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The term “uranium glass” generally describes glass with uranium oxide, which glows under a black light, and differs from Depression or Vaseline glass. (iStock)
The term “uranium glass” generally describes glass with uranium oxide, which glows under a black light, added. Other terms — Vaseline glass and Depression glass, for example — came later and apply more specifically to lighter yellow glass and glass made during the Great Depression, respectively. By any name, though, it’s experiencing a renewed popularity among collectors who are drawn to its eerie glow and perceived danger. TikTok has increased its visibility in recent years, with accounts such as @terrestrialtreasures sharing finds to more than 77,000 followers.
“I had no room for curio cabinets to collect uranium glassware,” she says. “However, I was at the time very interested in vintage jewelry, and when I saw my first piece of uranium glass jewelry, I was immediately hooked.”
“Most tableware kind of glass is what’s called a soda-lime glass,” says Katherine Gray, a glass artist and judge on Netflix’s “Blown Away.” The base is mostly silica, with a few “fluxes,” or substances that lower the melting point of the silica, she adds. Color is added by inserting pieces from long rods of tinted glass in the hot blow pipe, or by rolling molten glass in a fine powder of a metal oxide, including uranium.
“Uranium is just a controlled substance, so it’s a little harder to get your hands on, … but there are a few people that manufacture it in the U.S.,” says Gray, who has created pieces of uranium glass for items she sells under her “Hearth” series.
“You’re dealing with chemically purified uranium [in uranium glass],” Frame says. “Uranium that has been chemically purified is generally not that much of a risk. It’s not particularly radioactive.” This type of uranium, which hasn’t been enriched like the type used for nuclear weapons, has a fraction of the amount of radioactivity, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.
“Make sure the item is actually glass,” Granger says. “If the item is glass, and fluoresces neon green under a black light, it contains uranium dioxide 100 percent of the time.”
Prepare to pay. Prices vary based on the seller and the rarity of the item, with big-name brands such as Fenton and Anchor Hocking being more expensive. Glass shows tend to value pieces accordingly, but you might find deals at smaller stores. To be sure of an item’s value, use Replacements, Ltd. and books such as “Miller’s Collectibles Handbook & Price Guide.”
Caroline Eubanks is a writer in Atlanta. | 2022-10-11T13:01:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to know about collecting uranium glass - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/10/11/collecting-uranium-glass-advice/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/10/11/collecting-uranium-glass-advice/ |
The market for secondhand furniture has changed so quickly that some shops — and consumers — are having trouble keeping up
Antique lamps, a dresser, and a hutch all for sale inside 1830 Vintage in the Adams Morgan neighborhood in Washington, DC. (Tom Sandner for The Washington Post)
To understand why the vintage furniture market has gone a little haywire, start at the auction houses.
Weschler’s, in Rockville, Md., holds a weekly sale on Tuesdays where bidders duke it out for Louis XVI chairs, carved oak hutches and other wares finding a second — or third or fourth — life. These affairs used to be held in person: Auctioneers would rattle off prices from old lecterns that rolled around the floor. But like nearly everything else, that changed in March 2020.
“When we pivoted to online-only sales, we started seeing more and more people,” says Mark Weschler, the auction house’s vice president. “Our sales have exponentially grown — close to 100 percent more than what they were before.”
Not only has the move online opened auctions up to more buyers, it has also expanded the pool of who’s doing the buying. While almost all the furniture used to make its way to brick-and-mortar vintage shops, more of it than ever before is heading directly to private residences or to an ever-growing population of vendors who sell exclusively on Instagram and Facebook Marketplace.
All that new competition is driving up prices: “Now we’re not just selling it to someone who’s going to buy it and resell it — we’re [selling] it to the guy that would have bought it from him,” explains Matt Hurley, founder of Hurley Auctions in Greencastle, Pa. In other words, auction bidders are now willing to pay full retail or higher, putting a squeeze on traditional sellers at a time of increased competition.
