.
Now, campaign managers and consultants will have to try to monitor whether support is shifting to a libertarian candidate, who could draw those alienated Republicans, or if those voters will just skip the Senate race on the ballot.
Bitzer said he could not predict how the Walker scandals will play out this fall, but he said that without question, some of the old rules still did apply to Cunningham.
“He would have had a better chance had he kept his drawers zipped,” he said. | 2022-10-08T16:48:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Herschel Walker's candidacy may not follow the arc of Cal Cunningham's - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/08/herschel-walker-abortion-voters/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/08/herschel-walker-abortion-voters/ |
John Eugene Eklund was convicted in 1942 in the death of a teenager in the District. (National Archives and Records Administration)
Mildred Washington, 18, had a bad feeling about the person trailing behind her and her boyfriend, Hylan McClaine, 17, as they walked over Rock Creek Park on the K Street bridge early in the morning of Oct. 15, 1940.
She had reasons to be fearful. The papers were full of stories about a gunman terrorizing the Black community in Washington. The press had dubbed him the “sniper” for the way he appeared and disappeared with ease. “Oh, you’re crazy,” McClaine said. “That man isn’t thinking about us.”
That man was. He lifted a .38-caliber pistol and fired three shots at McClaine, killing him. Mildred saw the assailant in the light from a streetlight and was able to describe him to police: a White man in his late 20s wearing a brown suit and no hat.
That description was printed in all the papers. Only one, the Washington Afro American, commissioned a likeness of the assailant from a sketch artist. The Afro had followed the case from the beginning, how on Oct. 6, Theodore Goffney and Sam Banks were shot as they sat on a bench in front of 2600 I Street NW. How Jack Sharkey was shot on Sept. 2 but survived.
“I’m not afraid of anything I can see,” Sharkey told Afro reporter Sam Lacy. “But when something comes out of the darkness behind me, without a sound, and blazes away with a gun, there’s nothing I can do.”
Two Afro staff members — a photographer and a society reporter returning to their car after covering a party — thought they had been followed by the gunman, who turned and ran only when he overheard one say, “I believe it’s the sniper.”
Among those fixated on the Afro’s coverage was an unexpected reader, a 25-year-old White man named John Eugene Eklund. He was a George Washington University dropout and former Hot Shoppes waiter. Eklund’s mother lived in Washington but he lived in Baltimore, where he worked at an airplane factory.
An acquaintance named Herbert Ray told police Eklund filled his room with news clippings about the sniper, including ones from the Afro. The friend noticed that Eklund stopped wearing his brown suit and started wearing a hat. Eklund owned a .38-caliber pistol but had gotten rid of it. And Ray said Eklund was gathering tools to take to a wooded area near the Virginia side of the 14th Street bridge to dig bullets out of a tree stump he had used as target practice.
Fearful for his own life, Ray turned Eklund into the authorities. The police got to the tree stump before Eklund and said bullets found there came from the same gun that had killed the three Black men.
Prosecutors alleged that “intense race hatred” had motivated Eklund to stalk his victims. Eklund maintained his innocence. On June 23, 1941, an all-White jury found him guilty of the first-degree murder of McClaine. There was only one penalty: death by electrocution. Afro noted it was the first time in the District a White man had been sentenced to death for the murder of a Black person.
Eklund’s lawyers appealed, and when it turned out that Ray, the witness, had perjured himself — he claimed not to have had a criminal record when he had served time for housebreaking and perjury — Eklund was granted a new trial.
Eklund’s plea was the same, not guilty, and so was much of the testimony. This time, however, police said they had the murder gun, unearthed in a Baltimore park on a tip from a jailhouse informant Eklund had shared a cell with.
On July 10, 1942, the case went to the jurors. That evening, when he stepped out of the U.S. Marshals van returning him to the District jail, a handcuffed Eklund bolted. He evaded police for nearly two days before being caught.
The brief episode inspired Scott Hart of The Washington Post to rhapsodize: “He didn’t say where he excursioned in his short, harried liberty, why he chose to stroll with a priceless but ruinous audacity in a city where the scream of every police motorcycle siren must have burned his eardrums like hot wires.”
The captured Eklund told reporters: “I was trying to beat a bum rap.”
While Eklund was at large, the jury had returned a verdict: guilty of second-degree murder. Eklund was spared the chair and sentenced to 15 years to life.
The National Archives shared some of the records related to Eklund’s incarceration. He was sent first to prison in Atlanta, where he assaulted other inmates and was considered an escape risk. In 1949, he was transferred to Alcatraz. After four years at Alcatraz he was sent to Leavenworth in Kansas, where he spent a year before returning to Atlanta. He was later transferred to the Pennsylvania borough of Lewisburg.
Some sources suggest Eklund was conditionally released in the 1960s. On June 1, 1996, he died in Polk County in Florida. Later generations of Washingtonians would have their own snipers to deal with. | 2022-10-08T18:37:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | John Eugene Eklund terrorized Black community in Washington in 1940s - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/08/1940s-washington-sniper/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/08/1940s-washington-sniper/ |
Pedestrian is fatally struck by car in Arlington
A pedestrian died Saturday after being struck by a car in Arlington, police said.
The woman, who was in her 80s, was walking in the 5800 block of Little Falls Road about 9 a.m. when she was struck, Arlington police said in a statement.
She was taken to a hospital, where she died of her injuries, officers said.
The driver of the car remained on scene, police said. An investigation continues, police said.
Arlington police did not release the victim’s name, saying that family members were still being notified.
POLICE ACTIVITY: ACPD is investigating a crash with injuries involving a pedestrian in the 5800 block of Little Falls Rd. The pedestrian, an adult female, was transported to a hospital with serious injuries. Driver of striking vehicle remained on scene. Investigation is ongoing. pic.twitter.com/qnFZlhlwKG | 2022-10-08T18:37:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pedestrian dies after being hit by car in Arlington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/08/car-pedestrian-fatality-arlington/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/08/car-pedestrian-fatality-arlington/ |
Maryland state police airlift injured hunter from wooded area
Maryland state police used a helicopter to rescue a hunter who was injured after falling out of a tree stand. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Maryland state police rescued an injured hunter from a remote, wooded section of Howard County, using a helicopter to pluck him from the ground and airlift him to a hospital.
The rescue took place just after 8 a.m. Friday, after the hunter had fallen between 20 and 30 feet from a tree stand off the Cascade Falls Trail in Ellicott City, state police said in a statement.
The hunter had multiple broken ribs and a possible pelvic fracture, police said.
Howard County first responders determined that an ATV could not make it to the man, so they turned to state police, who dispatched a helicopter rescue crew.
As pilots hovered an AgustaWestland AW139 helicopter 150 feet above the scene, a state trooper, who also serves as a flight paramedic, dropped down to the injured hunter. The medic assessed the man’s injuries and, along with Howard County rescuers, secured him to an extraction platform. The hunter was hoisted up to the helicopter and flown to the Maryland Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore for treatment. His condition was not immediately available on Saturday. | 2022-10-08T20:57:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland state police airlift injured hunter from wooded area - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/08/maryland-state-police-airlift-hunter/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/08/maryland-state-police-airlift-hunter/ |
The Republican senators will travel Tuesday to show their support for the GOP senatorial candidate in Georgia
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla) leaves the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 27 after a cloture vote on debate of a continuing resolution to fund the government. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott (Fla.) will travel to Georgia on Tuesday to demonstrate support for Herschel Walker, days after news reports in which a former girlfriend accused the Senate candidate of paying for one abortion and urging a second.
Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is also making the trip, as the party continues to treat the Georgia contest as a marquee race that could help determine control of the Senate in 2023.
“The Democrats want to destroy this country, and they will destroy anyone who gets in their way. Today, it’s Herschel Walker, but tomorrow it’s the American people,” Scott said in a statement to The Washington Post announcing his trip. “I’m on Herschel’s team — they picked the wrong Georgian to mess with. I’m proud to stand with Herschel Walker and make sure Georgians know that he will always fight to protect them from the forces trying to destroy Georgia values.”
The mother of one of Walker’s children has said he ended a relationship with her in 2011 after she refused to have an abortion as she had done two years earlier, according to an account in the New York Times published Friday. The same woman previously told the Daily Beast that Walker paid for the first abortion, the report said. The Daily Beast reported on the woman’s account on Monday.
The Washington Post has not independently confirmed the accounts. Walker has denied both claims, saying he never had knowledge of any abortions by former partners. Walker, who says he has four children by four different women, is running for office on a platform that opposes abortion in all cases, without exception for rape or incest.
Cotton spokeswoman Caroline Tabler said the senator also wants to show his support for Walker. “He believes Herschel will be a champion for Georgia who will vote to keep violent criminals in jail, for lower gas prices, and to stop Joe Biden’s inflationary policies,” she said.
Republicans have shown no signs of backing away from the race, with multiple staffers from the NRSC planning to travel to the state in the coming weeks. Part of a recent cut in NRSC advertising spending in the New Hampshire Senate race, which was announced Friday, is expected to be reallocated to Georgia, according to a person familiar with the plans, who requested anonymity to describe strategy.
Walker and Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) are scheduled to meet Friday for their first televised debate. | 2022-10-08T21:10:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Herschel Walker to get support from GOP Sens. Rick Scott, Tom Cotton - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/08/scott-nrsc-georgia-walker/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/08/scott-nrsc-georgia-walker/ |
Rolando Cubela, who plotted with CIA to kill Cuba’s Castro, dies at 89
Rolando Cubela Secades, while a commandant in Fidel Castro's military, in the early 1960s. (Lois Herman/Corbis/Getty Images)
In March 1966, Rolando Cubela stood before a Havana military tribunal accused of leading a plot to kill his former comrade, Fidel Castro. During the two-day proceedings, Mr. Cubela never denied he sought to assassinate Cuba’s “maximum leader,” but reportedly blamed himself for falling “into the hands of the enemy.”
That contrition, carried by Cuba’s state-controlled media, gave Castro what he needed. Sending Mr. Cubela and four other convicted plotters to face firing squads could have created powerful martyrs to further rally opponents of his rule. Instead, Castro made a public display of saying he wouldn’t condemn Mr. Cubela and other former allies to death.
Mr. Cubela, who died Aug. 23 in Doral, Fla., at 89, would spend the next 13 years in prison — closing one of the more intrigue-filled footnotes from the turbulent years after Castro’s guerrillas overthrew Fulgencio Batista’s U.S.-friendly regime in 1959.
Mr. Cubela’s path to a Havana jail cell included clandestine meetings with CIA operatives in Europe, code names, ideas to kill Castro including a poison-filled pen and suspicions that Mr. Cubela may have been playing both sides as a double agent, according to declassified U.S. documents.
Mr. Cubela’s turn against Castro was a particularly harsh blow for the Cuban leader. During the revolution, an alliance between Castro’s guerrillas and factions led by Mr. Cubela avoided rivalries among anti-Batista forces and proved pivotal in critical battles against government troops in the final months, said Arturo Lopez-Levy, a research fellow at the University of Denver Korbel School’s Latin America Center.
A history of bizarre American plots in Cuba
Mr. Cubela, who studied medicine in Havana, gained prominence in stunning fashion: taking part in the slaying of a top military intelligence officer, Col. Antonio Blanco Rico, in a Havana nightclub in October 1956.
The next year, members of Mr. Cubela’s group, known as the Student Revolutionary Directorate, or DRE, tried to storm Batista’s presidential palace, but were driven back after clashes left heavy casualties on both sides. DRE co-founder José Echeverría was killed in a simultaneous attack on a radio station in Havana.
Fearing arrest, Mr. Cubela stowed away on a merchant ship bound for Florida. He returned to Cuba by boat in February 1958, later uniting the Directorate units with Castro in a pivotal win over government troops that December. Batista fled Cuba on New Year’s Day 1959.
Mr. Cubela was solidly in Castro’s inner circle after he took power. He proudly displayed a long scar, from right shoulder to biceps, from an injury during fighting. Yet, as Castro consolidated control, Mr. Cubela became increasingly dismayed by his embrace of communism and strongman rule.
The last moments of revolutionary hero Che Guevara
A 1967 Inspector General’s report on plots to assassinate Castro, released to the public in 1998, sketched out Mr. Cubela’s overtures to the CIA and then his deepening involvement in covert planning, given the cryptonym “Amlash.”
A January 1965 CIA memo, released as part of the Inspector General’s report, called Mr. Cubela “a representative of an internal military dissident group, which is plotting to overthrow Castro.”
In July 1962 — with the Kennedy administration still reeling from the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 — Mr. Cubela met with CIA contacts at a Helsinki nightclub. Mr. Cubela agreed to stay in Cuba to “carry on the fight there,” the Inspector General’s report said. His demand in return: to be “given a really large role to play” if Castro was removed. Mr. Cubela received clandestine training at a CIA safe house in France.
In the fall of 1963, Mr. Cubela was in Paris as a new CIA plot was hatched — possibly having Mr. Cubela use a ballpoint pen filled with a toxic alkaloid known as Black Leaf 40 delivered through an ultrafine syringe, the report said. There was an urgency in Washington’s covert teams. Earlier ideas to strike at Castro, including using mobster hit men or poison cigars, fell apart.
Shortly after Mr. Cubela examined the pen on Nov. 22, 1963, they learned that President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. “Cubela was visibly moved,” the report said, “and asked ‘Why do such things happen to good people?’ ” The pen plot was scrapped.
Mr. Cubela wanted weapons, including a sniper rifle with a scope and silencer, the report said. The CIA arranged for Mr. Cubela to meet in Madrid in 1964 with Manuel Artíme, a leading anti-Castro militant based in the United States. Artíme agreed to provide the rifle and a handgun, which Mr. Cubela managed to smuggle back into Cuba in early 1965.
Soon, however, rumors began to circulate in Cuba about brewing conspiracies against Castro. The CIA ended ties with Mr. Cubela for “security reasons,” Brian Latell wrote in his 2012 book, “Castro’s Secrets: The CIA and Cuba’s Intelligence Machine.”
The break raised suspicions that Mr. Cubela could be under Cuban surveillance or working as a double agent, spilling information to people in Castro’s regime to gain favor or try to build his network for a post-Castro leadership.
For years, the CIA had been wary of Mr. Cubela after he refused to take a polygraph test, the Inspector General’s report said. Artíme also was seen as a wild card, the Inspector General’s report said. National security adviser McGeorge Bundy “concurred that Artíme was a firecracker in our midst,” a memo said.
In a tape of Castro remarks played in 1978 before a House committee, the Cuban leader said Mr. Cubela was tried and sentenced “for the plots against our lives,” but declared that he had not known of Mr. Cubela’s CIA backing until the Senate’s investigations.
On Feb. 28, 1966, Mr. Cubela was arrested in Havana. At the same time, Cuban secret police were rounding up others who would join Mr. Cubela at trial, including Ramon Guin Diaz, another former top commander in Castro’s forces.
At the trial, Mr. Cubela portrayed himself as falling into personal turmoil and self-harming indulgence. (A previously classified U.S. document said Mr. Cubela “reportedly likes drinking, loves jokes, and is social, amicable and friendly.”)
“I was carrying around a series of preoccupations and contradictions, the product of long struggle after the triumph of the revolution,” he told the court, saying he led “a disorderly life, a life of parties, cabarets, a completely insane life. I was decomposing and deteriorating.”
Rolando Cubela Secades was born in Cienfuegos, Cuba, on Jan. 19, 1933, and was active in student affairs during his medical studies in Havana. He joined the Student Revolutionary Directorate after Batista took power in a military coup in 1952.
Mr. Cubela was released from prison in August 1979 as part of an agreement with the Carter administration that freed thousands of political detainees in Cuba. Mr. Cubela moved to Madrid, where he worked as a cardiologist and took part in several rallies calling for greater freedoms in Cuba. He moved to Miami after retirement.
His death was announced in a Facebook post by Alfredo Fernández-Gamez, a prominent member of the Cuban American community in South Florida and a friend of Mr. Cubela. Cubacute, a Spanish language news site in Miami, said Mr. Cubela’s sister, Caridad Cubela Secades, told the Spanish news agency EFE that Mr. Cubela died in a hospital in Doral, Fla., of respiratory problems. Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.
The Inspector General’s report said none of Mr. Cubela’s “dealings with the CIA from March 1961 until November 1964 were mentioned in the trial,” with the evidence focused on Mr. Cubela’s meetings with Artíme.
“If the full details of Cubela’s involvement with CIA had come out in court,” the report continued, “Castro might have had little excuse for asking for leniency.” | 2022-10-08T22:37:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rolando Cubela, who plotted with CIA to kill Cuba's Castro, dies at 89 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/08/cubela-cuba-castro-plot-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/08/cubela-cuba-castro-plot-dies/ |
The governor’s administration had been orchestrating the flights for several months
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has been under scrutiny over flights transporting migrants to other states. (Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post)
In the request for bids to round up migrants to transport across the country, the administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) was unequivocal: The winning contractor needed to fly out unauthorized new arrivals found in the state.
The parameters, laid out by the Florida Department of Transportation and disclosed in public records released by the state late Friday, are raising new questions about whether the program violated state protocols when DeSantis officials chartered two planes to fly 48 migrants from San Antonio — far from Florida’s shores — to Massachusetts last month.
The widely criticized political maneuver appeared to operate outside the boundaries of the $12 million program Florida lawmakers authorized in their budget in June to “facilitate the transport of unauthorized aliens from this state.”
Vertol Systems, the Oregon-based charter airline company, flew the group of Venezuelans, some of whom said they were lured onto the flights with promises of work and housing, to Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the Massachusetts coast known as a politically liberal-leaning community.
The flights on Sept. 14 began in San Antonio and first landed in Crestview, Fla., a Panhandle city 36 miles north of Vertol’s Florida headquarters in Destin. After a brief stop, they proceeded to Martha’s Vineyard later that day.
Florida officials have not offered an official explanation for the stop in Crestview, which has raised speculation about whether it was intended to look like the mission had a plausible connection with the state, as the rules of the program had laid out.
The information released Friday does not include the full contract the DeSantis administration awarded to Vertol. But records show that the state paid the company $615,000 for the Texas flights on Sept. 8 and another $950,000 on Sept. 19, reportedly for another flight carrying migrants to President Biden’s home state of Delaware, which was canceled.
DeSantis has said the flights were designed to send a message to Democrats, who he claims have resisted efforts to address the country’s border crisis. “Most of them are intending to come to Florida,” he said during a news conference in Dayton Beach, Fla., two days after the Texas flight. “Our view is you have to deal with it at the source.”
The relocation program was launched in July, when Rebekah Davis, the Florida Department of Transportation’s general counsel, issued a request for quotes from interested transportation companies.
The transportation department sought a company to “implement and manage a program to relocate out of the State of Florida foreign nationals who are not lawfully present in the United States,” according to the request for quotes in the newly released records. The winner would transport by ground or air “Unauthorized Aliens who are found in Florida and have agreed to be relocated” elsewhere in the United States and the District of Columbia.
The plans also required the contractor to work with a multitude of Florida agencies, including the Florida Department of Corrections, the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles and Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
Nowhere in the requests for bids was recruiting migrants from Texas or San Antonio mentioned. Other cities were mentioned as possible destinations.
Vertol’s chief executive, James Montgomerie, gave Davis quotes in an email for possible charter flights on a King Air 350 turboprop from Crestview to Boston (at a cost of $35,000) and Crestview to Los Angeles (at a cost of $60,000) for between four and eight people, an indication that the state was interested in these potential destinations for migrant flights. The subject line in Davis’s email to Montgomerie was “Florida Charter Flights.”
The migrant flights are the subject of a criminal investigation in Texas and a civil suit from several of the asylum seekers who say the DeSantis administration deceived them.
State Sen. Jason Pizzo, a Democrat from South Florida, who has filed a lawsuit as a private citizen seeking injunctive relief, alleges that the program violates state law, in part because the migrants were not being relocated from Florida.
“Oops, the five people that reviewed this missed it — or they will have to claim that the vendor went rogue” by flying the migrants from Texas, Pizzo said in an interview. “It was pretty clear with a plain reading of the law what was supposed to happen.”
When asked for comment on Saturday, the governor’s communications director, Taryn Fenske, did not address the question of whether the DeSantis administration may have violated state guidelines with the Texas flights. “We’re exclusively focused on Hurricane Ian relief and recovery. I’m with Floridians right now,” Fenske said. | 2022-10-08T23:39:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Records from Florida raise new questions about DeSantis’s migrant flights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/08/ron-desantis-migrant-flights-marthas-vineyard/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/08/ron-desantis-migrant-flights-marthas-vineyard/ |
Hospitals to pay nearly 150 patients who say gynecologist abused them
Robert Hadden is released on bail in 2020. (John Minchillo/AP)
Two hospitals affiliated with Columbia University announced Friday that they’d reached a $165 million settlement with 147 patients of a former Manhattan doctor who has been accused of years of sexual abuse and misconduct.
In 2020, former gynecologist Robert Hadden was indicted on federal charges after dozens of women said he sexually abused them between 1993 and 2012. Hadden — who was accused in 2020 of sexual assault by Evelyn Yang, the wife of then-Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang — is awaiting a federal trial, according to a news release from the Columbia University Irvine Medical Center (CUIMC) and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. The hospitals say he has not practiced medicine since 2012, the year in which Yang says she was a patient.
The hospitals’ settlement follows one in December 2021, which involved 79 women who were patients of Hadden, the release said.
“We deeply regret the pain that Robert Hadden’s patients suffered and hope that these resolutions will provide some measure of support for the women he hurt,” CUIMC said in the statement.
CUIMC is one of seven centers housed under New York-Presbyterian, the academic medical system that is also affiliated with Cornell University.
Gymnasts abused by Larry Nassar reach $380 million settlement with Olympic organizations
Before Hadden’s federal indictment, he pleaded guilty in 2016 to a criminal sex act in the third degree and forcible touching, according to the news release. But in a deal with Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., Hadden avoided prison time, instead surrendering his medical license and registering as a sex offender.
An attorney for Hadden did not immediately respond to The Washington Post’s request for comment early Saturday afternoon.
Yang was among the women who testified before a grand jury, but she kept her anonymity in the case for years. She spoke publicly about being a patient of Hadden for the first time in a 2020 interview with CNN.
Yang recounted that she kept it from her husband and most of her family until she saw a headline about Hadden after another woman reported abuse to the police, she said in the interview.
Seeing another woman come forward gave Yang the courage to share her own story publicly, she told The Post on Saturday.
“I thought I could help and reach other women,” she said. “This was back in 2020, and I never imagined it would open the floodgates to hundreds of other women coming forward.”
Evelyn Yang, Andrew Yang’s wife, says she was sexually assaulted by her OB/GYN while pregnant
In 2020, Hadden was charged with six counts of enticing women to engage in illegal sex acts. The federal indictment listed six victims, including one minor, and described their accounts with Hadden while they were his patients. It did not name them.
The victims listed in the indictment reported that during appointments, Hadden conducted abusive vaginal and breast exams when he was alone with them, the document says.
Over the past 10 years, patients of Hadden have been coming forward more and more, said attorney Anthony T. DiPietro, who has represented more than 200 women accusing Hadden of assault, including Yang.
He said that beyond the 226 women involved in the two settlements with Columbia and its affiliated hospitals, he has nearly a dozen more ongoing cases.
“Many of those women don’t even know they were being sexually exploited,” DiPietro said.
Marissa Hoechstetter, another Hadden accuser, said she was the first survivor to go public with her story after speaking with BuzzFeed in 2018. Afterward, she was met with an onslaught of messages from people who had similar experiences.
Hoechstetter, who was not a part of Friday’s settlement, Yang and other Hadden accusers urged New York lawmakers for years to pass the Adult Survivor’s Act.
Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) signed it into law in May.
The legislation allows people older than 18 to sue their alleged abusers during a one-year window from next month through November 2023 regardless of a statute of limitations.
“We’re letting people know they will have options and that they matter,” Hoechstetter told The Post on Saturday. “This is an important step in a many, many, many years-long battle that we’ve been in. But we’re not done yet.”
DiPietro says he wants the hospitals to notify all of Hadden’s former patients about his convictions.
A spokesperson for CUIMC did not immediately respond to The Post’s questions about potential notifications Saturday afternoon.
Although it’s been two years since her CNN interview, Yang told The Post, she’s surprised that some survivors are only learning of Hadden’s history from her story or from other women sharing theirs.
“Why is that I am basically their sole source of notification?” she said.
Meryl Kornfield and Allyson Chiu contributed to this report. | 2022-10-09T00:00:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | N.Y. hospitals to pay $165 million to 147 victims of Robert Hadden - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/08/columbia-university-doctor-sexual-abuse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/08/columbia-university-doctor-sexual-abuse/ |
A fire on the Crimean Bridge over the Kerch Strait on Saturday. (Reuters)
It was a media extravaganza, Putin-style. At the lead of a small truck convoy, Russian President Vladimir Putin drove an orange dump truck flying Russian flags across a portion of the Crimean Bridge in 2018, proudly inaugurating a 12-mile colossus of steel and concrete connecting the Crimean Peninsula he illegally annexed from Ukraine to mainland Russia. At the end of the ride, he was met with cheers and applause.
Early Saturday, a giant explosion sent a fireball rolling across Putin’s crown jewel thanks, it could be said, to Putin’s own hard work in launching an invasion of Ukraine in February. Portions of the bridge, among the longest in Europe, could be seen sinking in the water.
An explosion ripped across the Crimean Bridge on Oct. 8, threatening a vital supply route for Russian forces in southern Ukraine. (Video: The Washington Post)
Ukraine, while not taking credit publicly for the blast, had openly promised to attack the bridge as recently as June, calling it a “number one” target because of its strategic importance. The bridge is the main route for trains and trucks carrying troops and weapons from mainland Russia to Crimea, from where they are funneled into the grinding war against Ukraine.
Few recent gains were as visible as Saturday’s flames and collapsed roadways spreading across Putin’s bridge.
The Kerch bridge became a symbol of Putin’s mythical personal prowess, his ability to deliver on big infrastructure projects, his ambition to restore Russia to its long-lost greatness. “Even the most ambitious plans can be realized when they are implemented by him,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in 2018 of the bridge project.
Putin decided to proceed with the project anyway, and the bridge’s construction soon became emblematic of Moscow’s commitment to the newly annexed Crimea — a patriotic undertaking reminiscent of Soviet-era dams and canals that became the subject of worker-state propaganda.
To build the bridge, Putin tapped his childhood friend and judo partner, Arkady Rotenberg, who had become a billionaire in the 22 years since Putin took power by receiving large-scale state construction contracts and had been the target of international sanctions. Construction of the 12-mile rail and passenger bridge lasted three years and cost some $4 billion.
Missy Ryan, Natalia Abbakumova and Kostiantyn Khudov contributed to this report. | 2022-10-09T00:13:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bridge uniting Crimea and Russia holds special significance for Putin - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/08/kerch-bridge-crimea-symbolism-putin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/08/kerch-bridge-crimea-symbolism-putin/ |
Anonymous artist dyes Tehran fountains blood-red during protests
Fountains at culturally significant sites around the Iranian capital were transformed into protest art on Friday
A photo circulating on Twitter shows a fountain with water dyed red in Park Daneshjoo (Student Park) in Tehran. (User-generated content/AFP/Getty Images)
As Iranian protests sparked by the death of a woman in police custody continued, several Tehran fountains on Friday appeared as if filled with blood, according to photos and a video — verified by Storyful — that were shared widely on social media. The Persian-language Twitter account 1500tasvir, which has been monitoring the state crackdown that has killed dozens, credited the red liquid in the fountains’ basins to an anonymous artist/activist, referring to it as a protest artwork whose title roughly translates to “Tehran sinking in blood.”
Tactics of repression: How Iran is trying to sop Mahsa Amini protests
The affected fountains are in culturally significant locations, including one in Daneshjoo Park, near the City Theater, which has been the subject of government censorship, and another in front of the Iranian Artists Forum, an interdisciplinary arts space founded during the reform-oriented presidency of Mohammad Khatami.
According to the Voice of America, citing the BBC’s Persian service, the fountains have since been drained. But for a moment, the ephemeral work served as a visceral reminder of the sacrifices made in the name of women’s rights.
Iran’s weeks-long protests began in mid-September, after Mahsa Amini, 22, was arrested by the “morality police” for allegedly wearing a hijab incorrectly, and died in custody. The death has fueled sprawling protests. Schoolgirls have removed their head coverings and raised middle fingers. Women have burned their hijabs and cut their hair. People have flooded the streets chanting, “Women, life, freedom” and “Death to dictator,” a reference to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Pamela Karimi — an art historian at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth who recently published a book about Iranian contemporary art called “Alternative Iran” — said that artists are at the center of this protest movement. “Unfortunately, in the past 40 years, they haven’t been able to create political groups that can stand up to the government,” she said, pointing to Iran’s failed progressive movement. “Because of that, art has become a tool in the hands of the people to communicate their unhappiness with the system.”
But the art that has emerged during the protests — illustrations depicting women cutting their hair, for instance — stands out for its directness, Karimi said.
In a country where the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance must approve all art, Karimi says that artists typically circumvent rules by seeking alternative spaces for art-making — dilapidated factories, empty warehouses — and by being coy about their messaging.
“Iranian art is very complicated. You cannot just describe it in a black-and-white, easy way,” Karimi said. “Sometimes when you talk to Iranian artists, they don’t even directly talk to you about their political position. You have to read between the lines.”
Dyeing water blood-red might seem a little on the nose by comparison, but that’s the point. “Now what we are seeing on the internet these days is a surge of images that are very bold, very revolutionary in character and are not shy about what they want to say. So this kind of art is unique to this movement,” Karimi said.
