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Three teenagers shot in separate incidents in D.C.
All the victims were in Southeast on Sunday afternoon, according to police
Three teenagers were shot and wounded Sunday in separate incidents in the District, police said.
All of the victims were conscious and breathing, said Officer Hugh Carew, a police spokesman.
In the latest of the three incidents, a youth was shot about 4 p.m. in the 3400 block of Stanton Road SE, Carew said.
About two hours earlier, a youth was shot at 15th Street and Independence Avenue SE, according to Carew. The site is near the eastern edge of the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
The first of the shootings was about 1 p.m. in the 2600 block of Birney Place SE. | 2022-10-10T08:53:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Three teenagers shot in Sunday incidents in D.C,, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/three-teenagers-shot-southeast-washington/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/three-teenagers-shot-southeast-washington/ |
Two killed in B-W Parkway collision
A juvenile was one of those killed, according to police
Two people were fatally injured Saturday night in a crash on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway, the U.S. Park Police said.
Two cars collided about 9:30 p.m. in the northbound lanes near Route 197 in Prince George’s County, police said.
The driver of one car died at the scene. A juvenile passenger from the second car died at a hospital, police said. Three others from that car were injured and taken to hospitals, police said. | 2022-10-10T08:53:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two killed in Baltimore-Washington Parkway crash, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/two-killed-parkway-crash-bw/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/two-killed-parkway-crash-bw/ |
Ex-Republican congressman Riggleman cuts ad supporting Spanberger
Former Virginia Republican congressman Denver Riggleman, who no longer identifies as a Republican, cuts an ad supporting Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) in her race against Republican Yesli Vega. (YouTube)
Indeed, it’s pretty unusual for a former Republican congressman to campaign for a sitting Democrat, a la Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) supporting Democrats in Arizona over the election-denying Republican candidates for governor and secretary of state. But Riggleman is pretty unusual in that he was part of the vocal minority of Republicans to break ties with the GOP over former president Donald Trump’s stolen-election lies, telling The Washington Post in interviews last year he no longer identified as a Republican. Riggleman had also railed against what he called GOP purity tests he said he didn’t fit into.
What hunting Bigfoot taught a Republican congressman about politics
“In Congress, the parties sit apart and don’t work together — except Abigail Spanberger,” Riggleman says in the ad, pointing to a bipartisan index ranking Spanberger as the fifth-most bipartisan member of Congress. “She’s trying to change Congress and make it work.”
The ad — more than a half-million dollar buy in the Washington and Charlottesville markets, according to Spanberger’s campaign — appears geared toward the district’s independent or swing voters as Spanberger hits the final leg of the race against Prince William Board of County Supervisors member Yesli Vega (R). The race is by far the most expensive campaign in Virginia, so far totaling over $18 million. The district, anchored in populous eastern Prince William, is one President Biden and Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) each won, making it one of the most contested races in Virginia this year. The ad will run for most of October, the campaign said.
In an interview, Riggleman said he decided to cut the ad for Spanberger because he could not support “facts-challenged individuals” running for office.
He pointed to comments Vega made during the Republican primary this spring casting doubt on the 2020 election, and her acceptance of an endorsement from Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, a GOP activist and the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who remains under scrutiny by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol for her efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Riggleman, who has a background in tracking disinformation, worked as an adviser to the Jan. 6 committee — though he recently rankled committee members after publishing a book about his work before the committee’s investigation ended and that the committee did not authorize.
“If you’re afraid to come out and say President Biden was elected legally and fairly, there’s no way I can support that kind of ridiculousness,” he said.
Riggleman was referring to comments Vega made at an April 20 candidate forum in which she said “there’s evidence that continues to come out that indicates that the election of 2020 was interfered with,” according to a recording obtained by VPM. She said she would not say the election was “stolen,” adding she did not want to speculate and needed more evidence. Still, Riggleman argued that saying the election was “interfered with” is “coded language for everybody on the stop-the-steal bus.”
A spokesman for Vega did not respond to a request for comment for this article. But during a recent interview with The Post, when asked if she acknowledged President Biden was legitimately elected, Vega said, “He is the president of the United States.” She would not give a yes or no answer when pressed, taking issue with the question as something she said she believed did not matter to voters in her district, noting Jan. 6 was a long time ago. She later reiterated Biden is president and added that “the American people elected him.”
“I am not Donald Trump, I don’t know what goes on in his mind, and I can’t speak to what he stated,” she said when asked about Trump’s false claims of voter fraud. “You can call him and ask him about those comments, but I’m not gonna go there, because he has nothing to do with this race, and I have yet to talk to voters who are concerned about that.”
Despite caucusing with the most conservative members of Congress in the House Freedom Caucus, the libertarian-leaning Riggleman frequently worked across the aisle with Spanberger on issues such as expanding rural broadband. The two enjoyed a friendly rapport, bonding over a shared background in counterterrorism.
They served in Congress as Virginia Republicans. Now they’ve joined a national effort to reform the party.
Riggleman was defeated by Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) in a contentious GOP nominating convention in 2020 after upsetting right-wing religious conservative activists for officiating a same-sex wedding. He then emerged as a leading Trump critic within the GOP, angering party officials after he blasted the former president for flirting with QAnon conspiracy theories weeks before the 2020 election, and then sounding alarm bells about the false claims of election fraud Trump and his GOP colleagues were spreading.
“I think tribal politics is the worst thing we can have,” he said Friday. “I think that’s another reason for Abby [Spanberger], is that she’s bipartisan — she certainly wants to help the people in her district regardless of if they’re Republican or Democrat, and that’s a special trait to have.”
Riggleman’s successor, Good, who also falsely claimed the election was stolen, has endorsed Vega. In June he said she would “put America first” and called her a “true fighter whom I want serving beside me in Congress, fighting against the establishment and for our true conservative principles.” Multiple members of the House Freedom Caucus endorsed Vega, and its political arm says she will join the caucus if elected.
Spanberger said in a statement that she was “proud to be ranked as the most bipartisan Member of Congress from Virginia — because the people I represent expect me to get results, not grandstand.”
“This commitment to progress stands in direct contrast to my opponent — who has promised to join the hyper-partisan Freedom Caucus, pledged to shut down the federal government, and defended the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol and law enforcement officers on January 6, 2021,” Spanberger said.
Vega had expressed openness to shutting down the government in an interview with conservative radio host John Fredericks, but when questioned by The Post about the circumstances in which she would consider a shutdown, she said she would not speculate. | 2022-10-10T10:07:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ex-Republican congressman Denver Riggleman cuts ad supporting Rep. Abigail Spanberger - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/spanberger-riggleman-campaign-ad/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/spanberger-riggleman-campaign-ad/ |
By Mariana Alfaro
Maxwell Frost became the first member of Generation Z to win a congressional primary and appears likely to head to Congress in the deeply blue 10th Congressional District in Florida. (Thomas Simonetti/For The Washington Post)
Historically, young Americans turn out to vote at significantly lower rates than their parents and grandparents. Only 44 percent of voters ages 18 to 29 participated in the 2016 election, an unenthusiastic turnout compared with the 72 percent of voters 65 and older who showed up to vote that year. The trend has picked up since — 53 percent of young voters participated in the 2020 election, the most-recent presidential election year.
Per a Washington Post-ABC News poll published Sept. 25, only 49 percent of young Americans — those between the ages of 19 and 29 — said they are “absolutely certain to vote” in the November midterms, compared with 63 percent of those 30-64 and 84 percent of those 65 and older. And an NPR/Maris poll published on Oct. 6 found that those aged 18-29 are the least likely to vote in November.
Still, some leading voting rights groups are optimistic that Gen Z will vote in droves this year — if only because the pressure has been put on young voters as national and state lawmakers target rights they hold dearest, including protections to the LGBTQ community, abortion rights and gun control.
“Voting is habit forming, and, right now, no matter how negatively people may feel, they’re not ready to give up on voting, because the consequences are so clear and stark,” said Andy Bernstein, executive director of HeadCount, a nonpartisan organization that promotes voting through engagement with artists.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) and activists explain Proposal 3, a midterm ballot measure which would enshrine abortion rights in the state's constitution. (Video: Hannah Jewell, Lindsey Sitz, Ross Godwin/The Washington Post, Photo: AP Photo/Patrick Semansky/The Washington Post)
Stephanie Young, executive director of voting access group When We All Vote, said Gen Z voters appear to be more civically engaged than those who came before them because they’re seeing firsthand how “government works because of the pandemic … [and] all that we’ve experienced over the last couple of years.”
“They can see their power when it comes to voting and voting people into office that are aligned with them,” Young said.
Even President Biden has recognized the generation’s energy and potential.
“One of my reasons for optimism is the young people in this country, [they are] the least prejudiced, most volunteering, least — How can I say it? — Least likely to find blame and most likely to get engaged,” Biden said at a recent White House event.
Some members of this generation are working to harness their peers’ voting powers. Voters of Tomorrow, a Gen Z-run organization working to get out the youth vote, gathered more than 100 activists on an Friday night in Philadelphia in August. The youngest were 13 — too young to vote. They came from around the country to talk strategy about how they could get their peers to vote.
“They want us to feel that way, they want us to be ‘doomers,’ they want us to see what’s happening and look away,” Kasky said. “They all want us to give up, right?”
The Gen Z “doom” that Kasky spoke about is reflected in the numbers. A poll published in early August by the Economist and YouGov found that 61 percent of Americans aged 18 to 29 think the country is “on the wrong track.”
“Unfortunately,” Kasky told his fellow activists, “We still have to do the work.”
Gen Z’s civic engagement is visible, loud, and viral, HeadCount’s Bernstein said. More young people, he said, are protesting, picking up their phone and blasting their representatives on Twitter or running for office themselves.
“The civic engagement aspect is actually really healthy,” he said.
Will Larkins, 17, a senior at Winter Park High School in Florida is an example of this. Larkins went viral in April for educating classmates about the 1969 Stonewall uprising, and then led walkouts at their school protesting a measure passed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) that has come to be known as the “Don’t Say Gay’ bill.
And that sparked an “instantaneous shift in culture at my school,” they said, noting that they helped register 200 of his classmates to vote.
Republicans, Larkins said, “definitely picked the wrong crowd to mess with.”
And while Larkins is still too young to vote — and much too young to run for office — fellow Floridian Maxwell Alejandro Frost is an example of a young, grass roots organizer who’s taking charge after being disappointed by previous generations.
At 25, Frost became the first member of Gen Z to win a congressional primary. He is favored to win the general election for Florida’s heavily Democratic 10th Congressional District, which means Frost is likely to be one of the youngest members of Congress — and one of the first members of Gen Z to roam its halls as a lawmaker.
Speaking by phone days after his victory in the Florida primary, Frost noted that Voters of Tomorrow was among the first national organizations that backed his political campaign, lending it legitimacy. The urgency of Gen Z’s priorities, he said, can be felt through the dedication they put to organizations like this, where they feel like they can enact change even without having power.
Frost would know — He’s been working in politics since he was 15, protesting gun violence after the deadly mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012. Before running for office, he served as March for Our Lives’ national organizing director.
“We are [ticked] off that we don’t live in the world that we deserve,” Frost said. “People like to say young people are stubborn so, yeah, sure, Generation Z is stubborn about a better world. We know that we have to get involved and make our voices heard to build that world.”
Like Frost, Leavitt — who worked as an aide for former president Donald Trump — has leaned into her Gen Z identity while campaigning.
“They said I was too young, we could never raise the money to compete, and that we could never beat a former Republican nominee,” Leavitt said in her victory speech in September after she beat Republican Matt Mowers, who ran against Pappas in 2020 but lost by five percentage points.
At the Philadelphia conference, Chi Ossé, a 24-year-old member of the New York City Council and one of the youngest elected officials in the country, said it feels like Gen Z is more politically engaged than previous generations partly because of the internet, but also because of the “chaos” that was growing up in the country “over the past two decades.”
“I wouldn’t call it anger,” he said, of what motivates members of Gen Z to be politically active, “I would call it urgency to act on the issues that are very pressing right now. We are so tired of incrementalism.” | 2022-10-10T10:07:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gen Z's participation voting in the midterms remains an open question - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/gen-z-voters-midterm-elections/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/gen-z-voters-midterm-elections/ |
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un monitors a missile launch at an undisclosed location, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency. (KCNA/AFP/Getty Images)
TOKYO — North Korea’s recent barrage of missile launches was designed to test its capability to strike the South with tactical nuclear weapons as a warning after the United States’ and South Korea’s joint military drills, state media reported Monday.
The announcement comes after a flurry missile tests carried out with little explanation and offered leader Kim Jong Un’s response to the increasingly coordinated actions by South Korea, Japan and the United States.
North Korea’s seven tests since late September included a new intermediate-range ballistic missile and a short-range ballistic missile fired from an underwater silo, the report said, as the country works to diversify the types and locations of missile launches to evade missile defenses.
North Korea said it is not interested in resuming diplomatic talks with the United States or South Korea. It said it viewed recent military drills by the United States, South Korea and Japan as a military threat and decided to organize simulations of “actual war” to check its readiness. Tactical nuclear weapons, which have a lower nuclear explosive yield and fly shorter ranges, are on Kim’s five-year weapons development plan.
“The enemies have still talked about dialogue and negotiation while posing military threats to us, but we have no content for dialogue with the enemies and felt no necessity to do so,” Kim said, according to state media.
Pyongyang’s latest statement underscored the contentious diplomatic standoff as the United States and South Korea harden their positions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and its preparations for its seventh test of a nuclear weapon. The announcement also coincided with a North Korean holiday celebrating the country’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea.
After scaling back exercises during the pandemic and nuclear diplomacy that ultimately failed, the allies have been conducting drills since August to demonstrate their readiness to work together in the event of a conflict with the North. The allies say the exercises are defensive in nature, but Pyongyang has long viewed them as hostile acts and used them to justify its weapons development and nuclear program.
State media blamed the allies for “taking a regretful attitude further escalating the tension in the region” in their use of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan.
While the United States says it is open to dialogue, the Biden administration has been unwilling to grant the sanctions relief that Kim seeks. North Korea has continued to test his ballistic missiles in violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions banning such tests.
The release of photos showing the tests came after a six-month silence even as launches continued unabated. The announcement claimed that one test was a simulation of loading tactical nuclear warheads to neutralize South Korean airports, and others were aimed at hitting specific targets and making sure its nuclear-capable weapons are “fully ready to hit and wipe out” those targets.
It also explained its recent missile test over Japan — a provocative move that it took for the first time since 2017 — as a “more powerful and clear warning to the enemies.”
The South Korean presidential office called security tensions on the Korean Peninsula “grave” on Monday.
“It is important to accurately recognize the grave security reality on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia and prepare appropriately for it,” the office said in a statement. “Protecting the lives and safety of people is not about words, but it is a real-life problem.” | 2022-10-10T10:20:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | North Korea tests nuclear-capable missiles that could 'wipe out' South - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/north-korea-nuclear-missiles-tests/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/north-korea-nuclear-missiles-tests/ |
In the United States and elsewhere, land is being converted to offer free fruits and vegetables, ‘no questions asked’
The grounds and moat of Andernach’s castle are filled with fruit trees, flowers and vegetable plants that anyone can pick freely. (Andernach.net GmbH)
When word got out that Andernach’s public gardens and orchards — which started in 2010 — were free for the picking, other cities in Germany and throughout the European Union joined in, she said. Now the Edible Cities Network is funded by the European Commission, the executive body of the E.U.
“Every partner organization in the project receives funding from the E.U. budget to carry out their work,” Pettit said.
The Beacon Food Forest recently celebrated its 10th anniversary as a diverse community garden that is open to anyone walking by, said Elise Evans, one of the project’s volunteers. | 2022-10-10T11:00:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Edible cities are growing in the U.S. and Europe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/10/edible-cities-orchard-free-produce/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/10/edible-cities-orchard-free-produce/ |
New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan created a special committee that has held meetings across the state soliciting input on how to increase voter confidence. (John Tully/for The Washington Post)
NASHUA, New Hampshire — By 5 p.m., the small auditorium on the top floor of city hall is full.
There are elected officials in sleek business attire and slightly rumpled poll workers. There are voting rights activists and amateur election sleuths and curious members of the public.
They have come together for an unusual experiment aimed at bolstering faith in American democracy. At a time of deepening distrust, they are here both to speak and to listen.
Since May, the New Hampshire Special Committee on Voter Confidence has traveled the length of the state holding public hearings that are part civics roadshow, part airing of grievances.
The committee’s stated goal is to identify the causes of the decline in voter confidence and recommend ways to reverse it. Left unstated is the unprecedented nature of the current moment, where former president Donald Trump and Republican candidates continue to deny the outcome of the 2020 election.
Embedded in the bipartisan exercise in New Hampshire is a fundamental tension: Can you reassure voters that the electoral process is sound while providing skeptics a forum for their concerns?
Each session has explored a different facet of elections. Experts have explained how ballot-counting machines work. Election officials have discussed procedures and training. Academics have shared research on voter fraud.
Then the proceedings are opened to public comments. Some speakers come prepared to offer detailed policy prescriptions, or impassioned defenses of the system, or equally fervent accusations of fraud. Others share off-the-cuff suggestions drawn from their own experience.
At an August meeting in Nashua, the vibe is polite with a hint of tension. No one knows how much of the nation’s broader political turbulence is about to erupt in the room. One man in a suit clutches a thick blue book containing New Hampshire’s election rules. Another, in jeans and a red MAGA hat, stands at the back and records the session on his phone.
Jeanne Dunphy sits at the back of the room with her sister. An engineer and lifelong Nashua resident, she had never given much thought to election fraud before the 2020 vote.
These days, she feels deeply uncertain. She doesn’t believe that the election was stolen, but the things she has heard make her uneasy. “You know there’s something going on, but you’re not sure what,” says Dunphy, 63. As the presentations begin, she listens intently.
On this Monday evening, the commission has invited the two major parties to present their views on improving the election system. They agree on almost nothing.
“Voter fraud is a myth,” says Raymond Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. He uses a PowerPoint presentation to share research showing that the incidence of malfeasance is infinitesimally small. But it is impossible to convince people, Buckley says, when “they’re being fed nonstop lines of nonsense.”
William O’Brien, counsel for the New Hampshire Republican Party, steps up to the lectern next. “The myth is that Republicans are trying to suppress the vote,” he says. “It’s a myth intended to cease discussion of issues because of insults.”
Dunphy, who mostly votes Republican, is upset by the partisan sparring. “I was expecting them to say, ‘Look, this is what’s going on, a lot of this is fraud and here’s what we’re going to do,’ ” she says.
Later, during the public comment session, a man rises with a folder holding sheaves of paper that he claims contain evidence of voting irregularities at his own address.
As he sits back down, Dunphy pulls him aside and they huddle at the back of the room.
‘Make sure their guy wins’
Experts have spent years measuring voter confidence and they’ve learned a good deal about how it works.
Americans are more confident about elections at the local level compared to the national level, polling shows. They also feel better about elections when their candidate wins, said Charles Stewart, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who spoke before the New Hampshire commission in September.
In a poll conducted by the MIT Election Lab just after the 2020 elections, nearly two-thirds of Americans said they were very confident that their own vote was counted as intended, a proportion that has remained virtually unchanged for the past two decades.
However, when asked whether votes nationwide were counted as intended, a dramatic partisan gulf emerged. Confidence among Democrats rose from 69 percent to 93 percent compared to 2016. Among Republicans, it plummeted from 83 percent to 22 percent. Republicans were also more likely to believe that voter fraud is prevalent.
Decreasing faith in the election system could erode trust in democratic institutions, depress voter turnout and potentially lead to violence, as witnessed in the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.
In New Hampshire, Secretary of State David Scanlan saw the decline in confidence as cause for worry — and a potential threat to the state’s relatively high voter turnout.
Voters in the state — home to the first presidential primaries — “take pride in vetting the candidates and knowing who they are,” said Scanlan. But the attacks on the soundness of elections are “filtering into New Hampshire,” Scanlan said. “It’s not too early to start the process of trying to turn that around.”
Scanlan, a Republican, doesn’t mention the former president by name. He obliquely notes that having a national candidate say that “the winner of that election was not actually the winner of the election” had significant impact. But Scanlan adds that members of both parties have questioned the legitimacy of election results, leading to “the climate we find ourselves in today.”
Scanlan created the Special Committee on Voter Confidence and chose its eight members. Such committees have done productive work making recommendations on other aspects of state elections in the past, he said.
The group is chaired by Bradford Cook, a Republican, and Richard Swett, a Democrat, both silver-haired stalwarts of the state’s political scene: Cook leads the state’s Ballot Law Commission and Swett is a former member of Congress.
Other members include former state legislators and a former country director for the Peace Corps. One choice in particular has drawn criticism: Ken Eyring, a resident of Windham, posts regularly on the conservative website Granite Grok where he repeatedly made the false claim that there was “massive” corruption and “rampant” fraud in the 2020 presidential election. Such fraud “took place in all of the battleground states to steal the election from President Trump,” Eyring wrote.
Eyring also drew attention to irregularities in his own town’s election. In 2020, a ballot-folding error in Windham led to a discrepancy in the vote totals in a contest to elect state representatives (the error was corrected and the winners did not change).
The state later conducted an audit and found no evidence of fraud, only unintentional human error. Apart from the problem with the folded ballots, the auditors said, the poll was “well run under challenging circumstances.”
In person, Eyring is mild-mannered but insistent, declaring that allegations of election irregularities should not be minimized.
And though critics have argued that someone who denies the 2020 results shouldn’t be charged with restoring faith in the system, Scanlan has defended Eyring’s inclusion. Eyring has been “a really good representative of one of the constituent groups that are out there,” said Scanlan. “Anybody that feels impacted by the election process ought to have a voice.”
‘Feelings don’t matter’
In Nashua, the meeting stretches into its third hour. The skylight in the ceiling slowly grows dark. The man in the MAGA hat steps up to the microphone and introduces himself as Tim Cahill of Raymond, N.H., a town about 30 miles away.
He asks how many people in the audience drove to the event. Nearly everyone in the room nods or raises their hands. “If everyone here is honest, you would all agree that you probably broke a speeding law on the way over here,” he says. More nodding and chagrined smiles.
“Just because you didn’t get caught doesn’t mean you weren’t speeding,” Cahill continues. “Just because people didn’t get caught doesn’t mean there wasn’t voter fraud.”
Curtis Clayton, 33, watches Cahill cede the floor. He looks grimly amused. A former Marine in a camouflage hat and a blue Sig Sauer T-shirt, he readies himself to do something he has never done before: speak in public.
Clayton stands up and passionately argues that the election system is safe and free of any widespread fraud. “A lot of people are feeling upset about the election. A lot of people have felt anger and rage,” he says. “I also have many emotions ranging around the election. But in reality, feelings don’t matter. Facts do.”
Clayton and his wife, whose family is from Panama, moved to New Hampshire from North Carolina a year ago. He was looking for a state where he would still feel comfortable as a gun owner, but where he would no longer hear offhand comments about “shooting some liberals” when the civil war starts, he said.
In a later conversation, Clayton returns, incredulous, to the analogy between breaking the speed limit and voter fraud raised at the meeting. “So, because everyone is speeding, therefore everyone is committing treason?” he asks. “That guy was obviously the smartest person in the room; he should be president.”
A few rows ahead of Clayton is Tim Sennott, a 37-year-old with close-cropped dark hair. He’s an accounts-payable manager. For the past three years, he has also overseen elections in Nashua’s Ward 7, a wedge of the city next to the Merrimack River.
“Anybody who has doubts about the system is invited to come work,” Sennott tells the audience. “Come ready, and bring your coffee.”
Sennott likes that the public meeting allows people to speak freely, even if he finds some of their claims spurious. A long line of people registering to vote on Election Day, or multiple people being registered at a single address, or someone arriving at a polling station without identification does not equal malfeasance, he says.
Hearing such anecdotes presented as “unwavering evidence of election fraud — it speaks to people who maybe don’t see much of the world beyond their front door,” Sennott says.
Dunphy, the engineer, is one of those who is worried by what she hears at the meeting. She asks Joe Torelli, a former television journalist who presents alleged evidence of irregularities, how she can check what is happening at her address. He directs her to the website of the New Hampshire Voter Integrity Group, which displays a link to an online channel hosted by Mike Lindell, a Trump ally and prominent 2020 election denier.
The website also features a tool that purports to show which voters voted from which addresses in the state. That evening, Dunphy goes home and immediately checks the information on herself, her sister’s family and her neighbor across the street. She’s perplexed when her brother-in-law and nephew don’t appear in the search results. “So where are their votes?” she asks. “How come it’s not recorded anywhere?”
Anna Fay, a spokeswoman for Scanlan, the secretary of state, said his office does not know the source of the data used on the website. State and local election officials and official websites are “the trusted source of election information,” she said.
But for Dunphy, the meeting — which goes beyond three hours — only fuels her doubts. There needs to be “a little more light shined into the darkness of all this,” she says. “I’m still as confused as I was when I went there.” | 2022-10-10T11:17:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In a time of distrust, New Hampshire is trying to boost voter confidence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/10/new-hampshire-voter-confidence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/10/new-hampshire-voter-confidence/ |
21 displaced, one injured after apartment complex fire in Prince George’s
Twenty-one people were displaced after a fire Sunday at an apartment complex, officials said.
According to a Twitter message from the Prince George’s County Fire Department, the blaze broke out around 4:30 a.m. at a three-story building in the 8500 block of Greenbelt Road near the Baltimore-Washington Parkway in the Seabrook neighborhood.
Emergency crews found smoke coming from a fire on the second floor of the building. One person was rescued and transported to a hospital with life-threatening injuries. Officials said 21 people were displaced. | 2022-10-10T11:39:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 21 displaced, one injured after apartment complex fire in Prince George’s - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/fire-seabrook-prince-georges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/fire-seabrook-prince-georges/ |
One person killed in homicide in Bladensburg area
A homicide was reported in the unincorporated area of Capitol Heights, police said. (iStock)
One person is dead in a homicide in the unincorporated area of Bladensburg.
Police in Prince George’s County said on Twitter early Monday morning that the incident happened in the 5300 block of Sheriff Road near the District line.
No other details were immediately available and the person’s name was not released, pending the notification of family. | 2022-10-10T11:39:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | One dead in homicide in Prince George’s County - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/homicide-bladensburg-prince-georges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/homicide-bladensburg-prince-georges/ |
Maryland U.S. attorney establishes civil rights and special victims section
The new section will focus on civil and criminal civil rights cases and cases involving vulnerable victims
The Maryland U.S. attorney's office is adding a criminal civil rights division. (iStock)
The U.S. attorney’s office in Maryland will have a new section focused on civil and criminal civil rights and special victims cases.
“This section will be a beacon for protecting civil rights and addressing victim-related crimes requiring specialized skills,” said U.S. Attorney for Maryland Erek L. Barron in a release announcing the change on the first anniversary of his swearing-in.
Barron named Assistant U.S. Attorneys Sarah Marquardt and Paul Budlow as chiefs and Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles Austin as deputy chief of the new civil rights and special victims section, according to the release. Assistant U.S. attorneys from both the civil and criminal divisions will staff the unit.
Senate confirms Erek Barron as U.S. attorney for Maryland
The section will prioritize federal criminal civil rights enforcement including cases of child exploitation, human trafficking, and identity theft, according to the release.
The division also will emphasize civil rights work that addresses hate crimes, housing discrimination, voter suppression, discriminatory employment practices, equal opportunity for people with disabilities, and denials of equal protection to students, according to the release.
In his one year as the U.S. attorney, Barron has established a violent and organized crime section and hired 19 new assistant U.S. attorneys, according to the release.
Barron previously served in the Maryland General Assembly as a delegate representing Prince George’s County. During his time as a delegate, he served as a member of the General Assembly’s Legislative Black Caucus and was known for his work advocating for criminal justice reform. | 2022-10-10T11:39:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland U.S. Attorney Erek Barron creates civil rights and special victims section - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/maryland-attorney-erek-barron-civil-special-victims/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/maryland-attorney-erek-barron-civil-special-victims/ |
Man shot by Bladensburg police after driving into cruiser
He suffered non-life-threatening injuries and led officers on a chase into the District, police said
Bladensburg Police Chief Tyrone Collington speaks about the shooting of a man by police. (Bladensburg Police)
A man was shot by police after he drove a vehicle into a police cruiser and then led officers on a chase from Bladensburg into the District, officials said.
The incident started just before midnight in the 5100 block of 57th Avenue not far from the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. Officials said police got a call about two men in the area who were wearing full ski masks and “acting suspiciously,” as they were tampering with vehicles, according to Bladensburg Police Chief Tyrone Collington.
At a news conference, Collington said officers arrived and tried to speak with the men but that one of them fled. He was caught, and another man jumped into a vehicle and tried to “run over officers,” Collington said.
Officers told the man to stop and show his hands, Collington said, but he refused and drove at them at a “high speed in an attempt to run them over.” The man hit a police cruiser, and three officers fired their weapons, Collington said. A chase then ensued into the District. The driver was eventually stopped and detained, he said, in the 2300 block of Good Hope Road near Naylor Road in Southeast D.C.
Collington said the driver was taken to a hospital with non-life-threatening injuries. No officers were hurt in the incident. Officials said they later determined the vehicle the man was driving had been stolen in D.C.
Collington called it a “very significant incident” and thanked officers for keeping the community safe. “We want to assure residents,” he said, that officers are “operating with the law and doing the best they can in these trying and troubling times.” But he said none of his “officers come to work and intend to be run over by suspects driving a stolen vehicle.” | 2022-10-10T11:39:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man shot by Bladensburg police after chase into D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/police-shooting-bladensburg/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/police-shooting-bladensburg/ |
Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, tweeted this weekend for the first time since 2020, and immediately stirred controversy. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
Twitter confirmed Sunday that it had removed a tweet by Ye, the musician and fashion designer formerly known as Kanye West, and temporarily prohibited him from further posts on the platform, as the fallout from his recent antisemitic comments on social media continued.
Ye’s account, @kanyewest, was “locked for violating Twitter’s policies,” a Twitter spokesperson said in an email Sunday, declining to state which policy he had violated. The account shows that a recent tweet “violated the Twitter Rules.”
Though the tweet is no longer visible on his account, screenshots shared widely on social media show that Ye had said he would go “death con 3” on “JEWISH PEOPLE,” an apparent reference to Defcon, the U.S. military’s defense readiness system. In the tweet, he used antisemitic tropes and said he could not be antisemitic “because black people are actually Jew also.”
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The action by Twitter comes after Instagram removed a post from Ye’s account and similarly locked his account temporarily. A spokesperson for Meta, Instagram’s parent company formerly known as Facebook, said in an email that the platform “deleted content from @kanyewest for violating our policies and placed a restriction on the account. We may place restrictions on accounts that repeatedly break our rules, for example, we may temporarily restrict them from posting, commenting, or sending DM’s.” Screenshots of the post show that Ye had posted an apparent conversation with the rapper Diddy, employing antisemitic tropes to allege that he was being influenced by Jewish people.
After Ye was restricted by Instagram, he took to Twitter — in a tweet still visible on the platform — to criticize Mark Zuckerberg, Meta’s chief executive, writing, “Look at this Mark. How you gone kick me off instagram,” along with a photo of the two together in a group.
The Saturday posts came shortly after Ye tweeted a photo of a baseball cap labeled with “2024,” an apparent reference to the 2024 presidential election. The tweets were his first since 2020, when he had tweeted, “KANYE 2024.”
Ye’s social media posts have also garnered attention from political and societal figures, with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) admonishing him in a tweet late Sunday, writing: “There is absolutely no room in this country or world for antisemitism. It is important to see how harmful + dangerous Kanye’s words are — not only to our Jewish brothers, sisters, & siblings, but also to our collective society at large. We must reject this ... wherever we see it. ”
Some on the right have come to Ye’s defense in recent days. Elon Musk — the chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX who is engaged in a legal battle over his reneged offer, and subsequent reversal, to buy Twitter — responded to his tweet about Zuckerberg, writing, “Welcome back to Twitter, my friend!”
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) tweeted a link to an MSNBC blog post about Ye’s recent controversies, criticizing “the media,” which he said had “gone after Kanye for his new fashion line, his independent thinking & for having opposing thoughts from the norm of Hollywood.” He later followed up by saying that his post “was specifically and clearly aimed at the hypocrisy of the media and Hollywood elites, not anything to do with other comments. I have an obvious, clear and substantial Congressional and public record of being 100% supportive of the Jewish community and Israel.”
The blog post centered on widespread backlash to Ye’s display at last week’s Paris Fashion Week of a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “WHITE LIVES MATTER.” The phrase, a response to the Black Lives Matter movement, has ties to neo-Nazi and white-supremacist groups, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. The shirt led Adidas, which has collaborated with Ye on shoe and clothing lines, to reevaluate its partnership with him. Adidas said in a statement to various news outlets that “after repeated efforts to privately resolve the situation, we have taken the decision to place the partnership under review.”
Representatives for Ye could not be reached for comment Sunday evening.
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The controversies have reignited discussions over Ye’s documented struggles with bipolar disorder, and in turn, the limits of what can be explained by mental illness. “Please don’t let Kanye’s behavior mischaracterize bipolar disorder as something that inherently makes us act out so terribly,” Cameron Kasky, a gun-control advocate who has spoken publicly about having bipolar disorder, said on Twitter. “There are ups and downs, but bipolar disorder doesn’t restructure your fundamental values” into something harmful, he said. | 2022-10-10T12:01:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kanye West's antisemitic posts removed by Twitter, Instagram - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/10/kanye-west-antisemitic-twitter-instagram/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/10/kanye-west-antisemitic-twitter-instagram/ |
4 new science fiction novels mine a nonfictional problem: Climate change
Books by Ray Nayler, Stephanie Feldman, Akil Kumarasamy and R.B. Lemberg challenge the reader to get used to the unthinkable
Review by Charlie Jane Anders
Many of us have been saying for years that science fiction has an important role to play in helping us understand the dangers of climate change. To survive what’s coming, we’ll need more than ingenuity — we’ll need imagination and a willingness to face scary developments with our eyes open.
Let’s talk about science fiction and fantasy novels about ecology and climate change
So, it is welcome, thrilling even, to see so many new novels that include a thoughtful, matter-of-fact look at environmental devastation. Instead of treating the subject as shocking, or as an occasion for Roland Emmerich-style disaster stories, these books accept the inevitability of climate disruption and challenge the reader to get used to the unthinkable. Most of all, these books use a backdrop of climate disruption to tell cracking good stories in which you’ll want to get lost.
“The Mountain in the Sea,” by Ray Nayler (MCD) has been described as an eco-dystopian thriller, but it’s something slower and more meditative. When the book opens, marine biologist Ha Nguyen has been invited to a secluded island called Con Dao to study a newly discovered octopus society that’s developed what appears to be its own writing, culture and even religion. But the creatures are threatened with extinction at the hands of humans. Ha’s only companions are Evrim, the world’s first self-aware android and a cyborg soldier. Meanwhile, a man named Eiko is forced into slavery on a fishing vessel that trawls a near-lifeless ocean, and a hacker named Rustem is hired by a mysterious woman to do an impossible task.
Nayler’s poignant, mind-expanding debut is full of artificial intelligences, with various levels of mindfulness, alongside the mysterious octopus community. The juxtaposition of these nonhuman minds raises big questions about the nature of consciousness. At one point, Ha remarks that the statement that proves complex thought is not “I think therefore I am,” but “I think therefore I doubt I am.”
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In “Saturnalia” (Unnamed Press) Stephanie Feldman uses ecological collapse as a backdrop for a chilling tale of alchemy and corruption. At the center of the story is Nina, who dropped out of the elite Saturn Club and now has to sneak back inside to steal a very special box during the club’s debauched Saturnalia party. Nina is forced not only to confront her former friends, but also to discover just how far some alchemists are willing to go to survive the apocalypse.
The constant awareness of a world on fire lends an extra layer of dread as a deadly monster stalks Nina, who finds something equally monstrous inside the box she’s trying to steal. But even as Nina uncovers the depths to which some of her former friends are willing to stoop, she also rekindles one friendship that she realizes she threw away too lightly. (It was troubling, though, that the book’s trans character is referred to by her former name and pronoun in pre-transition flashbacks.) “Saturnalia” is both dazzlingly inventive and full of spine-tingling menace.
If you want a post-climate change novel that goes all the way weird, look no further than “Meet Us by The Roaring Sea” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), by Akil Kumarasamy. The story is a kind of multilayered dream sequence that asks big questions about civilization, memory and survival. Ada is mourning the death of her mother while training an artificial intelligence with an unsettling curiosity. She’s also translating a strange novel, written in Tamil, about girls studying medicine and creating new religions. Other subplots involve self-driving cars, strange art projects and memory experiments.
The specter of climate change is ever-present in Kumarasamy’s densely packed world, from the “carbon score” that governs everyone’s use of resources to the vivid descriptions of girls chewing a single peanut for 20 minutes during a famine. Kumarasamy’s gorgeously written book captures the terror of living through a bewildering disruption.
The disaster in R.B. Lemberg’s “The Unbalancing” (Tachyon) is of a more mystical sort: A fallen star is sleeping under the ocean near the city-state of Gelle-Geu, tied to the dormant volcano on the nearby mountain — but now the star is becoming restless and the waters may soon claim the city and everyone in it. An introvert poet named Erígra Lilún and an arrogant young “star-keeper” named Ranra are the only ones who can understand what’s going on.
There’s so much to cherish in “The Unbalancing,” a stand-alone novel in Lemberg’s Birdverse series. The relationship between Lilún and Ranra beautifully captures the spikiness and tenderness of a new connection that could turn into something beautiful. The worldbuilding is full of deep lore and casual queerness, and Lemberg’s magic system is appropriately wild and poetic. But most of all, the novel offers lessons in survival when complex, barely understood systems begin to fall apart.
Charlie Jane Anders is the author of “Victories Greater Than Death” and “Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak,” the first two books in a young-adult trilogy. Her other books include “The City in the Middle of the Night” and “All the Birds in the Sky.” | 2022-10-10T13:06:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 4 new science fiction novels explore the consequences of climate change - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/10/science-fiction-climate-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/10/science-fiction-climate-change/ |
Atlanta's Grady Jarrett was penalized for this sack of Tampa Bay's Tom Brady. (Julio Aguilar/Getty Images)
The Atlanta Falcons were down just six points late in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s game against the host Tampa Bay Buccaneers when they sacked Tom Brady on third down. However, instead of getting the ball punted back to them for a chance at a game-winning drive, the Falcons were called for roughing the passer.
The Buccaneers kept possession and eventually were able to kneel out the clock for a 21-15 win, but howls arose from those who thought there was nothing wrong with the way Atlanta’s Grady Jarrett sacked Brady.
Among them was Scott Pioli, a former NFL personnel executive who said on Twitter, “I’ve seen a lot of #NFL football in my life, but someone is going to have to explain this roughing the passer call.”
The 57-year-old, who helped draft Brady while with the New England Patriots and whose subsequent stops included a stint in the Falcons’ front office, shared video of the play and added, “I’m not sure I’ve seen anything quite like this.”
On the play, Jarrett chased down Brady, who was corralled after moving to his right in the pocket to evade the defensive tackle. Jarrett grabbed Brady around the hips and slung the 45-year-old quarterback to the turf.
On the Fox Sports telecast, analyst Daryl Johnston criticized the call, saying there was “no intent to hurt the quarterback right there.” He added, “That is not in the spirit of the rule, the way it was created to protect quarterbacks.”
In the NFL rule book, a passage from the section on roughing the passer states: “When tackling a passer who is in a defenseless posture (e.g., during or just after throwing a pass), a defensive player must not unnecessarily or violently throw him down or land on top of him with all or most of the defender’s weight.”
Jerome Boger, the head of the officiating crew in Tampa, said after the game: “What I had was the defender grabbed the quarterback while he was still in the pocket, and unnecessarily throwing him to the ground. That is what I was making my decision based upon.”
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Boger was asked if his crew “made a specific measure to try to watch out” for such treatment of quarterbacks, given the play’s similarity to one on which the Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa was injured in Week 4.
“No, not necessarily,” he replied via a pool reporter.
“It was a terrible call,” Tony Dungy, an NBC Sports analyst and former Buccaneers coach, said in a tweet. “They have to protect all players, including the QBs. But Jarrett did nothing wrong. I believe this call was an overreaction to Tua last week.”
Some who chimed in online suggested that the identity of the sack victim — in this case, the NFL’s biggest star and arguably its all-time greatest quarterback — affected the officials’ willingness to blow a whistle on the play.
“The Falcons got ROBBED,” former NFL quarterback Robert Griffin III, now an ESPN analyst, said on Twitter. “Hitting the QB hard does not equal Roughing the Passer even if it’s Tom Brady.”
THIS IS NOT ROUGHING THE PASSER pic.twitter.com/gFIyCADnNb
Tampa Bay Coach Todd Bowles, in response to a question after the game about whether he thought “other quarterbacks would have gotten the same call,” said he saw similar calls made in the game involving Tagovailoa and in a New York Giants-Green Bay Packers matchup earlier Sunday.
“I think they’re starting to crack down on some of the things and slinging back,” Bowles told reporters, “so right now, the way they’re calling it, I think a lot of people would’ve gotten that call.”
Atlanta Coach Arthur Smith, who appeared upset on the sideline when the call was made, declined to criticize the officials after the game. Asked if he thought it was roughing, Smith said: “I’m not going to get into that. I haven’t seen the film, and I’ve got to worry about how to coach that.”
Reporters pursued the issue, and Smith was asked if he thought his Falcons got a “fair shake” from officials.
“I’ve got to worry about what I can control,” he replied, “so I just need to see what I can do to coach those situations better.”
Smith also declined to comment on whether Brady’s status in the league helped him get the call.
Several commenters on the roughing call pointed out that, one play before, the Falcons were not flagged for possible pass interference on a long pass attempt from Brady to wide receiver Scotty Miller that fell incomplete. However, such plays, and the decisions officials must make on them, occur frequently in NFL games. The roughing call struck more than a few as unusually unfair to Jarrett, not to mention particularly damaging to Atlanta’s hopes of winning on the road.
Former NFL wide receiver Torrey Smith suggested Sunday that the NFL needed to make roughing-the-passer calls reviewable. “This is out of control,” he said online.
“I don’t throw the flags,” he said. | 2022-10-10T13:32:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Roughing-the-passer call helps Tom Brady, causes controversy in Bucs-Falcons - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/buccaneers-falcons-roughing-passer-tom-brady-grady-jarrett/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/buccaneers-falcons-roughing-passer-tom-brady-grady-jarrett/ |
Commanders wide receiver Dyami Brown recorded his first two touchdown catches Sunday against Tennessee. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
For most of the Washington Commanders, Sunday’s 21-17 loss, decided on a Carson Wentz interception at the Tennessee Titans’ 1-yard line in the final seconds, was a game they would like to scratch from the record books. Dyami Brown hopes he’ll never forget it.
Brown reached the end zone for the first time as a professional on a 75-yard catch-and-run early in the second quarter. The second-year wide receiver then doubled down by making an acrobatic, left-handed grab for a 30-yard touchdown late in the third.
“Aw man, it’s been a year and a half,” Brown said, referencing the final touchdown of his college days at North Carolina in November 2020. “But it’s a blessing, and I’m thankful for it. It’s just the beginning.”
With rookie Jahan Dotson out with a hamstring injury, the Commanders’ offense needed someone who could take the top off the Titans’ defense. Brown showed that not only was he capable of filling that void, he also could provide a needed pop once Dotson returns. He said he “definitely” sees himself having a role as a deep-ball option moving forward.
“I just play my role,” he said. “The [roles] we play are two different things, so when he gets back, we’ll just play our role and go from there.”
For a player who has been hampered by inconsistency, Brown’s performance came at a good time. A few weeks back, after a loss at Detroit, he was ridiculed by Lions wideout Amon-Ra St. Brown, who was drafted 40 spots later than Brown in 2021.
“I believe his name is Dyami Brown,” St. Brown told reporters in Detroit. “I don’t know how many catches he had — you guys can probably tell me that — or how many yards he had. I don’t forget things like that. I see him across the sideline from where I’m standing during the game, and I’m going to give every team hell. … I didn’t see him in the game much.”
Until Sunday, Brown had not made his mark. And with just 13 career receptions for 171 yards — including one catch for six yards this season — the third-round pick was free-falling down the depth chart.
During a particularly tough stretch last season, Brown’s confidence waned as he began to question whether he still loved the game.
“The consistency thing is just built off of confidence,” he said. “I can easily just stand there and catch a ball, but when you have some struggles, it can get to you a bit. Obviously I’m not out there thinking, ‘Man, don’t drop this ball,’ but in-game it’s a belief thing. ... Today I came out and had a lot of people just trusting and believing in me.”
Much of that support came from the players who line up across from him at practice.
“I see [his deep catches] every day,” second-year cornerback Benjamin St-Juste said. “Really all he needed was an opportunity. ... But with Jahan down, that was his time to shine — and like I expected he didn’t disappoint.”
With a short week ahead — the Commanders visit Chicago on Thursday night — it’s unclear what Dotson’s status will be. But if the Commanders are to right the ship against the Bears, they’ll need more of what they got from Brown on Sunday.
“Just [have to] go in with a positive mind-set next week,” he said. “Forget about this one after today and just keep going forward.” | 2022-10-10T13:32:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dyami Brown notches two TD catches during Commanders' loss to Titans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/dyami-brown-washington-commanders-two-touchdowns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/dyami-brown-washington-commanders-two-touchdowns/ |
NL first round, Game 3: Padres 6, Mets 0
Updated October 10, 2022 at 12:05 a.m. EDT|Published October 9, 2022 at 10:39 p.m. EDT
Manager Buck Showalter's gambit didn't pay off, and his batters managed just one hit as they were eliminated Sunday night by the Padres. (John Minchillo/AP)
NEW YORK — About the time Alfonso Márquez reached behind Joe Musgrove’s right ear, searching for something that could explain why the New York Mets looked completely incapable of saving their season against him Sunday night, reality set in at Citi Field.
The reason their 101-win season ended in a 6-0 loss to the San Diego Padres in the deciding Game 3 of their National League first-round series was not lodged behind Musgrove’s ear but rather out in the open, where it had been bubbling to the surface for a few disappointing weeks: The Mets, who spent in free agency, revamped the brain trust and seemed ready to challenge long-standing titans, were better this year. But they were not good enough.
“I think we just got flat-out beat,” Mets first baseman Pete Alonso said, echoing the message permeating through a calm home clubhouse Sunday night. Musgrove, who umps decided had not been using any banned substances, was better, going seven scoreless innings and allowing just one hit with his team’s season in his hands.
Over and over, the Padres did what the Mets could not. They found a way. They found a way to get to the Mets’ elite starters, Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom, a way to push Sunday’s starter, Chris Bassitt, from the game after three runs in four innings, a way to extend their lead against much-heralded closer Edwin Díaz in the anticlimax of what became a six-run deficit in the eighth.
“This is a kick in the balls,” Scherzer said. “You sacrifice everything in your life to be able to go out there, push through every injury. Guys are playing through injuries. You make so many sacrifices, all the training that you do for these moments, to get to the postseason. It doesn’t work out. It’s the worst day of the year.”
These Mets were better this year than last, better — at least in terms of wins — than any Mets team since they won it all in 1986. But they were not better than the NL East champion Atlanta Braves over 162 games. And they were not better than the Padres for three games when it counted this weekend.
Throwing financial resources and star power at a major league roster is not always a fast or foolproof way to build a World Series winner. The Padres, perhaps more than anyone, could have told the Mets that. This is their first playoff series win in a full season since 1998 but the latest in more than a half-decade of rosters bolstered by blockbuster deals that led to quick spikes in hype but not long postseason runs.
And these Mets were not exciting because they were the best team from top to bottom. They were exciting because they were better than before, because new ownership promised big spending and Manager Buck Showalter promised steady dugout leadership. They were exciting because their homegrown core of Alonso, Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil finally got to play in October.
They were exciting because pairing Scherzer with deGrom gave them a duo so formidable it stirred memories of Koufax and Drysdale. In a short series, what were the chances that anyone could beat both? In a seven-game series, what team had a chance if those two pitched four games between them?
But duos such as these always look unbeatable on paper. Scherzer, of course, paired with Stephen Strasburg in Washington for six-plus years and won just one World Series title. Clayton Kershaw and Scherzer paired for the Dodgers last year, and they could not win the NL pennant. And of course, neither Scherzer nor deGrom could take the mound for the Mets on Sunday night.
Instead, that job belonged to Bassitt, who made almost as many starts this season (30) as deGrom and Scherzer did combined (34) as he pitched to a 3.42 ERA. Bassitt came to New York from Oakland, and he admitted that pitching in the New York spotlight tested him. The 33-year-old said he thought he passed that test, that he had learned he could handle the booing and the pressure and the questions. He had not yet pitched a winner-take-all game with the Mets’ season in his hands. By allowing three runs in four innings, he didn’t exactly collapse. Much like the Mets down the stretch, as the Braves chased them down for the division title, as more complete teams hit their stride, Bassitt simply was not good enough.
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Musgrove, the hometown kid, was better. He retired the first 12 Mets he faced. By the sixth inning, he had thrown fewer than 60 pitches, meaning the Mets, who prided themselves on working counts all season, were nowhere near driving him from the game.
Shortstop Francisco Lindor said guys in the dugout thought something about Musgrove looked different. Alonso said the decision to question Musgrove was Showalter’s alone. In some ways, the check confirmed the one thing everyone in the stadium seemed to know, the one thing Showalter would never say publicly: The Mets did not know what to do.
“I’m charged with doing what’s best for the New York Mets,” Showalter explained afterward, referencing spin rate and other data the team has access to in the dugout. “If it makes me look however it makes me look or whatever, I’m going to do it every time and live with the consequences. ... I felt like that was best for us right now. There’s some pretty obvious reasons why it was necessary.”
Musgrove said later he knew the umpires wouldn’t find anything. The Mets may not find clear answers this offseason, either. They planned to be better, and they were. They won 101 games, tied for third most in the majors. They led the NL East for most of the season. They forged an identity as a scrappy offense. They watched Lindor reverse a brutal first year in Queens and endear himself to a once-skeptical fan base.
“We created a culture here that’s going to be one of the best ones in the game coming up. I’m truly excited for what is going to come. This is a step forward. This is a step in the right direction,” Lindor said. “I appreciate ownership, the front office and the coaching staff because they are moving us in the right direction.”
But they did not advance past the first round of the playoffs. They did not win the championship that billionaire owner Steve Cohen has made clear he covets. Bassitt, deGrom and Nimmo will be free agents when the World Series ends. A whole new set of questions will need answering this offseason, and the answers probably won’t be found anywhere but within. | 2022-10-10T13:32:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mets lose to Padres in Game 3, collapsing in wild-card round - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/mets-collapse-wild-card/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/mets-collapse-wild-card/ |
‘Thank God the season’s over,’ Wayne Rooney says after D.C. United’s last loss
FC Cincinnati 5, D.C. United 2
D.C. United midfielder Sofiane Djeffal passes the ball while defended by FC Cincinnati midfielder Luciano Acosta on Sunday. (Tony Quinn/USA Today Sports)
D.C. United ended a miserable season Sunday with a 5-2 defeat to FC Cincinnati at Audi Field.
It finished with the worst record (7-21-6) among MLS’s 28 teams.
With the second-most losses in club history, behind the 3-24-7 fiasco in 2013.
With the third-fewest points (27) in a full season since its 1996 debut.
With the most goals conceded (71) in one year.
And with no playoff berth for the third consecutive season in a league that hands them out like leaflets.
“Thank God the season’s over,” Coach Wayne Rooney said. “I think it’s a relief for all of us.”
“It’s a big offseason for us,” said Rooney, the former English superstar — and ex-D.C. striker — who took over the club in late July. “If we’re going to compete, if we’re going to be successful, there will have to be big changes and quite a few of them.”
Rooney was the third man in charge this year, following Hernán Losada’s abrupt firing after six games and Chad Ashton’s interim position for several months.
Rooney and the front office will attempt to revive a club that allowed at least three goals 12 times and had the worst goal differential since 2013. It had just six shutouts and was blanked 16 times.
“We need a restart,” said captain Steven Birnbaum, who was part of the last D.C. squad that won a playoff game (in 2015). “It wasn’t good enough today. It hasn’t been good enough all year. Pretty much par for the course.”
It was over quickly Sunday. Cincinnati scored twice in the first eight minutes en route to a 4-1 halftime lead before an announced sellout of 19,325.
Brazilian forward Brenner bagged a first-half hat trick and Brandon Vázquez had a goal and three assists for Cincinnati (12-9-13), which clinched its first playoff berth after finishing last in the league in each of its first three years.
Both D.C. goals came on terrific strikes — by Ravel Morrison and homegrown attacker Kristian Fletcher, 17, the 2021 Washington Post All-Met Player of the Year from Landon School who turned pro this summer and started for the first time Sunday. Otherwise, it was another forgettable outing.
“The goals we conceded — incredible, really. Not just at the professional level — at any level,” Rooney said. “Poor defending, poor decision-making, sloppy.”