While the average customer looking for, say, a mid-century modern credenza probably isn’t plugged into the auction scene, she’ll still feel the effects of this changing vintage economy when she shows up at her local secondhand shop. There, she’s more likely to find fewer options at higher prices. Not helping matters: persistent supply chain problems steering more consumers away from buying new and toward vintage options. (That’s why upholstered pieces like couches are especially sought after — and generally fly out of vintage stores within 24 hours.)
Though it’s difficult to precisely track secondhand furniture sales, the data available reveals significant growth: A recent report from the online seller Chairish shows the furniture resale market reached $15 billion in 2021, a $1 billion jump from 2020. Chairish projects the market will climb another $1 billion by the end of this year.
‘A different game’
Some shopkeepers have all but given up on auctions, not long ago their primary source of inventory. Suzanne Eblen, founder of the Old Lucketts Store in Leesburg, Va., says she no longer depends on them because the prices have become too unpredictable. Instead, she relies on leads from customers and other contacts liquidating estates or importing pieces from other countries. “It’s pushed people like me to try to find other directions where I can go,” she says.
The vintage market has changed so quickly, in fact, that even the early wave of social media sellers — not long ago, the new kids on the block — have begun to feel the same pressure they once put on old-school merchants.
Brent and Carly Holloway are the co-owners of BCH Furniture, which they launched in New York City, primarily on Facebook Marketplace, in 2019. Once the pandemic started, it “saturated the market,” says Brent. “People were stuck at home and it felt like the only kind of commerce that was open was Instagram, or at least online. So many people started to create their own stores and get out there with us, and it was a different game.”
Pat Tomasiello, who’s based in South Jersey, created the Instagram account Retrodelphia in 2018. He says the influx of new sellers on social media has made it “a little annoying sometimes when I’m trying to buy stuff.” His strategy now includes paying more for items he thinks will increase Retrodelphia’s visibility, even if he can’t ultimately profit from them.
Tell us what questions you have about caring for a home.
“If I have a sought-after collectible piece and it’s worth, say, $1,500, maybe I’ll pay $1,250 or $1,300 or $1,400 just to have the piece,” he says. “I get it on Instagram, it gets a bunch of likes, it gets a bunch of followers, and it brings people to my page.”
Getting the good stuff also now requires earlier mornings. These days, Tomasiello prefers to pay pickers to wake up at the crack of dawn for estate sales and deliver furniture to his warehouse, rather than attend himself and risk coming up empty: “If you don’t show up at 4 a.m., 5 a.m. — the sale might not start till 9 or 10 — if you’re not waiting in line that early, you’re not going to get it.”
‘We’re just getting by’
As prices rise for sellers, they have to reckon with how much of the burden they’re willing to pass to consumers.
1830 Vintage, in D.C., opens only when co-owner Wendy Hauenstein and her husband have enough wares to sell, because it’s not their full-time gig. “We’re getting close to the point where we’re open less because we’re not able to find good-quality pieces at good auction prices,” she says. “We don’t want to be selling things for thousands of dollars.”
Hauenstein compares the struggle to keep her prices reasonable while still covering her overhead to doing the limbo. “We’re just getting by with a really deep backbend, and it’s getting so that the stick is tighter and we’re not able to bend that far,” she says. “Maybe [we] do this one more year, but probably we won’t do it much after that.”
Pixie Windsor, owner of Miss Pixie’s, also in D.C., explains the delicate balance she has to strike between pricing items high enough to eke out a profit, and moving enough volume to free up valuable space in her store. “I don’t want this desk to be here for four weeks. I want this desk to be gone,” she says. “Do I want to price it at $195 and it’ll definitely be gone by Monday? Or do I want to price it at $250 and see if everybody realizes what a good deal they’re still getting?”