Dyeing fountains isn’t a new idea. Animal-rights protesters have spilled fake blood in fountains at London’s Trafalgar Square to call attention to factory farming. And in 2017, a man turned the Trevi Fountain red to protest corruption in Rome.
In Iran, though, such practices have a special significance as a way of honoring the dead. Karimi, who spent part of her childhood in Tehran, remembers visiting the city of Mashhad after the Iranian Revolution and seeing fountains dyed red in remembrance of martyrs. Tehran’s Behesth-e Zahra cemetery once had a pond with a fountain that flowed red — known as the Pond of Blood — to memorialize those who died in the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.
With this most recent iteration, Karimi says the artist’s choice to stay away from the spotlight adds to the work and reflects the strength of the protest movement in Iran. “The beauty of it is that the artist himself or herself is anonymous. Art is not just something that you use in order to promote your own profile,” she said. Instead, it gets at something more selfless: “The anonymity shows that art is now pure activism. ” | 2022-10-09T01:10:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Anonymous artist dyes Tehran fountains blood -red during protests - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/08/tehran-fountains-dyed-red/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/08/tehran-fountains-dyed-red/ |
Padres pound Max Scherzer and push Mets to the brink of elimination
Max Scherzer surrendered four homers and seven runs in less than five innings in a disastrous Game 1 start against the Padres on Friday night at Citi Field.
NEW YORK — Max Scherzer has given up the ball and walked from the pitcher’s mound to the dugout 445 times in his career. Twelve times, he has walked off the mound without giving up the ball at all. He has ambled off the field to standing ovations after no-hitters and 20-strikeout showings. He has been cheered politely after so many 10-strikeout games that he made them seem routine.
But never, in 456 starts in his Hall of Fame career before Friday, in eight postseasons, has Scherzer made that walk harried by boos from a crowd of 40,000-plus like he did in the fifth inning of the New York Mets’ 7-1 loss in Game 1 of their first-round series against the San Diego Padres at Citi Field on Friday night.
Because never, in 26 postseason outings and countless crucial regular season efforts, has a team rendered Scherzer as unintimidating as the Padres did, with four homers and seven earned runs in 4⅔ innings against him.
And never had a manager hurried to the mound more decisively than Buck Showalter did when the fourth homer flew off the bat of Manny Machado and into the left field seats, leaving Scherzer to tug on the brim of his hat and turn awkwardly back to the pitching rubber, his face emotionless, as if he didn’t recognize the feeling.
“Of course I’m disappointed, but I don’t know what else …” Scherzer said, shoulders hunched, eyes straight ahead, unblinking, stunned. “Baseball can take you to the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. And this is one of the lowest of lows.”
If Scherzer was stunned, Showalter was careful to dispute the idea that anyone should be surprised.
“That’s your word, stunning. It’s not,” said Showalter, who is dutiful and dogged in deflecting the harshest attention from his players. “We know how hard it is to do what Max does.”
But for Scherzer, who has allowed four homers in a game just three times in his career, who has allowed seven earned runs just a dozen times, and who has not come close to doing either in a game this important, Friday night’s showing qualified as unprecedented.
That showing, combined with the Mets’ complete inability to solve Yu Darvish, pushed the Mets to the brink of elimination. His struggles also pushed the Mets’ decision-making into a spotlight everyone around the organization probably hoped they could avoid.
Jacob deGrom, perhaps the most dominant pitcher of his era when healthy, is also on their roster. Instead of pitching him in Game 1 of this series, on full rest, his schedule set with plenty of notice, they opted to hold deGrom in what appears in hindsight like an unnecessary limbo: If they won Game 1, the Mets would throw Chris Bassitt in Game 2, hoping to avoid using deGrom until a division series opener. If they didn’t, they would put their season on deGrom’s fragile shoulders with relatively short notice.
DeGrom, who finished the season with four subpar starts and left the last of them with a blister, said he was able to throw his normal side sessions on schedule — that the whole thing “worked out.” Plus, if there was any silver lining to Scherzer’s struggles, it was that they let deGrom know early Friday that he would be needed in Game 2.
“The main preparation is going to be tomorrow when I get here. Going over scouting reports,” deGrom said. “Throughout that game, you’re watching that game and seeing what they’re hitting and what they’re not, picking up little things here and there, whether it was tomorrow or Sunday that I was going to throw.”
Perhaps deGrom will dominate and the Mets will win the series, the point moot in hindsight. But even if that happens, even if it all works out, the Mets will wonder exactly what went wrong with Scherzer. Because even Scherzer, keenly aware of his body and his mechanics, could not guarantee he could fix it.
From August: Padres GM A.J. Preller, master of the big swing, just took his biggest swing yet
Scherzer knew what went wrong Friday night. He knew the fastball he threw to his former Washington Nationals teammate Josh Bell leaked up and out to the lefty instead of staying up and in, allowing Bell to hit a two-run homer in his first postseason at-bat.
He knew the fastball he threw to struggling Trent Grisham an inning later was flat and ran out over the plate, right where Grisham — who hit .107 in September — could hit it. He knew the fastballs he threw to Jurickson Profar and Manny Machado in the fifth ended up in the seats because they didn’t end up where he wanted them.
“I felt like my fastball was running on me,” Scherzer said. He explained that fastballs to his glove side — the side, importantly, on which he strained an oblique that forced him to the injured list twice this season — were running instead of riding. Fastballs he tried to throw into lefties, like that pitch to Bell, leaked out over the plate.
He said he didn’t think his oblique was the problem, but wouldn’t say for sure. He said he watched the film and watched his trademark riding fastball traveling flat, even sinking now and then.
“Don’t know why that is," he said, in another nearly unprecedented moment of his long career. When it comes to his body, his mechanics, and his stuff, Scherzer always has answers.
“I’m like you, you see that, you go 'what if there’s something going on there?’ But if you’ve been around Max as much as we have, you know he doesn’t chase anything other than the mirror,” said Showalter, who meant that Scherzer looks at himself, rather than hunting for excuses, at times like these. "We’ll look at it though. Obviously when you see a break from what your expectations are, you do look at things like that.”
Scherzer said Friday would be a late night for him. He seemed to think he could figure this out, make the kind of adjustment he has made so many times before in a career defined by his ability to stave off long stretches of inefficacy. But he admitted he thought he had made the right adjustment after allowing three home runs in his final start of the regular season. This, whatever this is, is something even Scherzer has never seen before. | 2022-10-09T02:02:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Max Scherzer falters in Mets-Padres Game 1 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/max-scherzer-mets-padres-game-1/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/07/max-scherzer-mets-padres-game-1/ |
Commanders running back Brian Robinson Jr. is set to make his NFL debut on Sunday. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Washington Commanders rookie running back Brian Robinson Jr. is set to complete a remarkable recovery and make his NFL debut Sunday against the Tennessee Titans, 42 days after he was shot twice while walking out of a storefront in Northeast Washington in an attempted robbery. The Commanders activated him from the non-football injury list Saturday morning, the team announced.
The move seemed likely all week as Robinson, Coach Ron Rivera and others spoke optimistically about his chances to return. It’s unclear how much Robinson will play Sunday, or whether he will have a snap limit, but if the game is as run-heavy and physical as expected, Robinson’s hammering, between-the-tackles style could help the offense.
On Monday, when Washington designated Robinson to return to practice, Rivera said he thought Robinson’s approach could complement running backs Antonio Gibson and J.D. McKissic. Gibson has been the primary back over the past two seasons, and McKissic has received most of his snaps (and receiving targets) on third down.
“[We’ve] got a good group of backs that rotate through, and you try to find the matchups that you can exploit,” Rivera said.
Robinson returned to practice Wednesday. It was the first time he’d been able to participate fully since he was shot in the vicinity of his knee on the evening of Aug. 28.
After practice, in a news conference, he remembered lying in a hospital bed just five weeks earlier and called it “one of the lowest points of my life.”
“I never thought I’d be in a situation where I had to question or be questioned if I would be able to return back to playing football,” he said, adding, “It was just a beautiful day for me, honestly.”
Rivera said Robinson was “a little sore” after that first practice but that he “really responded very nicely” Thursday.
“This morning, he was there and he was in good shape,” Rivera said Friday. “So we’re pretty fired up.” | 2022-10-09T02:02:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brian Robinson Jr. set to return for Commanders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/brian-robinson-commanders-return/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/brian-robinson-commanders-return/ |
Christian Pulisic scored his first goal of the Premier League season against Wolves on Saturday. (David Cliff/AP)
Pulisic’s goal came as he continues to fight for minutes under new coach Graham Potter, who has largely excluded the U.S. men’s national team star from his early-season lineups as the World Cup approaches next month. | 2022-10-09T02:03:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Christian Pulisic scores goal in rare start for Chelsea - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/christian-pulisic-goal-chelsea/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/christian-pulisic-goal-chelsea/ |
Paul Chryst, fired by Wisconsin midway through this season, now gets paid handsomely not to coach. (John Fisher/Getty Images)
If Nebraska fans can’t bear the notion of Frost coaching against Oklahoma and Indiana, Athletic Director Trev Alberts can pull the trigger, and if it costs the school an extra $7.5 million … well, in pre-pandemic times the Cornhuskers athletic department raked in $97.5 million in revenue, according to the Lincoln Journal-Star. And that’s before the seven-year, $7 billion media rights deal between the Big Ten and Fox was forged. What’s $7.5 million among friends?
It all leads to some comical unemployment line jokes. On Nov. 27, 2021, Ed Orgeron coached his last game at LSU, which let him go. In December 2021, LSU paid Orgeron $5.68 million. In January 2022, the school paid him $667,000. In June of this year, it paid him $750,000. In December, the check will be for $1 million.
Fla. residents treated at field hospital after Hurricane Ian | 2022-10-09T02:03:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The best gig in college football might just be getting fired - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/college-football-firings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/college-football-firings/ |
Tennessee's offense hasn't been challenged much this season, but that is likely to change against LSU. (Wade Payne/AP)
The past three Tennessee-LSU games at Tiger Stadium have been decided on the game’s final play: Stevan Ridley’s one-yard touchdown run with no time left gave LSU a 16-14 win in 2010; Gerald Riggs scored from one yard out to give the Volunteers a 30-27 overtime win in 2005; and Rohan Davey’s 25-yard touchdown pass to Robert Royal and ensuing defensive stop in overtime propelled the Tigers to a 38-31 win in 2000, a game in which Tennessee blocked LSU’s game-winning field goal attempt at the end of regulation. The Vols enter with the nation’s top offense in terms of yards per game (559.3) and second-ranked scoring offense (48.5 points per game), but Tennessee’s four wins have come against teams that rank 105th (Ball State), 76th (Pittsburgh), 123rd (Akron) and 71st (Florida) in defensive SP+, a measure of efficiency. LSU’s defense ranks 13th in that department and has allowed more than 17 points just once this season, against Florida State in the opener. … Before the start of the season, if you had told me that ESPN’s “College GameDay” would be in Lawrence, Kan., for TCU-Kansas and not in Dallas for Texas-Oklahoma, I would have laughed in your face. But here we are, with the game between the Horned Frogs and the shockingly competent Jayhawks trumping the Red River Rivalry, in which neither the Longhorns nor Sooners are ranked for the first time since 1998. TCU and Kansas feature strong offenses, but the Jayhawks’ defense might struggle to keep up with the Horned Frogs, who dropped 55 points on Oklahoma last weekend.
Wait, is the Pac-12 good again? After getting shut out of the College Football Playoff for five straight seasons, the most bedraggled Power Five conference has four teams in the top 18 of the Associated Press rankings, and two of them — Utah and UCLA — meet Saturday at the Rose Bowl. The Utes have allowed only 10.8 points per game in the four games that followed their season-opening loss at Florida, but three of those games were against plainly bad teams (Southern Utah, San Diego State and Arizona State), and the fourth was last weekend against an Oregon State team that lost its starting quarterback to injury in the first quarter. Bruins quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson has thrown for 1,981 yards with 18 touchdowns and four interceptions over the past eight games dating from last season, all of them UCLA wins, and he’s fourth nationally in completion percentage (74.3) and 12th in passing efficiency (171.5) this season. …
Texas A&M-Alabama sure looked good to the CBS schedulers when they chose it as one of the network’s prime-time SEC games before the season and not only because of the offseason beef between Jimbo Fisher and Nick Saban. The Aggies were the No. 6 team in the AP preseason poll, and the Crimson Tide was in its usual spot atop the rankings, so it was an obvious choice. But things soured quickly for Texas A&M, whose offense has been stuck in neutral all season and whose defense — which had been keeping the Aggies from complete calamity — suddenly looks leaky after giving up 42 points and nearly seven yards per play in a loss to Mississippi State last weekend. The Crimson Tide also has had its share of shaky play, nearly losing to Texas last month and letting Arkansas back into the game in the third quarter last weekend before asserting itself late in a 49-26 win. With defending Heisman Trophy winner Bryce Young knocked out because of injury, Alabama running back Jahmyr Gibbs had fourth-quarter touchdown runs of 72 and 76 yards against the Razorbacks and finished with 206 rushing yards on the day, and the Aggies’ rushing defense is allowing 4.4 yards per rush (97th in the nation). | 2022-10-09T02:03:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | College football TV schedule for Week 6 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/college-football-tv-schedule/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/college-football-tv-schedule/ |
UCLA quarterback Dorian Thompson-Robinson (1) and wide receiver Logan Loya (17) had plenty to celebrate in a win over Utah. (Ashley Landis/AP)
Tennessee (winner)
Texas (winner)
Oklahoma (loser)
Georgia (winner)
TCU (winner)
C.J. Stroud (winner)
Washington (loser)
Jim Leonhard (winner)
Israel Abanikanda (winner)
Virginia (loser)
Things are starting to get interesting in Pasadena, where the No. 18 Bruins (6-0, 3-0 Pac-12) have exchanged their collection of September tomato cans for more high-profile opportunities — and made the most of them.
First came the Friday-night defeat of Washington last week. Now, No. 11 Utah — a team that’s had UCLA’s number throughout the Chip Kelly era — came to the Rose Bowl and departed with a 42-32 defeat Saturday.
It’s a score that leads to obvious — and correct — conclusions. The Bruins simply had more answers on offense, whether it was Dorian Thompson-Robinson (299 yards, four touchdowns) throwing or Zach Charbonnet (198 yards, one touchdown) running.
Utah couldn’t quite keep up, with Thompson-Robinson’s 70-yard scoring toss to Logan Loya offering a response 22 seconds after the Utes closed within 28-25 early in the fourth quarter.
The Bruins get their open date, then a trip to Oregon. If they can win that game Oct. 22, Southern Cal-UCLA on Nov. 19 will be the game of the year in the Pac-12.
There are all sorts of steps that come with building and establishing a credible top-20 program.
The Volunteers took one of them last month when they beat Florida, a rival that has created great consternation in Knoxville over the decades. It was an obvious one to celebrate.
Saturday’s box-checking exercise was more mundane, but still important. No. 8 Tennessee, unbeaten and with Alabama coming to town next week, went to No. 25 LSU and thrashed the Tigers, 40-13.
It wasn’t that Tennessee (5-0, 2-0 SEC) scored on its first four possessions and rolled up more than 500 yards (though it did). And it wasn’t that the Tigers (4-2, 2-1) never established a semblance of a running game (though they didn’t).
It’s that the Vols took the lead in the first two minutes, were never seriously threatened and basically turned the entire fourth quarter into garbage time. In a spot against a decent-but-not-great team on the road, it would have been easy and even somewhat understandable if Tennessee had to slog a little. That it didn’t bodes well for the course of its season and its program.
The Longhorns’ 49-0 beatdown of Oklahoma in the Red River Whatchamacallit said a lot more about the state of the Sooners (and a lot more will be discussed about them below) than of Steve Sarkisian’s team.
Still, this was one for the Texas faithful to savor. It ended a four-game skid in the series. Quarterback Quinn Ewers returned from injury to throw for 289 yards and four touchdowns. And the Longhorns (4-2, 2-1 Big 12) dealt Oklahoma its most lopsided shutout loss.
And perhaps best of all, it wasn’t the Longhorns who were being derided as a tarnished power — unlike so many times over a tumultuous decade-plus.
Texas doesn’t suddenly become a national title contender because it nearly won by half-a-hundred against the worst iteration of its biggest rival in nearly a quarter-century. But its fans can gloat for the next year, and they’re unlikely to be quiet about it.
Just like last week, it was over shortly after it started for the Sooners (3-3, 0-3 Big 12), who have dropped three in a row for the first time since 1998. Oklahoma’s 49-0 loss to Texas was a display of ineptitude made worse because it wasn’t much worse than what the Sooners managed while getting crushed 55-24 at TCU to open the month.
In the first half of its last two games, Oklahoma has allowed a combined 69 points and 833 total yards. As dicey as the quarterback situation is for the Sooners, especially without the injured Dillon Gabriel, their defense is getting worn out before it gets worn out.
Just halfway into his first year as a head coach, Brent Venables might already be at something of a crossroads. The issue isn’t wins, it’s competitiveness. It’s been a long time since that’s been a question at Oklahoma.
It was quite a bit easier for the No. 2 Bulldogs to tame these Tigers than the ones they saw last week. After scrambling to rally past Missouri last week, Georgia cashed in a couple short touchdown drives in the second quarter and pulverized Auburn on the ground throughout the second half of a 42-10 rout.
Caveat No. 1: Georgia’s defense, per usual, deserves plenty of credit. Auburn did get within 14-3 early in the third quarter, but that was after it ran three plays in Bulldog territory in the first half.
Caveat No. 2: Although it hasn’t done anything truly abysmal, Auburn (with losses to Penn State, LSU and Georgia and an overtime escape against Missouri) isn’t remotely special this season.
Those points in mind, Georgia (6-0, 3-0 SEC) responded like it should have after looking vulnerable last week.
The No. 17 Horned Frogs took the matchup of surprise Big 12 unbeatens, edging No. 19 Kansas, 38-31. And in thoroughly surprising fashion, the teams played two entirely different games.
The first half was a relative snoozer, with TCU up 10-3 at the break. Then the teams each managed to cram three touchdowns, a punt and a turnover into the third quarter before swapping scores in the final five minutes of the game.
Quentin Johnston’s 24-yard touchdown catch from Max Duggan with 1:36 to go was the difference for the Horned Frogs (5-0, 2-0), who look like a credible contender to push for a spot in the unpredictable Big 12’s title game — if not more.
Okay, so maybe Stroud didn’t have his best showing a week ago when the No. 3 Buckeyes pummeled Rutgers. It would seem, unsurprisingly based on the last two seasons, it was a blip.
The Ohio State quarterback picked apart Michigan State for 361 yards, six touchdowns and an interception in a 49-20 rout in East Lansing. He found Marvin Harrison Jr. three times for touchdowns as the Buckeyes (6-0, 3-0 Big Ten) aced their first road test and roll into their open date halfway to a perfect regular season.
However conference realignment out West shakes out, maybe the No. 21 Huskies just need to find a way to get away from Arizona State. Or, more specifically, making trips to play football at Arizona State.
Washington has dropped eight in a row in Tempe after stumbling, 45-38, as the Sun Devils earned their first victory in three tries under interim coach Shaun Aguano. The Huskies’ last victory at Arizona State came in 2001.
It’s also becoming clear one of the biggest overreactions of nonconference play was to give Washington (4-2, 1-2 Pac-12) a lot of credit for ambushing Michigan State on Sept. 17.
The Spartans, as the three weeks since against Minnesota, Maryland and Ohio State have amply illustrated, are not very good. And Washington, while it’s better off than a year ago, is probably going to settle in as a midpack Pac-12 team after its back-to-back losses to UCLA and Arizona State — especially since it doesn’t have to deal with Southern California or Utah at all.
If the next two months are going to be Leonhard’s audition for Wisconsin’s full-time head coaching job, his first impression as the Badgers’ interim coach couldn’t have gone much better.
Less than a week after the ouster of coach Paul Chryst and his 67-26 record over eight seasons, Leonhard led Wisconsin (3-3, 1-2 Big Ten) to a 42-7 thumping of woeful Northwestern as quarterback Graham Mertz threw for 299 yards and five touchdowns.
In fairness to Chryst, who departed after a 34-10 loss at home to Illinois and former Badgers coach Bret Bielema, Wisconsin probably would have bounced back against the Wildcats (1-5, 1-2) regardless. But there’s little doubt things look rosier (if not Rose Bowl-worthy) after a cathartic drubbing in Evanston.
The Pittsburgh junior left last week’s loss to Georgia Tech with an injury. He seemed just fine Saturday.
Abanikanda rushed for a school-record 320 yards and six touchdowns as the Panthers trampled Virginia Tech, 45-29. The record was previously held by Tony Dorsett, who had 303 yards against Notre Dame in 1975.
It didn’t completely rewrite the ACC record books, but Abanikanda still did some impressive things on that front. It was the fourth-largest rushing output in league history, and the most since Boston College’s Andre Williams set the conference mark with 339 yards against N.C. State in 2013.
The six touchdowns tied an ACC record set by North Carolina’s Kelvin Bryant against East Carolina in 1981.
While Venables is having his own issues, things are every bit as disconcerting for the other former Clemson coordinator who moved into a big office after last season.
Tony Elliott’s first team at Virginia hit the midpoint of the season at 2-4 thanks to a 34-17 loss at home to a Louisville bunch playing without injured quarterback Malik Cunningham and coming off a frustrating loss to Boston College.
The Cavaliers have myriad problems, and few obvious answers for them. Basketball season can’t arrive soon enough in Charlottesville. | 2022-10-09T02:03:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | College football winners and losers for Week 6 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/college-football-winners-losers-week-6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/college-football-winners-losers-week-6/ |
Mark Maske
Daniel Snyder, left, and Bruce Allen on the sideline before a game at FedEx Field. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Daniel Snyder’s embrace of Bruce Allen was total in December 2009. In announcing Allen’s hiring as general manager of Washington’s NFL franchise, Snyder hailed him as a seasoned front-office executive and a “proven winner.”
After a decade of declining attendance and only three winning seasons, Snyder’s rejection of Allen was similarly total. He fired Allen as team president in December 2019.
But Snyder didn’t stop there. Three months later, he tried to cut Allen’s guaranteed severance pay in half. More than a year later, when Snyder’s ownership appeared threatened by an NFL-sponsored investigation into reports of widespread workplace sexual harassment, Snyder and his attorneys sought evidence that would portray Allen as the architect of the toxic behavior, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform concluded in a report in June that characterized the actions as an “effort to scapegoat his former team president.”
And this week, with support among fellow NFL team owners appearing to shift away from him, Snyder publicly broadcast those allegations in a nine-page letter from his lawyers — and signed by former Republican congressman Tom Davis from Virginia — to the chairwoman of the committee that is nearing completion of its year-long investigation into the team.
In his letter to Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), Davis denied the committee’s conclusion that Snyder had conducted a “shadow investigation” to shift blame for the team’s workplace issues to Allen, calling the characterization a “false narrative.” But he also acknowledged the efforts “of Mr. Snyder and the Team to uncover evidence of unlawful conduct directed against him and his family” as “proper and separate from the NFL’s workplace investigation.” Davis further wrote that the NFL “was contemporaneously aware of those efforts.”
Moreover, Davis wrote, the team’s findings concluded that the ringleader of the bad behavior in the team’s workplace was Allen.
“The fraternity-house culture that Mr. Allen instilled in the Commanders organization is the principal reason that the Commanders came under investigation in the first place,” Davis wrote, noting that the team’s “single most significant step” in remedying its toxic workplace “was to rid itself of Mr. Allen.”
Allen declined to comment on the letter this past week.
Bruce Allen testifies for 10 hours in congressional Washington NFL probe
Central to Snyder’s effort to blame Allen was a batch of misogynist and derogatory emails found in Allen’s dormant team email account. The emails have nothing to do with Snyder. But that was the point, Snyder’s lawyers argued in closed-door presentations to both attorney Beth Wilkinson, the NFL’s lead investigator, and league officials in 2021: The mere existence of the crude and offensive emails in Allen’s inbox was proof that Allen, not Snyder, was the bad actor.
But the committee found that it was Snyder’s lawyers who identified and shared the offensive emails from among 400,000 in Allen’s account with Wilkinson, highlighting specific inappropriate language within them as part of the effort to cast Allen as responsible for the team’s toxic workplace.
Davis did much the same, acknowledging in his letter that his law firm provided the committee “with a small sample of [Allen’s] workplace communications” on the eve of Allen’s approximately 10-hour remote deposition Sept. 6.
“That the Committee would nevertheless choose to sponsor such a witness, in full awareness of the racist, misogynistic, and homophobic beliefs he tolerated and espoused in his email conversations with his friends, is truly astounding,” Davis wrote.
The surfacing of the emails for the NFL and the committee was part of a multipronged effort aimed at Allen. In spring 2021, Snyder also sent private investigators to the homes of at least a half-dozen former team cheerleaders to solicit information about Allen and sexual misconduct.
“He told me that he was here on behalf of the Washington Redskins to ask me questions about Bruce Allen,” former cheerleading captain Abigail Dymond Welch testified, recounting a private investigator’s visit to her Texas home in May 2021. “He said he was working on behalf of the law firm Reed Smith out of New York. … He then said, ‘This is regarding interactions with Bruce Allen and the sexual misconduct investigation with the Washington Redskins.’ ”
Snyder also used the federal court in what the committee characterized as an abuse of subpoena power to get access to Allen’s phone records, texts, emails and other private communications.
Finally, Snyder publicly aired his campaign to disparage Allen via Wednesday’s letter to the committee, which a lawyer for Snyder amplified in several broadcast interviews in the ensuing days.
Truth and consequences
While Allen had no shortage of detractors among fans during his tenure in Washington, he hasn’t been associated with reports of sexual harassment in the workplace.
Allen was never mentioned by any of the dozens of female former team employees who told The Washington Post that they experienced sexual harassment on the job.
Attorney Lisa Banks, who represents more than 40 former team employees, said that none of her clients mentioned Allen in discussing the sexual harassment and abusive behavior they experienced at work.
“He was not a factor in any of the stories of harassment and abuse I heard from 40-plus clients,” Banks said. “None of my clients reported they had a problem with Bruce Allen. Not one.”
Banks reiterated that in a letter Friday to Davis.
“[T]he repeated attempts by your client to blame former team president Bruce Allen for the toxic workplace culture will certainly fail,” she wrote. “While we have no knowledge whether Mr. Allen was a party to offensive emails, as your letter states, we do know that none of our clients has alleged that Mr. Allen played any role in the harassment or abuse they suffered or witnessed. In fact, most have never even met Mr. Allen.”
Snyder’s targeting of Allen also is notable because it seeks to tarnish a family name that’s entwined with the franchise’s history. Allen’s father, the late George Allen, led Washington to a Super Bowl appearance and seven consecutive winning seasons in the 1970s and is enshrined in the team’s Ring of Fame as well as the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Davis’s letter and the committee’s findings also provide new context for the leaks of emails involving Allen that led to Jon Gruden’s resignation as coach of the Las Vegas Raiders last October.
While the committee found team lawyers flagged the emails for Wilkinson and Davis acknowledged sharing some with the committee before Allen’s deposition, it’s unclear who shared the emails with the Wall Street Journal and New York Times in October 2021.
Tanya Snyder told fellow NFL owners during a league meeting that month in New York that the leaks did not originate with her or her husband, according to multiple people familiar with the situation. One person familiar with the NFL’s view said then that some league officials believed the leaks had originated with Daniel Snyder through representatives acting on his behalf.
Regardless of who was responsible, the leaks had significant consequences.
Gruden resigned Oct. 11, 2021, as coach of the Raiders within hours of a New York Times report detailing emails he sent over a seven-year span ending in early 2018 to Allen and others that contained homophobic, misogynist and sexist insults, as well as a photo of topless cheerleaders.
The leaks also reignited the controversy over the team’s workplace, three months after the NFL largely had put the matter to rest by fining the team $10 million and announcing that Tanya, the franchise’s co-CEO, would be in charge of the team’s day-to-day operations for an unspecified period.
On Oct. 21, Maloney launched the ongoing probe, citing “serious concerns” about the team’s apparent abusive workplace and the NFL’s lack of transparency in refusing to release Wilkinson’s report.
In November, Gruden filed a lawsuit accusing the NFL and Commissioner Roger Goodell of using the leaked emails to “publicly sabotage Gruden’s career” and pressure him into resigning via “a Soviet-style character assassination.”
The NFL repeatedly has denied leaking the emails, writing in a legal filing that requested dismissal of Gruden’s lawsuit in January, “To be sure, the NFL and the Commissioner did not leak Gruden’s emails.”
Disintegrating partnership
For a decade, Snyder and Allen were virtually inseparable, particularly when team business was at hand.
At training camp each summer and at practices throughout the season, they stood shoulder-to-shoulder surveying players on the field. They attended team-related social functions and political gatherings together, with Allen glad-handing with the political wiles of his elder brother, George, a former Virginia governor and U.S. senator. It was much the same at NFL meetings, where Allen was on a first-name basis with virtually every league executive, team owner, general manager, coach and agent.
“Bruce was a vital connection in terms of knowing people in Richmond and being accessible to us,” said Virginia state Sen. Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax City). “Bruce had a lot of connections, either through his brother or personality-wise.”
Even after many fans had soured on Allen — sick of the team’s losing and weary of his ill-advised free agent signings and tone-deaf public remarks, such as the assurance amid a playoff drought that the team was “winning off the field” — he served a useful purpose for Snyder by absorbing hostility that otherwise might have been directed at the owner.
But after a 3-13 season during which Snyder fired Allen’s handpicked coach, Jay Gruden, following an 0-5 start, Snyder fired Allen on Dec. 30, 2019.