Rooney’s postgame message to the players?
“I hope you’re fit when you come back for preseason,” he said. “We can’t afford to waste time getting them fit. … If they do the work, they will be ready to go straight into football. If they don’t, it will be difficult for them.”
The list of roster needs is long. Rooney said he will spend much of the offseason at home in England and scout players in Europe. He is likely to have one slot available for a high-end designated player, assuming midfielder Victor Palsson’s contract no longer counts against MLS’s three-DP limit.
“I’ve learned a lot since I’ve been here,” Rooney said. “It’s my job to push the owners [to sign players], and if we want to be successful, if we want to develop as a team and a club, we have to make sure we make the right decisions. It’s going to be a lot of work, but it needs it.”
Here’s what else to know about United’s loss:
Hamid’s farewell
Bill Hamid, United’s first homegrown signing who spent most of his 13 years as the starter, was honored at halftime as he and the club prepare to go their separate ways.
Hamid, who turns 32 next month, will be a free agent this offseason. He had hand surgery in late June and, after coming off the injury list, chose not to train with the team. A family illness and the birth of his first child also factored into his absence.
Forward Ola Kamara, who will turn 33 on Saturday, is also expected to depart when his $1.5 million contract expires. He had 35 goals in 85 appearances since arriving in late 2019.
Ochoa talks continue
Among United’s major offseason tasks is signing goalkeeper David Ochoa, a summer acquisition from Real Salt Lake whose contract expires this winter. Ochoa, 21, would enter next season as the undisputed starter.
“We obviously want him to stay here, but we also have to be, like any club, looking and aware of what players become available,” Rooney said.
It’s unclear whether Rafael Romo (13 starts) and Jon Kempin (two) will return. One goalkeeping slot will be filled by Luis Zamudio, 24, whose contract is being upgraded after one season with second-division Loudoun United.
Fountas probe unresolved
MLS’s investigation of allegations that United all-star Taxi Fountas directed a racial slur at a Miami player Sept. 18 remains unresolved. Fountas has remained eligible to play, but because the Greek forward is upset about what he has called false accusations, Rooney allowed him to remain with his family in Greece.
“It’s frustrating,” Rooney said. “We’re respecting the league in trying to come to a conclusion on the matter. … It’s strange that it’s taken this long.”
Johnson’s farewell
Dave Johnson, United’s first and only play-by-play announcer, called his final game over 27 seasons for the local TV broadcast, which will no longer exist starting next season. Under a 10-year contract, Apple TV will carry all MLS matches, using a variety of announcers.
Johnson, 58, was emotional before the match as he engaged staff, media members and fans. He could end up working for Apple TV or joining United for radio or digital programming. | 2022-10-10T13:33:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. United season ends with another loss to FC Cincinnati - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/thank-god-seasons-over-wayne-rooney-says-after-dc-uniteds-last-loss/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/09/thank-god-seasons-over-wayne-rooney-says-after-dc-uniteds-last-loss/ |
Grady Jarrett of the Atlanta Falcons sacks Tom Brady during the fourth quarter at Raymond James Stadium. (Julio Aguilar/Getty Images)
Five weeks into season, the NFC East is hovering above the rest of the NFL. There are six teams with one or zero losses, and three of them reside in the division that two years ago sent a 7-9 champion to the playoffs.
The Philadelphia Eagles are the lone remaining unbeaten after surviving Kyler Murray’s comeback bid in Arizona. The New York Giants matched their win total from last year with a London upset of Green Bay. The Dallas Cowboys have won four straight after an opening loss with Cooper Rush subbing for Dak Prescott at quarterback. The Washington Commanders are … well, they have a name now.
The NFL needs to make roughing the passer reviewable. With three minutes left and the Atlanta Falcons down 21-15, Grady Jarrett stormed around the corner and slung Tampa Bay quarterback Tom Brady to the ground on third down, rolling over him with no extra malice or excessive physicality. It appeared the Falcons would get the ball back with a chance to drive for a game-winning touchdown, to complete a furious comeback after trailing 21-0 at the start of the fourth quarter.
And then, a flag. Jerome Boger’s crew called Jarrett for roughing the passer, which was both confusing and infuriating. Jarrett could not have done anything more than he did to avoid injuring Brady. The call allowed the Buccaneers to salt away the game and robbed the Falcons of a chance at a division-shifting victory.
The moment provided a perfect example of why roughing the passer should be reviewable. Protecting quarterbacks is good for the health of the league, and the restrictive rules are smart. They are also difficult to legislate. When Jarrett hopped to his feet, it may have looked — in real time, on the field — as though he was putting his full weight on Brady. A 20-second glimpse at the video would have corrected the mistake.
It would be simple to make sure quarterbacks are protected by the rule while ensuring no egregious penalties decide a game. One did Sunday, and it ruined what could have been one of the day’s most exciting finishes.
The Commanders shuffle the deck, lose anyway
The Rams’ offense is dismal. One sequence in Los Angeles’s 22-10 loss to the Cowboys typifies the Rams’ offensive ineptitude. Late in the third quarter, the Rams took over on the Dallas 29-yard line after a shanked punt. They tried a trick play that didn’t work. They moved back 10 yards on a holding penalty. Matthew Stafford threw a one-yard completion to Allen Robinson, then a five-yard pass to Robinson. On fourth and 14, Matt Gay missed a 51-yard field goal.
Remember when Sean McVay made Los Angeles the vanguard of offensive football? Those days feel like a long time ago. The Rams’ offense consists of short passes to Cooper Kupp and dreck. Kupp turned a short screen into a 75-yard touchdown Sunday, and they still managed only 10 points. Injuries along their offensive line made blocking Micah Parsons and the rest of the Cowboys’ fearsome front seven impossible. With Odell Beckham Jr. a rehabbing free agent and Van Jefferson hurt, the Rams have no viable skill players outside of Kupp. Robinson has surprisingly been a bust, unable to develop chemistry with Stafford and looking less explosive than he was in Chicago.
It should not come as a surprise that the Rams lack depth. Their strategy of sacrificing high draft picks for stars is rightfully celebrated; the Lombardi Trophy in their facility isn’t going anywhere. But it also makes draft misses more penal. Last year, the Rams used the 57th pick on speedy wide receiver Tutu Atwell. Atwell had a 54-yard gain against the Cowboys, but he is at best a gadget player and mostly a non-factor.
When the Rams picked Atwell, Amon-Ra St. Brown was on the board. But the Rams don’t even need a star. They just need a useful player, such as Nico Collins or Josh Palmer, two more receivers who were available when the Rams took Atwell. Every team misses in the draft, but those are magnified without high-volume and high-quality picks.
Zac Taylor chose poorly. In two ways, game mismanagement cost the Cincinnati Bengals a chance to win a taut, fascinating game before Justin Tucker’s 43-yarder gave the Ravens a 19-17 victory and first place in the AFC North on Sunday night in Baltimore.
The Bengals could have tied the score late in the third quarter, but Taylor chose to go for it on fourth and goal from the 2-yard line while down 13-10. In that spot, a field goal would have guaranteed the Bengals a one-score game at worst when they got the ball back. That spot on the field also nullified some of the Ravens’ defensive weaknesses — the Bengals couldn’t get Patrick Queen in space, for example, or count on zone defense to pick up a quick completion. And Joe Burrow doesn’t provide a goal-line threat that a mobile quarterback would. Taylor called a doomed shovel pass that never had a chance.
The Ravens kicked a field to go up six, at which point the Bengals responded with an epic drive. It may have been too epic. At one point in their 13-play jaunt, Taylor seemed to realize he would have a chance to drain the clock. But the Ravens had all of their timeouts, and the Bengals were running out of field. Really, their deliberateness was only making it easier for the Ravens to kill the clock before taking the lead. By the time Burrow sneaked in to take a one-point lead, it was the Ravens who were in perfect position: They had Lamar Jackson against a tired defense and the best kicker in NFL history. Tucker’s kick sailed through with no time left.
That may be nitpicking to the extreme — the Bengals scored with less than two minutes left to go ahead on the road. But coaches need to consider every last detail. The pace of the Bengals’ drive mattered as much — if not more — than the result. And it cost them.
The Vikings are in control of the NFC North. Minnesota has not played like a dominant team, squeezing out close victories over mediocre opponents in three consecutive weeks. But the Vikings have pushed their record to 4-1 and, crucially, are 3-0 in the division.
The Vikings’ steadiness stands in contrast to the wayward Packers, who blew a 17-3 lead in London against the Giants on Sunday. Aaron Rodgers said after last week’s 27-24 overtime victory over the New England Patriots that the Packers’ success was not sustainable. He was proved right Sunday, when his team made key mistakes, couldn’t finish drives in the second half and failed to stop the run.
The postgame locker room included some troubling comments. Rodgers chided cornerback Jaire Alexander for saying he would only be worried if the Packers lose next week; in Rodgers’s mind, “manifesting” a theoretical loss is damaging. And running back Aaron Jones seemed to question Coach Matt LaFleur’s play-calling in the final minutes, when the Packers passed twice when needing one yard to keep the drive alive.
The Broncos are in choppy, uncharted waters. In a matter of weeks, the enthusiasm surrounding the acquisition of a star quarterback and a young, offensive coach has devolved into home fans booing — or simply leaving the stadium. Russell Wilson has been one of the worst quarterbacks in the NFL. Nathaniel Hackett has coached like a dad on vacation trying to order off a menu printed in a language he doesn’t speak. The Broncos are the second-lowest-scoring team in the NFL and are lucky to be 2-3 with a difficult schedule ahead.
Don't trust the Jaguars
What is going to happen next? Given the unprecedented nature of the situation, nothing can be taken off the table. The Broncos have new owners, the Walton-Penner family, who didn’t execute the Wilson trade or hire Hackett. Nobody knows how they’re inclined to process the ugly returns.
The Broncos are five games into Wilson’s $245 million contract, and already he is playing as if in decline. ESPN reported Wilson has been playing with a shoulder injury and received an injection Friday to treat it. Unless the Broncos turn things around, it will be fascinating to watch the fallout.
The Giants are proving that coaching matters. The most surprising team of the day is also the most surprising team of the first five weeks. The Giants stunned the Packers in London, 27-22, behind another massive performance from rejuvenated running back Saquon Barkley. They improved to 4-1, matching their win total from Joe Judge’s last season in Brian Daboll’s first year.
The Giants capitalized on Rodgers’s mishaps, including the third-down sack he took that knocked them out of field goal range early in the third quarter. They controlled the ball with Barkley, who deserves early consideration as the offensive player of the year.
Daboll has changed so much about the Giants, but his impact is seen most in the in-game adjustments he makes. The Giants have outscored their opponents 70-39 in the second half.
The Patriots’ coaching staff had a great day, too. Bill Belichick continued his years-long habit of making Jared Goff’s life miserable. Belichick stymied Goff four years ago in the Super Bowl with a game plan from which Goff still has not recovered. In a 29-0 Patriots victory Sunday, Goff’s sneaky strong season — he entered ranked third in the NFL in passing yards — came to a crashing halt. He completed 19 of 35 passes for 229 yards with an interception and a fumble that safety Kyle Dugger scooped and returned 59 yards for a touchdown.
On offense, Belichick’s top assistants, Matt Patricia and Judge, have received justified criticism. But they deserve credit for preparing fourth-round draft pick Bailey Zappe for his first start. Getting to play comfortably from ahead helped, but Zappe completed 17 of 21 attempts for 188 yards, a touchdown and an interception.
Geno Smith is making the Seahawks look brilliant. Seattle lost, 39-32, in New Orleans, but that wasn’t Smith’s fault. The quarterback continued his remarkable season by passing for 268 yards and three touchdowns without an interception.
Smith is one of the great stories of the season. A second-round draft pick in 2013, he has been a backup since 2015. He was best known as the quarterback who lost his job when a teammate broke his jaw over a financial dispute. But the Seahawks turned to him after trading Wilson, a move many interpreted as Coach Pete Carroll using 2022 to reset the roster.
Through five weeks, Smith has been one of the best passers in the NFL. He has completed 75.2 percent of his throws and averaged 261 yards while logging nine touchdowns against just two interceptions. Entering this week, Pro Football Focus graded Smith as the best quarterback in the NFL. He has been better than Wilson by any measure, and it has not been close.
The Seahawks gained two first-round picks and two second-round picks when they dealt Wilson, and it has not cost them any drop-off at quarterback. Whether that’s good luck or great evaluation, it’s working out incredibly well. | 2022-10-10T13:33:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL Week 5: Roughing Tom Brady, the dismal Rams offense and more - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/nfl-week-5-roughing-passer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/nfl-week-5-roughing-passer/ |
Bernanke, two other Americans win Nobel Prize in economics
Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond and Philip H. Dybvig received the 2022 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Oct. 10 for their research. (Video: AP)
Former Federal Reserve chair Ben S. Bernanke, Douglas W. Diamond of the University of Chicago and Philip H. Dybvig of Washington University in St. Louis were awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday for their work on banks and financial crises.
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Stockholm said research published by the three Americans in 1983 and 1984 provided a new understanding of the role banks play in making the economy work and causing it to plunge into crisis.
“Their discoveries improved how society deals with financial crises,” the committee said, crediting the academics for showing policymakers it is critical to prevent banks from failing.
Bernanke, who led the Fed during the 2008 financial crisis, was recognized for his pathbreaking 1983 analysis of the Great Depression. The committee said his research showed how bank runs had turned an ordinary recession in the 1930s into the worst global economic crisis in history.
Bernanke demonstrated that bank failures — rather than resulting from the downturn — were responsible for making it so deep and so long. When banks collapsed, valuable information about borrowers disappeared, making it difficult for new institutions to channel savings to productive investments, the committee said.
During the 2008 crisis, Bernanke piloted the Fed to an expansive use of central bank powers, dropping interest rates to near zero and accumulating assets worth a then-record $4 trillion in a bid to spur economic activity.
Diamond and Dybvig were honored for pioneering theoretical work, also in 1983, which explained banks’ role in linking savers and borrowers in a mutually beneficial relationship.
The two men showed how banks resolve an inherent conflict between those with excess funds at any one time and those who need more cash than they have. Savers want immediate access to their money in case of unexpected expenses, while borrowers want the assurance that they will not be forced to repay their loans prematurely, the committee said.
By acting as a middle man, banks pool savings from multiple individuals, allowing them to satisfy savers’ demands for easy access to their deposits while providing long-term loans to businesses and others.
Diamond and Dybvig also showed how banks’ essential function leaves them vulnerable to rumors of potential collapse. If savers grow worried that a bank is about to fail, withdrawals can snowball into a destabilizing and self-fulfilling “run” on the bank. That dire outcome can be avoided, as it is in the United States, by having the government offer deposit insurance that protects savers against such losses and by having the central bank operate as a lender of last resort.
Diamond also was recognized for his 1984 work showing that banks play a vital role by amassing valuable information about borrowers, assessing their creditworthiness and ensuring that loans are used for sound ventures.
The award committee woke Diamond with the news of his Nobel and patched him in to the ceremony.
“It did come as a surprise,” Diamond said by phone. “I was sleeping very soundly.”
The three economists will split the prize money of 10 million Swedish kronor, or roughly $885,810.
The award comes as world financial leaders are preparing for this week’s annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Washington, with the global economy slowing amid high inflation.
Diamond told reporters in brief remarks that the financial system is better armored today than in 2008, and he predicted that central banks will succeed in controlling inflation.
He also said that efforts to design an invulnerable financial system would interfere with its core function of creating liquid, or readily available, assets out of illiquid ones.
“It’s possible, but not necessarily desirable” to seek such perfection, he said.
The award ceremony was streamed live on the Nobel institution’s website.
Before Monday’s announcement, a total of 89 individuals had received the prize, known formally as the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.
Last year’s prize was split between David Card of the University of California at Berkeley, who received one-half of the award, and two other economists, Joshua Angrist of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Guido Imbens of Stanford University, for their work drawing conclusions by observing the cause and effect of real-world economic actions. | 2022-10-10T13:45:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bernanke, two other Americans win Nobel Prize in economics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/10/nobel-economics-bernanke-diamond-dybvig/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/10/nobel-economics-bernanke-diamond-dybvig/ |
Credit Suisse Group AG can tell the world it has a liquidity coverage ratio of 191% and the vast majority of listeners will be left bemused. An analyst could explain further that this means the bank has high-quality liquid assets that are nearly double its forecast 30-day net cash outflows in a stress scenario — hat tip to Simon Adamson, a longtime banking specialist at CreditSights. But for many, this probably still raises more questions than it answers.
Ulrich Koerner, Credit Suisse’s recently appointed chief executive officer, would have done better to remember this episode when he affirmed the bank’s “strong capital and liquidity position” in the same breath as the phrase “critical moment” in a Sept. 30 memo to staff and investors.
Just compare the proportion of long-term debt and deposit funding currently with 2007, for example: At Credit Suisse, long-term debt— the name tells you it can’t be quickly pulled — accounted for 22% of its funding, versus 12% in 2007. Deposits now make up 53% of its funding versus 25% in 2007. Deposits, of course, can be withdrawn in the worst-case scenarios; however, guarantee programs protect ordinary consumer deposits of up to 100,000 Swiss francs ($100,000) in Switzerland, which really should guard against panic. Also, Credit Suisse’s demand deposits — the kind that can be most easily taken back — are just 26% of its funding presently.
At the other end of the scale, less stable funding such as short-term borrowing from banks and markets, plus trading liabilities, account for 13.5% of Credit Suisse’s funding today compared with 44% in 2007.
Now, look at Lehman Brothers’ balance sheet in its 2007 annual report. It didn’t have deposits because it wasn’t a Federal Reserve-regulated bank or member of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Its customers did have cash balances in trading accounts and these did disappear rapidly over 2008 — but they were small as a share of its balance sheet to begin with. However, Lehman did have a lot of short-term borrowings from other banks and markets, plus trading liabilities and other money it owed clients, and these added up to 77% of its funding base. Long-term debt was just 18%.
If there is a next Lehman moment, it is much more likely to have its epicenter elsewhere in financial markets.
• The Bank of England Promotes Moral Hazard — Again: Marc Rubinstein
• Credit Suisse’s Hong Kong Bankers Deserve Some Love: Shuli Ren
• No, Credit Suisse Isn’t on the Brink: Paul J. Davies | 2022-10-10T13:45:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Credit Suisse Isn’t the Lehman Moment You’re Looking For - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/credit-suisse-isnt-the-lehman-moment-yourelooking-for/2022/10/07/b6ab983c-45fd-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/credit-suisse-isnt-the-lehman-moment-yourelooking-for/2022/10/07/b6ab983c-45fd-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html |
BOCA CHICA BEACH, TX - AUGUST 25: SpaceX founder Elon Musk during a T-Mobile and SpaceX joint event on August 25, 2022 in Boca Chica Beach, Texas. The two companies announced plans to work together to provide T-Mobile cellular service using Starlink satellites. (Photo by Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images) (Photographer: Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images North America)
Maybe Elon Musk will acquire Twitter Inc. before a court-appointed Oct. 28 deadline to complete the $44 billion acquisition rolls around. Maybe the price of Tesla Inc.’s shares, currency that Musk may need to rely on to help pay for the deal, will bounce back from a grinding downturn. Maybe the seven banks that have arranged a $13 billion loan — and stand to lose as much as $500 million on the transaction — will hang tough. Maybe the coalition of rich guys and venture capitalists who promised to chip in $7 billion to support Musk’s bid will stick around.
The lying, spin and misdirection Musk has attached to his Twitter bid might have been fun when he first hatched the offer, but a judge is looking now. Yes, he’s the world’s richest person, but his sagging Tesla shares, among his most liquid holdings, lost 16% of their value last week after the company’s car sales didn’t meet expectations. He may have to fork over more cash or sell assets such as part of his stake in Space Exploration Technology Corp. to fully fund the takeover. Reality is catching up to Musk, and it’s all very Trumpy.
The case was an embarrassment for Musk. Cringeworthy text messages and other communications were released. And Judge Kathaleen McCormick has presided over the matter with an iron fist, refusing to let Musk or his lawyers get away with any hijinks. When it became apparent that he wasn’t going to win in court and would have to endure a grueling deposition, Musk pulled the plug on the case and is now revisiting the Twitter takeover. The court caught up with him.
Musk has also ventured into dangerous legal territory. If he doesn’t have a deal in place by Oct. 28, McCormick plans to proceed with a trial in November. He also told the judge — not just investors and the media — that he intends to complete the buyout. She might decide to force him to close the deal, or she might find evidence of securities fraud in his court machinations. Some investors are also probably waiting in the wings, ready to sue Musk if he doesn’t follow through.
That’s a lot of pressure. And Musk will most likely slip past most of it. Even so, his Twitter foray has made him recognizable to anyone who has seen Trump exposed on multiple occasions — as the emperor who has no clothes.
• Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Musk and Twitter Have Some Loose Ends
• Elon Musk’s Everything App ‘X’ Is a Bad Idea: Parmy Olson | 2022-10-10T13:46:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Elon Musk Taps His Inner Trump in Twitter Machinations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/elon-musk-taps-his-inner-trump-in-twitter-machinations/2022/10/10/e29ec304-4893-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/elon-musk-taps-his-inner-trump-in-twitter-machinations/2022/10/10/e29ec304-4893-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
To hear many people talk, the fate of the planet hangs in the balance depending on the outcome of the second-round vote in Brazil’s election. On one side is Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the leftist who all but halted the logging of the Amazon in his term as president from 2003 to 2010. On the other is Jair Bolsonaro, the Trumpy right-winger who razed the rainforest and pushed deforestation last year to nearly double its levels during his first year in office. | 2022-10-10T13:46:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Even a Lula Victory May Not Restore Brazil’s Forests - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/even-a-lula-victory-may-not-restore-brazils-forests/2022/10/09/e9dd68b8-4826-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/even-a-lula-victory-may-not-restore-brazils-forests/2022/10/09/e9dd68b8-4826-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
Over the past three weeks, young female protesters in Iran have led the biggest show of resistance against the country’s theocratic regime in more than a decade. US and European leaders have rightly voiced support for them. As the regime intensifies its brutal response, the West should do what it can to ensure the movement survives.
The eruption of anger was sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd, who died in custody of Iran’s “morality police” after she was arrested for allegedly flouting local dress codes. Women across the country poured onto the streets to denounce the killing and demand more freedoms. In recent days, social media videos have shown schoolgirls openly confronting government officials and removing their headscarves in defiance. As the protests have expanded, the regime has responded with predictable fury. Security forces have killed dozens and arrested hundreds more; the death of one 16-year-old girl who reportedly disappeared after joining demonstrations has triggered another wave of outrage. The government has also imposed internet shutdowns to disrupt communications and suppress reports of police abuses.
While similar crackdowns have quelled previous uprisings — notably the anti-government protests that followed a fraudulent presidential election in 2009 — there’s some reason to believe this time might be different. The protesters are younger, mostly female and drawn from a wider cross section of Iranian society. Under the country’s current hardline leadership, social repression has widened, the economy has cratered and Iran has grown more isolated from the West — all of which is fueling greater public anger. Meanwhile, the regime’s ability to address the protesters’ grievances has been hampered by the ailing health of its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the looming struggle to succeed him.
So far, the US has struck the right tone in responding. President Joe Biden has voiced sympathy for the demonstrators and eased export restrictions to allow technology companies to provide internet services to Iranians; the Treasury Department also announced sanctions yesterday against seven senior government officials. In its public statements, the administration has championed the rights of Iran’s women. But Biden has avoided promising more direct help to the protesters — and resisted pressure to call for regime change. Restraint on both counts is wise: A more aggressive response would likely only bolster Iran’s efforts to discredit the movement and give the regime an excuse to unleash even more violence against its opponents.
At the same time, there’s more the US can do. The administration should work with European governments to sanction additional members of the regime suspected of abuses against peaceful protesters. It should also vigorously counter attempts by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to target Kurdish areas of Iraq, where the US maintains a military presence, as a way to scapegoat the Kurds for the unrest. Iranian rocket attacks against Iraqi Kurds last month killed one American; the administration should make clear that any repeat of such provocations will bring a punishing military response.
As for the stalled negotiations over a nuclear deal, Biden should keep the current offer on the table: a partial lifting of sanctions in exchange for Iran’s rolling back its program and allowing international inspections, terms that Tehran has continued to resist. Biden should refuse any further concessions so long as the regime’s crackdown continues. In the meantime, the US should tighten enforcement of sanctions, in particular by closing loopholes that have allowed Iran to continue selling oil to countries like China, and increase military coordination with regional allies such as Israel and the Gulf states.
The emergence of a democratic Iran would be an immensely beneficial development, both for Iranians and for the wider world. Ultimately, that’s a change only the Iranian people can bring about — but the US should help them where it can. | 2022-10-10T13:47:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iran’s Brave Women Deserve the World’s Support - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/irans-brave-women-deserve-the-worlds-support/2022/10/07/ca9455d0-4640-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/irans-brave-women-deserve-the-worlds-support/2022/10/07/ca9455d0-4640-11ed-be17-89cbe6b8c0a5_story.html |
Labor Market Strength Is Also a Sign of Dysfunction
The biggest puzzle in the US economy this year has been two straight quarters of negative real economic growth accompanied by booming job growth. As a result, on a year-over-year basis, workforce productivity growth has been historically bad. There’s plenty of reasons for this following two weird pandemic years, but an underexplored cause is that the strong labor market has led to too much turnover in the workplace, creating disruptions and unpredictability for businesses. A softer labor market would be better for workers, employers and consumers alike.
In the first six months of the year, the total number of hours worked by Americans grew at a 2.5% annualized rate, with employment growing by 2.7 million workers. Ordinarily, with that kind of growth in total hours worked you’d expect real gross domestic product growth of 4% or so — 2.5% growth in hours and 1.5% productivity growth, assuming workers became more productive at roughly the same pace as in the 2010’s.
That’s not what we got. Instead, the economy contracted at a 1.6% annualized rate in the first quarter and a 0.6% rate in the second quarter. Employers were hiring at a historically-robust pace but the economy shrunk somewhat as the productivity of the workforce fell.
That’s been costly for everyone. Hiring more people to produce less stuff has meant lower profits for companies, pressuring them to raise prices, which consumers have felt in the form of inflation. And this isn’t a great dynamic for workers, either. A high churn rate means a lot of new employees trying to get up to speed at a challenging time in the economy, with longer-tenured workers having to pick up the slack for colleagues who are quitting or those who are new and not yet fully trained.
The Wall Street Journal reported a couple weeks ago about a beer distributor in Michigan struggling with this dynamic. Due to high attrition, they’re employing 8 to 12 more people than they ordinarily would. This produces a chaotic work environment where efficiency is down, profits are down, payroll is up because of the increased staffing, while they’re holding onto people that other employers need.
In general, strong labor markets are better than weak labor markets. Workers feel valued and tend to see increased living standards, and employers have incentives to become more productive and invest in labor-saving equipment and tools. But as we’ve seen over the past 18 months or so, a labor market that’s too out of balance leads to chaos, dysfunction, inefficiency and high inflation.
For that reason, some of the signs of decreased labor market churn that we’ve gotten over the past several months should be cheered by everyone. The rate at which private sector workers quit their jobs peaked in November and has been falling gradually ever since, though it remains above pre-pandemic levels. The level of job openings has fallen by 1.8 million since March, still 3 million above pre-pandemic, but a sign that the labor market is becoming more balanced.
After Friday’s jobs report we can say that hours worked grew at a 2.9% annualized rate in the third quarter — slightly faster than we saw in the first half of the year. For the time being, expectations for real economic growth in the quarter are positive, with the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s GDP tracker estimating 2.9% growth, which is at least in-line with the rise in hours worked.
Part of the recent poor productivity has been due to a labor market that’s been dysfunctional more than it’s been strong. We need productivity growth to rebound from the abysmal trend we’ve seen so far in 2022 if we’re going to avoid more draconian economic outcomes in 2023 from efforts to contain inflation.
The intense labor market churn that we’ve gotten in 2021 and 2022 may have been a necessary part of reopening the economy after pandemic-related shutdowns and finding our way to a new normal. But it’s not sustainable, and we should welcome the deceleration we’ve seen over the past several months, with more to come.
Labor Market Is Coming for Margins — or Worse: Jonathan Levin
Retailers Should Prepare for a Revenge Christmas: Andrea Felsted | 2022-10-10T13:47:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Labor Market Strength Is Also a Sign of Dysfunction - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/labor-market-strength-is-also-a-sign-of-dysfunction/2022/10/10/82bc8b40-488b-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/labor-market-strength-is-also-a-sign-of-dysfunction/2022/10/10/82bc8b40-488b-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
Federal Reserve officials have been getting an earful about the economic threat that the US central bank’s rapid monetary tightening presents to the rest of the world — complaints that will no doubt be amplified at this week’s meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
The Fed must focus on what’s best for the US, so there’s little it can do to mitigate the global repercussions of its actions. That said, it should at least do a better job of explaining itself.
The complaints are amply founded: The Fed’s aggressive monetary tightening is undoubtedly imposing stress on the rest of the world, in large part by boosting the exchange rate of the dollar to other currencies. In developed countries, this drives up prices of imports such as crude oil, stoking inflation and forcing central banks to respond with matching rate hikes — even in economies where inflation pressures are relatively mild and growth is weaker. The effects are even harsher in developing countries. Aside from more expensive food and energy imports, they face reversals of foreign capital inflows (which makes financing imports harder) and increasing difficulty servicing their already burdensome dollar-denominated debts.
Yet the Fed will almost certainly stay the course, for two reasons. First, it’s the only way to get US inflation under control. Excessive fiscal and monetary stimulus stoked the demand for goods, services and labor, so the central bank must now tighten and push up unemployment enough to slow wage and price increases. If it fails to act aggressively enough, inflation will become more embedded, forcing the Fed to act even more forcefully later with even harsher consequences for the US and global economy.
Second, the Fed’s congressional mandate is to achieve maximum sustainable employment consistent with price stability for the US economy. Congress made no mention of what’s best for the rest of the world. Of course, the Fed pays attention to global developments such as the war in Ukraine, but only to the extent that they have implications for the US economic outlook. Fed officials explain their policies to their foreign counterparts, but no adjustments are made just because the latter are unhappy. This is standard operating procedure for central banks everywhere. What’s different is how much US monetary policy affects everyone else.
Still, the Fed could do more on the communication side. Specifically, officials would do well to be more forthcoming about what went wrong, and why they now must raise short-term rates by more than 400 basis points in just nine months. A couple talking points:
• The way the Fed implemented its new monetary policy framework, which from 2020 sought to target a longer-term average of 2% inflation, proved particularly ill-suited to the economic environment. The Fed’s self-imposed constraints were too extreme and inflexible: “Liftoff” from zero rates couldn’t happen until the economy had reached full employment and inflation had climbed above 2% and was expected to stay there for some time. Also, the Fed had to make “substantial” progress toward these goals before even beginning to taper the asset purchases known as quantitative easing, which had to be fully wound down before rate increases could begin. As a result, the federal funds rate was still at zero in early March, even though the economy had clearly overheated.
• The Fed made two important forecasting mistakes. Inflation pressures were much broader and more persistent than anticipated, and the labor market became much tighter much faster than expected.
Humility is always valuable when you have inadvertently made life more difficult for others. Also, by recognizing its mistakes, the Fed might provide some reassurance that it won’t repeat them. It’s not much to offer countries struggling to cope with the consequences, but it’s better than the alternative of saying nothing at all.
• Will Powell Get Greenspan’s ‘Oasis’ Feeling?: Daniel Moss
• Why the Emerging-Markets Dog Didn’t Bite Yet: John Authers | 2022-10-10T13:47:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Federal Reserve Owes the World a Mea Culpa - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-federal-reserve-owes-the-world-a-mea-culpa/2022/10/10/1f5ba35e-4883-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-federal-reserve-owes-the-world-a-mea-culpa/2022/10/10/1f5ba35e-4883-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
The Gilt Storm Has Passed. The Damage Assessment Is Just Starting.
The UK government bond market has been in disarray since the cataclysm two weeks ago. The terrible reception to Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng’s radical new economic plans sent yields soaring, triggering sudden margin calls for liability-driven pension fund investors.
That prompted the Bank of England’s successful emergency intervention. But its £65 billion ($73 billion) bond-buying pot — the Financial Stability Intervention — expires Oct. 14, leaving gilt traders to worry if the market can withstand the support’s removal. Early Monday morning, the BOE announced that it would step up the size of the daily operations until the end of this week and also provide a month-long collateral repurchase facility, with wider eligibility including corporate bonds.
The backdrop involves rising US Treasury yields as the Federal Reserve continues to hike interest rates. Gilt yields had been rising sharply since mid-August, in line with all global bond markets. That pressure hasn’t abated — in fact it’s probably increased — with a big BOE rate hike expected on Nov. 3.
Then there’s the steady unwinding of leverage of gilt holdings in the pension system. That will lead to more, not less, need for super-safe boring long-maturity assets. It’s going to take some time to steady the ship.
But it’s not all bad news as upcoming issuance of gilts is already skewed toward short-to-medium maturities. The UK Treasury’s Debt Management Office was aware demand for long gilts was limited before this crisis blew up. Long-maturity and inflation-linked bonds are very much the domain of domestic investors, compared to short-to-medium gilts, which are more of an international bond market. The system is back working, but there’s just a lot to chew through.
Longer-maturity gilt yields are still flying around with record daily moves. The trading range of the spread between 10- and 30-year gilts in the past two weeks has been wider than the preceding five years. The bond market is functioning, but it is far from operating normally. Bid to offer spreads are much wider than usual, and volumes are much higher, which the main market-makers are no doubt enjoying.
The BOE’s role is to neither cap yields, reduce volatility nor prevent losses. The central bank stepped in to prevent a sudden lack of liquidity from becoming a systemic risk resulting in market failure. That was as much to ensure orderly process of margin calls from the liability-driven pension investors suddenly required to stump up high-quality collateral (gilts), as it was for the bank counterparties on the other side of interest-rate swap derivative trades. A point that financial commentator Frances Coppola makes clearly here. Institutional sellers of long-end gilts should be able to find a price; whether they like it or not isn’t the concern of the BOE.
The BOE’s deputy governor responsible for financial stability, Jon Cunliffe, laid out in a letter to the UK House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, a comprehensive explanation of the BOE’s actions. The speed and scale of the gilt selloff “implied additional long-term gilt sales of at least £50 billion in a short space of time, as compared to recent average market trading volumes of just £12 billion per day in these maturity sectors”. But the crisis has been averted, the BOE only had to buy less than £5 billion of the facility (which can be extended to £100 billion if needed). This can be held in reserve if necessary, and its costs are fully underwritten by the UK Treasury.
Actuarial consultant Barnett Waddingham has issued an update on the LDI market outlining how the three largest investment management providers, Blackrock Inc., Legal & General Group Plc and Insight Investment Management Global Ltd. are all permanently reducing their leverage. This will set the precedent for the rest of the industry, with the net effect that more long-maturity gilts will be needed. The happy part is that with long yields no longer microscopic, investment returns will be greater. That over time reduces the actuarial requirement for such safe assets to match future pension payment liabilities. There is a silver lining.
However, there is still widespread concern, as yields are rising again, over such sustained volatility. But it’s not all about the chancellor’s misguided fiscal strategy. Some of this gilt selloff stems from the BOE decision, at its last meeting on Sept. 22, the day preceding the chancellor’s fiscal event, to push ahead with unloading its quantitative-easing holdings back into the market, a process known as active quantitative tightening. This start of this program has been pushed back to Oct. 31.
Unfortunately, this clashes directly with a sizable sale the same week of 2038 gilts. This is either ill-advised, or deliberately placed, to pressure the chancellor to accelerate the release of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s review of the government’s financial state before his Nov. 23 budget. The gilt market will not calm down properly until it has seen the OBR’s markings of the government’s fiscal homework.
Throughout the entire QE era, and now in the unwind period, the BOE and the DMO have worked carefully not to clash. As both are now sellers, this is even more important. So while the BOE can end the buyback confidently on Oct. 14, its work is not done. There needs to be an honest assessment of whether markets are functioning normally to allow for active QT sales.
• Bank of England Promotes Moral Hazard — Again: Marc Rubinstein
(Updates in 2nd paragraph with BOE statement early Monday morning.) | 2022-10-10T13:48:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Gilt Storm Has Passed. The Damage Assessment Is Just Starting. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-gilt-storm-has-passed-the-damageassessment-is-just-starting/2022/10/10/3d4e494a-4859-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-gilt-storm-has-passed-the-damageassessment-is-just-starting/2022/10/10/3d4e494a-4859-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
A global tax on frequent fliers could go a long way toward fixing aviation’s climate problem
Passengers wait at LaGuardia Airport in New York City on Monday, Aug. 2, 2021. (Angus Mordant/Bloomberg News)
Getting in an airplane long ago ceased to be anything remotely resembling a luxury experience. But in recent years, it has become something else as well — a largely unavoidable form of “climate sin.” Although aviation is a relatively slim sliver of global carbon emissions — around 2.5 percent — at the personal level, it carries an enormous footprint practically unmatched by any other individual action. (Avoiding an international flight from New York City to London, for example, could save 600 kilograms of carbon dioxide from spewing into the atmosphere — about double the effect of going vegan for a year.) The climate activist Greta Thunberg once opted to take a high-speed racing yacht across the Atlantic rather than get in a plane; in her home country, Swedes have started using the word flygskam, which means “flying shame.”
“We’re saying ‘If you want to fly more, that’s fine,’” said Sola Zheng, a researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation and the lead author of the report. “You’ve just got to pay a bit more.”
The report suggests a frequent flier tax that starts on the second flight each individual takes per year, at a rate of $9. It would then steadily ratchet up, reaching $177 for the 20th flight in a single year. (A “flight” in this case, is a single take off and landing — that is, half of a round trip.) For most Americans — who take two or fewer flights per year — the tax would cost about the same as buying a drink and a bag of chips at the airport. But business travelers and other frequent fliers racking up dozens of flights every 12 months would face steeper costs.
Such a tax, according to the study, could fully fund the transition from fossil fuels to sustainable aviation fuel. According to the International Civil Aviation Organization — the United Nations agency that coordinates international air travel — switching to sustainable fuels and making other aircraft efficiency improvements will cost around $121 billion per year until 2050. (Sustainable aviation fuels, which are biofuels made from things like corn, oil and grease, do exist but cost two to five times more than equivalent jet fuels made from fossil fuels).
It’s an elegant-seeming solution for what has, at times, looked like an intractable problem. Despite their large carbon footprints, medium- or long-haul flights (often defined as flights lasting more than three or four hours), have few viable alternatives. Unlike Thunberg, most people can’t snag a ultrafast yacht to cross the Atlantic Ocean. In the United States, swearing off flying entirely means consigning oneself to a life without much international travel and without the ability to easily visit family members across the country.
But flying is also highly unequal. In the United States, research has shown that just 12 percent of people take 66 percent of the flights. Globally, that picture is even starker: According to the ICCT report, low-income countries constitute 9 percent of the world’s population but only take 0.4 percent of the world’s flights.
Zheng says that the tiered tax has the benefit of allowing lower-income people, who generally fly less, to still be able to take one or two flights a year relatively cheaply. “It’s not trying to create an unbearable burden for anybody,” she said. Zheng argues that people in developing and poorer countries should still be able to fly cheaply, so that they can enjoy the benefits of air travel, like tourism and cross-cultural experiences.
According to the study, the top 10 percent of earners worldwide would account for 90 percent of the tax revenue. That is far better, Zheng argues, than something like a flat tax, which would charge every person around $25 per flight. Although the authors didn’t attempt to include private jet travel, due to a lack of data, Zheng said that including a similar tax for those using private jets could further shift the burden to the world’s wealthiest consumers.
And because the tax is levied per flight — instead of per mile traveled or per kilogram of carbon dioxide emitted — it also could have the added benefit of encouraging travelers to take trains or other forms of transportation for short-haul trips. Consumers might try to “save” their plane fares for longer trips, like transatlantic flights, where there are truly no good alternatives.
At the moment, the report is just an idea — not a full-blown policy proposal. The International Civil Aviation Organization, or ICAO, only just announced its long-term goal for getting fossil fuels out of aviation, aiming to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. Implementation of a global tax would be challenging, to say the least; it would require international coordination and a centralized system to track passports and other forms of identification to count how many times each person flies.
But Zheng says it shows a way forward that doesn’t rely on a complete halt to flying — and that doesn’t add to the burdens on low-income citizens. Some countries have already considered similar policies: The United Kingdom, for example, has a flat tax for short- and long-haul flights, but some climate groups have suggested that tax be replaced by a tiered frequent flier levy.
“If you wanted to raise money for decarbonization, this is one way to do it,” Zheng said. | 2022-10-10T13:48:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Frequent fliers are a problem for the planet. Should they pay more? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/10/frequent-flyer-tax-aviation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/10/frequent-flyer-tax-aviation/ |
Students cheered a crowd-surfing superintendent. Then came the arrest.
Fists went up, and phone cameras started rolling at Charles W. Baker High School in suburban Syracuse, N.Y., as a man, hands spread out in the air, crowd-surfed above a pack of people, most donning red to support the Baldwinsville Bees for Friday’s homecoming football game against the Proctor Raiders.
The crowd-surfing 48-year-old was Baldwinsville Central School District’s superintendent, Jason D. Thomson.
Students laughed, screamed and recorded his ride above the crowd that would watch the Bees defeat the Raiders 23-6.
When Thomson was lowered, students crowded around him, jumping up and down as they cheered, according to a video of the incident obtained by the local ABC channel, WSYR.
THREAD: @NewsChannel9 obtained this video of Baldwinsville Superintendent Jason Thomson (48) crowd surfing at Friday night's football game ‼️
Shortly after, he was charged with DWI.
Baldwinsville Police say he was driving with a BAC of .15% - nearly twice the legal limit. pic.twitter.com/yBAQ48xodA
— 𝐀𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐧𝐧𝐞 𝐒𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐡 (@AdrienneSmithTV) October 9, 2022
But after the airborne administrator touched down on the bleachers, several students told game staffers that Thomson might be under the influence, according to a news release from Baldwinsville Police Chief Michael W. Lefancheck. The staffers then told Baldwinsville police officers who were at the game. Alcohol is not sold at district athletic events, Lefancheck said in a statement to The Washington Post.
Shortly after 8 p.m., an hour and a half after the scheduled kickoff, a police officer saw Thomson driving without a front license plate and making a turn without using his signal, the news release said. The officer pulled over Thomson, tested his blood alcohol level, arrested him and charged him with driving while intoxicated. Thomson’s blood alcohol level was 0.15, police said, nearly double the legal limit for driving in New York.
Thomson was booked and released, the news release from Baldwinsville police said. He is scheduled to appear in court Oct. 26.
A teacher who showed up drunk to a field trip later sued her city. She is getting $75,000.
If convicted in New York, a person’s first DWI is a misdemeanor. They can face a $500 to $1,000 fine, up to one year in jail, or both. Their driver’s license will be suspended for six months. A second offense is a Class E felony and can result in a fine between $500 and $1,000, up to one year in jail, or both. The state suspends the driver’s license for at least one year.
“We appreciate the prompt response by school staff in responding to this matter,” said Jennifer Patruno, Board of Education president, in a statement to parents Friday, WSYR reported. “Since this is a personnel matter the district is unable to comment further. Please be assured the district takes this matter seriously and will take appropriate action if warranted.”
Patruno told The Post that she had no comment beyond the statement shared with WSYR.
Second-grade substitute teacher arrested after principal discovers she’s drunk in class
Thomson has served as a superintendent for school districts across New York. The Baldwinsville Central School District hired him in August 2021 on a contract scheduled to end in August 2024. That followed a four-month stint leading Ichabod Crane Central School District (ICC), which he left citing a desire to be closer to his family, according to HudsonValley360.
Thomson spent nine years as the superintendent of Delaware Academy, but he told the Daily Star that the ICC job was “an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”
Before he took over the top role at Baldwinsville Central — which has about 5,400 students — two recent superintendents had left the position abruptly.
Matthew McDonald, who was Thomson’s direct predecessor, resigned in February 2021 for “personal reasons” after a leave of absence. The district announced McDonald’s leave one week after extending his contract, saying he was “exploring other career opportunities,” CNY Central reported.
Superintendent David Hamilton was under a three-year contract that began in 2014, but he resigned in April 2016 after Baldwinsville had “determined that the district should move in a different direction with respect to instructional leadership,” Syracuse.com reported.
As of Sunday, it was unclear whether Thomson would remain the district’s superintendent. Calls to a phone number listed in his name could not be connected. The Post sent a request for comment to Thomson’s district email, but the message failed to deliver to the address.
The Baldwinsville Board of Education will hold a special meeting Monday, according to the district’s website. The board is expected to be in a closed session to discuss a personnel matter “made confidential by attorney/client privilege,” the announcement said. | 2022-10-10T13:48:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Baldwinsville, N.Y., Superintendent Jason Thomson charged with DWI - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/09/new-york-superintendent-crowd-surf/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/09/new-york-superintendent-crowd-surf/ |
The Supreme Court will hear a pair of lawsuits challenging UNC and Harvard University's use of race in admissions decisions. Above, the student union at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. (Cornell Watson for The Washington Post)
Jacob James, a junior majoring in public policy and history, wants the court to outlaw racial preferences in admissions. The 20-year-old from Robersonville, N.C., is White and chairs the campus College Republicans organization. He said the university should pay more attention to ideological diversity.
Affirmative action based on race is “antiquated,” James said, and “particularly egregious” at public universities. “Effectively what it’s saying is, ‘You’re not good enough to get in on your own merit, so we have to help you,’ ” he said.
But Oklahoma’s attorney general, John O’Connor (R), argued in an amicus brief that racial diversity did not suffer at the University of Oklahoma after the state banned affirmative action in 2012. Universities, he wrote, “can remain both diverse and academically competitive without resorting to racial discrimination.”
State bans don’t tell the whole story. A Washington Post review of how 66 major public universities describe admissions criteria for a higher education initiative called the Common Data Set found that nearly 60 percent ignore race. Among them are the universities of Hawaii, Kentucky, Maine, Missouri and Nevada at Las Vegas.
Race is considered at schools such as the universities of Maryland, Virginia and Wisconsin at Madison, as well as Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University and Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Gregory L. Fenves led the Texas flagship at the time. He recalled a moment of surprise jubilation when he learned the news in a Singapore airport. “I can’t believe it!” he shouted to his wife. “We won!”
After President Donald Trump appointed three new justices, the new conservative majority was willing to revisit that decision.
Fenves, now president of private Emory University in Georgia, said the court’s action will have a profound effect on selective schools. “An attack on affirmative action is really an attack on the importance of diversity in education," he said. “There’s a lot at stake. What do we want our class to be? What do we want our whole class to look like?”
The suits against UNC-Chapel Hill and Harvard, filed in November 2014, proceeded slowly through federal courts. Both universities provided records on more than 100,000 applications to the plaintiff for analysis.
The challenge to Harvard centered on a claim that it illegally discriminated against Asian American applicants. A federal judge in Massachusetts rejected the claim after a widely publicized trial in 2018 that exposed the sometimes-embarrassing inner workings of the Ivy League university, including an admission rate for so-called legacy students, with parents who went to Harvard College. (It was 34 percent, more than five times the regular rate.) The 2019 ruling in Harvard’s favor was later upheld by a two-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit.
The challenge to UNC-Chapel Hill focused on allegations that the university had violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and civil rights law by discriminating against White and Asian American applicants, putting too much weight on race in its deliberations and failing to give adequate consideration to “race-neutral” alternatives. The trial, held in 2020 in North Carolina, drew relatively modest public attention.
In 2021, U.S. District Judge Loretta C. Biggs ruled that UNC-Chapel Hill had not violated civil rights laws and that its admission practices were constitutional. Biggs accepted the view of an expert witness for the university that UNC-Chapel Hill’s process was not formulaic and that race and ethnicity were not “dominant factors” in decision-making. She also ruled that the university had made a “good faith” effort to use race-neutral approaches, citing an extensive financial aid program and other measures to recruit rural, low-income and first-generation college students.
Biggs also cited the work of historian David Cecelski, who wrote in a report submitted for the court record that UNC-Chapel Hill was “a strong and active promoter of white supremacy and racist exclusion for most of its history,” with ties to enslavers, the Ku Klux Klan and “ardent defenders” of Jim Crow. That history, Biggs wrote, provided “an important contribution to the Court’s understanding of the context of this case.”
Race remains a frequent point of tension in Chapel Hill.
In 2018, protesters toppled a Confederate statue on campus known as “Silent Sam.” Critics saw the statue as a symbol of white supremacy at the gateway to the historic campus; supporters defended it as a memorial to alumni who died for their state. There was further turmoil over the removal of the pedestal and plaques.
More upheaval arose in 2021 when the university botched an effort to recruit the prominent Black journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones, a UNC-Chapel Hill graduate, to a prestigious faculty position without initially offering her the job protections of tenure. Previously those who held the chair had been granted tenure. The university eventually made her a tenure offer, but Hannah-Jones turned it down and went to Howard University. The episode angered many Black faculty members and students.
Inside the dramas at UNC-Chapel Hill: Boards, partisan politics and the flagship
Claude A. Clegg III, the chair of the African, African American and diaspora studies department at UNC-Chapel Hill, who was an undergraduate here in the 1980s, said the university must keep in mind that people of color often feel a sense of isolation on campus. “I’ve felt it as a student, and I’ve seen it as a professor,” he said. Clegg, who is African American, said he views affirmative action as a modest but necessary measure. “It’s kind of a watered-down version of reparations, to open the door and allow a different population of folks who have been historically excluded to come here,” he said.
Blum recently put The Post in touch with two people of Asian descent whom he said were members of the organization. One, who showed The Post a copy of a rejection letter he received from Harvard in 2017, said his parents were immigrants from India. “There are actual students behind Edward Blum who agree with his view on this,” the man said. The man, who said he also answered questions in a pretrial deposition for the Harvard case, spoke with The Post on condition of anonymity because he wanted to avoid negative publicity.
On the other side, Andrew Brennen is eager to speak out.
Now 26, Brennen graduated from the university in 2019. He was one of several students who submitted written testimonials for the court record about the value of racial diversity on campus. Brennen, who is African American, told the court he sometimes felt far outnumbered.
Reached by The Post recently, Brennen reiterated that admissions officers should be able to take race into account. Race played a major part in his experience here. He recalled witnessing white supremacist demonstrators on campus, hearing a racial epithet directed at him one day downtown on Franklin Street, seeing the pulsating crowds on the night Silent Sam came down. He also showed The Post a copy of an admission essay he wrote about his experience as a Black high school student in Lexington, Ky.
“My Blackness shapes every single interaction and element of my life," he said. “Look, I think there’s a lot of things that are unfair about the college admissions process, but what I’m sure of is that having a more diverse learning environment benefits everyone.”
What is critical race theory? Frequently asked questions | Video explainer
K-12: Md. school apologizes after video shows White students singing n-word | Perspective: Navigating the wilderness, avoiding predators urban and rural | Teacher quits in protest after being punished for banned-books sign
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Virginia’s fight over schools: Youngkin criticizes trans rules, eases path to becoming a teacher in Va. | Judge thwarts Va. Republicans’ effort to limit book sales at Barnes & Noble | Virginia Board of Education delays review of history standards | 2022-10-10T13:48:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court to review UNC-Chapel Hill's use of race in admission - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/10/supreme-court-race-unc-admission/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/10/supreme-court-race-unc-admission/ |
History suggests that Britain’s new economic gamble won’t pay off
Half a century ago, another conservative U.K. government took a similar approach — to disastrous effect
Perspective by Stephen Colbrook
Stephen Colbrook is a PhD candidate at UCL in London and the research and engagement coordinator for the UCL Policy Lab.
British Prime Minister Liz Truss and Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng visit a construction site in Birmingham, Britain, last Tuesday. (Stefan Rousseau/Pool/Reuters)
On Sept. 23, Kwasi Kwarteng, Britain’s new Tory chancellor, delivered a “mini-budget” that would loosen regulations, lift a cap on bankers’ bonuses and contain a string of unfunded tax cuts. With markets spooked by this dramatic change in fiscal policy, the value of the pound fell off a cliff after Kwarteng’s announcement, although it has recovered in recent days.
But Britain has also been here before. In the early 1970s, Prime Minister Edward Heath’s conservative government pursued a similar set of economic policies in the hope of igniting growth. What followed was a dramatic contraction of the economy and a steep decline in the value of sterling, prompting a balance of payments crisis. The dire economic consequences of such a miscalculation suggest that Kwarteng’s mini-budget may also be destined for disaster.
Heath became prime minister in 1970 with a promise to enact radical economic change. At the time, Britain suffered from sluggish growth, weak profits and rising unemployment, all of which threatened the country’s economic standing in Europe. For most of the previous decade, Britain had experienced an unproductive cycle of “stop-go” economics, when successive governments would increase spending as an election neared to boost their popularity, only to implement a spending squeeze shortly thereafter to rebalance the books. In this frenzied climate, many businesses struggled with long-term planning, which restricted their ability to invest.