Still, she says that Instagram has been an asset, as much as an added complication. Yes, Insta-sellers are competitors, and unlike brick-and-mortar businesses, they often don’t have to deal with sales taxes, or overhead costs such as payroll. But social media is now a necessary tool for old-school sellers, too. “My employees were begging me, ‘Please do Instagram,’ ” says Windsor, who was at first hesitant then ultimately “shocked” by the business it brought in, especially in the early months of the pandemic. “It really kind of saved the company.”
Others are rebalancing how they split their time between their physical and online stores. Wishbone Reserve, a vintage shop in Baltimore, has cut back on in-person hours because at least half its sales now happen digitally. It’s open only Friday through Sunday, and co-owners Athena Hoffberger and Julie Lilienfeld spend the rest of the week seeking out inventory and working on their website. “People can come in if they want to see the shop and experience it,” says Lilienfeld. “But our websites are always open.” | 2022-10-11T13:01:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why vintage furniture is getting more expensive and harder to find - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/10/11/vintage-furniture-harder-to-buy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/10/11/vintage-furniture-harder-to-buy/ |
11-year-old climate activist inspires action through social media
Licy Kangujam, who is from India, prompted a cleanup of trash at the historic Taj Mahal. But her ambitions to help the environment are much bigger.
By Lela Nargi
Licypriya Kangujam, 11, is an environmental activist from New Delhi, India. She holds a climate justice sign in front of the White House, which she visited. (Courtesy of Licypriya Kangujam)
At age 11, Licypriya Kangujam has already traveled the world, but her adventures haven’t been all fun. She’s been trying to help save the planet by getting the attention of people in power.
“Asking [for] clean air to breathe, clean water to drink and clean planet to live are our basic rights,” said Licypriya (pronounced lih-see-PREE-yaa), who is also called Licy.
Inspired by teenage Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg, Licy began protesting at age 6.
Climate activists Greta Thunberg and Vanessa Nakate scold global leaders for lack of action
“I started spending a week outside the Indian Parliament House to draw the attention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to pass a climate change law in India,” she told KidsPost in an email. She also founded the Child Movement, an organization that calls on world leaders “to take urgent climate action to save our planet and our future.”
Last month, Licy traveled from her home in New Delhi, India, to New York City, to attend the United Nations (U.N.) General Assembly. That’s when 193 countries send representatives to talk about the most important issues for the world. Licy participated in several events at the U.N., on climate and education, for example. She met other activists, including Malala Yousafzai, who received the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize for her work in helping girls to get an education.
Licy also traveled to Washington, D.C., and visited the White House.
But Licy might be best-known for getting officials at the Taj Mahal mausoleum to clean up trash at the historic site. When she visited it for the first time in June, she says she was shocked to see piles of garbage around the nearly 400-year-old white marble building, where emperor Shah Jahan and his wife are buried. She held her own protest, holding up a sign that read “Behind the Beauty of Taj Mahal is Plastic Pollution” and posing for a photo.
“The picture [went] viral in the social media, and the plastic pollution around the Taj Mahal was cleaned within 24 hours,” said Licy.
Licy said social media has been a powerful tool for her, allowing her to stay up-to-date on environmental issues, as well as speak out about them. It also helps her gain support from her followers. She has almost 21,000 followers on Instagram, more than 37,000 subscribers on YouTube and almost 157,000 followers on Twitter. Her mother manages her accounts, which require owners to be at least 13 years old.
“Whenever I raise my voice, people keep increasing[ly] following me,” she said. “At the same time, I faced lots of false propaganda, threat[s] and abuse to silence my voice.”
Despite all that, Licy says her nonactivist life is normal. She’s a fifth-grader at Ryan International School, where her favorite subject is math. When she isn’t studying or accepting invitations to speak at other schools, she swims, paints and watches the cartoon “Doraemon” with her 8-year-old sister, Irina.
She also has an initiative encouraging kids to plant trees every Monday, hoping to get to 1 million trees planted this year, “to make our planet green again,” she said.