Three months later, Snyder notified Allen via the team’s lawyer that he was reducing his guaranteed severance pay 50 percent because of financial conditions resulting from the coronavirus pandemic. That letter, dated April 1, 2020, was attached to a May 2021 federal court filing in Arizona in which Allen argued against Snyder’s effort to gain access to his private communication.
“Mr. Snyder’s attempt to withhold my compensation forced me to retain legal counsel and initiate a proceeding through the NFL, in which I prevailed,” Allen stated in the court filing.
As scrutiny over leaked emails rises, Tanya Snyder tells owners the WFT was not the source
Snyder’s attempt to cast Allen as responsible for the team’s toxic workplace does not account for allegations of bad behavior said to have taken place before Allen was hired in December 2009. Among them: The $1.6 million settlement with a female former employee who alleged that Snyder sexually assaulted her in the private compartment of his corporate jet in April 2009 and the creation of a lewd video from outtakes of a 2008 cheerleader swimsuit-calendar shoot that showed exposed nipples and pubic areas, which a team executive reportedly directed be made for Snyder. A similar video was made from outtakes of a 2010 swimsuit shoot.
Snyder has denied the former employee’s 2009 sexual assault claim, and a team investigation concluded it was an extortion attempt. Snyder also said he did not request the creation of the lewd videos or have any knowledge of them. In 2021, the team reached confidential financial settlements with many, if not all, of the 30 cheerleaders whose outtakes were included.
Welch, a Washington cheerleader from 2005 to 2012 and a former squad captain, was among them.
In testimony for the congressional committee, Welch recounted a private investigator’s unannounced visit to her home in May 2021 to solicit disparaging information about Allen.
She had recently moved to Texas with her husband and their three young children, she said, when a neighbor texted while they were vacationing to tell her that a man had parked his car in front of her house for several hours and was “stalking or spying.” The neighbor explained the man finally knocked on her own door, identified himself as a private investigator and asked whether she knew Welch.
Daniel Snyder conducted ‘shadow investigation’ of accusers, panel finds
The man came back after Welch and her family returned from vacation, she said. He knocked on her door, claimed he was a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent and presented a business card that she described as looking “fake.”
Welch told the committee that “perhaps five other” cheerleaders also had been visited at their homes by private investigators, who were “asking questions about Bruce Allen and the sexual misconduct investigation.” The visits, which Welch said she learned about as part of a chat group with former cheerleaders, occurred several months after the NFL told Snyder to “back off” his use of private investigators to query former team employees.
The committee concluded that Snyder scored at least a partial victory in persuading the NFL to shift its investigation to Allen. As Maloney noted, the NFL launched a “targeted review” of Allen’s emails that included “troubling exchanges” between Allen, Jon Gruden and Jeff Pash, the NFL’s general counsel.
Whether those efforts continue to resonate with the NFL — or Snyder’s fellow team owners — remains to be seen.
Multiple owners said recently that they believe serious consideration may be given to ousting Snyder from the league’s ownership ranks, either by convincing him to sell his franchise or by voting to remove him. One owner said, “He needs to sell.”
Eight days after The Post reported those comments, Snyder made an on-field appearance with Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones before last Sunday’s game between the two teams in Arlington, Tex. The Commanders posted a photo of the scene to social media and called Snyder and Jones “Friends and rivals for 24 years.”
For more than a decade, Snyder leaned on Allen to help him through such perilous times. Now he’s asserting that once-trusted lieutenant is to blame for the latest round of scrutiny. | 2022-10-09T02:03:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Daniel Snyder's effort to shift blame to Bruce Allen ramps up - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/dan-snyder-bruce-allen-washington-nfl-investigation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/dan-snyder-bruce-allen-washington-nfl-investigation/ |
Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green, seen posing for a photograph during media day Sept. 25, apologized Saturday for punching teammate Jordan Poole. (Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP)
Draymond Green apologized and said he would remain away from the Golden State Warriors for a “few days” after video of the all-star forward punching teammate Jordan Poole during practice became public Friday.
The Warriors have yet to publicly punish Green, by suspension or fine, for his role in the altercation, which occurred Wednesday, but Green said he would spend an indefinite amount of time away to give his teammates a chance to “heal” and give himself an opportunity to refocus.
“I failed as a leader,” Green said at a news conference Saturday, calling the punch a “huge mistake” while apologizing to the Warriors organization, his teammates and Poole’s family. “I failed as a man.”
Warriors Coach Steve Kerr said Saturday that Green’s separation from the team was a “mutual decision” between the organization and player and there was “no set date” for a return. Green’s status for Golden State’s season opener against the Los Angeles Lakers on Oct. 18, when the reigning champions will receive their rings, therefore remains uncertain.
In the video footage, which was first published by TMZ without accompanying audio, Green walked over to the baseline where Poole was standing until the two were face-to-face. Poole then shoved Green with two hands before Green punched Poole with enough force that Poole’s head was thrown back as others rush over to the pair.
The fight between Green and Poole was first reported Wednesday, and the Warriors didn’t immediately discipline Green, instead treating the incident as an internal matter.
Warriors General Manager Bob Myers told reporters Thursday that Green had apologized to the team for the altercation, left the training facility and was not expected back until Saturday. Myers initially said he did not expect Green to be suspended or miss any games as a result, and Poole, who was not injured by the blow, returned to practice Thursday. That decision drew scrutiny once video of the incident leaked Friday.
Green said he was in “a very, very, very bad space mentally” and that he was “dealing with some things in my personal life” that possibly contributed to his shortened temper and reaction. Acknowledging his history of emotional outbursts, Green said he is a “flawed person” and a “constant work in progress,” and he still has “a very long way to go.”
The 2017 Defensive Player of the Year also expressed frustration and embarrassment that the footage had leaked, and he thanked the Warriors for conducting an investigation to determine who was responsible. Green said he watched the video at least 15 times, concluding his actions “look even worse than I thought” and were “pathetic.”
“I thought [the leak] was bulls---,” Green said. “No other video leaks from practice. When we’re working on our sets, they don’t leak. When I’m coaching everyone up, that doesn’t leak.”
“There’s nothing that warranted the situation,” Curry said Thursday. “I want to make that clear. It’s also something we feel like won’t derail our season, what we’re trying to build, and that’s with Draymond a part of that.”
Kerr said Poole has been “fantastic throughout camp,” and the coach shot down concerns about the guard’s attitude.
A four-time all-star and seven-time all-defensive team member, Green has been involved in several combative incidents in his career. During a profane 2016 halftime outburst directed at Kerr, Green reportedly shouted “I am not a robot!” so loudly that he could be heard by a reporter standing outside the visiting locker room in Oklahoma City. In 2018, the Warriors suspended Green for one game for his role in an in-game argument with teammate Kevin Durant, a disagreement that preceded Durant’s 2019 departure for the Brooklyn Nets.
While under contract through the 2023-24 season, Green was eligible for an extension this offseason, but he said last month he didn’t expect to consummate a deal before the start of the season.
Poole, 23, enjoyed a breakout campaign in 2021-22, averaging a career-high 18.5 points, 3.4 rebounds and 4.0 assists in his third season. Regarded as an early favorite to win the Sixth Man of the Year award, Poole’s next contract could be similar in size to the four-year, $130 million extension recently signed by Miami Heat guard Tyler Herro.
Green said he hasn’t met with Poole since the incident, but he was adamant that the parallel contract negotiations were not a motivating factor for his punch.
“I can assure you I don’t count other people’s pockets,” he said. “That’s not something I would ever start doing. The way I was raised, that’s simply hating on another man’s situation.” | 2022-10-09T02:03:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Draymond Green apologizes for punching Jordan Poole - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/draymond-green-apologizes-jordan-poole/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/draymond-green-apologizes-jordan-poole/ |
Two Huntington University coaches were placed on administrative leave Thursday after two former runners accused them and the school in a federal lawsuit of enabling a culture in which athletes were sexually assaulted, emotionally abused and pushed to use unidentified performance-enhancing substances.
The small private school in northern Indiana placed head cross-country coach Lauren Johnson and assistant coach Curtis Hines on administrative leave “until further notice pending investigation.” In a statement to The Washington Post, the university said it “has engaged in communication with key stakeholders to begin the necessary work required to ensure the ongoing care of our students.
The plaintiffs, two women who competed for Huntington’s cross-country and track teams, single out Johnson’s husband, Nicholas, the school’s former cross-country coach, in the lawsuit.
They said he conducted a “study” or “experiment” on some of the team’s athletes in which he injected them with an unknown substance. He also massaged unknown substances into both women’s bodies, they said in the lawsuit, describing the “treatments” as “Larry Nassaresque massages,” in reference to the former USA Gymnastics doctor who sexually abused his patients.
It is alleged in the lawsuit that Nicholas Johnson raped one of the plaintiffs on several occasions throughout 2020 and “had sexual contact” with several of her teammates. It is also alleged that Johnson took female runners on individual runs to isolated locations and sexually assaulted those women under the guise of “hugging” them for good performances.
The plaintiffs claim Lauren Johnson, Hines and the university knew of Johnson’s abuse and did nothing. Nicholas Johnson’s alleged behavior occurred from 2018 until his December 2020 arrest on charges of child seduction, kidnapping and identity deception related to a separate incident. He was subsequently fired, pleaded guilty to identity deception in 2021 and served 30 days of a two-year sentence. Lauren Johnson replaced her husband as head of the cross-country program following his arrest.
Jenkins: Another ‘report’ on abuse in women’s sports. When is enough enough?
Both plaintiffs were National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics cross-country champions at Huntington. One told the Indianapolis Star her results should be invalidated and the 2020 women’s team stripped of its NAIA indoor track and field championship because of possible doping in connection with the substances Johnson allegedly used on their bodies.
The NAIA told the newspaper it “is aware of the allegations concerning the Huntington University women’s track & field program. We will continue to monitor the situation but have no further comments at this time.” | 2022-10-09T02:03:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Huntington University coaches on leave amid sexual assault, doping allegations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/huntington-university-sexual-assault-case/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/huntington-university-sexual-assault-case/ |
Boilermakers 31, Terrapins 29
Maryland quarterback Taulia Tagovailoa, right, walks off the field with offensive lineman Jaelyn Duncan after a 31-29 loss to Purdue. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
The blocked extra-point attempt hung over Maryland’s fourth quarter and then through the afternoon as the loss against Purdue lingered. The miscue, which happened in a blink on a usually automatic play, kept Maryland’s lead at a fragile six points instead of bumping it to seven. Once the Boilermakers responded, that blunder took what could have been a tied game and made it a narrow deficit for the Terrapins. And eventually, after Maryland scored in the waning moments of the game, that one moment meant the Terps needed more than a simple kick through the uprights to even the score.
And on the two-point play that was instead required, the final pass from Taulia Tagovailoa sailed out the back of the end zone, leaving the quarterback’s hands on his helmet in disbelief. The blocked extra-point attempt effectively stole Maryland’s chance to win in overtime — in which the Terps could have secured their best start to a season in nearly a decade — and instead prompted a dreary walk to the locker room after a 31-29 loss.
The Terps faced that two-point attempt after a short-lived moment of joy when they thought they had indeed tied the score. Tagovailoa had scrambled toward the sideline and connected with Rakim Jarrett, only for it to be negated by a penalty. Offensive lineman DJ Glaze drew a flag for being an ineligible receiver downfield, far from Jarrett in the back right corner of the end zone. When Maryland tried again from eight yards out, Tagovailoa couldn’t find a receiver. And the Terps never would have needed an extra moment of brilliance after Corey Dyches’s touchdown if not for the blocked extra-point attempt.
“The blocked extra point had a major impact on the game,” Coach Michael Locksley said. “It’s a one-score game. It takes us into overtime. It adjusts and changes how they play the game. The illegal man downfield had no impact on the touchdown. So I’ll just leave it at that.”
As soon as Cam Allen blocked the extra-point attempt with 7:47 to go in the game, the play drew the ire of the Maryland student section because, upon replay, the play can resemble either a well-timed jump or a missed offside call, depending on your vantage point and allegiances.
Locksley wouldn’t blame the officiating and instead said, “We had plenty of opportunities to win this game on the field with our play, not without all the other stuff that I’m sure everybody wants to talk about.”
Maryland’s defense had a standout second half to put the Terps (4-2, 1-2 Big Ten) in position to grab a win — one that would have signaled that a special season might be brewing in College Park. The unit forced turnovers on three straight Purdue possessions after halftime, but Maryland failed to turn any of them into points — a sequence of defensive excellence paired with poor offense that couldn’t tilt the tied game in Maryland’s favor.
Durell Nchami caused a fumble on a sack, and Austin Fontaine recovered. But the Maryland offense couldn’t convert on fourth down. Jakorian Bennett, who nearly had an interception earlier in the game, held on to the ball this time for the pick. Then the Terps had to punt. And after standout freshman Jaishawn Barham forced and recovered a fumble, Maryland settled for a 52-yard field goal attempt, and Chad Ryland missed.
Over those three series, Maryland’s offense picked up just 35 yards on 16 plays. Tagovailoa said he felt like he “missed opportunities” with those scoreless drives.
“They gave us opportunities, and we squandered them,” Locksley said. “To not come away with points, you don’t get those type of opportunities without them coming back to bite you in the butt.”
Taulia Tagovailoa needed to hear from brother Tua before playing last Saturday
The defense refused to relent, and finally the Terps’ offense matched that effort with an effective drive early in the fourth quarter. Tagovailoa found Jacob Copeland on third down, and then running back Roman Hemby grabbed a 24-yard reception to move the chains on another third-down play. Hemby scored moments later on a screen pass, but Purdue blocked the extra-point attempt.
The Boilermakers (4-2, 2-1) answered and took a 24-23 lead with 3:19 to go when quarterback Aidan O’Connell threw his second touchdown pass of the afternoon. The Terps’ offense sputtered again in this important moment, going three and out and giving Purdue a chance to extend its lead.
O’Connell’s 56-yard pass to an open Payne Durham got the Boilermakers to the 2-yard line with more than two minutes remaining — a “communication error” for the Terps, Locksley said. Purdue tried not to score on its first two rushing attempts, draining the clock and forcing Maryland to burn its timeouts. On third down, Devin Mockobee barreled into the end zone, and Purdue seized an eight-point advantage.
The Terps had no timeouts and 1:12 on the clock, but they still had a chance. Tagovailoa connected with Dyches for an 18-yard score and then couldn’t finish the game with a successful two-point conversion. The Boilermakers recovered Ryland’s onside kick attempt to seal the victory.
Even though O’Connell, a sixth-year player at Purdue, threw for 360 yards on 30-for-41 passing, Maryland’s defense had plenty of highlight moments that could have been enough for the victory had the offense played at its best. The Boilermakers rushed for only 13 yards on 34 attempts, and Maryland forced those three turnovers in the third quarter.
Tagovailoa threw for 315 yards on 26-for-38 passing with three touchdowns and an interception when he threw into double coverage. He played well when Maryland desperately needed him to on the final drive, but he had an up-and-down performance.
Maryland’s offense sputtered after its opening series looked effortless and ended with Tagovailoa’s nine-yard touchdown run. The unit headed into halftime on a high note thanks to an impressive effort from Dyches. After Tagovailoa stepped up in the pocket and launched the ball downfield to the redshirt sophomore tight end, Dyches carried a defender with him 15 yards into the end zone. Dyches’s 68-yard score was the first touchdown for the Terps since the opening series and tied the game just before halftime.
“You get inside the 20, you know you’ve got to be hungry for the end zone,” Dyches said.
Maryland’s improving defense did enough to mask the team’s offensive struggles. The unit presented Maryland with a chance. Even though that blocked extra point forced Maryland to try the two-point conversion, the Terps nearly delivered. And then a penalty wiped it all away.
“I think we did a good job of trying to fight back,” Tagovailoa said. “Our defense gave us a lot of opportunities to do that. But we’ve just go to finish.” | 2022-10-09T02:04:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland’s comeback attempt comes up short in loss to Purdue - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/maryland-loses-to-purdue/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/maryland-loses-to-purdue/ |
Michigan running backs coach Mike Hart was carted off the field during the first half against Indiana on Saturday. (Doug McSchooler/AP)
Michigan running backs coach Mike Hart collapsed on the sideline during the first quarter of the Wolverines’ game at Indiana on Saturday, leading to a scary moment that appeared to shake players on both teams.
Hart suffered a seizure, according to the Fox broadcast, was carted off the field and was taken to a hospital.
Hart fell with around five minutes left in the first quarter. Players dropped to one knee, and several Michigan coaches surrounded Hart as trainers treated him. Hart was able to move his extremities and was placed on a stretcher before he was carted off the field.
Michigan’s all-time leading rusher, Hart was a four-year starter from 2004 to 2007. He spent three seasons with the Indianapolis Colts and later joined the staff at Indiana, where he spent four seasons coaching running backs before he returned to Ann Arbor last year.
Under his tutelage, Wolverines running back Blake Corum has transformed into one of the top backs in the country, leading the nation this season with 10 rushing touchdowns entering Saturday’s game. As Hart was taken away, Corum and teammate Donovan Edwards were visibly emotional on the sideline as teammates and coaches tried to comfort them. Following a slow start, the fourth-ranked Wolverines defeated Indiana, 31-10. | 2022-10-09T02:04:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Michigan assistant Mike Hart collapses on sideline, reportedly has seizure - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/mike-hart-michigan-coach-seizure/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/mike-hart-michigan-coach-seizure/ |
Commanders safety Darrick Forrest, center, and cornerback Benjamin St-Juste have been bright spots on a roster that has struggled in the first four weeks of 2022. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
It’s unlikely that the Washington Commanders’ Week 5 matchup with the Tennessee Titans was among those circled in red when the NFL schedule came out in May. It’s not a celebrated rivalry, it won’t be a meeting of star quarterbacks, and it certainly hasn’t been billed as one of the league’s must-watch games.
But Sunday’s game at FedEx Field could have high stakes — for Washington, at least.
The Commanders are 1-3 and sit near the bottom, if not at the bottom, in most measures of efficiency. Their yards per play (4.6) rank last in the NFL, as does their minus-34 scoring margin. They have allowed a league-high 17 sacks, have punted on 45.1 percent of their drives and have had 106 plays for zero or negative yards.
The inconsistency has been consistent — and this season’s spiral has prompted fans to call for drastic change, again.
Coach Ron Rivera has hinted one could be coming. Although the knee-jerk reaction would be to look at the quarterback or the play callers, the more probable change might come elsewhere on the roster should Washington continue to spiral.
Throughout the start to this season, Rivera has talked about the team’s young players, insinuating they need more experience and development. But in the secondary, youth prevails. Safety Darrick Forrest and cornerback Benjamin St-Juste, both second-year defensive backs, have impressed on the back end — enough to warrant consideration of a personnel change.
“These young guys are starting to get to where you hope they would get in their second season, and what’s happening is you see their confidence building, which means us as coaches, our confidence is building in them,” Rivera said.
‘I understand how important it is to win’
Washington has had a losing record every year under Rivera. But in the past two seasons, he has found ways to stop the bleeding, be it with a personnel change, a motivational gimmick or a shift in the game plan.
In 2020, Rivera benched quarterback Dwayne Haskins after four games and, following a season-ending injury to Kyle Allen, turned the offense over to Alex Smith, the 16-year veteran who had overcome a life-threatening injury. Smith guided Washington to a four-game winning streak late in the season, then played through another leg injury to help it clinch the NFC East.
In 2021, after losing starter Ryan Fitzpatrick only 16 snaps into the opener, Washington sputtered to a 2-6 start. But following the bye, the team turned to its running game and embarked on another four-game winning streak.
Now, after three dismal losses — including two to division rivals — Rivera must find another way to salvage this season and future ones in Washington.
“This organization’s got five championships. … I get it,” Rivera said earlier this week. “I understand how important it is to win, okay? But I got to be realistic with what we have and what we’re going to do. Now, some of it we can improve on as coaches and get better at, and we have to. There is a sense of urgency that these things have to happen, but they’re not going to happen until everything’s in place.”
From 2021: Scott Turner grew up with Washington football. He’s hoping to push its offense to the next level.
Changing play callers probably isn’t the answer. Not now, anyway. Washington just extended the contract of offensive coordinator Scott Turner, its only offensive coach with recent play-calling experience. And Jack Del Rio is the only defensive assistant with play-calling experience. Stripping him of those duties would put more on Rivera’s plate.
Changing quarterbacks isn’t it, either, although it may eventually be necessary if Carson Wentz continues to struggle. The Commanders surrendered two picks to get him and took on his full $22 million salary. Ending the experiment now would not only be costly, but it would send a clear message that Rivera, who lauded Wentz as a player the team “wanted” and saw as a potential long-term fit, has already given up on him. And Washington already knows what it has in backup Taylor Heinicke: a good backup with physical limitations.
So the focus shifts to the rest of the roster.
‘You have to consider everything’
Although many of the Commanders’ deficiencies lie with the offense, the team’s defense has had problems of its own, especially the explosive plays it has allowed. Through Week 4, Washington has given up 15 plays of 25 yards or more, second most in the league. Eight went for at least 40 yards.
Rivera has cited blown coverages, poor technique, missed tackles, penalties and a general lack of execution as reasons. He has said players have at times failed to get in position to make plays — and sometimes just failed to finish.
Penalties also have contributed to the Commanders’ downfall. Against the Cowboys, cornerback William Jackson III was flagged for defensive holding, which negated an interception, and also was called twice for pass interference for a combined 65 yards. Fellow cornerback Kendall Fuller was penalized twice against Jacksonville, for PI and holding. According to Pro Football Focus, Fuller has allowed the second-most receiving yards (328) among cornerbacks when targeted in coverage and has a passer rating against of 137.5 this season.
The Commanders had many firsts in Week 1. Darrick Forrest’s may have been best.
In contrast, Forrest, the safety who was a fifth-round pick in 2021, started Week 1 and had a breakout game. He had two pass deflections in the end zone, forced a fumble with a hard hit on a receiver and sealed the win over Jacksonville with an interception in the fourth quarter. And St-Juste, a second-year cornerback, filled in for Jackson in Week 3 and was a bright spot in a loss Washington would otherwise like to forget. Moving from the slot to outside, he had three pass deflections.
“I feel like I’m starting to be more vocal, and it’s helping everybody,” Forrest said of his play this year. “I feel like sometimes we lack energy, and when you bring that energy and everybody’s communicating, I feel like we play way better.”
Forrest played minimal snaps on defense as a rookie but has evolved into a versatile weapon on the back end. More time for him could mean Washington’s secondary uses more three-safety sets, which it did often last year and has repurposed this season with Bobby McCain, Kam Curl and often Forrest. Forrest also has been a boon in nickel packages because of his physicality, and he has been a part of another package with seven defensive backs.
“The nice thing for [Forrest] … is how he’s assimilated to really a couple of different roles for us,” Rivera said. “Not just playing safety but playing the Buffalo position for us. … There’s a lot of positive growth that you’re seeing from a young man like that. So, you get excited about it.”
St-Juste, whose rookie season was cut short because of concussions, has shown his comfort in the slot and outside at cornerback. Though it hasn’t been flawless, his rate of improvement has earned notice.
“I’m way more comfortable with the play-calling, and now I can really start to anticipate plays,” he said. “Once you’re in that beginning process of learning the scheme and playbook and that stuff, especially at a new position, you kind of just play by the rules. But once you get a glimpse and a good hold of how the playbook works and how to manage the position, you can start anticipating stuff and jumping routes.”
“There’s going to be a point where you’re not going to be able to hold them back just because they’ll take a next step,” Rivera said of his young defensive backs.
Of course, any consideration of a personnel change would have to factor in more than simply on-field performance. The near term has to be weighed with the long term.
“You’ve got to be sure, because it is a long season, and if you make a knee-jerk reaction to something and it doesn’t pan out, now you’ve got to correct it and fix it,” Rivera said. “So a lot of the decisions, I go through and … [consider] the ramifications of how it’s going to impact the player, the players, the team and the organization. You have to consider everything.”
Including money.
Jackson has the second-highest salary cap charge on the team at roughly $13.8 million. That’s a lot of money to put on the bench, and it would make it difficult to turn back to him if things go awry. He has another year left on his deal, and moving on from him in 2023 would leave a $9 million dead money charge from his prorated bonus while saving $6.8 million overall.
Fuller’s cap charge is slightly less this season, at about $11.1 million. He also has another non-guaranteed season left on his deal, but the dead money charge is significantly lower. If Washington were to move on next year, it could save $8.5 million in cap space.
But the Commanders, stuck in a cycle of repeated mistakes, desperately need a jolt. Another week of a similar showing will warrant change.
“We’ll see,” Riviera said. “I mean, we got time. As each game progresses, we will evaluate and we will go from there.” | 2022-10-09T02:04:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Commanders’ spiral could soon prompt a change. No, not at QB. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/ron-rivera-commanders-change-secondary/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/ron-rivera-commanders-change-secondary/ |
Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa leaves the field during the first half of a Sept. 25 game against the Bills to be evaluated for a possible head injury. (Wilfredo Lee/AP)
The NFL and the NFL Players Association determined in a joint review that their concussion protocols were followed “as written” in the case of Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. But they also acknowledged Saturday that the outcome was “not what was intended” and agreed to modified protocols that eliminate an exception that allowed Tagovailoa to reenter a game late last month.
Under the change, doctors no longer will have the leeway to clear a player to return to a game if he demonstrates abnormal balance, stability or motor coordination, as Tagovailoa did when he stumbled following a first-half hit during a Sept. 25 game against the Buffalo Bills in Miami Gardens, Fla. The change takes effect immediately.
“While the investigation determined that the team medical staff and unaffiliated medical professionals followed the steps of the Protocol as written, the NFL and NFLPA agree that the outcome in this case is not what was intended when the Protocols were drafted,” the league and union said in a statement.
Previously, a player demonstrating “gross motor instability” could be cleared to reenter a game if doctors determined the instability was not neurologically caused. Under the change announced Saturday, the NFL and NFLPA said “ataxia” has been added to the list of mandatory “no-go” symptoms under the protocols. That is defined as “abnormality of balance/stability, motor coordination or dysfunctional speech caused by a neurological issue,” the league and union said.
“In other words, if a player is diagnosed with ‘ataxia’ by any club or neutral physician involved in the application of the Concussion Protocol, he will be prohibited from returning to the game, and will receive the follow-up care required by the Protocol,” the NFL and NFLPA said.
Allen Sills, the NFL’s chief medical officer, said during a video conference with reporters Saturday that Tagovailoa would not have been cleared to reenter the Sept. 25 game under the revised protocols.
“It would have kept him out of the game,” Sills said. “This new protocol would have ruled him out.”
Under the new protocol, Sills said, doctors will assume that signs of ataxia are related to a brain injury.
“We are adamant here that the protocol was properly applied,” Sills said, “and that the medical professionals used their best judgment. … When we say that the outcome was not what we’ve intended, what we’re saying is that we want the protocol to be conservative. And we recognize that this gross motor instability puts everyone in a difficult position, which was to try to determine: Is it coming from the brain, or is it coming from something else?”
Doctors involved in such in-game decisions will err on the side of caution, Sills said.
“If we’re going to be wrong, we’d rather hold someone out who doesn’t have a brain injury but we’re being cautious,” Sills said, “than to put someone out [on the field] who might have a brain injury and we weren’t able to diagnose it.”
Tagovailoa returned to the game against the Bills to begin the second half after being evaluated for a possible head injury. He and Coach Mike McDaniel said afterward that Tagovailoa had suffered a back injury, not a head injury. The NFLPA initiated the joint review at that point.
Sills said Saturday that Tagovailoa had reported suffering back and ankle injuries earlier in the game. He showed video of Tagovailoa’s reaction to his back injury.
“Mr. Tagovailoa immediately upon the impact in question told the medical staff that he had aggravated that back injury and that it was indeed his back injury that had caused him to stumble,” Sills said. “I would say that throughout the entire evaluation, Mr. Tagovailoa did not exhibit any symptoms of concussion.”
Sills said that while the doctors agreed after watching video that Tagovailoa had demonstrated gross motor instability, they conducted the required tests and “determined that they did not believe a concussion had occurred. But it’s very clear that every step of the concussion checklist had been completed.”
However, former Cleveland Browns center JC Tretter, the NFLPA president, wrote Saturday evening on Twitter: “We do not believe this was a meaningful application of the protocols. Nobody, including the NFL, believes he should have been put back in the game. It is problematic that he was cleared for a back injury for which the lead doctors never took the time to examine.”
Four days later, when the Dolphins visited the Cincinnati Bengals on Sept. 29, Tagovailoa was taken from the field on a stretcher after hitting his head on the turf during a first-half sack. He was taken by ambulance to a hospital and was determined, according to the Dolphins, to have suffered a concussion. Tagovailoa was released that night from University of Cincinnati Medical Center and accompanied the Dolphins on their flight back to Miami. He underwent an MRI exam the following day, according to the team.
Tagovailoa is being treated and evaluated under the league’s concussion protocols. The Dolphins have said he will not play against the New York Jets on Sunday in East Rutherford, N.J., but have not specified how long he is expected to be sidelined.
Sills said “a concussion diagnosis can be very difficult” and added, “When medical professionals are presented with a group of facts, it is possible for reasonable and well-trained medical professionals to reach differing judgments on the appropriate diagnosis.”
Representatives of the league and union interviewed Tagovailoa on Tuesday as part of the joint review. They previously interviewed others involved in the case.
The NFL and NFLPA announced last weekend that they had agreed to make changes to the protocols. That announcement came soon after the NFLPA exercised its right to remove the independent neurological expert involved in the decision to clear Tagovailoa to return against the Bills. The union said the previous day that it was focused on the medical judgments made in the case, more than the process of whether the concussion protocols technically were followed.
Sills and Jeff Miller, an executive vice president of the NFL who oversees its health and safety measures, said Saturday that the league disagreed with the NFLPA’s decision to rescind its approval of the unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant involved in the case. Those doctors must be approved by the league and the union. Either side can withdraw its approval at any time.