Determined to overcome these difficulties, Heath pledged “to reduce the burden of taxation and to restore the competitive vitality of British industry.” He believed that tax cuts, deregulation and liberalization would create growth and renewed economic dynamism.
The person tasked with putting these ideas into practice was Anthony Barber, the incoming chancellor. In a series of budgets in the early 1970s, Barber slashed taxes, boosted spending and loosened regulatory control of the financial sector. He told the House of Commons in 1971 that the country’s system of taxation “stultifies enterprise,” “discourages the pursuit of profit” and penalizes saving.
Unveiled on March 21, 1972, in the House of Commons, Barber’s second budget was his most ambitious. Amid frequent cheers from his conservative colleagues, he announced a string of unfunded tax cuts and spending increases, including a £1 billion cut to income taxes and an increase in pension and social security payments.
The result was a ballooning budget deficit. While the government had been running a small surplus in 1970, its deficit had grown to 4 percent of gross domestic product by 1974. But Barber hoped his interventions would also achieve a faster rate of economic growth by stimulating demand. The rationale was that a sudden surge of productivity gains and investment could finally put the British economy on a more permanent upward trajectory and end the cycle of “stop-go.”
Initially, conservative politicians, journalists and many economists reacted positively to Barber’s budget. “Britain is two-thirds of the way to an economic miracle,” claimed the Economist in September 1973. Despite this optimism, things quickly took a turn for the worse, as inflation soared, reaching over 16 percent by 1974. Meanwhile, sterling came under extraordinary pressure, declining rapidly against the dollar in the 18 months after the budget.
By the end of 1973, Barber was forced to put the brakes on his plan as the economy faced a perfect storm of skyrocketing energy prices, a balance of payments crisis and a massive credit squeeze. With the pound in free fall and prices surging, he announced a mini-budget in December 1973 that slashed government expenditure by 4 percent. This intervention prompted a sharp economic downturn, which saw Britain enter its deepest recession since the 1920s.
In the decades since, Barber’s budget has become a byword for economic incompetence, and a morality tale about the dangers of short-term tax giveaways fueled by soaring budget deficits.
And yet, today, the similarities between Barber’s disastrous policies and Kwarteng’s mini-budget are striking. Kwarteng, too, is pursuing an ambitious rush for growth at all costs, including a string of tax cuts that he once again hopes will boost demand. But, according to one estimate, such policies will increase the budget deficit by around $150 billion annually, approximately 5 percent of GDP. After insisting for more than a decade that Britain must live within its means and reduce deficits, the conservatives are playing fast and loose with the public finances, once again.
Needless to say, markets have reacted extremely poorly to Kwarteng’s dash for growth. In the days since he unveiled his mini-budget, the value of the pound relative to the dollar has tumbled, trading as low as $1.035 at one point — a record low. In a stark warning about the country’s economic future, Larry Summers, the former U.S. treasury secretary, has commented that “the U.K. is behaving a bit like an emerging market turning itself into a submerging market.”
It remains unclear whether Kwarteng’s mini-budget will lead to the same long-term economic problems that Barber’s policies did in the early 1970s. For the sake of Britain’s prosperity and well being, let us hope that it does not. | 2022-10-10T13:48:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | History suggests that Britain’s new economic gamble won’t pay off - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/09/britain-tax-cuts-inflation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/09/britain-tax-cuts-inflation/ |
Conservatives’ panic over teachers misses how little freedom they have
Calls for control over educators are manufactured political myths as they’ve never had the power to push an agenda
Perspective by Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz
Diana D'Amico Pawlewicz is a historian of education policy at the University of North Dakota, a Visiting Scholar at the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement at the University of Richmond and an editor of Made by History. She is the author of "Blaming Teachers: Professionalization Policies and the Failure of Reform in American History."
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) displays the signed Parental Rights in Education bill, also known as the "Don't Say Gay" law, while surrounded by elementary school students during a news conference on March 28. (Douglas R. Clifford/Tampa Bay Times/AP)
When Oklahoma teacher Summer Boismier sent her students a QR code that gave them access to banned books through the Brooklyn Public Library, Ryan Walters, the state’s Republican secretary of education, tweeted, “There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda in the classroom” and demanded that her teacher’s license be revoked. In Chesterfield County, Va., teachers must sign a pledge before they enroll in any professional development, vowing that critical race theory will not be covered. These moves are an effort to address conservatives’ alarm that public school teachers — armed with tenure and unbridled academic freedom — are a danger to children.
Fears like these have filtered through the nation’s public schools for more than a century. But calls for control over teachers are manufactured political myths designed to animate voters and preserve bureaucratic and inequitable status quos. In reality, American public school teachers have neither the sort of tenure protection critics fear nor the academic freedom.
As early as the 1880s, teachers in municipally supported public school systems began to press for tenure. This women-dominated corps of workers faced dismissals without cause, and they had to reapply for their positions each year. In this early vision, all teachers wanted was stability and due process. Even so, school leaders denounced the proposition as preposterous. Baltimore’s commissioner of education dismissed teachers as “foolish,” and a superintendent from one Massachusetts district argued that the instability teachers faced functioned as a useful “spur that helps keep them up with the times.”
By the close of the 19th century, however, education policymakers began to see the issue differently. School systems were growing. Not only were districts rehiring teachers each year, but high rates of teacher turnover meant that they were locked in a constant cycle of recruitment and training. Cast in this light, tenure represented a pathway to bureaucratic efficiency and stability.
Within a decade, tenure had become widespread, but it didn’t involve academic freedom. Rather in most places it just meant that teachers could not be dismissed without cause and deserved due process. Even with this new protection, teachers continued to lose their jobs for a range of reasons, including getting married, having children, disagreeing with supervisors, pressing for social justice and teaching divisive topics.
In 1915, the American Association of University Professors adopted its “Declaration of Principles” in which the organization argued that tenure and academic freedom were essential to professors’ ability to “rightly render [their] distinctive and indispensable service to society.” Leaders in the newly formed American Federation of Teachers hoped this framing would apply to public school teachers as well, but they immediately met resistance.
In the fall of 1917, New York City public schools fired three teachers for “holding views subversive of discipline in the school and which undermine good citizenship.” One teacher had assigned the task of writing a letter to President Woodrow Wilson but did not admonish a student who used the essay to vent his frustration, telling the president, “You are ready to slaughter us all.” Another teacher similarly decided to remain neutral during a heated classroom conversation among students about the “merits of anarchism,” and the other distributed a questionable reading list.
Union leaders pushed back, arguing that teachers had the academic freedom to run their classes as they saw fit. They raised more than $10,000 to defend the teachers and invested years in the fight, but school leaders remained unconvinced and demanded that teachers “continue teaching obedience to authority.”
Loyalty oaths became standard practice, and around the country teachers faced circumstances similar to those that had cost the New York teachers their jobs.
But in the 1930s, critics began to wonder whether the associated costs were too high. A survey from the National Education Association’s committee on academic freedom found the repressive and chilling climate in the schools might be pushing teachers out of the profession in fear. In 1949, a committee of leading educators, including Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was serving as the president of Columbia University, issued a report that declared, “State laws requiring special oaths for teachers, or laying down detailed prescriptions for the school curriculum … do harm to an important safeguard of freedom in education.” The committee called on the public to “resist exaggerated fears which tend to rise in periods of heightened tensions.”
Local leaders ignored this warning. A few short years later, 180 teachers in New York City found themselves under investigation as part of a campaign to purge communists from the schools.
Concerns over teachers’ unbridled academic freedom didn’t just stem from fears about their loyalty to the country, they also arose from doubts about teachers’ loyalty to the public school system. In 1959, James Worley, a longtime teacher who served as chair of the English department at his school in Westchester County, N.Y., was fired for insubordination when he refused to file lesson plans with his administrator. For Worley, the oversight infringed on his professional authority and academic freedom. His superiors cared about neither. In their dismissal report, the board wrote that “a teacher must recognize and respect the balance of administrative authority and teacher freedom.”
The situation was even more dire for the nation’s Black teachers. Across the South, teachers of color fought for racial justice through pay equalization and school integration.
Howard Pindell taught in the Anne Arundel County, Md., public schools for five years and had secured tenure privileges. Yet, when he pressed for higher pay in 1938, he was transferred to another district without tenure and fired. In South Carolina, 12 veteran teachers of color — all with the highest levels of certification — were dismissed before the start of the 1954 school year because they signed a petition in support of improved schools, refused to sign a petition in favor of school segregation, and had relatives who were actively involved in the NAACP. In 1956, another 17 Black teachers were fired in South Carolina because they refused to sign a pledge that detailed their affiliation with and views on the NAACP. Time and time again, Black teachers who fought for and taught about racial justice were demoted, transferred and dismissed without recourse in the name of reining in what White school leaders defined as a dangerous autonomy and academic freedom.
Critics have long cast public school teachers as both the problem plaguing the nation’s schools and the pathway to improvement. This formulation has been the engine driving changes to the American educational system into the 21st century as fears over academic freedom and tenure accelerated the standardization and constriction of school curriculums and efforts to roll back teachers’ job protections.
But in reality, the nation’s public school teachers have never had academic freedom, even as the fear that they might has been historically persistent. These circumstances have led to burnout for teachers of all races and made it more difficult for teachers of color to enter and remain in schools. As we face severe teacher shortages, this is no minor issue.
But perhaps even more important are the consequences for American society. In preventing teachers from guiding students in debate and critical inquiry and inhibiting them from educating about social justice, we have weakened the core elements of American democracy. Indeed, the fear of what might happen if children encounter difficult topics may well trace to generations of adults who never learned how to do just that.
This essay is the seventh in the Freedom to Learn series sponsored by PEN America, providing historical context for controversies surrounding free expression in education today. | 2022-10-10T13:48:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Conservatives’ panic about teachers misses how little freedom they have - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/10/conservative-panic-teachers-academic-freedom/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/10/conservative-panic-teachers-academic-freedom/ |
Justice Jackson offered Democrats a road map for securing equal rights
Tying the fight for equal rights to the founders and the Constitution has worked before
Perspective by Evan Turiano
Evan Turiano is the Macaulay Honors College visiting assistant professor of history at Queens College, CUNY.
Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson poses for a portrait on Friday. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
On Tuesday, Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made headlines and drew praise by invoking the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution — the Reconstruction Amendments — during oral arguments over Alabama’s alleged violation of the Voting Rights Act.
Drawing on 19th-century sources, including speeches and congressional committee reports, Jackson explained that, when she examined “what the framers and the founders thought,” it became evident that the authors of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause knew that securing racial equality did not necessarily mean legislating in a race-blind way. Alabama’s new congressional map, in short, did not match the intent of those who devised the amendment.
Jackson’s move surprised court watchers because originalism is usually associated with the contemporary conservative legal movement — an expanded Second Amendment, the rollback of women’s reproductive rights and more. One writer referred to her questioning as a rare example of “progressive originalism” — trying to divine the Constitution’s original meaning from the historical record to guide liberal policymaking and jurisprudence.
But in reality, such a version of originalism isn’t new. Instead, Jackson’s constitutional interpretation joins a storied tradition in the struggle for equal rights. First abolitionists and later the “Radical Republicans” who shaped Reconstruction — the very people whose ideas Jackson cited — tied their movement to the founders’ supposed original intentions. By resurrecting this tradition, Jackson isn’t simply co-opting a conservative legal philosophy. She’s also giving the Democratic Party a road map for effective constitutional politics.
Maybe the most enduring quotations about the Constitution’s relationship with slavery come from William Lloyd Garrison, who called the document a “covenant with death” and an “agreement with hell.” But while some abolitionists like Garrison scorned the Constitution, many others knew that they could not afford to cede the legacy of the founding to enslavers. The early 19th century was, according to historian Eric Foner, a time when people “cared deeply about constitutional interpretation.” Whatever flaws the founders had, these abolitionists understood that if their goal was to build power, they had to connect their efforts with the founding.
They took a variety of approaches. William Jay, son of founder John Jay and a prominent figure in New York antislavery politics, focused much of his writing during the 1830s on trying to wrest the legacy of the founders back from proslavery ideologues who had co-opted it for their political project. He argued that the founders had formed a government “to establish JUSTICE, and secure the blessings of LIBERTY” — goals that were incompatible with slavery.
It was only Jay’s enslaving contemporaries, he argued, who had tilted the government toward protecting and expanding slavery. When Jay wrote an influential biography of his father, he carefully cherry-picked evidence to make the elder Jay’s gradual antislavery beliefs align with the radical edge the movement had developed by the 1830s. Sure, this helped the Jay family legacy. More importantly, though, it gave the antislavery movement a story to tell about themselves — one where they were the true keepers of the founders’ legacy. This story gave them legitimacy, helped them win followers and led to vital political power.
While some like Jay looked to the founders as individuals, others grounded their case in an assessment of how the public understood the Constitution at the moment when they consented to its authority — what Justice Antonin Scalia helped define a century and a half later as the pursuit of original public meaning. This was particularly useful for abolitionists when, as scholar Simon Gilhooley has recently noted, they were forced to reckon with the fact that many of the founders themselves were enslavers. For example, abolitionist William Goodell argued that it did not matter whether the founders were evil men “bound by the wicked intentions” to expand and protect slavery. What mattered was the “righteous words they were obliged to employ, in order to make their document acceptable to the People.”
This attempt to tie their movement to the founders and the Constitution itself helped antislavery activists and politicians build power and shape policy. Frederick Douglass understood this well. In 1857, he told a crowd in New York that “The Constitution … give[s] us a platform broad enough, and strong enough, to support the most comprehensive plans for the freedom and elevation of all the people in this country, without regard to color, class, or clime.”
In the 1850s, the most effective messengers of that broad and strong platform quickly became the new Republican Party. When compared to many abolitionists, the new party’s platform was relatively moderate. Yet the Republicans adopted key aspects of the abolitionists’ message about the founding and used them to build power and eventually to win support for the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution.
Take, for example, Rep. James Mitchell Ashley (R-Ohio), who was elected to Congress in 1859. Ashley came of age in Ohio as a Jeffersonian Democrat committed to the rights of the working man, before abandoning the party over its connection to slavery. He held on to his admiration for Jefferson and his ilk, though. In the words of scholar Rebecca Zietlow, Ashley “was either unwilling or unable to imagine that the Founding Fathers, whom he so admired, had sanctioned slavery, which he so hated.” Ashley found solace in William Jay’s style of antislavery originalism. “If the government was organized for any purpose,” he told Congress in 1861, “it was to secure the blessings of liberty … and not to enslave any man, nor to become the defenders of slavery.” Ashley introduced a bill in 1863 to create what would become the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery.
Same, too, with John Bingham, also of Ohio. Bingham was the chief author of the 14th Amendment, which established and protected birthright citizenship and its attendant rights, regardless of race. Justice Jackson cited Bingham’s words directly to capture the original intent behind the equal protection clause. Bingham also built his argument on originalism, though he adopted Goodell’s version, wrapping his effort in the collective public meaning of the Constitution. Because Black people were part of the nation at its founding moment, he told Congress in 1859, and because they worked “to achieve the independence of the country by the terrible trial by battle, it is not surprising that the Constitution of the United States does not exclude them from the body politic.”
These tactics, in the hands of Radical Republicans, played a major role in selling the expansion and protection of rights that came with the Civil War and Reconstruction. They allowed Republicans to frame the revolutionary changes underway as a vindication of the founding and to paint their opponents, the enslavers, as aberrations in the arc of American liberty. And, by rooting their movement in the Constitution’s authority, Republicans ensured that the gains they sought would be codified in durable constitutional amendments.
This tradition of using the founders’ intent and the original meaning of the Constitution to crusade for equal rights has been forgotten, swept aside by conservatives’ adoption of this philosophy over the past 40 years to undo the foundational liberal decisions of the Warren Court. Their efforts have produced significant scrutiny about originalism’s legal soundness. Any theory of jurisprudence will; at their essence, such philosophies exist to justify political decisions.
But what the conservative legal movement has known since the Reagan administration, and what the Republican Party knew nearly 170 years ago, is that originalism has the potential to make effective politics. It remains to be seen whether Democrats will recognize the value of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s powerful rhetoric, or if it will remain relegated to poignant but toothless 6-3 dissents. But she’s offering Democrats a road map to making liberal policy prescriptions far more popular. | 2022-10-10T13:48:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ketanji Brown Jackson’s liberal originalism isn’t new — but it’s powerful - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/10/originalism-ketanji-brown-jackson-supreme-court/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/10/originalism-ketanji-brown-jackson-supreme-court/ |
A horse ran away with wild mustangs. It just came home, 8 years later.
Shane Adams rides Mongo, his beloved horse who fled eight years ago, after being reunited. (Courtesy of Shane Adams)
Eight years ago, Shane Adams jolted from the tent he was camping in — underwear-clad and scurrying to get dressed — when he heard a herd of wild mustangs zoom past. His heart broke when he saw his beloved horse had joined them, running off into the Utah desert.
Mongo, a gentle stallion who loved to munch on Sour Patch Kids candy, had been missing ever since, but Adams never let go of his hope that the horse would eventually find its way home. Last week, it finally happened when Mongo was returned by federal officers with the Bureau of Land Management.
“He was his calm, mellow and normal self — like he had never left at all,” Adams told The Washington Post. “But I was overjoyed. I couldn’t believe it. It was like a dream come true.”
Seeing Mongo — now 18 years old and “a few hundred pounds” skinnier — brought back a flood of memories, the 40-year-old said. He could easily picture the “goofy,” bigheaded horse nickering for treats and their weekend camping trips to northwestern Utah. But he also remembered the dreaded scene of Mongo scurrying off into the brush-speckled landscape. Some six inches of snow were covering the desert plains that cold March morning, Adams said.
“I ran after him and I tried driving, but I really couldn’t get anywhere because of the snow,” he said. “Then I went back every weekend for three years to see if he was there. I reported him missing and tried every person I could to find him. But I never saw Mongo again.”
In Utah, some 22 herds have called the state home since the 1800s, most of them descending from horses that banded together after escaping from early settlers and ranchers. They now live on nearly 2.4 million acres controlled by the Bureau of Land Management.
Since 1971, when Congress passed the Wild Free-Roaming Horses & Burros Act, the horses have been protected as “living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West.” But their mushrooming population has sometimes eroded Utah’s ecosystem. And in the midst of a severe drought, some of the horses haven’t been able to find enough to eat and drink. That’s why the Bureau of Land Management in September rounded up about 700 wild mustangs in the Cedar Mountain herd management area — where about 920 horses free-roam in a space with the appropriate resources to manage between 190 to 390.
It was during this roundup in Tooele County that the Bureau of Land Management finally found Mongo, Adams said. Unlike the other horses, Mongo behaved like he had been trained in a previous life, and the branding in his coat was a telltale sign that he wasn’t feral like his other mates.
Federal protection sought for mustangs in West
Now that Mongo has returned home, Adams said he’s trying to get him back to a more healthy weight after years of free-roaming on scarce land.
“There’s not a lot of food out there with this drought, and the horses look like walking death because they’re so skinny,” he said. “I get why Mongo ran off — horses are tribal animals and will follow each other. But I’m happy we can take care of him now and make sure he eats enough food.”
In the time they’d spent apart, Mongo had become a bit of a legend in the Adams household. Pictures of the chocolate-colored, Persian and Quarter horse mix were still displayed at home. Adams’s oldest son — who was only 2 when the horse vanished — had made up songs about Mongo’s escape. But while the horse’s memory had been preserved in time, many aspects of Adams’s life had changed.
The former construction worker had gotten into a car crash in 2021 that left him disabled after a serious brain injury. He had to relearn how to walk and said his doctors told him the odds of him ever getting back to work — or atop a saddle — were fairly low.
“They said it’ll be probably like five years before I could think of getting on a horse. But I’ve already proved them wrong on that,” said Adams, who’s now easing his way back into the saddle. Though he can ride again, he said he’s still working on regaining the same level of control he had before.
These days, Adams enjoys taking his two kids, an 11-year-old son and an 8-year-old daughter, on rides. The two are often atop the family’s ponies, Captain, Pretty Boy and Sleepy Old John. Now they’re also taking out Mongo, whose name is a reference to the character in the 1974 Western spoof film “Blazing Saddles.”
“Now I’m a firm believer that you have to look past your trials and trust that things are going to get better,” Adams said. “Everything happens, but you’ve got to keep your chin up. I mean, a month ago I would’ve never imagined Mongo would be back.”
And Adams isn’t the only one excited to see Mongo return. His daughter, who was a 3-month-old baby when the horse disappeared, is already showering him with kisses — and, of course, Sour Patch Kids. | 2022-10-10T13:48:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Horse returns to owner in Utah after roaming wild for eight years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/10/utah-horse-returns-roaming-wild/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/10/utah-horse-returns-roaming-wild/ |
The Star Trek actor, a longtime environmental advocate, described feeling grief for a planet in peril
From left, Audrey Powers, William Shatner and Chris Boshuizen speak to reporters after their launch into space on Oct. 13, 2021. (LM Otero/AP)
William Shatner expected that going to space in October 2021 would induce “the ultimate catharsis” — a sense of connection between all living things. Instead, having stared into “the vicious coldness of space,” he found himself confounded as the Blue Origin spaceship landed and he stepped back onto Earth.
It took Shatner several hours to realize what he was experiencing: “great grief … for the planet.” The actor, now 91, had been involved in environmental causes for years. But his Oct. 13 trip aboard the Blue Origin spaceship, which made him the oldest human to visit space, gave that work new urgency, he said. Juxtaposing its “cold, dark, black emptiness” with “the warm nurturing of Earth below” filled him with deep despair and sparked a realization.
“I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound,” he wrote in an excerpt of his new book, “Boldly Go: Reflections on a Life of Awe and Wonder,” that was published Thursday by Variety.
William Shatner, Star Trek’s Capt. Kirk, flies to space and back, adding to this year’s number of civilian astronauts
For three seasons in the mid-to-late 1960s, Shatner brought space, the final frontier, into American homes as Capt. James Kirk in “Star Trek: The Original Series.” It was around the time he was portraying the fictional commanding officer of the USS Enterprise that Shatner read Rachel Carson’s seminal ecological text “Silent Spring,” which he described last year as an eye-opener.
Still, Shatner kept bleating about the environment. He starred in the 1986 film “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home,” in which his crew travels back in time to save humpback whales, which were endangered at the time, because they’re the only creatures who can communicate with an alien probe that threatens to destroy the Earth. The movie was inspired by Greenpeace, which saw donations increase after the blockbuster’s release and reacted to the film by saying it “subtly reinforces why Greenpeace exists.”
In 2009, Shatner scolded Hewlett-Packard for failing to keep its promise to produce a “toxic-free” computer. And he’s consistently warned that overpopulation and climate change are existential threats to humanity.
After playing a fictional spaceship captain for decades, Shatner finally got his own chance to venture into the final frontier. In August 2021, two months before his civilian flight, Shatner said he wanted to go to space so that he could look back at “the blue orb” and hinted that “a very enterprising and entrepreneurial friend” had once explored how to get Shatner on a civilian flight.
Two months later, Blue Origin, the space company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, announced that Shatner and three other passengers would fly into space on its second human spaceflight mission. In a news release, Shatner described the opportunity to see space for himself “a miracle.” (Bezos also owns The Post.)
A day before taking off, Shatner was excited for his imminent trip to space. In one video clip, he joked about jumping out of the spaceship capsule. In another, he said he planned to have his nose pressed against the window, and that when he did, he didn’t want to see “a little gremlin” looking back at him.
The NS-18 crew on the way to the training centre in our @Rivian. Space is so close we can taste it! 24 hours until launch. 🚀@CaptainClinical @AudreyKPowers @WilliamShatner @blueorigin pic.twitter.com/dyE1BAO4sW
— Chris Boshuizen (@cboshuizen) October 12, 2021
Then, it was launch day, and at 9:49 a.m. Central time, Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket — named after Alan Shepard, the first American to go into space — blasted off. Shatner’s flight lasted a little more than 10 minutes, climbing to a height of about 66 miles, four miles beyond one of the thresholds generally considered the edge of space. While in flight, the crew saw Earth below and the dark abyss on the other side, experiencing weightlessness for a few minutes. Shatner said he looked out the window, preoccupied with the color and curvature of Earth beneath him, even as he endured the discomfort of weightlessness and then the “ominous blackness” of space.
Then, they descended. Slowed by parachutes, their capsule landed in the desert near Van Horn, Tex., as Blue Origin celebrated a successful mission. In the immediate aftermath of the spaceflight, Shatner thanked Bezos for giving him “the most profound experience I can imagine.”
William Shatner, at 90, keeps seeking that next personal frontier
He didn’t, he told The Post on Sunday. But he did process it over the ensuing hours, days and months. He described the experience as “a clarion call” to stop climate change. Shatner said the devastating effects are already beginning to show, citing Hurricane Ian’s recent destruction of the Florida Gulf Coast and torrential rains in Pakistan. Such seismic forces have the power to snuff out animal and plant species, sometimes without humans ever knowing they existed.
Shatner then mentioned the contrast between his expectation of the flight versus what happened while free-floating nearly 350,000 feet above the Earth a year ago. He described the experience in his book excerpt. | 2022-10-10T13:48:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | William Shatner says space trip filled him with sadness, climate anxiety - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/10/william-shatner-space-flight-grief/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/10/william-shatner-space-flight-grief/ |
Originalism as parody in conservative judges’ latest gun-law rulings
A sign on 6th Avenue in New York City states that Times Square is a "gun free zone." (Sarah Yenesel/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
New York State can’t prohibit people from carrying guns at summer camps because — get this — there weren’t any similar restrictions in place at the time the Constitution was written.
Of course, there weren’t any summer camps back then, either. But such is the blinkered, history-focused approach to gun regulation imposed by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority earlier this year and applied last week by a federal judge to block the state’s new gun law.
Also, New York can’t prohibit guns in subways, train stations or airline terminals. Nor at concerts or sports stadiums, homeless and domestic violence shelters, addiction treatment facilities, libraries, playgrounds or zoos.
Nursery schools and other educational institutions can be deemed gun-free zones — but not day-care centers or other licensed child-care programs. It’s your constitutional right to pack a pistol in crowded Times Square.
Oh, and New York can’t require those applying for concealed carry permits to provide lists of their social media accounts for the previous three years because, said U.S. District Judge Glenn Suddaby, “an insufficient number of historical analogues exists.” This is originalism as parody.
So much for the belief that the people, through their elected representatives, should be able to make such policy choices for themselves. (Oh, wait, that was abortion rights.) When it comes to guns, the Constitution tells the people that their ability to protect themselves against gun violence is limited by what federal judges, posing as amateur historians, can dig up about Revolutionary era statutes.
It didn’t need to be this way — even if you believe, as the Supreme Court concluded in 2008, that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms.
In its 5-4 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, the court cautioned that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings.”
Indeed, in the years after Heller, courts more often than not upheld gun laws challenged under the Second Amendment. The federal appeals courts considering the issue unanimously concluded that gun regulations should be tested not just by history and tradition but also by whether the infringement was justified under the circumstances — what was known as means-ends scrutiny.
Then came new conservative justices, who imposed a more stringent, unyielding test: What does history dictate? Specifically, the 6-3 majority asked in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, is the challenged law grounded in “this Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation”? No matter that we live in the modern age of “ghost guns” and 3D printing, when owning a gun may mean wielding an assault weapon, not shouldering a musket.
The results have been predictable — and, for those who believe in reasonable gun regulation, grim.
Last month, a federal judge in Delaware struck down part of the state’s ghost-gun law, barring weapons that lack serial numbers, and a federal judge in Texas overturned the federal-law ban on those charged with felonies from “receiving” guns, although they can still possess them. In August, another federal judge in Texas struck down the state’s ban on 18- to 20-year-olds’ carrying handguns, and one in Colorado blocked enforcement of Boulder County’s assault weapons and high-capacity magazine ban.
The courts are just getting started in responding to Bruen, so maybe — maybe — things will settle down. Suddaby’s order, which will be appealed, seems particularly obtuse and tilted against any restriction.
After citing a raft of laws prohibiting guns in schools, Suddaby, a George W. Bush appointee, offers up this bit of non-reasoning: “However, the Court cannot find these historical statutes analogous to a prohibition on ‘summer camps.’ ”
Seriously? The court said in Bruen that “analogical reasoning requires only that the government identify a well-established and representative historical analogue, not a historical twin. So even if a modern-day regulation is not a dead ringer for historical precursors, it still may be analogous enough to pass constitutional muster.”
But analogous enough is in the eye of the beholder, and many of those beholding are named by Republican presidents. In the end, how history applies will be up to the justices — and their track record here is distinctly unimpressive: History matters when it’s on the side they’d prefer to win, and is discarded when that proves inconvenient to the desired outcome.
Justice Stephen G. Breyer, dissenting in Bruen, warned of precisely this problem. “At best, the numerous justifications that the Court finds for rejecting historical evidence give judges ample tools to pick their friends out of history’s crowd,” he wrote. “At worst, they create a one-way ratchet that will disqualify virtually any ‘representative historical analogue’ and make it nearly impossible to sustain common-sense regulations necessary to our Nation’s safety and security.”
Not even four months later, Breyer’s warning looks prophetic, and common-sense regulations look to be in grave jeopardy. | 2022-10-10T13:49:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Originalism as parody in conservative judges’ latest gun-law rulings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/originalism-parody-conservative-judges-latest-gun-law-rulings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/originalism-parody-conservative-judges-latest-gun-law-rulings/ |
The best way to counter Putin’s nuclear threats
By Carl Bildt
A photo taken from video provided by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Feb. 19 shows a Yars intercontinental ballistic missile being launched from an airfield during military drills. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)
Is Vladimir Putin really going to use nuclear weapons as part of his effort to subjugate and break up Ukraine?
Some months ago, most observers dismissed this as highly unlikely. Putin had hinted at the possibility, but there were no concrete signs of preparation for nuclear use, and it seems to be irrational even beyond what we once knew of Putin.
Today there is reason to take the issue more seriously.
The speech that Putin gave on Sept. 30, during a ceremony marking the illegal annexation of large parts of Ukrainian territory, demonstrated a mind-set devoid of both rationality and reality. Gone were all but a couple of passing references to NATO expansion, and even Ukraine now figured only marginally. Putin painted a distinctly dark picture of a confrontation with a Satanic West intent on breaking up and destroying Russia itself. (And now, as if to underline his rage, his forces have staged a series of brutal missile attacks against largely civilian targets in Kyiv and elsewhere.)
If this is his mind-set, there is no reason to assume that he isn’t serious in his threat to use nuclear weapons. Official Russian doctrine allows the use of nuclear weapons when the very existence of the Russian state is under threat — and a Ukrainian effort to expel Russian forces from its territory can hardly be described in these terms — but Putin’s rhetoric now comes very close to framing the situation in existential terms. He has previously described the conflict as one of “life or death” for Russia.
Throughout the Cold War, NATO deterred the use of nuclear weapons by the Soviet Union by threatening the use of nuclear weapons in response — a posture known as “mutually assured destruction.” Currently, however, the West seems to be signaling that any direct response will be non–nuclear. This is a highly sensible move in order to avoid escalation to all-out nuclear war, but at the same time, it runs the risk of weakening deterrence.
As a result, there is now a need to discuss how the wider effort to deter any use of nuclear weapons by Putin could be augmented. Here are the elements of a policy to achieve this.
First, it should be stated that any use of nuclear weapons should immediately make regime change in Russia the explicit aim of Western policy. And regime change should be explained as the removal from power of Putin — and all others directly implicated in the decision to use nuclear weapons — and ultimately making them personally responsible for this crime against humanity.
Second, it should be stated very clearly that any Russian nuclear attack — even if Putin were to take out a number of cities with tens of thousands dead — would in no way alter the fundamental policy of the West. Such an action would, on the contrary, strengthen the determination to make certain that Putin loses the war he has initiated. Ukraine NATO membership would be a part of the answer in this respect. It has already been granted candidate status for European Union membership.
Third, the West should seek to preemptively mobilize the broadest possible international support for this policy. To use nuclear weapons is to cross the reddest of red lines in our world of today, and we should start right now with efforts to seek support for the strongest possible measures against Russia if this happens.
Fourth, a special effort should be made to engage the wavering nations of China and India. It is highly likely that they would have strong objections to Putin using nuclear weapons, but they should be encouraged to make that clear to the Kremlin in advance, and preferably publicly as well. We should make it clear that continuing their policy of tolerating Russian behavior would no longer be an option if they wish to preserve ties with the West.
Fifth, there should be active and visible preparations for credible conventional strikes against important Russian assets. The country has numerous critical vulnerabilities — including base areas for its Black Sea and Baltic fleets or its Arctic liquefied natural gas facilities — and whether its cyberdefenses can withstand sustained attack remains unclear. Putting assets such as these at explicit risk could be part of a beefed-up policy of deterrence.
A policy along these lines should be devised with the explicit purpose of deterring Putin from continuing his slide into dangerous delusions and insane behavior by making clear to all those around him that any attempt by him to press the nuclear button would have catastrophic consequences for Russia — as well as for them personally.
But we have to be realistic. If worse comes to worst, we should be ready to carry out these policies. In such a situation, further elements would rapidly have to be added to the policy.
We are in a situation potentially more dangerous than the Cuban missile crisis. We are faced with a leader in the Kremlin who might actually mean what he says about this being a struggle for “life or death.” We must do our utmost to deter Moscow — and all those there in positions to influence events — from the ultimate insanity. | 2022-10-10T13:49:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The best way to counter Putin’s nuclear threats - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/putin-russia-nuclear-threat-deterrence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/putin-russia-nuclear-threat-deterrence/ |
Biden's directive on marijuana faces a Catch-22
Happy Monday, everyone. It’s four weeks until the midterms. Tell us what we need to know: rachel.roubein@washpost.com.
Today’s edition: The Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade is revealing the growing influence of Catholic hospitals, which have restrictions on services like abortion and birth control. An Arizona court halted enforcement of the state’s near-total abortion ban. But first …
Marijuana research is restricted because it's Schedule 1 – making it hard to consider reclassifying it
President Biden tasked the federal health department with undertaking a major scientific and medical review that has the potential to upend more than a half-century of marijuana policy.
Last week, Biden directed the Department of Health and Human Services and the attorney general to expedite a review into whether marijuana should remain listed as a Schedule I substance, a category usually reserved for the most dangerous drugs such as heroin and ecstasy.
But such an evaluation — the first initiated by a U.S. president — is made all the more difficult due to tight restrictions on research into marijuana, which some experts and government officials say have hindered the ability of scientists to study the drug. Yet, those tight restrictions are in place precisely because marijuana is classified as a Schedule I drug, presenting a Catch-22 for scientists.
“It’s something that we constantly communicate: We really need to figure out a way of doing research with these substances,” Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, told The Health 202. Her agency is a major funder of studies on drug use and addiction, and Volkow said she’s working to find pathways to ease research into Schedule I drugs.
Either way, a final determination over how to classify marijuana could take years. The prospect is sure to ignite a flurry of lobbying and a renewed push in Congress to decriminalize the drug at the federal level.
Keith Humphreys, a professor at Stanford University:
"Re-scheduling" means marijuana would be a medical product that the health care system would provide with some level of control appropriate to risk.
"De-scheduling" means marijuana would be a corporate product like tobacco (indeed the tobacco industry would likely sell it).
— Keith Humphreys (@KeithNHumphreys) October 7, 2022
The Food and Drug Administration is charged with conducting an assessment considering eight factors, such as marijuana’s actual or relative potential for abuse, scientific evidence of pharmacologic effect and the state of scientific knowledge about the drug. The agency then makes a recommendation.
Such petitions can be launched by outside parties, HHS or others. The last such evaluation was completed in May 2015, when the FDA recommended — and the National Institute on Drug Abuse agreed — that marijuana should maintain its status as a Schedule I drug. That designation means it has a high potential for abuse and no current accepted medical use.
Then, the Drug Enforcement Administration typically conducts its own independent review. If there’s enough evidence that a change is warranted, then the rulemaking process may begin.
Some advocates — such as Kevin Sabet, the president and CEO of Smart Approaches to Marijuana — have argued that marijuana should remain a Schedule I drug, but that studying the drug should be easier by creating a new category for research. Others have also proposed similar approaches to research.
Challenges to researching Schedule I drugs include obtaining a research registration; getting protocol modifications approved by the DEA, such as a change in the quantity of the drug requested; and sometimes acquiring separate registrations for each building a researcher works at on a single campus, according to a report from NIDA to Congress, obtained by Marijuana Moment.
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra:
A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity due to ground rules set by the White House, emphasized to reporters that Biden isn’t pushing for descheduling or any particular schedule, but rather for a review to assess how marijuana should be classified.
But on the campaign trail, Biden said he supported moving marijuana to a lower schedule, such as classifying it as a Schedule II drug, CNN reported at the time. Here’s Biden talking marijuana at a Las Vegas town hall in November 2019:
“It is not irrational to do more scientific investigation to determine, which we have not done significantly enough, whether or not there are any things that relate to whether it’s a gateway drug or not.”
Pushing for more
Some experts don't anticipate that the administration would deschedule marijuana. But some top congressional Democrats are pushing for that to happen, which would decriminalize marijuana at the federal level and treat it the same as alcohol and tobacco.
Under legislation from Sens. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Cory Booker (N.J.) and Ron Wyden (Ore.), cannabis would be removed from the federal list of controlled substances and states could craft their own laws without fear that Washington may intervene. Wyden said he welcomes a review by HHS on the scheduling of marijuana, but emphasized that he believes marijuana should be descheduled.
“My god, the federal government has been lagging behind for years and years,” Wyden told The Health 202. “It's time to get beyond just playing a bit of catch-up ball and really laying out a framework, like I’ve described, that gives the states a lot of flexibility within a sensible federal framework.”
Catholic systems now control about 1 in 7 U.S. hospital beds
Catholic health systems, which don't provide contraception or abortion in most cases, have a growing influence in the United States, The Post’s Frances Stead Sellers and Meena Venkataramanan report.
Catholic systems now control about 1 in 7 U.S. hospital beds, and are “the sole community providers of short-term acute hospital care” in more than 52 communities across the country, according to the liberal health advocacy organization Community Catalyst.
Key context: Catholic health-care facilities must follow directives from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops when treating patients. The religious doctrine prohibits providers from offering services it deems immoral, which includes sterilization, such as vasectomies and contraception, as well as abortion.
More than one-third of women who went to Catholic hospitals for reproductive care said they weren’t aware of the facilities’ religious affiliation, according to a 2018 survey published in the journal Contraception.
The big picture: The role of Catholic doctrine in U.S. health care has expanded during a years-long push to acquire smaller institutions — a reflection of consolidation in the hospital industry, as financially challenged community hospitals and independent physicians join bigger systems to gain access to electronic health records and other economies of scale.
Chart check
Here's the share of Catholic hospitals in states across the country:
Republican Sens. Rick Scott (Fla.), chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Tom Cotton (Ark.) will travel to Georgia tomorrow to stump for Herschel Walker, following accusations that the Senate candidate paid for one abortion and urged a second, our colleagues Michael Scherer and Annie Linskey reported.
The GOP candidate is in a competitive contest with Sen. Raphael Warnock (D), the outcome of which could help determine which party controls the Senate for the next two years. Republicans have shown no signs of backing away from the race, with GOP lawmakers hitting the airwaves yesterday to drum up support for the embattled candidate.
Walker — who is running for office on a platform that opposes abortion in all cases, without exceptions for rape or incest — has denied reports that he paid for the mother of one of his children to have an abortion and later urged her to have a second one. The woman, speaking on the condition of anonymity to protect her privacy and that of her child, told The Post in a brief interview Saturday that those reports accurately described her experiences.
Hear what other lawmakers and pundits have to say about the Walker allegations:
An Arizona appellate court halted enforcement of the state’s roughly 150-year-old abortion ban late Friday, staying a lower court’s decision last month to reinstate the law that criminalizes the procedure almost entirely, our colleague Andrew Jeong reports.
The ruling means that abortions are now prohibited in Arizona after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Gov. Doug Ducey (R-Ariz.) signed the restriction back in March, which went into effect the day after a judge revived the near-total ban in late September.
The details: The Arizona Court of Appeals agreed with Planned Parenthood that a judge should not have lifted a decades-long injunction on the near-total restrictions, which are rooted in an 1864 law that has no exceptions for victims of rape or incest and threatens abortion providers with imprisonment for up to five years. The pause on the law is in place until the appellate court can hear the case.
In the panel’s brief, Judge Peter J. Eckerstrom wrote that Planned Parenthood’s attorneys had “demonstrated a substantial likelihood of success” in its legal challenge against the stricter prohibitions. The reproductive rights organization had argued the lower court erred in resurrecting the Civil War-era ban because it failed to consider a host of laws passed more recently in the state that provide abortion seekers more leeway.
Meanwhile, in Ohio …
A county judge issued a preliminary injunction against a state law prohibiting most abortions after fetal cardiac activity is detected while a state constitutional challenge against the ban is heard, citing individual liberty. The decision extends an earlier, temporary suspension of the law that was set to expire this week. The procedure is permitted up to the 22nd week of pregnancy.
And in California …
A measure to enshrine abortion access into the state constitution is heading toward an easy victory. But political analysts are left wondering how the amendment will impact the state’s competitive congressional races, unsure what type of people the measure might bring to the ballot box on Election Day, The Post’s Scott Wilson writes.
Michelle McMurry-Heath, CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, is on leave amid dissent within the lobbying group about its direction and concerns about its results, the Wall Street Journal reports.
The Biden administration’s fall booster campaign has vaccinated just 4 percent of eligible Americans, a low rate that experts are warning could have dire consequences as the country approaches a projected winter surge, Dan Diamond, Mary Beth Gahan and Mark Johnson report for The Post.
Some vulnerable residents in Florida have struggled to access essential health care and medications in the days following Hurricane Ian, which shut down hospitals and pharmacies across the state, NBC News reports.
Women powered Democrats in the 2018 midterms. Will they again in 2022? (By Dan Balz | The Washington Post)
‘The Cash Monster Was Insatiable’: How Insurers Exploited Medicare for Billions (By Reed Abelson and Margot Sanger-Katz | The New York Times)
Pregnancy complications spiked during the pandemic. No one knows exactly why. (By Ariana Eunjung Cha l The Washington Post) | 2022-10-10T13:49:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden's directive on marijuana faces a Catch-22 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/biden-directive-marijuana-faces-catch-22/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/biden-directive-marijuana-faces-catch-22/ |
Iraqis voted a year ago but still don’t have a government
Iraq’s democracy depends on consensus — yet parties in the minority in parliament don’t want to take the opposition role
Analysis by Hamzeh Hadad
Riot police throw stones Oct. 1 as protesters try to storm Baghdad's Green Zone government area. (Ahmed Jalil/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
In Iraq, government formation takes 5½ months on average, from election day to the swearing in of the prime minister and cabinet. But Iraq has yet to form a government after its last election, on Oct. 10, 2021. It’s one year since Iraqis went to the polls in the sixth parliamentary election since the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003.
Iraq found itself on the brink of civil war by late summer, following widespread protests and a Sadrist occupation of parliament after populist cleric Moqtada al-Sadr ordered his parliamentary bloc to resign. Why has this government formation process been longer and more violent — and what does this mean for Iraq’s democratization?
Iraq’s democracy depends on consensus
Iraq’s political structure, installed by the U.S.-led occupation, relies on a broad consensus government. The Sadrist movement resigned after unsuccessfully challenging the system, prompting an armed confrontation in late August between the Sadrist paramilitary, Saraya al-Salam, and the Iraqi security forces and other paramilitary groups representing Sadr’s rivals.
Iraq’s populist leader quit parliament. What happens now?
The Iraqi public, which had called for early elections through mass mobilization in fall 2019, has become more disenchanted with political parties and the democracy they purport to represent. My research on government formation in Iraq helps explain the growing frustration, and the current political impasse.
Iraq’s informal power-sharing system ensures that each of the major ethno-religious groups — Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds — has a share. This time, the tripartite alliance, representing the winning party within each ethno-religious group, instead tried to form a government on its own as the majority, and sideline its co-ethnic and co-religious rivals to the role of opposition.
The Iraqi constitution does not enforce the informal requirements for the president to be Kurdish, the prime minister to be Shiite and the speaker of parliament to be Sunni. But it does require a two-thirds majority of parliament to elect a president in the first round of voting. This article was included in the constitution to protect the Kurds, a minority group, and to prevent the tyranny of the majority. Despite pressures exerted by Iran and Turkey in favor of their respective Iraqi political allies, government formation has been stalled since January.
A clarification from the Federal Supreme Court in early February reinforced the two-thirds rule. The tripartite alliance didn’t have the numbers and was unable to recruit other parties. After successfully installing its choice for speaker of parliament, the alliance failed to reach a quorum to elect a president, who should then designate a prime minister.
Iraq lacks a culture of opposition parties
No political party has won a majority in Iraqi elections. In fact, some previous winners, who won more seats than the Sadrists in 2021, were forced into consensus governments with a compromise prime minister.
The generation of politicians who have governed Iraq for the past two decades only understand opposition as being anti-state. The concept of parties in the majority working together to form a cabinet, while parties in the minority agree to take their place in parliament as opposition, is alien. Political parties always prefer to be in government as it allows them access to state resources. In opposition, parties only have their parliamentarians and no presence in cabinet.
How does this unfamiliarity with the role of the opposition play out? Parties excluded from the tripartite alliance actively worked to keep the winning bloc from reaching a quorum. And the Sadrist movement — which won the most seats in last year’s election but failed to form a government with its allies — resigned from parliament in June. The Sadrists took to the streets; they and their rivals seemed to view the near prospect of civil war as preferable to staying in parliament as opposition.
The frustrating process of government formation has overshadowed the gains made from the 2021 election, which include the emergence of protest-based parties and nonpartisan independent candidates. Although they are not a large enough bloc today to transform the informal political system, these newcomers may be enough to begin a genuine opposition, which could grow in coming elections. After all, it takes just 50 members of parliament to hold a vote of no confidence for the executive branch.
Unfortunately, the ongoing stalemate has deprived Iraqis from witnessing what a genuine parliamentary opposition can look like.
Iraqis are less trusting of their political system
The 2021 elections were held early, in response to a mass protest movement in the fall of 2019. But Iraqis have now had a caretaker government for a full year. That government is unable to pass major legislation, like a federal budget. This has paralyzed the country, hurting the fragile relationship between the government and its citizens.
Iraqi political parties have politicized public institutions to an alarming degree, analysts find. Ethno-sectarian parties built their patronage networks by expanding the public sector, which now provides about 40 percent of employment in Iraq. But Iraqis outside these networks have grown frustrated that services like education, water, electricity and health care function poorly.
As the government continues to tighten up on dissent, voters have become increasingly apathetic, with many joining a boycott movement. In 2021, only 44 percent of Iraqis voted, despite citizens’ demands for early elections. A year-long gridlock, with political parties now calling for yet another early election, isn’t likely to restore people’s faith in democratic institutions.
What does this mean for Iraq’s future?
Whether the Sadrists participate, Iraq is likely to see another broad consensus government — even if only long enough to oversee early elections. However, early elections will not suddenly provide a clear parliamentary opposition, nor overcome the ethno-religious apportionment.
These issues do not necessarily point to constitutional change, or a revolution. The constitution is not responsible for the lack of constitutionalism, and a revolution risks further chaos. Iraq may be able to overcome the challenges of democratization — and its own undemocratic history — by developing a stronger democratic political culture. New political groups, new nongovernmental organizations and even popular protests will probably be part of the ongoing process.
Hamzeh Hadad is a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Find him on Twitter @HamzehKarkhi. | 2022-10-10T13:49:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why is Iraq's government formation stalled? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/iraq-government-stalled-parliament-sadr/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/iraq-government-stalled-parliament-sadr/ |
Politics are a problem in spyware investigation, committee chairman says
Analysis by Aaron Schaffer
Good morning and happy Monday! I'm filling in for Tim this morning; I've been watching his vacation dispatches — while simultaneously being somewhat terrified of iguanas.
Below: Iranian state television was briefly taken over, and hackers pull off another large cryptocurrency heist. First:
Tensions are palpable in Pegasus-prompted spyware investigation
Politics are playing too much of a role in a European Parliament committee investigating the proliferation of spyware in Europe, its chairman says.
“It was always going to be a very difficult committee to work as a team,” Jeroen Lenaers, chair of the committee investigating Pegasus and similar surveillance spyware, told The Cybersecurity 202. “But I personally feel that, especially lately, the politics have really taken too much center stage.”
The drafting of the report — which is due to be presented in less than a month — comes amid revelations about the use of Pegasus spyware, which have prompted scandal on nearly every continent. It could boost awareness of spyware misuse and build momentum for action on spyware in Europe, where lawmakers say not enough is being done to curb the proliferation of such software.
In Europe and elsewhere, the subject is controversial. Opposition lawmakers, journalists and activists in Greece, Hungary, Poland and Spain have reportedly been targeted with spyware.
The work of the committee, whose members are from countries all across Europe, has turned tense at times. When lawmakers supporting the independence of Spain's Catalonia region testified at a Thursday hearing on their experiences being targeted with spyware, the hearing turned testy and some Spanish members of the committee criticized the Catalan independence movement. The arguments frustrated some other lawmakers, who see the spyware issue as something that goes beyond a debate over Catalonia and Spain.
Complicating things, the committee’s membership includes both alleged targets of surveillance and members of Hungarian and Polish ruling parties, which have been embroiled in spyware scandals in their countries.
Lenaers said the committee's work would be effective if members of the committee “work as European members of Parliament and leave the national discussions to the national parliaments.”
NSO Group, the maker of Pegasus, has a sizable European client base. Fourteen European countries have purchased Pegasus, and the licenses of two member states’ licenses have been revoked, NSO told the committee, per Haaretz.
NSO has long said it investigates credible allegations of misuse and cuts off some customers. The company also says Pegasus is used to catch terrorists and other criminals. But it’s reportedly been used to try to target U.S. and European officials:
Last year, Apple notified U.S. Embassy employees that they were hacked with the spyware, my colleagues reported.
Apple also told Didier Reynders, Europe's commissioner for justice, and several staffers that they'd been targeted with the software, Reuters reported.
The committee, which is dubbed the European Parliament “Committee of Inquiry to investigate the use of Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware,” faces other limitations as well. Some governments haven't even been willing to reply to letters asking them about their legal frameworks for using spyware, committee rapporteur Sophie in 't Veld told The Cybersecurity 202.
Moreover, the committee has limited power, a stark contrast to the United States’ subpoena-equipped investigators who have forcefully looked into U.S. political scandals like Watergate.
In 't Veld’s report will be presented Nov. 8, she said. After that, the committee will debate it, Lenaers said. Members of the committee plan to visit Greece and Cyprus next month and Hungary in February, before the committee’s mandate ends in March, he said, adding that if the committee’s mandate is extended, lawmakers could visit another country like Spain, the United Kingdom or the United States.
The report is due almost exactly a year after the U.S. government blacklisted NSO upon finding that Pegasus was used to “maliciously target” journalists, activists and government officials. The sanctions came months after The Washington Post and 16 other news organizations published dozens of articles on how NSO clients had misused the technology.
This year alone, there have been new reports of spyware victims in at least a half dozen countries, from El Salvador to the United Kingdom. Just this month, digital rights groups said that Mexican journalists and activists were targeted with the spyware after the country’s president pledged not to use such tools.
For In 't Veld, one current challenge is incorporating all of the information she’s gotten into her report. “I have so much information, I'm not even sure how I'm going to integrate all that into one report,” she said. “And the picture is becoming pretty complete, and it's not a pretty picture.”
Iranian state television briefly taken over amid protests
Hackers on Saturday took over Iranian state television for around 15 seconds and displayed an image of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in flames, the Associated Press’s Samya Kullab reports. The captions on the footage said “join us and stand up!” and “the blood of our youth is dripping from your claws.”
The hack came as protesters in Iran began demonstrations for a fourth week. The protests came in response to the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who died after being detained by the country’s “morality police” for allegedly violating the conservative dress code imposed by Islamic clerics leading the government. Rights groups say that dozens of people have been killed, with hundreds more injured and arrested, as security forces faced off against protesters.
Iranian authorities appear to have cut internet access in the evening — when protests typically take place — making it difficult for protesters to communicate, my colleagues reported. On Thursday, the U.S. government sanctioned Iranian Communications Minister Eisa Zarepour, with the Treasury Department saying that Zarepour “is responsible for the Iranian government’s shameful attempt to block the internet access of millions of Iranians in the hopes of slowing down the protests.”
Another cryptocurrency firm was hit in a multimillion-dollar hack
Hackers stole around $570 million worth of cryptocurrency from a blockchain bridge used by the Binance-linked BNB Chain, but they were only able to get away with around $100 million in cryptocurrency, Reuters’s Elizabeth Howcroft reports. Blockchain bridges are tools that let users transfer assets between blockchains.