Meet 12 kids who are changing their communities and our world
Licy has suggestions for other kids who want to be activists: Persuade your parents to walk, bike or take public transportation. Stop using single-use plastics. And make sure trash makes it to the wastebasket.
“Many people told me that I’m too young to get involved in such activism, but … I strongly believe that children can lead the change,” she said. “We need to keep speaking up about the climate crisis and … to hold lawmakers accountable for their political decisions.” | 2022-10-11T13:01:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kid activist Licy Kangujam inspires climate action through social media - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/10/11/licypriya-kangujam-kid-climate-activist/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/10/11/licypriya-kangujam-kid-climate-activist/ |
Michael Cohen was President Donald Trump’s personal attorney and served as an executive at the Trump Organization. (Rick Wenner/FTWP)
Michael Cohen, 56, was President Donald Trump’s personal attorney and served as an executive at the Trump Organization. In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion and campaign finance violations and served time at a federal correctional institution in Otisville, N.Y. He is the author of “Disloyal” (2020) and “Revenge,” which will be released in October. He lives in Manhattan with his wife and two children.
Can you tell me about the title of your new book, “Revenge” — on whom, by whom?
So it’s “Revenge: How Donald Trump Weaponized the U.S. Department of Justice Against His Critics.” Very much like my book “Disloyal,” you’re not sure who’s “disloyal.” So it’s one of those words that can go either way. I chose “Revenge” as a name, and to write the book in the first place, to explore what occurs when a corrupt and immoral president, along with a willing and complicit attorney general, weaponize the Department of Justice against his critics.
In the foreword you say, “We should all be worried about government, because if we’re not, then what happened to me could happen to you.” How much do you think that what you call the weaponizing of the DOJ is a systemic issue versus to do with one particular administration?
It’s definitely systemic. But Donald Trump was the cancer. He was the person who figured out how to weaponize it and to go after critics like no one has ever done before.
The system is damaged because the better the prosecutor’s conviction rate is, the more desirable they become to these white-shoe law firms, and then the higher-paying jobs that they land. Like in my case, prosecutors from the very first time that they engaged with my counsel, gave me an ultimatum to either plead guilty within 48 hours — from a Friday at 5:30 p.m. to Monday morning — or to be served with an 80-page indictment that would include my wife. That’s something that I’d rather die [over] than let happen. So I pled guilty to charges that were untrue. Other than the Stormy Daniels [nondisclosure agreement] charge that I pled guilty to, the rest are all lies. Shoved down my throat by prosecutors.
The tax evasion charges: completely untrue. I have never not filed a tax return in my 30-plus years of work. I have never been audited in my life. I had never even requested an extension. There was an error, which would make it not tax evasion, but rather a tax omission. I am currently suing my former accountant, Jeffrey Getzel, who was given some sort of an immunity deal to testify against me for mistakes that he had made. I never paid Karen McDougal the $150,000 to silence her via an NDA from discussing her affair with Donald. In fact, David Pecker of the National Enquirer made the payment. Somehow Pecker gets a limited immunity, and I get charged. All of this is covered in “Revenge” with specificity and also statements by agents, lawyers, former prosecutors, etc.
You worked closely with [Donald Trump] for many years as his personal lawyer, as his fixer, preceding his political phase. What do you see as parallels between his life in the business world and the way you allege he went after his enemies using the tools he then had at his disposal?
In the business world, he used his money and lawyers in order to achieve his goal. The power that he had as a businessman pales in comparison to the power of the presidency. His personal beliefs, his anger towards critics, remain the same. But his ability to effectuate harm and damage is unparalleled when you’re the president of the United States.
You have urged his current lawyers to distance themselves as soon as possible because they will take the fall. When you were working for him, did you have others who counseled you the same, but you didn’t hear them?