“I think this is the first time that we’ve had an unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant terminated,” Miller said. “It wasn’t by the NFL. … The notion that one could be fired at a time when the protocol was followed, you know, strikes us as something that the NFL wouldn’t do.”
Asked whether the league would support any effort by the neurotrauma consultant, who has not been publicly identified, to be reinstated, Miller said, “We never supported terminating him.” The NFL also has “started conversations” with the NFLPA about changing the rules that allowed the union to unilaterally remove the doctor, Miller said.
Richard Sherman, the former NFL cornerback who is an NFLPA vice president, said Thursday night on Amazon’s coverage of the Broncos-Colts game that “the union’s position is that the protocols were not followed,” adding that the NFL did not concur with that. The NFLPA said Friday that it approved the pending protocol change and urged the NFL to do the same in time for Sunday’s games. The league said then that it already had begun to discuss the “likely” changes with doctors and athletic trainers.
“The concussion protocol is not broken,” Sills said Saturday. “Concussion care in the NFL is not broken. Our protocol can always improve. We can always get better. … But let’s not kid ourselves. Our protocol continues to be very effective.” | 2022-10-09T02:04:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL, NFLPA change concussion protocols, complete Tua Tagovailoa review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/tua-tagovailoa-nfl-investigation-protocols/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/tua-tagovailoa-nfl-investigation-protocols/ |
Virginia continues its slide with sloppy home loss to Louisville
Cardinals 38, Cavaliers 17
Virginia quarterback Brennan Armstrong and Coach Tony Elliott haven't been able to figure out a way to generate consistent offense. (Mike Kropf/Daily Progress/AP)
CHARLOTTESVILLE — Disgruntled Virginia football fans began streaming toward the exits at Scott Stadium early in the fourth quarter of the Cavaliers’ homecoming game against Louisville on Saturday afternoon.
By then, a large swath of supporters, some booing in the second half, had seen enough of the dreadful execution, turnovers and penalties that plagued Virginia in a 34-17 loss — its third in a row — that dealt another crippling blow to any flickering bowl aspirations halfway through the regular season.
Formerly reliable quarterback Brennan Armstrong was responsible for three turnovers, including a pair of interceptions in front of an announced crowd of 38,009, and continued to labor in a redesigned offense under first-year coach Tony Elliott and first-year offensive coordinator Des Kitchings.
Armstrong’s second interception came with 5:31 to play in the third quarter after his 11-yard touchdown run had drawn the Cavaliers (2-4, 0-3 ACC) within 20-17. The Cardinals (3-3, 1-3) proceeded to march 60 yards, capped by Trevion Cooley’s one-yard plunge, to stretch the lead back to 10.
The next series ended when Armstrong absorbed a sack — one of six permitted by the Cavaliers — on fourth and one, and Louisville ended what little drama remained when Jawhar Jordan scored on a one-yard carry with 11:03 remaining in the fourth quarter for the final points.
“We’ve just got to learn to win,” said Armstrong, who has seven interceptions this season and 11 over his past nine games. “We don’t know how to win. We don’t know how to come back and win. I’m hard on myself to begin with, but just piecing it together when times get tough, and we just struggle to do that right now.”
Armstrong finished 24 for 34 for 313 yards and accounted for two touchdowns behind a remade offensive line that had the record-setting fifth-year senior frequently on the move and rarely comfortable with the pocket collapsing around him.
His fumble came on Virginia’s third possession of the first quarter following his 10-yard run to the Louisville 18. The Cavaliers were ahead 10-0 at the time, but they couldn’t recover from the momentum-shifting turnover with three minutes to play in the period.
“I think what happens is, two things, when we have success, guys get satisfied,” Elliott said. “They get fat and happy as opposed to — it doesn’t matter what the score is. That’s something I talk about a lot. You can’t play to the scoreboard. When you play to the scoreboard, you’re externally motivated, and then it’s easier for you to make justifications for you not to give your best effort.”
Making matters worse were careless drops from several Virginia wide receivers, including Keytaon Thompson and Dontayvion Wicks, who left the game with 14:25 to go in the fourth quarter following a collision with Cardinals cornerback Quincy Riley.
Wicks, who set the program’s single-season record for receiving yardage last year, remained on the field for several minutes while athletic trainers examined him. The junior rose and walked to the sideline for good before heading inside the medical tent behind the benches.
The onus to move the ball fell entirely on the passing attack when Elliott and Kitchings elected to abandon the running game in the second half. Virginia finished with six net rushing yards, losing 35 on sacks, while Armstrong led the team with 14 carries.
“We couldn’t run the football in the first half,” Kitchings said. “A first-and-10 run to try to get something started, and we end up being second and 10 or second and 11 or second and eight, and that’s not fair, so screw the run. I mean, we just couldn’t cover them up, couldn’t run it, and we had to throw the ball.”
The defense failed to produce a sack or a tackle for loss in facing a backup quarterback. Brock Domann started in place of Malik Cunningham, who was in the concussion protocols this past week, according to Louisville Coach Scott Satterfield.
Domann amassed 346 yards of offense, including a 44-yard touchdown run on fourth and two that tied the score at 10 midway through the second quarter. The junior ran untouched into the end zone when he pulled the ball out of the running back’s belly and curled around the left side, where a cavernous gap awaited as defenders flowed in the wrong direction.
Virginia yielded 473 yards of offense, including 198 rushing one week after it gave up 248 on the ground in a 38-17 loss to Duke. The Cavaliers also committed eight penalties for 66 yards and played the first half without starting defensive tackle Aaron Faumui, who watched from the sideline in uniform as punishment for committing penalties last week.
“The guys were frustrated,” Faumui said of the mood in the locker room. “We were definitely frustrated. We lost the game. That is nothing to be excited about. ... We have to live with it, think about it over the weekend and get back on Monday to make the corrections and keep pressing forward.” | 2022-10-09T02:04:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia continues slide with sloppy home loss to Louisville - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/virginia-loses-to-louisville/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/virginia-loses-to-louisville/ |
Admirals 56, Eagles 40
From left: Reid Gills, Nickolas Sotiropoulos and Jacob Todd are lacrosse stars powering Severn football's strong season. (Kyle Melnick)
Todd hurried to snap the ball for the ensuing play, on which Nickolas Sotiropoulos ran up the middle, sent a defender to the turf after they knocked shoulders and cruised to the end zone in the Admirals’ 56-40 win over Annapolis Area Christian in Severna Park.
Todd and Sotiropoulos wouldn’t have envisioned making those plays a year ago. The seniors had dedicated their athletic careers to lacrosse, which both will play at the Division I level.
This season, many athletes from Severn’s well-known lacrosse program are playing football. With the revamped athleticism, the Admirals (5-1) are enjoying one their best seasons this century.
Severn won three games between 2018 and 2021, including a winless campaign last year. Todd and Sotiropoulos played football as freshmen in 2019 before focusing on lacrosse recruiting their sophomore and junior years.
The football program lost to AACS (0-5) by 26 points last October. Todd and Sotiropoulos, meanwhile, helped transformed Severn’s lacrosse program into one of Maryland’s best.
Both have set their college plans. Todd, a four-star prospect as an attackman, will play at Princeton. Sotiropoulos, a four-star prospect as a long-stick midfielder, has committed to Hobart. They desired to play football a final season, and their teammates followed. In August, the football program attracted 60 players, the most in recent years at the 420-student school.
Sotiropoulos played soccer growing up, so Severn made him its kicker and punter in addition to running back. Todd is athletic and played quarterback halfway through his freshman year, so he took over the Admirals’ offense. Reid Gills, a four-star lacrosse prospect as a faceoff specialist, likes physicality, so the junior plays defensive back.
On Saturday, players enjoyed the large crowd for their homecoming game — a turnout typically seen only for crucial lacrosse matches. After the game it was time to mentally pivot: Sotiropoulos is participating in a lacrosse training camp Sunday; Gills has club lacrosse practices on the weekends.
Before that, they danced on the field to “Party in the U.S.A.” by Miley Cyrus.
“They’re my best friends,” said Sotiropoulos, who rushed for 175 yards and two touchdowns. “It’s definitely nice to do something different. And then obviously after, it’s straight to lacrosse.” | 2022-10-09T02:16:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Severn was a football afterthought. Until its lacrosse stars got involved. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/severn-was-football-afterthought-until-its-lacrosse-stars-got-involved/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/08/severn-was-football-afterthought-until-its-lacrosse-stars-got-involved/ |
Man killed by car in Prince George’s, police say
The Incident was at Piscataway and Temple Hills roads, according to police
A pedestrian was hit by a car and killed Saturday night in Prince George’s County, the police said.
The man was hit around 7:15 p.m. at Piscataway and Temple Hills roads, the police said.
He was found in the roadway and taken to a hospital, where he died, according to police.
No name was available immediately.
Police said they were trying to find out why the man was hit. They said the driver of the car that hit him was cooperating in the investigation.
The site is in the Clinton area. Piscataway Road is a major thoroughfare in the southern part of Prince George’s. | 2022-10-09T03:08:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man killed by car in Prince George's - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/08/man-killed-car-prince-georges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/08/man-killed-car-prince-georges/ |
Ask Amy: Friend is mad I didn’t ask him to go wedding dress shopping
Dear Amy: I live with my fiance and our cat, and I’m really happy. We are getting married at Disneyland next year!
My mom and I have made a plan to go wedding dress shopping together. I also invited my future mother-in-law to come with us. My fiance doesn’t have any sisters and his mom always wanted a daughter. She and I are really close.
He said it’s usually a bridal party of close friends, or just the bride and mother of the bride who go shopping for a dress. I plan to go ahead with my plan to include the two most special women in my life. But I am wondering, am I in the wrong?
Bride: Researching your question I have now perused numerous photos of Disneyland brides riding in Cinderella’s crystal coach (which is pulled by four white ponies and guided by a driver and two footmen).
In a world beset by challenges, conflict, and dreams deferred, I’m actually happy to report that … this sort of “fairy tale” wedding is a thing! The Cinderella dream is alive, well, and available — for a price — in Anaheim, Calif.(and other locations).
Your friend is wrong, you are right, and I hope you have the fairy tale wedding of your dreams.
We have been a couple for 29 years, but have been married for 11 years. We didn’t marry until we had been together for 18 years. I was a fool but didn’t realize it until we were finally married and had our son.
I have been severely unhappy for about five years, but even before that my unhappiness was building. Now, I am attracted to someone else and want to leave the marriage. I am determined to leave.
In the meantime, should I reveal how I feel to this person I’m attracted to? I think he feels the same way toward me but holds back because I’m still married. I have told him I’m not happy and that my husband and I are sleeping in separate rooms. But the bottom line is that I’m still married.
Sad: You have stated that you are leaving your very long relationship, and yet the question you ask is really about embarking on a new relationship. | 2022-10-09T04:22:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: Friend is mad I didn’t ask him to go wedding dress shopping - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/09/ask-amy-bridal-shopping-friend/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/09/ask-amy-bridal-shopping-friend/ |
Carolyn Hax: How to help daughter with ‘spoiled’ in-law, enabling spouse
Dear Carolyn: My daughter is married to a great guy who has an entitled, spoiled younger sister. His mother enables her and takes her side every time there is any conflict. My daughter goes through cycles with his family where things are calm but then the sister stirs up conflict. My daughter has a heart issue that is exacerbated by stress.
My generous son-in-law often takes them along on family vacations and pays for everything. It has now gotten to the point where they are upset if he and my daughter go without them. Her husband knows his family can be difficult but doesn’t want to deal with it. My daughter says she wants to completely avoid most gatherings with his family. She is fine with him and their child getting together. Is this the best way to deal with this?
— Concerned Mom
Concerned Mom: Whatever the best way is, it doesn’t involve you or me.
Or his sister, or the rest of his family.
It’s best if the two of them, the vow-swappers, agree it’s best. If you give me a vote (you can’t), then I’ll go further and say the best way is for the two of them to start prioritizing their marriage over one or the other’s family of origin.
That their centers of gravity are still with their own families, as appears to be the case, is a bigger problem than any overindulged sister-in-law — though the former can certainly make the latter much worse than it would have been otherwise.
And maybe it’s just that I’m writing this on a Monday, but I don’t see what is “great” or “generous” about inviting along but refusing to deal with a family he knows is “difficult” in general and specifically unpleasant company for his wife.
We all have things we don’t want to deal with. If we’re going to give into that impulse and neglect them knowingly at someone else’s expense, then at best we’re typical, not great.
Except to the pot-stirrers who travel free. To them, his negligence is pretty awesome.
But this is all academic unless your daughter asks for your opinion. If she does, then start by asking her what she thinks is right. Then ask whether she has shared this idea or plan explicitly with her husband. Then ask why not, if not.
In other words: Deal with this by encouraging her to approach him about including her, so they handle things like this as a unit. Whew. And so she recognizes, if he refuses, that his refusal is Problem Zero.
The exception to that coupled framework being, of course, when you see signs of control and harm. In that case, you stop promoting “unit”-think and instead speak up plainly, with proof, on behalf of the one getting hurt.
Dear Carolyn: Our wedding was a few weeks ago. It was a beautiful event that included an outdoor ceremony followed by a move indoors to hosted appetizers, cocktails and a full dinner with choice of entrees. The cost of reserving the venue with all the caterers was not inexpensive and based on a per-person rate. Our wedding invitations were sent out three months in advance, said the wedding included cocktails, dinner and dancing, and included self-addressed stamped RSVPs. We submitted our count and paid for the venue based upon the RSVPs we received.
We were disappointed that a number of folks were surprise no-shows on wedding day, especially when we found out later they were “just too busy” to attend or had other thin excuses. This cost us hundreds of extra dollars.
Is there a way to word the invitation that lets people know we are PAYING for them to attend, without sounding like a cheapskate? It’s too late for us, obviously, but perhaps others would benefit.
Oregon: You’re funny.
I mean, you’re 100 percent right: It was awful of your loved ones to do this to you, and you deserved for your guests to treat you with care somewhere in the same ballpark as the care with which you prepared to host them.
But the idea that a line on an invitation worded just so can reverse the effects of societal unraveling? That’s an, “Oh, honey,” moment [pat, pat]. They either live in protective bubbles or know you paid through the nose.
The best advice I can give to couples is to build this “loss” into their budgets — and their emotional expectations. Awful as it is, it’s happening constantly now. (I know we’re all tired, people, but stop doing this.)
So why publish a letter with a hopeless non-answer? Because your letter, worded just so, has a better chance than I do of cutting through someone’s rudeness impulse to the future benefit of others. Thank you for trying.
And for what it’s worth, you don’t sound like a “cheapskate” at all. | 2022-10-09T04:22:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: How to help daughter with tough in-laws, enabling spouse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/09/carolyn-hax-in-law-daughter/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/09/carolyn-hax-in-law-daughter/ |
A portrait of Alla, a Ukrainian woman who said she was held by Russian forces for 10 days in July in the occupied city of Izyum in Ukraine's northeast Kharkiv region. During that time, she said she was raped and tortured by her captors. (Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post)
Whitney Shefte
IZYUM, Ukraine — Soon after Russian forces took her prisoner, the 52-year-old woman picked up a nail and carved her name into a brick wall.
A-L-L-A, she wrote.
Below, she scratched how many days she had been held in the shed outside a medical clinic in her hometown. Above, she wrote in simple words what she had endured in captivity: ELECTRICAL SHOCK. UNDRESS. PAINFUL.
She hoped the markings would one day serve as clues for her son about what she expected to be the final days of her life.
“I thought if my son would look for me, he could find these writings and understand that I was there and died there,” she later recalled.
Alla, 52, claims Russian forces brutalized her and her husband for 10 days during the occupation of Izyum. (Video: Whitney Shefte, Jon Gerberg/The Washington Post)
Some of Alla’s writing is still visible in the small shed in Izyum, the city in northeast Ukraine, where she said occupying Russian forces tortured, raped and beat her while she was held captive for 10 days in July.
The men who detained her, Alla said, were seeking information about her son, who works for Ukraine’s internal security service, the SBU, and about her own work at the region’s gas company. Her husband, who worked at the same company, was also detained and tortured on the clinic’s property.
Alla’s account of her treatment at the hands of Russian forces adds to a growing body of evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Russian troops and officials in the parts of Ukraine they occupied this year, after President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion and launched a full-scale war.
Russian forces have left a trail of destruction and cruelty across Ukraine, including in Bucha, where they were accused of atrocities. New reports of barbarity are emerging as Ukraine’s military liberates more towns following months of occupation, and as authorities and rights groups try to document these acts of inhumanity in hopes of one day bringing perpetrators to justice, perhaps before an international tribunal.
Russia controlled Izyum, a small city in the northeast Kharkiv region, from March through September, when a surprise Ukrainian counteroffensive forced Russian troops and local collaborators to rapidly retreat. In the weeks since Ukraine retook its territory, horrific details have emerged about some of the most grievous offenses Russian forces allegedly committed during their violent occupation.
Civilians who survived the occupation have recounted other instances of rape and torture at the hands of Russian and Russia-backed troops. Some of the hundreds of civilian bodies retrieved from a mass burial site in Izyum showed signs of torture, Ukrainian officials said.
Alla shared her account with The Washington Post on the condition only her first name be used. The Post is also not naming her husband, or son, to protect her identity.
Washington Post journalists twice visited the site where she was imprisoned, once independently and once with Alla and her husband. Her account was consistent with what Post journalists found inside, including her name and other details still scrawled on the wall.
It was impossible to independently verify every detail of Alla’s case. But in an investigation into torture in Izyum, Human Rights Watch spoke to eight other men and one other woman who were detained at the clinic during the Russian occupation, said Belkis Wille, senior researcher in the group’s conflict and crisis division. The woman told the group she was threatened with rape but not sexually assaulted. A man who was held in a garage at the clinic during the same time as Alla reported that he heard women’s screams, and soldiers talking about denying food to a prisoner because she had not performed a sex act, Wille said.
Alla also showed The Post journalists a video of herself after she returned home, in which she appeared gaunt and disheveled.
The harassment started in mid-March.
After surviving heavy shelling, Alla braved a pedestrian bridge across the river that runs through Izyum to check on her son’s empty apartment near the city center. On her way, she found a scene of ruin: Corpses lay on the sides of the road, and there were destroyed buildings everywhere she looked.
Her son’s neighbors told her that Russians had visited the building, asked about her son, who was working elsewhere in the Kharkiv region, and searched his apartment. The men “started taking out everything,” she recalled, including his coffee machine, CD player, television and washing machine. Fearing all his belongings would be looted, she moved what valuables were left to a friend’s house nearby.
That same month, Russian forces began visiting her and her husband at their home. First they said they were looking for weapons or wanted photos of her son, who was deployed for work outside of Izyum. Later they started searching her phone, interrogating her and her husband about whether their son was hiding in Izyum and insisting he should collaborate with Russia.
Soldiers also told them that her son’s neighbors had provided intelligence to them about their family. They were “threatening us all the time, telling me that if my son collaborated with them, they won’t touch us, everything will be good,” Alla said. “We lived in constant fear, but they didn’t touch us, didn’t torture us.”
Like many other civilians, Alla and her husband knew they might be safer elsewhere but they feared leaving behind her elderly parents.
Then the Russians’ demands escalated.
The Russian-appointed mayor of Izyum and men who identified themselves as FSB agents repeatedly asked Alla to return to her job at the Kharkiv gas company. The gas supply was cut to the much of the city and Russian officials wanted to turn it back on. Alla insisted she would not return to work and that as a manager, she did not have the technical expertise they needed. When she finally visited her office, she found the door kicked in and her belongings turned upside down.
The next day, on July 1 at 11 a.m., two cars pulled up outside their house — both emblazoned with the Russian “Z.” About 10 men jumped out of the vehicles, including those who had visited them before. “ ‘You were saying you wouldn’t go to work?’ ” Alla recalled them shouting. “ ‘You went to the gas bureau and bossed around there? Now, get ready.’ ”
The men placed bags over Alla and her husband’s heads, tied their hands with duct tape and shoved them into the trunks of each car.
With her eyes covered, Alla did not know where she was being taken. Then the cars stopped and the soldiers jumped out. “ ‘We’ll beat the Ukrainian out of you here, you won’t come out of here alive,’ ” they told her. “ ‘Either you accept our rules and acknowledge that you live in Russia or you’ll go missing. No one will find you, ever.’ ”
Then they pushed Alla through a door, untied her hands and took off the bag covering her eyes. She was inside a small, dark shed with a cement floor. The men locked the door and said they would be back soon.
An hour later, six men returned to the shed, placed the bag back over her head and brought her to another building nearby, where they demanded she undress. When she refused, “they forcefully undressed me, laid me on [the] table and started touching me, everywhere,” she said.
They laughed as they groped her. “Then they were throwing me on my knees, screaming, ‘Oh you are Ukrainian. Do you know what we do with Ukrainian women and mothers of Ukraine’s Security Service officers?’ ” Alla said. “ ‘We tie them up naked on the main square and send pictures of them to their sons so they would see what we can do to their parents.’ ”
The commander made rules about how Alla should behave, threatening to beat her if she disobeyed: When the men entered the shed, she should be naked from the waist down and keep her back turned to them.
She initially refused. “ ‘What do you mean you would not take your clothes off? Do you think you can argue with us?’ ” she recalled the commander saying. “I started crying and screaming, but he took my clothes off and asked his soldiers who would be the first to rape me.”
The assaults — carried out by the commander — usually began after 4 p.m., when the men returned to the clinic.
For three days, the commander forcibly touched her and forced her to perform oral sex on him while holding her husband hostage in a garage nearby. Alla said she could hear her husband cry out as the troops beat him, and overheard the commander tell “my husband that he raped me, and that we both enjoyed it.”
The shed was so stuffy that she found it difficult to breathe and had to remove a loose brick from the wall to try to get fresh air. She begged the soldiers for anti-anxiety medication, which they provided. They also gave her two buckets — one to use as a toilet and the other for porridge and stale bread. Through a hole in the wall, she once saw the men escorting her husband back to the garage, beaten so badly he could barely stand.
“I was determined to commit suicide. There were some spikes inside the barn, and I had a bra so I thought of hanging myself,” she said. “It did not work out. I started crying. I was crying all the time. They heard me crying and came back, and started harassing me again.”
As the days passed, the men continued to demand information from her about the gas supply in Izyum — at one point shocking her feet with electricity and laughing as she screamed. “I cannot express what kind of pain it was,” she said. The commander also asked about money on her bank card and in her house, which she later realized they stole, she said.
For days as they questioned her, the men accused her of lying about even basic information. In the end, after demanding details from her about how to extract and distribute natural gas in Izyum, the Russians said they were satisfied with her answers and that she and her husband would both be released — a decision the couple still does not fully understand.
On July 10, they were blindfolded and dumped at a gas station on the side of the road. After taking some time to heal, they fled through Russia, Belarus and Poland until they reached a part of Ukraine not occupied by Russia, where Alla received gynecological treatment due to her repeated assaults.
In September, days after Ukraine liberated Izyum, Alla and her husband returned to their hometown for the first time. With the Russians gone, their son has also been able to return. Leaning up against the wall outside their home, Alla turned to her husband.
“Did you believe them when they said they were raping me?” she asked him.
He paused. “I didn’t know what to believe,” he responded. He said he could only hope it wasn’t true and was some form of psychological torture the soldiers were using against him instead.
Two days later, they returned to the abandoned clinic where they were tortured just two months before.
Inside the main clinic building, where Alla and other detainees were tortured, the German words “Truth Sets You Free” were scrawled on the wall in what appeared to be a nod to the Nazis’ use of “Work Sets You Free” — the slogan on the gate to Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps.
Alla stepped into the shed where she was held, her eyes scanning the wall to look for the markings she left — some now scratched over in what she thinks was an effort to erase the truth of what the Russian forces did to her. She pulled back the covering on the boarded up window. She found the sedative packets on the floor. She pointed to the corner where she moved a brick to get light and fresh air — then the metal rods where she tried to hang herself.
In the garage where her husband was held, Alla found the filthy yellow foam mattress she had slept on, and the dirty clothes she used as a pillow.
Her ordeal was over but the trauma was not.
“We are Ukrainians. We were always for Ukraine,” she said. “For that, we were punished.”
Sergii Mukaieliants contributed to this report. | 2022-10-09T05:19:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Victim tells of rape and torture by Russian soldiers in occupied Izyum - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/09/izyum-rape-torture-occupation-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/09/izyum-rape-torture-occupation-russia/ |
Twitter's San Francisco headquarters on Oct. 6. The company has allowed employees to work remotely full time. (David Paul Morris/Bloomberg News)
The drop of $5,546, or 4.6 percent, was the largest decline by both dollar amount and percentage among the 25 most populous metropolitan areas in the country. The second highest was in the New York City area, which experienced a 4.2 percent — $3,321 — decline in median household income. The D.C. region saw a 1.4 percent drop, from $111,974 in 2019 to $110,355 in 2021.
The largest jump in either direction was in the sprawling Phoenix metropolitan area, where the median household income jumped 5.2 percent, from $71,954 in 2019 to $75,731 in 2021.
The exodus of wealth from San Francisco tracks with the area’s loss of population during the pandemic, which was also the largest in the country, as remote workers fled for less expensive locales like Miami or more remote areas like Teton County, Wyo., and as some major companies, such as Oracle and Charles Schwab, relocated their headquarters to Texas. From 2020 to 2021, San Francisco lost 54,813 people, or 6.3 percent of its population, according to the Census Bureau — the largest portion of population lost in a major U.S. city during the pandemic.
In pandemic’s first year, large cities shrank as South, West saw gains
Although the drop in median household income could cause problems for tax revenue in the future, San Francisco is expecting a budget surplus for fiscal years 2022-2023 and 2023-2024, Breed said in December, after she instructed departments to get “back to basics,” urging them to focus on pandemic recovery and “restoring the vibrancy” of San Francisco. In July, Breed signed a 2022-2023 budget that “prioritizes economic recovery, public safety, workers and families, homelessness and behavioral health needs.” Included is $7.2 million over two years dedicated solely to cleaning the Tenderloin neighborhood.
Still, as the dust of the pandemic is still settling across much of the nation, San Francisco’s downtown has been the slowest to recover among any city in the United States. According to a study by the University of California at Berkeley, downtown activity is at 31 percent of its pre-pandemic levels, the lowest among any large or medium-size U.S. city. That falls short of the 65 percent return in downtown D.C., 78 percent bounce in New York and 155 percent boom in Salt Lake City. | 2022-10-09T09:41:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | San Francisco area's pandemic wealth exodus largest in U.S., census says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/09/san-francisco-bay-area-income-pandemic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/09/san-francisco-bay-area-income-pandemic/ |
The measure includes subsidies for carbon capture projects that often promote more fossil fuel extraction
A “clean coal” project subsidized by the Department of Energy under President Barack Obama, the Petra Nova project in Texas fell short of its environmental targets and then closed after three years of operations in 2020. (Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg)
Yet after years of underwhelming results in carbon capture experimentation, this surge of cash strikes many climate scholars as predominantly a gift to fossil fuel, chemical and industrial agriculture companies seeking a lucrative route to rebrand as “green.” The vastly increased tax credit, which lobbyists of every major oil company pursued, will propel a technology that has failed to deliver in several prominent trials.
“We are spending a vast wad of money on this — huge government subsidies — and it often does not work,” said Bruce Robertson, an energy finance analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, an energy sustainability think tank. “It keeps coming back because the oil and gas industry is powerful politically. It sets the agenda on climate change.”
Oil refineries are making a windfall. Why do they keep closing?
The boosting of the subsidies by billions of dollars came as lawmakers and the Biden administration confronted a narrow path for meaningful climate action. Energy industry consent was crucial for this summer’s passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, championed by one of the industry’s staunchest allies, Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). Many climate activists overlooked what they saw as throwing good money after bad for carbon capture to win the massive investments in renewable energy and electric vehicles in the legislation.
The irony of carbon capture is that the place it has proven most successful is getting more oil out of the ground. All but one major project built in the United States to date is geared toward fossil fuel companies taking the trapped carbon and injecting it into underground wells to extract crude. A Wyoming project from Exxon was designed for oil extraction but has since been rebranded as a key component of the company’s decarbonization strategy, with Exxon boasting it has captured more CO2 than any facility in the world.
Occidental Petroleum would be able to use tens — and possibly hundreds — of millions of dollars of the subsidies in Texas for its plan to trap carbon that will then be injected into wells to extract what it calls “net-zero oil,” branding critics call brazenly misleading.
Such carbon capture operations have a questionable track record. During the Obama era, the Department of Energy spent $1.1 billion to help launch 11 demonstration projects. Only two of them are operational today. An Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis study of 13 of the world’s biggest projects, accounting for more than half the global carbon capture capacity, found that 10 of them are either underperforming by large margins — trapping as little as half the CO2 promised — or have shut down.
The city of New Orleans has seen enough. Unnerved by the technology’s spotty history, safety concerns around the compressed CO2-filled storage wells and pipelines it relies on, and the move by corporations to use it to rebrand heavily polluting projects as green, the City Council voted in June to outright ban carbon capture. The city’s resolution concludes the “technologies often act to enable, not diminish, carbon emissions.”
“Some of the same critiques we are now hearing about carbon capture were made about wind and solar power in the early 2000s,” said Brad Crabtree, who leads the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. Those heavily subsidized technologies overcame early, well-publicized troubles to become efficient drivers of climate action.
“We can and will do the same thing with carbon management technology,” Crabtree said.
Manchin’s office said in a statement that there is no “silver bullet” solution to climate change, and the new federal legislation aims to advance a variety of technologies that can curb emissions and enhance energy security.