The cryptocurrency industry and such tools have been the targets of hackers, with the U.S. government accusing North Korean hackers of being responsible for a $620 million heist this year. It’s not clear if North Korean hackers were responsible for the BNB Chain hack, but U.N. investigators have said that cryptocurrency hacks are an “important revenue source” for the country’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Biden administration announces increased privacy checks for European data flows
The new executive order boosts privacy protections for data transferred between the United States and Europe in an attempt to address long-standing concerns about U.S. surveillance, Cristiano Lima reported. It puts into practice a March deal between President Biden and European leaders, and adds checks on U.S. intelligence agencies’ collection of Europeans’ personal information. It also lets them seek redress if their data is unlawfully intercepted.
“U.S. and E.U. officials have sought for years to come to terms on a legal mechanism to replace Privacy Shield, a data pact that allowed businesses to safely transfer data across the Atlantic that was struck down by European courts in 2020 over U.S. surveillance concerns,” Cristiano wrote. “But a deal proved elusive, even as businesses clamored for clarity around the legality of data flows.”
The new pact still has to be ratified in Europe, which could take months. It’s not clear if it will withstand challenges in European courts. “At first sight it seems that the core issues were not solved and it will be back to the [Court of Justice of the European Union] sooner or later,” Austrian privacy activist Max Schrems said. Schrems’s legal challenges ushered in the end of the Privacy Shield.
In heated exchange, federal judge demands True the Vote identify who provided access to poll worker data (Texas Tribune)
Germany's cybersecurity chief faces dismissal, reports say (Reuters)
Meta warns 1 million Facebook users their login info may have been compromised (Naomi Nix)
Hackers target eager homebuyers with a dumb scam that keeps working (Bloomberg Businessweek)
Singtel's second unit faces cyber attack weeks after Optus data breach (Reuters)
Chicago scientists are testing an unhackable quantum internet in their basement closet (Jeanne Whalen)
The FS-ISAC holds its FinCyber Today summit in Scottsdale, Ariz., today through Wednesday. | 2022-10-10T13:49:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Politics are a problem in spyware investigation, committee chairman says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/politics-are-problem-spyware-investigation-committee-chairman-says/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/politics-are-problem-spyware-investigation-committee-chairman-says/ |
Ending the war on marijuana is crucial for racial justice
President Biden in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., on Oct. 6. (Tom Brenner/REUTERS)
To give you a sense of the magnitude of the problem: “Between 2001 and 2010, there were over 8 million pot arrests in the U.S. … Marijuana use is roughly equal among Blacks and Whites, yet Blacks are 3.73 times as likely to be arrested for marijuana possession.”
It has long been known that these arrests and convictions have tremendous and lasting costs. They can “negatively impact public housing and student financial aid eligibility, employment opportunities, child custody determinations and immigration status.”7 That is the very definition of structural racism — something Republicans so often refuse to acknowledge exists.
In a larger sense, Biden’s move demonstrates how actions that correct racial inequity can benefit the broader society. Rectifying injustice against Black and Brown people helps chip away at a racial barrier, but it also helps everyone affected by bad policy. Americans in the Rust Belt and rural communities who have seen the destruction wrought by addiction to fentanyl and other drugs should appreciate the effort to reconsider the punishment of nonviolent drug users. This is the antithesis of the zero-sum political mentality in which gains for Black people must mean losses for Whites.
Biden’s decision regarding student debt is similarly one that addresses inequities. Although critics have raised legitimate concerns about the move’s constitutionality and inflationary impact, it targets a problem that also disproportionately affects Black people. “Black borrowers on average carry about $40,000 in federal student loan debt, $10,000 more than White borrowers, according to federal education data,” the Associated Press reported.
“The disparity reflects a racial wealth gap in the U.S. — one that some advocates say the debt relief plan does not do enough to narrow,” the AP added. “One in four Black borrowers would see their debt cleared entirely under the administration’s plan,” which includes “an additional $10,000 in relief for Pell Grant recipients, who are more than twice as likely to be Black.” Again, addressing a hindrance to millions of Black people also lifts White borrowers.
Many policies assisting lower-income Americans (e.g., Medicaid, housing subsidies) disproportionately help Black people and other disadvantaged groups because they are most likely to have been affected by the existing wealth and income gaps that stem from institutional racism in all its forms. White people should not deplore them. Raising standards of living and opportunity for any group benefits the whole — another thing many Republicans are loath to admit.
If Biden’s action prompts governors to pardon people convicted of state marijuana crimes, and if the administration moves to reschedule cannabis on the federal list of controlled substances (eliminating its current parity with heroin, for example), something Biden says he is considering, this could be the most consequential advancement in racial justice in recent memory. While such policies will not undo past harms — jobs and homes lost, educations foreclosed, families torn apart — they would be a significant step toward a more just and fair America. | 2022-10-10T14:07:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden's marijuana pardons are an act of racial justice - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/biden-marijuana-pardon-racial-justice/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/biden-marijuana-pardon-racial-justice/ |
The scenarios are ... grim.
Trump dramatically changed the presidency. Here’s a list of the 20 most important norms he broke — and how Biden can restore them.
Can Antony Blinken Update Liberal Foreign Policy for a World Gone Mad?
Based on what these experts described, here’s a portrait of a democratic crackup in three phases.
Phase 1: Trump seizes control of the government …
… And installs super loyalists.
“Among the first things he would do, in the initial hours of his presidency, would be to fire [FBI Director] Christopher Wray and purge the FBI,” says Larry Diamond, senior fellow in global democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. Diamond’s research has focused on the plight of democracy in other countries, but lately he’s been thinking and writing about its ailments in America. Trump “would then set about trying to politicize the FBI, the intelligence agencies and as much of the government as possible,” Diamond continues. “He has complete authority to appoint the senior ranks of the National Security Council. So you could see [retired Lt. Gen.] Michael Flynn” — who was pardoned by Trump after pleading guilty to lying to the FBI — “as the national security adviser again, or somebody else who would not represent any of the prudence and restraints and efforts to rein in Trump’s more authoritarian and impulsive instincts.”
FBI directors serve 10-year terms across presidential terms to depoliticize the job. Wray, who was appointed by Trump but lost his favor, ascended to the post in 2017 after Trump fired his predecessor, James Comey, partly to undermine the bureau’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Comey’s firing caused an uproar and helped lead to the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to oversee the Russia probe. It’s doubtful firing Wray would cause much backlash from Trump’s allies in Congress and his base, given widespread Republican criticism of the search of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida home, to retrieve classified documents. But even if his allies did balk, Trump might not care; he wouldn’t have to face voters again. Trump made his own view of federal law enforcement clear at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., in September: “The FBI and the Justice Department have become vicious monsters controlled by radical-left scoundrels, lawyers and the media who tell them what to do.”
“I think certainly in the power ministries — State, CIA, Defense, Justice — he will look to put true loyalists in,” a senior Pentagon official in the Trump administration, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told me by email. “When I say loyalist, I mean somebody who places their loyalty to him above their oath of office.”
In his first term, Trump burned through Cabinet members at a high rate because they kept failing the loyalty test: Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper objected to using the military to put down racial justice protests. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson reportedly called Trump a “f---ing moron.”
Trump supporters chalk up the churn to a chaotic transition that failed to elevate the right talent to key positions. Now, a number of outside groups formed by supporters and former Trump administration officials are aiming to fix that problem by identifying and vetting a government-in-waiting that will be ready to serve Trump or a Trump-like president right away. “We just have to be more organized and more purposeful and more strategic, and ensure that we have the right team of people from the very top ... and then ensuring that we’ve got a structure in place that allows us to move forward our agenda,” says Brooke Rollins, director of the Domestic Policy Council during the Trump administration, now president and CEO of the America First Policy Institute.
If Trump installed loyalists at the FBI and Justice Department — picture as the next attorney general Jeffrey Clark, the Justice official who tried to get the department to help overturn the 2020 election — then any lingering federal investigations of Trump could be dropped. An endless series of investigations of Hunter Biden, Liz Cheney, Merrick Garland, Brad Raffensperger, Letitia James and other perceived enemies could begin. “This is a guy for whom political revenge is pretty front and center,” says Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard University and co-author of the book “How Democracies Die.” “He’s going to come in and use the state to go after his enemies. He has a long list of grievances against people. … He’s going to come in like an authoritarian autocrat on steroids.”
Loyalists would lead other departments as well. While in office, Trump futilely tweeted at the Federal Reserve, seeking a monetary policy that would benefit him politically, and compared Chairman Jerome Powell to an “enemy” like China’s Xi Jinping. Powell’s term is up in 2026. If Trump could get a loyalist through the Senate, interest rates could be manipulated to juice the economy ahead of elections, says Stanford political scientist Francis Fukuyama, author of “The End of History and the Last Man” and, most recently, “Liberalism and Its Discontents.” Meanwhile, a politicized Bureau of Labor Statistics could lead to monthly jobs reports suddenly becoming suspect. Or how about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention? Says Fukuyama: “Do you want people who believe in hydroxychloroquine making these decisions?”
He governs without Senate advice and consent.
Democrats hope to retain control of the Senate in the 2022 midterm elections. But even if they do, a Trump victory in 2024 presupposes that he will have strong coattails to sweep in down-ballot candidates — and a Trumpified Senate could reasonably be expected to approve his nominees for top jobs in his administration.
What if, however, a few Republicans balk at nominees who are just too beyond the pale? Or what if the Democrats hold a majority? Not a problem. By the end of his first term, Trump had mastered the art of governing without the advice and consent of the Senate. In part he was forced to do so by Democratic obstruction and by the terrible dysfunction of the appointments process — an already damaged corner of our democracy. But Trump, more than any other president in memory, relied on “acting” Cabinet secretaries and unconfirmed agency chiefs who wielded delegated authority. “I sort of like ‘acting,’ ” Trump told reporters in 2019. “It gives me more flexibility.”
It can also create chaos. In the last year of Trump’s term, the Government Accountability Office found that his acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and the acting DHS deputy were serving unlawfully, calling into question the legitimacy of their policy decisions. But there’s little to stop a president willing to skirt the rules and run out the clock on his term. It would take both houses of Congress to stand up to him, perhaps wielding the power of the purse as a cudgel, says Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group focused on effective government and smooth presidential transitions. And what if a gridlocked Congress failed to check an out-of-control chief executive? Stier told me: “If the president decides they’re going to install a secretary of defense that isn’t actually confirmed, and Congress isn’t going to try to respond with their powers and try to stop that, I think the reality is that there’s not much that you can do.”
He creates a MAGA civil service.
Installing loyalists at the top of government won’t be enough. As for populating the rank and file with those who echo the former president’s slogan of Make America Great Again, Trump tipped his hand near the end of his term, when he signed an executive order designed to strip as many as tens of thousands of federal employees of their civil service protections. The order created a new category of employees, dubbed Schedule F, targeting those whose jobs arguably include a degree of policymaking. Top officials would be able to fire them almost at will. President Biden rescinded the order shortly after he was inaugurated. If Trump were reelected, he’d reinstate the policy, Axios reported in July.
“They are using the language of good government to justify this, saying that this is the only way that you can discipline poorly performing workers,” Fukuyama says. “But obviously their real intention is to basically politicize the whole civil service. … Because Trump personalizes everything to such an extent, he’s going to be super looking out for revenge and therefore going after, for example, anybody that denied that he won the 2020 election. And this is going to go down to a really low, granular level of American government.”
The approach would restore a patronage system that hasn’t existed in the United States since reforms were enacted in the late 19th century, says Stier. “It is fundamentally this notion that the president should be able to decide, not on the basis of merit, but on the basis of political or personal interest, a larger segment of the workforce,” he says.
The country already has far more politically appointed civil servants — some 4,000 — than most, or all, liberal democracies, Stier explains. We need fewer consigned to that status, not more, he says. As an example of the potential impact, Stier notes that Trump’s Office of Management and Budget reportedly identified nearly 90 percent of its employees as fitting into the new category. The OMB is the nerve center of the government, making vital decisions on budgets and regulations for all the agencies, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Internal Revenue Service to the Defense Department to the intelligence community. Political actors from OMB could reach into all the scattered engine rooms of democracy; other corners of the government could undergo similar transformations. (A Democratic bill to block initiatives like Schedule F is currently before the Senate. But even if it passes, it could always be repealed.)
Rollins, of the America First Policy Institute, rejects the charge that a measure such as Schedule F would harm government. “It’s not really about us-versus-them, or ‘they’re the bad guys in the federal government and we’re the good guys going to put in some draconian new measures that allow us to come in and clear everybody out,’ ” she says. “But what I do believe we have to put in place is a system where those who agree with the agenda of more freedom and less government have people working in those positions that also align and agree with that. It’s okay if you don’t, but maybe you should not necessarily be part of a policymaking process.”
Fukuyama maintains it would mark the death knell of expertise in the U.S. government. “It’s ridiculous when you can’t run a modern government without expertise,” he says, “and they want to try to undo that system because of these right-wing ideas about the ‘deep state’ and the need to root it out.”
Phase 2: Trump deploys the military aggressively at home, while retreating abroad.
Once Trump has centralized power through cadres of vetted loyalists across government, what will he do with it? As The Post has previously chronicled, he’s already told us, in speeches over the past several months, some of his proposals if he decides to run: Execute drug dealers. Move homeless people to tent cities. Eliminate the Education Department. Restrict voting to one day using paper ballots. But there could be much more — including profound shifts in military and foreign policy.
He uses the military to promote his own political power.
After Trump led Secretary of Defense Esper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley and other officials across Lafayette Square for a photo op in June 2020 amid racial justice protests, Milley apologized to the public for participating in a staged politicized event, enraging Trump. In a second term, such cautionary voices will be fewer, says Peter Feaver, a professor of political science at Duke University and a leading expert on civilian-military relations.
“President Trump and his team of loyalists … are going to seek to magnify the president’s already extraordinary power in this area and remove the safeguards … sometimes mockingly called the ‘adults in the room.’ ” Feaver predicts. “Those safeguards don’t prevent the president from doing what he wants to do. They slow the system down from responding to the whim that the president expresses and make sure the president has heard all sides and is willing to own the consequences.”
Some of the ramifications would be small: During a Trump presidency, for instance, expect to see armored troop carriers, soldiers with flashing bayonets and enormous missile launchers stream down Pennsylvania Avenue on Veterans Day as Trump finally gets a military parade. He yearned for one during his first term but was talked out of it by advisers and military officials. It’s “the kind of thing that would probably happen,” Feaver told me.
More substantively, Trump — taking up items listed in an aide’s memo near the end of his term on why he should fire Esper — could restore Confederate symbols to military bases, reinstitute an effective ban on transgender people serving, and dismantle ongoing diversity and inclusion efforts that his Senate allies already lampoon as “woke.” “These would be a series of dumb, dumb moves done for political stunts and Twitter troll point-scoring rather than because this is a sincere effort to improve national security,” Feaver says.
A dramatic and potentially deadly breach with tradition could come if widespread street protests erupt against Trump and his policies, or if disputes over future elections turn violent. When the murder of George Floyd sparked demonstrations for racial justice in 2020, Trump wanted to call in federal troops. Esper and other national security officials opposed the move and Trump never gave the order. But in a second term with a team of loyalists, who would tell Trump no? “This time Trump’s got a hack Defense Department and moves to repress,” says Levitsky, the Harvard professor. “We know that repression of protest very often triggers the escalation of protests; it could get very ugly, very quickly, under Trump.”
In such a scenario, the response of other elements of the federal government and federal law enforcement could be unpredictable. “What that order does is that it fractures the American federal government, because you give an order like that to fire on American civilians and then maybe some agencies will pick it up and some won’t,” says Timothy Snyder, a historian at Yale University who writes about freedom and tyranny. “There’s a very real possibility that giving an order like that leads not to protest being put down, but it leads to some Americans in uniform firing on other Americans in uniform, with the people on both sides being convinced that they are doing the lawful and correct thing.”
American global leadership is finished — much to Putin’s delight.
As for the use of military power abroad, Trump mostly favored withdrawals during his term (though he did authorize a drone strike to kill a key Iranian commander in Iraq in 2020 and, according to the Associated Press, considered an invasion of Venezuela in 2017). Trump wanted to pull U.S. troops out of South Korea, Germany and Somalia, but critics warned that those moves would be devastating to global security and alliances. A second term might see them come to pass, Feaver says: “There’s a higher likelihood that the president would take risky action, but they would be risky actions of retreat, or abandonment of allies … rather than invasions of countries, although downstream they could result in that.”
“One might argue that’s the starting point,” the former senior Pentagon official told me. “Withdraw all U.S. forces and diplomats from Africa, withdraw all U.S. forces from Germany. … And depending on his views of Putin and the conflict in Ukraine, he might just stop the flow of arms, ammunition and material to Kyiv.”
If in 2025 Ukraine still depends on American aid for survival, halting it would hand Vladimir Putin the victory that he was denied in 2022. Recent work to restore America’s leadership and ability to coordinate allies against rogue actors would be undone. “You’ll see a Putin summit,” predicts Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who worked in the State Department for Republican and Democratic secretaries of state. NATO would be undermined if not abandoned. “Trump’s election,” says Wilentz, the Princeton historian, “means the end of the Western alliance.”
American foreign policy would not only be upended vis-a-vis Russia and NATO. “The overriding interest in the Gulf isn’t going to have anything to do with national security,” Miller says. “It’s going to have to do with the security of the Trump Organization.”
Beyond an issue-by-issue restoration of Trump’s isolationist version of an “America First” foreign policy, Miller foresees a ruinous blow to the country’s stature in the eyes of friends and foes. “The Europeans understand that the bloom is off the rose on our capacity to tell and lecture others about what freedom and democracy mean. But never before have they looked into a window where the basic concept of America, the stability of our political system … has been now replaced with one party essentially no longer being willing to respect norms and institutions that are essential to good governance. … Another four years of Donald Trump, and what that could do to faith in government, our institutions, our political stability and our values, would fundamentally open … a more permanent set of questions about America. What does this country stand for now? Is it so deeply divided and polarized that it can’t create a coherent image to the world?”
Worse, key allies may be loath to share top secrets. Hayden recalled being able to hop on the phone with spy chiefs around the world to supplement the intelligence-sharing that happens through other channels. But after seeing how Trump handled top secrets at Mar-a-Lago, “Do you want to say something secret to the Americans or not?” Hayden said. “If Trump is in power again, after four years, many of those people won’t ever trust us again.”
In spy work, as in so many professions essential to democracy, respect for facts and the objective search for truth are vital, Hayden added. He said Trump’s reelection would be another sign the country is “spiraling down” into a “post-truth” era.
Phase 3: Political violence and democratic collapse? It’s possible.
Trump did not cause the fissures slowly pulling the country apart. He’s a symptom — but he’s also an accelerant, one whose return to the White House could provoke the final breakdown. “Trump has been able to add to the narrative that if democracy doesn’t deliver what I want, then it must be a flaw in the democracy,” says Nicole Bibbins Sedaca, executive vice president of Freedom House, a nonpartisan democratic advocacy and research group, which has recorded a decade-long decline in political and civil rights in the United States that accelerated during Trump’s term, putting us on par with Romania and Panama.
Ideological, racial and ethnic tensions ramp up.
America is already gripped by an unprecedented level of what political scientists call “pernicious polarization” — stoked and exploited by Trump — and a second Trump term could make it dangerously worse, says Jennifer McCoy, a political science professor at Georgia State University who co-authored a study of the phenomenon for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. No other established democracy since at least 1950 has been so polarized for so long. In nearly half of the dozens of countries McCoy studied, the next step after pernicious polarization was either “electoral autocracy” — where votes are cast but don’t necessarily confer power — or outright “democratic collapse.” “It’s extremely worrisome; we’re in uncharted territory,” McCoy told me. “If Trump does come back, I think it would severely deepen the crisis that we face.”
Racism, including violent racism, is likely to increase. “The most immediate concern of Trump returning to the presidency is it would provide the greatest domestic terrorist threat of our time — violent white supremacist organizations — the ability to rebuild and spread and engage in even more violence and terror,” says Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University and author of “How to Be an Antiracist.” At the same time, “I don’t think the people who are opposed to what Trump would try to build would just go lightly into the night. The ideological collision, potentially violent collision, political collision would just be unlike anything we’ve seen since the Reconstruction era.”
Trump would almost certainly return to the issue that first built his following in the GOP and still animates the party: harsh measures to counter illegal immigration. “America will not be known as the place of the Statue of Liberty but rather as the place where there’s a big wall at the border,” says Vanessa Cárdenas, deputy director of America’s Voice, an immigrant advocacy group. She predicts he’ll find another domestic use for the military: deployment to the border with Mexico. Dehumanizing rhetoric and conspiracy theories about White people losing their status will lead to more mass shootings targeting immigrants, like the one in El Paso in 2019, she adds. “He will just continue to create these really hard moments, terrifying moments, for communities.”
The bonds that bind the Union loosen.
How Trump gets reelected matters. Is it a close but legitimate victory where he loses the popular vote but takes the electoral college, as he did in 2016? Or do the insurrectionist schemes that failed in 2020 — getting state officials to block certification and substitute slates of electors — work in 2024? Perhaps by 2024 such shenanigans will have been made legal in certain swing states. Ultimately, does the GOP-appointed Supreme Court majority or the gerrymandered House of Representatives pick the winner?
The intensity and immediacy of the backlash would vary depending on those circumstances, but serious damage to the democracy may be inevitable either way if Trump is on the ballot, says David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research. “We have a significant percentage of the American electorate right now who have been lied to about the integrity of our elections, who believe that elections … are rigged unless their candidate wins,” he told me. “Yet it’s nowhere close to 50 percent of America overall. But if Trump were to win a narrow victory again, I could see [election denial] ideas … infecting a larger percentage of the electorate. And if a large segment of a democracy’s electorate loses confidence in elections, that democracy probably is unsustainable.”
Differences between states could deepen. “You’d be looking at states — Democratic states — which would be taking over Republican arguments about states’ rights and applying them in a different way to try to limit the reach of the federal government,” says Snyder, the Yale historian. “And then you’d also be seeing something which I think has already started to happen as a result of the overturning of Roe v. Wade: You’re going to see people moving. It might be a peaceful process at first. But I think you’re going to see populations sorting themselves out according to where people feel safe and at home, which will mean red states becoming more red and blue states becoming more blue. And that makes some kind of secession or breakup scenario in the medium term more likely.”
The message of prophets of democratic doom can sound over-the-top, but to dismiss it, experts say, would be naive.
Becker, who with journalist Major Garrett recently published “The Big Truth: Upholding Democracy in the Age of the Big Lie,” says he can foresee increasingly nightmarish scenarios of democratic dominoes falling in the wake of a Trump reelection. “It would be very hard for him to keep the Union together as it is now,” Becker says. That doesn’t necessarily mean civil war; short of armed conflict, there are things “that could weaken the bonds between the states.” An example we’re already seeing is the governors of Texas and Florida sending migrants to D.C. and Massachusetts, based on “the idea that states are competitors rather than collaborators and partners,” Becker says. Actions like that to score points against blue states on any number of issues will multiply, and blue states will retaliate.
“If Trump won reelection in 2024, how long until California says, ‘Why are we sending [more in taxes] for every federal dollar we’re getting back?’ ” Becker says. “ ‘Why aren’t we requiring the federal government to pay for its use of the naval bases in San Diego and Camp Pendleton and other places?’ … There are a lot of people who would say, ‘Oh, that would never happen.’ [But] what we’ve seen in the last two years we thought would never happen.”
“What if the ties that bind us have become so weak that even that can’t result in the enforcement of federal court rulings?” Becker continues. “A democracy that must by definition rely upon the rule of law … is built upon an agreement that these paper or parchment documents have meaning and we will abide by them. … If someone like Trump … comes into office with a clear contempt for the rule of law, which I think time and again he has demonstrated, at what point does the rule of law evaporate? At what point does that agreement evaporate? At what point do the people who oppose him say, ‘Okay, are we going to fight him with one arm tied behind our back, even though he won’t do that?’ ”
That’s when the potential for violent conflict is real. For those studying the implications of these trends, “there’s no scenario that worries us more than that the wheels just come off completely from the restraints against violence in the United States,” says Diamond, of Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute. “My biggest concern is what citizens would do to citizens, and what citizens might do to legitimately constituted government authority.”
Some of the preconditions for civil war — a weakening democracy with hindrances to popular participation and divisions along identity lines — are brewing in the United States, says Barbara Walter, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego and the author of “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them.” Those dynamics could intensify with Trump or a similar figure in the White House, she says. It wouldn’t be an 1860s-style civil war of states vs. states; if it did come to pass, she says, “the type of war we’re going to see is an insurgency. … [Participants] are going to fight a type of guerrilla war, a siege of terror that’s going to be targeted very specifically at certain individuals and certain groups of people, all civilians.”
‘They are preparing for war’: An expert on civil wars discusses where political extremists are taking this country
The election of Trump would not necessarily cause the kinds of people who stormed the Capitol to stand down, just because their goal of elevating their leader has been achieved four years later. “There’s a scenario by which [their aggression] accelerates because they’ve won and they’re emboldened and they have a president who, with a wink and a nod, encourages them not to allow ‘cheating’ and disloyalty at lower levels of authority,” Diamond says. The already commonplace threats and intimidation of public officials, civic volunteers and civil servants — election workers, teachers, health-care workers, librarians — could spread and strengthen, egged on by Trump, driving more from their jobs to be replaced by MAGA loyalists.
“This is not going to be something that’s just done by one side; that’s why the risk of political violence is so severe,” Becker says. “Oftentimes we talk about the passage of [anti-democratic] laws and the taking of power as if that’s the finish line. It’s just the starting line of a really violent and vicious race.”
Snyder — whose books include “On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century” and “The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America” — elaborates on what could ensue: “I think there’s a very important miscalculation going on, on the right, which is that ‘if anyone makes a ruckus, it’s going to be us,’ ” he says. “Folks on the right think that chaos is a button that they push. … Another assumption that the right makes which is erroneous is that they’re the only ones who have guns. … They may be carrying more weapons than the other side, but there are so many weapons in the United States, and there are plenty of people who are not on the right who have weapons, and there could be many more very quickly.”
The spiral of violence, response and counter-response would create the kind of disorder that Trump — no longer constrained by his secretary of defense and attorney general — could use to justify invoking the Insurrection Act. Then federal troops would flood the streets of American cities — and this time, not for a parade.
A spokesman for Trump did not return my emails seeking the former president’s reaction to claims that his reelection could wreck democracy. A few days after Biden’s recent democracy speech in Philadelphia — in which the current president said, “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic” — Trump responded at a rally: “As you know, this week, Joe Biden came to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to give the most vicious, hateful and divisive speech ever delivered by an American president, vilifying 75 million citizens … as threats to democracy and as enemies of the state. … He’s an enemy of the state, you want to know the truth. … We are the ones trying to save our democracy.”
After four more years of nihilistic energy like that, the experience of being American could well have been transformed into something unrecognizable. “If Trump wins, I don’t imagine some kind of normal inauguration in ’29,” Snyder says. “If we want a normal inauguration in ’29, we need one in ’25 which involves somebody else.” | 2022-10-10T14:16:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Could America Look Like If Trump Returns? Experts Game It Out For Us. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/10/country-after-second-trump-term/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/10/country-after-second-trump-term/ |
For a 2½-day stretch, during the summer of 1984, I wanted to be White. I was watching the Olympics, and in the events I’d seen — swimming and gymnastics, specifically — most of the athletes were White, so 5-year-old me thought you had to be that to compete.
That feeling faded as quickly as it came, but it was replaced in 1987, when I wanted shoulders and a neck like LL Cool J had in the “I’m Bad” video. And then in 1988, when I wanted to be light-skinned like Al B. Sure and Christopher Williams because that’s who all the girls I liked in fifth grade liked. And then in 1989, when I wanted a juicy fade with a half-dozen wraparound parts like MC Hammer. And then in 1991, when I wanted to be as tall as my classmate Ron.
I would also, through the years, desire leaping ability like Harold Miner (1992); blemishless skin like my homie Omar (1993);, a small head like Usher (1994); perfect waves like Nas (1995); gangly, effortless swag like Method Man (1996); the ability to easily glide off one foot like Allen Iverson (1997); giant hands like Michael Jordan (1997 to present); perfect white teeth like Kevin Garnett to contrast with my skin (1995 to present); and the sort of high-cheek beard that Black Thought from the Roots always has (2006 to present).
When thinking about my body, and the things I’ve wished, at some point in my life, were physically different about it, it’s harder to name the things I’ve always been fine with. (My arms and my legs. My ears too, I guess.) I grew out of most of those desires to change, but they were real. And if I could’ve taken a pill to fix what I thought needed fixing, there would have been no hesitation. No second-guessing.
I try to be careful not to presume unanimity with something as arbitrary as human behavior. But I will make a leap here and say that everyone reading this, with no exceptions, has wished to change something about their natural bodies at some point. Sometimes it’s innocuous and only noticeable to you, like wanting less hair on a forearm. And sometimes it’s a 45-year-old man who wishes to be three inches taller, so he flies to Las Vegas and pays a doctor $75,000 to break his femur and insert titanium screws into it.
When I first read Chris Gayomali’s recent piece in GQ magazine on leg-lengthening surgery, my immediate visceral reaction, even before curiosity, was disgust. It reminded me of something from one of those demonic horror films from the ’70s and ’80s, like “Phantasm” or “Hellraiser,” that forcibly congealed the surreal with the grotesque. And when Gayomali, whom I’ve known since he was my editor at GQ, described the actual procedure, I had to stop reading.
“With the aid of X-rays and a guide wire, [Dr. D] begins to drill a hole down the center of the femur. The sound of hot spinning metal pulpifying bone isn’t unlike the sound of installing drywall anchors. Actually severing the femur takes only a few seconds.”
But then I asked myself why? It’s not why would a man do such a thing to himself. That’s obvious. The desire to be attractive, affirmed and desirable is inescapable. And sometimes it’s not as easy as just telling someone to “be more confident” and “love yourself.” The world is a different place for shorter men than it is for taller men. As Gayomali wrote, “short guys aren’t so much discriminated against as they are precluded from stuff.” That includes the romantic (a 2013 study found that women were taller than their male partners in just 7.5 percent of cases) and the financial (short guys make less money than their taller peers and are less likely to climb the corporate ladder).
The circular byway of what constitutes ‘appropriate’ maleness isn’t just a roundabout. It’s a chain saw, with jagged edges at each end.
No, I was curious why it bothered me. The desire to change, either a little something, or a big something, is universal. So why did it feel wrong to me when a man spent the money — and endured the excruciating pain (and risk) — necessary to get it done? And yes, it matters that these are men, because I have no such feelings about women who get cosmetic surgery.
I think the answer is that the same series of societal constructs that make short men feel, to quote Gayomali (who is 5-foot-6 himself), like a “physically incomplete version of who we were supposed to be” also urge men to be silent about our physical insecurities. If they exist, we better just swallow it, because saying it is less manly too.
If this doesn’t make sense to you, good. That just means you’re sane. It’s not supposed to make any sense. The circular byway of what constitutes “appropriate” maleness isn’t just a roundabout. It’s a chain saw, with jagged edges at each end. Because of it, things like leg-lengthening operations will continue to exist. And I’ll try to reserve my judgment for the callous world that created that desire. | 2022-10-10T14:16:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Damon Young: Finding empathy for men who get leg-lengthening surgery - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/10/damon-young-defense-leg-lengthening/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/10/damon-young-defense-leg-lengthening/ |
Amid a historic drought and record shortages, Coalinga searches for extra water to make it through the year
Coalinga, Calif., may run out of water later this year, forcing it to pay market price for more. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
COALINGA, Calif. — The residents of this sun-scorched city feel California’s endless drought when the dust lifts off the brown hills and flings grit into their living rooms. They see it when they drive past almond trees being ripped from the ground for lack of water and the new blinking sign at the corner of Elm and Cherry warning: “No watering front yard lawns.”
The fire chief noticed it when he tested hydrants in August — a rare occurrence as Coalinga desperately seeks to conserve water — and the first one shot out a foot-long block of compacted dirt. The second one ejected a can of Axe body spray.
But what lies ahead might be far worse for the 17,000 residents living amid the oil derricks and cattle farms on the western edge of the state’s Central Valley. Coalinga has only one source of water — a shrinking allotment from an aqueduct managed by the federal government — and officials are projecting the city will use up that amount before the end of the year.
That was the grim scenario facing Mayor Ron Ramsey when he rapped his knuckles on the table and cursed at a City Council meeting in early August. Everyone but Ramsey had just voted to ban watering front yards and to ramp up penalties on overuse — measures they conceded would not save nearly what was needed. But it was more than Ramsey could stomach.
“It’s too much. Too fast,” Ramsey told the room. On top of that, he said, it wasn’t fair.
“Go to the state capitol and they got green grass, don’t they?” he said. “They can do it, but why can’t we?”
Coalinga, named for its history as a coal mining town, is a small Republican outpost in liberal California. The city had already defied state leadership in 2020, passing a resolution that declared all businesses essential to avoid mandatory pandemic closures. When it was time for the state to distribute covid-19 relief funds to municipalities, Coalinga didn’t get any.
“How do you not give farmers water when they feed everybody unless you’re trying to put them out of business?” asked Scott Netherton, owner of Coalinga’s lone movie theater and executive director of its chamber of commerce.
“It feels like we’re being singled out, small towns,” he said. “It’s like they’re trying to force them out to where you’ve got to move into the bigger cities.”
Coalinga’s brackish groundwater has never been a reliable option. Before a canal was completed in the early 1970s that connected Coalinga to a major aqueduct, the city relied on water delivered by train. After a 1983 earthquake that destroyed some 300 homes in town and spread concerns about water contamination, residents resorted to donations; Anheuser-Busch sent drinking water to Coalinga in beer cans and bottles.
“We’ve never been this bad where they said we’re going to run out of water,” Mayor Ramsey said.
The most severe drought in the American West since the 9th century is now in its 23rd year. All across the region, communities are confronting shortages worse than they have ever known. The biggest reservoirs have fallen to record lows. Whole neighborhoods have lost their water supply as wells have gone dry. States along the dwindling Colorado River are negotiating water cuts that could bring dramatic disruptions to some of the country’s most important agricultural belts.
The hotter and drier climate has forced California and other states to reckon with a future in which they will have access to far less water, even as populations continue to grow. In August, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) presented a 19-page plan to deal with the expected loss of 10 percent of the state’s water supply by 2040.
“The hots are getting a lot hotter. The dries are getting a lot drier,” Newsom told reporters at the time. “We have to adapt to that new reality, and we have to change our approach.”
In worsening drought, Southern California water restrictions take effect
Coalinga’s water comes from the San Luis Reservoir, about 90 miles to the north, and is delivered along a portion of the California Aqueduct that was built in the 1960s and helped fuel the region’s agricultural growth. This is part of the Central Valley Project, a network of dams, reservoirs and canals now severely hobbled by drought.
Farmers received no allocation from that network this year; municipalities and industrial users were limited to what the Bureau of Reclamation calculates as their “public health and safety” needs — a first in the history of the Central Valley Project, which dates to the 1930s.
For Coalinga, that meant 1,920 acre-feet of water — a quarter of its historic allotment and just over half of what it expected to consume this year. Federal officials raised that in April to 2,500 acre-feet — a level that still fell more than 1,000 acre-feet short of what Coalinga needed. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, what it would take to cover an acre of land with one foot of water.
Over the summer, city officials calculated the city’s supply would run out by mid-September.
“You don’t have the right to take that water,” was the message Sean Brewer, Coalinga’s assistant city manager, said he got from Reclamation officials.
The bureau said in a statement that it had been working closely with Coalinga on its “unique water supply circumstances and challenges.” Brewer agreed that the bureau has been “extremely helpful” even as its “hands are tied.” Federal officials gave him names of vendors who might sell the city the extra water it needed. But as Brewer worked his way down the list of irrigation districts, farmers and other private interests, the news wasn’t good.
“Nobody has water to sell right now,” he said.
“We just don’t have $2.5 million to buy water,” City Council member Adam Adkisson said in an interview, calling the water prices “criminal.”
“In a natural disaster, you can’t increase the cost of bottled water 2,000 percent; you’d go to jail for that,” he said. “But somehow these people can increase it 2,000 percent and everything’s just fine.”
Hurtado talked to Adkisson in August as he was searching for a solution for Coalinga and found him “in panic mode.”
“The price of water, the cost of water, is increasing, but it’s not just going to be to the Central Valley; it’s going to be statewide,” Hurtado said. “We’re in a crisis situation in a matter of weeks, I think.”
‘What do you do when the water runs out?’
In the High Times marijuana store — a burgeoning industry for Coalinga, which has two prominent dispensaries downtown and a pot farm run out of a defunct prison owned by Bob Marley’s son Damian — manager Luis Zamora is just starting to register a new level of concern about the water crisis.
“Just in the last probably two days, I’ve had people asking me, like, what do you do when the water runs out?”
“Exactly. What do you do?”
Coalinga has tried to get tough on water waste. The city has code enforcers and even police officers patrolling for water violations. The city put a moratorium on building swimming pools, raised water rates several times and last year began imposing “drought fees” for overuse. But the city soon voted to refund the $277,000 it had raised in fees because water use wasn’t declining enough.
“It was supposed to be a deterrent,” said Netherton, the chamber of commerce’s executive director. “It wasn’t deterring anybody.”
Zamora has been slowly stockpiling five-gallon water bottles at home — he’s up to nine of them. He has stopped watering his lawn and watched as his neighbors’ yards have also turned brown. But others’ lawns in town are still green, and residents are keenly aware who is still watering.
Facing a new climate reality, Southern California lawns could wither
“They encourage people to kind of rat each other out, out here,” Zamora said. “So if you water, people will be taking pictures of you.”
“I’m watching your yard,” Mary Jones, a Coalinga resident, told Mayor Ramsey at an Aug. 18 City Council meeting.
“Hey, you know why mine’s green?” he asked Jones. “I painted it.”
“I would paint mine, too, but it’s dirt,” she responded. “I can’t fool anyone with dirt.”
Coalinga’s two biggest water users sit next to each other on a lonely two-lane road several miles outside of town. The Pleasant Valley State Prison and the Department of State Hospitals-Coalinga, a psychiatric hospital for sexually violent predators, together consume about 20 percent of the city’s water allocation. And both institutions have told the city they can’t conserve more water than they already do.
“Go look at our coastal redwoods in our medians; they’re all dead. The ones at the school? Dead,” said Adkisson, the council member. “I think there’s opportunities for them to conserve when it comes to landscaping.”
The hospital has operated under a drought plan for the past eight years. The facility has removed most grass from “non-patient care areas,” has removed shrubs and plants, has resorted to controlled shower times, closely monitors leaks and “continues to make every effort” to use water efficiently, according to Ralph Montano, a spokesman for the Department of State Hospitals.
“Unfortunately, [the hospital’s] coastal redwoods are brown and dying from lack of water also,” Montano said in a statement.
City officials argued that the burden of saving water on behalf of the two state-run institutions was unfairly being borne by residents. In August, with Coalinga just weeks from running out of water, the Bureau of Reclamation responded by increasing the city’s allotment by 531 acre-feet “to assist with meeting public health and safety needs,” the bureau said in a statement.
“You don’t want to say that they’ll never turn the water off. I don’t see how they could,” Mayor Ramsey said. “I hate to say this, but with the government we have right now, you never know.” | 2022-10-10T14:38:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Drought-stricken Coalinga, Calif., may soon run out of water - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/10/drought-california-water-levels/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/10/drought-california-water-levels/ |
Important to Tuberville’s comments on race: He represents Alabama
Former Auburn University football coach and Alabama Republican Senatorial candidate Tommy Tuberville during a Mardi Gras parade Feb. 22, 2020, in Dothan, Ala. (Elijah Nouvelage for The Washington Post)
The Auburn University Tigers went 13-and-0 in 2004, one of the best seasons in the school’s history. But they were boxed out of the championship game after ending the season ranked third, a decision that coach Tommy Tuberville decried loudly and often. Even a decade later, after he’d moved on to the University of Cincinnati, Tuberville expressed his frustration at the season’s outcome.
But Tuberville himself came out of the season well-positioned. He was named coach of the year and secured a new seven-year contract paying him $2 million a year in salary and endorsements. Leading one of Alabama’s leading programs to national glory turned Tuberville into something of a legend in the state.
He did not repeat that success in future years at Auburn, though. Of course, college football, unlike the NFL, depends on a rotating pool of players who are making their way through college. And that 2004 team had a number of exceptional players: four who were drafted into the NFL in the first round and three others who would eventually go on to play in the NFL’s Pro Bowl.
Relevant to the moment: All seven of those players, the ones that helped Tuberville cement his legacy, were Black.
Tuberville was elected to the Senate from Alabama in 2020, easily ousting Democratic incumbent Doug Jones. He earned the endorsement of Donald Trump and soon established himself as staunchly loyal to the president. Even before he was seated in the Senate, he announced his intention to object to the results of the 2020 presidential contest.
So, on Saturday, Tuberville was offered a speaking slot at Trump’s rally for Republican candidates in Nevada. And in that speech he falsely claimed that Democrats actually support criminal activity.
“Some people say, well, they’re soft on crime. No, they’re not soft on crime. They’re pro-crime. They want crime,” Tuberville falsely claimed, to applause. “They want crime because they want to take over what you got. They want to control what you have. They want reparation because they think the people that do the crime are owed that.”
“Reparation,” of course, has a specific meaning in the context of American politics: the idea that providing monetary or other benefits to Black Americans might help dismantle the long-term effects of centuries of enslavement of Black people. In other words, Tuberville is clearly suggesting that “the people that do the crime” are Black, in addition to suggesting that the entirety of the Democratic Party thinks that violence and robbery are acceptable proxies for addressing systemic racial gulfs.
Casting Democrats in the most toxic, negative light possible is, of course, standard fare for right-wing politicians in particular. But Tuberville let that other idea slip: that crime is a function of Black Americans. It’s a grotesque, racist proposition from anyone. That’s certainly more true of a sitting U.S. senator. And more still from one whose celebrity was dependent on the unpaid work of college athletes, many of whom were Black.
But it’s also important coming from a senator from Alabama. This is one of the leading government officials in the state, someone who has no lengthy track record in state politics but someone who nonetheless represents the state in a literal sense on the national stage. And his position is that Black people “do the crime.”
Alabama was in the news recently for another reason. The state is challenging a district court’s ruling that the way it drew congressional boundaries in the wake of the 2020 Census violated the Voting Rights Act. That challenge came before the Supreme Court in the case Merrill v. Milligan, with justices hearing oral arguments last week. The state, awarded seven seats in the House, drew district lines that created one district in which half the population was Black — a tactic called “packing.” With so many Black voters in one district, there are fewer in the other six, decreasing the likelihood that those districts might elect Democrats (given how heavily Democratic Black voters are) and therefore decreasing the likelihood that another Black representative might win election. In a state that’s about a quarter Black.
The Voting Rights Act exists because of systemic efforts, mostly in Southern states like Alabama, to exclude Black voters from participating in electoral politics in the decades before the Civil Rights movement. In an amicus brief filed by a group of Alabama-based historians, the lingering effects of both enslavement and historic limits on political power are thoroughly documented. But state leaders and legislators would rather send six Republicans to Washington, and if the Voting Rights Act (hobbled in 2013 on the dubious grounds that it was no longer needed) stands in the way, so be it.
Meanwhile, state prisoners in Alabama recently launched a work stoppage, protesting conditions in the facilities. The Department of Justice filed suit against the state in December 2020 alleging that the state “violated and is continuing to violate the Constitution because its prisons are riddled with prisoner-on-prisoner and guard-on-prisoner violence.”
Speaking to the New Yorker, journalist Beth Shelburne explained that “the problems of overcrowding, understaffing, violence, and corruption are fundamental to our carceral system, and exist in every jail and prison across the United States, but in Alabama they’re all on steroids.”
This disproportionately affects Black people because Blacks are overrepresented in the state prison population (as they are in most states). This Shelburne attributes to overrepresentation of “people who have been most impacted by the lack of social services, poor education, and widespread poverty tend to be those whom politicians don’t care about” — often meaning, in Alabama, Black people. (See the aforementioned amicus brief.)
Enter the state’s junior senator. Speaking at a rally hosted by the former president, he suggested that crime is not only perpetrated by Blacks but that Democrats encourage the idea so that Black people can “take over what you got” — framing the idea not Only in grotesque racial and political terms but also as a specific threat to his almost exclusively White audience.
The point of the recent focus on race in the political conversation by Black activists has been to call attention to ways in which racism manifests not as people wearing blackface — as Alabama’s governor did in college — but as embedded, structural biases against Black Americans. Things like disproportionate imprisonment or uneven representation.
But sometimes racial hostility also manifests as a U.S. senator blaming Black people for crime.
On our radar: Sens. Scott, Cotton to rally in Ga. for embattled Herschel Walker
1:38 PMOn our radar: Probe by special counsel John Durham unlikely to live up to Trump’s billing | 2022-10-10T15:26:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Important to Tuberville's comments on race and crime: He represents Alabama - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/tuberville-race-trump-rally-alabama-football/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/tuberville-race-trump-rally-alabama-football/ |
Man charged in Friday fatal stabbing in Southeast D.C.
Julian Ruffin, 31, was charged with second-degree murder while armed in the killing of Alphonso Lee.
Police on Saturday arrested a man in the Oct. 7 killing of Alphonso Lee in Southeast Washington.
Julian Ruffin, a 31-year-old from Southeast Washington, is facing charges of second-degree murder while armed.
The incident occurred in the 1500 block of Butler Street SE before 7:15 p.m. Friday. Ruffin told police that the incident started when he saw several people, including Lee, near his car and asked them not to sit or lean on it, according to charging documents. Ruffin said he got “into it” with Lee in a verbal exchange but then tried walking back toward his apartment to avoid further escalation.
Ruffin said Lee followed him to the apartment and “tried to swing on me and we got into an altercation,” according to the charging documents. Ruffin, who told police he has been stabbed and shot at in the past, said he got out his knife to defend himself in case Lee “had something” that could hurt him.
“I don’t know if he got a gun on him or whatever,” he told police, according to the charging documents. “I’m just trying to be alive for my kids.”
Police found Lee, 38, of no fixed address, dead with multiple stab wounds.
Ruffin’s attorney could not be immediately reached. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for Oct. 18. | 2022-10-10T16:05:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man charged in Friday fatal stabbing in Southeast D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/homicide-october-arrest-southeast/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/homicide-october-arrest-southeast/ |
Protesters who shut down Beltway arrested after demanding Biden declare climate emergency
Protesters block the inner loop of the Beltway on Monday morning in Montgomery County. (Maryland Department of Transportation)
Protesters who shut down the Beltway’s inner loop were arrested Monday near the U.S. 29/Colesville Road interchange after demanding that President Biden declare a climate emergency.
Climate advocates wearing yellow vests sat and stood in the highway, blocking all inner loop lanes around 10:30 a.m. Monday, according to live traffic footage. By about 11:20 a.m., all lanes had reopened, according to the Metropolitan Area Transportation Operation Coordination Program. Seven people were arrested at the scene and taken to the Montgomery County Detention Center for processing, said Ron Snyder, a Maryland State Police spokesman.
It was one of several demonstrations by members of the climate advocacy group Declare Emergency, whose protesters often block traffic in the region, resulting in arrests. On Friday, members of the group briefly shut down southbound Interstate 395, and a D.C. police spokesman said three people were arrested.
Thirteen climate advocates with Declare Emergency were also sentenced to four days in jail on Sept. 30 after being arrested July Fourth for blocking all lanes and both shoulders of the Beltway’s inner loop at the U.S. 29/Colesville Road exit. They were released Oct. 3, said Mark Goldstone, an attorney for the protesters.
Those activists ranged in age from 27 to 73 and came from cities as far as Vancouver, Wash., and as close as the District, according to online court records. | 2022-10-10T16:05:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Protesters demanding Biden declare climate emergency shut down Beltway - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/10/beltway-traffic-climate-protest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/10/beltway-traffic-climate-protest/ |
Nikki Finke, a veteran reporter who became one of Hollywood’s top journalists as founder of the entertainment trade website Deadline, and whose sharp-tongued tenacity made her the most feared columnist in show business, died Oct. 9 in Boca Raton, Fla. She was 68.
Her death was confirmed by Deadline, which said she had “a prolonged illness” but did not cite a specific cause.
A famously reclusive blogger, Ms. Finke began writing LA Weekly’s “Deadline Hollywood” column in 2002 and made it essential reading for gossip and trade news. Four years later, she launched Deadline Hollywood Daily as a website.
Blogging at Deadline.com, Ms. Finke made a pugnacious media empire of scoops and gossip, renowned for her “live-snarking” award shows and story updates that blared “TOLDJA!” when one of her earlier exclusives proved accurate.
Ms. Finke’s sharp-elbow style earned her plenty of enemies in Hollywood. But the Long Island native’s regular drumbeat of exclusives proved her considerable influence with executives, agents and publicists. In 2010, Forbes listed her among “the world’s most powerful women.”
Ms. Finke was unapologetic, declining to soften her approach for the most glamorous stars or the most powerful studio executives. “I mean, they play rough,” she told the New York Times in 2015. “I have to play rough, too.”
She did it all largely from the confines of her apartment in west Los Angeles, not schmoozing at red-carpet premieres or cocktail parties. But from her reclusive remove, she could ruthlessly skewer executives whose decision-making she disapproved of. Using an expletive, she once called Jeff Zucker, then-president of NBC Universal, “one of the most [obsequious] incompetents to run an entertainment company.”
“I can’t help it!” she told the New Yorker in 2009. “It’s like meanness pours out of my fingers!”
In 2009, Deadline Hollywood was purchased by Jay Penske, whose company, Penske Media Corp., would later also acquire Variety and the Hollywood Reporter. Ms. Finke often quarreled with Penske, particularly after his purchase of the Deadline rivals. She left the site in 2013 after months of public acrimony, but remained under contract as a consultant. “He tried to buy my silence,” Ms. Finke wrote at the time. “No sale.”
After her departure, Ms. Finke played with various projects but never returned to entertainment journalism. Her deal with Penske reportedly prohibited her to report on Hollywood for 10 years, though she at one time threatened to go solo again with NikkiFinke.com. Instead, she debuted HollywoodDementia.com, with fictional showbiz tales instead of real ones.
Ms. Finke grew up in Sands Point, N.Y., on the North Shore of Long Island. Her father founded a lamp company in New Jersey, according to a New York Times report. Survivors include a sister.
After graduating from Wellesley College, Ms. Finke married Jeffrey Greenberg and launched a career in journalism. The marriage ended in divorce, and she went on to work as a reporter for the Associated Press, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Post and the New York Observer. She also inspired a 2011 HBO pilot that starred Diane Keaton as a hermetlike reporter named Tilda Watski.
“Trust me, I never set out for [Deadline] or me to be as controversial as we became,” she wrote in a 2016 article marking the publication’s 10th anniversary. “Instead, I was following the advice of my mentor, the legendary editor Peter Kaplan, who told me repeatedly: 1. You’re best when angry; 2. Write what you really know; and 3. Tell the truth about Hollywood.” | 2022-10-10T16:14:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nikki Finke, sharp-tongued Hollywood columnist, dies at 68 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/10/deadline-founder-nikki-finke-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/10/deadline-founder-nikki-finke-dead/ |
Scenes of the Hampstead Heath bathing ponds in North London during a historic heat wave on July 19. (James Forde for The Washington Post)
LONDON – England’s scorching summer that saw temperatures reach record-breaking highs also saw the highest recorded excess deaths among the elderly.
England recorded 2,803 excess deaths for those aged 65 and over, according to a recent analysis by the U.K. Health Security Agency (UKHSA) and the Office for National Statistics. The agencies said that it was the highest figure of excess deaths among the elderly since they started recording these figures in 2004. “These figures demonstrate the possible impact that hot weather can have on the elderly and how quickly such temperatures can lead to adverse health effects in at-risk groups,” the groups said in a statement.
On July 19, temperatures soared above 104 degrees Fahrenheit, or 40C, the hottest day ever recorded in Britain. Train tracks buckled, several fires broke out across greater London, and in some areas officials issued their first ever “level 4 heat health alerts.” Scientists said that the heatwave had been made at least 10 times more likely because of human-cased climate change.
Keep cool and carry on? Britons struggle through hottest day on record.
It can take some time to understand the wider impact of those temperatures, including on mortality figures, in part because deaths may not be registered immediately.
The agencies looked at the period between June and August, which saw several periods of punishing heat, with some heat waves occurring much earlier in the summer than usual. The UKHSA used data from England only — not Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the thee other nations of Britain, where health is a devolved issue.
“These estimates show clearly that high temperatures can lead to premature death for those who are vulnerable,” Isabel Oliver, chief scientific officer at UKHSA, said in a statement. “Higher excess deaths occurred during the hottest days this year and a warming climate means we must adapt to living safely with hotter summers in the future.”
Climate scientists say climate change is making periods of intense heatwaves more frequent and that more needs to be done to prepare for extreme heat and the increased risk for those most vulnerable.
Human-caused climate change made U.K. heat wave 10 times more likely, study says
The term “excess deaths” is used to refer to the number of deaths that exceed what is normally expected for that time of year.
The agencies said that between July 17 and 20, there was an estimated 1,012 excess deaths in those aged over 65. They said the period with the highest overall excess mortality in the elderly was from Aug. 8 to 17, which saw estimated 1,458 excess deaths in those over the age of 65.