Only my wife and children, who wanted me not to accept the job to work for him. And, over the course of my decade-long employment, had requested multiple times that I quit. In fact, if you go back to my House Oversight Committee hearing, the public hearing, in February of 2019, I cautioned not just Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, and a slew of the Republicans who felt as though they needed to denigrate me repeatedly on behalf of Donald, I warned the entire world on who Donald Trump truly is: a con man. A thief. A liar. They didn’t heed the warning. And many of them are now caught up in significant litigation.
As you you’ve thought back on your own experience in the role and about individuals subsequent to you who have played that role for him, what do you think it takes to be a good fixer?
Someone who’s willing to go to the depth of hell to accomplish the task that Donald gave you. I was that person. I was well situated in many different areas. Which is why I was as effective for Donald as I was.
On the one hand, it’s a set of strengths — no matter what problem, you figure out how to get it done. But as you reflect, what are the dangers or the downfalls? What would you do differently?
Everything. I hate myself for what I did. I caused my family harm, unhappiness. It cost me my law license, my business, my reputation. The biggest mistake that I made was not listening to my wife and children.
You wrote that you helped create this Frankenstein monster and let it out of its cage, so you feel a moral duty, or that it’s your penance, to make sure that we re-cage the beast. Do you mean the individual, or the example of exploiting the system with impunity?
I’m specifically speaking of the individual himself. Donald Trump never wanted to be president of the United States. The entire campaign originated from a desire to increase the visibility of the brand. And Donald was frequently heard saying, “This is going to be the greatest political infomercial in the history of U.S. politics.” Once he tasted power, I knew that he would never want to give it up. He always admired dictators, monarchs, authoritarians, supreme leaders. And when I stated that we need to put Frankenstein’s monster back in its cage, I believe it’s the only way to silence MAGA and the cult of Donald J. Trump.
You said that you hate yourself for some of the things that you did. Obviously, you’re speaking out now. You’re writing, you’re getting involved. What would you like your legacy to be?
I don’t think that far down the line. My goal is to ensure that the democracy that I grew up with and that I’m currently living with is inherited by my children, grandchildren and, god willing, great-grandchildren.
What is your hope for the book, then?
The goal is to open up people’s eyes to several things. First, the importance of voting. And voting for people who share your democratic principles and value the Constitution. It’s also to hold those accountable who acted improperly, all at the direction of, and for the benefit of, Donald J. Trump, a wannabe dictator.
How optimistic are you that accountability will come to those who deserve it — and that there will be some sort of reform or greater fairness of prosecutorial goals?
I wish I can say that I was hopeful or even optimistic. This system is designed to protect itself. I talk about, for example, making a FOIA request over two years ago regarding the unconstitutional remand of me back to prison — because I refused to waive my First Amendment constitutional right. The response back from FOIA was that there are not documents in their possession that relate to the request. Unbeknownst to them, I actually had five documents that would have been responsive to my request. And so I brought on an attorney named Mark Zaid, who specializes in this area, and received back, thereafter, a response from FOIA claiming that they were initially wrong in their assessment, that there’s over 450,000 documents.
Do you see that as an error or as intentional?
Intentional. Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein determined that this was retaliation, plain and simple, by Attorney General Bill Barr to silence me and prevent me from putting out a book that was critical of his boss, the president.
You spent time in prison. Can you talk about what you learned, both as an individual, but also maybe what you learned from other people that you met there?
This country is in desperate need of prison reform. Many of my fellow inmates and I described prison as merely human warehousing of individuals to appease the public. To lure the public into a false state of security. And also to create jobs. While I was in Otisville, I was surrounded in the satellite camp by doctors, lawyers, accountants, businessmen, even an actor, all for some varying crime related to money and taxes. And as we would sit and have breakfast or lunch or dinners and engage in conversation, we used to always ask: Is there not a better public use for these people than prison? So instead of prison, how many impoverished communities could benefit from some of my fellow inmates, myself included, who were all — this is important — first-time offenders who felt a similar wrath as I did by overzealous prosecutors in desperate need of a conviction.