“There haven’t been sufficient resources invested in this until now,” said Kurt Waltzer, CEO of the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit focused on confronting warming that has long championed carbon capture. “We are finally seeing the resources needed to drive this technology forward.”
The most notable is the Gorgon Project in northwest Australia, which Chevron is leading with Shell and Exxon. It is one of the largest natural gas extraction facilities in the world. The companies promised to divert 40 percent of the gas extraction operation’s CO2 emissions into a reservoir more than a mile deep.
“Innovation on this scale is not without its challenges, but the technology works,” said Bill Turenne, a spokesman for Chevron.
Company CEO Andrew Forrest calls Gorgon “an abject failure.”
“They promised to get rid of the carbon by shoving it down a hole,” he said in an interview. “So they got their huge project approved. Now that project is happily pumping carbon dioxide out into the atmosphere and the world is worse off because the carbon sequestration didn’t work.”
There is another problem researchers see at Gorgon and other operations like it, including ExxonMobil’s Shute Creek project in Wyoming, the 36-year-old natural gas extraction project the company boasts has captured more C02 than any place else.
“The perverse effect is to develop fields that are extraordinarily high in CO2,” Robertson said. “The net result is more CO2 gets into the atmosphere, not less.”
Exxon said in a statement it is spending $400 million to expand the facility so it can trap an additional 1.2 million tons of CO2 to be stored on public land, noting the Bureau of Land Management praised the company’s efforts.
“As more projects come online, we expect continued improvements in existing technology and industry’s ability to capture and store more CO2,” the Exxon statement said. The company said incentives like those in the Inflation Reduction Act “are critical to enabling deployment and infrastructure development at the pace and scale needed to help meet the goals of the Paris Agreement which we have supported since its inception.”
The company is spearheading a plan for a $100 billion carbon capture “hub” in the Houston Ship Channel that has attracted 10 partners, all of them oil, gas or petrochemical giants. Depending on the technologies used, the effort now has the potential to generate several billion dollars in subsidies.
The technology spawned the “clean coal” movement, with industry promising it could scrub the greenhouse gases from coal energy production. The Obama administration leaned on it to try to keep coal viable. The Department of Energy invested nearly a half-billion dollars in six “clean coal” projects that ultimately failed, according to a report from the Government Accountability Office.
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The company Next Decade recently turned to carbon capture after its plans to export natural gas from a proposed huge new terminal in Texas fell into limbo. An earlier iteration of the project, without carbon capture, threatened to be such a climate menace that a major potential buyer in Europe of the project’s natural gas had backed out of a tentative deal with the Next Decade, dimming the outlook for investment and regulatory approval.
“It’s puzzling how the federal government is justifying all this money for this,” said Beverly Wright, leader of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice and a guest this month at a decarbonization forum hosted by White House climate adviser Gina McCarthy and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. | 2022-10-09T10:55:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carbon capture subsidies promise a windfall for big oil and gas - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/09/carbon-capture-oil-gas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/09/carbon-capture-oil-gas/ |
Norma Lomax puts a flower on a headstone at the Congressional Cemetery in D.C., where a memorial ceremony was held on Saturday for those whose bodies were unclaimed in the past year. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
On a chilly October Saturday, Norma Lomax came to the Congressional Cemetery in Southeast Washington to say goodbye to her brother. She wore a pin emblazoned with his name, Alan J. Barnes, and an image of him superimposed on a cross floating in the clouds.
Unlike some famous people buried at the cemetery — FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, D.C. “mayor-for-life” Marion Barry — Barnes doesn’t have his own gravestone. He is one of hundreds interred in the past three years at Congressional through what the mortuary trade calls “public disposition” after their bodies went unclaimed.
Barnes said no relatives knew when her brother, who was 68, died at a D.C. hospital during the pandemic in 2020 without leaving family contact information. His ashes were interred with others at Congressional in 2021, and she only learned he had passed in February.
Now, he rests with others under a stone emblazoned with the seal of the D.C. Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
“He never married. He had no kids. He was just a loner,” Lomax said. “He’s not alone anymore.”
A dignified resting place awaits the poor and unfamous in a famous graveyard
The ceremony, conducted by the medical examiner’s office, is the third time in three years that the District honored those who died in the city whose bodies were not claimed. The annual ceremony, which officials estimate costs around $7,500, follows similar ones that began in 2019 and have resumed after a pandemic pause.
In an interview, D.C. Chief Medical Examiner Francisco J. Diaz paraphrased 19th century British politician William Gladstone: “The way a society treats its dead is a reflection on how the society treats its living.”
It’s important for people who lose a loved one to remember that this person was important, Diaz said. Survivors of those who receive public disposition sometimes seek out medical examiners decades later, searching for details of how they lived and died. Interment marked by some ritual can provide this needed closure.
“I think it’s a moment that a life, albeit briefly, is remembered, and remembered in the presence of people that care about them,” Diaz said.
Preparations for the ceremony began in July, when the city sent hand-signed letters to next of kin inviting them to Congressional. No gravediggers or forklifts were on hand — Lily Buerkle, Congressional’s director of site sales and funerals, said the ashes had already been interred in vaults beneath the ground.
At least in theory, according to Buerkle, a relative or loved one could come decades later to claim someone’s remains. They will be there — individually bagged and marked.
“Just because someone is unclaimed doesn’t mean they were an unloved member of their family,” Buerkle said. “Families lose touch for a lot a different reasons.”
Cost is also a consideration. The District provides burial assistance to those in need, with aid limited to $1,000 for a burial or $650 for a cremation. Even with this help, some families cannot afford to claim their “decedents,” as officials put it. Others whose bodies go unclaimed may not have a close circle of family or friends — or may simply have outlived everyone they know.
At Saturday’s ceremony, Rev. Thomas L. Bowen, director of the Mayor’s Office of Religious Affairs, addressed a crowd of about 50 people that included many members of Barnes’s family as well as advocates for the homeless, at least 69 of whom died in D.C. last year.
Before officials read the names of all 170 people who were being memorialized, Bowen said that none of Congressional’s celebrity burials was more important than those who receive public disposition.
“All of us should be afforded in death the things that we were perhaps not afforded in life,” he said.
Adams Morgan mourns a man who died homeless, steps from his childhood home
The day before the ceremony, Vikram Surya Chiruvolu navigated the costs and logistics many families could not: a trip to a funeral parlor to pick up a loved one’s remains.
Chiruvolu, a computer-scientist-turned-counselor, has worked with other advocates for unhoused people to call attention to the death of Miguel Gonzales. Gonzales, who grew up in Adams Morgan, died on a street blocks from his childhood home on a cold March night earlier this year.
When Chiruvolu learned Gonzales faced public disposition if his remains were not claimed, he paid the medical examiner’s $485 cremation fee and drove his 2012 Ford Expedition Limited an hour south of the District to Heaven Bound Cremation Services in White Plains, Md.
There, in a pink and teal office behind a Jamaican restaurant and a nail salon, Chiruvolu signed a form to claim Gonzales’s ashes. Within moments, all that was left of a man who was once a neighborhood fixture was delivered in a black box in a black tote bag bearing the crematory’s name and a certificate of cremation that read: “Michael E. Gonzales.”
Little more than 10 minutes later, Chiruvolu was on his way back to D.C. Later this month, he plans to have Gonzales, who has no known living family, interred in Maryland with the woman who raised him. He’s also arranging for DNA analysis in the hopes that Gonzales’s living relatives can be found.
Though Chiruvolu had prevented Gonzales’s public disposition, he attended Saturday’s ceremony anyway to honor others like him. He can’t be sure Gonzales, or any of the dead, know what is done with their bodies — what great effort and expense it can be to ensure someone has a proper burial.
It just felt right to be there, according to Chiruvolu.
“This physical plane is not the be-all-end-all,” he said. “We’re bound to each other by something more than what’s readily, physically present.” | 2022-10-09T11:47:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 170 dead bodies went unclaimed in D.C. Now the city is honoring them. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/09/unclaimed-bodies-congressional-cemetery-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/09/unclaimed-bodies-congressional-cemetery-dc/ |
Abortion measure brings a hint of uncertainty to California’s midterms
Proposition 1 would add the right to abortion to the state’s constitution. Will it also impact tight congressional races?
Residents arrive at a town hall meeting with Democrat Christy Smith in Santa Clarita, Calif., in September. She is facing Republican Mike Garcia in the 27th Congressional District. (Karla Gachet for The Washington Post)
SANTA CLARITA, Calif. — This is quintessential Southern California suburbia, low stucco homes with front-yard lemon trees, soccer fields so safe the goal nets never come down, the blue-ribbon elementary school just across the street.
It is a visual time-capsule of the neighborhoods that grew up and out north of Los Angeles with the post-World War II aerospace boom, safe and prosperous for decades and now vulnerable to circumstances rising in its toss-up House contest.
A high school shooting here almost three years ago killed three students, including the one who pulled the handgun’s trigger between classes. Economic anxiety is commonplace. Water shortages have left front yards and the sharp hills that surround the city a parched, dusty tan.
This year, though, the race between a first-term Republican and the same Democratic challenger he narrowly defeated two years ago is also a prime test of California’s activist approach on the resurgent issue of abortion after the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The state budget passed this summer included $200 million in public funds for abortion services, including $20 million to help defray the travel costs of poor women from newly restrictive states seeking the procedure in California. The state now operates a website designed to help women, inside and outside the state, navigate the array of abortion services California offers.
And, alarmed that the Supreme Court decision showed that rights not specifically guaranteed could be lost, Democratic lawmakers rushed to place on the November ballot an amendment to the state constitution that would explicitly protect abortion rights.
Proposition 1, as the measure appears on the ballot, is heading to an easy victory, according to several recent polls, with support even from a significant chunk of Republicans statewide.
But how the amendment will affect other races in the state — particularly a handful of competitive congressional contests — has puzzled political analysts, largely because it is uncertain what type of people the amendment might inspire to vote. Several national political observers rate this race a toss-up, one of roughly five of 53 congressional contests in the state considered highly competitive, meaning that even slight variations in the electorate are potentially meaningful.
Democrats, confident that the amendment will drive up party turnout in an off-presidential year election, have promoted the ballot measure. But others see risks that the amendment, along with the high-profile steps to expand abortion access taken by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and other state officials, will bring out Republicans who, in a funk of futility, might have otherwise sat out the race. If so, Democrats may have inadvertently and unnecessarily made themselves vulnerable at the margins in key contests.
“I think the extreme position does not play well in these districts, and Republicans have traditionally painted themselves into that corner,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican political strategist who is not working on the Proposition 1 campaign or the congressional contest here. “But that image shifts with Newsom talking about California as a sanctuary state for abortions. That may not sit well with more moderate voters.”
At a recent town hall here at Wiley Canyon Elementary School, Democratic enthusiasm for the issue among those in line to hear Christy Smith, the Democratic challenger, was plain to see.
Linda Lott, a retiree, wore a T-shirt featuring the outline of coat hanger with the words “this is not a medical instrument” written beneath. Campaign volunteers wore pink T-shirts reading “Smith 27 Pro-Choice,” the number referring to the congressional district at stake.
“I’m 44 years old, and this is the only world I have ever known,” said Cindy Maynard, a health-care worker with a 10-year-old daughter, as she leaned against the school’s breeze-block wall. “And I can’t believe that today my daughter is growing up in another place.”
Rep. Mike Garcia (R), a former Navy fighter pilot and Iraq War veteran who opposed certifying the 2020 presidential election, stresses the uncertain economy, the over-$6-a-gallon gas prices, rising homelessness and crime in his public appearances and on his campaign website. Abortion is a subject he has largely avoided.
Garcia defeated Smith in 2020 by 333 votes, making it the third-closest congressional race in the country that year. This race is taking place in a newly drawn district more Democratic than it was when Garcia triumphed. It is also occurring in a more unpredictable environment since the Supreme Court’s June decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“California is obviously a liberal state, a state that has been very supportive of Roe v. Wade,” said Richard Temple, the chief political strategist for the “No on Proposition 1” campaign. “But the recent ruling has opened up questions about abortions in large and small ways, and there are voters in the state, including Democratic voters, who differentiate on the issue in these ways.”
Democrats, who hold a 2-to-1 edge statewide in voter registration over Republicans, dismiss that possibility.
Newsom has been picking political fights with Republican governors to heighten his national appeal, and in doing so, has made abortion virtually the centerpiece of his reelection campaign.
Last month, he signed a dozen abortion-related bills, including one that has raised deep concern among antiabortion activists because it protects doctors and patients from criminal charges or civil litigation for complications that lead to a fetus’s death before birth. It also prohibits a coroner’s death certification from being used in criminal proceedings against patients in such cases.
With only nominal opposition in November from a Northern California Republican state senator, Newsom has also dipped into his campaign account to elevate the issue. Most recently, he rented 18 billboards in various Republican states now restricting abortion rights, showcasing California as the place to come for the procedure.
“California is ready to help,” reads one billboard, among a series that also feature images of women in handcuffs.
But the question of why Proposition 1 is needed — why the Democrat-dominated legislature didn’t simply leave well-enough alone — continues to trouble some abortion rights advocates in a state where access to the procedure is under no threat at all. Abortion is legal here until a fetus is determined to be “viable” — able to survive outside the womb — and after that with medical approval.
“Democrats don’t seem to understand the law of unintended consequences,” wrote the author Wendy Voorsanger in an essay for CalMatters, a news site that covers state politics. “Or perhaps they don’t comprehend the fierce determination of Republicans to eliminate women’s reproductive rights.”
Those pushing for the measure say it will add a necessary level of protection by specifically naming abortion as a protected right, citing the Supreme Court ruling as an example of the ease with which a law rather than explicit constitutional guarantees can be overturned.
“If we have learned anything by the Dobbs decision it is that the right to privacy is no longer enough,” said Jodi Hicks, the chief executive and president of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California and co-chairperson of the “Yes on Proposition 1” campaign.
“What we know is that patients are confused, not only in California but those coming here from other states,” she said. “California must continue to be a beacon of hope amid this confusion and fear, and passing this proposition is a way to send that message loud and clear.”
Susan Swift, vice president of legal affairs for the antiabortion Right to Life League, called the proposition “at best, virtue signaling by pro-abort legislators.”
“But at worst it opens the door to a host of unforeseen consequences because of its overly broad, very vague wording,” Swift said. “The broad granting of this right will encourage exploitation.”
The antiabortion movement has interpreted the proposition’s text to mean that no limits — including on late-term abortions — can be enforced if the measure passes. Swift goes further, saying any sexual act, including illicit ones between adults and minors, could be deemed legal if courts find that a prohibition interferes with the couple’s “reproductive freedom.”
Proponents say the additional constitutional protection preserves the right of lawmakers and state courts to regulate abortion — addressing, if needed, some of the more extreme hypotheticals that opponents raise. But any future changes to an explicit constitutional right would require a far greater level of judicial scrutiny from the courts than if abortion access only existed as a privacy right subject to interpretation.
“What Dobbs did was kick abortion down to a more general category of rights that no longer needed that high standard,” said Cary Franklin, director of the Center on Reproductive Health, Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law. “The amendment prevents Dobbs from happening in California.”
Beyond the legal questions, Swift and other antiabortion rights advocates say the Supreme Court ruling has inspired the Republican base here.
“We know it’s possible now,” Swift said. “There is no more Roe fig leaf, and I know the energy is very much on the red side right now.”
But polling suggests otherwise. In addition to Proposition 1 securing about 70 percent support, according to the most recent statewide survey by the Public Policy Institute of California, a higher proportion of Democrats called the issue “more important” than Republicans did.
In the 27th District, the debate around the proposition has added even more uncertainty.
Garcia’s skin-of-the-teeth victory over Smith turned the district from blue to red, part of a shifting control between the parties here since the 2014 departure of Rep. Buck McKeon (R), who represented northern Los Angeles County and a conservative slice of southern Ventura County for more than two decades.
After defeating the Republican incumbent in 2018 in the district then labeled the 25th, Democrat Katie Hill held the seat for less than a year until she was forced to resign after acknowledging a prohibited sexual relationship with a campaign staff member. Garcia won a special election to replace her before his November 2020 victory over Smith.
While the new 27th District is more favorable to Democrats, one in five of the district’s voters are unaffiliated with either party, an independent streak that could determine the outcome of the race.
At Smith’s recent town hall here, about 50 or so interested residents settled into folding metal seats in a bright, if warm, auditorium for a moderated Q&A session with the candidate. Water was passed out. Hand fans fluttered near faces.
The notecard questions sought Smith’s positions on climate regulations and “girls” rights, covid-19 restrictions and gun-control initiatives, rancorous partisanship and the rising threat to voting rights and other democratic institutions.
Abortion rights arose twice during the roughly 70-minute event, and Smith’s support for them drew strong applause. Smith is the mother of two daughters, both born after high-risk pregnancies, a story she shares on the campaign trail.
“This issue is incredibly personal to me,” she said in a backstage interview after the event.
Since the Supreme Court ruling, Smith has elevated abortion access as a primary issue in her campaign. Her advertising on social media, some of it critical of her opponent’s record, reflects her view that a strong majority of the district supports abortion rights.
“I would not back off of this even if that weren’t the case,” said Smith, who is 53. “This is a very galvanizing issue for voters, and we have found that it is appealing to voters who may not usually vote in midterm elections.”
Garcia’s decision to mute the abortion discussion in his campaign stands in contrast with his well-defined record against it.
Soon after taking office in 2020, he co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, which granted legal protections for the fetus from the moment of conception. Garcia also signed an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn Roe, and he has opposed several other bills to protect abortion access, including the ability of women to travel to other states to have the procedure.
But immediately after the Dobbs opinion was issued, Garcia released a statement emphasizing that the court had placed the issue in states’ hands.
“As Californians, even after this ruling, you will continue to live under the same laws and access to abortion,” the statement said. Garcia declined to be interviewed for this story.
Ron Bischof attended a recent Garcia town hall, and on a quiet Sunday, he lined up to see what Smith had to say in hers. He said many of the questions Garcia received focused on inflation, crime and the economy, issues Garcia is stressing most.
Bischof is 64 and retired from a Fortune 500 company, the father of three sons, whose chief concerns are protecting Second Amendment rights, improving the economy and reducing the size of government. He was a “no party preference” voter before 2016, then signed up as a Republican.
He said he appreciated Garcia’s endorsement of what Bischof called “constitutional government,” meaning, fundamentally, the smaller the better. “And he’s quite critical of California, which is de facto one-party rule,” Bischof said.
As for abortion access, he said the issue ranks “very low” among his concerns. While he will vote “no” on Proposition 1, he said, “I’m not opposed to it being on the ballot to let citizens decide.”
Many others waiting with Bischof listed the threat to voting rights, faltering transportation infrastructure and a rapidly changing climate as top concerns. For most, though, abortion access remains a chief reason to vote for the ballot measure and Democrats for federal office.
“I don’t even list abortion protections on my list of concerns,” said Kathryn Marsailes, who is 66 and a senior graphics designer at the California Science Center, as she waited to enter the town hall. “I almost can’t say it because, at my age, I just can’t believe it’s even in danger again. It’s a fundamental human right.” | 2022-10-09T14:37:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Abortion measure brings a hint of unease to California’s midterms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/09/abortion-proposition-california-midterms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/09/abortion-proposition-california-midterms/ |
Rep. Anthony G. Brown on Capitol Hill in 2021. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
In this fall’s race for Maryland attorney general, Democratic U.S. Rep. Anthony G. Brown, an Army veteran with impressive state and federal government experience, is a thoughtful and prepared candidate who would responsibly wield the broad powers of the office he seeks. He would pursue an agenda representing continuity with Brian Frosh, the retiring Democratic incumbent, who is one of Maryland’s most broadly respected public servants.
The Republican candidate, Michael Anthony Peroutka, is ill-suited for public office. An attorney who served a term on the Anne Arundel County Council, he has expressed the belief that “Dixie” is the true national anthem; that public schools are a “plank in the Communist manifesto”; that biblical precepts trump state law; and that Maryland officials should be criminally prosecuted for covid-19 public health measures — “atrocities,” in Mr. Peroutka’s view. The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he said, were an inside job; he has also argued that the pandemic was somehow planned.
The Post endorses Mr. Brown.
Having been elected to Congress in 2016, he mounted his campaign for attorney general this year on a solid platform that emphasizes public safety and crime, with an eye on the epidemic of gun violence that has wracked Baltimore. Along those lines, he would push for an overhaul of Maryland’s broken juvenile justice system, which is widely perceived as adept mainly at turning minors into repeat offenders.
Mr. Brown, who served two terms as the state’s lieutenant governor, also spent 30 years in the Army and Army Reserve as an aviator and lawyer before retiring as a colonel. He earned a Bronze Star in 2004 while deployed to Iraq, where he was one of the nation’s highest-ranking elected officials to serve a tour of duty.
That background has informed Mr. Brown’s tenure over the past six years in Congress, where he has served on the House Armed Services Committee. In that capacity, he pushed for tougher reporting requirements in military prosecutions, requiring record keeping on defendants’ race, ethnicity, gender, age and rank, in order to to spot bias, and he added muscle to investigations and prosecutions in sexual assault cases.
Mr. Brown’s agenda reflects the wide-ranging authorities of the attorney general’s office, which is staffed by more than 450 lawyers plus support personnel. It handles litigation and prosecutions on the state’s behalf, covering civil rights, environmental crimes, consumer protection, antitrust and Medicaid and investment fraud. The office is also responsible for defending the state and its duly enacted laws. Mr. Peroutka — who opposes abortion without exceptions — has said he would not defend Maryland’s abortion statute, which permits the procedure up to the moment of fetal viability.
For Maryland voters, the choice is easy; a victory for Mr. Brown would be a credit to the state. | 2022-10-09T14:42:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Endorsement for Maryland attorney general: Anthony Brown - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/anthony-brown-maryland-attorney-general-endorsement-2022/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/anthony-brown-maryland-attorney-general-endorsement-2022/ |
The paradoxes of Gavin Newsom
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) talks to reporters in Sacramento on Friday. (Rich Pedroncelli/AP)
Let’s explore the paradoxes of Gavin Newsom.
By taking on his right-wing Republican counterparts in Florida and Texas, California’s Democratic governor has gone national in a big way — and earned the gratitude of many in his party who are tired of being pushed around.
Newsom doesn’t regret his public war with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, but he does speak of it somewhat wistfully, as a task he really wishes he didn’t have to undertake. In an interview Friday, he distinguished between “the person that I want to be versus the person I’m becoming.”
Taking on DeSantis, Abbott and the right, he says, is “a tactic to meet this moment. And so, yes, I’m pushing back. … I’m trying to change the narrative because I think they’re dominating the narrative.”
He speaks with pride at having joined former president Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, in June to call out what he called “the red-state murder problem,” a reference to the fact that eight of the 10 states with the highest murder rates happened to have voted Republican in every election since 2000.
But Newsom insists that he’s weary of “how polarized we’ve become, how traumatized we’ve become through this pandemic, being so socially distant from each other in every way, and how tribalism is dominant.”
What you might call The Newsom Tension is reflected in the reason he reached out to have a conversation — not because he wanted to press on with his boisterous, attention-grabbing sparring with the GOP’s Sun Belt duo, or to reinforce his efforts on behalf of abortion and LGBTQ rights, but to plug what he called his “proudest moment” as governor:
Friday saw the swearing-in of the first 3,200 members of the state’s new College Corps, which pays low-income students $10,000 annually for undertaking service jobs. The students come from 46 campuses and will serve in 600 different community organizations.
Perhaps it’s a comment on our bitter moment that Newsom’s innovative approach to service is likely to be of wide interest primarily as a counterpoint to his political pugilism. But it’s a cause he’s passionate about. He names Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace Corps, as his hero, and his administration has a chief service officer — not your standard bureaucratic post.
Josh Fryday, the Navy veteran and former small-city mayor who holds the job, hopes other states will imitate a program he sees as a next-generation GI Bill. “If you are willing to serve your community,” Fryday says, “we are willing to help you pay for school.”
Newsom freely acknowledges “going back and forth” between the “clenched fist” of partisan warfare and warmer feelings inspired by “these remarkable kids that just don’t care about that, they still care about something bigger than that.”
The man who has relished taking it to the likes of DeSantis and Abbott insists he’d prefer a more peaceable republic. “At a certain point we’re all exhausted,” he says. “At a certain point, this has to end. It’s just too much. … How do we get out of this?” One path out, he thinks, is compulsory national service, drawing citizens together to combat the loss of a “common story” and a “common experience.”
There are other Newsom paradoxes. He is, in many ways, a moderate. In describing his service program, he reaches back to the decades-old slogan of the centrist (and now-defunct) Democratic Leadership Council: “Opportunity, Responsibility, Community.” He referred to himself as a businessperson five times in a roughly 45-minute interview.
Yet he roundly defends his state’s highly progressive tax structure and signed into law a raft of progressive bills. They include pro-labor laws on behalf of fast-food workers and farmworkers; a major climate package; generous new family-leave benefits for lower-income workers; and legal protections for transgender youth. He is particularly proud that the state has set up college savings accounts for low-income children.
Newsom is fond of “mantras” — his word — that sand down frictions: “growth and inclusion,” for example, or “diversity and dynamism.” He praises President Biden for offering a “master class of substance” but can also scold fellow Democrats. “We have a completely broken immigration system,” he says. “Where the hell is my party in that?”
And the biggest tension of all? After turning himself into a national player, Newsom, who has a big lead in his reelection race, insists tenaciously that he is not running for president. “Look, there’s nothing special about me,” he says. “I’m a guy that got 960 on my SAT and struggled to read.”
“I’m getting invitations now to all of these barbecues and dinners,” he adds. “And I’m turning them down because if I turn up, then no one, including myself, will believe anything I say.”
Maybe it’s one more paradox: Such words won’t stop Democrats fed up with Republican bullies from keeping his inbox busy. | 2022-10-09T14:42:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Newsom's war on GOP governors is part of a paradox - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/gavin-newsom-desantis-abbott-war-paradox/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/gavin-newsom-desantis-abbott-war-paradox/ |
Jeffrey Clark, then-assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division, speaks at a news conference at the Justice Department on Sept. 14, 2020. (Susan Walsh/AP)
One of the most troubling aspects of the lawless Trump era has been the conduct of so many lawyers who cast aside their professional obligations and brought frivolous suits on behalf of a defeated president. Some actively participated in the coup plot.
Clark, you might recall, tried to wheedle his way into the post of acting attorney general and encouraged Trump’s notion that the election could be reversed. Clark put together a letter seeking to cajole states to invalidate the choices of their voters by appointing alternate slates of electors.
The draft began with this blatant lie: “The Department of Justice is investigating various irregularities in the 2020 election for President of the United States. The Department will update you as we are able on investigatory progress, but at this time we have identified significant concerns that may have impacted the outcome of the election in multiple States, including the State of Georgia.” That’s false. There were never significant concerns about the validity of the count. He continued, “No doubt many of Georgia’s state legislators are aware of irregularities, sworn to by a variety of witnesses, and we have taken notice of their complaints.” There were no such irregularities.
This letter, which he presumably intended to send to a batch of states, would have thrown those electoral ballots into disarray. Thankfully, his superiors refused to go along with the stunt. But Clark continued to plead with President Donald Trump to replace the acting attorney general and allow him to send the letters. The only reason Trump did not do so is because Justice officials warned him that it would have resulted in mass resignations.
Now Clark is being called to account for his conduct. Ethics guru Norman Eisen, who served as co-counsel for the House Judiciary Committee during Trump’s first impeachment, helped draft a complaint letter that may have precipitated the bar investigation. Simply put, Eisen tells me, “Legal ethics rules do not contemplate attempted coups as a permissible activity” for lawyers.
The bar could determine that Clark violated ethics rules prohibiting “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation” and engaged in conduct that “seriously interferes with the administration of justice” (i.e., counting electoral votes and peaceful transition of power).
Eisen’s complaint letter makes a powerful argument:
Mr. Clark’s proposed letter was an official request by the Department of Justice of the United States for the Georgia Legislature to call itself into session and substitute its own presidential electors for those chosen by Georgia citizens. It was based on fabricated and fictional concerns. Even worse, Mr. Clark proposed to Messrs. Rosen and Donoghue that the Department of Justice send a similar letter to other unnamed states without any evidence, so far as appears in the public record, that the certifications resulting from similar administrative processes in those states were unreliable.
It is difficult to think of graver, more disruptive or more consequential interference with the administration of justice than what Mr. Clark was proposing. Simply to state his proposal is to comprehend the disruptive chaos such a letter would produce as it either shredded public confidence in carefully examined, tested and certified election results or shook confidence in the fairness and impartiality of the Department of Justice itself. . . . Mr. Clark attempted in an unprecedented way to ‘engage in conduct that seriously interferes with the administration of justice.’
Clark has denied wrongdoing and has argued that the bar lacks jurisdiction over government lawyers.
Reuters reported, “Hamilton ‘Phil’ Fox, the head of the D.C. bar’s Office of Disciplinary Counsel, disclosed his plans to call former Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen and former Acting Deputy Attorney General Rich Donoghue as witnesses during a D.C. bar ethics committee hearing on Thursday.” Given their damning testimony before the House Jan. 6, 2021, select committee, in which they explained that Clark had no basis for pursuing his scheme, this likely will not go well for Clark.
At the hearing on Thursday before a three-attorney panel, Clark’s counsel advanced the notion that it is not illegal to make a dumb suggestion. Fox agreed, but much more is at issue here. Not only has federal district court found probable cause to search Clark’s phone, but another federal judge, David O. Carter, has already signaled that it is likely Trump and his allies, including Trump lawyer John Eastman, engaged in illegal conduct. If Eastman’s conduct in cooking up the phony elector plot and effort to steal the presidency likely violated federal law, according to Carter, Clark may have a tough time explaining how his aspect of the scheme was a perfectly legal suggestion.