Sarah Caul, head of mortality analysis at the Office for National Statistics, explained in a summer blog post that the most common causes of death are conditions such as respiratory failure, heart disease and Alzheimer’s. “It is likely that some of these deaths are hastened by circumstances associated with extreme heat,” she wrote.
Other European countries have similarly connected thousands of excess deaths over the summer to the intense heat.
France’s national statistics institute reported last month that more than 11,000 more people died between June 1 and August summer compared to the same period before the pandemic, an increase “likely to be explained by the heat wave in mid-July, after an initial heat wave episode as early as mid-June.”
Excluding covid deaths, German officials reported more than 3,000 excess deaths in the week of July 18, while Spain recorded more than 2,700 excess deaths in the week of July 11 and nearly 2,500 in the following week. | 2022-10-10T16:40:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.K. heat waves linked to record excess deaths among elderly in England - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/uk-heat-wave-deaths/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/uk-heat-wave-deaths/ |
Rep. Lee Zeldin has sought to make fighting crime a central issue in his campaign
Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) participates in a Republican gubernatorial debate at the studios of CBS2 TV on June 13, 2022, in New York. (Bebeto Matthews/AP)
Two teenagers were shot Sunday outside the Long Island home of Rep. Lee Zeldin (R), who has sought to make fighting crime a central issue in his long-shot campaign for New York governor against the Democratic incumbent, Gov. Kathy Hochul.
The teenagers were walking down the street when a person in a passing vehicle fired multiple shots at them, the Suffolk County Police Department said in a statement. The teens “were struck and attempted to hide in the yard,” the police said. A third teenager who had been walking with them fled, according to the statement.
The two victims, both 17, were being treated for injuries that were not life-threatening, police said. The police did not state a cause for the shooting but said investigators “do not believe there is any connection” to Zeldin’s work or campaign. As of Monday afternoon, no arrests had been made, police said.
Zeldin said his two 16-year-old daughters were home when the shooting began. They heard the gunshots, ran upstairs and “locked themselves in the bathroom,” he wrote in statement Sunday afternoon. One daughter called 911 and the other called Zeldin and his wife, who were driving home from a parade in the Bronx, he said.
On Sunday evening, Zeldin told reporters, “I’m standing in front of crime scene tape in front of my own house,” and, “You can’t get me more outraged than right now.”
On Monday, Zeldin told Fox Business Network that “One of the bullets landed about 30 feet” from where his daughters were sitting in the kitchen. “I don’t know anything about the shooters,” he said. “I don’t know who shot these two people. I don’t know what the motive was.”
It is the second violent episode to unfold as the four-term congressman campaigns for governor. In July, a man was arrested for attempting to stab Zeldin during a campaign event. The suspect, a military veteran, told police he had been drinking before the episode.
Zeldin has made crime and public safety a key issue in his uphill campaign against Hochul, who was elevated to the governor’s office after former governor Andrew M. Cuomo abruptly resigned last year amid allegations of sexual misconduct and inaccurate reporting of covid-19 deaths at nursing homes.
Public polling shows Hochul with a double-digit lead over Zeldin, whose party has not won statewide office in New York in two decades. But the shooting has renewed Zeldin’s call to make fighting crime the defining issue of the campaign.
“We do need to roll back pro-criminal laws up in Albany,” Zeldin told Fox Business Network on Monday, referring to changes in bail law recently enacted in New York that Republicans say has shortened the amount of time a violent suspect is held in custody. “We have to take back our streets. This is something that motivated me to get into this race in the first place.”
Zeldin’s tough-on-crime message has also been fueled by headline-grabbing violence, including the fatal stabbing of an emergency service worker in Queens two weeks ago, and the shooting death of a mother of three in Buffalo this week. New York mayor Eric Adams (D), a former police captain, has also urged lawmakers to help bring down crime in New York.
Hochul, for her part, has responded to such calls with action from Albany. In September, she announced that the state would send $20 million to local law enforcement. That month, she also highlighted her plan to install cameras on each subway car in the city.
In New York City, murders have declined, but other major crimes — including rapes, robberies, felony assaults, burglaries, grand larcenies and car thefts — have increased in the first nine months of the year compared with a year ago, according to data from the New York Police Department. But the number of shooting incidents and victims during that period is down more than 12 percent.
In Suffolk County, the number of shooting incidents reported for the first eight months of the year are down about 11 percent compared with a year ago, according to data released in September by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services. The number of people shot during that period is down nearly 22 percent, according to the division. | 2022-10-10T17:41:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two people shot outside home of N.Y. gubernatorial candidate who has focused on crime - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/new-york-zeldin-crime-shooting-governor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/new-york-zeldin-crime-shooting-governor/ |
People attend Divine 9 Day of Action, an event aimed at reaching voters to cast their ballot in November for Stacey Abrams as the next governor of Georgia. (Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post)
SOUTH FULTON, Ga. — Inside a local bar and restaurant here, a packed room of nearly 100 Black business leaders and community members welcomed Stacey Abrams with loud cheers and applause.
After laying out her plans for everything from health care to education, the Democratic nominee for Georgia governor made an admission: While she loved the support they were showing, she needed it to extend beyond those willing to come out to her events.
“None of it matters if we do not turn out the very people who are the most affected,” Abrams, standing beneath a disco ball, told the crowd late last month. “You have to tell the story, so as Moses said, ‘Go, run, tell.’ And make sure folks know what’s happening.”
She continued her pitch to a large, lively crowd that spilled over into the parking lot. “I also need you to reach out to those communities that didn’t know they should be here, the ones who don’t think any of this matters,” she said. “We don’t have an enthusiasm gap. We have a trust gap — and I need folks to trust me one more time.”
Abrams has been widely credited with working to build the base of voters who helped deliver the White House and Senate majority for Democrats. But as the race for governor heads into the final weeks, a question has swirled around her campaign: Will enough Black voters show up for her to win her second bid to make history?
Polls show Abrams trailing Republican Gov. Brian Kemp in their rematch and suggest she is struggling to replicate the same level of Black support that she garnered in 2018, when she defied conventional political wisdom by coming within 55,ooo voters, or 1.4 percentage points, of becoming the first Black female governor in the nation.
Four years ago, Abrams garnered 94 percent of the Black vote, according to exit polls. In recent weeks, polls have shown her drawing less than 90 percent support among Black voters.
Polls also consistently have her a few points behind Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.), who has a slight lead over Republican challenger Herschel Walker, whose campaign has been rocked this week by allegations that he paid for a former girlfriend to have an abortion. Abrams, however, is polling similarly among Black voters as Warnock, but he is performing better among a wider swatch of voters.
Abrams will need strong turnout in cities such as South Fulton, which is 90 percent Black, and community leaders acknowledge that there’s work to be done to motivate people to go to the polls.
“If every Black person got out and voted, Stacey Abrams would already be our governor,” said khalid kamau, mayor of South Fulton, which he has dubbed “America’s Blackest city.” “If you look at the margins she lost by, if every Black voter in South Fulton had turned out to vote for Stacey Abrams, she would be governor right now.”
Interviews with more than two dozen Black leaders, organizers and voters paint a complicated picture for why Abrams appears to be lagging in the polls with the largest bloc of Democratic voters in Georgia. Some say voters are feeling more disillusioned about politics than ever because many feel their lives haven’t improved and that national Democrats haven’t fulfilled key promises since the last election. Others note that it’s always difficult to run against an incumbent, and Kemp is regarded as a popular governor.
Juan Willis, who was at the South Fulton rally, is concerned by the amount of people he’s seen that “have gotten complacent and just given up on government.”
“There’s a lot of things she’s for that will benefit the Black community and the Black man, but … there’s a lot of people that don’t feel like it matters,” said Willis, 50, a controls engineer who lives in Decatur. He said the sense of hopelessness is “more frequent than before because of everything that went down with Donald Trump. There’s less trust in government.”
Abrams’s allies argue the challenges she’s facing aren’t surprising. They complain that the media is writing her off by fixating on polls that don’t capture the young and diverse Georgia electorate of today.
In an interview, Abrams herself argued that the polls are wrong because they capture just a “snapshot” of the state’s electorate and not the full coalition of voters she is trying to draw out to the polls.
“My responsibility is to build the electorate,” Abrams said. “And for some that sounds disingenuous, it sounds like I’m denying reality, but what I am saying is traditional politics ignores the very communities I seek to engage.”
Abrams achieved a strong showing in 2018 by registering hundreds of thousands of new voters and mobilizing people, particularly voters of color, who don’t regularly participate in elections. She’s hoping a similar approach will work this year.
“My outreach is intentional because I respect Black voters. I respect Latino voters. I respect AAPI voters,” Abrams said. “I show up because I do not take for granted their engagement, and I do not presume that their choice is me or the other guy. Their choice is vote or not vote — tired and despairing or trust one more time … My responsibility as the person seeking their support [is] I need to go and ask.”
Charles Bullock, a political science professor at the University of Georgia, emphasized that Abrams is not dramatically underperforming with Black voters — but even a small decrease from her 2018 performance makes a difference. He said, in part, it could be because there are more Black voters this time who will back Kemp and appreciate some of his work, including the tax rebates he signed into law earlier this year. Bullock added that an additional challenge for Abrams is building enthusiasm with Black voters after losing in her first bid.
“It’s hard to rekindle the enthusiasm that surrounds a first major effort — and that first effort did not succeed,” Bullock said. “It’s just hard to recapture some of that excitement that surrounded her first bid.”
kamau, who took office early this year, dismissed the polls, pointing to his own “surprise upset” unseating an incumbent mayor and said he’s seeing a lot of energy and hunger on the ground.
Many voters are still thrilled about having another opportunity to elect Abrams as Georgia’s first Black and first female governor. Abrams served as Democratic leader of the State House until she stepped down in 2017 to run for governor. After her unsuccessful bid for governor, she built a national profile as a voting rights activist and best-selling author, and was floated as a possible running mate for Joe Biden in 2020.
“I probably scare people with how excited I am about Stacey Abrams,” Alaina Reaves, 33, a Georgia committee member for the Democratic National Committee, said with a huge smile and laugh after a recent Warnock event in Jonesboro.
Reaves, former president of the Clayton County Young Democrats, praised Abrams as a “champion for everyday people” and credited her with drawing in a lot of young voter enthusiasm. She expressed hope that this election will change the narrative that young people don’t vote.
Mark Taylor, who showed up at the South Fulton rally, is a self-described Black Republican, who voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Taylor refused to vote for Biden because of the then-senator’s strong support for the 1994 crime bill that he argues led to mass incarceration. And he plans to vote for Trump again if he runs in 2024. But, now, in 2022, he’s a big fan of Abrams.
“I just like what she stands for. I’m going to say I’m bipartisan because I vote for what I feel is right,” said Taylor, 41. “I’ve seen a lot of gun violence, a lot of violence among the community and I think it’s time for a change.”
Taylor and several supporters all used the same word to describe why they’re backing Abrams: A need for “change.”
“We need change right now. Of course, the majority of us feel that way. We just have to convince a lot of other people that we do count,” said Tina Hodge, 50.
Hodge, a small-business owner, came to the Abrams event with her husband and brother-in-law because she feels Abrams isn’t “as detached from our reality” as other candidates and said the issue of abortion rights, in particular, has her really focused on the election.
Like Hodge, several women at the event emphasized they are especially motivated to vote given the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn abortion rights. “Our rights as women are being taken away,” said Letitia Jackson, 49, from East Atlanta.
While it’s clear that abortion rights has been a galvanizing issue for women to vote Democrat, there have been concerns about Abrams’s standing with a key base: Black men.
This past week, Atlanta rapper and activist Killer Mike caused a stir when he went on “Hell of a Week with Charlamagne tha God” and declared that Kemp had an “effective week with Black people. And I would love to see [Abrams] do that. But if she doesn’t, that ain’t our fault.”
Kemp’s campaign shared that last week he participated in a town hall hosted by local Black radio stations, which Abrams attended as well. He also held a town hall in Buckhead with 50 Black male business owners that was moderated by conservative radio host Shelley Wynter.
The clip of Killer Mike’s comments was shared Friday on Twitter by Kemp’s communications director. Abrams’s supporters quickly pushed back, noting that she has held numerous events aimed at engaging with Black voters.
Earlier on Friday, Abrams shared photos from an event with Black business owners and posted a video with television host and comedian Steve Harvey calling on Black men to “show up for Stacey.”
Omar Ali, a business leader and developer, said that Abrams is running at a time when frustrations are running high with the Democratic Party across the country. Ali, who said he doesn’t identify as a Democrat or Republican, has been active in pushing for Black men to “sit in the middle” to push Democrats to not take them for granted and Republicans to actually have a dialogue with them.
“It’s just a really bad time for her to be running. It doesn’t matter who it was going to be to be honest with you,” Ali said. “If you have a Democrat and they’ve been telling over and over they’re going to do something. Why should we trust it’s going to be done one more time?”
“A message has to be sent to the Democratic Party,” Ali said, adding that oftentimes the focus is on engaging Black men on police brutality and criminal justice reform and not enough on economic opportunity, which is what “Black men want the most … above and beyond everything.”
Abrams acknowledged that Black men, in particular, have been disillusioned by politicians because “their challenges are often not met with consistency and with integrity,” and the attention falls on Democrats because “the presumption is, well, Republicans aren’t going to do it.”
“They are absolutely legitimately suspicious of politicians writ large,” she said. “And I understand that, which is why we’ve had so many conversations because I want them to know that I’m not a typical politician.”
Andra Gillespie, an associate professor of political science at Emory University, agreed that some of the challenges Abrams is facing, including with Black men, speak to broader national problems for Democrats — and that the party is just starting to come to grips with the fact there’s a gender gap that exists in the Black community. She added that she can’t rule out sexism as part of why Abrams is facing this issue, too.
A win for Abrams, however, doesn’t just depend on Black voter turnout — but strong turnout from all voters of color, Gillespie said. And the fact that voters of color have that much power in determining the election is in part thanks to the infrastructure Abrams has built out, which helped candidates like Biden, Warnock and Sen. Jon Ossoff win their races, delivering Democrats the White House and Senate majority, she added.
“The sad part is the possibility — and I don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion yet — but the possibility that she might not be able to reap the benefit from it,” Gillespie said. “Mark my words, whoever the next Democrat is who gets elected statewide … owes Stacey Abrams a great debt of gratitude for helping to put the infrastructure together to teach people how to do this.”
Abrams allies, however, push back on the polls and narrative that the longtime voting rights advocate is struggling or facing an enthusiasm gap. They emphasize that with a month to go, the election is far from over.
In Columbus, the Rev. Joseph Baker is grappling with how to get churchgoers and community members excited about the election and ready to vote. But he admits part of the challenge is getting people’s attention when many families are still facing economic hardship from the coronavirus pandemic.
To help those families, Baker, who has been pastor of St. James AME Church for nine years, is ensuring his church’s food drive stays up and running with volunteers offering fresh food each week. But he’s also urging them to go out and vote — a tool he believes can ultimately help their whole community improve.
And while Baker avoids sharing his opinion with churchgoers and community members, he’s certainly heard a lot of chatter from them about one of the candidates they’re planning to support: Abrams.
“It all has to do with who they feel is the person that will better represent them … and that person is Stacey Abrams,” Baker said. “A lot of her work has focused … on people who are often forgotten and have some of the greatest challenges. Now, we just have to get everyone out to vote.”
The latest: Democrats call Sen. Tuberville’s comments about crime and reparations racist | 2022-10-10T17:41:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stacey Abrams faces challenges in governor’s race. Is Black voter turnout one of them? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/stacey-abrams-black-voters-kemp/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/stacey-abrams-black-voters-kemp/ |
Former president Donald Trump throws “Save America” hats during a rally Sunday in Mesa, Ariz. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Donald Trump’s latest riff on his decision to keep government documents at his residence at Mar-a-Lago is chock full of ridiculousness and false equivalency to a degree remarkable even by Trump’s standards.
Appearing at a rally in Arizona on Sunday, Trump repeatedly compared his retention of presidential records to the actions of his predecessors. Except most of the examples he cited involved those presidents setting up presidential libraries. (And his other arguments were almost complete non sequiturs.)
He cited Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton having their presidential records moved to warehouses as their libraries were being built. But that’s how the process works. And even if there were evidence that the records were handled improperly during those moves — which there isn’t — they were in the custody of the National Archives, as that agency noted when various Trump allies tried to compare Trump’s situation to Obama’s.
Trump also invoked, as he has before, the thousands of emails that Hillary Clinton’s team deleted from her private email server. But these were records deemed to not be work-related, and then-FBI Director James B. Comey determined there was “no evidence that any of the additional work-related emails were intentionally deleted in an effort to conceal them.”
Perhaps most eyebrow-raising was what he said about the elder George Bush.
“Meanwhile, George H.W. Bush took millions and millions of documents to a former bowling alley pieced together with what was then an old and broken Chinese restaurant. They put them together. And it had a broken front door and broken windows. Other than that, it was quite secure. There was no security.”
Many assumed Trump was talking about Bush’s favorite Chinese restaurant in the Washington, D.C., area, the Peking Gourmet Inn. But this actually refers, as it did with the others, to where Bush’s presidential records were stored for his library.
In 1994, the Associated Press reported that items from Bush’s personal life were being sorted in College Station, Tex., “in the old Chimney Hill Bowl” and “in what used to be the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant.”
It’s not at all clear what Trump is referring to by broken doors and windows. But the idea that there was “no security” is flat wrong. As the same story noted, “Uniformed guards patrol the premises. There are closed-circuit television monitors and sophisticated electronic detectors along walls and doors. Some printed material is classified and will remain so for years; it is open only to those with top-secret clearances.”
The deputy director of the library recalled earlier this year that they “built a secure space within [the bowling alley] to house the classified material.”
“[Bill Clinton] kept classified recordings in his sock. Did you know about that? They say he left the White House with recordings in his sock and they found him in his sock drawer.”
This refers to something Trump’s lawyers cited in a court filing last month. But the speech botches the facts badly.
The recordings weren’t kept in Clinton’s sock, but rather in his sock drawer (as Trump later correctly says).
More importantly: Clinton didn’t leave the White House with the recordings; rather, they were stored in a sock drawer in the White House during Clinton’s tenure.
And they weren’t classified; they were tapes of conversations Clinton had with an author who was working on Clinton’s oral history.
Trump’s team and its allies have cited this as proof that a president has the authority to determine what is personal record, rather than a presidential one. They note that a 2012 court ruling determined that the recordings were Clinton’s personal records and said that “the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office.”
“Under the socks decision — this is a very important decision, they call it the socks decision, because again it had to do with Bill Clinton and his socks — there is no crime,” Trump said Sunday. “You know, there is no crime. It’s not a crime.”
But that same ruling repeatedly notes that this authority pertains to a president’s time in office. It does not deal with a former president removing material with classified markings, for which there is no evidence of their having been converted into personal records.
“Bill Clinton also lost the nuclear codes, and nobody complained. Trump didn’t lose the nuclear codes. … Jimmy Carter sent the nuclear codes to his dry cleaner. You know that, right? Nothing happened though.”
The former refers to a claim about Clinton made in a book by a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but there are reasons to be skeptical of the account (for more on that, see here). The second, on Carter, refers to a more thinly sourced and unconfirmed rumor.
“The National Archives put a trigger warning on the Constitution of the United States — did you know that — and the Bill of Rights, and other great documents that we have in our country, founding documents, considering them to be dangerous.”
In fact, as PolitiFact reported last year, the National Archives’ warning that certain content in its collection could contain harmful language is included “on all documents across its collection of records of the U.S. federal government.” The Archives isn’t singling out the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
“They should give me immediately back everything that they’ve taken from me, because it’s mine. It’s mine. … Likewise, under the Presidential Record Act, everything should come back. All should come back.”
“[The Archives] lose documents, they plant documents. ‘Let’s see, is there a book on nuclear destruction or the building of a nuclear weapon cheaply. Let’s put that book in with Trump.’ No, they plant documents.”
These two comments make little sense on their own, but they make even less sense next to one another.
On the one hand, Trump is continuing to baselessly suggest that someone planted evidence at his residence (something his lawyers still won’t actually claim in court). On the other, he’s saying all of the documents are his and should be returned.
But specifically, Trump is suggesting that it was the Archives that planted evidence. (That quote came after the “trigger warning” quote above.) But the Archives didn’t conduct the search of Mar-a-Lago; the FBI did.
All of which suggests, more than two months after the search, that Trump is still just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what will stick with his base of supporters. But if shoddy whataboutism and baseless accusations are still the best he has, he might be in some real trouble. | 2022-10-10T17:42:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump’s nonsensical riff on past presidents and classified documents - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/trump-classified-documents-bush-clinton/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/trump-classified-documents-bush-clinton/ |
By Yonat Shimron
Abortion rights supporters chant their objections at the Kentucky Capitol in Frankfort after the passage of strict antiabortion laws in April. (Bruce Schreiner/AP)
Three Jewish women in Kentucky have filed a lawsuit arguing that a set of state laws that ban most abortions violate their religious rights.
The lawsuit, filed in Jefferson Circuit Court in Louisville, is the third such suit brought by Jewish organizations or individuals since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the right to an abortion in its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In all three suits — the first in Florida, the second in Indiana — the Jewish plaintiffs claim their state is infringing on their religious freedom by imposing a Christian understanding of when life begins.
Under current Kentucky laws, life begins at the moment of fertilization. Another law bans abortion after six weeks when cardiac activity is first detected.
Clerics sue over Florida abortion law, saying it violates religious freedom
Abortion will be on the ballot next month when Kentuckians decide the fate of a proposed constitutional amendment that would eliminate the right to abortion in the state.
“There are a whole patchwork of laws, passed over the last 20 years,” said Ben Potash, one of the lawyers who filed the complaint. “They’re internally inconsistent and, put together, very vague.”
Most Jews believe abortion is allowed and, in some cases, even required.
“Judaism has never defined life beginning at conception,” the Kentucky suit says, adding that “millenia of commentary from Jewish scholars has reaffirmed Judaism’s commitment to reproductive rights.”
The suit, filed Thursday, repurposes a legal tactic successfully used by conservative Christian groups in recent years.
The women are not the first to challenge Kentucky’s abortion bans. The American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood sued the state shortly after the Dobbs ruling was handed down.
What’s distinct about the latest suit is that all three of the Jewish women require in vitro fertilization to become pregnant but are afraid of beginning the procedure without greater clarity about what the law will permit them to do with excess frozen embryos. The suit claims the women must spend exorbitant fees to keep their embryos frozen indefinitely, and they are unsure whether they will face felony charges if they dispose of them.
Further, because pregnancies resulting from infertility treatments have a higher rate of stillbirth, the women foresee the possibility of not wanting to carry their IVF pregnancies to term if the fetus is not viable.
The 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,” their suit says.
In this sense, the Kentucky suit is about women who want to give birth, not women who want to abort, said Sheila Katz, CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, which is supporting and advising plaintiffs in all three states where the abortion restrictions are being challenged in court.
“It’s a scary time to be pregnant,” Katz said. “The state is telling them their life is not as valuable as the fetus. These women are saying, ‘A, that’s against our religious tradition, and B, you owe us with being less vague about what this will look like so we can start our families.’ ”
In June, a Jewish congregation in Florida filed suit arguing the state’s 15-week abortion ban — signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) — prohibits Jewish women practicing their faith free of government intrusion. In September, a group called Hoosier Jews for Choice sued, claiming, among other things, that the Indiana law banning abortion violated the state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
The women in Kentucky claim the abortion ban similarly violates their state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act. That law states that government “shall not substantially burden a person’s freedom of religion” unless it proves a compelling interest and uses “the least restrictive means” to do so.
“If you’re Jewish, you’re having a very narrowly defined idea of when life begins imposed on you that is incongruent with our religious beliefs of when life begins,” said Lisa Sobel, 38, one of the women in the lawsuit.
She said she met the other plaintiffs, Jessica Kalb and Sarah Barton, through Louisville’s Jewish community. They learned that all three require IVF treatments to have children.
“When Dobbs came down,” Sobel said, “we didn’t know what to do.” | 2022-10-10T17:46:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jewish women sue over Kentucky abortion laws, citing religious freedom - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/10/10/kentucky-abortion-law-2022-jewish-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2022/10/10/kentucky-abortion-law-2022-jewish-lawsuit/ |
L.os Angeles City Councilwoman Nury Martinez attends "Women's March Action: March 4 Reproductive Rights" at Pershing Square on Oct. 2, 2021, in Los Angeles. (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
Los Angeles City Councilwoman Nury Martinez (D) announced Monday that she would resign as the council’s president in the midst of a controversy that followed the release of a leaked audio in which she made openly racist remarks about a colleague’s son as part of a discussion of the city’s redistricting process.
“I take responsibility for what I said and there are no excuses for those comments,” Martinez said in a statement. “As a mother I know better and I am sorry. I am truly ashamed.”
It appears that Martinez will remain on the 15-member legislative body. She made no mention of leaving her seat representing the city’s 6th District.
According to an account by the Los Angeles Times, Martinez, during a taped conversation last fall with three other council members and a labor leader, said that Councilman Mike Bonin (D), who is White, handled his young Black son as though he were an “accessory” and described his son as “Parece changuito,” which translates into “like a monkey.”
The Times also reported that Martinez appeared to discuss Bonin’s child’s behavior during a 2017 parade. She allegedly said on the call: “[t]hey’re raising him like a little White kid. I was like, this kid needs a beatdown. Let me take him around the corner and then I’ll bring him back.”
During the call, Martinez could also be heard disparaging other politicians, according to the Times.
In a statement Sunday, Martinez issued an apology for the comments, which she apparently did not know had been recorded, but stopped short of announcing that she would step down as president.
“In a moment of intense frustration and anger, I let the situation get the best of me and I hold myself accountable for these comments,” she said.
Bonin had called for Martinez’s removal as president and her resignation from office.
Martinez has served as the council’s president since late 2019. She was the first Latina to hold the position. | 2022-10-10T18:16:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | L.A. City Council president steps down in wake of racist comments - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/los-angeles-city-council-racist-comments/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/los-angeles-city-council-racist-comments/ |
D.C.'s punk rock past is explored in a new online exhibit
An online collection of D.C.'s punk rock past was created by John Davis, shown here in 2019, and Ben Jackson. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)
In 2011, digitized scans of the Dead Sea Scrolls went online to great fanfare. I confess I’ve never once looked at them. But I spent the past weekend happily lost in the Dead Sea Scrolls of D.C.’s punk rock past, courtesy of a new online exhibit called “Persistent Vision: The D.C. Punk Collections at the University of Maryland.”
The pages and pages of material — concert fliers, fanzines, photos, recordings — make you feel as if you were there. And I was there. But even so, I couldn’t keep up with everything that was going on in that fecund scene back then. “Persistent Vision” is a digital bolus of D.C. punk rock stretching from 1976 to 1992.
The online collection was co-created by John Davis, a curator with the university library’s Special Collections in Performing Arts, and musicologist and SCPA manager Ben Jackson. The more than 1,000 digitized items in it were selected from the collection’s more than 50 linear feet of material. (Visit it at exhibitions.lib.umd.edu/dc-punk.)
The fliers and zines are the most fun, but the co-curators, along with Jessica Grimmer, have written thoughtful essays that set the scene for each chunk of time the chronological exhibit explores. In D.C., as elsewhere, punk was created not by multinational music conglomerates, but by fans, some of whom picked up instruments and some of whom picked up cameras or X-ACTO knives or, just as importantly, tickets and 45s.
“Most punks were alienated by the lengthy guitar solos, fantastical lyrics, and jet set lifestyles of prominent rock musicians in the mid-1970s,” the curators write. “Punk offered an irresistible antidote, blasting out succinct, serrated rock-and-roll songs like the Ramones’ ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’ and the Damned’s ‘New Rose.’”
Washington and its suburbs spawned their own Ramones, their own Damned, bands with names like the Bad Brains, Teen Idles, Tru Fax & the Insaniacs, Minor Threat, Madhouse and Rites of Spring. It was a Rites of Spring song that gave the exhibit its name. Said Davis: “I asked [singer/guitarist] Guy Picciotto if it was okay if we used the song title as the exhibit title and he very graciously said yes.”
Scrolling through the fliers you can see the evolution of a punk aesthetic, from a ransom note-style design to something more elegant. There’s an evolution of nomenclature too. Early fliers describe bands as presenting “Real Rock & Roll,” “New Wave” or “New Wave Music.” A Bad Brains show in Forestville, Md., is described as “Another Punk Rock Bash,” suggesting that even fans were getting tired of the taxonomies — or could at least joke about them.
Zines such as the Infiltrator, Descenes and Vintage Violence track the ever-revolving musical gyre. One page of the June 1978 issue of Vintage Violence notes that “Razz’ guitarist Abaad [Behram] has left the band and joined Artful Dodger” while on another page, Slickee Boy Kim Kane laments the demise of a D.C. band called the Pop: “They were to me the better of the best ‘power pop’ bands in either the U.S. or the U.K.”
One reason for the breakup? Guitarist Tommy Keene has left to join Razz.
The ads are fun, too. Skip Groff’s influential Rockville record store Yesterday and Today is everywhere ( “The records you want without having to go to New York”), while in the Infiltrator someone is selling a 1978 Fender Super Reverb amplifier for $285. It would probably set you back around $1,500 today.
The zines might be covering an occasionally threatening form of music, but they are homespun affairs. The first issue of 1983′s DCene, editors thank “our Moms,” while offering “no thanks to the people Safeway sends their pictures to, who lost a roll of my film.”
Scroll through the pages and you can see D.C. hardcore’s myths being born. A review in Capitol Crisis of a 1983 Black Market Baby, SOA and Minor Threat show at 9:30 Club notes: “Excessive preaching by Minor Threat’s Ian [MacKaye] (in protest smoking, drinking and fighting) between numbers raised a few twitters in the audience, but it is healthy to be reminded of the Ten Commandments once in a while.”
In that same issue, edited by Xyra Harper, there’s a line typed at the bottom of one page. It’s there to fill space, but it encapsulates what the community was trying to do: “The scene you crave should be the scene you create!”
That’s the spirit Davis hopes “Persistent Vision” will engender.
“The hope is you go out and make things,” he said, “that this will inspire you to create new art or create new scholarship or increase the understanding of this pretty remarkable community. That has always been at the heart of punk.” | 2022-10-10T18:42:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Persistent Vision' lets music fans spy on the birth of D.C. punk - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/dc-punk-rock-exhibit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/dc-punk-rock-exhibit/ |
Brown Grove in Hanover County, Va. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
Jessica Johnson, a visiting scholar of religious studies at the College of William & Mary, is the author of “Biblical Porn: Affect, Labor, and Pastor Mark Driscoll’s Evangelical Empire.”
Virginia’s shift from the 2021 Model Policies for the Treatment of Transgender Students to the 2022 Model Policies on the Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for All Students by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) seems sudden and extreme, but it has a history.
On Aug. 30, the Hanover County Public School Board voted to adopt a “restroom and locker room” policy that criminalizes and pathologizes transgender students. Effectively, it denies the possibility of a student being trans without parental, medical, legal and educational authorization. The 2022 VDOE model policies mimic these stipulations, such that privacy, dignity and respect for “all” students can be achieved only by eradicating those who are trans.
At a Hanover public school board meeting in September 2021, I heard one ugly joke that baselessly characterized trans students as sexual criminals; by last October, this unsubstantiated moral panic was a fixation. One mother stated, “I am scared for my daughter. … Who is to say that a transgender student will not sneak a picture from underneath the stall on their cellphone of a female or male using the bathroom and pass it along, which you all know is considered child pornography and is a felony?”
Often, this demonization of trans students was couched in terms of Christian belief. One parent spoke on behalf of Christian families so victimized by secular trends that they had no choice but to home-school: “Every sexual orientation, mental illness, marriage preference, minority group, social justice initiative and other worldly religions are raised up on this imaginary pedestal and just catered to. … But I am a Christian. … My faith says that God created us male and female. This is the God that makes no mistakes. For Christians to go along with this transgender lie is disrespectful to my God. Sin is sin and I will not call it anything other. I am one of the many Hanover parents that have pulled their kids from the school district to home-school. If our religious beliefs continue to be violated, there will be a mass exit of Christians from your school system and that will not look well on the county.” Yet the Hanover public school board meetings routinely begin with Christian prayer, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.
“Transgenderism” was deemed a “personal belief system” that, if allowed to exist in Hanover schools, “would be equivalent to establishing a state religion” when “our objective should be to promote unity.” The question of how “unity” would be defined and according to whom was clear.
The Family Foundation — a Richmond nonprofit that believes “there is no square inch in all the universe over which God has not claimed ‘Mine,’ and that includes the arenas of civil government and public policy” — provided signs that stated “Protect Every Kid.” This slogan universalized the particular so that the bodily safety, privacy and well-being of trans students was transposed into defending “all kids” from them. Much like “All Lives Matter” generalized “Black Lives Matter” to hierarchically privilege White life over Black life through the ruse of universalism, “Protect Every Kid” erased trans youths from public life and the nation.
One parent stated that the mere presence of trans youth would contaminate the “purity” of cisgender students; “seeing and experiencing this firsthand can leave a child permanently traumatized and their purity in ruins.”
As a political feeling, tool and weapon used to define and police “unity” and “purity,” Christian nationalism shaped dehumanizing rhetoric and policies through a particular logic of the universal — one that shores up “normative” gender according to a strictly “biblical” male/female binary (and hierarchy), while framing whiteness as the universal (superior) and natural (nativist) ethno-racial identity.
In March, the Hanover School Board enlisted the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy organization that seeks to change the law and culture of the nation, to devise another policy. Meanwhile, Johnny Redd, a White man who considered “a shift of attention away from core educational objectives ... to social issues like CRT, transgender bathrooms” a problem, was appointed to the school board. “My attention will be focused on ... education of the students, not indoctrination of the students, not promoting social change that is illogical, immoral and/or ungodly,” Redd said. “A biblical worldview will be the lens that I use to analyze policies and curriculum. … I am not going to … allow an evil tide to carry THE CHILDREN to a point where they are brainwashed.”
When the Hanover NAACP published an open letter calling Redd’s appointment into question because of his prejudicial remarks, he responded using a racist, sexist stereotype, referring to “an angry African American lady.” Shortly thereafter, a logo design for a faculty conference resembling a swastika made headlines. The teacher who created the symbol was trying to represent “unity.”
In August, several Hanoverians testified to how this policy debate affected LGBTQ, Black and Jewish community members. One person said, “I chose to speak today because as a Jew, we have seen this happen before. Holocaust history is about the vilification, policing, and ultimate murder of trans and LGBTQ people. Restricting Jews and LGBTQ people from society is how the Holocaust began. Gay and trans people were deported alongside Jews and were targeted for not being able to participate in the public community. … When I read the part of the policies that would require a criminal-background check, among other requirements, just for a child to use the restroom, I thought about my great-grandmother’s family being barred from French businesses and being able to shop and live among non-Jews. Exclusion from basic human rights, such as using a bathroom, is the same type of violence against transgender children that my grandmother’s family endured. It is the same type of violence brought against the Black community.”
Contrary to statements that suggest otherwise, the 2022 model policies do impose a specific ideology. Christian nationalism is not relegated to churches, extremist groups or religious-political leaders; it exerts control and fosters political violence through public policies and institutions that seek to exterminate non-White, non-Christian, and non-heteropatriarchal thought from the nation.
Opinion|Justin Fairfax deserved a fair hearing from the beginning | 2022-10-10T18:43:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Virginia schools are threatened by white nationalism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/virginia-schools-threatened-trans-white-nationalism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/virginia-schools-threatened-trans-white-nationalism/ |
Democracies must stand firm against Xi Jinping’s next assault on human rights
Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing on Oct. 1, 2019. (Thomas Peter/REUTERS)
Sophie Richardson is the China director at Human Rights Watch.
The Chinese Communist Party is set to open its 20th National Congress on Oct. 16. Xi Jinping will almost certainly secure a third term as party general secretary — and therefore continue his profound assault on human rights across the country and around the globe. Are the world’s democracies up to the task?
Over the past decade, Xi’s regime has conducted brutal assimilationist campaigns with especially grim consequences for Tibetans, Uyghurs, people in Hong Kong, and others. He has reengineered the party state, reversing previous decades of slow progress toward legal reform. From the 2016 counterterrorism law to the 2017 Foreign Nongovernmental Organization Activities in China law to the Orwellian 2020 “national security” law imposed on Hong Kong, Xi’s entourage has used the law to entrench party power.
Xi’s repression has not stopped at China’s borders. In relentless pursuit of global power, Chinese authorities have dramatically expanded their capacity to commit human rights violations around the world. State-owned enterprises and Belt and Road Initiative projects often violate labor, land and Indigenous people’s rights and harm the environment in other countries. Other governments are pressured to forcibly return refugees and asylum seekers.
Some members of diaspora communities — even those who have obtained citizenship in democracies — are under such close scrutiny or harassment that they don’t feel secure exercising their rights. Chinese authorities now seek to influence public education in democracies, neutralize key international human rights institutions and shape global technical standards to expand their vision of technology as an instrument of control and coercion.
Where are the democracies?
Few governments were until recently willing to impose any meaningful consequences in response to serious human rights violations, and fewer still to consider dialing back the economic relationships that have given Beijing such leverage. Most have been painfully slow to recognize that Beijing poses threats to human rights inside their own countries. For democracies, defending international human rights institutions and norms has been a relatively low priority.
To challenge Xi and his allies’ sense of impunity, democracies should use all available domestic and international means to investigate and appropriately prosecute those responsible for crimes against humanity. Acting through United Nations mechanisms, particularly the Human Rights Council, requires coordination and commitment, but it has the additional advantage of building that whole system’s resilience to insulate it from Beijing’s pressure — and last week’s close vote on a debate about Uyghurs shows how critical that goal is. There are also avenues to justice available in democracies, particularly by way of opening national investigations.
Democracies can no longer ignore the reality that their economic interdependence with Xi’s government has helped sustain human rights abuses. Canada, the European Union, Britain and the United States have begun imposing some sanctions in response to Chinese government human rights violations. The U.S. Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act has made it harder for goods produced in China with forced labor to enter the United States, and has helped gain recognition for the idea that companies and consumers should not want to profit from repression.
But large swaths of economic activity — from finance to manufacturing — remain largely unexamined. Business ties to the Chinese companies and institutions that provide surveillance equipment and services, as well as to the Chinese military-industrial complex, deserve particular scrutiny. Some democracies already have tools to limit trade as a means of pressuring Beijing to improve its human rights record. But they should also urgently adopt laws requiring companies to conduct human rights due diligence to identify and address risks of complicity in China and elsewhere.
Democracies can also do a better job of trying to protect and preserve the distinct identities Beijing seeks to obliterate. This could take several forms, from expediting asylum claims for those Beijing has driven out, and ensuring that they can live with full protection of their rights in democracies, all the way through to underwriting curriculums in languages such as Cantonese, Mongolian, Tibetan and Uyghur.
Governments should also make clear they are firmly opposed both to Chinese government repression and to anti-Chinese racism, a horrific phenomenon amplified during the pandemic. Some have been hesitant to do the former, fearing it exacerbates the latter. The Chinese government decries anti-Chinese sentiment in democracies for self-serving purposes; democracies need to take strong steps to tackle both problems.
They should support Chinese-language media platforms not subject to Beijing’s censorship. Encouraging — and investing in — innovations that give people easy access to uncensored news and other information will most likely pay dividends. Governments should require Chinese social media companies to publicly disclose what content they have censored or suppressed at the behest of the Chinese government as well as the legal basis for doing so.
Last but far from least: No democratic government should ever forget that people across China — regardless of what self-interested authoritarians in Beijing claim — are entitled to human rights. Giving independent activists from China now living in democracies a visible seat at policy tables reflects real — not just rhetorical — support for their ideas and work. It will also help to generate new policy ideas and to challenge Xi’s claim that he and “China” are one and the same.
Xi has had a decade to show his true human rights colors. From crimes against humanity to the abusive “zero-covid” policies to an unwillingness to condemn Russia for war crimes in Ukraine, the outcome is far bleaker than most predicted. The costs of allowing these trends to go unchecked into the future should motivate action now. Democracies should move swiftly to defend human rights inside and outside China.
Opinion|What the West is still getting wrong about the rise of Xi Jinping | 2022-10-10T18:43:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Democracies must stand firm against Xi Jinping’s next assault on human rights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/xi-jinping-human-rights-democracies-response/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/xi-jinping-human-rights-democracies-response/ |
A health-care worker administers a third dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine at a senior living facility in Worcester, Pa., on Aug. 25, 2021. (Hannah Beier/Bloomberg News)
Katie Lane’s father, Patrick, died of covid-19 in the summer of 2021. Hundreds of thousands of Americans did, of course, but Lane believes that her father was among the estimated 234,000 people whose deaths could have been prevented had he been vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Asked during an interview on CNN why she thought her father chose not to get a dose of the vaccine, Lane suggested that there were a number of factors, media consumption included.
“He watched some Tucker Carlson videos on YouTube, and some of those videos involved some misinformation about vaccines,” Lane said, “and I believe that that played a role.”
New research suggests that Patrick Lane was probably not the only consumer of the Fox News host’s rhetoric to turn away from being vaccinated. And, therefore, he was probably not the only one to die of covid-19 who might otherwise have lived.
We’ve known for some time that there is a partisan divide in vaccine uptake. A lot of attention has been paid to the divide in vaccination rates by race — often because pointing at lower vaccination rates among Black Americans is used as a bit of whataboutism to rationalize low vaccination rates among Republicans. But research has consistently shown that White Republicans are far less likely than Black Americans to report having been vaccinated, and far, far less likely than White Democrats.
Research published this month found a correlation between partisanship and rates of excess deaths during the pandemic. In places where vaccine uptake was lower — which correlates to support for President Donald Trump in the 2020 general election — Republicans died at a much higher rate than they did before the pandemic, a gap that primarily emerged in the months after the vaccine became widely available.
But why? What made Republicans less likely to get vaccinated?
Research published last week, though, identifies a likely role for another prominent voice on the political right: Fox News.
Tracking vaccinations from March to June 2021 shows markedly lower rates of vaccinations among Fox News viewers under 65, particularly in May — the month after vaccinations were opened up to all adults.
Recognizing that Fox News’s audience is heavily Republican, the researchers worked to extricate partisanship from their analysis — with success.
“We can rule out that the effect is due to differences in partisanship, to local health policies, or to local COVID-19 infections or death rates,” the study’s authors write. “The other two major television networks, CNN and MSNBC, have no effect.”
So what was happening on Fox News in the period being studied? Well, for one thing, Fox News was discussing the vaccines less often than its main competitors. During April and in the first two weeks of May, the word “vaccine” was mentioned about twice as often on CNN as on Fox News and substantially more on MSNBC.
During the period of the study, there was one Fox News show in the top 10 shows mentioning the word “vaccine” most often on cable news: Tucker Carlson’s.
In May 2021, Carlson’s was the second-most watched prime-time show on cable news — but most watched in the 25- to 54-year-old demographic.
So the show that was most popular among those under 65 on Fox News was making ceaseless false claims about the vaccine or playing down its efficacy during a period when Fox News viewers under 65 were demonstrably less likely to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
The Department of Health and Human Services last week reported that vaccinations probably saved 330,000 lives among Medicare recipients in 2021. Most of them are 65 and over, the group most likely to get vaccinated.
When he died, Patrick Lane was 45. | 2022-10-10T19:17:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How much of right-wing opposition to vaccination was Fox News’s fault? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/vaccines-coronavirus-fox-news/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/vaccines-coronavirus-fox-news/ |
The consensus in a resolute Kyiv: There can be no compromise
KYIV — A few hours after the explosion Saturday that buckled Russia’s Kerch Bridge to occupied Crimea, a Ukrainian official named Mykhailo Podolyak described the attack as a “psychological” breakthrough for Ukraine and another sign that Russian President Vladimir Putin is losing the war.
“Ukraine can’t take credit for it,” Podolyak, an adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, said of the assault. But “it shows that Russia does not control Crimea,” or other territory it has seized. His message was unyielding: no pause in Ukraine’s offensive, no negotiations until Russia agrees to withdraw its forces, no compromise with the invaders. “We need to humiliate Russia,” he told me.
Russia’s punishing retort came two days later, a day after my trip to Ukraine with a study group from the German Marshall Fund (of which I’m a trustee) had ended. The Ukrainian capital was pounded by a wave of rockets, landing on residential areas downtown, local infrastructure and other locations across the city. People took refuge in shelters for the first time in months in Kyiv. But given what we heard during our visit, this latest punitive assault will only harden Ukraine’s will to resist. “Putin is a terrorist,” a Ukrainian military official said in a statement Monday. “Ukraine’s decision not to hold any negotiations with him proved to be correct: no talks are conducted with terrorists.”
Podolyak spoke in the sandbagged offices of the presidential administration. This is ground zero for a nation at war. The surrounding streets are closed and heavily guarded. On the wall behind Podolyak was a photo of two military amputees on crutches, next to the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag. Nearby, just in case, were his armor and helmet.
Many Ukrainians repeated the same defiant message during a two-day visit here last weekend: We’re not afraid of Russian nuclear threats; we’ve suffered too much to make concessions; we want the world’s help in ensuring the defeat of President Vladimir Putin. A wall mural downtown summarized the public mood: “Be brave like Ukraine.”
What became clear after several dozen conversations here is that for Ukraine, there’s no middle ground. The resiliency and resolve I heard reminded me of Londoners during the Blitz in World War II. For Ukraine, there’s no turning back, and I was asked repeatedly why some in the West still talk about compromise with Putin.
Ukraine’s determination to go all the way worries some in the Biden administration, who believe that the war must be settled through negotiations and that the United States has a responsibility to contain this conflict before it expands into something much worse. I share those concerns, but it’s hard to make arguments for conciliation to Ukrainians whose nation is being hammered by Russian attacks.
“It would be extremely difficult to explain to society why we need to sit down at the table with these terrorists and negotiate,” Oleksiy Danilov, head of the Ukrainian national security council, told us.
An example of this defiant spirit is Olga Datsiuk, a 33-year-old Ukrainian television producer. I met her in a glass-walled cafe in downtown Kyiv a few hours after the Kerch attack. She said she felt “joy” at the news of the explosion. “It should have been done a long time ago,” she said of this assault on Russia’s lifeline to occupied Crimea. “It feels like one of the first steps for Putin to be defeated.”
Ukrainians profess to be unafraid even of Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling. The most popular question on a Ukrainian call-in network program the past two weeks has been how long can you wait before seeking shelter after a warning of a possible nuclear attack, according to Ekaterina Miasnikova, executive director of the National Media Association. There’s a joke circulating on social media that people should gather for an orgy on a hilltop called Shehakavstaya, near Kyiv, if there’s an attack.
Defiance has become a way of life here in the nearly eight months since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion. The national pet is a bomb-sniffing dog named Patron, who has become a star on TikTok. Women wear brooches decorated with cotton, the word for which in Russian is similar to the word for “clap,” a euphemism in Moscow for “explosion.” A Russian-language radio station here has been replaced by one that plays patriotic Ukrainian songs. It’s called Radio Bayraktar, for the Turkish-made drones that have devastated Russian troops.
Wars bring solidarity to people under attack, and you sense that comradeship in the streets of Kyiv. Bracelets made from the last batch of steel produced at the Azovstal foundry in Mariupol sold out in a day. T-shirts and graffiti memorialize the pugnacious response of the Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island who were ordered by Russians to surrender: “Russian warship, go f--- yourself.” A hot pop-music song is a rock version of the traditional Ukrainian patriotic song “The Red Viburnum in the Meadow.”
Russia’s assault has drawn this often fractious and corrupt country together, under Zelensky’s iconic leadership. A group of 70 Ukrainian intellectuals met recently to assess how the country has changed since the invasion. Among the changes: increased trust in public institutions, greater tolerance and a spirit of cooperation in which “charity is a mass phenomenon,” according to a document produced by the group.
Part of the explanation for this intense public feeling is that Ukraine has been fighting Russia alone since 2014, when Putin seized Crimea and parts of the eastern Donbas region. On a long wall near St. Michael’s Cathedral are photos of those killed in the 2014 fighting, and on the first day of Russia’s all-out attack in February. The somber display stretches for a block.
Ukrainians seem convinced that they’re winning. Children play atop captured Russian tanks in St. Michael’s Square at sunset, in the warm fall weather that Ukrainians call “grandmother’s season.” Datsiuk, the television producer, allows: “We will have to talk with the Russians sometime. But not now.” In a survey of the American Chamber of Commerce here, hardly an activist group, 92 percent said Ukraine will win the war, according to an American who talks with the chamber.
Military officials are more cautious. They know that there is still brutal fighting ahead, and they don’t joke about the nuclear risk. Hanna Maliar, deputy minister of defense, told us in measured tones that Russia is continuing to mount intense attacks in the Donetsk region, despite its disarray on other fronts, and that the Iranian-made drones the Russian army is using are “difficult to track and neutralize.” As for the nuclear threats by Putin, Maliar said, “We have no choice but to be ready for any scenario.”
Maliar had talked with me and an earlier German Marshall Fund group here a few weeks before the war started, and I asked her what she had surprised her most in the months since. The biggest shock, she said, was how “barbaric” the Russian attacks had been — destroying kindergartens, maternity wards, homes for the elderly. “In our civilized world, no one assumed this could happen in the 21st century,” she said.
Ukraine fought back. Its citizens think they will be victorious. What they want from the West is weapons and money to fight Putin, A visit here left me with the feeling that steady, sustained military assistance to this astonishingly brave nation — despite Russian threats and for as long as it takes — is an investment in a safer and better world. | 2022-10-10T19:35:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | David Ignatius: Kyiv consensus says no compromise with Russia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/kyiv-attack-no-compromise-russia-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/kyiv-attack-no-compromise-russia-ukraine/ |
We need to talk about marijuana’s potential harm to youths
A jar of medical marijuana at a dispensary in Sherwood, Ore. (Gillian Flaccus/AP)
President Biden’s pardon of people convicted of a federal crime for simple marijuana possession is a long-overdue step to rectify policies that have disproportionately impacted communities of color. But the push for decriminalization should not be misinterpreted as signaling that marijuana is safe for everyone or that recreational use — especially among youths — ought to be normalized.
The dominant narrative about marijuana seems to be that it is harmless. Indeed, 19 states and D.C. have legalized recreational marijuana, and young people are increasingly nonchalant about using it. One study shows nearly half of college students said they consumed marijuana. Eight percent reported they used it daily or nearly every day. One in 5 high school students used marijuana in the preceding 30 days.
But there are real dangers associated with the substance, as a 2020 report from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) shows. Abundant research demonstrates how exposure to marijuana during childhood impacts later cognitive ability, including memory, attention, motivation and learning. Studies have linked regular cannabis use in adolescents with lower IQs in adulthood and higher propensity to drop out of high school. This association persists in college-age students. One large study followed college students and found frequency of marijuana use to correlate with skipping classes, lower grade-point average and longer time to graduation.
Some studies have also linked frequent cannabis use in youths to increased rates of schizophrenia, depression and anxiety. One Lancet article reported that smoking high-potency marijuana every day increased the chance of developing psychosis by nearly five times.
More research is needed on whether the causality could be the other way around — perhaps those predisposed to mental health diagnoses are more likely to seek out marijuana. But as Nora Volkow, a psychiatrist and the director of NIDA, told me, “Based on the data we already have, we can clearly say that marijuana is not a benign drug, especially for children and adolescents.”
In addition, there is evidence that marijuana — though often misleadingly touted as a “treatment” for opioid addiction — might increase the likelihood of using opioids and other drugs by disrupting the reward system in the brain.
Moreover, people can become dependent on and addicted to marijuana itself. As many as 30 percent of people who use marijuana have marijuana use disorder. Those who start using marijuana before age 18 are four to seven times more likely to develop marijuana use disorder than those who begin as adults. Unfortunately, though nearly 6 million Americans have this condition, only about 7 percent have received targeted treatment.
Volkow compares the favorable narrative built around marijuana to that created for smoking. “Initially, people said there was no harm from tobacco,” she said. “The data were manipulated by those who want to promote it. Now, people say that marijuana is safe and doesn’t lead to addiction, but the data show otherwise.”
Lack of treatment was one of the main concerns Volkow expressed. “If you’re thinking about legalization, you should make sure that you have the public health structure to provide treatment for people who have harmful patterns of marijuana consumption,” she said. “We need to provide a system of care for marijuana use disorder, which the United States doesn’t have.” She cited Portugal as an example of a country that decriminalized marijuana but also increased treatment access.
Volkow is a proponent of specific regulatory standards, including a standard unit dose to measure concentrations of active ingredients. This makes sense; we have standardized measurements for alcohol and nicotine content in cigarettes. Similar unit doses for marijuana would help users better understand how much they are consuming. Standardization would also make it easier for researchers to assess short- and long-term harm from the drug.