As you tell your story, and you talk about what happened, you mentioned also the problem with credibility. How much do you struggle with that?
My credibility is an issue because that’s what Donald wanted it to be. Not because it’s true. Donald Trump figured out how to play the media and how to use members of his party in order to discredit me. In fact, when I spoke before the House Oversight Committee, before the world, I made dozens of allegations, the most prescient being that if Donald Trump lost reelection there would never be a peaceful transfer of power. I talked about the inflation of his assets for the purpose of increasing his net worth while deflating the same assets for tax purposes. Every single statement that I made — the ones that were beneficial to Donald and the ones that were detrimental to Donald — were all truthful. They were all accurate. In fact, when I spent 100 hours with the Mueller team, being the second-most quoted person in the Mueller report only behind Don McGahn, two members of the Mueller team came to my sentencing, where they stated that everything I told them was truthful, accurate and relevant to their investigation.
Once you began to testify, and in writing your first book and now this book, has it felt satisfying, freeing to just be able to speak openly and to get things off your chest, no matter how damning they be to you or anybody else?
The first book I wrote while I was in prison. And I used that time as a way of distracting myself from being where I was. I would imagine that I was in a library or my living room writing. The second book, “Revenge,” I thought would be cathartic. It was not. It was painful. It was painful to remember all of the things that I had to go through by individuals looking to advance their own careers, to benefit from someone else’s misfortune, and doing so by creating lie after lie after lie about me.
Do you ever wonder if things hadn’t ended the way they had, might you still be part of things? Might you still be in the center of the cyclone?
The easiest and most self-serving answer to your question would be to say that even had this not occurred, and even if my relationship with Donald had not disintegrated, I would never have been involved in all of his — what’s the right word for it — meshugas — you know, in all of his craziness? I’m not certain that that statement would be true. It’s the one thing that I humorously thank him for because it helped extricate me from the cult of Donald Trump and prevent me from doing things that would leave a stain on my family’s legacy and name.
As you ask me these questions, you refer a lot back to my time at the Trump Organization and doing bad things. Yes, we sued contractors. Yes, I strong-armed a paint company where Donald was angered that the paint was not adhering to the wall — it was his fault because he bought the cheapest paint possible. I was a sharp-elbowed New York lawyer working for a narcissistic sociopath that wanted every benefit he could attain. How does any of that [compare] to what people like Rudy Giuliani and others were doing?
So, in the end, are you grateful that things did work out as they did, and you weren’t involved in subsequent things that, as you say, would have been a lot worse?
Yes. Though I would have preferred not to have gone through this ordeal. I’ve been through hell. It is soul-crunching. Not just what happens to the individual, but their family as well.
I acknowledge I did things that were wrong. Not things that I pled guilty to, other than the Stormy Daniels matter. But I want to ensure that American democracy prevails. That my children will get to grow up in the country that my father, a Holocaust survivor when he first came here, calls the greatest place in the world. We’re losing that. And if I could do something to help to prevent it, even if it costs me my life, I’m willing to go that distance.
A lot of people in prison used to say this to me, and it used to anger me terribly, “Had you shut up, had you done nothing, had you avoided the subpoenas like everybody else did, not provided the information, documentation, the truth, you would have ended up, for the most part, incarcerated — exactly where you are. But, you would have been the first one on his list for a full pardon.”
But you have no regrets on that front?
You’ve theorized that the classified documents that were kept at Mar-a-Lago were probably a bargaining chip. I wanted to ask you about why you say that and whether you have examples from when you worked with him that lead you to believe that. What grounds that theory?
By Donald taking and retaining these top-secret papers, he truly believes — and, again, it’s my theory — he believes that he could extort the Justice Department to refrain from indictments and incarceration by threatening to have these documents released to our adversaries. Now, I believe it’s an ill-conceived Trumpian power play, but what other power play does he have?