Clark has not been indicted, and his bar disciplinary process has only begun. Nevertheless, his case should serve as a flashing red light to other attorneys: If you participate in an effort to subvert an election, knowing there is no evidence of fraud, or misrepresent facts to federal investigators, you’re putting yourself in legal jeopardy — and possibly at risk of losing your law license.
For trying to uphold the standards of the legal profession and preserving the guardrails of democracy, we can say to the D.C. Bar, the attorneys who filed a complaint letter and Mr. Fox, well done. | 2022-10-09T14:42:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Finally some accountability for lawyers who assisted Trump's coup plot - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/jeffrey-clark-dc-bar-ethics-hearing-accountability/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/jeffrey-clark-dc-bar-ethics-hearing-accountability/ |
Yet another lawsuit shows how abortion bans violate religious freedom
Abortion rights supporters chant at the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort on April 13. (Bruce Schreiner/AP)
In July I wrote about a lawsuit in Florida challenging the state’s abortion ban on the grounds that it violates the religious beliefs of Jews — and members of other faiths — who do not believe in the Christian dogma that human life begins at conception. Now, three Jewish women from Kentucky have filed a similar suit.
One of the plaintiffs is undergoing in vitro fertilization. Another one is storing nine embryos. And another is “of advanced maternal age and faces many risk factors if she chooses to have a third child,” the complaint explains. It adds, “Individuals of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry have a heightened risk of passing on genetic anomalies, like Tay-Sachs disease, for which there is no cure and the average life span of those with the condition is four years of age.”
Yet Kentucky’s abortion law, the complaint argues, would arguably make both an abortion after genetic counseling or the destruction of IVF embryos capital murder.
Contrary to the officiousness of the right-wing Supreme Court justices, who seem not to understand that they applied their own religious views in their ruling overturning abortion rights, the complaint explains:
Judaism has never defined life beginning at conception. Jewish views on the beginning of life originate in the Torah. ... Millenia of commentary from Jewish scholars has reaffirmed Judaism’s commitment to reproductive rights.
Under Jewish law, a fetus does not become a human being or child until birth. Under no circumstances has Jewish law defined a human being or child as the moment that a human spermatozoon fuses with a human ovum.
The question of when life begins for a human being is a religious and philosophical question without universal beliefs across different religions.
The last sentence is key. The so-called state interest in preserving “fetal life” depends on the assumption that a fetus deserves the same protection as a toddler. But for Jews, “the necessity of protecting birth givers in the event a pregnancy endangers the woman’s life and causes the mother physical and mental harm” must control. Moreover, “the law forces Plaintiffs to spend exorbitant fees to keep their embryos frozen indefinitely or face potential felony charges.”
For that reason, the complaint alleges that the Kentucky abortion law violates the First Amendment and the state constitutional protection for religious freedom — as well as the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The latter part of the lawsuit may become moot should Kentucky voters pass a ballot measure that would declare the state constitution does not protect abortion access. But, in any case, forcing others to comply with the religious-based edicts of one sect flies in the face of the constitutional guarantee of free religious expression.
The complaint also alleges that the Kentucky law should be void for vagueness under the 5th and 14th Amendments. As with so many laws triggered by Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that predate modern medicine, it’s not clear whether the law requires preservation of the embryos. Moreover, the complaint argues, Kentucky’s abortion law “does not impose clear standards, rules, or regulations regarding the potential experiences of potential birth givers with regards to their access to reproductive technology.”
Regardless of whether the lawsuit succeeds, it raises three critical issues that apply in legal challenges to abortion bans. First, it pulls back the curtain to reveal that judges are acting on a religious, not scientific, view of personhood. The arrogance in assuming that everyone buys into a specific Christian sectarian viewpoint reveals the degree to which right-wing courts and legislatures ignore or disfavor Americans who are not Christian. It’s critical to force politicians, media, pundits, doctors, researchers and ordinary voters to recognize this.
Second, the lawsuit makes clear the negative impact on IVF, which was not in existence when many state abortion bans were passed in the 19th or early 20th century. The current crop of state lawmakers and Supreme Court justices seems willfully oblivious to the implications for such reproductive care. Do they really want to make a commonly used process for procreation effectively impossible?
Finally, it’s not just the Kentucky law that is vague to the point of unintelligibility. Many state statutes use vague, nonmedical terms to put doctors and patients in untenable positions. Should physicians render care to a pregnant woman experiencing a dangerous pregnancy, risking prosecution under the opaque language of a 19th-century law, or should they let the patient’s condition become so acute that she might fit within an exception for preservation of her life? The uncertainty these laws have imposed seems designed to chill the willingness of doctors to provide care, even if it turns out to be legal.
If the Kentucky lawsuit forces state legislators to wrestle with the real harm and chaos these laws have created, then it will be a success. Good thing that there is an election less than a month away. | 2022-10-09T14:42:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Yet another lawsuit shows how abortion bans violate religious freedom - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/kentucky-abortion-lawsuit-jewish-religious-freedom/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/kentucky-abortion-lawsuit-jewish-religious-freedom/ |
By Michael R. Strain
British Prime Minister Liz Truss speaks at the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham on Oct. 5. (Isabel Infantes/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Michael R. Strain is the director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.
Prime Minister Liz Truss declared that she wants Britain “to do things differently.” At the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham last week, she acknowledged that her efforts to achieve this have produced substantial political and market volatility. “Whenever there is change,” she said, “there is disruption.”
That is an understatement. In reaction to her proposals to cut taxes and subsidize energy costs, the pound plunged and gilt yields soared. Economists expressed concern about the sustainability of U.K. debt. Some political commentators called for her premiership to come to a swift end.
But markets and commentators have wildly overreacted. Much of what Truss has proposed is perfectly sensible.
The prime minister is absolutely right to focus on economic growth. Britain is the only Group of Seven country with a smaller economy today than in the fourth quarter of 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic. In the 40 quarters preceding the pandemic, its economy grew at an annual rate of less than 2 percent more than half the time.
Several of the prime minister’s proposals would likely boost economic growth by increasing private investment in Britain, which has been troublingly low for years and lags behind that in other nations. The government’s tax plan would cancel a scheduled increase in the corporate tax rate to 25 percent from 19 percent and would make permanent a temporary increase in the annual investment allowance, letting businesses deduct the full cost of qualifying plants and machinery up to 1 million pounds in the first year.
These changes, by increasing after-tax returns, would strengthen investment over the longer term, which in turn would boost productivity. This is much needed, as weak productivity growth threatens wages, incomes and mobility. In addition, Truss’s plan calls for reviewing ways to expand tax relief for research and development expenses as a way to support the basic research that fuels long-term prosperity.
The prime minister’s plan also involves deregulation. For example, Truss would accelerate the completion of infrastructure projects by reducing the scope of environmental impact assessments. She would also reduce the tax on property transactions, creating a more fluid housing market and increasing economic efficiency and labor mobility.
The most questionable parts of the plan are the income tax cuts. Reducing the basic rate of income tax by one percentage point, to 19 percent, will fuel consumption at a time when the Bank of England is attempting to curb inflation. But after concerning rhetoric during the leadership election about the independence of the central bank, the prime minister was clear: “It is right that interest rates are independently set by the Bank of England and that politicians do not decide on this.”
The prime minister’s proposal to eliminate the 45 percent tax bracket on incomes above 150,000 pounds per year — the top 1.1 percent — was also unwise in the current fiscal and economic environment, heavily criticized and ultimately scrapped. “I get it and I have listened,” Truss said.
The energy subsidies are hard for an economist to swallow. By shielding the public from high prices, they would reduce incentive to change behavior: turning off the lights when you leave a room, donning an extra sweater. But other European countries are pursuing broadly similar policies, and there are simply no good solutions for the government when average household energy bills are set to spike because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And these subsidies are not economic stimulus — they merely shift the responsibility for absorbing high energy costs from the private to the public sector.
So yes, there are legitimate grounds here for concern and criticism. But Britain is not collapsing. In fact, there is much here to support.
Fortunately, the hyperbole seems to have subsided, and markets have stabilized. Following an intervention by the Bank of England to provide emergency liquidity to the financial system and the government’s decision not to scrap the 45 percent rate, the pound recovered its losses. Britain’s 10-year borrowing rate is less than half a percentage point above the U.S. rate — a relatively small gap.
But stability isn’t enough. The plan’s rollout was botched and created a credibility crisis for the government. Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor of the exchequer, must convince markets and the public that their plan is reasonable. They need to explain why the energy subsidies are the best of a set of bad options, and why their tax and regulatory changes will boost growth.
Credibility also requires them to clearly state where they plan to cut spending to move toward fiscal balance. And the government needs to flesh out its plans for deregulating child care, agriculture, infrastructure, housing and land use.
In Birmingham, Truss took off the green eyeshades: “Low growth isn’t just numbers on a spreadsheet.” Indeed, slow growth means fewer opportunities for economic advancement. It means conflict over distribution. It means workers’ talents underutilized and energy untapped. It means dimmed aspirations and more modest dreams for the future.
Truss’s economic agenda is a work in progress. It got off to a bad start. But by focusing on growth, the prime minister is clearly pushing Britain in the right direction. | 2022-10-09T14:42:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Liz Truss’s focus on economic growth is what the U.K. needs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/liz-trusss-economic-plan-caused-furor-its-actually-sound/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/liz-trusss-economic-plan-caused-furor-its-actually-sound/ |
Pedestrian killed in Chantilly area of Fairfax early Sunday
The victim is the latest in a deadly week on D.C.-area streets
A pedestrian was struck and killed early Sunday in Fairfax County, police said.
The crash on West Ox Road, near Legato Road in the Chantilly area, was the latest in a string of deadly crashes involving pedestrians in the Washington area.
Fairfax police said the pedestrian was pronounced dead at the scene and the driver who struck the person remained on-site. A section of southbound West Ox Road closed several hours Sunday at Lee Jackson Memorial Highway, as authorities investigated the crash. No other information about the collision, including the victim’s name, has been released.
Two other pedestrians were killed Saturday on the region’s roads. In the Williamsburg area of Arlington, police said 85-year-old Gwendolyn Hayes was walking along Little Falls Road around 9 a.m. when she was struck. She died at a hospital, police said. Then around 7:15 p.m., a driver struck and killed a man at Piscataway and Temple Hills roads in the Clinton area of Prince George’s County. Police have not identified the victim.
At least three pedestrians have been killed on Fairfax County streets over the past week, including one in a crash early Thursday along Route 1 at the Tulley Gate entrance to Fort Belvoir. A week ago, 74-year-old Dalchoon Park died after being struck by a driver as she crossed the street in the Annandale area. The driver fled the scene. | 2022-10-09T15:17:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fairfax fatal crash is latest involving pedestrians in DC area - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/09/dc-area-pedestrian-fatalities/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/09/dc-area-pedestrian-fatalities/ |
Losing my father to Alzheimer’s felt like losing him twice
Perspective by Sharee Miller
When I lost my father to Alzheimer’s, I grieved the loss of him and all the memories we would no longer be able to make together. But through my grief, I still find comfort in the memories we were able to make while he was still here. | 2022-10-09T15:25:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Losing my father to Alzheimer’s felt like losing him twice - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/09/losing-my-father-alzheimers-felt-like-losing-him-twice/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/09/losing-my-father-alzheimers-felt-like-losing-him-twice/ |
Asking the hard questions about nuclear energy
The Olkiluoto nuclear power plant on the island of Eurajoki, Finland, on Oct. 6. (Olivier Morin/AFP/Getty Images)
The Oct. 4 Style article “The world of ‘nuclear bros’ ” sought to explain the reasoning of some members of the environmental activist community who favor nuclear energy. Essentially, readers were told, nuclear energy is clean energy because it does not burn fossil fuels. Readers were left wondering why other environmentalists do not embrace nuclear energy. Readers were told that those who do not support nuclear energy are needlessly afraid. (Such people are afraid of the “unnatural” and the “mad scientist.”) Only once was an opponent of nuclear power, Erich Pica, quoted as saying that the problems of waste and aging reactors haven’t been solved. Nowhere was there any mention of the obvious nuclear disasters (such as Three Mile Island), the toxicity and the half-life of nuclear waste, or the neighborhoods where this waste is stored. Nor were readers given an explanation of why renewables can never meet our needs.
Without answers to those questions, I am still struggling to understand the logic of “nuclear bros.”
Jill McGowan, Silver Spring | 2022-10-09T16:18:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Asking the hard questions about nuclear energy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/asking-hard-questions-about-nuclear-energy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/asking-hard-questions-about-nuclear-energy/ |
The nuances of abortion
Antiabortion demonstrators march on Jan. 21 during the March for Life in D.C. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
In her Oct. 4 Style column, “The one point abortion rights activists must keep making,” Monica Hesse made a long and complex argument to advance a view that almost no one holds — and for good reason. Unborn children, by the author’s logic, deserve no legal protections — ever — including right up until delivery. That’s a position taken by 10 percent of the population, according to a recent Harvard CAPS-Harris poll. When confronted with the reality of life in the womb, most of us have more of a heart.
Grazie Pozo Christie, Key Biscayne, Fla.
The writer is a senior fellow with the Catholic Association.
Monica Hesse’s Oct. 4 Style column on abortion rights correctly noted that there is no proof of when life starts in a fetus. It is a belief. Some believe it is at the moment of conception; others, later in the pregnancy. We are all entitled to our beliefs, but that does not entitle us to force our beliefs on others, as some states are doing.
This is particularly egregious when a woman is raped, one of the most devastating crimes a woman can suffer. Banning abortion forces her to confront the memory of it every day for nine months, likely suffer emotional damage for the rest of her life, lose significant income for time lost from work and incur medical costs. This amounts to what conservatives call “a taking,” when the government forces losses on a private person or company. That suggests that compensation is in order, perhaps several tens of thousands of dollars for a woman who has reported being raped and becomes pregnant as a result. Obviously verification would be necessary to prevent fraud.
Congress is unlikely to be able to do anything to protect abortion rights, but legislation requiring states that ban all abortions to compensate victims of rape might have a better chance. Financial compensation won’t cover all the emotional costs a raped woman has suffered, but it would clarify to antiabortionists that their beliefs impose very real costs on the victim, and she should not have to pay them all by herself.
Alan T. Crane, Silver Spring | 2022-10-09T16:18:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The nuances of abortion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/nuances-abortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/nuances-abortion/ |
The Post got its D.C. endorsements wrong
A voter casts his ballot June 21 at the Turkey Thicket Recreation Center in D.C. (Julia Nikhinson for The Washington Post)
I was fascinated to read in the Oct. 4 editorial “For D.C. elections” that the D.C. Council is now too liberal. Tackling the housing crisis, ensuring a living wage, reforming our criminal justice system and improving child and family outcomes in D.C. are not “ideological goals” but rather urgent problems that demand “pragmatic solutions” of the sort that D.C. Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large) and Ward 3 Democratic nominee Matthew Frumin have advanced. Even a cursory read of The Post’s Metro section each day makes that abundantly clear.
Clifford Johnson, Washington
I found the editorial endorsements of the D.C. Council’s at-large seats puzzling at best. Elected in 2014 as an independent, Elissa Silverman has served D.C. citizens and workers, fighting for higher minimum wages and paid leave, affordable housing, safer neighborhoods and much more, and all without any corporate donations, unlike those who earned endorsements.
Endorsements by D.C. nurses, public school teachers, grocery workers and Attorney General Karl A. Racine should give voters an idea of the depth of her commitment to serving D.C. citizens. To dismiss her record of service and achievement as an “ideological tilt” is an insult to someone who has a long and admirable record of public service.
Mary F. Hanley, Washington
In 2016, D.C. voters approved a referendum endorsing statehood for the District of Columbia, with almost 80 percent supporting it. Despite years of advocating for full citizenship and voting rights for D.C., The Post inexplicably ignored this overwhelming expression of the popular will in D.C., endorsing a candidate who supports “retrocession” of D.C. to Maryland. Neither Maryland nor D.C. supports retrocession.
We in D.C. should not have to give up our very existence to right the 221-year-old error that today disenfranchises 700,000 people.
As Post editorials and op-eds have repeatedly explained, statehood for D.C. can be achieved by an act of Congress (like that for the 37 states admitted since the Constitution was ratified). The Post should be consistent in its support of H.R. 51 and endorse only those candidates who actually believe in the will of D.C. voters on this question central to D.C. and democracy.
Lorelie S. Masters and Jamal Holtz, Washington
The writers are founders of the DC Statehood PAC. | 2022-10-09T16:18:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Post got its D.C. endorsements wrong - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/post-got-its-dc-endorsements-wrong/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/post-got-its-dc-endorsements-wrong/ |
Remembering Maury Wills, D.C.’s greatest baseball player
Maury Wills, a player and coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers, in August 2009. (Eric Parsons for The Washington Post)
Maury Wills, whom a Post Sports reporter called the “greatest baseball player to come out of D.C.,” died last month. The year of Wills’s National League MVP award, 1962, was marked by an incredible pennant race between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, ending with a Giants victory in a three-game playoff. Not only did Wills break Ty Cobb’s stolen-base record and win MVP, but he also beat out the great Willie Mays, who had an incredible season of his own, batting .304 with 49 home runs and 141 runs batted in.
In more than 60 years as a sports fan, I have never experienced crowd enthusiasm greater than when Wills got on base. Everyone was up, hollering, “Go, Maury, go!” And if Sandy Koufax happened to be pitching, then I and my fellow 10-year-old fanatics could not have been happier.
Wills and Koufax were subjected to the kind of hate mail that poisons our culture and makes life so difficult for those who endure it. But Wills and Koufax were tough and brave — and they were loved by all of us who filled the brand-new, beautiful Dodger Stadium, sitting in our $2 bleacher seats, with Vin Scully’s voice everywhere in the air. Go, Maury, go!
Steve Selby, Falls Church | 2022-10-09T16:18:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Remembering Maury Wills, D.C.’s greatest baseball player - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/remembering-maury-wills-dcs-greatest-baseball-player/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/09/remembering-maury-wills-dcs-greatest-baseball-player/ |
With their fourth straight loss, Ron Rivera's Commanders fell to 1-4. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Ron Rivera had a choice and, with his Washington Commanders floundering following three straight losses and the Tennessee Titans still celebrating in the end zone, he went bold.
At the start of the second quarter Sunday at FedEx Field, Rivera benched his high-priced cornerback, William Jackson III, in favor of second-year player Benjamin St-Juste. Rivera had warned this could happen.
“The thing I have to make sure,” he said last week, “is that when we get to this point — and I went through this in Carolina — when you get to this point, you have to determine if what’s going on is a liability.”
The change, subtle as it may have seemed, was among Rivera’s boldest yet, and it sent a message that he’s willing to sacrifice money — and admit a possible mistake in free agency — to find wins.
But that wasn’t enough to stop the bleeding. The personnel switch was a long-needed spark for the Commanders, but it didn’t eliminate costly big plays, and it couldn’t help the offense convert on third down as they fell, 21-17, for their fourth straight loss. With no timeouts remaining in the game’s final seconds, Carson Wentz was intercepted on a forced throw to running back J.D. McKissic at the goal line to drop Washington to 1-4.
For much of the first half, Washington appeared on the verge of snapping its skid by cleaning up its mistakes.
Analysis and takeaways from Sunday's loss
Jackson was pulled after the Titans’ first touchdown, when they used back-to-back screen plays for 24 yards to Derrick Henry and a 13-yard touchdown to Dontrell Hilliard. For a while, the move seemed to make a difference.
The Commanders’ Joey Slye booted a 50-yard field goal. Washington forced another three-and-out after Montez Sweat, the defensive end who went sack-less in the first four games, notched his second of the day. He got to Ryan Tannehill on the Titans’ first snap, too.
Then, 2021 third-round pick Dyami Brown — the butt of jokes for Detroit wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown a few weeks earlier — caught a 75-yard touchdown pass on a play-action fake from Wentz to put Washington ahead 10-7. It was the first score of Brown’s career, the longest by Washington since 2019 and the second longest of Wentz’s career.
Wentz and Brown then connected on a 30-yard over-the-shoulder touchdown catch in the third quarter, giving the latter the first 100-yard game of his career and putting the Commanders up 17-14. Wentz finished 25 for 38 for 359 yards, two touchdowns and the late interception for a 102.9 rating. He was sacked three times.
For the first time in weeks, Washington had stopped beating itself — but only for a while. And even its glimmers of improvement weren’t enough to avoid a halftime deficit.
Washington has found many ways to lose this season, and Sunday was no different. In the third quarter, just two plays after Wentz found Brown for the go-ahead score, Tannehill threw a 61-yard missile to wideout Nick Westbrook-Ikhine. The busted coverage led to a touchdown for the Titans (3-2) five plays later — the second of the day for Henry, who had 102 yards on 28 carries — to erase Washington’s lead and any accompanying momentum.
The mistakes snowballed from there. Washington finished 1 for 11 on third down, with its lone conversion coming with 24 seconds left.
The offensive line committed a string of penalties and struggled to hold up in pass protection. Midway through the fourth quarter, left guard Andrew Norwell had a memorable stretch of plays in which he was run over by defensive lineman Denico Autry, was flagged for a false start and was beaten for a sack. It was only a week ago that right guard Trai Turner, another veteran signing, was pulled because Rivera thought he didn’t appear “quite right” with a quad injury. He, too, had committed penalties and was the culprit on multiple sacks before Rivera determined it was a health issue.
Norwell might be the next veteran on the hot seat, but finding other ways to fix the Commanders will be a tall task for Rivera.
Washington had a chance to come back in the fourth quarter, but like so many others this season, that opportunity was squandered. Wentz looked for Terry McLaurin (five catches, 76 yards) deep after entering the red zone and the Titans were flagged for pass interference, giving Washington first and goal at the 2-yard line and 19 seconds left.
But two incomplete passes later, Wentz was intercepted by linebacker David Long Jr. on a throw into double coverage, raising only more questions about where Washington goes from here. The Commanders are already on their third center, lack depth across the board and soon may have to worry about locker room fissures if this spiral continues and frustration mounts. | 2022-10-09T21:37:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Commanders' losing streak reaches four in 21-17 loss to Titans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/commanders-losing-streak-titans-ron-rivera/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/commanders-losing-streak-titans-ron-rivera/ |
Capitals center Dylan Strome is trying to make a future in the District. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
When Dylan Strome talks about his future, he is careful to avoid moving too far ahead. The newcomer to Washington isn’t naive; he knows this season with the Capitals offers a chance for him to establish himself with a new franchise and set roots in D.C. But if there’s anything Strome learned from growing up in a hockey family, it’s that success not only requires skill and hard work but also the right situation.
As much as Strome, 25, believes he is a good fit in Washington, there is a long season ahead — and plenty to prove. He signed a one-year deal in July, becoming a key piece of the forward corps. The rebuilding Chicago Blackhawks, with whom he had played for the past four seasons, decided to let him hit free agency.
Strome, who scored a career-best 22 goals and recorded 26 assists last season, let that decision fuel him.
“I just want to feel wanted,” he said. “… You got to work your way up and show the team that they want to sign you for long term, not that you are forcing their hand. I want to just enjoy it and have fun. You don’t get to play this game forever, so I’m just having fun, living in the moment.”
He learned that lesson in part from his older brother, Ryan, a 10-year NHL veteran who also changed teams in the offseason, moving from the New York Rangers to the Anaheim Ducks. Dylan and his younger brother, Matt, had front-row seats as Ryan navigated his own difficulties and successes.
“My message to them is, ‘Don’t get too high, and don’t get too low,’ ” said Ryan, 29. “I think through our minor hockey careers and junior careers, we didn’t face adversity. Then I got to pro hockey and I had some ups and down and faced some challenges and some roadblocks. I think them seeing me go through it and them seeing firsthand the challenges that pro hockey has and stuff like that, they’ve learned from it.”
The brothers talk to each other every day, a task made easier when Matt and Dylan both participated in Capitals training camp. Still seeking his NHL debut, Matt, 23, signed with the Hershey Bears, the Capitals’ American Hockey League affiliate.
Training camp was the first time any of the Strome brothers were on the ice together in a team environment since they were young. Ryan said that while it “sounds cheesy,” it was something their parents were “over the moon” about.
During camp, Matt lived for 2½ weeks in Dylan’s house in Arlington, becoming a live-in roommate in an already-crowded household. Matt got to be around his sister-in-law, Tayler, in addition to the couple’s young daughter, Weslie, and their energetic golden retriever, Benny.
Matt said he loved being around his niece and was always willing to lend a hand after long days at the rink. Weslie, who is 1½, loves all the attention she can get. She is already running around, blurting out words here and there. Dylan said she has taken to her mother more than her father, though there might be some controversy over her first word.
Goaltender Charlie Lindgren’s winding NHL road leads him to Washington
“There are some question marks around that, but I think her first word might have been ‘dada’ — but when she knew what ‘mama’ and ‘dada’ meant, it was ‘mama,’ ” Dylan said with a chuckle.
The couple, who got married this summer and spent their honeymoon in Hawaii, also have a house in Oakville, Ontario. Their home is 20 minutes from Dylan’s parents’ house, as well as Ryan’s house in Mississauga. In the summers, Matt and Dylan work out daily at Ryan’s house. When they aren’t in the gym or on the ice, they’re probably golfing.
Ryan and Matt agree that Ryan is the best golfer of the brothers. They also agree that Matt, if he hasn’t already surpassed Dylan, is challenging him for the No. 2 spot.
Jokes aside, Ryan and Matt are thrilled about Dylan’s opportunity in Washington. They see it as a fresh start and hope he can have a breakout season.
Dylan, who was a healthy scratch at times under two different coaches in Chicago, said he is ready to prove he can be a contributor for a contender. With the Capitals, he should get a chance to not only solidify his place in the NHL but help an aging roster make a run at another Stanley Cup title.
“For him to get to play with those [veterans], it is unbelievable,” Matt said. Dylan had “a smile on his face every day when I [got] home from the rink. He’s happy to be here and this is a big shot for him — and he is going to make the most of his opportunity.” | 2022-10-09T21:37:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dylan Strome is ready to start over with the Washington Capitals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/dylan-strome-washington-capitals-brothers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/dylan-strome-washington-capitals-brothers/ |
Emily Sisson smashes American marathon record by 43 seconds in Chicago
The American women's record in the marathon now belongs to Emily Sisson, who placed second in the Chicago Marathon. (Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images)
Three days shy of her 31st birthday and with only one previous marathon on her resume, Emily Sisson took to the streets of Chicago and lowered the American women’s marathon record by 43 seconds, becoming the first American woman to run a marathon in less than 2 hours 19 minutes.
Conditions on the Chicago Marathon’s relatively flat course were ideal, with Sisson — who won the 10,000 at the U.S. Olympic Track and Field Trials last summer — finishing second to Ruth Chepng’etich. The Kenyan repeated as the Chicago champion with a time of 2:14:18, fractions of a second off the world record of 2:14:04 set by Kenya’s Brigid Kosgei in the 2019 Chicago Marathon.
From 2021: Emily Sisson outruns a broken heart to dominate the 10,000 at the U.S. track and field trials
Sisson finished in 2:18:29, taking 43 seconds off the American record set by Keira D’Amato in January in Houston. Before D’Amato, the record had stood for 16 years; now it has been lowered twice in 10 months, something D’Amato expected.
“There’s a number of American women that are also gunning for that record, so I think if I don’t lower it myself, it’s not going to be mine for very much longer,” she said before the Berlin Marathon two weeks ago. D’Amato, who did not run in Chicago, joined Sisson at the finish line, along with Deena Kastor and Joan Benoit Samuelson — women who held the American record before her.
“It’s amazing,” Sisson said, according to NBC Chicago. “I mean, the women standing here today, they’ve all accomplished so much, so just to be amongst them is an incredible honor.”
Sisson said she wasn’t aware that the record was in reach until very close to the finish line.
“I just was given instructions to go off my pacers and not think about time at all, so I had no clue what pace I was running until, I think, like a mile to go,'' she said. “A few people told me to pick it up, so I thought, ‘Oh, I must be close to either breaking 2:20 or the American record,’ but I didn’t know which one.”
🚨 AMERICAN RECORD 🚨 @Em_Sisson finishes second at the 2022 Chicago Marathon in 2:18:29 👏
Takes down @KeiraDAmato’s previous American record by 43 seconds!
pic.twitter.com/zFJedYNrOb
The Chicago race marked Sisson’s return to the marathon after she dropped out of the 2020 Olympic marathon trials after 22 miles despite being a favorite. Her only other marathon came in London, where she ran a 2:23:08 in 2019.
She's 37. A mom of two. And America's fastest female marathoner.
“The Olympic marathon trials — that broke my heart,” Sisson, a six-time national champion, said later. “Usually, I’m good at moving on from bad races, but I really struggled with that one.”
Take a look at @Em_Sisson's American marathon record splits: pic.twitter.com/Wj5iL2tpj9
— Erin Strout (@erinstrout) October 9, 2022
In the Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Sisson was 10th in the 10,000, the top American finisher, after winning that event at the 2021 U.S. trials. Her time of 31:03.82 broke the 17-year-old trials record set by Kastor in 2004. Sisson, who set the American record in the half-marathon (1:07:11) in May, told Forbes recently that she is growing more comfortable with races like Chicago, one of the world’s six major marathons.
The Mt. Rushmore of American women’s marathoning 👏 @Em_Sisson @KeiraDAmato @DeenaKastor
Joan Benoit Samuelson
🐐🐐🐐🐐
📸 @Justin_Britton pic.twitter.com/dDkHBHSTWD
“As I have gained more experience in the sport, I have been able to handle these big race days with more confidence and composure, compared to when I was younger,” she said. “I simply reiterate to myself that I have done my best, and all I need to do is give it my all.”