None of Volkow’s warnings contradict Biden’s announcement, which represents a shift in criminal justice policy to decriminalize marijuana possession. I think more needs to be done to correct previous drug policies, including expunging criminal records of those prosecuted for simple possession. We also need to distinguish recreational use from medicinal use, because there is evidence that cannabis can help certain patients, such as those with cancer, with intractable pain.
Perhaps the right balance to strike is to think of recreational marijuana as we do tobacco. Tobacco is legal, and people don’t go to jail for having cigarettes. But nicotine content is regulated, and tobacco sales to young people are banned. Treatment also exists for those who want to quit.
Critically, just as there are concerted efforts to educate on the dangers of smoking, there should be national efforts to warn against recreational cannabis use. If not, the myth that marijuana is totally safe will keep getting perpetuated, and today’s generation of young people will pay the price. | 2022-10-10T19:35:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | We need to talk about marijuana’s potential harm to youths - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/marijuana-biden-pardon-harm-youth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/marijuana-biden-pardon-harm-youth/ |
Fare vending machines at Metro's Addison Road station in 2021. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
It is clearly too soon to tell whether Metro’s new general manager, Randy Clarke, will be successful in getting the troubled agency back on track. He has been on the job less than three months, and the challenges facing Metro are formidable. But credit Mr. Clarke for squarely facing up to one of the more nettlesome problems facing the transit system, which was largely ignored by his predecessors: fare evasion.
Metro last week rolled out a multifaceted plan to address the problem of people not paying fares on trains and buses. The first stage is an education campaign with Metro posting digital signs urging riders to pay their fare and warning them that Metro Transit Police officers could fine them if they don’t. Transit officers will hand out fliers with the same message, and the system will install cameras and monitors to deter gate-jumping. Next month, transit officers will start issuing tickets.
Transit police had already been writing tickets in Maryland and Virginia, where fare evasion is a criminal offense that comes with a fine of up to $100. But after the District decriminalized fare evasion in 2018, making it a civil offense subject to a $50 fine, Metro took no enforcement action. It claimed that no process was in place to handle adjudication and appeals. Mr. Clarke figured out a solution with the city’s Office of Administrative Hearings.
Metro, which faces a funding gap of $185 million in the next fiscal year, estimates it lost $40 million to fare evasion on buses and trains during the fiscal year that ended this summer. While some applauded Mr. Clarke’s new initiative, others found fault, arguing the problem has been inflated. There was also concern that transit officers would, as has happened in the past, disproportionately target Black riders and that the stops could result in excessive use of force. Clearly there should be oversight of how the policy is implemented, a task that will be made easier when transit police in the next few months are equipped with body cameras.
But Mr. Clarke is right to recognize the harm caused by nonpaying riders. Those who use the system and who do pay feel they are being taken advantage of, and rising fare evasion, The Post’s Justin George reported, adds to perceptions of disorder and disarray in the system. Indeed, some suburban Washington officials have said fare evasion is among the problems Metro needs to resolve before requesting subsidy increases.
It’s unclear how well the initiative will succeed; skeptics point to the millions of dollars in unpaid speeding and red-light camera tickets as evidence of the inherent weaknesses of a civil ticketing system. Metro says other fixes are underway, including testing prototypes to make station fare gates more difficult to jump. (Metro should have thought about this before replacing many of its fare gates with nearly identical models.) But Mr. Clarke’s new enforcement campaign has at least sent an important and overdue message to Metro riders: The rules are there to be followed. | 2022-10-10T19:35:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Metro General Manager Randy Clarke takes on fare evasion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/metro-fare-evasion-plan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/metro-fare-evasion-plan/ |
It’s a situation Republicans have confronted way too many times for Mitch McConnell’s liking over the past decade or so: A candidate running in a closely-watched, competitive race is suddenly enmeshed in a personal scandal late in the campaign. This time, it’s Herschel Walker. And as always, the question is: Will it matter?
A more apt question is will it matter enough.
It’s tempting to say these things no longer matter at all, especially after Donald Trump still won the presidency in 2016 despite the “Access Hollywood” tape. Trump was initially left for dead by many in his party, but then he pulled the mother of all political shockers.
Trump recently contended that the electorate’s view of personal moral failings has shifted so substantially that Walker’s personal problems aren’t the dealbreaker they once were — at least before Walker was accused of paying for an abortion.
That might still be true. But a look at recent history suggests these things have almost always mattered at least somewhat. Just how much depends on a whole host of variables, including:
what the alleged offense is
how vital the election is/whether it’s federal
when the alleged offense occurred/was revealed
how people felt about the politician before that
Perhaps the most clear-cut recent example of a scandal instantly and unambiguously sinking a politician was Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.). Before his comments about “legitimate rape” in August 2012, he had led Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) in the seven most recent polls of their race. But within days of the remark, the very same pollsters showed McCaskill overtaking him. And her ultimate 16-point margin of victory was bigger than in any of the polls.
Late that same election cycle, Indiana GOP Senate candidate Richard Mourdock decided to offer his own thoughts on pregnancy resulting from rape. He said that when it happens, it’s “something that God intended.” The race had been polling tight before those Oct. 23 comments, but Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) quickly overtook Mourdock and won by six points.
Given the GOP won Missouri and Indiana by nine and 10 points, respectively, in the presidential race that year, there’s little doubt that these comments inflicted substantial damage.
The other key example of a controversy apparently costing the GOP a Senate seat is the 2017 Alabama Senate race. This time, though, the scandal concerned the candidate’s personal conduct: The Washington Post reported that GOP candidate Roy Moore had pursued teenage girls decades earlier while he was in his 30s — including two who cited sexual abuse. Moore’s Democratic opponent, Doug Jones, hadn’t led in any polls of the race to that point, but suddenly a Fox News poll showed him up eight points, and a Washington Post-Schar School poll showed him up three. Jones won by 1.5 points — in deep-red Alabama.
Some other examples are a little more difficult to parse, but carry some lessons.
In 2007, Sen. David Vitter’s (R-La.) prostitution scandal didn’t appear to have much political impact; a poll conducted the next month showed two-thirds of Louisianans still approved of him. And he was reelected three years later by a whopping 19 points. But he did ultimately lose a 2015 governor’s race in which the prostitution issue was raised extensively — again, in a heavily red state.
South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford (R) was revealed to have had an extramarital affair in 2009, and there were some signs of voters souring on him a bit (one poll showed 50 percent wanted him to resign). But he opted to ride out his term and maintained a strong approval rating. He was also elected to Congress just four years after the scandal broke — albeit by only nine points in a district Mitt Romney had carried by 18 points the year before.
Perhaps the most analogous situation to Walker’s is the one Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.) found himself in, at the tail end of the 2012 campaign. DesJarlais was revealed to have urged a mistress to have an abortion — among other messy problems. As you might have heard, DesJarlais is still in Congress a decade later. But there are real signs that it hurt; his margin of victory that year was just 12 points, despite Romney carrying the heavily conservative district by 32 points the same day. And DesJarlais won his primary two years later by just 38 votes.
Indeed, if DesJarlais had been dealing with an electorate like the others on this list, it’s quite possible he would’ve lost.
The final key example we’ll cite is one my colleague Paul Kane broached this weekend. Democrat Cal Cunningham, like Walker, was someone his party was counting on to help it retake the Senate in 2020. Then he was revealed to have engaged in an extramarital affair. The impact here is less obvious — Kane notes that Cunningham led both before and after the disclosure in nearly every poll — but his lead narrowed to the point where it was anyone’s ballgame on Election Day. And Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) was reelected by two points.
Why did that apparently have less impact? As the Sanford and Vitter examples suggest, it’s likely in part because of the perceived severity of the offense — an affair versus advocating an abortion or expressing extreme views on rape and pregnancy. (Sanford and Vitter also likely benefited from not having to face voters until years later.) It was also a federal race in which voters might be more concerned about losing 1 of 100 votes for their preferred side.
Both of these factors also likely accrued to Trump’s benefit — the importance of the presidency and Trump’s conduct being about what he argued was mere “locker room talk.”
Walker’s situation presents a whole host of variables that make it difficult to directly compare.
The details are similar to what happened with DesJarlais: Both men espoused strongly antiabortion views; this time, too, the alleged abortion is also merely the latest in a series of ugly personal revelations about the candidate’s personal life. (For Walker, this includes reports about his having multiple children with different women he had not previously spoken about publicly.) Walker is also an obviously bad candidate, even aside from his personal issues — giving incoherent answers in interviews, and previewing his performance at an upcoming debate by saying, “I’m not that smart” and predicting his opponent would “embarrass” him. It’s possible that the fallout from this latest scandal could be a death-by-a-thousand-cuts-type situation.
But the evidence of the alleged abortion is less cut-and-dried — in DeJarlais’s case, there was a transcript of the congressman talking about the abortion — and Walker had already managed to remain competitive despite the previous revelations. (Walker denies paying for the abortion.) His race is also arguably more pivotal to control of the Senate than Akin’s and Mourdock’s races were in 2012, when Democrats went into Election Day with a six-seat majority. And Walker surely benefits from goodwill left over from his time as a Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Georgia.
The question seems to be less about Walker suffering the same kind of collapse as Akin and Mourdock and more about whether it costs him enough to lose an already tight race, ala Cunningham.
Of course, unlike in the pre-Trump era, Republicans now appear more willing to tolerate candidates behaving immorally than Democrats — if they even believe the incidents happened the first place.
Analysis: Welcome home, Marjorie Taylor Greene
8:27 PMNoted: In Maryland, the GOP marginalizes itself | 2022-10-10T21:50:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Todd Akin and Roy Moore can tell us about Herschel Walker - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/herschel-walker-scandal-impact/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/10/herschel-walker-scandal-impact/ |
A woman holds a portrait of Mahsa Amini as people participate in a rally in support of Iranian women, in Paris on Sunday. This demonstration takes place following the deaths of Mahsa Amini, who died while in police custody after being detained by Iran's morality police, and Hadis Najafi, who was shot during a protest in Iran. (Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Sixteen-year-old Sarina Esmaeilzadeh loved to share her life with the world online. On her video blog, the charismatic teen sang, danced, cooked, did her makeup, and celebrated the end of exams. On Sept. 22, Esmaeilzadeh went to join the protests sweeping the country and was beaten to death by Iranian security forces, rights groups say.
Esmaeilzadeh “died after being severely beaten in the head with batons,” according to Amnesty International, which reported her death Sept. 30 as one of at least 52 people killed by security forces up to Sept. 25, an account later corroborated by other rights groups.
On her blog, Esmaeilzadeh would occasionally lament the discrimination women faced in Iran. Teenagers “need freedom” to live a good life, she said in a video posted May 22. But she couldn’t, she said, “because of some of the restrictions that are specifically put on women,” such as the mandatory hijab and being barred from sports stadiums. Iranians could expect “nothing else” from the government except welfare handouts, she said.
“It’s no longer 20 years ago when apart from ourselves we hadn’t seen any other teenager,” Esmaeilzadeh, dressed in a colorful shirt of cartoon prints, told the camera. “And it’s only natural that as a human you would look toward the better option.”
Esmaeilzadeh’s case is eerily similar to that of 16-year-old Nika Shakarami, who also died during protests last month. Her family alleges she was killed by security forces after burning a hijab, while Iranian authorities claim she fell off a roof. Shakarami’s death, and the apparent attempts to cover it up and intimidate her family, fueled further outrage.
It was the unexplained death of another young woman, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, in the custody of Iran’s morality police that first sparked the nationwide protests in mid-September. Despite a violent crackdown and internet shutdowns, the popular unrest has continued, posing the greatest challenge to Iran’s clerical leaders in several years.
“I can see that the protests have spread further after the killings increased, especially with the killing of Nika and Sarina,” Negin, a 36-year-old art teacher at a Tehran high school who has joined protests, told The Washington Post. She spoke on the condition that only her first name be used to protect her security.
Negin said one of her male relatives had initially dismissed the protests as “a bunch of spoiled kids making a mess.” But he was very saddened by Esmaeilzadeh’s death, which he compared to Iran losing a great poet.
Iranian censorship and reporting restrictions make casualty counts difficult to verify, but rights groups have identified more than two dozen children who have been killed in demonstrations. Many of the minors lived in long-marginalized areas of Iran, including Kurdistan and Baluchistan provinces, where the state’s crackdown has been most severe.
Esmaeilzadeh reportedly went to protest Sept. 22 with several friends after class. She did not return that night.
Reports of Esmaeilzadeh’s death and videos from her blog soon began to circulate online. One video of the teen singing a song by the Irish musician Hozier reached the singer on Friday, he said.
“We talk about freedoms with no understanding of what it means to pay the ultimate price in fighting for it,” Hozier tweeted. “This brave girl was only 16 years in the world…”
Under pressure, Iranian authorities said Friday that the teen died by suicide by jumping from a five-story building. State TV also aired an interview with Esmaeilzadeh’s mother, who said her daughter had once tried to kill herself using pills. She confirmed the official cause of death.
But Iran has a long history of forcing confessions and airing them on state TV, according to rights groups. Shakarami’s mother said her family was pressured to make false statements about her daughter’s death.
State TV was later briefly hacked Saturday by a group calling itself “Adalat Ali,” or Ali’s Justice. The hackers interrupted a news bulletin with slogans in support of the protests and pictures of slain demonstrators, including Esmaeilzadeh.
“The main core of this revolution is Sarina and her generation,” said Negin. “A group which is fully aware of their rights, is in touch with the world and knows really well what they are deprived of … They don’t have the fears of [my] generation.” | 2022-10-10T21:54:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Death of Iranian teenager Sarina Esmaeilzadeh galvanizes protesters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/iran-protests-sarina-esmaeilzadeh-hijab/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/10/iran-protests-sarina-esmaeilzadeh-hijab/ |
‘PGA Tour 2K23’ features Tiger Woods, lacks memorable courses
In the two years since the release of “PGA Tour 2K21,” the team at HB Studios has not been idle. In that time, the Canadian developers have crammed a host of new features into their golf video game series, spanning from new shot types to new modes. At the moment, publisher 2K’s golf franchise is the gold standard golf sim on the market. Heck, Tiger Woods being emblazoned on the game’s cover should serve as an emphatic statement that this series, and not the former EA franchise that bore his name, wears the crown.
The question, however, is whether the PGA Tour 2K series can differentiate itself enough to remain atop the golf sim leaderboard when EA rejuvenates its golf franchise, “EA Sports PGA Tour,” in the coming year. With “2K23,” which releases Oct. 11, HB Studios fires the first shot, and it’s a fine one. It’s a long, serviceable drive into the center of the fairway. If this was your shot, you’d be happy with it every time — but you’d also be hard-pressed to remember one over the other. And that is “2K23’s” biggest shortcoming: It is a very good game, and does a great job capturing golf’s feel. It just doesn’t feel very distinguished. Even as the only major golf sim on the market, the game feels serviceable but not essential.
This is perhaps highlighted best by the tournament series featured in “PGA Tour 2K23”: the FedEx Cup. Golf enthusiasts will bluntly tell you no one really cares about the FedEx Cup, certainly not in the way golfers care about the Masters Tournament or the Open Championship. Those are the sport’s true majors — and you can’t play either in “PGA Tour 2K23.”
There’s no Augusta. No Pebble Beach. No St. Andrews. The courses found in “2K23” are all lovely, but TPC Boston is not particularly memorable compared to some of the sport’s most hallowed grounds. And so, while the career mode allows players to fine-tune their golfer and their equipment in extremely satisfying and granular ways, it lacks the luster of the sport’s premier events.
“PGA Tour 2K23” does add some new courses to its TPC-centered offerings, but even these seem to highlight the high-profile absences. All I can think of when I look at one of the three added courses, the South Course in Wilmington, Del., is the line from the “Wayne’s World” movie: “Hi, I’m in Delaware.” There is little that quickens the pulse about the course — or its home state, unless you’re looking to incorporate a company.
Given licensing agreements, no one will be playing Augusta or the Old Course or compete in one of golf’s four majors until EA brings back its golf line in 2023. (Its last installment was in 2015). So it’s best not to dwell on what’s missing and focus on what is on offer with “PGA Tour 2K23” — specifically, a fantastic engine that perfectly captures the feel of a golf shot. That is the defining characteristic of HB Studio’s games. But will that provide enough satisfaction when 2K once again faces real competition in the golf sim market?
It is, for certain, enjoyable in the meantime. With “PGA Tour 2K23,” players can craft a shot for nearly any situation, adjusting the loft, spin or speed. Need to carve around that dogleg to the left? Use the analog stick to shape the perfect draw. Trying to avoid a low-hanging limb? Punch it under the branches instead, a new addition this year. If players want to tune their game even more, they can utilize a skill tree to over-index on certain attributes, like shot distance, to enhance their strengths or help mitigate their weaknesses. I’ve been focusing on my short game since putting remains brutally challenging in the 2K series.
There is an array of other new features as well, including a Top Golf mode where players can virtually participate in the popular gamified driving range. Here too though, the addition actually highlights what “2K23” is lacking.
For those familiar with Top Golf, where you score points by hitting balls at different targets, the mode in “2K23” plays pretty much exactly as you’d imagine, which is to say, it’s not exactly a highlight. I can easily play Top Golf at one of their venues in real life. I won’t be walking onto the front nine at Pebble Beach anytime soon. Lacking the ability to do so virtually in an otherwise good golf game — moreover, the only PGA game on the market for the moment — is disappointing. Top Golf is not a salve for that particular itch.
In ‘Madden 23,’ filler clutters an otherwise improved game
Golf games have not evolved much over the years, and while “2K23” is definitely better than its predecessor, it’s not exactly by leaps and bounds. As noted when we reviewed “PGA Tour 2K21,” the game is good but does not really distinguish itself in any particular way (perhaps with the exception of its challenge on the greens). There is “more” to find in this release, but there’s not much that will drop your jaw. You can play as celebrity athletes like Michael Jordan or Steph Curry now. Neat. (Honestly, if they’re throwing in basketball players, it would be better if they added Charles Barkley and the crime against humanity that is his golf swing.) On the PGA Tour, you can earn bonuses by building a rivalry with an existing pro. Okay, sure. (Somewhat interestingly — to those following the PGA Tour’s heated battle for players with the Saudi Arabia-backed LIV Golf — you can play with and against Bubba Watson and Harold Varner III, who both jumped over to LIV Golf.)
While “PGA Tour 2K23” delivers on the feel of a golf shot, it underwhelms when it comes to providing a feel for a major tournament or even dramatic moments. The broadcast crew is flat and often delivers inaccurate commentary. One putt was applauded by one commentator as it went sailing some 25 feet past the hole. That’s not a commendable putt, that’s a disaster. The presentation of the 2K PGA series has always paled in comparison to EA’s old offerings. “2K23” does not close that gap, even with its new bells and whistles.
At its core, “PGA Tour 2K23” remains a good, solid golf game that has benefited greatly from a lack of competition. I’m not too bothered by not being able to play St. Andrews at the moment because I simply don’t have that option unless I want to dig out “Rory McIlroy PGA Tour” on PS4. But when EA returns to the field, will the most enjoyable parts of “2K23” still hold up? Or will the appeal of those courses I badly miss pull me back to EA? | 2022-10-10T22:38:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | PGA Tour 2K23 review: You get Tiger Woods, but not memorable courses - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/reviews/pga-tour-2k23-review-tiger-woods/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/reviews/pga-tour-2k23-review-tiger-woods/ |
Charlottesville museum hoping to melt toppled Lee statue must say where it is
A statue of Confederate general Robert E Lee is lifted off its pedestal in Market Street Park in Charlottesville, on July 10, 2021. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
A Charlottesville museum that wants to melt down one of the city’s toppled Confederate statues must tell lawyers who are suing to stop that plan where the monument is located, a judge ruled Monday, setting the stage for yet another trial over the sculpture’s fate.
Local activists had raised security concerns regarding the bronze statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, which had served as the focal point of the deadly Unite the Right rally in 2017 and had been the subject of a lengthy legal battle over whether it could be taken down.
Lawsuit seeks to stop Charlottesville Lee statue from being melted down
Since then, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center won a bid to take over the statue from Charlottesville and “disassembled” the monument after receiving it from the city. It is now in storage in an undisclosed location.
The ruling from Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Paul M. Peatross Jr. means that the museum’s leaders must reveal to plaintiffs’ lawyers where exactly the Lee statue is located and must allow those lawyers and any expert witnesses to inspect it.
The plaintiffs suing the city over the statue’s future are the Trevilian Station Battlefield Foundation, which runs a Civil War battlefield in Louisa County, Va., and the Ratcliffe Foundation, which manages a museum in Russell County, Va., linked to a Confederate general.
Charlottesville statue to be melted down by local history museum
Both entities had submitted bids to take over the Lee statue from the city of Charlottesville but lost to the proposal from the Jefferson School. The foundations’ legal team includes Jock Yellott, who was one of several plaintiffs who sued in 2017 to stop the city from taking down the Lee statue to begin with.
“This is not like the secret recipe for Colonel Sanders’ Chicken or somebody’s bank account number,” Yellott said in an emailed statement. “The whereabouts and condition of the Lee monument is a matter of public interest.”
The Jefferson School had asked the judge to require anyone receiving information about the statue’s location to sign a declaration saying they would keep that information private. Peatross’s ruling included no such requirements, but the plaintiffs’ legal team could still be held in contempt of court if they do go public.
5 years after deadly rally, Charlottesville wants to tell its own story
Among those who could be allowed to see the statue are Yellott and “a nationally renowned expert in bronze sculpture repair and restoration” whom Yellott declined to name Monday afternoon.
Christopher R. Tate, a lawyer for the museum, said he was confident that the court’s orders will be followed. “All we want is for everybody to be safe,” he told reporters following the ruling.
Peatross had previously removed the Jefferson School as a defendant, but it remains a party to the suit. Its director, Andrea Douglas, was deposed by the plaintiffs earlier this summer.
On Monday, she expressed confidence in the case’s outcome.
“We are making significant strides towards the proper outcome,” Douglas said. “Charlottesville made a decision about what it wants to do with its statues and we are willing to go through every single one of those processes to make sure that is the outcome that is required.”
Peatross also denied two requests that would have circumvented a trial. The bench trial is set for Feb. 1. | 2022-10-10T22:42:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Charlottesville museum must reveal location of toppled Confederate statue - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/charlottesville-lee-statue-lawsuit-location/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/charlottesville-lee-statue-lawsuit-location/ |
In D.C., where disenfranchisement is personal, they soon will
The Emery Heights Community Center in Ward 4 on the first day of in-person early voting in D.C. (Vanessa G. Sanchez/The Washington Post)
Washington, D.C. — the disenfranchised capital of the nation, where residents and U.S. citizens still don’t have a vote in Congress — is trying to change that. At least, on a local level.
“The right to vote is the right to belong in the community you call home,” said D.C. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6). “Our noncitizen neighbors, many of whom have lived, worked and raised families in the District for decades, deserve to have a stake in their government and determine their own leaders — just as we all do.”
D.C. Council passes bill allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections
This was actually how our nation of immigrants used to work — mostly.
Let’s start with the beginning, because the “We The People” neck tattoo crowd that objects so vociferously to noncitizen voting rights, likes that so much.
“State lawmakers offered the franchise as an incentive for white, male, Europeans of working age to migrate,” wrote Allen H. Kennedy, a lecturer in public policy at the College of William & Mary, in his paper “Voters in a Foreign Land: Alien Suffrage in the United States, 1704-1926.”
They called for deporting immigrants and a 21-year naturalization period — along with mandatory Bible reading in schools and the elimination of all Catholics from public office. This coincided with the end of most “alien suffrage”, as noncitizen voting was called, in America by 1850.
And we allowed some noncitizens voting rights again, thanks to “territorial expansion, demands for cheap labor, urbanization, racism, and sexism, alien suffrage expanded in the mid-to-late nineteenth century, peaking a century after the nation’s founding,” Kennedy wrote.
While the 14th amendment gave Black people citizenship, it took the 15th amendment two years later to try to ensure “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
After World War I inflamed our xenophobia and gasp — women were given the right to vote in 1918 — the White, male folks in charge again became nervous. U.S. citizenship was made a voting requirement across the nation by 1926.
So D.C. was like, “What state constitution?” and gave it a try — a few tries, actually, because it failed in previous years. But this time, the bill passed a first vote before the council last week and has one more vote to clear before it becomes law.
We have more than 50,000 noncitizens living in the city, according to the Migration Policy Institute. That includes refugees we’ve absorbed who have become part of the fabric of the District as they wait for citizenship or reside as permanent citizens, or just live. But it also includes thousands of diplomats and educators who may own homes, send their kids to school and otherwise participate in our city as U.S. citizens do for the years they are here. The migrants who’ve been bussed here from Texas and Florida can also vote, as long as they’ve lived in D.C. for 30 days.
The only frightening part of this proposal is what it has elicited from detractors:
“For years, democrats screamed about foreign influence in US elections — for example, Russia, Russia, Russia. Now, they are embracing it. Nuts,” another complained.
And: “This is what Democrats aspire to do in all fifty states if given the chance,” tweeted Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).
Funny, coming after supporters of former president Trump actually did try to steal an election, right?
There is no move anywhere to grant noncitizens the right to vote for Congress or the president and it is not a nationwide plot. They are voting on local issues, people. Parks, traffic, wages, housing. | 2022-10-10T23:22:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. sees statehood struggle reflected in push for noncitizen rights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/dc-noncitizen-voting-rights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/dc-noncitizen-voting-rights/ |
Pr. George’s curfew crackdown ending Wednesday; 4 violations issued
It’s unclear whether enforcement of the curfew announced on Labor Day will be extended
Teenagers enter the Lanham Skate Center just before 10 p.m. on the first weekend a curfew in Prince George's County was starting to be enforced. (Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
Enforcement of the juvenile curfew in Prince George’s County is set to end on Wednesday with officials issuing four violations to teens in the past month. It’s unclear whether County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D) will extend enforcement of the curfew — announced on Labor Day in a bid to address one of the most violent months in county history — but the move has remained a point of tension as the community continues to discuss how to effectively address concerns about an increase in certain crimes.
The last weekend of the curfew, which applies to children under 17, came and went with no violations.
The first three violations involved teens stopped for a traffic violation, gunfire and being caught outside during curfew hours, county officials said. In each incident, a first offense curfew warning letter was given. The most recent curfew warning was issued early Thursday morning. At about 1:25 a.m., a 14-year-old boy was charged with driving without a license after police responded to a report of a car being driven recklessly behind a building on Powder Mill Road, the department said. Police released the teen to his mother, whose car he was driving without permission, according to the department.
The hours of the curfew are from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11:59 p.m. to 5 a.m. Friday and Saturday. The county executive’s office will provide an update on next steps before curfew enforcement ends, Gina Ford, communications director for Alsobrooks, said Monday.
During its four-week span, residents have expressed mixed reactions toward its enforcement, with some fully backing the curfew and others weary of its effectiveness.
What to know about the Prince George’s County juvenile curfew
“I don’t think a curfew is the answer,” said Monique Anderson-Walker, a former Prince George’s County Council member and Maryland lieutenant governor candidate. She spoke to The Washington Post at a community town hall Thursday at the Prince George’s Sports and Learning Complex. “I think the lazy way to look at addressing things is just saying ‘lock everybody up at home.’ ”
Data collected from Prince George’s County shows that violent crimes this summer grew to one of its highest points in recent years. During the month of August, there were 24 homicides in the county, the highest in recent decades, the department said.
“The curfew was put together because we were in such a dire situation,” Prince George’s Deputy Chief James McCreary said at the town hall. “We are seeing a significant reduction in the violence that we saw in August.”
The county reported zero homicides during curfew hours in the first three weeks of its enforcement between Sept. 9 to 26. Carjackings also went down from eight to four during curfew hours between those dates.
It’s unclear from the county’s data, however, if the curfew is directly responsible for reduced crime. Crime often dips at this time of year before experiencing another increase leading into the holiday season, according to a review of data since 2017 by The Post.
McCreary said that in addition to the curfew, the department dedicated a “significant amount” of overtime resources in recent weeks. School resource officers conducted truancy sweeps to ensure youth were in school during daytime hours and not getting into trouble, he said.
When county officials announced why they were enforcing the curfew law that has been on the books since 1995, County Police Chief Malik Aziz and Alsobrooks voiced frustration with what they called a “catch and release” problem in which juveniles are arrested and charged and not kept detained. At Thursday’s town hall, however, Prince George’s Circuit Court Judge Michael R. Pearson said the issues surrounding the matter are more complex.
Pearson, who has been overseeing juvenile matters in the court since last month, discussed the “slow-moving” nature of the law and reminded attendees about current laws related to juveniles in the criminal justice system.
Pearson noted that Maryland saw “sweeping and drastic change” in juvenile law after the murder of George Floyd, a Minneapolis Black man who died under the knee of a police officer in 2020. Part of that sweeping change for Maryland juveniles involves probation sentences.
For youth who have been adjudicated and placed on probation, the maximum time for probation cannot exceed six months for a misdemeanor and 12 months for a felony, Pearson said.
The court is allowed to extend probation sentences in three-month increments for violent crimes. Depending on a juvenile’s offense, juveniles are not permitted to be detained until a court hearing, meaning a juvenile accused of a crime could be free in communities for days before seeing a judge, according to Pearson.
Juvenile offenders simply cannot be treated as adults, he reminded attendees.
Real estate agent Sherman Hardy, who ran for Prince George’s County executive this year, hosted the event, telling The Post that he hopes the town hall becomes one of many conversations to help the community find solutions beyond the curfew. Community leaders, public safety officials and mental health professionals who attended the event brainstormed ways to help youth before problems arise. They discussed the development of community gardens, making therapy accessible to families and finding ways for youth to learn discipline through activities such as boxing.
“As adults, we are supposed to be shaping and molding our future to be bright,” Hardy told attendees. | 2022-10-10T23:22:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pr. George’s curfew enforcement scheduled to end Wednesday, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/prince-georges-curfew-enforcement-end/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/prince-georges-curfew-enforcement-end/ |
Seth McCoard of Townshend, Vt., gets a coronavirus booster shot in September. (Kristopher Radder/The Brattleboro Reformer via AP)
Will there be an autumn or winter wave of covid? Right now, in the United States, daily cases and deaths are gradually declining off a still-high plateau. On the horizon, however, there are worrisome signals of a possible new wave. It is not too soon to grab protection with the bivalent booster.
Europe is a telltale indicator. For the past few weeks, cases among people 65 years and older have been on the rise in 19 of the 26 countries reporting data to the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control. Fifteen countries in the group reported rising hospitalizations. Germany, France and Italy have all seen growing caseloads, which often portend a similar jump in the United States a few weeks later. The European center said the main driver appears to be people gathering together inside after summer’s end. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the World Health Organization director general, noted another factor: “Most countries no longer have measures in place to limit the spread of the virus.”
New variants are not yet propelling a wave, but there are new omicron subvariants. They appear to have genetic changes that confer the ability to evade human immunity from vaccines or previous infection. In a paper not yet peer-reviewed, immunologist Yunlong Cao and colleagues at Peking University warned that the new variants mean vaccine boosters and previous infection “may not provide sufficiently broad protection” against the mutated variants and could make existing antibody drugs useless. This could be worrisome if the variant splinters take hold in the population; so far, they have not in the United States, where the older variants BA.5 and BA4.6 still make up 92.8 percent of cases, according to data and modeling by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A wall of immunity, created by the substantial amount of previous infection, might be helping, too.
The new bivalent boosters for those 12 and older are free, widely available and aimed at the prevalent variants. Yet the U.S. public has shrugged. A survey in September by the Kaiser Family Foundation found half of adults had heard “a little” or “nothing at all” about the booster. The Post reports that just over 11 million Americans — or about 4 percent of those eligible — have received a booster shot.
Such hesitancy stems in part from destructive misinformation spread by anti-vaccine campaigns. In recent days, such bad information came from an unexpected source. Florida’s surgeon general, Joseph A. Ladapo, on Friday issued a news release and an “analysis” purporting to show a sizable risk of cardiac-related death among men ages 18 to 39 within 28 days of getting the mRNA booster. Dr. Ladapo claimed risks of the vaccine outweigh the benefits. Researchers soon exposed the “analysis” to be shoddy, based on an extremely small sample, with poor methods, not peer-reviewed, and lacking a named author. But the damage had been done; the message made headlines and spread across social media. That Florida is urging people not to get a potentially lifesaving booster is disgraceful — and deeply irresponsible. | 2022-10-11T00:14:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Get a coronavirus booster shot before a winter wave arrives - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/covid-winter-wave-bivalent-booster-shot/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/covid-winter-wave-bivalent-booster-shot/ |
Florida Senate candidates Marco Rubio (R), the incumbent, and Rep. Val Demings (D). (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post and Thomas Simonetti for The Washington Post)
On the cover of Time magazine, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) in 2013 was billed as “The Republican Savior” — a 41-year-old conservative Cuban American wunderkind who was “the new voice of the GOP.” Six years ago, he ran for the Republican presidential nomination.
The golden luster has decidedly faded since then. These days, Rubio is a 51-year-old career politician who appears locked on reelection autopilot. He holds few campaign events. He flip-flops (on immigration, on Donald Trump) and chronically misses Senate votes, seeming unconcerned about the possibility of giving his opponents weapons to use against him.
A sense of entitlement runs deep in career politicians. And maybe Florida’s increasingly Republican leanings will be enough to let Rubio coast to victory in November. Recent polling favors him; the FiveThirtyEight average pegging him with a 4.6-percentage-point lead includes polls with Rubio leads of up to 7 points and as few as 2.
Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) would like to focus on the polls within the margin of error. It is difficult to imagine a Democratic challenger with a résumé better suited to unseating Rubio. She’s a Black, centrist, law-and-order politician, with 27 years in law enforcement, four of them as Orlando police chief. During that time, the city’s violent-crime rate dropped 40 percent. Did I mention she drives a red Harley?
Demings wields her law-enforcement experience as a different kind of police shield: It deflects the soft-on-crime attacks that Republicans trot out every election cycle. Rubio has, of course, accused Demings of wanting to “defund the police,” to which she responds, “I am the police.” And she points out that while “Rubio was home in his bed sleeping,” she was confronting real-world dangers. Her background also makes it easier to fend off jabs about gun reform.
Joe Biden was impressed enough by her that he put Demings, elected to the House in 2016, on his short list for vice president. Many Americans got to know her as one of the House managers of Trump’s first impeachment.
Rubio has plenty of advantages in this race. He is a household name from voter-rich Miami-Dade County; he’s a Republican running in a midterm election, which typically favors the party out of power; and, well, this is ever-redder Florida.
“The math gets hard,” Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist who ran the 2008 Obama-Biden campaign in Florida, told me. “But it’s not impossible.”
What could make it possible? There are lots of signs. For one, she held a $12 million fundraising lead over Rubio as of Sept. 2. The website Florida Politics notes that even if Rubio polls ahead of Demings, “a plurality of voters say he’s doing a bad job as Senator.”
And then there’s the campaigning by the “Chief,” as her staff calls her. Demings has combined old-school handshaking appearances with TikTok savvy. She has crisscrossed the state and plastered screens with ads hammering Rubio’s weaknesses. She has energized Black voters and is working the Latino vote — long neglected by the party.
Though plenty of Floridians are devoted to Trump and his acolytes, certainly some have soured on the former president. That could sap support for the senator who once labeled Trump a “con man” and accused him of spending “his entire career sticking it to the little guy,” but is now a die-hard defender.
Rubio has showed little interest in investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, invasion of the U.S. Capitol. And, early on, Rubio, vice chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence, dismissed Trump’s mishandling of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago as a “storage” issue.
Then there’s abortion. Rubio has said that he personally favors banning abortion with no exceptions for rape or incest, but would accommodate such exceptions, if necessary, because he realizes that others don’t share his views. He signed on to the ill-fated legislation Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) sponsored last month to federally ban abortion in most cases after 15 weeks.
Demings’s ads have gone after Rubio on abortion. “I know something about fighting crime, Sen. Rubio,” she says in one. “Rape is a crime. Incest is a crime. Abortion is not.” Rubio has countered by accusing her of supporting abortion “up to birth”; Demings has said she supports some restrictions after a fetus becomes viable.
While Rubio seems focused on waging a culture-war campaign, Demings tends toward bread-and-butter issues: She touts her votes on reducing inflation, lowering prescription drug prices, capping costs for diabetes medication and repairing infrastructure — initiatives that Rubio has voted against.
In an appearance on “The View” last year, Demings vowed to “talk to people who look like me and people who don’t look like me about the things that they care about.” Floridians might like what they hear — if they’re listening. | 2022-10-11T00:14:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How Val Demings could disrupt Marco Rubio’s glide to reelection - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/demings-challenges-rubio-florida/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/demings-challenges-rubio-florida/ |
The dream is not to waste our investment in young immigrants
Ivania Castillo, second from right, a board member of CASA in Prince William County, waves a flag on June 18, 2020, outside the Supreme Court in support of “dreamers.” (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Catherine Rampell’s excellent Oct. 7 op-ed, “Congress must save ‘dreamers’ — now,” missed only one point: the investment we have made in the “dreamers,” young people who were brought to the United States without documentation. And for those educated in Maryland, that investment represents a large part of my taxes. I don’t begrudge the expenditure, as I have no children educated here; that was all done in Canada.
I suppose we might have difficulty in using asylum as a means of granting dreamers a path to citizenship given President Donald Trump’s messing about with asylum agreements; regardless, common sense should tell Congress that the talents we have helped develop would likely be wasted in the lands from which their parents brought them, and it is not as if we have an overabundance of talent here.
Dream Act? I guess the dream is that Congress might actually do something useful in this matter. For heaven’s sake, please retain their talents and their persons here in the only country they have really known.
Robert Blackshaw, Glenwood
Marc A. Thiessen’s Oct. 5 op-ed, “Immigration reform comes after securing our border,” blamed Biden administration policies for the unprecedented number of arrests at the U.S.-Mexico border, but there’s plenty of blame to go around. Moreover, Mr. Thiessen’s prescription — first secure the border — won’t work or sell. Ask former president Barack Obama, who initially believed that his administration’s record numbers of deportations and border enforcement buildup would pave the way for broad immigration reform. Instead, Congress and subsequently the Trump administration adopted politically symbolic goals for border enforcement, “no unlawful entries” and a wall.
In fact, the United States needs all the tools at its disposal — and more — to address the crises driving migrants to the border. Yet, as is well documented, the Trump administration systematically degraded most of these other tools and capacities — development, refugee resettlement, the asylum system and legal immigration.
If the United States needs workers and desperate people in flight want to work, as Mr. Thiessen correctly argued, then Congress should bestir itself and reform the legal immigration system. More legal migration opportunities will go a long way to disincentivizing irregular migration. Political stunts and posturing only make a bad situation worse. Enforcement and legal immigration reform go hand in hand.
Donald Kerwin, Alexandria
The writer is executive director of the Center for Migration Studies of New York.
Opinion|To stop inflation, we need to secure the border | 2022-10-11T00:14:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The dream is not to waste our investment in young immigrants - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/dream-is-not-waste-our-investment-young-immigrants/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/dream-is-not-waste-our-investment-young-immigrants/ |
Putin wanted to terrorize us. He only made us more determined to win.
By Iuliia Mendel
People react outside a partially destroyed office building after several Russian strikes hit the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Monday. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images)
I got a call from my cousin Oleksandra Mendel, who is 24. She left her home in Kherson village back when the Russians came and, since then, she’s been living with my grandmother in downtown Kyiv. She told me that she’d been heading home from the train station in a cab when she heard the whistling of a missile. It hit about a block away with a tremendous explosion — and was soon followed by a second one.
Despite the Kremlin’s efforts to terrorize our people, their reaction has been extraordinary. The citizens of Kyiv are scared, it’s true. You can’t not be scared. But at the same time, they haven’t given into hysteria. The German ambassador to Ukraine, who spent hours in bomb shelters on Monday, too, tweeted: “With hundreds of Kyivans in a shelter. I am amazed at the calm that prevails here while Russia is shelling playgrounds in the center of Kyiv.”
Monday’s attacks gave some of us flashbacks to when the war started back in February. But this time, the situation feels very different. While we can’t get used to the fact that someone is trying to kill us just because of who we are — no one could ever get used to that — now we know we can fight back. We understand that our enemy is doing this because he is desperate.
People are determined to go about their lives. When the invasion began, everything shut down. But today, many of the shops have stayed open. Grocery stores, coffee shops, even a beauty salon in my building — they all kept working.
He was right. The mood among civilians is that they want to put a stop to this terror — and the only way to do that is by stopping the war. Everything we have is under attack. Our loved ones have been killed, wounded and terrorized. Parts of our country have been occupied, subjected to lawlessness and state-orchestrated violence. Our very existence has been doubted and attacked. So people have good reason to be angry. They want all of this to stop. They are under incredible stress. But they are not hopeless or desperate. | 2022-10-11T00:14:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Putin wanted to terrorize us with Kyiv airstrikes. It didn't work. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/iuliia-mendel-putin-airstrikes-kyiv-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/iuliia-mendel-putin-airstrikes-kyiv-ukraine/ |
Maryland must save the Nice Bridge
Construction on the new Nice/Middleton Bridge in May across the Potomac near Newburg, Md. (Maryland Transportation Authority)
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s (R) lawyer admitted on Oct. 6 that Maryland intends to start demolition on Oct. 13 of the Historic Nice Bridge crossing the Potomac River between Maryland and Virginia. This is after Mr. Hogan first announced to fanfare that the new bridge under construction would have bicycle and pedestrian facilities, only to do an about-face when construction was set to begin. The new bridge design is unsafe for cyclists and prohibits the use by walkers and hikers even though it can connect the Potomac Heritage National Scenic Trail on both sides of the Potomac.
The Nice Bridge must not be destroyed, at least until the next governor of Maryland has an opportunity to study whether the bridge can be repurposed and become a world-class bicycle and pedestrian bridge for the enjoyment of present and future generations.
Once the Nice Bridge is destroyed there is no do-over. The great Republican President Theodore Roosevelt urged in 1907, “The one characteristic more essential than any other is foresight.” That foresight was also fortunately found in turning back attempts to eliminate bicycle and pedestrian lanes on the design of the Woodrow Wilson Bridge. We urgently need that vision once more for a historic bridge that can last generations.
David G. Brickley, Woodbridge
The writer is president of the Dahlgren Railroad Heritage Trail Association, a former member of the Virginia House of Delegates and former director of the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. | 2022-10-11T00:15:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Maryland must save the Nice Bridge - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/maryland-must-save-nice-bridge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/10/maryland-must-save-nice-bridge/ |
Both the nature and tempo of the war have changed in recent weeks, as Ukraine’s forces score victories on the ground and Russia retaliates as Putin is backed into a corner.
People remove debris from a damaged house after shelling in Sloviansk, Donetsk region, Ukraine, on Monday. (Andriy Andriyenko/AP)
In little more than a month, the war in Ukraine has turned abruptly from a grueling, largely static artillery battle expected to last into the winter, to a rapidly escalating, multilevel conflict that has challenged the strategies of the United States, Ukraine and Russia.
Russia’s launch of massive strikes on civilian infrastructure Monday in nearly a dozen Ukrainian cities far from the front lines brought shock and outrage. The strikes, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken described as “wave after wave of missiles” struck “children’s playgrounds and public parks,” left at least 14 killed and nearly 100 wounded, and cut electricity and water in much of the country.
“By launching missile attacks on civilians sleeping in their homes or rushing toward children going to schools, Russia has proven once again that it is a terrorist state that must be deterred in the strongest possible ways,” Ukraine’s United Nations Ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya said at the opening of a General Assembly session scheduled before the assault to promote world condemnation of Moscow.
The attacks were the latest of many head-spinning events — from Ukrainian victories on the ground to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat of nuclear weapons use — that have changed the nature and tempo of the war in recent weeks, and raised questions about whether the United States and its partners may have to move beyond the concept of helping Ukraine defend itself, and instead more forcefully facilitate a Ukrainian victory.
So far, the U.S. supply effort has been deliberative and process-oriented in the kinds of weapons it provides, and the speed at which it provides them, so as not to undercut its highest priority of avoiding a direct clash between Russia and the West. That strategy is likely to be part of the agenda at Tuesday’s emergency meeting of G7 leaders, and a gathering of NATO defense ministers later in the week.
U.S. officials continue to express caution about precipitous moves. “Turning points in war are usually points of danger,” said a senior Biden administration official, one of several U.S. and Ukrainian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss policy deliberations. “You can’t predict what’s around the corner.”
Russian leaders have cited their own turning point. Viktor Bondarev, head of the foreign affairs committee of Russia’s upper house of parliament wrote in a Telegram post on Monday that the strikes were the beginning of “a new phase” of what the Kremlin calls its “special military operation” in Ukraine, with more “resolute” action to come.
Putin, speaking early Monday to his security council, said the attacks were retaliation for what he called Ukrainian “terrorism,” including the blowing up over the weekend of the strategic Crimean Bridge that is a crucial logistics route for Russian occupying forces in southern Ukraine.
The bridge destruction, for which Ukraine has only indirectly claimed responsibility, came after a steady stream of Ukrainian gains that buoyed both Kyiv and its Western supporters. In a surprise counteroffensive begun in early September, Ukrainian forces recaptured more than 1,000 square miles of Russian-occupied territory in the north east, followed by other gains in the south.
The Ukrainian victories, along with persistent reports of poorly equipped and low-morale Russian soldiers who fled the onslaught, abandoning equipment and leaving behind their dead, brought public criticism of the conduct of the war from inside Russia, including from some senior Putin advisers. Within days, Putin had called for the military mobilization of up to 300,000 civilians to bolster his failing forces. The humiliation was compounded by a chaotic implementation and the fleeing of hundreds of thousands of military-aged men across neighboring borders.
In what was widely interpreted as a reference to nuclear weapons, Putin threatened to use “all means available” to defend Russian-occupied territory, even as he moved to annex four Ukrainian regions. “I want to remind you that our country also has various means of destruction … and when the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, to protect Russia and our people, we will certainly use all means at our disposal,” he said on Sept. 21. “This is not a bluff.”
The mobilization and nuclear threats, the senior administration official said, were “signs of two things: Putin does know how bad he’s doing. … That was a question mark before.”
“Two, it’s definitely a sign that he’s doubling down. That we’re not close to the end, and not close to negotiations. Those realities don’t give anyone any great comfort here,” the official said.
Rose Gottemoeller, a former senior State Department official for arms control and nonproliferation issues, and former deputy secretary general of NATO, said: “The use of nuclear weapons is a dead end. It shows the final failure of [Putin’s] policy if he’s somehow driven into that corner,” Gottemoeller said. “It’s the final throwing of the dice,” thinking that “somehow … everyone will panic and all of their supporters will force the Ukrainians to sue for peace … I don’t see that happening.”
With the Monday strikes inside Ukraine, Putin was clearly trying to reclaim the initiative, but also to bolster the image of a unified strategy and leadership. In his security council remarks, reported by Russian media, he said the missile attack had been fashioned and recommended by his “Defense Ministry, in accordance with the plan of the Russian General Staff.” He made particular reference to the role of Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, whose absence from public view in recent days had led to speculation that he had been fired.
For its part, Ukraine has long combined its profuse gratitude for Western weapons aid with demands for stepped up delivery of more, and more sophisticated, supplies. The counteroffensive on the ground brought calls for battle tanks to move into contested territory, which the United States and its allies have been reluctant to send. This week, Kyiv attached new urgency to sophisticated air defense systems.
A Ukrainian official, referring to a list provided by the senior military command, said Ukraine’s priority items include the Patriot surface to air missile system, MIM-23 Hawk missiles, attack drones and NASAMS (National Advance Surface-to-Air Missile Systems) as well as Israeli air defense systems.
Ukraine’s pleas found new resonance in some quarters of Washington after the Monday attacks, with senior Democrats, in particular, demanding that Biden move more quickly to supply Ukraine. “I am horrified by Russia’s depraved and desperate escalation against civilian infrastructure across Ukraine — including in Kyiv,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said in a statement. “I pledge to use all means at my disposal to accelerate support for the people of Ukraine and to starve Russia’s war machine.”
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), a former senior official at the CIA and the Pentagon, tweeted that the need for air defense “is urgent given the scale of these attacks. Providing these systems is a defensive — not escalatory — step, and our European friends need to step up along with us to get the Ukrainians what they need.”
But there was little initial sign that the administration intends to change the relatively lengthy approval process by which it decides what weapons to send to Ukraine, and when. The process includes a U.S. analysis, based on its own reporting of conditions on the battlefield, of what Ukraine needs, a senior U.S. defense official said, and “second, do we have that stuff?”
“Third, do they already know how to use it? If not, what’s our plan to train them? Fourth, how are they going to sustain the stuff? Keep it in the field? Maintain it? Repair it? Spare parts? … If we can’t do those things, who among our allies and partners can do it?” the defense official said.
Once those questions are answered, the request and recommendation is vetted for comment and concerns from other government departments with equities in the decision before going to the White House, where President Biden makes a final determination.
When decision is made, delivery can be made within days for equipment taken from U.S. defense stocks, months if extensive training for use and maintenance is required, or years if particular items need to be manufactured. For example, Biden approved sending the NASAMS air defense system early in the summer, and defense officials have said that two will be shipped this fall, once the systems are ready and training is complete.
An additional six NASAMS, announced by the Pentagon at the end of August, will take years to manufacture. Patriot systems are already in short supply within NATO, and usually travel with their own U.S. or NATO operating teams — a commitment the West is unlikely to make.
Israel, whose prime minister on Monday for the first time condemned Russia, over the missile attacks, has its own complicated relations with Moscow.
“We certainly understand that we are at a potential inflection point here in the war, on many levels,” the senior Biden administration official said. “That thinking is baked into [our] decision-making. … Ukraine has certainly done better and been more aggressive recently, and Putin is feeling the heat on the battlefield, at home, and overseas. There is no question that is a different set of conditions.”
“But we believe that these changes on the battlefield and in Russia have only validated even more our decision-making process,” the official said. | 2022-10-11T00:18:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine war at a turning point with rapid escalation of conflict - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/10/russia-ukraine-war-turning-point/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/10/russia-ukraine-war-turning-point/ |
Falls Church Mayor David Tarter (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
For nearly a decade, officials in Falls Church have worked to revive a decaying strip on a main road with an ambitious development project meant to include a little bit of everything: apartments, senior living, retail space and offices, all anchored by the city’s first movie theater in decades.
This tiny Northern Virginia suburb could be sealing the deal on that cinema with an unusual shot in the arm: Its own tax dollars.
City lawmakers are set to vote Tuesday on a deal that could grant as much as half a million dollars every year for the next three decades to the developer behind the Founders Row project. The pay-as-you-go arrangement would essentially reinvest tax revenue generated by the sale of movie tickets and concessions as a way to offset the cost and economic risk of bringing in the theater.
Although the deal was first designed nearly a decade ago, the plan has in recent weeks drawn criticism from the city’s planning commission. That volunteer body voted against recommending the agreement after some of its members questioned whether a movie theater is an appropriate use of city money.
“We usually provide tax incentives for public goods. We’d like to have a movie theater, but it’s not a public good,” planning commissioner Derek Hyra said at the Sept. 21 meeting. “It’s not a public high school. You have to pay to go there.”
But in this wealthy, deep-blue city of 15,000 — sandwiched between Fairfax and Arlington counties — proponents of the plan say such incentives are necessary to attract a business that might otherwise choose to locate in the city’s much larger, better-resourced neighbors.
“We’re trying to create a balanced community that has [the] sort of things that people want, and entertainment is something that’s important,” Falls Church Mayor David Tarter said. “Being able to walk to a movie theater is something that people in our community have asked for.”
The deal was originally inked about seven years ago between Falls Church and a business entity tied to Mill Creek Residential Trust, a developer based in Bethesda, and it has been transforming the site formerly home to a gas station and a convenience store.
Paragon Theaters, a small chain that also has cinemas in Florida, North Carolina and Fredericksburg, had been secured as the movie theater operator for the project and is expected to create a facility with seven or eight screens and between 750 and 850 seats.
After the coronavirus pandemic dealt a blow to the theater industry nationwide, the company amended its plans to offer a more modest 550 seats. That change — as well as another tweak to create an arcade area in the lobby — requires city lawmakers to vote again on the economic development deal.
The first $20,000 generated in tax revenue by the sale of movie tickets would stay in city coffers, but any money raised beyond that — up to $340,000 — would go back to the developer. A similar setup exists for food and drinks sold at the cinema: The first $10,000 generated in tax revenue from those items would go to Falls Church, while up to $150,000 beyond that would also go to the developer.
That plan is supposed to be in place for the next 30 years. If the theater makes $13 million in four consecutive fiscal years, the subsidies are eliminated.
Joe Muffler, the company’s senior managing director for development, said that the incentive was an innovative way to attract a movie house at a time that has been challenging for theaters nationwide.
“We’ve identified a creative solution to an extremely difficult market dynamic that creates a win-win situation for the City by bringing a unique amenity [and tax revenue generator] that the City otherwise would likely be unable to receive,” he wrote in a statement.
Tarter, the mayor, also noted that the movie theater would serve as a magnet for visitors and keep residents close to home. And all of those theatergoers might also spend their money at nearby shops and restaurants, generating more tax revenue for the city.