Five of the top 10 female finishers in Chicago were American: Susanna Sullivan was sixth in 2:25:14, Sara Vaughn seventh in 2:26:23, Maggie Montoya eighth in 2:28:07 and Makena Morley 10th in 2:30:28.
Kenya’s Benson Kipruto was the men’s winner in 2:04:24 with Conner Mantz, who finished seventh in 2:08:16, the top American finisher.
Switzerland’s Marcel Hug won the men’s wheelchair race in 1:25:20, adding Chicago to his 2022 major marathon wins in Tokyo, Berlin and London. Susannah Scaroni of the United States won her first major marathon title in the women’s wheelchair competition in 1:45:48.
NFL live updates: Commanders take 10-7 lead over Titans on deep pass from Carson Wentz | 2022-10-09T21:37:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Emily Sisson smashes U.S. women's marathon record - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/emily-sisson-us-marathon-record-chicago/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/emily-sisson-us-marathon-record-chicago/ |
Dolphins quarterback Teddy Bridgewater leaves the field during Sunday's game against the Jets in East Rutherford, N.J. (Seth Wenig/AP)
The Miami Dolphins’ quarterback issues worsened Sunday.
With starter Tua Tagovailoa already sidelined indefinitely after suffering a concussion, the Dolphins also lost veteran backup Teddy Bridgewater during their game against the New York Jets in East Rutherford, N.J.
Bridgewater started the game but left the field in the first quarter. The Dolphins said Bridgewater had an elbow injury and was being evaluated for a head injury. The team initially called him questionable to return to the game but later ruled him out.
Rookie Skylar Thompson, a seventh-round draft choice from Kansas State, took over at quarterback. The Dolphins trail the Jets, 19-14, at halftime.
The NFL and the NFL Players Association said Saturday that their concussion protocols were followed “as written” in Tagovailoa’s case, but the outcome was “not what was intended” under the protocols. They announced a modification to the protocols that prevents any player who demonstrates abnormal balance, stability or motor coordination from returning to a game.
That change to the protocols was in effect for Sunday’s games leaguewide, and Bridgewater reportedly was ruled out from returning to the game under the new provision.
The Giants are thriving
Don’t get carried away quite yet. But the New York Giants just might be for real.
The first-ever NFL game in London to feature two teams with winning records served as further evidence that the Giants are making immediate and significant progress under their new football brain trust of Coach Brian Daboll and General Manager Joe Schoen. They rallied, then held on late to beat the Green Bay Packers, 27-22, to improve their record to 4-1.
The injury-plagued Giants were desperately shorthanded at cornerback and wide receiver. Quarterback Daniel Jones played despite an ankle injury and had a bloody right hand during the game. Tailback Saquon Barkley left the game with a shoulder injury but returned.
Yet the Giants found a way. Jones threw for 217 yards on 21-for-27 passing accuracy. Barkley ran for 70 yards and a touchdown. The Giants regrouped after trailing, 17-3, in the second quarter.
The defense stopped the Packers on a fourth-and-one attempt from the New York 6-yard line with just more than a minute to play and the Giants leading, 27-20. Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers had a pass batted away for an incompletion. The Giants handed the Packers a safety in the final seconds rather than punting out of their own end zone but sealed the victory with a sack of Rodgers on the game’s final play.
The NFC East is surprisingly competitive, with the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys also thriving thus far. But after a decade of on-field futility following their most recent Super Bowl triumph to conclude the 2011 season, the Giants at least have hope again.
All eyes on Kenny Pickett — and maybe Bailey Zappe
It has not been a season for rookie quarterback exploits in the NFL. The quarterbacks mostly were afterthoughts in this year’s NFL draft, and not a single one began this season as a starter.
Even so, rookie quarterbacks will be in focus on Sunday in Week 5. Kenny Pickett makes his first NFL start for the Pittsburgh Steelers in an early-afternoon game at Buffalo. And Bailey Zappe could make his first start when the New England Patriots host the Detroit Lions at 1 p.m. Eastern time in Foxborough, Mass., with usual starter Mac Jones listed as doubtful because of his high ankle sprain.
The move was inevitable. The Steelers made Pickett, a University of Pittsburgh product, the only quarterback chosen in the first round of the draft in April. But the switch came sooner than Tomlin would have preferred, with the Steelers sputtering along at 1-3 in the first season after Ben Roethlisberger’s retirement. Tomlin never has had a losing season in a head coaching tenure with the Steelers that began in 2007.
Pickett excelled during preseason, showing poise and passing accuracy. He undeniably provided the Steelers with a burst of energy against the Jets, with a pair of second-half rushing touchdowns. But he also threw a trio of interceptions in a 10-for-13, 120-yard passing performance. Tomlin and the Steelers probably will have to live with a few mistakes along the way. | 2022-10-09T21:37:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dolphins lose Teddy Bridgewater, Giants thriving, all eyes on Kenny Pickett - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/kenny-pickett-bailey-zappe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/kenny-pickett-bailey-zappe/ |
Max Verstappen won the Grand Prix from Japan and, in the process, his second Formula One championship. (Peter Fox/Getty Images)
Perhaps one year Max Verstappen will win the Formula One championship in an ordinary, noncontroversial fashion. This is not that year.
Verstappen repeated as the sport’s champion on Sunday morning, an expected conclusion given the season he is having, and, as with first championship last year, he was awarded the title in unprecedented and odd circumstances after the Japanese Grand Prix in Suzuka had ended.
The Red Bull driver was declared winner of the rain-shortened race amid confusion over rules governing the awarding of points in the rain. The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile, the sport’s governing body, determined that full points, rather than the partial points teams had expected, could be awarded since the race was resumed after a two-hour delay, despite being ultimately cut short. That gave Verstappen a 113-point lead with only 112 points possible over the final four races.
Verstappen got an assist in securing the title when his rival, Charles Leclerc, was found to have cut the final corner under pressure from Verstappen’s teammate, Sergio Perez. Leclerc was assessed a five-second time penalty that dropped him to third.
The delay in the FIA’s final determination left Verstappen, who won his 12th race of the season, initially believing the championship would have to wait until next weekend’s race in Austin. “The championship obviously did not come the way this time around,” he said, according to the Associated Press, apologizing to the crowd on the public address system.
His skepticism continued even as his crew swarmed to hug him, with drivers figuring that only partial points would be awarded for the race. “Once I crossed the line I thought: ‘It was an amazing race, good points again, but I’m not world champion yet,’” he later said.
Verstappen had started from the pole in pouring rain, but the race was quickly suspended because of a crash involving Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari. Cars were running behind the safety car before the recovery vehicle was released onto the track. Drivers questioned why the recovery vehicle was out with the track so slippery and FIA said it will investigate the matter. Two hours later, the race was resumed but only 28 of 53 laps were completed, with Verstappen leading all the way.
Still, Verstappen was one of the last to realize he’d won the title, repeatedly asking despite being crowned champion, “have I or have I not [wrapped up the title]?” during another post-race interview, according to CNN. “I am hearing different things.”
With confirmation, he sat down in front of a “world champion” banner, with his second championship crowning a dominant season that marked a transition in the sport. With one more victory, the 25-year-old Dutch driver would tie the single-season record set by Michael Schumacher in 2004 and matched by Sebastian Vettel in 2013.
Last December, Verstappen edged Lewis Hamilton for the championship in even more chaotic and controversial circumstances, denying Hamilton his record eighth title by overtaking him on the final lap of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. During that 2021 season finale, race director Michael Masi’s decisions following a late safety car period were intended to restart the race with one lap remaining, but he partly ignored FIA regulations in making them. That enabled Verstappen to pass Hamilton on the final lap of the race, inviting confusion and acrimony from Hamilton’s Mercedes team and many observers
A FIA investigation later determined that “human error” was a factor in the controversial finish, but found the results of the race and Verstappen’s first championship were “valid.” Masi left FIA last summer.
“It’s crazy, very mixed emotions,” Verstappen said during a podium interview Sunday. “Winning the championship, what a year we’ve had. It’s incredible! I’m so thankful to everyone who’s been contributing to the success, the whole team has been working flat out. Beside that, the work we did with Honda every year, constantly improving, gets very emotional especially here. I’m very proud we could do it here.
“The first [championship] is more emotional but the second is more beautiful.”
Alabama escapes Texas A&M in a glorious night of drama and disgust | 2022-10-09T21:37:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Max Verstappen wins second F1 championship at Japanese Grand Prix - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/max-verstappen-f1-championship/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/max-verstappen-f1-championship/ |
Researchers are studying spikes in maternal complications among those with the coronavirus. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
At the time, it didn’t seem like a big deal — “just like a mild cold” — and her pregnancy proceeded without incident until she gave birth to a healthy eight-pound baby boy in April. The trouble began a few days later.
She was at home nursing her son when she felt what she called a “pulse” shake her body and by the time she made it to the emergency room, her blood pressure had rocketed to a dangerous 160/116. Phillips didn’t know it then, but she had preeclampsia, a little understood complication of pregnancy that each year results in more than 70,000 maternal and 500,000 fetal deaths worldwide. Rates of the illness had been rising steadily in the United States for years, but during the pandemic, the number of cases jumped, according to doctors. No one knows exactly why.
The mystery of preeclampsia cases like that of Phillips is part of the growing pool of information scientists are sorting through when it comes to the impact of the coronavirus on reproductive health, from a woman’s menstrual cycle and fertility down to possible effects on a baby’s development.
Instead, she and other pregnancy experts have spent the past few years scrambling to understand spikes in maternal complications — first reported anecdotally then verified in several large studies — including an extremely small but nonetheless alarming group of unusual stillbirths. “I was naive,” Messaoudi reflected. “Now I wonder, ‘What else have we been missing?’”
It will be decades before we know the extent of the coronavirus’s effects on human health. But now, more than 2 years and 9 months since it appeared — a period in which millions of pregnant people have been infected with the virus at least once — researchers have noted some positive signs, some worrisome ones, and many other data points they still aren’t sure how to evaluate, especially since it’s difficult to disentangle the impact of maternal stress during the pandemic from the devastation of the virus itself.
The coronavirus is not the first virus to have ripple effects that may impact pregnancy and childbirth. During the 1918 flu pandemic, rates of stillbirth soared, and babies born during the height of the disaster suffered from higher rates of cardiac and other health issues as adults. In 2015, Brazil and numerous other countries reported an association between infection with the Zika virus and microcephaly, a rare neurological condition that results in an infant’s head being abnormally small.
Among the key findings so far about SARS-CoV-2 — by many accounts the most studied virus ever to infect humans — are that fertility appears appears unaffected by either infections or vaccines. Periods may shift in women after the vaccine but only slightly so and the change appears to be only temporary.
The biological mechanisms are still unclear, but researchers say they likely start with changes in the blood and immune system of the mothers. Pregnancy can be both magical and brutal as it transforms a person’s body to support another life. Much of the stress is on the heart and circulatory system, with blood volume surging by 30 percent to 50 percent, and the heart growing to pump more blood.
Placentas
For the first nine months of their being, humans are cocooned next to an organ in their mother’s uterus known as the placenta that provides oxygen and other nutrients. Back in spring 2020, when health officials still called covid-19 a respiratory disease, the idea the virus could wreak damage on that seemed far-fetched.
Almost as soon as she began looking into them, Heerema McKenney recalled, she became “pretty panicked.” A normal placenta is spongy and dark, reflecting the nourishing blood flowing through it. The ones she was looking at in her lab from the mothers who lost their babies were like nothing she had ever seen before: firm, scarred and more of a shade of tan.
“The degree of devastation was unique,” she said. Flipping through case files, she noted that most of the women were in their second trimester, unvaccinated or only partially vaccinated, and infected with the coronavirus within a two-week window before their pregnancies ending. Heerema McKenney herself saw fewer than 20 potentially coronavirus-related stillbirths over about six months.
But her findings matched up with cases colleagues were seeing in other parts of the world. And they also echoed those in a paper from Ireland that looked at seven cases — six stillbirths and one second-trimester fetal death in pregnant people infected with the coronavirus — resulting from what the authors called “a readily recognizable pattern of placental injury.” She said, “That’s when we realized we were all looking at the same thing.”
A report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention involving 1,249,634 deliveries from March 2020 to September 2021 similarly documents a link. “Although stillbirth was a rare outcome overall, a covid-19 diagnosis documented during the delivery hospitalization was associated with an increased risk for stillbirth in the United States, with a stronger association during the period of delta variant predominance,” the researchers wrote.
They theorized that a reduced blood flow to the placenta, along with inflammation from a coronavirus infection, “might, in part, explain the association between covid-19 and stillbirth.” No sooner had Heerema McKenney and other researchers around the world begun pooling data and discussing how to react, the delta wave receded, and when omicron arrived, the cases simply disappeared.
Preeclampsia, a leading cause of maternal death across the globe, usually begins with small signs like high blood pressure, bubbly urine or vision changes but can progress rapidly to send a person’s entire body into crisis. It typically occurs midway through pregnancy, after about the 20th week, in roughly 2 to 6 percent of pregnant people in the United States.
“It’s a progressive condition,” said Patrick Ramsey, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and chief of its division of maternal-fetal medicine. While most cases resolve when the baby is delivered or the pregnancy ends, there is no clear treatment in the meantime and the condition can result in organ failure and death.
During the pandemic, pregnant people infected with the coronavirus — whether symptomatic or not — were found to have a 60 percent greater risk of preeclampsia than those who were not infected, according to a number of studies. They also experienced higher rates of other complications, ranging from preterm birth and infection, to dying within six weeks of the pregnancy ending.
Aris Papageorghiou, a professor of fetal medicine at the Oxford Maternal and Perinatal Health Institute in the United Kingdom, who participated in the research, said no one knows exactly why the coronavirus can affect pregnancy so severely. But one theory is that the virus may “unmask” or exacerbate underlying issues that already put some women at risk for preeclampsia or inflammatory disease.
Messaoudi’s research findings bolster his hypothesis. In her study of the placenta and cord blood of infected pregnant people, she found what she calls “disturbances” — or changes in infection-fighting T cells and other immune system changes — that might have long-lasting consequences. She and her colleagues described the differences as a “remodeling of the immunological landscape” or “immunological scars.”
“I think I should have known,” she said, “but I was still surprised by the magnitude of that impact.” For some women who have experienced preeclampsia, the complications seemed to come out of the blue. | 2022-10-09T21:50:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is coronavirus to blame for pregnancy complications in the pandemic? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/08/covid-pregnancy-preeclampsia-stillbirths/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/08/covid-pregnancy-preeclampsia-stillbirths/ |
U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., is introduced at a rally for former President Donald Trump at the Minden Tahoe Airport in Minden, Nev., Saturday, Oct. 8, 2022. Tuberville says that Democrats support reparations for the descendants of enslaved people because “they think the people that do the crime are owed that.” (AP Photo/Jose Luis Villegas) (José Luis Villegas/Pool AP) | 2022-10-09T21:51:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Senator: Dems back reparations for those who 'do the crime' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senator-dems-back-reparations-for-those-who-do-the-crime/2022/10/09/12ab9c84-480d-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senator-dems-back-reparations-for-those-who-do-the-crime/2022/10/09/12ab9c84-480d-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
PISCATAWAY, N.J. — Rutgers fired offensive coordinator Sean Gleeson on Sunday, two days after the team’s third straight Big Ten loss.
”This was a difficult decision, but I believe it is in the best interest of our program to make a change at offensive coordinator,” Schiano said in a statement. “I want to thank Sean for his hard work and wish him and his family all the best in their future endeavors.” | 2022-10-09T21:52:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rutgers fires coordinator Sean Gleeson as offense struggles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/rutgers-fires-coordinator-sean-gleeson-as-offense-struggles/2022/10/09/fc5186ca-481a-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/rutgers-fires-coordinator-sean-gleeson-as-offense-struggles/2022/10/09/fc5186ca-481a-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
TAMPA, Fla. — Tom Brady threw for 351 yards and a touchdown as Tampa Bay beat Atlanta to end a two-game skid.
CLEVELAND — Rookie Cade York missed a 54-yard field goal with 11 seconds left, and Los Angeles held on to beat Detroit after coach Brandon Staley inexplicably gambled on a fourth down.
MINNEAPOLIS — Kirk Cousins scored on a 1-yard quarterback sneak with 2:26 remaining and Minnesota snapped out of its mid-game slump in time to beat Chicago.
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Josh Allen picked apart a flimsy and injury-depleted Steelers secondary by throwing four touchdown passes in the first half as Buffalo routed Pittsburgh.
FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Rookie Bailey Zappe threw a touchdown pass in his first career start and Rhamondre Stevenson rushed for a career-high 161 yards as New England blanked Detroit.
NEW ORLEANS — Taysom Hill ran for three touchdowns and threw for another as New Orleans beat Seattle to snap a three-game skid.
LANDOVER, Md. — Derrick Henry rushed for 102 yards and a touchdown and Tennessee made a last-minute goal-line stand to beat Washington. | 2022-10-09T21:52:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Barkley's late TD helps Giants edge Packers 27-22 in London - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/barkleys-late-td-helps-giants-edge-packers-27-22-in-london/2022/10/09/aa9a3ec4-4817-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nfl/barkleys-late-td-helps-giants-edge-packers-27-22-in-london/2022/10/09/aa9a3ec4-4817-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
Azi Paybarah
Walker, who has campaigned against abortion rights, has denied reports that he paid for an ex-girlfriend’s abortion and later offered to pay for her to have a second one. The Washington Post has not been able to independently verify those allegations. Walker has also claimed he did not know who the woman making those allegations was, despite reports that she is the mother of one of his children.
The race could determine which party controls the Senate, with Democrats working to highlight the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade to draw in voters in favor of abortion rights.
Republicans, for their part, are trying to shift voters’ attention to other topics such as crime and the economy, amid the daily headlines about Walker’s personal behavior that has included threats of domestic violence, fathering children out of wedlock, and inaccurately describing his business record.
Although some Republicans have expressed concerns about Walker’s “baggage,” many in the GOP are doubling down in backing the troubled candidate. National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) plan to rally in Georgia for Walker on Tuesday, as The Washington Post first reported.
And on Sunday, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who is facing a tough reelection for his House seat, defended Walker, saying “none of us are perfect.”
“Herschel needs to come clean and just be honest,” Bacon said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We also know that we all make mistakes and it’s just better, if this actually did happen, say I’m sorry and ask for forgiveness.”
Ga. Republican Senate candidate Herschel Walker, who is campaigning on an antiabortion platform, has denied that he paid for a girlfriend's abortion in 2009. (Video: Reuters, Photo: Meg Kinnard/AP/Reuters)
When “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker asked if Walker’s controversies undercut the Republican Party’s broader antiabortion message, Bacon was circumspect, returning to his belief that the race would not be decided on a candidate’s personal behavior.
“You want to walk the talk and talk the walk. You want to have cohesion with your message,” he said. “But people also make mistakes. I’m surely not a flawless person by no means. I have made my own mistakes in life. And Herschel has too.”
Bacon’s remarks are in line with a GOP memo released last month that offered talking points to Republican candidates looking to effectively position themselves heading into the general election this fall. The GOP acknowledged in the memo that the vast majority of voters disagree with the Supreme Court’s decision this summer to overturn Roe v. Wade, which for nearly 50 years provided a constitutional right to abortion.
In the memo, first reported by the Hill, Republicans were urged to “draw a contrast” between their position on abortion — which the memo describes as including exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother — against “a Democrat who supports abortion at any time for any reason.”
On NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) dismissed those arguments. She also defended a Michigan ballot initiative that would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution “up to the point of viability.”
“And then afterwards it has to be because of the health of the mother deemed by a medical professional,” Slotkin said. “So it’s not abortion on demand, it’s not through the ninth month, all these talking points that the Republicans are using because they know they’re on their heels on this issue. So I support that ballot initiative.”
Slotkin also called out the hypocrisy of Republicans, noting that they have called for forgiving Walker even though he has not admitted any wrongdoing.
“I think what Mr. Walker is doing himself is enough for voters to see, right? He’s being accused of something, he’s not admitting it, or he’s dodging,” Slotkin said.
Overall, the five-page GOP memo argues for shifting attention from abortion and toward other issues such as inflation and the economy. But Republicans have found it difficult to avoid the topic of abortion since Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) introduced a bill last month that would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy nationwide.
On CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor in the battleground state of Arizona, refused to say whether she would pursue restrictions on abortions sooner than 15 weeks. Instead, she diverted the discussion to offering women help to “keep their baby” or assistance in making an adoption plan.
“I want to give women true choices,” Lake said.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, the Democratic nominee for governor, dismissed as “ridiculous” Lake’s assertion that late-term abortions were performed solely at the patient’s discretion.
Abortion is a topic that belongs “between a woman and her doctor,” Hobbs added. "The government and politicians don’t belong in that decision.”
Midterm elections typically favor the party not in power, but the Supreme Court’s ruling in June has Democrats looking to reverse that trend by emphasizing their goal of codifying abortion rights into law. Planned Parenthood recently announced plans to spend a record $50 million to elect abortion rights supporters across the country in November, on the belief that the focus will be a net positive for Democratic candidates.
However, some Democratic groups have expressed concern that they have not seen the same levels of fundraising and voter enthusiasm as they did in 2020.
Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor who is trailing in polls against Gov. Brian Kemp (R), said on Sunday that reports of faltering support among Black voters was a “manufactured crisis designed to suppress turnout.”
“If you look at my polling numbers and the polling numbers of my ticket mate, [Georgia Democratic] Sen. Raphael G. Warnock, we are polling similarly well with Black voters. We know, however, that Black voters, like every voting population, deserves the respect of having someone to come and speak to them, engage them,” Abrams said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“But it is always an opportunity to engage. I do not take any voting bloc for granted,” she added.
Abrams also noted that Black women in Georgia are the most likely to die of maternal mortality issues because they are denied access to health care before they get pregnant.
“We know that in Brian Kemp’s Georgia, a Black woman faces a lethal choice and that is to either have a crystal ball and knows she’s pregnant before she can actually know, or face forced pregnancy with very little support,” she said. “In the state of Georgia, Brian Kemp has said that Herschel Walker is entitled to his personal choices, but no woman is. And that is unconscionable.” | 2022-10-09T22:24:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Herschel Walker allegations keep abortion in spotlight for midterms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/09/abortion-herschel-walker-midterms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/09/abortion-herschel-walker-midterms/ |
Three shot in Shaw area of NW Washington, authorities say
The victims apparently are young men, according to police
Three people, who appeared to be young men, were shot Sunday afternoon in the Shaw neighborhood of Northwest Washington, authorities said.
The three were described as in their early 20s, and were all taken to hospitals in serious condition, said Vito Maggiolo, a spokesman for the D.C. fire department.
The shooting occurred about 5:45 p.m., near 7th and O streets NW, Officer Hugh Carew, a police spokesman, said. The three victims were all conscious and breathing when found, the police said.
It was not immediately clear what led to the gunfire. | 2022-10-09T23:56:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | three young men shot in NW Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/09/men-shot-shaw-northwest-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/09/men-shot-shaw-northwest-dc/ |
Devastating inland mudslides are possible with up to 15 inches of rain
Wind blows palm trees ahead of Hurricane Julia on San Andrés Island, Colombia, on Saturday. (Michael Arevalo/AFP/Getty Images)
Julia made landfall as a Category 1 hurricane around Laguna de Perlas, Nicaragua, at 3:15 a.m. local time Sunday, according to the National Hurricane Center. Maximum winds were around 85 mph. As of 11 a.m., Julia, centered 65 miles east-northeast of Managua, Nicaragua, had weakened to a tropical storm with 70 mph winds as it moved west at 15 mph.
The Associated Press reported that several thousand people in Nicaragua were evacuated from low-lying coastal areas ahead of the storm and that local news media showed images of trees down across roads.
Before crashing ashore in Central America, Julia swept across the Colombian islands of Providencia and San Andrés just east of Nicaragua. On Sunday morning, authorities said the winds and rain left minimal damage on the islands, where residents had braced for another powerful storm less than two years after Hurricane Iota ravaged the archipelago.
In a tweet Sunday morning, Colombian President Gustavo Petro said the passage of the hurricane through the island of San Andrés left “minor damage,” including two people injured, two homes destroyed and 101 homes damaged. “Its passage through Providencia was milder,” Petro said. “As soon as air operations are restored, aid will arrive.”
Colombia’s national disaster risk management unit reported that five homes on San Andrés had lost roofs and four sectors of the island experienced flooding.
Everth Hawkins, governor of the archipelago of San Andrés and Providencia, said in an interview on W Radio on Sunday morning that authorities were able to begin evaluating the condition of the islands around 2 a.m. and found several fallen trees on homes and roof tiles ripped off houses. About four or five homes in Providencia were damaged, Hawkins said.
While authorities continued to assess the impact of the storm, Hawkins said the damage was not “catastrophic,” and paled in comparison with the destruction of Iota nearly two years ago, especially on the hard-hit island of Providencia.
Julia is the 10th named storm of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season. The season to date has defied forecasts of an active season, with activity thus far only about 81 percent of average. That is based on a metric of accumulated cyclone energy, a figure that takes into account the intensity and duration of a storm. It is a rough estimate for how much energy storms expend on their strong winds.
Fiona, which struck Puerto Rico, sideswiped Bermuda and slammed the Canadian Maritimes, and Ian, which ravaged Cuba and southwest Florida, churned out 54 percent of the accumulated cyclone energy this season.
At 11 a.m., Julia was a tropical storm as its center of low pressure continued to fill in. Picture a low-pressure center as the dip that results when you stir your coffee. The depression in the fluid grows deeper as you spin faster. But if you stop spinning, that depression will relax, and the fluid will return to a state of equilibrium, meaning there is no difference in the height of the surface. The same premise is happening here.
Now that Julia is inland, warm waters from below cannot heat and remove air from the center. That allows the storm to weaken. On infrared satellite, a decrease in the intensity of colors near the storm center could be seen, signifying warming cloud tops. That means clouds are not as tall, and therefore that the storm is weaker.
Heavy rains and dangerous mudslides
While weakening, the storm is unloading a tremendous amount of moisture in the form of heavy rain. Julia will drop widespread totals of 5 to 10 inches in Nicaragua and El Salvador, with localized amounts to 15 inches. Lower amounts of 3 to 6 inches with a few totals of 10 inches can be expected in Honduras, Belize, northern Guatemala and the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico. Parts of southern Guatemala and Costa Rica could see up to a foot.
“This rainfall may cause life-threatening flash floods and mudslides across Central America today and Monday,” wrote the National Hurricane Center. Julia will emerge over the Pacific on Sunday afternoon or evening and begin to curve to the northwest, paralleling the coastline and prolonging its life while it slowly weakens into a remnant tropical depression. | 2022-10-10T01:45:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hurricane Julia makes landfall in Nicaragua with ‘life-threatening’ flooding - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/09/hurricane-julia-nicaragua-flooding-storm/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/09/hurricane-julia-nicaragua-flooding-storm/ |
I was shocked and disgusted. Is there anything a person can do in these circumstances? I feel guilty for not advocating for an infant who appeared to be less than 2 years old.
Not a Parent: Thank you for recognizing that even though you don’t like them, young children are helpless human beings who should not be assaulted, by a parent or by anyone else.
Yes, you should have attempted to advocate for this child. Ways to do this would be to say, “Whoa, whoa — wait a minute. Is everything okay here?” (You don’t want to risk an escalation by responding too aggressively.)
Dear Amy: This week is the first anniversary of my mom’s death. She died suddenly of lung cancer, two weeks after her diagnosis. I’m still very much grieving. My parents were married for over 40 years.
The last time I was with him, I was caring for my sick mom, and the next time I go back, a new woman will be living in her place. I’m glad that my dad is happy — he deserves it — but I’m not ready to be involved in that part of his life.
Sad: My condolences on your mother’s death. This is a loss you will be processing in many different ways for a long time. There is no one way to grieve her loss, but one thing you may be discovering now is how closely sadness and anger seem to reside.
There is evidence that men tend to partner up quickly after a loss. Why is this?
If you decide not to attend the wedding, you should plan a trip to see your father and to meet her as soon as you are able. If you have a partner, sibling or close friend who could do this with you, it might help for you to offload your feelings and talk this experience through.
Having recently moved to a new city, I have been amazed at how many people I’ve met by joining a rock-climbing gym and meetup groups. I’ve met so many friendly people around my age (30s). Plus, it’s a healthy activity!
Climbing: Great recommendation. | 2022-10-10T04:22:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I saw someone hit a child in public - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/10/ask-amy-witness-child-abuse/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/10/ask-amy-witness-child-abuse/ |
Dear Carolyn: My brother confessed to me that he doesn’t really love his fiancee or find her physically attractive. Then he told me he really just wants to work it out with her because she is a nice person and would be a great mother. This is not the first time he’s told me this in their five years together.
I really love his fiancee and think she deserves better than this, and have told him so. But I can’t say anything, can I? I need to just keep my trap shut and then be a safe place for their kids when they end up divorcing, right?
— Butting Out
Butting Out: Well, wait — you can tell him he deserves better, too.
And you can say he’s being a complete shortsighted ass, and spouses aren’t just breeding stock — unless he doesn’t really mean what he says and is just working through some dark thoughts out loud, in which case you’ll be happy to listen.
You’d just like to know upfront whether he’s actually secretly deeply smitten and mouthing off out of fear of the implications of caring and loving so much — or actively, knowingly, presumptuously and unnecessarily choosing a life of mediocrity for himself and his unwitting bride. So, you know, you can gauge your response to him accordingly.
She of course is as equipped as anyone to pick up the scent of meh in the air, so she is not without responsibility, but still.
I hope anyone he confides in says this to him powerfully, once, on the fiancee’s, his and any future kids’ behalf.