When it comes to economic development deals such as this one, “the devil is in the details,” he said. “You have to ensure you’re being wise with taxpayer money.”
Falls Church had inked a similar deal in 2008 to attract a BJ’s Wholesale store. To fill a location that would have otherwise probably gone to a car dealership, the city agreed to give $250,000 in annual tax relief to JBG Smith, a major regional developer that owns the property.
But for Hyra, who noted that a nearby attraction would be a plus to his children, ages 11 and 14, it was not worth eating into funds that could serve some sort of public infrastructure — parks, school facilities or even a pool.
If his children want to go to the movies, he said, he can take them to nearby Ballston, in Arlington. | 2022-10-11T00:36:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Falls Church movie theater deal could offer tax revenue as incentive - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/falls-church-movie-theater-incentive/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/falls-church-movie-theater-incentive/ |
Unions fight plan to privatize Western Maryland Hospital Center services
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan speaks to an audience during a forum at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester last week. (Cj Gunther/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Unions representing nurses and other health-care workers at Western Maryland Hospital Center are fighting what they say is Gov. Larry Hogan’s final chance to outsource care at the Hagerstown facility before he leaves office.
The powerful three-member Board of Public Works, which includes the governor, is scheduled Wednesday to vote on expediting contracts that would outsource key functions of the public, long-term-care hospital, which cares for patients with complex conditions who often have been turned away from private facilities.
Health department officials said staffing shortages due to the pandemic have made it difficult to keep the facility open at a time the costs of managing its aging infrastructure are projected to increase.
Contracts slated to come before Hogan (R), Comptroller Peter Franchot and Treasurer Dereck E. Davis, who are Democrats, on Wednesday would move core services provided at the hospital to other facilities, which union officials say ultimately will shutter Western Maryland Hospital Center.
The requests under consideration Wednesday ask bidders to submit proposals for skilled nursing, long-term acute care and brain injury services at a cost of $107 million to $128 million over five years. Patrick Moran, the president of AFSCME Council 3, which represents licensed practical nurses, direct-care aids, dietary staff, and maintenance and clerical staff, said it costs about $125 million over five years to operate the hospital.
The union represents about 120 of the hospital’s 200 employees, union officials said. It was not clear how many jobs would be impacted.
“It’s really an unfortunate and underhanded way to cut out a staple and jewel in the Hagerstown and Washington County area,” Moran said.
Mike Ricci, a spokesman for Hogan, who is term limited and cannot seek reelection, said transferring services from the chronic care hospitals to community providers, from 2022 to 2026, is part of the administration’s master plan.
“The state is in the process of implementing a public health facilities plan — released more than a year ago after extensive dialogue — to improve care and services for patients,” Ricci said in a statement.
Western Maryland Hospital Center is one of 11 facilities operated by the state health department, with a total of about 1,800 beds for psychiatric care, children and adolescents, those with developmental disabilities, and chronic care.
The hospital, which opened in 1957, serves adults with chronic, complex medical conditions and traumatic brain injuries, and it serves as a hospital of last resort when private providers are unwilling to admit patients because they are uninsured, undocumented or require a high level of care. The facility is licensed for 123 beds, but it only has enough funding to staff 55 beds safely.
The state health department previously explored privatizing or closing the hospital, but it abandoned those plans in 2016, according to news reports at the time.
Rosemary Wertz, the field coordinator for AFT Healthcare-Maryland, which represents registered nurses at WMHC, said all state hospitals have had staffing challenges for decades due in part to noncompetitive salaries, but she acknowledged that the pandemic and the increase in travel-nurse salaries have exacerbated the problem.
Chase Cook, a spokesman for the Maryland Department of Health, said the contracts would allow the state to move about 43 nursing-home and long-term acute-care patients to other facilities, in keeping with a 20-year plan the department submitted to the General Assembly last year.
The report rated the overall infrastructure at Western Maryland Hospital Center as poor, an outcome Cook blamed on underinvestment by previous administrations over 25 years. The state’s other chronic-care facility, Deer’s Head Hospital Center in Salisbury, is rated poor as well, according to the report.
“At the moment, MDH is focused on minimizing potential future major infrastructure failures at this hospital, given its age … which may result in the need for emergency actions regarding patient safety and could include emergency procurements; and ensure sufficient hospital staffing and service quality for patients,” Cook said in a statement.
Cook said the state would ultimately be responsible for the patients and their care.
Aruna Miller, the Democrat running for lieutenant governor on a ticket with Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore, said that if Democrats are elected, they would cancel contracts that may pass this week. Del. Brooke E. Lierman, the Democratic nominee running for comptroller, shared a statement in support of the public hospital.
“You can rest assured which side we’re going to be on as far as this is concerned,” Miller said in a virtual news conference organized by the unions. “We want to make sure that this hospital remains in public hands because there’s no reason for it to change.” | 2022-10-11T00:36:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Union fights Hogan plan to close Western Maryland Hospital Center - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/hogan-privatize-western-hospital/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/10/hogan-privatize-western-hospital/ |
The Capitals announced their opening night roster Monday. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Washington, which kept 14 forwards, seven defensemen and two goaltenders, made its final cuts Sunday by waiving forwards Axel Jonsson-Fjallby, Brett Leason and Henrik Borgstrom and defenseman Lucas Johansen. On Monday, Jonsson-Fjallby was claimed by the Winnipeg Jets and Leason by the Anaheim Ducks. Borgstrom and Johansen cleared waivers and were sent to the Hershey Bears, the Capitals’ American Hockey League affiliate.
McMichael had nine goals and nine assists in 68 regular season games then notched one assist in four postseason games. He appeared to be a lock to make the lineup at the start of training camp, but Protas’s showing might have pushed him out. Protas looked like a natural fit on the second line with Dylan Strome and Anthony Mantha in the final preseason game Saturday. McMichael, a 21-year-old who was a first-round pick in 2019, had a decent training camp but wasn’t as noticeable as Protas.
“I think he’s responsible. I think he’s smart. I think he uses his speed to defend,” Laviolette said. “ … Playing offense is the best defense, and maybe he can contribute to that.” | 2022-10-11T02:38:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Washington Capitals lose Axel Jonsson-Fjallby, Brett Leason on waivers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/axel-jonsson-fjallby-brett-leason-capitals-waivers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/axel-jonsson-fjallby-brett-leason-capitals-waivers/ |
Hail or Fail: Clock management costs Commanders as the rest of the NFC East stays hot
Commanders rookie running back Brian Robinson Jr. made his debut Sunday. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
A look at the good (Hail!) and bad (Fail!) from the Washington Commanders’ 21-17 loss to the Tennessee Titans on Sunday.
Hail: Brian Robinson Jr.
With his family among the crowd at FedEx Field, the Commanders’ rookie running back received a standing ovation after he was the last player out of the tunnel during pregame introductions. It had been six weeks since Robinson was shot twice during an armed robbery attempt. The third-round pick made his NFL debut on Washington’s second offensive series and immediately showed off the burst that impressed coaches during training camp by breaking outside for an eight-yard run — but the play was negated by a holding penalty. With the Commanders’ running game stuck in neutral, Robinson finished with a team-high nine carries for 22 yards, including an important fourth-down conversion on Washington’s final drive.
Fail: Ron Rivera’s clock and timeout management
Robinson might’ve had an opportunity to cap his remarkable comeback with a game-winning touchdown run if Rivera had managed the Commanders’ final drive better. Trailing 21-17 with less than five minutes to play, Washington marched 87 yards on 15 plays to the Tennessee 2-yard line with 19 seconds remaining. Having used all three of their timeouts, the Commanders decided they couldn’t risk running the ball and called three consecutive pass plays. The first two resulted in incompletions; the third was intercepted to seal Washington’s fourth straight loss. Washington showed a lack of urgency throughout the drive. More than 10 seconds ran off the clock between the time Curtis Samuel made a catch for a short gain at the Titans’ 33 and when Washington called its final timeout with 28 seconds remaining. Rivera forfeited a timeout earlier in the possession when he challenged what was ruled an incomplete pass to Cam Sims. “We’ll go back and look at it, and we’ll talk about what we did,” Rivera said. “It’s great to be able to second-guess. It really is.”
Hail: Dyami Brown
A third-round pick in 2021, Brown was mostly a nonfactor as a rookie wide receiver, posting 12 catches for 165 yards. Buried deeper on the depth chart after Washington used a first-round pick in this year’s draft on Penn State wideout Jahan Dotson, the speedster out of North Carolina had one measly catch for six yards through four games. Forced to play a larger role with Dotson sidelined with a hamstring injury, Brown had a breakout performance against the Titans, including a 75-yard touchdown reception from Carson Wentz early in the second quarter. It was Brown’s first career score and Washington’s first pass play of at least 50 yards in 18 games. Brown wasn’t done, making a ridiculous one-handed grab on a perfectly placed ball by Wentz in the third quarter for a 30-yard touchdown. “It’s just the beginning,” he said afterward.
Fail: Wentz’s turnover streak
Wentz played his best game since the season opener, completing 25 of 38 passes for a season-high 359 yards and two touchdowns. He overthrew a couple of open receivers and made a poor decision on a fourth-down pass that resulted in a turnover on downs, but all of that would’ve been forgotten had he managed to lead the Commanders to a win. Wentz was 10 for 12 for 76 yards on Washington’s final drive, including nine consecutive completions, before the pivotal closing sequence. Facing pressure and not finding anyone open on first down, Wentz wisely decided to throw the ball away but was nearly intercepted because he didn’t put enough oomph on the toss. Two plays later, Titans linebacker David Long Jr. jumped a short route by J.D. McKissic and made a diving interception. Wentz has committed at least one turnover in each of Washington’s five games.
Hail: Montez Sweat
Sweat sacked Titans quarterback Ryan Tannehill on Tennessee’s first play from scrimmage and was a (mostly positive) force the entire game. The edge rusher finished with two of Washington’s season-high five sacks — its most since Nov. 8, 2020 — and had three tackles for loss. Sweat also committed two offside penalties, the second of which was declined because teammate Efe Obada was flagged for roughing the passer, and caught a huge break when he wasn’t penalized for taking his helmet off on the field to celebrate his second sack.
Fail: Third-down conversions
For all of their struggles offensively, the Commanders came into this game with the NFL’s sixth-best conversion rate (44 percent) on third down. That success didn’t continue against the Titans, who limited Washington to one conversion on 11 attempts. It’s the first time Washington converted one or fewer third downs since Week 17 of the 2019 season, when it lost by 31 points at Dallas.
Hail: Changes
After Rivera hinted last week that he would consider personnel changes if the team’s poor play continued, Washington appeared to bench underperforming cornerback William Jackson III late in the first quarter. The next move could be at left guard, where Andrew Norwell struggled mightily against the Titans. During one ugly stretch in the second half, Norwell committed two penalties and allowed a pair of sacks.
Fail: Last place
It seems the Commanders missed the memo that the NFC East is back to being the NFC Beast. The Philadelphia Eagles improved to 5-0 with a win at Arizona, and the Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants improved to 4-1 with impressive wins over the defending Super Bowl champion Los Angeles Rams and Green Bay Packers. Meanwhile, Washington is 1-4 for the second time in Rivera’s three years at the helm. In 2020, the team rallied from 1-4 to make the playoffs by winning one of the worst divisions in NFL history with a losing record. That doesn’t figure to be a potential path to the postseason this year. | 2022-10-11T02:38:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Highlights and lowlights from the Commanders' loss to the Titans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/commanders-titans-highlights-and-lowlights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/commanders-titans-highlights-and-lowlights/ |
The Panthers fired Coach Matt Rhule on Monday. (Jacob Kupferman/AP)
The first head coaching change of the NFL season Monday was far from surprising. The reeling Carolina Panthers dismissed Matt Rhule and promoted Steve Wilks to serve as their interim coach.
The Panthers announced the move one day after a 37-15 loss at home to the San Francisco 49ers dropped them to 1-4.
“I think that there has been progress of some sort,” Panthers owner David Tepper said at an afternoon news conference. “But, look, we’re just not getting over the hump. And we’ve got to get over the hump.”
The Panthers went 11-27 under Rhule, whom Tepper fired five games into his third NFL season. Rhule never was able to achieve the level of success he had managed in the college ranks at Temple and Baylor.
“There’s numerous reasons why you make a decision like that,” Tepper said. “Ultimately, I felt this was the time.”
Wilks, the former coach of the Arizona Cardinals, was the Panthers’ secondary coach and defensive passing game coordinator.
In 2020, Tepper outbid other interested NFL teams to hire Rhule. The New York Giants reportedly were focused on him — he had been their assistant offensive line coach in 2012 — but ended up hiring New England Patriots assistant coach Joe Judge once Rhule headed to Carolina.
Rhule has more than four seasons remaining on his seven-year, $62 million contract. The Panthers reportedly owe him more than $40 million for the remainder of the deal. But Rhule could become a candidate for college head coaching jobs, and the amount the Panthers owe him reportedly would be offset by his salary from another coaching job.
Among the five NFL head coaches hired for the 2020 season, Rhule and Judge already have been fired. The other three hired during that cycle were Washington’s Ron Rivera, the Dallas Cowboys’ Mike McCarthy and the Cleveland Browns’ Kevin Stefanski.
“I just feel like we’re better than we’ve shown,” Rhule said of the Panthers following Sunday’s defeat. “It’s how I feel. But you are what your record says you are. We’re 1-4. It’s not where any of us intended to be. We’ve got to get that turned around.”
There was intense speculation about Rhule’s job security as the losses mounted. Sunday’s defeat was their 11th in 12 games, dating from last season. Rhule declined to address the topic during his postgame news conference.
“I hope you guys can understand: I’m here to talk about the game,” Rhule said then. “I’ve always been very forthright with you guys. I have nothing to say about that now. … I would never want to make this about me.”
Tepper mentioned Monday that there were “63,000 butts in seats” at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte for Sunday’s game. But he added: “Now, unfortunately, there was too many red butts,” meaning 49ers fans.
“It’s a funny thing, that thing called patience,” Tepper said. “If you ask the average fan out there, they think I was ridiculously patient. … I think you have to show the right amount of patience and see the progress that’s made: Are we winning more? Are we progressing in different ways?”
Tepper spoke several times Monday of getting over the hump and was asked what he meant.
“It’s winning,” said Tepper, who purchased the franchise from Jerry Richardson in 2018 for approximately $2.2 billion. “… By that definition, I don’t think we’re over the hump. We started off 1-4 this year. We had five wins [each of] the last two seasons. … We have to somehow change that culture, see how we can change that culture, and try to win. And whatever that takes, we’re going to try to find that.”
Rhule was unable to land a franchise quarterback, going through a list of starters that included Teddy Bridgewater, P.J. Walker, Sam Darnold, Cam Newton and Baker Mayfield. The Panthers traded for Mayfield in July, nearly four months after the No. 1 choice in the 2018 draft was ousted from his starting job in Cleveland when the Browns traded for Deshaun Watson.
Matt Rhule speaks to the media https://t.co/TgrdY7ecs2
But the offense has continued to sputter this season with Mayfield and new coordinator Ben McAdoo, the former coach of the Giants whom Rhule hired in January. Mayfield suffered an ankle injury Sunday. Walker finished the game and could start Sunday against the Los Angeles Rams in Inglewood, Calif.
“It’s hard for me to talk about last year because Ben wasn’t here,” Rhule said Sunday. “Baker wasn’t here. I just try to focus on right now. … We’re not going to win unless we score more points. I think we all know that. I’m not going to sit here and lie to you. But in terms of a complete and total overhaul, I don’t know that that’s the answer. … I think everything is just about trying to improve each player.”
Steve Wilks, Ray Horton join Brian Flores’s lawsuit against NFL, teams
Wilks, a Charlotte native, could be a candidate for the head coaching job on a more permanent basis, Tepper said.
The Cardinals fired Wilks in 2018 after he spent one season as their coach. The team went 3-13. In April, Wilks and another Black coach, Ray Horton, joined Brian Flores’s racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL and teams. Flores filed the lawsuit in February in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
The lawsuit claims Wilks served as a “bridge coach” who didn’t get “a meaningful opportunity to succeed.” It contrasted the Cardinals’ dismissal of Wilks with their retention of General Manager Steve Keim, whom they fined and suspended in 2018 after he pleaded guilty to driving under the influence.
“Like many other Black Head Coaches, Mr. Wilks has never been given a second opportunity to become the Head Coach of any other NFL team,” the lawsuit said. “Mr. Wilks is unfortunately not an anomaly or an exception to the rule. To the contrary, the discriminatory treatment towards Mr. Wilks is just part and parcel to the ongoing pattern and practice of discrimination in the NFL when it comes to the NFL’s Head Coach, Coordinator and Executive hiring and employment decisions.”
Wilks becomes the NFL’s fourth active Black head coach. He joins the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Mike Tomlin, the Houston Texans’ Lovie Smith and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Todd Bowles. Smith and Bowles were the only Black head coaches hired during the most recent cycle in which 10 teams changed coaches. The Miami Dolphins hired Mike McDaniel, who is biracial. | 2022-10-11T02:38:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Panthers fire Matt Rhule, promote Steve Wilks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/matt-rhule-fired-panthers-wilks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/matt-rhule-fired-panthers-wilks/ |
Raiders wide receiver Davante Adams, left, and quarterback Derek Carr could again form a solid connection against the Chiefs. (Dylan Buell/Getty Images)
The Las Vegas Raiders will try their luck against the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday night, renewing a rivalry that dates from the 1960s. Kansas City has had the upper hand of late. Andy Reid is 15-3 against the Raiders straight up, and 12-6 against the spread, since taking over as head coach of the Chiefs in 2013, and he has never seen his squad as an underdog in these matchups. The Chiefs will be a touchdown favorite Monday night as they look to continue their winning ways.
The Pro Bowl slot receiver missed the past two games with a concussion but was a full participant in practice this week for the first time since Week 2. It’s a great bounce-back spot for Renfrow. The Chiefs have allowed slot receivers to catch 38 of 49 targets for 376 yards and four touchdowns, equivalent to a 125.9 passer rating, and are mostly using zone coverage (65 percent of the time, including a cover-two zone 25 percent of the time). Renfrow has caught 82 of 101 targets in the slot against zone coverage since 2019, tallying 878 yards and three touchdowns and averaging nearly six yards after the catch.
Largest lead of the game
Pick: Over 14.5 points
Since 2002, 682 teams have been between seven- and eight-point favorites, and 364 (53 percent) have had a lead of at least 15 points, a break-even rate for a -110 bet (wager $110 to win $100). The Chiefs have led by at least 15 points in 14 of their past 18 games (78 percent) against the Raiders.
No. 1 receiver
eight receptions, 103 yards, two touchdowns
Over the past three weeks, No. 1 receivers have 24 catches for 288 yards and three touchdowns against the Chiefs, who rank 29th in defense-adjusted value over average (DVOA) against opponents’ top pass-catchers. The volume certainly should be there for Adams, who is averaging 11.8 targets. (Only the Los Angeles Rams’ Cooper Kupp is averaging more.) The opportunity should also be there, particularly if Adams is being shadowed by Chiefs cornerback L’Jarius Sneed, who has allowed 21 receptions on 27 targets. | 2022-10-11T02:38:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Monday Night Football betting preview and picks: Raiders vs. Chiefs prop bets - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/monday-night-football-raiders-chiefs-predictions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/monday-night-football-raiders-chiefs-predictions/ |
Titans defensive lineman Denico Autry sacks Carson Wentz in the Commanders' loss to Tennessee on Sunday at FedEx Field. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Svrluga: Taylor Heinicke belongs in the NFL, but he’s not Washington’s QB of the future
“Be more consistent,” Rivera offered Monday. “One thing we can’t do is have penalties — silly penalties. … We’ve got to continue to work at it. It’s interesting because when you put all the pieces together that you want and you get them there for that period of time, it starts to happen. And so we just got to continue to work hard at it.”
“The disappointing part is you learn, ‘Okay, that’s what we did last week; we can’t do that.’ And when it’s something new, that’s the frustration of it,” Rivera said. “We just corrected this, and now we have something over there. It’s that inconsistency that gets you.”
“We played well enough to win,” he said. “We just didn’t play consistently. … You give up a couple of big plays, and then you miss a couple opportunities. I know I’ve said that before, but that’s the truth.”
“The truth is, this is a quarterback-driven league,” he added. “And if you look at the teams that have been able to sustain success, they’ve been able to build it around a specific quarterback.”
“I have no regrets about our quarterback,” Rivera said of Wentz, who appeared on the injury report Monday with a right shoulder issue. “I think our quarterback has done some good things. There have been a couple of days that he struggled. … [But] the way he performed [Sunday], it just shows you what he’s capable of. We chose him because we believe in him.”
“He’s got to work with those pieces. It’s like walking into a new job,” Rivera said Monday. “The job’s already been there. … You walk in, and you’re the new guy. You’ve got to learn everybody, don’t you? You’ve got to learn to work with everybody, got to learn to do your job with everybody.” | 2022-10-11T02:38:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ron Rivera says QBs are the difference-maker in the NFC East - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/ron-rivera-quarterbacks-nfc-east/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/ron-rivera-quarterbacks-nfc-east/ |
What do you do with a purported ally who’s jumping into bed with the enemy?
OPEC+ last week opted to cut oil production a month out from US midterm elections, with Brent crude not far off $100 a barrel and Europe buckling under the impact of economic warfare with its largest energy supplier, Russia. The decision, coming not long after President Joe Biden flew to Riyadh in search of higher oil output, has many in Washington questioning the wisdom of the eight-decade alliance with Saudi Arabia.
“The royal Saudi family has never been a trustworthy ally of our nation,” Dick Durbin, the second-highest ranking Democrat in the Senate, wrote in a tweet Thursday. “It’s time for our foreign policy to imagine a world without their alliance.”
Three Democratic representatives promised a bill to remove US troops and missile systems from the region, calling the OPEC+ production cut a “turning point in our relationship” with Gulf partners. “It is time for the US to resume acting like the superpower in our relationship with our client states,” the trio wrote. “They have made a choice and should live with the consequences.”
Here’s the thing, though: Stationing troops in ungrateful Arab nations is precisely what a superpower should be doing in this situation. Washington has quietly recognized that reality ever since 1943, when Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that “the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States.”
If the world’s oil exporters seem refractory in their relations with Washington, it’s exactly because they recognize the extent to which the status quo is an asset to the US, not a liability. Events since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine don’t undermine that narrative in the least — if anything, they make it still more compelling.
That’s because the battle since March has been fought not just in the fields of Ukraine but also in the ports and pipelines connecting Russia’s oil and gas to global markets. The recent destruction of the Nord Stream gas lines carrying Russian fuel to Europe and the Kerch bridge bringing diesel from Russia to the southern front of the Ukraine war both demonstrate the same point. The most potent weapon in modern warfare is energy, and control of the supply lines that get it from its sources to its consumers.
Now translate the situation in Europe to the Gulf. In the unlikely event that the US did withdraw its military presence in the region, another nation would step in to protect the slice of the $1 trillion trade in crude oil passing through the pirate-infested waters of the western Indian Ocean. Arab countries’ own navies are incapable of doing much more than basic coastal defense, so the most viable candidates would be China and, at a pinch, India.
In one sense, leaving Beijing in charge of protecting its own energy supplies is reasonable. The western hemisphere is largely self-sufficient in crude. Some 82% of the Gulf’s oil exports head east, with just 3.7% going to the US. Having America pay the security detail for its oil supplies frees up China to direct its military spending toward other ventures, such as building up forces to threaten Taiwan.
The disproportion is the point, though. By guaranteeing China’s supplies of oil, Washington quietly holds enormous leverage. In the event of an invasion of Taiwan, US sea power in the Gulf and Indian Ocean gives it the option of a Russian-style strategy, using embargoes around the straits of Hormuz and Singapore to cut off roughly three-quarters of the oil fueling Beijing’s war machine. While China’s domestic oil production would be able to step up in such a crisis, the pain such a scenario would inflict on the economy and the risk of popular unrest vastly raise the cost of warfare.
By the same token, Chinese control of those sea lines of communication would be an enormous strategic asset to Beijing. Lacking the domestic reserves that make China the world’s sixth-biggest oil producer and protected under the umbrella of the Pax Americana on the high seas, Washington’s allies in Asia are if anything even more dependent on imported crude.
The US doesn’t want China deploying the energy weapon to obtain hegemony in East Asia via a Pax Sinica. Nor does it want to see its often-fractious Asian allies taking action to protect their own energy supplies in the absence of American sea power. The naval arms race between Germany and Britain before World War I, in many ways one of the causes of that conflict, demonstrates the hazards of such a strategy. In the circumstances, stationing a few thousand troops in the Gulf to head off those scenarios is a small price for Washington to pay.
Having a hand resting on the spigot of the world’s energy flows is a fundamental building block of US global power, and both Washington and Riyadh know it. Saudi Arabia may be more a frenemy than an ally these days, but energy geopolitics operates under similar principles to those Michael Corleone used to rule his criminal empire: Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
• Oil Production Cut Could Be 10% Real, 90% Illusion: Julian Lee
• Biden Should Hit Saudi Arabia Where It Really Hurts: Bobby Ghosh | 2022-10-11T02:47:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | America’s Defense of Saudi Arabia Is an Asset, Not a Liability - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/americas-defense-of-saudi-arabia-is-an-asset-not-a-liability/2022/10/10/efe6abec-48d6-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/americas-defense-of-saudi-arabia-is-an-asset-not-a-liability/2022/10/10/efe6abec-48d6-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
A Common Brown Lemur with its young on its back in Madagascar. (Gunter Lenz/imageBROKER/Shutterstock)
A statement in this article from Amanda Korstjens, a professor of behavioral ecology at Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom, was incorrectly attributed to Andrew Bernard, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Michigan. It has been updated.
Those species most inclined to adapt to spending time on the ground — whether because they have more diverse diets, live in the relative safety of large groups or are physiologically more capable of ambling on the forest floor — are most likely to descend from the trees, and thus may be more likely to survive into the future, said Tim Eppley, a postdoctoral associate at the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance. Eppley is lead author of the study, which was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Primates in Madagascar are already the most threatened in the world, but studies like this show us that they may be able to find refuge from the worst climate changes by flexibly adapting to spending more time in areas with lower temperatures,” Amanda Korstjens, a professor of behavioral ecology at Bournemouth University in the United Kingdom, wrote in an email. “But the study also highlights the importance of preserving healthy forest habitats to allow primates to use the limited options they have to manage global warming.”
Madagascar’s lemurs face a grim future because of human activity. A solution? Planting trees.
Researchers not involved with the study said it supports literature that has shown the effects of climate change on primates, including that primates will increasingly depend on the availability of shade in forests as global temperatures rise, according to Korstjens.
And it’s not safe to assume that some species will thrive just because they might be more adaptable to spending time on the ground, said Andrew Bernard, a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Michigan whose research focuses on primate behaviors. | 2022-10-11T02:47:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Climate change is driving monkeys and lemurs from the tree canopy to the forest floor, study finds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/10/climate-change-monkeys-lemurs-forest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/10/climate-change-monkeys-lemurs-forest/ |
Religious doctrine restricts access to abortion and birth control and limits treatment options for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies
Meena Venkataramanan
(IStock/The Washington Post)
The Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion is revealing the growing influence of Catholic health systems and their restrictions on reproductive services including birth control and abortion — even in the diminishing number of states where the procedure remains legal.
The Catholic health-care facilities follow directives from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that prohibit treatment it deems “immoral”: sterilization including vasectomies, postpartum tubal ligations and contraception, as well as abortion. Those policies can limit treatment options for obstetric care during miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies, particularly in the presence of a fetal heartbeat.
“The directives are not just a collection of dos and don’ts,” said John F. Brehany, executive vice president of the National Catholic Bioethics Center and a longtime consultant to the conference of bishops. “They are a distillation of the moral teachings of the Catholic Church as they apply to modern health care.” As such, he said, any facility that identifies as Catholic must abide by them.
The role of Catholic doctrine in U.S. health care has expanded during a years-long push to acquire smaller institutions — a reflection of consolidation in the hospital industry, as financially challenged community hospitals and independent physicians join bigger systems to gain access to electronic health records and other economies of scale. Acquisition by a Catholic health system has, at times, kept a town’s only hospital from closing.
Confusion post-Roe spurs delays, denials for some lifesaving pregnancy care
With Roe v. Wade overturned, the legality of abortion has been left to the states. Some worry that access to certain types of contraception could be next. (Video: Julie Yoon, Hadley Green, Sarah Hashemi/The Washington Post)
“It’s all about market share,” said Lois Uttley, a senior adviser to the hospital equity and accountability project at Community Catalyst. Uttley, who has been tracking hospital mergers and acquisitions since the 1990s, said that with fewer choices, patients today face more difficulty obtaining reproductive services.
“It would be very troubling to see cutbacks in a state like Connecticut,” said Ian McDonald, a stonemason who opposes the proposed deal between Day Kimball Healthcare in Putnam and Massachusetts-based Covenant Health.
Covenant Health spokeswoman Karen Sullivan said in an email that as part of the regulatory process, the Catholic health system is drafting a public response to questions by the state’s Oct. 23 deadline. The system, she said, is committed to “ensuring that the Ethical and Religious Directives are applied thoughtfully and with empathy, compassion and respect for every person we serve.”
Physicians face confusion and fear in post-Roe world
Many patients are unaware of the restrictions because hospital administrators typically don’t outline the services they do not offer, said Sister Simone Campbell, a lawyer who until recently led the liberal-leaning NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice.
“Many hospitals have dealt with this by being pretty quiet. Dobbs has made it more of a question,” Campbell said, referring to the case that led to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
Catholic facilities may not “promote or condone” contraception, according to the directives — a stance that is not widely shared by the public. Just 4 percent of U.S. adults think contraception is immoral, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center poll. Among Catholics who attend weekly Mass, only 13 percent say contraception is morally wrong, and 45 percent find it acceptable.
The directives, developed in the late 1940s by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, were updated in 2018, largely to ensure that Catholic doctrine prevails after mergers and acquisitions, according to Amy Chen, a lawyer with the National Health Law Program. They limit options for referring patients to secular facilities, saying employees must not “manage, carry out, assist in carrying out, make its facilities available for, make referrals for, or benefit from the revenue generated by immoral procedures.”
Interpretation of the directives varies among hospital ethics committees. But decisions ultimately rest with the local bishop, who is to be kept informed, the directives say, if “a Catholic health care institution might be wrongly cooperating with immoral procedures.”
“Bishops have a great deal of authority in their dioceses,” Brehany said. “A bishop should ensure that a Catholic organization is abiding by the directives.”
A 2018 survey published in the journal Contraception found that more than one-third of women who go to Catholic hospitals for reproductive care are not aware of the facilities’ religious affiliation. The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of California at San Francisco, called for increased transparency among hospitals to raise awareness that patients’ options may be limited at institutions with religious ties.
“Even people who had a very wanted pregnancy are at the mercy of policies not driven by their personal values or by the best interests of their health,” said Debra Stulberg, the chair of family medicine at the University of Chicago and one of the researchers in the 2018 survey.
Then she learned she could not get a tubal ligation at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, where she planned to deliver.
“I was just surprised that [the hospital] could decide that for us,” said King, who ultimately elected to go ahead with her delivery at Providence Saint John’s because of the care she had received there in the past.
Doctors, too, face surprises — and can even be reported to hospital ethics committees for following standards of care.
In Washington state, where 41 percent of beds are Catholic-run, legislators passed a law last year to prevent hospitals from interfering with a doctor’s ability to provide medically necessary care to a pregnant patient whose health or life is at risk.
Annie Iriye, a retired OB/GYN who used to work for a Catholic hospital in Olympia, Wash., testified in support of the bill. In a recent interview, Iriye described wanting to administer medication to hasten a woman’s delivery to stave off infection after her water broke at 18 weeks, before fetal viability. Even though the woman was in active labor, Iriye said other staffers refused to follow her direction as the attending physician because a heartbeat had been detected.
“I was flabbergasted,” Iriye said. “It’s like, ‘Oh, come on guys. Can’t we just practice medicine and give good care?’ ”
Are you a provider or patient who has experienced disruptions to reproductive health care? Get in touch.
Whitney Marshall, 29, learned only after waking up from exploratory surgery for endometriosis in 2019 at Ascension Crittenton in Rochester Hills, Mich., that her IUD had not been replaced. Marshall, who uses the device to reduce the pain associated with the condition, had to undergo a second procedure in her gynecologist’s office to have the IUD reinserted. The spokesman for Ascension Crittenton did not respond to requests for comment about the case.
“Some women cannot afford surgeries” to treat endometriosis, Marshall said. “So their only form of recourse is to try to regulate their hormones by using contraceptives.”
Catholic hospitals’ tradition of serving women and children in the neediest neighborhoods is “rooted in our reverence for life,” said Brian Reardon, spokesman for the Catholic Health Association. But the lack of choice has been felt keenly in rural and low-income communities where patients cannot easily transfer to secular institutions, reproductive rights advocates say.
Hospitals operating under Catholic restrictions are “the sole community providers of short-term acute hospital care” in more than 52 communities across the country — up from 30 in 2013, according to Community Catalyst.
In Putnam, Conn., residents have relied on Day Kimball Healthcare, the town’s only hospital, for more than a century.
The proposed arrangement with Covenant Health requires the approval of Connecticut’s Office of Health Strategy, which has been examining how services might be affected.
The need to preserve access to reproductive health services can bring an end to negotiations. In 2012, the investor in a proposed joint venture with two hospitals in Waterbury, Conn., one of which was Catholic, pulled out after reproductive health advocates and the local archbishop raised opposing concerns about creating a “hospital within a hospital” to provide reproductive services — a workaround that had been successful elsewhere.
“Any unwanted pregnancy is a potential abortion,” Wesler said.
Members of the group Save Day Kimball Healthcare said that in conversations, Kramer and other representatives of the hospital have sought to be reassuring. “They say, ‘Everything will be fine,’ ” said Margaret Martin, a retired social worker and member of the group.
Kramer, who said he intends to stay on if the Covenant deal goes through, repeated those assurances to The Washington Post. “What we have been we will still be,” he said, while declining to describe how contraceptives could be offered for the sole purpose of birth control.
In a Q&A posted in September on the Day Kimball website, Kramer suggests that other justifications could be found for using “tools” such as oral contraceptives, including “to maintain health and wellness, to address a medical condition, prevent disease, and mitigate cancer risk.”
Bruce Shay, a member of the Save Day Kimball Healthcare steering committee, says he worries doctors may leave if they have to abide by the directives — or might evade them by making “a sketchy diagnosis.”
The 40-year-old Latham, N.Y., resident received a copper IUD after delivering her first child at a secular hospital that Trinity is in the process of acquiring. She was denied the device after giving birth to her second child at a Catholic hospital now affiliated with Trinity.
“I remember laughing and saying, ‘What? Seriously?’ ” Seshadri recalled. “I didn’t know that Catholic hospitals still did that.”
“I didn’t have that problem,” Seshadri said. To give her the contraception, she said, the nurse “was essentially falsifying my medical record.” | 2022-10-11T02:47:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Spread of Catholic hospitals restricts abortion, birth control access - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/10/abortion-catholic-hospitals-birth-control/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/10/abortion-catholic-hospitals-birth-control/ |
NEW YORK — Since Annie Ernaux won the Nobel literature prize last week, the French author’s books have gained enough new admirers that many titles are out of stock on Amazon.com and at physical bookstores, some unavailable for a month or more. But at Albertine Books on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, her appearance Monday night felt less like an introduction than a gathering of old friends, French and American alike. | 2022-10-11T02:47:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nobelist Annie Ernaux draws hundreds to New York bookstore - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/nobelist-annie-ernaux-draws-hundreds-to-new-york-bookstore/2022/10/10/0d82631e-490c-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/nobelist-annie-ernaux-draws-hundreds-to-new-york-bookstore/2022/10/10/0d82631e-490c-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
Special counsel John Durham, the prosecutor appointed to investigate potential government wrongdoing in the early days of the Trump-Russia probe, arrives at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in D.C. this year. (Evan Vucci/AP)
Former president Donald Trump said special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s 2016 Russia probe should “reveal corruption at a level never seen before in our country.”
But the special counsel’s nearly 3½-year examination seems destined for a less dramatic conclusion this month in a federal courthouse in Alexandria, Va., where Durham will put on trial a private researcher he says lied to the FBI.
Igor Danchenko — a researcher who fed information to former British spy Christopher Steele, and whose contributions ended up in the now-infamous “Steele dossier” of allegations about Trump’s ties to Russia in 2016 — goes on trial Tuesday. The trial is expected to last one week.
Danchenko was indicted on charges of lying to FBI agents who interviewed him in 2017 about the sources behind his claims to Steele. Defense attorneys argue that Danchenko made “equivocal” statements to the FBI and should not be penalized for giving wishy-washy answers to vaguely worded questions.
Whatever the outcome, the Danchenko trial is shaping up to be Durham’s last stand in court.
John Durham has a stellar reputation for investigating corruption. Some fear his work for Barr could tarnish it.
A grand jury Durham had been using in Alexandria is now inactive, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the pending legal proceedings. It is not clear whether Durham is still using a grand jury in D.C.
Durham was tasked with writing a report summarizing his investigation, as former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III did at the close of his earlier probe into Trump and Russia. But it would be up to Attorney General Merrick Garland how much, if any, of Durham’s report to make public.
“The public is waiting ‘with bated breath’ for the Durham Report, which should reveal corruption at a level never seen before in our country,” Trump wrote in August on his social media platform, Truth Social, after FBI agents raided his Mar-a-Lago complex.
Durham, a longtime federal prosecutor who served as the U.S. attorney in Connecticut in the Trump administration, was asked by then-Attorney General William P. Barr in 2019 to dig into the origins of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into possible coordination between Trump and Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign. A report by the Justice Department’s inspector general in 2019 criticized the FBI for not noting doubts about the veracity of the information that it used to seek court approval of secret surveillance on a former Trump campaign adviser, though the inspector general said he found no evidence of political bias in the agency’s decision-making. Barr, a Trump appointee, had complained that the 2016 probe was initiated on the “thinnest” of evidence.
Barr later appointed Durham as a special counsel and directed him to write a final report “in a form that will permit public dissemination.”
The special counsel trained his sights in large part on the FBI’s use of reports Steele produced, which are now commonly referred to as the Steele dossier. Steele had been hired to produce the reports by research firm Fusion GPS, which had been retained by a law firm that represented Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, and the Democratic National Committee. Fusion GPS initially had been hired to dig into Trump’s background by a website funded by a deep-pocketed GOP donor.
Years after they began digging, Durham and his team have found only mixed success. The Danchenko case marks the second time the prosecutor who was supposed to root out dishonesty and misconduct within the ranks of the FBI and intelligence agencies will instead try to portray the FBI as victims, not perpetrators, of lies and deception.
“This case is likely the last real test for Durham’s office to justify its years-long investigation into possible collusion with Russia in the 2016 election,” said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor who’s now in private practice, adding that it “will only add fodder to critics of Durham’s office who believe that his prosecutions have failed to get to the core of his mandate to investigate the genesis of the Russian collusion allegations, but instead have only charged individuals with more technical violations.”
A former FBI lawyer, Kevin Clinesmith, pleaded guilty in 2020 to altering a government email to justify secret surveillance of the former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page. Clinesmith was sentenced to a year of probation. In May, a jury in D.C. federal court acquitted the only other defendant who went to trial as part of Durham’s investigation, cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann, who also was accused of lying to the FBI.
The Danchenko indictment has gotten a skeptical reception from the federal judge presiding over the matter, and much of the case Durham wanted to present won’t be weighed by the jury.
At a hearing last month, U.S. District Judge Anthony J. Trenga allowed the case to proceed to trial but said it was “an extremely close call” whether Danchenko’s statements to the FBI could even be prosecuted.
This month, Trenga ruled that Durham’s team cannot raise the most salacious allegations in the Steele dossier — concerning Trump, the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow and unproven claims about a “pee tape” featuring prostitutes — that investigators say they traced back to Danchenko and his purported sources.
Trenga, a senior judge who was nominated to the bench by President George W. Bush, and who sits on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, also barred other pieces of evidence Durham had hoped to show jurors.
“Danchenko’s allegedly false statements regarding his sourcing of the Ritz-Carlton allegations do not qualify as direct evidence,” Trenga wrote in an order Oct. 4. He added: “Why Steele characterized the sources for the Ritz-Carlton allegations as he did in the Report or, indeed, whether the listed sources, in fact, came from Danchenko are subject to a significant degree of speculation.”
Steele himself might be able to shed light on Danchenko’s claims, but he is not expected to testify. Neither is Sergei Millian, the former president of the Russian American Chamber of Commerce who prosecutors say Danchenko lied about during his FBI interviews.
That poses another challenge for Durham: narrating a complex story to the jury about claims that Danchenko made to the FBI, about previous claims he made to Steele, about information he supposedly received from Millian and others — all of it without Millian or Steele providing their own versions of events.
Durham and his team did not respond to a request for comment.
The indictment and filings submitted in the case are dense and technical, with some focusing on the proper grammatical way to parse FBI questions and Danchenko’s responses. For example, Danchenko’s attorneys argue that some of his statements to the FBI in 2017 — that he “believed” it was Millian who contacted him anonymously in a phone call and shared information about Trump and Russia — were “literally true” and thus not a crime.
Stuart A. Sears, an attorney for Danchenko, argued at a hearing last month: “If Rudy Giuliani says he believes the 2020 election was fraudulent, that doesn’t make it a false statement. He believes it.”
Mintz said, “This will be a difficult case for prosecutors because there is ambiguity in the facts, and prosecutors will have to prove Danchenko intended to mislead the FBI during his questioning as part of its investigation. While lying to federal agents is a crime, without more serious underlying charges it may be difficult to convince jurors that this case matters.” | 2022-10-11T02:47:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Steele dossier source heads to trial, in likely last stand for Durham - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/10/john-durham-igor-danchenko-trial/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/10/john-durham-igor-danchenko-trial/ |
By Jim Gomez and Joeal Calupitan | AP
Detained former opposition Sen. Leila de Lima waves under tight security as she arrives to attend a court hearing which later postponed in Muntinlupa, Philippines, Monday, Oct. 10, 2022. Human rights activists pressed their call Monday for the immediate release of de Lima after she was taken hostage in a rampage by three Muslim militants in a failed attempt to escape from a maximum-security jail. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)
Police killed three Islamic State group-linked militants behind Sunday’s violence in which a police officer was stabbed and former Sen. Leila de Lima was briefly taken hostage. The militants tried to escape from the jail for high-profile inmates at the national police headquarters in metropolitan Manila, police said.
Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch separately expressed deep alarm over the violence and the hostage-taking of de Lima. The groups call for her immediate release.
The man continually threatened to kill her until he was gunned down by a police negotiator, she told investigators.
Even before the jail violence, the European Union Parliament, some American legislators and United Nations human rights watchdogs have demanded that de Lima be freed immediately. | 2022-10-11T02:49:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Calls mount for Filipino ex-senator freedom after jail riot - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/calls-mount-for-filipino-ex-senator-freedom-after-jail-riot/2022/10/10/4f51b86c-4885-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/calls-mount-for-filipino-ex-senator-freedom-after-jail-riot/2022/10/10/4f51b86c-4885-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
FILE - In this image taken from video footage run by TVB, the megayacht Nord, left, worth over $500 million, is seen off Hong Kong Island outside Victoria Harbour on Oct. 7, 2022. The U.S. has warned Hong Kong in a statement Monday, Oct. 10, 2022 that its status as a financial center could be affected if it acts as a safe haven for sanctioned individuals, days after a luxury yacht connected to a sanctioned Russian tycoon docked in the city. (TVB via AP, File) (Uncredited/TVB) | 2022-10-11T02:49:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | US warns Hong Kong against helping sanctioned individuals - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-warns-hong-kong-against-helping-sanctioned-individuals/2022/10/10/53b6704c-48c0-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-warns-hong-kong-against-helping-sanctioned-individuals/2022/10/10/53b6704c-48c0-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
Freedom (Woodbridge) hangs 112 on opponent, nears scoring record
Freedom (Woodbridge) is 7-0 after an astounding 112-16 win over Colgan on Friday night. (Spencer Nusbaum)
As Freedom’s players coalesced at halftime Friday night, awaiting a revised game plan and speech in their bout against Colgan, several assistants pulled aside Coach Darryl Overton.
“Coach, the state record is 124,” they told him.
He looked up at the score. His team led 91-0.
“I can’t lie: I was just as amazed as everyone else,” Overton said. “It all happened so quickly.”
The Eagles closed out the second half with a 112-16 victory and ended up scoring the most points of any Virginia public school since West Side set the single-game record in 1967. But, as Overton expected, the Woodbridge school’s success generated just as much blowback as it did praise.
“The players are texting me, telling me people on social media are accusing us of running up the score,” Overton said. “I put a defensive lineman in at running back; he scored a 30-yard touchdown. Our backup quarterback is our [top receiver]. I put in our junior varsity guys in the second half, but even they have a limit — they’re only allowed to play 48 quarters in a [10-game] season.”
Freedom had the ball for 6½ minutes in the first half, and Colgan had eight turnovers before halftime.
“You look at the way we scored, the second half, it’s not like we were going for the record,” Overton said. “What am I supposed to do?”
Overton said he avoided giving much credence to detractors or devotees and added that the Eagles (7-0) are focused on one type of win: the ones that come in the postseason.
Focus aside, his team could rewrite history even if its pace slows into December. With a 461-32 advantage over its opponents, Freedom is 358 points away from the Virginia single-season scoring record of 819 — a mark Manchester tied in 2018 with its 49-7 victory over the Eagles in the Class 6 state final.
Churchill’s Avit enjoys commitment, winning streak
Life is good right now for Ezekiel Avit. The Churchill senior sat down Saturday afternoon to watch the Maryland football game, a much-deserved period of rest and relaxation after the Bulldogs earned their fourth straight win Friday night. Avit had played well, catching two touchdown passes and nabbing an interception in a 37-3 victory over Whitman.
Now, he had a chance to take a look at his future. A week earlier, the 6-foot-2 wide receiver committed to play for the Terrapins.
100% COMMITTED🐢🏠✅ pic.twitter.com/GYoHlXxTAF
— Ezekiel Avit (@EzekielAvit) October 2, 2022
The announcement ended a recruitment that started just a few months ago at a summer camp, where he was told by a Maryland coach that he had a future in football and the Terps were interested in offering him a scholarship. This was news to Avit, who previously viewed himself as more of a basketball player.
“The last two years, I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to play football,” Avit said. “I was so focused on basketball in the summers, too, I only went to one football camp. And then it all changed.”
Maryland was Avit’s first offer, and he entered his senior season with the Bulldogs sporting a new target on his back as a Division I recruit.
“I feel a change from my opponents; they want to see why I have this Maryland offer or why I’m committed,” Avit said. “And I really want to show them. I don’t want to take any high school game for granted.”
Now that he has shifted his mind-set to being a future college football player, Avit has changed the way he views the game on Saturdays. When he watches Maryland play, he likes to focus on Dontay Demus Jr., who went to Friendship Collegiate and is now starring for the Terps at wide receiver.
“I just see myself in his shoes next year,” Avit said.
Evan Taylor, Poolesville: The senior running back turned in a monster performance, rushing 36 times for 345 yards and two touchdowns as the Falcons remained unbeaten with a 28-13 win over Catoctin.
Malik Washington, Archbishop Spalding: The sophomore quarterback continued his breakout season by accounting for seven touchdowns and 330 yards in the Cavaliers’ 54-7 win over Gilman.
Nick Adjei-Ababio, Lewis: In a triple-overtime thriller against Jefferson, the junior running back carried the Lancers to their first win with seven touchdowns and 309 yards on 41 carries.
Conscience Abba, C.H. Flowers: The junior kicker converted a 39-yard field goal off the left upright in overtime to secure a 16-13 win over Wise — the Jaguars’ first in the rivalry since 2009.
Blair at Sherwood, Friday, 6:30 p.m.
Centreville at Madison, Friday, 7 p.m.
Gonzaga at Good Counsel, Friday, 7 p.m.
Eleanor Roosevelt at DuVal, Saturday, 2 p.m.
Roosevelt and Dunbar put on a show
With six seconds remaining Friday in a game featuring two of the D.C. Interscholastic Athletic Association’s top teams, the stands at Theodore Roosevelt were jampacked and rocking.
Roosevelt led Dunbar by three, and the Rough Riders needed one more stop.
Chants of “De-fense!” rained down from the skybox, an area located just above the end zone where a large group of nonpaying patrons have gathered to root on Roosevelt for years. Dunbar quarterback Jibril Scott took the snap and slung it toward his receiver in the back corner of the end zone. Scott’s pass — affected by defensive pressure — ended up in the hands of cornerback La’Nell Stoddard, who secured a 29-26 win for Roosevelt (5-1).
“Man, this game was exactly what the city needed tonight,” Roosevelt Coach Chris Harden said. “The stands were packed, and the kids were giving every single play all that they had. Energy was special for everyone tonight; this is the kind of energy that we are trying to bring back to D.C. public games every week. Our kids deserve this, regardless of the matchup.”
Through five games, Roosevelt had run through every public school it faced and even gave Washington Catholic Athletic Conference powerhouse Gonzaga a tough game. The defending Turkey Bowl champions appeared to have a win in the bag Friday, too, when they returned a punt for a touchdown and then converted an interception into a subsequent score to take a 29-8 lead midway through the third quarter.
But Dunbar (3-3), which stormed back to beat Coolidge to open the season, was planning another comeback. As the Crimson Tide’s defense began to hold Roosevelt in check, its offense found its flow, scoring a touchdown on three of its next five drives. Both of the nonscoring drives ended with dropped touchdown passes, though, which proved costly.
“This one hurts and feels so good at the same time,” Dunbar Coach Maurice Vaughn said. “These kids could’ve tucked their tails and thrown in the towel when Dunbar got up big on them like that, but they chose to play with pride and keep fighting. Hopefully, we’ll get a chance to see these guys again and put on another show for the city.”
Episcopal beats crosstown rival
Midway through the third quarter Friday afternoon, Episcopal was in danger of losing to rival St. Stephen’s/St. Agnes for the first time since 2007. Wide receiver Buom Jock knew the Maroon, which hadn’t scored, needed a big play.
Jock caught a 30-yard pass to put Episcopal at midfield. Two plays later, the senior captured a heave from quarterback Alexander Brady, broke a tackle and cruised into the end zone for a 49-yard score.
“Everybody’s going crazy,” Jock said. “After that, we kind of knew, ‘Hey, the game’s not over.’ The momentum hit like a train.”
Episcopal scored four touchdowns in the fourth quarter, including two more from Jock, for a 34-12 road win in Alexandria.
Jock, a Mankato, Minn., native, transferred to Episcopal (2-2) his junior year. He loves basketball, but he prioritized football recruiting at the Alexandria boarding school.
The Colorado State football commit learned the stakes of Episcopal’s rivalry with St. Stephen’s/St. Agnes in January, when he and the Maroon basketball team beat the Saints for the first time in four years. The schools are two miles apart.
“It definitely took me a bit just to know, ‘Yeah, the school across the street is one of your rivals,’ ” Jock said. “I didn’t really get to understand what the rivalry is, but now, it definitely shifted. The rivalry game is definitely more tense for me.” | 2022-10-11T02:49:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Freedom (Woodbridge) hangs 112 on opponent, nears scoring record - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/freedom-woodbridge-hangs-112-opponent-nears-scoring-record/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/freedom-woodbridge-hangs-112-opponent-nears-scoring-record/ |
Police identify pedestrian killed in Prince George’s
Man was struck by a car on Saturday, authorities say
A pedestrian who was fatally injured last week in Prince George’s County has been identified, the police said.
William Hall III of Accokeek, who was 62, was struck by a vehicle at 7 p.m. Saturday in the 9800 block of Piscataway Road in the Clinton area, the police said. He died at a hospital.
Few details have been provided about the circumstances of the incident. Police said the driver of the vehicle involved remained at the scene. | 2022-10-11T05:15:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Police identify pedestrian killed in Prince George's - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/pedestrian-killed-prince-georges-identified/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/pedestrian-killed-prince-georges-identified/ |
Dear Amy: Thirty years ago, I began a romantic relationship with “Bonnie.” We were both married. The relationship lasted for 16 years and produced a child, “W.”
Bonnie was very happy that I was W’s father. I was able to visit/play with W as a toddler and had two chance meetings with W as a child. After 16 years, Bonnie stopped seeing me, but we continued to talk by phone almost daily. We talked for six years, but then Bonnie abruptly stopped.
Besides missing Bonnie, I really miss hearing about W. Bonnie knew I loved children, and she did a wonderful job of informing me of W’s life.
I have tried contacting Bonnie, but she has not responded. Through social media, I see that W is doing well and appears to have a good life. I don’t know whether Bonnie ever told W about me, but I imagine it’s a very difficult subject to bring up to your adult child when you’re still married.
I don’t want to interfere with Bonnie’s marriage. The main thing I want is for W to know that I care. I don’t think W has the best relationship with Bonnie’s husband, and I hope meeting me would help.