Once done, then yes — you shut up and be there to help.
Carolyn: I’ve told my brother he deserves better, too. He thinks this is the best he can do and it’s better just to settle rather than keep hope alive for the impossible. Or be lonely. For what it’s worth, our parents were not a good example, for anything, and I did years of therapy before I felt ready to be in a relationship.
— Butting Out again
Butting Out again: “The best he can do” is a human being, for fox’s sake. His selfishness is breathtaking.
Good for you for getting help and climbing out of the hole your parents dug for you. You’ve tried to help here, you’ve said your piece, so I guess the couple will just have to figure this out. And maybe they will — not that it makes it any easier to watch.
Dear Carolyn: I met a man four months ago. We hit it off amazingly well and had a really fun, intense three months of “all in.”
Now, he’s pulling away “to think about his life, his goals, next steps, etc.” And what “love” really means.
He’s 65! Maybe it’s a late midlife crisis?
I really fell hard for this man. How do I know if “he’s just not that into me,” or if this is a healthy step back, after which he’ll be ready for love? If I hang around at a remove while he works things out, is that being patient and supportive, or is it being a doormat?
— Doormat?
Doormat?: Go live your life as if he will no longer be in it, because he is no longer in it. Accept it.
If after his thinking period he should return to your doorstep looking to be welcomed back in, then you can decide, based on how you and your circumstances and your feelings have (or haven’t) changed, whether to say yes.
Everything else at this point is just speculation and wheel-spinning. I’m sorry. | 2022-10-10T04:22:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Brother says he doesn’t love his fiancee. Tell her? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/10/carolyn-hax-brother-love-fiancee/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/10/carolyn-hax-brother-love-fiancee/ |
SAVYNTSI, Ukraine — As his silver SUV bumped along the winding dirt roads, Viktor looked at me through his rearview mirror and smiled.
“This is the village where I grew up,” he said. “Where I went to school and spent my childhood.”
Several months ago, as Viktor drove me across Ukraine in this same car — me in the front seat, his teenage daughter in the back — his voice had cracked as he described his life before the war. There’s a bit of a language barrier between us, but with the help of Google Translate, I learned about his house in the small northeastern city of Izyum. He told me about his successful poultry business and visits to his elderly parents who lived in a village nearby.
The war had taken all of that away from him.
Viktor Havrashenko, 41, decided shortly after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion to flee Izyum with his wife and daughter. They settled in a part of the Kharkiv region still under Ukrainian control. It was clear from early on that Russian forces were intent on illegally annexing the territory and declaring it part of Russia.
Viktor’s parents, like many older people across the country, refused to evacuate — preferring to stay home, come what might. By March, after weeks of heavy fighting, Russian forces took control of Izyum and many surrounding villages, including their own.
For months, there was barely any phone connection. But from what little Viktor learned, he knew the situation was dire. Shelling had destroyed many apartment buildings and homes — including the house just across the street from his own. Food was scarce. He wasn’t sure what had happened to his many chickens. He missed his pet cat. He worried about his parents getting the medicines they needed to survive.
As a driver working for The Washington Post, Viktor bore witness to the dangers civilians faced in towns near the war’s front lines. The summer passed without much hope that his situation would change any time soon.
Then, in the span of just a few days in September, a rapid and unexpected Ukrainian counteroffensive forced unsuspecting Russian forces and their collaborators to retreat from the Kharkiv region, abandoning many of their belongings — including tanks and weapons. Ukrainian forces were invigorated by their gains. Military analysts lauded the advances as a potential turning point in the war. And many civilians who survived months of Russian occupation embraced the arrival of the blue-and-yellow flag that restored their place in Ukraine.
Among them were Viktor’s parents, who for months had been holed up in the modest house where he grew up in Savyntsi, a village about 40 minutes outside of Izyum. With cell service still cut, Viktor couldn’t contact them to tell them he would soon be able to reach them by road.
He visited Izyum first, driving Post journalists in with him. Viktor wept as he saw what had become of his once peaceful city. “I’m not recognizing my hometown,” he said. “Everything is burned down.”
Apartments were destroyed, the debris of war lay everywhere and abandoned Russian vehicles — the signature Z painted on the side — littered the streets. When he reached his own home, he knelt down by his bed, put his head on his pillow and wept again. Tears streamed down his face as he held his purring cat, kept alive by his neighbors.
Viktor’s best friend, our other driver Viacheslav Polovyi, 36, had days before reunited with his parents in Izyum for the first time since the war began — knocking on their gate and wrapping his dad in a bear hug when he opened the door. Amid all the horrors of this war and the personal tragedies we have covered, Viacheslav’s emotional reunion with his parents offered a surge of hope and happiness for our team.
Now it was Viktor’s turn.
As we rumbled along the road, he suddenly veered off and parked on a patch of grass. An older man was walking slowly in front of us, hunched over in a thick plaid coat. Viktor didn’t need to say a word. We knew from the tears in his eyes that this must be his dad, Volodymyr. The two cried as they held each other in front of the house where Viktor grew up.
We walked through their gate. Viktor’s mother, Natalia, who is 72, was at a neighbor’s house. We crossed through their garden, Viktor leading the way. He threw his arms around his mom, weeping once more.
“Don’t cry, we are all right. Everything is fine, son,” she said as they hugged. “We are strong, we have withstood it at all. … We have waited for the Ukrainian flag.”
We spent the afternoon in their home — time that allowed us and Viktor to ask the kinds of questions his parents couldn’t safely answer when the Russian military was still there.
The few calls his mother made when she went out searching for service, she said, were monitored by armed soldiers. “And what could you say? ‘Everything’s fine, we are healthy and well.’ Absolutely nothing else,” she said.
We asked about why she decided to stay behind. She described how Viktor had called her and told her that if he had to flee, she and his dad should come with them. But she worried about leaving — and never being able to come back. “ ‘If we have to die, then we will die in our village,’ ” she said she told him. “ ‘You can bury us here, at the cemetery where our whole family is buried.’ ”
She talked about how her grandfather had served in World War I and her father in World War II. He was badly wounded and died two months before she was born.
“I never thought that our generation would suffer through such [a thing],” she said.
She recalled how tanks rolled through their village in March, how they felt “cut off from every side.”
Some residents of the town were taken to basements and disappeared, she said. They struggled to find medication. All shops closed. They survived off what they grew in their garden and homemade bread that some residents sold. Viktor managed to send some medications through acquaintances, which helped keep them healthy.
“The scariest thing was that they could have died without getting help,” Viktor said. “There was no pharmacy there, no hospital.”
We brought more medicine and groceries with us — sandwiches, cured meats and cheese. They served us homemade wine. “When is the last time you ate meat?” I asked Natalia. “We’ve even forgotten the smell of it,” she replied.
When she had to venture outside to look for supplies, she would take routes that she hoped would let her avoid even seeing a Russian soldier. “If I saw a man with a rifle, I got very scared,” she said. Their uniforms, bulletproof vests and weapons unsettled her. “It was very unpleasant,” she said. “And I thought, why did they come here?”
When Ukrainian tanks finally rolled through, she said, civilians knelt down in thanks. “This was so touching,” she said. “You couldn’t look at that without crying.”
“That day, the neighbors came out, saying, ‘Glory to Ukraine!’ to one another,” she recalled. “ ‘We are Ukraine now, there are no Russians. Come with wine, let’s have a drink,’ they said.”
That was the beginning of the end of what Viktor described as feeling as if he was living in “a dead end.”
“The situation is such that you might be ready to take off your last shirt and give it away,” he said. “But you can’t do that.”
Each day that passed, he knew he was missing precious time with his parents. His dad, who is 73, has suffered from serious health issues. “To say I’m furious would be an understatement,” Viktor said. “At my parents’ age, every single day they live is a great accomplishment — I don’t know what else to call it.”
For his mom, being unable to reach her son was also the most difficult part of the occupation. The pain they each felt at their separation was something they struggled to put into words.
Then, a few days after they were liberated, Natalia’s neighbor told her to look up. When she did, she saw Viktor coming across the field, arms wide open, ready to pull her in for a hug.
Whitney Shefte and Sergii Mukaieliants contributed to this report. | 2022-10-10T05:19:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Izyum, joyous family reunions after liberation ended Russian occupation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/izyum-family-reunions-liberation-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/izyum-family-reunions-liberation-ukraine/ |
Ukrainian soldiers greet each other alongside a Russian tank in the Kherson region of southern Ukraine on Oct. 6. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post).
KYIV, Ukraine — As American officials pore over maps tracking developments in Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia, their Ukrainian counterparts are monitoring a different kind of contest back in the United States: the upcoming midterm congressional elections.
In Kyiv, Ukrainians voice hope, and some apprehension, that next month’s legislative polls won’t undercut the staggering flow of U.S. weapons and security aid that Washington has authorized since the start of President Vladimir Putin’s Feb 24. invasion. And they warn that a softening of Republican sentiment has the potential to sap a recent surge in battlefield momentum.
Uncertainty about future American support is intensifying as pollsters predict that Republicans will retake control of the House of Representatives. Some Republican lawmakers and candidates have expressed displeasure with giant aid sums, citing competing security concerns about China, domestic priorities, and the need for greater oversight.
Daria Kaleniuk, an anti-corruption activist who led a delegation of female Ukrainian fighters to Washington last month, noted that nearly all House Republicans had voted against a stopgap funding bill that included $12 billion for Ukraine.
“So it means that we are getting into this danger waters of making Ukraine a partisan issue, and support for Ukraine a partisan issue,” Kaleniuk said.
Fears, however tentative, that American support could falter, are creating a sense of added pressure in Kyiv.
A senior Ukrainian official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly, said that Ukraine’s near-total dependency on foreign military and economic aid meant that its military must quickly recapture as much Russian-controlled territory as possible before any potential softening of Western support.
“The U.S. midterms are one of the factors that have us concerned about the winter,” the official said. “Russia will gain an advantage with the new Congress and with Europeans as they blackmail them on energy policy. That’s why the current offensive is so important.”
Other Ukrainian officials said they remained confident that U.S. assistance would continue.
Oleksander Zavytnevych, who heads the national security and defense committee of Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, said U.S. public support for Ukraine in the war remained strong nationwide despite the reluctance of some Republicans, and so he was not worried that U.S. help would drop off.
“Which politician does not support the opinion of his voter?” Zavytnevych said. “After all, the support provided by the United States is a certain strategic course” for America’s own security.
President Biden, in a call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky this week, repeated his pledge that Washington would support Ukraine “as long as it takes,” suggesting a long-term campaign to supply arms needed to push Russian troops back from occupied cities and towns, and prevent Putin’s illegal annexation of four Ukrainian provinces from being carried out on the ground.
Since February, the Biden administration has sent Ukraine more than $17 billion of military aid, including missile systems and drones. The White House has frequently faced calls from lawmakers in both parties for faster and greater assistance, which, combined with ongoing appeals from Kyiv, helped yield an expanding supply of heavier, longer-range weaponry for the fight.
But as American consumers grapple with inflation and a slowing economy, polls indicate that fewer Republicans believe the United States has a responsibility to protect Ukraine. An August poll by Morning Consult showed that U.S. concern about the war has declined more quickly among Republicans than among Democrats.
For Ukrainians, the moment echoes the toxic political dispute over the Trump administration’s withholding of military aid to Ukraine, which culminated in the then-president’s 2019 impeachment. This time, Ukrainians are determined to stay out of the partisan crossfire.
“It’s not our business to discuss or to help somebody” in American politics, said Vasily Chaly, who served as Ukrainian ambassador in Washington from 2015 to 2019. “Our business is to keep a strong relationship with American people.”
Chaly recalled the intense debate over providing arms to Ukraine, then locked in a war with Russian-backed separatists in the eastern Donbas region, during his tenure in Washington. The sale of small arms began in 2015 and 2016 under the Obama administration. In 2017, the Trump administration authorized the provision of Javelin antitank missiles.
Since its start, largely bipartisan U.S. backing has defied the prevailing animosity in Congress.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee are among the Republican leaders on Capitol Hill who have championed military aid to Ukraine.
But other Republicans, including Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) and Roger Williams (R-Tx.), have expressed reluctance. Influential conservative pundits such as Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, meanwhile, have questioned where money for Ukraine is going and warned of ‘mission creep’ in U.S. support.
That has led even some Republicans to fret about the staying power of American support for Ukraine.
“I hope the safety and security aspect will win out,” said one Republican congressional aide. “But I think there is a question mark.”
While Chaly is among the Ukrainians pushing for sophisticated equipment including tanks and fighter jets, he said he empathized with some U.S. lawmakers’ focus on domestic issues.
“Every country should pay for health, for education, for the internal programs, for jobs — it’s absolutely understandable,” he said. “But if you do not secure your country and your people, you can’t think about development.”
Ukrainians also fear that Russia will use the election to chip away at the bipartisan support, potentially using strategies like those the U.S. government determined to be Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko suggested Russian media narratives and disinformation could be swaying American lawmakers to Ukraine’s detriment. “Of course I worry that some politicians don’t receive the right information,” Klitschko said. “Russians use the media so strong against the world.”
The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) last month posted, then deleted, a tweet that echoed Kremlin language and called for a halt to “gift-giving to Ukraine.” It later issued a statement reaffirming its stance on U.S. assistance. “We must oppose Putin, but American taxpayers should not be shouldering the vast majority of the cost,” it said.
Republican officials cautioned that the recent spending vote did not necessarily indicate a big reduction of support, noting that Ukraine aid was just one of the items the bill financed. They also said Republican support may be buoyed by Ukraine’s military gains or Russian atrocities and nuclear threats.
Oleksandr Kornienko, deputy speaker of the Rada, noted that Putin devoted much of a speech last week on his annexations to a long list of Russian grievances against the U.S. and the West, signaling his larger ambitions and animosity.
“But the war is happening in Ukraine, in the territory of Ukraine. Our people are dying,” Kornienko said. “Therefore, it is in the interest of the civilized world to continue helping Ukraine defeat Putin on Ukrainian territory … so that it does not spill over into Europe and other countries of the world.”
As U.S. assistance adds up, lawmakers of each party are calling for more robust oversight in hopes of averting the waste and diversion that characterized much of the enormous U.S. aid sums provided to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Ukraine is working to intensify accountability efforts, standing up a new parliamentary oversight body and organizing visits to weapons depots, according to Zavytnevych. So far, he said, there have been no substantiated complaints about diversion or misuse of foreign arms.
While they recognize what America’s election results may bring, Ukrainians continue to make the case for the global cost of inaction.
“What we can do as Ukrainians is just keep explaining to the world properly what Russians are doing,” said Kaleniuk, who heads an anti-corruption group. “If [we] are properly armed, we are able to win, and this war has to be won faster. Otherwise, it will cost too much for American people.” | 2022-10-10T05:19:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As U.S. midterms near, anxiety rises in Kyiv over pro-Putin Republicans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/republicans-ukraine-putin-russia-midterms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/republicans-ukraine-putin-russia-midterms/ |
Ukraine live briefing: Explosions shake central Kyiv; Putin convening Russi...
Ukraine live briefing: Explosions shake central Kyiv; Putin convening Russian Security Council
Cars on fire after Russian missile strikes in Kyiv, Ukraine October 10, 2022. (Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)
A series of blasts shook central Kyiv on Monday morning, prompting several officials to issue air-defense alerts and urge residents to shelter. The explosions, after a period of relative calm in the capital city, in the central Shevchenkivskyi district followed an attack on a strategic Crimean bridge over the weekend.
Russian President Vladimir Putin blamed Ukraine for the attack, calling it an “act of terror” by its special services. He is also set to meet with Russia’s Security Council later Monday as prominent Russians urge reprisal for the bridge blast.
Ukrainian officials reported several explosions Monday morning in central Kyiv, the first major attacks on the capital since June. Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the explosions were in the Shevchenkivskyi district, promising more detail later. Videos on social media showed cars ablaze in the middle of a downtown street.
Putin meets with his security council later Monday. The meeting comes the bridge blast, combined with Moscow’s faltering military efforts and recent partial mobilization, generates “direct criticism” of Putin and the Kremlin from the Russian pro-war nationalist community, of a nature that is “almost unprecedented,” analysts at the Institute for the Study of War think tank said. The council meets regularly, on a schedule set by the president, to debate policy and sometimes to resolve disputes.
The Ukrainian government hasn’t officially claimed responsibility for a predawn blast Saturday that saw sections of the Crimean bridge plunge into the waters of the Kerch Strait. But a Ukrainian official told The Washington Post that the country’s special services were behind the attack. The explosion has been celebrated by Ukrainian government agencies — from social media memes to mock postage stamps depicting the blast.
Russia has repeatedly struck civilian targets since its Feb. 24 invasion, including hospitals, schools, apartment buildings and railway stations. At least 14 people were killed and more than 70 people were injured, including 11 children, in airstrikes overnight Saturday in Zaporizhzhia, according to Zelensky. “Hundreds of families were left homeless,” he said in his nightly address Sunday. “An entire block, from the first to the sixth floor, was destroyed by one of the missiles.”
Another airstrike devastated the Zaporizhzhia area early Monday, according to the regional governor, as rescuers worked to clear the debris from an earlier strike. About 2 a.m. local time, Oleksandr Starukh warned people in Zaporizhzhia to take cover because of an incoming airstrike, according to his Telegram account. About an hour later, he said a residential building had been destroyed.
Over the past week, Russian forces have advanced on the eastern city of Bakhmut, which has “suffered very extensive damage from shelling,” British defense intelligence officials said Monday. The attacks are part of a “grinding” Russian offensive in central Donbas, probably aided by Wagner private military company units, including those recently recruited from Russian prisons, the officials said.
Ukrainian troops have retaken seven settlements in Luhansk, regional governor Serhiy Haidai reported Sunday. The easternmost region was a major focus of Russian troops this summer, but Ukraine has slowly regained territory there, including the key transport city of Lyman.
Long lines of cars snaked along the main highway out of Crimea, waiting to cross the undamaged portion of the Crimean Bridge. Video footage showed traffic at a standstill. One driver was anticipating a nearly 12-hour wait.
Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, will visit Moscow this week after meeting with Zelensky in Kyiv on Thursday. The U.N. nuclear watchdog has expressed concern about military attacks in the Zaporizhzhia area, which Grossi has said “increase the risk of a nuclear accident.” Workers restored regular electricity to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant Sunday after shelling damaged a transmission line and it was forced to rely on generators for a day and a half.
Estonia’s intelligence chief said Western countries should consider sending longer-range weapons to Ukraine. “We have a self-interest in giving Ukraine what they ask for,” Mikk Marran said in a Yahoo News interview. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba renewed his appeal for military equipment Sunday after the weekend airstrikes. “We urgently need more modern air and missile defense systems to save innocent lives. I urge partners to speed up deliveries,” he tweeted.
Viktor Havrashenko decided shortly after Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion to flee Izyum with his wife and daughter. Viktor’s parents, like many older people across the country, refused to evacuate. By March, after weeks of heavy fighting, Russian forces took control of Izyum and many surrounding villages, including their own.
Correspondent Siobhán O’Grady joined Victor, a driver working for The Post, as he returned to Izyum months later, after a rapid and unexpected Ukrainian counteroffensive forced Russian forces to retreat from the Kharkiv region. He visited Izyum first, weeping as he saw what had become of his once peaceful city. “I’m not recognizing my hometown,” he said. “Everything is burned down.”
Then he went to find his parents. | 2022-10-10T06:46:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia-Ukraine war latest updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/russia-ukraine-war-latest-updates/ |
Chinese President Xi Jinping adjusts his jacket as he attends a dinner reception at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on the eve of the National Day holiday on Sept. 30. (Ng Han Guan/AP)
All eyes are on Xi Jinping at the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th National Congress that begins on Oct. 16. Barring a major upset, the most powerful Chinese leader in decades will extend his rule, undoing the previous convention of top leaders serving two five-year terms before stepping aside.
With authority tightly held in one man’s hands, it’s easy to forget the remaining 2,295 delegates attending the conclave in Beijing. But it is among these jockeying cadres that experts in Chinese politics search for clues about just how much power Xi has — and how long he is liable to hold it.
The primary focus will be on the Politburo’s Standing Committee, the seven-member body at the pinnacle of decision-making power. If Xi is able to stack the committee with loyalists, then there will be few signs of checks on his personal control.
Turnover at the top of the party had previously been encouraged by an informal age limit known as “seven up, eight down” whereby officials of 67 or below take on new positions while 68-year-olds and above retire. Sticking to this rule-of-thumb would create two new slots for Xi to fill with allies.
But that norm may no longer hold. Aged 69, Xi is at minimum set to ignore the purported rule for himself — and may also do so to promote allies to the Politburo. “It’s not about age any more. It’s about whether you are on Xi’s side,” said Yang Zhang, a sociologist at American University’s School of International Service.
One key indicator of Xi’s power will be if extra members of the current committee are pushed into early retirement, with most attention being on Premier Li Keqiang, who at 67 has not reached the age limit.
The other big question is whether a successor will emerge from the reshuffle. Before Xi, a pathway for future leaders had begun to form, where an heir-apparent took on a Standing Committee position and the vice presidency five years before they were appointed to the top job. Both Xi and his predecessor, Hu Jintao, ascended in this manner.
But that precedent, too, was broken when no officials young enough to serve three terms made the Politburo Standing Committee in 2017. Analysts tracking Chinese politics warn against expecting an anointed successor this year either, arguing that Xi’s extended rule could bypass entirely the generation that will dominate the 370-odd full and alternate members of the Central Committee (the body below the Politburo) over the next 10 years.
Xi and Putin meet and pledge to ‘inject stability’ in the world
“It’s in everyone’s interests not to mention the issue of succession,” said Zhang. “Even if politicians born in the 1960s make it to the Politburo Standing Committee, they will merely be Xi’s technocrats.” It’s more likely that the eventual successor will be from the 1970s generation, but that crop of leaders is currently too young and inexperienced for a clear favorite to be selected at this juncture, Zhang said.
Even if none of them will lead the party, officials born in the late 50s and 60s are the ones who will implement, interpret, and, perhaps occasionally, challenge Xi’s policy agenda as he forges ahead with ambitious plans to tackle inequality and social ills while simultaneously securing China’s position as a military, economic and technology power.
Below are four officials who, if they make it onto the stage in the Great Hall of the People at the meeting’s conclusion, could provide clues about Xi’s degree of control.
Having risen through the same Communist Youth League faction as Li, Hu was the youngest official to make it onto the Politburo at the last Congress. Before Xi, his fast rise made him appear like a potential successor.
But his relative lack of experience working alongside Xi compared with contemporaries means few now consider him a candidate for the top job. His appointment to the Politburo Standing Committee could, however, indicate a degree of power-balancing between total Xi loyalists and other networks.
The party secretary of Chongqing, Chen hails from the eastern province of Zhejiang, an important location in Xi’s power base.
He built a reputation as a loyal lieutenant for Xi during his tenure as party boss of impoverished Guizhou province on the front lines of Xi’s war on poverty.
His real break came in 2017 when he was parachuted into Chongqing after the dramatic takedown of the city’s former party boss, Sun Zhengcai, who was once considered a contender to replace Xi.
Few current Politburo members up for promotion to the Standing Committee have worked as closely with Xi as Ding. As director of the general secretary’s office, he is equivalent to Xi’s chief of staff.
Their relationship stems from a period working together in Shanghai in 2007, when Ding helped Xi mop up a corruption scandal that felled the city’s party boss. His other position since 2017 on the party’s Central Secretariat, the body that conducts day-to-day operations on behalf of the Politburo, has made him a crucial enforcer of Xi’s policy agenda.
As party secretary of Shanghai, Li had a rough start to the year. He became the focus of widespread anger during a coronavirus outbreak after city authorities told residents that Shanghai would not go into lockdown — then did just that for two months.
But Li is also considered an ally of Xi, having worked under him in Zhejiang, and Li’s forceful response to the outbreak was in line with central government demands to stick with a “zero covid” approach.
These four men are far from the only officials eyeing a position at the apex of party power. For the Politburo Standing Committee, other candidates floated by experts include propaganda chief Huang Kunming and the party bosses of Beijing, Tianjin and Guangdong, Cai Qi, Li Hongzhong and Li Xi respectively. Out of those, only the two Lis are not dyed-in-the-wool Xi men.
Beyond the top jobs, even more changes will take place. About half of the 25-member Politburo will be replaced and two-thirds of the positions on the Central Committee could switch hands over the course of reshuffle.
Of particular interest for the United States is who might replace Liu He, an important economic adviser who has been the main point of contact during U.S.-China trade negotiations. He Lifeng, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, the Chinese economic planner, is considered one likely candidate, given his experience governing areas with a focus on international trade and investment.
New positions for the current and former party bosses of Xinjiang, Ma Xingrui and Chen Quanguo respectively, will be closely watched by those concerned about a harsh security clampdown in the region under Xi. If Chen receives a promotion, that would be an official stamp of approval on his hard-line approach.
Analysts also debate whether China will appoint a new foreign minister to replace Wang Yi, who will be 69 by the time the meeting ends. Some argue that Wang is likely to stay on as an influential Politburo member even if he steps aside from the ministry role.
His replacement, if there is one, is likely to lean into China’s assertive foreign policy turn under Xi. One option is Liu Jieyi, current head of the Taiwan Affairs Office, the institution responsible for managing Beijing’s increasingly fraught relationship with Taipei. Another is current top vice foreign minister Ma Zhaoxu, who recently underscored the need for a “diplomatic struggle” to protect China’s interests. | 2022-10-10T08:40:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who will succeed Chinese President Xi Jinping? Here's what to know. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/china-president-xi-jinping-successor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/china-president-xi-jinping-successor/ |
Live updates:Ukraine live updates: Strikes across Ukraine, including heart of Kyiv; Puti...
Cars on fire in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, on Monday after a Russian missile strike. Explosions were reported across the country as Moscow apparently took revenge for an attack on the Crimean Bridge. (Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)
KYIV, Ukraine — A series of blasts rocked Kyiv on Monday morning, with some strikes landing in the heart of the Ukrainian capital’s downtown during rush hour, and rocket attacks hit cities across the country, as Russia apparently sought to take revenge for the explosion Saturday on the Crimean Bridge.
Following heavy explosions, multiple vehicles were in flames near Taras Shevchenko Park — on a busy road often jammed with rush-hour traffic — when suspected Russian missiles landed at around 8:15 a.m.
At least five people were killed, and at least a dozen injured in the strikes, the Kyiv police department reported on its Telegram channel.
Explosions were reported across other major Ukrainian cities on Monday, including in Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Kharkiv and Lviv, as Moscow unleashed a barrage of missiles in multiple waves.
In Kyiv, the strikes, which came in two waves, marked the first attack on the city since June. But even when Russian forces were on the outskirts of the capital in the early months of the war, no attack had hit this directly into the city center.
Russia’s strikes on the city-center raised questions about the strength of Ukraine’s air defenses, Ukrainian officials have been pushing Western countries to help improve through additional security assistance.
Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, said that Kyiv was reaching out to its Western allies to organize a response to Monday’s strikes. “I am in constant contact with partners since early morning today to coordinate a resolute response to Russians attacks,” Kuleba posted on Twitter. “I am also interrupting my Africa tour and heading back to Ukraine immediately.”
Monday’s strike appeared to be retribution for Saturday’s attack on the bridge across the Kerch Strait, which has partially reopened, including to rail traffic. The Crimean Bridge is a strategic link between mainland Russia and Crimea and a symbol of President Vladimir Putin’s ambitions to annex Ukrainian territory.
Putin blamed Ukrainian special services for the attack on Sunday.
“There is no doubt that the attack was aimed at destroying critical civilian infrastructure of the Russian Federation,” Putin said in a video released by the Kremlin on Sunday. The 12-mile long span, while used by civilians, is also a crucial military logistics conduit for Russia’s armed forces, the only direct road and rail route from mainland Russia to Crimea, which the Kremlin invaded and illegally annexed in 2014.
Monday’s attacks followed Russia’s announcement on Saturday that Gen. Sergei Surovikin had been named overall commander of the war in Ukraine. Surovikin is a veteran officer who led the Russian military expedition in Syria in 2017.
Monday’s missile strikes shattered the sense of relative peace that Kyiv has experienced since April, when Ukrainian troops pushed Russian forces to retreat from the northern edges of the region.
About 90 minutes after the first explosions rocked the capital, emergency workers and military were arrayed around an intersection in central Kyiv that was the site of one strike.
The intersection sits next to a major university complex and Taras Shevchenko Park, which is popular with families. One of the missiles landed in the park’s playground.
The burned out hulls of several cars stood in the intersection following the strike. At least one body bag was visible on the pavement. Glass from shattered windows of nearby buildings littered the sidewalk.
Kyiv has come back to life in the months since the failure of Russia’s attempt to seize the capital and topple the government. People in the city routinely ignored air-raid alert sirens while sitting at outdoor cafes and walking around town.
Foreign diplomats, who had evacuated the city in the early days of the war have all returned, and many were posting reports about the strikes on Monday, while urging their diplomatic teams to seek safety.
In the western city of Lviv, a refuge for thousands of displaced Ukrainians because it is far from the front line, missiles struck a power plant, knocked out electricity and hot water in some places, the mayor, Andriy Sadoviy, said on Twitter.
“They are trying to destroy us and wipe us off the face of the earth,” Zelensky said in a statement on Telegram. “Destroy our people who are sleeping at home in Zaporizhzhia. Kill people who go to work in Dnipro and Kyiv.”
Khurshudyan reported from Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine. | 2022-10-10T08:40:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kyiv and cities across Ukraine hit by missing barrage after bridge attack - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/kyiv-missile-strikes-russia-ukraine-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/kyiv-missile-strikes-russia-ukraine-war/ |
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