Eager: You outline decades of infidelity and very brief contact with the child you fathered — with no acknowledgment, involvement or financial support — then ask if you are doing the right thing.
I suggest reaching out to W via private message. (That way, you can see whether the message has been opened and read.)
Every employee on my unit knows of my allergy, and they continue to wear strong perfume and cologne. Usually it makes me vomit several times during my shift. I typically get short of breath, but I have a rescue inhaler and typically recover within an hour or so. Last week, I had a swollen tongue and sores in my mouth due to exposure.
My last reaction was terrifying, and it took several days for the sores to go away.
I love my job. I’ve been there more than eight years, and I was hoping to retire from there. (I’m 50.) What should I do?
Allergic: Your co-workers are putting your — and by extension, your patients’ — health at risk.
You should kick your advocacy up several notches, contacting HR, your union (if you have one) and an employment lawyer, as well as researching your rights and options through the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (eeoc.gov).
Dear Amy: “Extremely Conflicted Husband” described his wife’s advanced dementia and wondered whether he should succumb to temptation and respond to an aggressive lady friend he’d gone to high school with.
Upset: I advised Conflicted to avoid his former high school fling. I did say that I thought he could pursue a relationship with a kind and stable person — as long as he did not abandon his wife. | 2022-10-11T05:32:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: My affair produced a child. Should I reach out now, years later? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/11/ask-amy-affair-child/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/11/ask-amy-affair-child/ |
Experts warn drivers to slow down and use caution as deer are in mating season and there’s high potential for more crashes
Deer remains on Clara Barton Parkway near Lock 5, in Brookmont, Md., last week. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
With the start of fall, deer are in mating season, and wildlife experts and transportation officials are warning drivers to slow down and use caution as deer are more active and the potential for crashes is high.
Deer often cross roads and highways in “unpredictable patterns at all times of the day in search of a mate,” according to experts at the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Paul Peditto, director of the Wildlife and Heritage Service at the agency, said deer activity “increases significantly” from mid-October through November as they’re breeding and that results in “more motorist encounters with deer.”
Young bucks leave their summer areas and spread out to other parts while “their testosterone rises” and female deer are on the move as they search for “good, fall food resources,” said Katie Martin, a turkey, bear and deer biologist at the Virginia Department of Wildlife Resources. That movement, she said, means “high peaks of deer-vehicle crashes.”
Charlie Gischlar, a deputy director of communications for the Maryland State Highway Administration, said during the fall motorists should be careful and expect to see more dead deer on roadways: “They’re mating, and they’re wildly crossing streets and going all over the place.”
Elk were decimated in the Eastern U.S. Now a herd is thriving in Va.
Hitting a large animal like a deer in a vehicle can be dangerous.
Each year, roughly 200 people nationwide die in a vehicle that collides with an animal, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a nonprofit consumer group based in Arlington. From 2011 to 2020, there were 56 fatal crashes in Maryland and Virginia involving an animal, according to an analysis of crash data from the U.S. Department of Transportation done by the insurance institute. There were no animal-related crashes that killed a person in D.C. during that time frame.
Transportation departments, which depend on the public to report dead animals on roadways, send crews to those sites in addition to doing regular pickup of animals reported or seen by public works crews, officials in the region said. If an animal is blocking a road, crews respond more urgently to avoid a driving hazard.
Fraser Shilling, director of the Road Ecology Center in Davis, Calif., said there’s no systematic way across the country of tracking the amount of roadkill on roads and highways, nor is there a broad policy of how — and when — roadkill is picked up. He said most county and state agencies depend on the public calling to report where they’ve seen roadkill.
Katelyn Liming, a spokeswoman for the National Park Service, said their staff responds to reports of roadkill along the George Washington Memorial and Clara Barton parkways and they “try to remove roadkill as quickly as we can, especially when it is an immediate safety issue.” She said the NPS had no “data on whether there is more roadkill on the parkways than in the past.”
In Maryland, Gischlar said there was a slight decrease in the amount of roadkill at the height of the pandemic in 2000 as more people were working from home and driving less.
Decomposing a shot
In Virginia, officials for the state’s Department of Transportation said if roadkill is blocking a lane on a road or highway, crews will usually pick it up on the same day it is reported to them, according to Ellen Kamilakis, a spokeswoman for VDOT. But she said it can sometimes take a few days, depending on the crew’s workload.
Carcasses picked up in Virginia are taken to an approved landfill that accepts them in various locations in the state, Kamilakis said. So far this year, she said, they haven’t seen an uptick in the number of animals nor in the days it is taking crews to pick them up from the roadside. In Maryland, carcasses are taken to a landfill or places that have contracts with the state to take dead animals. In some rural areas, they’ll just be moved to wooded areas, where nature takes its course.
Martin said for the environment, it isn’t a huge concern how long a carcass stays on the side of a road because there are plenty of scavenger species, including bald eagles, vultures and hawks, that eat roadkill: “They do a great job at cleaning up these carcasses.”
Wildlife experts and transportation officials offer these tips for motorists:
Be alert, particularly in the early morning and evening.
Gischlar said drivers should “never veer for deer.” If you have a deer or other animal that jumps in front of you as you’re driving, don’t swerve dramatically or overcompensate. You might lose control of your vehicle. Gradually brake to avoid hitting the animal.
If you see one deer, slow down because they usually travel in groups so there’s likely to be others nearby.
Check the shoulders of a road or highway. Deer tend to stand on the sides of the road and then suddenly move into the road. Slow down and hit your horn to scare the deer, as they dart and run in either direction. Shilling said for deer, squirrels and rabbits, their best — and natural — response to predators is to “run chaotically,” so it’s best for drivers to slow down.
If you hit and kill an animal, here’s who to call: In Virginia, drivers can report hitting roadkill by calling 800-FOR-ROAD or go to the state’s website and file a report. In Maryland, go to www.roads.maryland.gov and click on the “contact us” tab at the bottom of the page. In the District, call the city’s services hotline at 311, and if a dead animal is on a sidewalk or in an alley, crews will pick it up. | 2022-10-11T09:06:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Deer mating season comes with potential for more crashes, roadkill - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/fall-deer-mating-season-roadkill/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/fall-deer-mating-season-roadkill/ |
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) talks to reporters in Washington on April 6. The authors of a new book describe him as “frozen between his fealty to Trump and his own ethical compass.” (J. Scott Applewhite/AP)
In the weeks after the Senate voted to acquit Donald Trump for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was seething.
Stunned by McCarthy’s anger, Herrera Beutler began to cry. Through tears, she apologized for not telling him ahead of time that she had confirmed to the media details of a call McCarthy made to Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, urging him to tell his supporters to leave the U.S. Capitol.
The intense meeting between Republican lawmakers is detailed in the new book “Unchecked: The Untold Story Behind Congress’s Botched Impeachments of Donald Trump,” by Washington Post reporter Karoun Demirjian and Politico reporter Rachael Bade, a copy of which The Post obtained ahead of its release next week. Several excerpts detail McCarthy’s state of mind from Election Day 2020 to the origination of the select committee investing the Jan. 6 insurrection.
House GOP tries to embark on a united front as expected rifts loom
“McCarthy’s tirade against Herrera Beutler was just the start of what would become a GOP-wide campaign to whitewash the details of what happened on January 6 in the aftermath of the second impeachment,” the authors write.
McCarthy and Herrera Beutler both denied the explosive details from their 2021 meeting in a statement to the authors, saying their reporting “is wrong.”
“Beyond multiple inaccuracies — it is dramatized to fit an on-screen adaptation, not to serve as a document of record. We know it’s wrong because we were the only two in the room for this conversation,” the joint statement to the authors said. The authors state that their reporting was verified by a person in the room during the argument and multiple lawmakers who heard the account firsthand from McCarthy.
The amicus brief decision
The book describes the political calculations made by congressional leaders and those who played a central role in the two impeachment trials against Trump that ended in acquittal. McCarthy’s inner conflict began shortly after Trump asserted that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.
Trump’s false claim that he had won the election moved his allies in the House to sign an amicus brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn the election results in key states. According to the book, McCarthy sought the counsel of Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), then the House GOP conference chair, about what he should do about the amicus brief, ultimately telling her that he would not sign it because it would “give the federal government too much power over elections.”
McCarthy’s office denied to the authors that he ever asked Cheney for advice or had reservations about supporting the amicus brief. Bade and Demirjian note in the book that the denial goes against what was conveyed to them by multiple people in McCarthy’s office at the time who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.
McCarthy often strayed from advising his conference during the period between Election Day and Inauguration Day, refusing to disclose whether he would vote to decertify the election or how he would vote on impeachment. The writers describe him as “frozen between his fealty to Trump and his own ethical compass.” Each time, he chose his ambition.
McCarthy not only blessed attempts to overturn the election results on Jan. 6 but also greenlit a move by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to set up shop off the House floor and lobby colleagues to join the effort. The decisions worried some of McCarthy’s own staff members, according to the book, as well as more moderate House Republicans, who worried the objections might lead to violence.
Fallout from the impeachment vote
McCarthy often found himself seeking to do the right thing before changing course, the book details. After evacuating to Fort McNair as the riot was underway at the Capitol on Jan. 6, McCarthy called Cheney to inform her that upon his return, he would force the GOP conference to abandon objections to the electoral college tally. But he caved again after Jordan argued that backing down at that point would make them all look weak. Jordan’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
“Still, the GOP leader’s lust for power had come at a heavy price: In refusing to push back on the president, McCarthy had helped turn the GOP into a party that promoted conspiracy theories and lies,” the authors write. “Now those lies had led to violence and an insurrection. And much as he loathed to admit it, McCarthy was ashamed.”
Knowing that a vote to impeach Trump would drive a dagger through his speaker ambitions, but equally finding Trump’s inaction on Jan. 6 indefensible, McCarthy allowed his conference to vote their conscience on impeachment. He also knew they could vote in a way he couldn’t.
“Republicans were coming to him, seeking answers on whether they should vote to impeach the president. McCarthy didn’t know what to tell them. How could he turn on Trump when he needed him to land his dream job someday — yet how could he corral his rank and file into opposing impeachment when he knew Trump was guilty,” the authors write.
The House’s long-awaited electoral reform bill is ready. Can it pass?
Herrera Beutler was one of many Republicans who asked him for advice. Their conversations turned into “a therapy session” for McCarthy, who knew that telling the truth about Trump’s actions on Jan. 6 would influence her to vote to impeach, according to the book. He told her about the call where Trump praised the rioters, how Trump was unmoved to act or take responsibility for his actions since.
McCarthy’s promise to protect those who chose to impeach Trump over Jan. 6 was short-lived. Trump was “apoplectic” at McCarthy’s suggestion to censure him instead of holding an impeachment trial, allegedly telling “everyone who would listen that the man who had once been ‘my Kevin’ was in fact the biggest ‘p---y’ in Washington.” McCarthy’s conference was coalescing again around Trump, irate after Twitter and Facebook banned him from their platforms and colleagues sided with Democrats to impeach their president.
To make amends, McCarthy met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida in late January 2021, telling his Republican colleagues who voted to impeach that his meeting was “to make peace with the ex-president” and to ensure he would not act to take revenge against them.
But McCarthy’s blowup one month later with Herrera Beutler, and his decision to support Cheney’s ouster as conference chair later, mirrored similar retaliation tactics of Trump. The former president ended up working to find primary challengers to all 10 Republicans, including Herrera Beutler. At least five of them will not be returning to Congress. | 2022-10-11T09:49:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New book details how McCarthy came to support Trump after Jan. 6 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/kevin-mccarthy-jan-6-trump-book/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/kevin-mccarthy-jan-6-trump-book/ |
Abortion rights advocates eye ballot measures for 2024
By Rachel Roubein
Abortion rights activists on the campus of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on Oct. 3. (Jeff Kowalsky/AFP/Getty Images)
Abortion rights advocates are exploring ballot measures to enshrine access to the procedure into state constitutions in 2024, including in a handful of Republican-led states with restrictions on the books.
The effort represents an emerging strategy for the abortion rights movement and a growing belief that public opinion is on their side. After the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, advocates know appealing directly to voters is one of the only ways to counteract bans in conservative states and reshape access in a post-Roe America.
Some abortion rights advocates warn the movement should proceed carefully, wary of pouring millions of dollars into a ballot measure campaign only to be defeated. Such endeavors can take years to plan and are resource intensive, involving copious cash, research and time. Meanwhile, some Republican-led states are fighting back against ballot measures, seeking to make it more difficult to pass such initiatives after liberal policies — from expanding Medicaid to raising the minimum wage — have won in conservative-leaning states across the country.
But an unexpected Kansas victory has already provided a test case of how ballot measures may be useful in the future.
In early August, roughly 59 percent of voters in Kansas defeated an attempt to strip abortion protections from the state constitution — a margin of victory that shocked both sides of the debate. The campaign opposing the measure used messaging it believed could appeal to voters across the political spectrum such as focusing on the freedom of Americans to make their own health-care decisions without government interference, a message Republicans typically use to promote their own health agenda.
The vote in the conservative state where President Donald Trump won by 56 percent shows “we can do this,” Corrine Rivera Fowler — who served as the policy and legal advocacy director at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which helps with liberal ballot measures — said in an August interview before leaving her post late last month. “We can use the tool of the ballot measure to protect our right to make decisions over our body.”
Even before the Kansas vote, some abortion rights supporters began eyeing the ballot box as a critical tool shortly after the Supreme Court overturned the nearly half-century-old constitutional right to an abortion in June.
“Conversations immediately started stirring,” said one person in the reproductive health movement granted anonymity to detail private conversations. “Can we do this? Can we make this happen?”
A major test comes in November, where abortion will be on the ballot in five states. In particular, Michigan — a swing state — is viewed as a bellwether for future ballot measures aimed at shoring up abortion rights in other purple states.
Not every state allows questions to be posed directly to voters. Roughly half of states have processes allowing citizens to gather signatures and petition to put questions on the ballot. But only 18 states allow voters to directly amend their state constitutions through such petitions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures, further limiting the areas where abortion rights supporters can attempt to restore access to the procedure.
In most states, no decisions have been made. The discussions occurring across the country are preliminary, but groups such as the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center advise state advocates to begin exploring the idea at least two years in advance.
Such considerations include the legal and political landscape in a given state, the sheer cost of mounting a campaign, whether the idea has broad support among a diverse coalition of groups and research into if the state’s public will vote for such a measure. They’ll face fierce opposition from the antiabortion movement and other conservatives in the state, who could pursue lawsuits to attempt to stop the initiatives or mobilize their resources to try to defeat the measure at the polls.
“We are going to pay attention,” said Stephen Billy, the vice president of state affairs at SBA Pro-Life America. “We are going to be on the front end of these things in all the states and are aware of the threat and are going to do everything that we can to fight back where we’ve got the ability to.”
In Colorado — where abortions are legal — advocates have been plotting a ballot measure for over a year aimed at affirming the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution, as well as allowing state funds to pay for abortions, according to Karen Middleton, the president of Cobalt Advocates, a reproductive rights group.
“We for many years have been looking at a proactive ballot measure, and the reason we have held off was there’s been a hesitancy about how much it will cost and how much it takes out of our relatively small organizations that are doing other work,” Middleton said.
But now, a coalition of seven groups believes the time is right and is in the process of hiring initial staff to prepare for a 2024 campaign. At least 2 percent of total registered voters in each of the 35 Colorado Senate districts must sign a petition to get the abortion protections on the ballot, in addition to other requirements. Roughly 56 percent of surveyed Coloradans said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, compared with 38 percent who said it should be illegal in all or most cases, according to the Public Religion Research Institute’s American Values Atlas in 2018, when the nonpartisan group last asked about abortion rights.
Support for abortion rights was similar in Arizona, Florida and Ohio, hovering around 56 percent. It was a little lower in Missouri and Oklahoma, at 49 percent and 47 percent, respectively.
In Ohio, a ballot measure is “certainly possible” for 2024, though discussions are still fluid on what year advocates would potentially seek to put a question to voters, according to Lauren Blauvelt-Copelin, the vice president of government affairs and public advocacy for Planned Parenthood Advocates of Ohio.
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, abortion access in Ohio whipsawed between a ban on most abortions to resuming the procedure temporarily. A Hamilton County judge recently paused enforcement of the state’s ban on abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected while the case winds its way through the courts. Yet, antiabortion advocates are pushing the legislature to adopt further restrictions during a lame-duck session in November, believing the electorate won’t sign off on a constitutional amendment supporting abortion access.
“I don’t see Ohio being in play for them,” Mike Gonidakis, the president of Ohio Right to Life. “And if they do bring the initiative and it says, ‘no limits, no restrictions,’ we’ll beat it 80[percent]-20[percent].”
A simple majority of votes is needed to pass such a measure in Ohio. But in other states, that threshold is higher.
In Florida, an amendment to the constitution must garner 60 percent support at the ballot box as of 2006, increasing the difficulty of passing abortion measures.
There’s a grass-roots effort underway in the state to ask voters to adopt a constitutional amendment “recognizing the God-given right to life of the preborn individual,” which would need to collect nearly 892,000 signatures to put the question to voters in 2024. A broader measure failed to garner enough signatures for the 2022 ballot, but Mark Minck, the state chairman for Protect Human Life Florida, said he tailored the question this time to solely focus on abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.
On the other side, there are preliminary conversations occurring around a potential measure to instead protect abortion access in the state, which currently has a 15-week ban on the procedure, said state Rep. Anna Eskamani, a Democrat who previously worked for Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida.
“We’re navigating a ballot amendment initiative opportunity in a state that has already made this process more difficult,” she said. “So we have to tread in a very intentional and strategic way.”
The potential for citizen-led initiatives to become harder to pass already has abortion rights advocates on edge. In Oklahoma, that’s a fear among those who have begun discussing whether to attempt a constitutional amendment amid the state’s ban on abortions with limited exceptions.
“We need to do more due diligence because we can’t afford to get it wrong,” said one reproductive justice advocate in Oklahoma, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to detail private conversations.
In Arizona, a last-minute grass-roots effort to put an abortion rights measure to voters in November failed to garner enough signatures over the summer.
Now, there are exploratory conversations underway about whether to attempt such an effort for 2024, though the decision partly depends on the outcome of several measures on the state ballot this year that could make such campaigns more difficult, according to Darrell Hill, policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona. On Friday, an Arizona appellate court halted enforcement of the state’s near-total ban on abortion, which was rooted in a law from 1864. Now, most abortions in the state are prohibited after 15 weeks. | 2022-10-11T10:15:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Abortion rights advocates eye ballot measures for 2024 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/abortion-rights-advocates-eye-ballot-measures-2024/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/abortion-rights-advocates-eye-ballot-measures-2024/ |
As some Republican candidates face a fundraising shortfall, the former president, the RNC and key state parties have all spent significant sums on legal fights
Former president Donald Trump tosses out “Save America” hats at a rally ahead of the midterm elections in Mesa, Ariz., on Oct. 9. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Available filings, which disclose payments only through the end of August, show Save America sent its single biggest check in the last 20 months not to a Trump-backed candidate or to advertising aimed at swing-state voters. Instead, the $3-million payment went to a Florida law firm representing the former president in the Justice Department’s investigation of his handling of government documents at Mar-a-Lago and its probe of the riot on Jan. 6, 2021, aimed at keeping Trump in power. Trump attorney Christopher Kise demanded the fee up front before he accepted the role. (A series of payments to multiple groups working unsuccessfully to oust Gov. Brian Kemp (R-Ga.) surpassed $3 million.)
Legal expenses incurred by Save America exploded this summer, as multiple probes of Trump’s conduct intensified, from the capital, where lawmakers and prosecutors are investigating possible wrongdoing, to New York and Georgia, where authorities are scrutinizing the former president, his political associates and members of his family.
Cash doled out to lawyers by the leadership PAC nearly tripled between May and June, as authorities sent subpoenas to a wide range of people involved in efforts to reverse Trump’s November 2020 loss. That sum nearly doubled in July compared to June, reaching almost $1 million.
And in August, Save America spent more than $3.8 million on legal consulting, according to a filing with the Federal Election Commission. The committee has spent $42 million in total so far this cycle — with much of that sum going to payroll, event staging and fundraising — and had more than $92 million in reserve at the end of the summer.
In response to questions about the use of donor money to cover the former president’s legal bills, Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich accused Democrats of “weaponizing taxpayer dollars with fake investigations and meritless cases in an attempt to intimidate and silence Republicans.”
State-level Republicans have also used party resources to defray legal costs related to Trump’s attempts to stay in power. The Georgia GOP paid more than $20,000 this summer to the firm representing party officials, including the chairman, David Shafer, before the House panel probing the Jan. 6 attack. Another $25,000 went to the firm representing Shafer and other members of a slate of alternate electors backing Trump despite his loss in the state. Shafer declined to comment.
In Arizona, the state GOP has paid more than $127,000 to a pair of law firms representing the party’s chairwoman, Kelli Ward, in her lawsuit seeking to block the House’s Jan. 6 committee from obtaining her phone records and in the party’s litigation against Maricopa County over the hiring of poll workers, according to state and federal filings. It was unclear how much of those expenses were related to those two legal battles; a spokeswoman for the state party did not respond to requests for comment.
A new Trump-backed super PAC promising to up the former president’s financial commitment in the midterms may assuage some concerns within the party about his use of donor money. Its forerunner, Make America Great Again, Again!, was essentially disbanded, partially because of Trump’s frustration with the money some of his advisers were making from it. The new super PAC, called simply Make America Great Again Inc., put about $5 million behind advertising in five states as of the end of last week, according to the tracking firm AdImpact.
Trump’s leadership PAC has shied from such commitments. Among Save America’s expenditures totaling $500,000 or more, just seven have gone to groups devoted primarily to spending in races this cycle. Meanwhile, 10 such payments have gone to a wide range of other recipients, including law firms and vendors that stage Trump’s events throughout the country. The Smithsonian Institution was sent $650,000 to fund portraits of Trump and former first lady Melania Trump for the National Portrait Gallery.
Trump has personally been unwilling to spend money in many cases for other politicians, believing that having a major financial reserve shows political strength, aides say. Some advisers have called for a bigger spend — believing it would buy more goodwill in the party.
Some of the committee’s spending has benefited Trump’s business — or people close to the former first family. Save America has directed about $245,000 to Trump properties for lodging and meals, as well as facility rental, since he left office, according to a review of the PAC’s filings. Hervé Pierre, the French American fashion designer who served as Melania Trump’s stylist when she was in the White House, has been paid $78,000 by the PAC in five installments since April. The payments were marked as “strategy consulting.”
Pierre did not respond to a message on LinkedIn seeking comment. But he told Women’s Wear Daily that his work for the former first lady involved interior design, not fashion. “It’s a great honor for me and it is very creative to give my viewpoint on some of these projects,” he said.
Save America’s funds have also helped support nonprofits employing former White House staff, including $1 million to the Conservative Partnership Institute — Meadows’s new employer — and $1 million to the America First Policy Institute, whose board chair is Linda McMahon, formerly Trump’s director of the Small Business Administration.
The Republican National Committee has also doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover Trump’s personal legal expenses. The party explained the unusual arrangement, first revealed by The Washington Post last fall, by assailing the investigations as politically motivated.
Over the last 10 months, the RNC has paid about $633,000 to the law firm of Ronald Fischetti, a veteran defense attorney who has represented Trump in investigations by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and the New York attorney general’s office. Whereas the criminal probe by the district attorney’s office appeared to wind down earlier this year, the civil investigation by the New York attorney general, Democrat Letitia James, intensified last month when she filed a lawsuit accusing Trump, three of his grown children and executives at his company of wide-ranging business fraud.
Party officials have said the payments will end if Trump announces a bid for the 2024 nomination — a contest in which the RNC is expected to remain neutral. The party’s executive committee has approved payments up to $1.6 million but could decide to surpass that amount.
One RNC member said the arrangement shows Trump has the party “wrapped around his finger.”
“It’s hard to justify when he’s not currently running for anything — much less the party nominee,” added the person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal.
The RNC’s revenue this cycle, about $276 million as of the end of August, has eclipsed that of the Democratic National Committee, which stood at about $244 million at the same juncture. But the GOP has also spent more — and ended the summer with $24 million on hand, compared to the DNC’s $56 million.
RNC spokeswoman Emma Vaughn said spending early in the cycle gave Republicans an edge. “The RNC invested early on in the cycle towards our minority engagement efforts, massive data-driven ground game, and digital strategy to drive turnout for Republicans up and down the ballot,” she said in a statement.
In addition to counsel for Trump, the RNC’s broader legal expenses have been extensive. The payments, totaling more than $20 million, have covered everything from ordinary compliance consulting to wide-ranging efforts to force changes to the way local officials conduct elections. Thomas Galvin, a member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, responded to recent lawsuits by the Arizona GOP and the national party accusing the county of favoring Democratic poll workers by saying party leaders were “wasting GOP donor money.”
Vaughn defended the move, saying, “Spending money to ensure that states are following the laws on the books for administering elections, including commonsense policies like bipartisan poll watching and poll working, is an important investment that our donors and supporters are passionate about.” She also said the litigation was made necessary by the county’s refusal to release relevant records, which officials there said they were in the process of doing.
Ron Kaufman, the RNC’s treasurer and a longtime committee member from Massachusetts, also defended the use of party resources on legal fights related to voting and election administration.
“If our state parties or elected leaders come to us and say, ‘There’s a problem with election integrity, let’s fix it,’ I’m not sure there’s any more important expense,” Kaufman said, also noting that such efforts are funded by a legal account that can’t be used for other purposes.
The party has not skimped on other efforts, Kaufman added, pointing to the GOP’s success in registering new voters. “We’ve been blessed by good management of our funds,” he said. | 2022-10-11T10:15:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Trump's legal expenses consumed GOP donor money - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/trump-legal-fees-donor-funds-rnc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/trump-legal-fees-donor-funds-rnc/ |
‘Bikes provide a sense of freedom and joy that I was not expecting,’ said teacher Sam Balto, who leads a caravan of kids to school
Phoebe, a 65-pound goldendoodle, rides with students every Wednesday morning in Portland, Ore., during their weekly “bike bus” ride. (Ian Downard)
Every Wednesday morning, people in Portland, Ore., go to their windows and stand on their stoops to watch a group of about 170 children roll by on their bikes, music trailing behind them, sometimes drowned out by the kids’ excited chatter. The onlookers cheer and take photos.
“This brings so much joy to so many people,” said Alison Warlitner, whose children attend Alameda Elementary School and join in the bike commute each week. “It’s the coolest thing.”
Physical education teacher Sam Balto leads the caravan of kids on their collective commute to school starting about 8:10 a.m. He wears a neon yellow safety vest and blasts music on a portable speaker.
Warlitner’s two children, ages 6 and 7, spring out of bed Wednesday mornings, she said, to join the bike caravan to school. Warlitner shared a video of the “bike bus” on TikTok last week, and it has been viewed more than 7 million times. She said she thinks it hit a nerve because of the sheer joy it spreads.
“They just get to school happy,” she said.
The bike bus has become the students’ favorite way to get to school. The community likes it because it reduces congestion and pollution caused by buses and cars — while also promoting physical activity and fostering community.
Free fruit and vegetables for anyone? It’s the reality in ‘edible cities.’
Balto — who is from Chevy Chase, Md., and has been a teacher for 10 years at schools in D.C., Boston and now Portland — has long been interested in the idea of active transportation.
While teaching in Boston, Balto started a “walking school bus” in 2016. He plotted out a safe route and encouraged students, parents, teachers and community members to join a group stroll to school.
“I saw great success with that,” said Balto, 37. “Children really love a chance to be out walking with their friends, and it was a great way to support students who did not have a parent who could walk with them or drive them to school.”
Balto said walking as a group addressed several problems, including childhood inactivity, bus driver shortages, morning drop-off congestion, pollution and safety concerns — since some parents and students aren’t comfortable with solo walks to school.
“There is tons of research about the importance of physical activity before school,” Balto said, adding that he noticed morning exercise improved students’ ability to focus in class.
What struck him most about the walking school bus, though, was how it strengthened the sense of community at the school.
“When we can provide more opportunities for children to connect with their peers, they absolutely love it,” he said. “It’s how we build stronger, more connected, safer school communities.”
When Balto moved to Portland in 2018, he brought the walking project to his new school. Then the pandemic hit, and he began working at Alameda Elementary in the fall of 2021.
In April, to mark Earth Day, he proposed trying out a bike bus, which he saw was gaining popularity in Barcelona. Administrators were enthusiastically on board.
He had also participated in National Bike to School Day. This is that idea writ large.
“That first run of it on Earth Day was a super-successful event,” said Matt Goldstein, the principal of Alameda.
The bike bus was also an opportunity for students to learn about climate change and how they can help. “This has proven to be a really cool, actionable item for kids and adults,” he said.
The whole school was invited to join the ride, and about 75 students showed up, many bringing their parents along to help chaperone.
Having led several walking school buses in the past, Balto was surprised that the bike bus had an even more powerful effect.
“Bikes provide a sense of freedom and joy that I was not expecting,” he said.
Given its success, they decided to do it again — and again and again. It quickly became a weekly Wednesday ritual at the school, and by the end of the school year roughly 120 students were taking part each time. Now, more than 170 kids — nearly 30 percent of the student body — meet every Wednesday morning, ready to ride. Goldstein also participates.
“The energy and the sense of community and the smiles, the day feels a little bit different than other days,” Goldstein said.
Every Wednesday around 8 a.m., the kids and parent volunteers congregate at two meeting spots, depending where they live. Balto has mapped out two routes — each about 1.5 miles long — and the groups meet in the middle. Both rides are entirely on a neighborhood greenway, which is a road intended for walking and biking. Parents wait at major crossings to stop the bike bus until there’s a break in car traffic.
There is always “a good ratio of adults to kids,” Balto said, adding that although they stay on a designated bike route, “there’s safety in numbers.”
The school community provides bikes to any student who doesn’t have access to one, Balto said. He has also contacted to local cycling organizations, with the aim of offering bikes to students in need at other schools in the city.
“At other schools, there’s a higher need for support,” said Balto, who shares videos of the bike bus on social media, hoping it will inspire other schools. “These videos are really touching something in people. There’s a sense of joy and freedom that they see with the children biking, but it also gets them to stop and reflect on how we can do student transportation differently.”
“My goal is to bring more awareness about active transportation and also to change how we fund student transportation,” Balto continued, adding that relying on parent volunteers to facilitate bike buses is inequitable and unsustainable. “Just as we have infrastructure for buses, we need to create an infrastructure around active transportation.”
Ian Downard, who has two children — ages 8 and 10 — at the school, helps lead the group every Wednesday.
The concept “touched me deeply,” he said. When the project started in the spring, “people were just so starved for community.”
“When we do bike bus, people come out of their homes and watch us. It’s kind of like a parade,” Downard said. “It’s palpable, the excitement in the neighborhood and community, and how much joy everyone gets just by seeing kids going to school and being happy and exercising.”
Downard brings his 65-pound goldendoodle, Phoebe, along for the ride. He straps her into a basket on the back of his bike.
“The dog is definitely a mascot for the bike bus,” he said.
As a parent, he has taken note of the benefits the bike bus, particularly for children.
“They not only enjoy biking, but it gets them in a great frame of mind for learning,” Downard said. “The whole thing is just such a delight. It’s nothing but goodness.”
Since starting the bike bus, Balto has noticed groups of students riding to school together on non-bike-bus days, which “has been truly amazing to see,” he said.
“When you get students and parents out of their cars and out in the community,” Balto said, “that is where the magic happens.” | 2022-10-11T10:20:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Elementary school students ride a 'bike bus' to school in Portland - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/11/bike-bus-school-sam-balto/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/11/bike-bus-school-sam-balto/ |
After September floods in Pakistan, a displaced man tried to cool off by a highway. (Akhtar Soomro/Reuters)
By the year 2100, extreme heat events will make parts of Asia and Africa uninhabitable for up to 600 million people, the United Nations and the Red Cross said Monday.
Projected death rates from heat waves are “staggeringly high,” comparable to all cancers or all infectious diseases, according to a report released ahead of next month’s U.N. Climate Change Conference in Egypt by the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
The report adds to the growing number of studies that show climate change is exacerbating the magnitude and frequency of extreme weather events. Heat waves in the Western United States this year broke hundreds of records after days of triple-digit temperatures and weeks of dry weather.
The report’s findings “are startling and disturbing,” the authors wrote. Heat waves “will become deadlier with every further increment of climate change. We hope this report serves not only as a wake-up call but also a road map.”
In a stark scenario, which would result if “little is done to curb carbon emissions,” densely populated urban centers in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa will suffer from “recurring life-threatening” heat events that bring temperatures beyond the human survivability threshold.
That would affect 600 million people in countries such as India, Indonesia, Sudan and Kuwait, according to the report. Many of those regions are already experiencing increasingly hot and frequent heat events.
The past seven years have been the hottest in recorded history, new data shows
This year, India and Pakistan suffered a scorching streak that began in March. It shortened the school calendar and cut crop yields as the mercury reached 117 degrees Fahrenheit. Last year, parts of the Middle East topped 125 degrees during a heat wave. Five years before, a Kuwaiti town logged 129 degrees.
By the end of this century, one-third of the global population could be living in areas with average temperatures above 84 degrees, which until now has been limited to 0.8 percent of the world’s land surface, mostly in Africa’s Sahara region, according to the report, which cited a 2019 study.
Extreme heat waves will also make parts of the United States, including Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and California, less suitable for human habitation by 2070, the report said, if global temperatures rise between 2 and 2.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
More frequent and more severe heat events will also kill more animals and destroy environments, exacerbating the fallout from such weather, according to the report. Food supplies will be disrupted, with extreme heat events potentially contributing to price volatility for staple crops like wheat.
The fallout will be unequal. The most vulnerable and marginalized people, such as agricultural workers, migrants, the elderly, children, and pregnant and breastfeeding women, are at higher health risk from heat events, according to the report.
Countries that are the least responsible for climate change will also bear more of the burden than richer nations that emit more greenhouse gases, the authors said. Pakistan, which has contributed less than 1 percent of global emissions for decades, suffered catastrophic floods this year that weather experts blamed on climate change.
“Let us be clear: This is not a problem that humanitarian organizations can solve alone. The urgent priority must be large and sustained investments that mitigate climate change and support long-term adaptation for the most vulnerable people,” the report said. “Without those investments, we are destined for a future of ever larger and deadlier heat disasters.” | 2022-10-11T10:24:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Extreme hot weather could make parts of Africa and Asia uninhabitable - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/11/extreme-heat-heatwave-deaths/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/11/extreme-heat-heatwave-deaths/ |
Enforcement of District’s routine vaccination mandate to begin Tuesday
Meanwhile, a quarter of the city’s school-aged population is still behind on required shots
A newly-renovated classroom at School Within School in Washington on Aug. 29, 2022. The District is set to begin enforcement of its routine vaccination mandate on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
School leaders in D.C. have been told to start enforcing a rule today that requires children to have all their routine vaccinations, a long-held but historically neglected mandate that could keep children out of school.
Tuesday marks the deadline for prekindergarten through fifth-grade students to have all their routine shots for illnesses including measles, polio and whooping cough. Children who remain out of compliance could be excluded from school — though the Office of the State Superintendent of Education has instructed schools to grant a two-week grace period to students with upcoming doctor’s appointments and for families who are waiting to have their documentation processed.
Sixth through 12th grade students will need to be vaccinated by Nov. 4 before facing the same consequences. The order applies to students in public, charter, private and parochial schools.
These types of mandates are common and enforced throughout the country, said Paul Kihn, the city’s deputy mayor for education, in a previous interview. But, in the District, the order has not been enforced “in a number of years,” he added.
Kihn said the city planned to start enforcing the routine vaccination requirement three years ago, but decided to postpone because of the pandemic. But with the resurgence of diseases such measles and polio in recent years, officials are concerned.
But more than 23,000 students — about a quarter of the city’s school-aged population — were still behind on all their immunizations as of Sept. 27. Schools were instructed to send notices on Sept. 7 to prekindergarten through fifth-grade families who still had not submitted paperwork saying their children were fully vaccinated.
The scheduled enforcement also comes as D.C. lawmakers host a public roundtable on the city’s vaccine policies. The D.C. Council will hold the discussion Tuesday at 1 p.m. via Zoom, which will include testimony from the health department, deputy mayor for education, state superintendent of education, D.C. public schools and the Public Charter School Board.
“While the policy of the District is that all children should be vaccinated, it is also the policy that all children should be educated,” according to a notice from the Committee of the Whole. “Therefore, it is not a desired outcome for children to be disenrolled.”
The statement said the committee is “also interested whether to modify the covid-19 vaccine mandate, “ but did not indicate in what way.
D.C. students age 12 and older will have to be vaccinated against covid-19 by Jan. 3.
Education advocates and some lawmakers have criticized the District’s enforcement plans that could keep students out of school — particularly Black students who have lower vaccination rates and who fell further behind academically during the pandemic.
Enforcement follows a push from the city to get children up-to-date on routine shots after being away from doctors during the pandemic. The city this summer ran mobile vaccination clinics, hosted pop-up events and set up booths at back-to-school events. | 2022-10-11T10:28:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. schools: Deadline today for routine vaccinations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/11/dc-schools-routine-vaccination-deadline/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/11/dc-schools-routine-vaccination-deadline/ |
Judge to consider whether to save Potomac River bridge for cyclists
The Maryland Transportation Authority said a new bridge will open this week and demolition of the old bridge will begin immediately
Construction on the Governor Harry W. Nice Memorial/Senator Thomas “Mac” Middleton Bridge between King George County, Va., and Charles County, Md. (Maryland Transportation Authority)
Maryland officials plan to open a new Potomac River crossing Thursday, a date that is months ahead of schedule for a $463 million project. That timeline might normally be a cause for celebration, but the date was only disclosed amid a legal battle over the fate of an 82-year-old parallel crossing that bike advocates hope to save.
A trio of bike and trail advocacy organizations filed suit last month alleging late design changes to the new bridge that eliminated a bike and pedestrian path violated environmental review laws. They asked a federal judge preserve the old Governor Harry W. Nice Memorial/Senator Thomas “Mac” Middleton Bridge so it can be studied as an alternative for pedestrians and cyclists.
Bike groups sue over demolition of Maryland bridge they want for trail
Lawyers for the Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA), with the backing of the U.S. Department of Transportation, say demolition is set to begin as soon as the new bridge opens and that bike groups waited too long to go to court. But in court papers filed Monday, lawyers for the advocacy organizations argued the demolition schedule had not been consistent and that recent public statements from Maryland officials suggested it was months away.
“These statements reflect a rapidly changing demolition plan and timeline and demonstrate that MDTA is proceeding with removing the decking on the bridge to prevent any future efforts to repurpose the Historic Nice Bridge without a clear plan in place,” they wrote.
The future of the old bridge now falls to U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman, who on Tuesday afternoon will consider whether to stop the demolition at the 11th-hour, which the state says would cost taxpayers $21,500 each day. The dispute stretches back years, part of a battle over how to accommodate non-drivers on a major river crossing 30 miles south of Washington that was designed to last century.
The initial plans for the bridge called for a separated bike and pedestrian crossing, but the idea was abandoned in 2019 as a cost-savings measure. Instead, bicyclists will need to share a lane with cars and trucks — an approach advocates say is too dangerous and which makes no provision for pedestrians.
In the lawsuit filed in late September, the advocacy groups alleged the 2019 design changes weren’t properly evaluated under federal and state environmental laws. The new bridge is complete, but the groups argue Boardman could still order Maryland to preserve the old bridge — an approach that has the backing of federal lawmakers.
In court papers filed Saturday, lawyers for Maryland said the advocacy groups’ plans for the old bridge would never come to fruition.
“[The] Plaintiffs’ plan for the old bridge is unworkable, unaffordable, and potentially unsafe, as [the] Defendants thoroughly explained to the Plaintiffs and other members of the public years ago,” they wrote, saying demolition crews are assembled and “contract delay fees” could reach $21,500 each day to keep it open.
Officials at the U.S. Department of Transportation delayed approval of a $200 million loan for the bridge last year as they pushed the state for information about the bike path that was removed from plans.
Stalled federal loan increased the cost of Potomac River crossing
But in court papers also filed Saturday, federal lawyers urged the judge to allow the demolition to move forward this week, saying the advocacy group’s claims were a disagreement about the best design for the crossing and didn’t amount to a violation of environmental review laws.
“[The] Plaintiffs waited until the new bridge was complete and just days before the demolition of the old bridge is set to begin to seek emergency relief,” they wrote. “[The] Plaintiffs should not benefit from an alleged emergency created by their own choices regarding the timing of this lawsuit.”
State and federal lawyers for the U.S. Transportation Department both argued that the separate bike and pedestrian path would have been a minor element of the bridge’s design, one that the state said would only have been used for a tiny fraction of the 7 million annual crossings. Federal lawyers argued the official “purpose and need” of the bridge related only to traffic issues and that “a bike and pedestrian lane does not further any of those purposes.”
Asked when the decision was made to open the bridge this week, Kelly Melhem, a spokeswoman for the Maryland Transportation Authority, said last week the agency wouldn’t comment on pending litigation and that the agency would “provide appropriate notice to the media and the public regarding opening activities for the new Nice/Middleton Bridge.”
On Monday, the bridge project’s website continued to say it would open in early 2023. | 2022-10-11T10:29:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Judge to consider whether to save Maryland's Nice Bridge for cyclists - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/11/maryland-nice-bridge-potomac/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/11/maryland-nice-bridge-potomac/ |
Jeremy Fleming, head of the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), in London 2019. (Frank Augstein/AP)
LONDON — The United Kingdom’s top spy chief will warn in a rare public speech Tuesday that Russian forces in Ukraine are overstretched and “exhausted” — and that President Vladimir Putin is committing “strategic errors in judgment.”
The assessment from Jeremy Fleming, head of the secretive GCHQ, Britain’s intelligence, cyber and security agency, comes after Putin drafted reservists to bolster his war effort and claimed a “massive strike” across Ukraine this week. The missile attacks hit energy facilities and civilian infrastructure across the country, including in the heart of Kyiv, in retaliation for a weekend explosion on Russia’s strategic Crimean Bridge.
“Russia’s forces are exhausted. The use of prisoners to reinforce, and now the mobilization of tens of thousands of inexperienced conscripts, speaks of a desperate situation,” Fleming is expected to say in an address to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) think tank in London. A preview of the speech was obtained by The Washington Post.
Ukraine’s military has launched a series of successful counteroffensives with the help of Western weapons, recapturing swaths of land previously held by Russian forces.
Putin’s “decision-making has proved flawed,” Fleming will say, and he has “little effective internal challenge” from Russia’s military and political elite.
“We know — and Russian commanders on the ground know — that their supplies and munitions are running out,” he will say.
Britain’s Defense Ministry has become a daily source of information since Russia invaded its neighbor in February, churning out frequent bite-sized updates on social media analyzing Moscow’s military strategy and war effort.
The move to be more transparent with intelligence follows a strategically unusual decision by Western intelligence agencies, including the U.S. intelligence community, to publicly share information about Putin’s plans — although it ultimately was not enough to deter the invasion.
By speaking out, Fleming told the BBC in an interview early Tuesday, his agency hoped to “illuminate the threat” and encourage public trust. He cautioned that the United Kingdom is not exactly writing off the threat from Russia. The last 24 hours have proved Moscow still has a “very capable military machine,” he said, referring to the strikes on dozens of Ukrainian cities Monday.
However, he added, Russia is running low on munitions and troops, and “it’s certainly running short of friends.”
Putin last month announced a partial military mobilization of as many as 300,000 reservists for what he still terms Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine. The decision sparked public panic, sending thousands of eligible men fleeing to borders and scrambling for flights to avoid being called up for deployment to the front lines.
Russians are “seeing just how badly Putin has misjudged the situation,” Fleming will state. “They’re fleeing the draft, realizing they can no longer travel. They know their access to modern technologies and external influences will be drastically restricted. And they are feeling the extent of the dreadful human cost of his war of choice.”
A little more than a month after the war started, Fleming warned that Russian soldiers were low on morale and weapons and had, at times, refused orders and sabotaged their own equipment — painting a picture of chaos on Russia’s front lines even then.
Following this weekend’s attack on Russia’s strategic Crimean Bridge, Moscow retaliated by launching a wave of strikes that targeted parks, playgrounds and downtown areas Monday far from the front lines, sparking outrage and killing at least 19 people, according to Ukrainian authorities.
Yet the strikes were cheered by backers of Putin. Viktor Bondarev, head of the foreign affairs committee of Russia’s upper house of parliament, called Monday’s strikes the beginning of “a new phase” and promising more “resolute” action to come.
As the threat of nuclear weapons looms large, Fleming warned that suggestions from the Kremlin that such weapons are on the table are “very dangerous,” and would lead to a “catastrophe.” However, he stressed, so far there have been no indicators of their deployment, and Putin has been “staying within the doctrine of their use.”
This is consistent with views of U.S. officials, who say they think it unlikely that Putin will carry out his threats. President Biden nevertheless warned last week that Putin was “not joking” in his threats to use nuclear weapons, stirring up what Biden called the most serious “prospect of Armageddon” in 60 years.
The United Kingdom has three main intelligence services: MI6, the foreign intelligence service, popularized by the fictional spies James Bond and George Smiley; MI5, the domestic agency; and Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ, the eavesdropping service. The entire intelligence community is famously secretive.
Fleming, expected to speak more broadly on global threats to security on Tuesday, will also single out China’s bid to spread its influence through science and technology.
Calling today a “sliding doors moment in history,” Fleming will accuse China’s ruling Communist Party of seeking to create “client economies and governments,” bringing countries into its sphere of influence and in doing so “mortgaging the future” by encouraging them to buy Chinese tech and incur what he called “hidden costs.” | 2022-10-11T11:56:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.K. spy chief: Russian military ‘exhausted,’ Putin’s judgment ‘flawed’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/11/russia-military-exhausted-gchq-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/11/russia-military-exhausted-gchq-ukraine/ |
A woman walks past workers washing the street in Lisbon's old town. (Armando Franca/AP)
Portugal is the latest country to formally position itself as a haven for “digital nomads,” as it introduces a new visa geared toward remote workers that will become available Oct. 30.
With its comparatively low cost of living, temperate weather and proximity to other European destinations, Portugal has grown in popularity as a destination not only for travel but also for longer-term relocation, including retirement. About 9.6 million international tourists visited Portugal in 2021, per government estimates — a 48 percent increase from 2020, but still sharply down from 2019.
Despite the pandemic’s dent on tourism, it set off widespread remote work, which Portugal now appears to be trying to take advantage of. In July, when the country was considering such a policy, Portugal’s deputy minister for parliamentary affairs, Ana Catarina Mendes, said: “Portugal is a country of immigration that needs immigrants, that needs and benefits from the contribution of immigrants to its demographics, to its economy, to its culture.”
I’ve worked remotely from 14 countries. Here’s what I learned.
The digital-nomad visa and residence permit will be available for people employed outside of Portugal who are able to provide a contract of employment, tax residency documents and proof of an average monthly income over the past three months equivalent to at least four times the minimum wage in Portugal, or roughly $2,730. For salaried workers, an annual salary of about $32,760 would suffice. That’s just under half of the average annual salary of U.S. remote workers, according to jobseeker site ZipRecruiter.
For freelancers or other self-employed workers, proof of the same level of income will be required by way of service contracts or other means of proof of services. (European Union nationals and citizens of Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, Andorra and Switzerland already have some residency rights in Portugal.)
Portugal has another comparable visa that permits residency with relatively lax income requirements, but this one is geared toward retirees and has a passive-income requirement. Portugal has become popular as a means to attain permanent residency within the E.U., with its “golden visa” offering a path to long-term residency for people who invest a minimum amount within the country. It is not immediately clear if the digital-nomad visa provides a similar path.
Portugal’s digital-nomad visa comes as U.S. companies are again pushing employees back into the office. But workers in many cities have resisted returning to the workplace, with downtown activity in many major cities such as San Francisco, Washington and New York City in June far below its pre-pandemic levels, according to a study by the University of California at Berkeley.
Meanwhile, many tech companies have remained fully remote. Twitter, Airbnb and Salesforce have allowed many employees to go remote full time. Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong said last year that the cryptocurrency company had become a “decentralized company, with no headquarters,” with its remote-first policy helping it “attract top talent.”
Those tech workers — as well as countless other remote workers and freelancers — are able to take advantage of remote-work programs across the world, which have blossomed during the pandemic. A report on remote work released in June by the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank, said that more than 25 countries have created digital-nomad initiatives since 2019, when Estonia became the first country with such a visa.
One of the latest is Malaysia, which launched a program that aims to establish it as the “preferred digital nomad hub” in Southeast Asia. A government website promoting the “DE Rantau” program touts Malaysia as “Your Next Digital Nomad Destination.” | 2022-10-11T12:09:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Portugal is latest to offer digital-nomad visa for remote workers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/10/11/portugal-digital-nomad-visa-remote-work/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/10/11/portugal-digital-nomad-visa-remote-work/ |
Someone threw a can of booze at a comedian. She chugged the rest.
Ariel Elias got into a minute-long back-and-forth with an audience member about her vote in 2020
A heckler threw a can of beer at comedian Ariel Elias during her set at a New Jersey comedy club on Oct. 8. She responded by chugging it on stage. (Video: Ariel Elias)
Comedian Ariel Elias thought she’d silenced a heckler who had been harassing her Saturday night at a New Jersey comedy club.
Elias fired back: “I could tell by the fact that you’re still talking when nobody wants you to that you voted for Trump.”
As the crowd declared Elias the victor with cheers and laughter, she turned away, ready to finish her set at Uncle Vinnie’s Comedy Club in Point Pleasant Beach, N.J.
That’s when a can of alcoholic seltzer whizzed by, splashing against a brick wall, just a few feet from Elias’s head.
Elias later posted a 1½-minute video of the interaction, which racked up 5 million views in a little more than a day. Several famous comedians have responded, defending her and praising her work. Jim Gaffigan, retweeting a video of the incident, called her “super funny and total class,” while Patton Oswalt lauded her “rock-ribbed poise” and wished a hangover on her heckler.
Elias, a 33-year-old self-described Kentucky Jew, told The Washington Post she’s been doing stand-up for 11 years. It’s her main line of work, although she said she picks up the occasional dog-walking gig.
She performed at Uncle Vinnie’s, which is about 40 miles from her home in New York City, for the first time on Friday, the night before the can-throwing incident. She said she neither killed nor bombed with her act, which focuses on her insecurities, body-image issues and experiences navigating life as a Jew growing up in the South. The crowd wasn’t her ideal audience, and she wasn’t their ideal comedian, she said.
Still, the club’s owner, Dino Ibelli, saw her act for the first time that night and booked her to come back in April.
Saturday’s set was much like the one from the night before, she said: so-so. About three-quarters of the way through, Elias pivoted to a Q&A, something she does when she wants to inject a bit of spontaneity. A woman’s hand shot up, and Elias called on her, joking about how polite she was.
“He goes, ‘They might be a problem,’ ” Elias recalled.
Elias asked the woman to state her question, and she had it ready: “Did you vote for Donald Trump?”
Video of the back-and-forth, which Elias captured from a tripod she’d set up, shows that she deflected, repeating the question and asking the woman what she thought. Having inquired earlier in her set whether there were any other Jews in the room and gotten no response, Elias had a follow-up question.
“Why would you ask me that in here knowing I’m the only Jew in this room?” she said, to laughter from the crowd.
“Are you trying to get me killed?” she added, getting even more laughs.
Elias tried to steer the conversation away from politics, which was not the subject of her set, to something more kumbaya. “Guys, everybody vote for whoever you want to vote [for],” she said. “I don’t care who you voted for. I’m just happy we’re all here together.”
But the woman kept grilling Elias, the video shows: “So you voted for Biden?”
“I don’t know. Why does it matter?” Elias responded.
Ibelli told The Post that’s about the time he approached the woman and said that her opportunity to engage with Elias was over. He told her she needed to be quiet or leave. The woman, grabbing her purse and heading for the door, chose the latter, he said.
But fleeing won’t help the man escape accountability, the club owner said. A member of his party gave Ibelli information that allowed him to find and identify him online, along with the woman who heckled Elias. When police showed up to take a report the following morning, Ibelli gave them what he’d uncovered.
Ibelli said Uncle Vinnie’s is holding the man accountable “to the fullest extent,” in part to scare anyone from doing something like that in the future.
“We protect our comics, and that act was atrocious,” Ibelli said, “and we’re making sure he’s going to pay for it.”
“Stop throwing things at me.”
Elias didn’t miss a beat when she heard the can smash behind her. She whirled around to look at it on the ground and whipped back to stare, mouth agape, into the audience whence it came. Elias turned back toward the can and picked it up. She held it a few seconds for dramatic effect and then, to cheers from the crowd, chugged what was left in it.
“I’d really appreciate it,” she wrote on Twitter, “if anyone could please just let my teachers know that chugging a beer has in fact been great for my career.” | 2022-10-11T12:22:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Comedian teases heckler, chugs booze after can is thrown at her in N.J. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/11/ariel-elias-comedian-heckler-can/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/11/ariel-elias-comedian-heckler-can/ |
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