Trump’s classified Mar-a-Lago documents, catalogued
It’s a pretty risky game, if that’s the game.
Well, for both sides, in his mind. Indict me, incarcerate me, I release top-secret information that places the national security of the United States of America in jeopardy. You see, you asked a good question, which is: Why would I make that statement? Because working for him for more than a decade and seeing what he has done to so many people, myself included, Donald Trump doesn’t care about anyone or anything. And he’s willing to burn down the establishment in order to protect himself.
I also don’t believe that Donald is actually going to run in 2024. Because I believe that he knows that he cannot win and that, even if he did choose to run, that he will face opposition for the Republican nomination. He also knows very well, statistically, that he cannot win the general election. He’s lost those independents now, based upon Roe v. Wade, climate, student relief, etc. So what he’ll do is he will seek to remain relevant in the party by becoming a power broker and believing that whichever nominee he backs and endorses will owe him a duty of loyalty so that, in the event that his day of reckoning comes, they will terminate or pardon him from the plethora of litigation and consequences that currently plagues him.
A lot of people would say, “Well, you haven’t worked with him for so many years. How can you know this?”
As the old adage goes, a leopard never changes its spots.
This interview has been edited and condensed. KK Ottesen is a regular contributor to the Magazine. For a longer version, visit wapo.st/magazine.
WNBA’s Elena Delle Donne on tuning out judgment to define who you are
Sen. Patrick Leahy on how and why the Senate is a ‘broken place’ | 2022-10-11T13:02:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Michael Cohen: ‘Donald Trump never wanted to be president’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/11/michael-cohen-donald-trump-president/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/11/michael-cohen-donald-trump-president/ |
Bronny James is a 6-foot-2 point guard for Los Angeles's Sierra Canyon School. (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
As LeBron James Jr. noted, he already had been part of the Nike “family” for essentially his whole life. A name, image and likeness deal announced Monday simply turned that relationship into a more formal arrangement.
More commonly known as Bronny James, he is the 18-year-old son of LeBron James and an ascending basketball talent in his own right. A senior point guard at Los Angeles’s Sierra Canyon School, Bronny James became one of five players who are now official Nike endorsers.
The other four include a pair of college stars, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and Stanford’s Haley Jones, as well as two more high school seniors: Dajuan “DJ” Wagner Jr. of Camden., N.J., and Judea “JuJu” Watkins, who plays for the Sierra Canyon girls’ team.
“Each athlete is recognized as a player who is paving the way for the next generation on and off the court,” Nike said.
From 2019: Bronny James, LeBron’s kid, is the biggest draw in high school hoops
That language echoes Nike’s marketing for its LeBron XX shoe, the latest from the Los Angeles Lakers star’s signature line that was unveiled in September and has a stitched tag inside the tongue that reads, “Designed and Engineered to the Exact Specifications of the Next Generation.” The shoe was created with “players like LeBron’s sons Bronny and Bryce in mind,” a senior Nike footwear designer said in a statement.
In a statement Monday, Bronny James said, “For as long as I can remember, Nike’s been a part of my family.”
“Getting a chance to team up with them,” the 6-foot-2 guard continued, “and continue my family’s legacy both on the court and in the community is wild — it really means a lot to me.”
According to Nike, Bronny James wants to use the partnership with the apparel giant to “continue supporting the LeBron James Family Foundation and positively impacting communities that matter most to him.”
LeBron James has been partnered with Nike since a month before the 2003 NBA draft, in which he went No. 1 to the Cleveland Cavaliers, after the sides agreed to a deal that would reportedly pay the then-high-schooler in excess of $90 million. That ended a furious courtship among top athletic shoe companies including Adidas and Reebok, and James’s partnership with Nike took an unprecedented turn in 2015 when it signed him to what essentially amounted to a lifetime deal.
Terms of Nike’s NIL deals with Bronny James and the other four players were not disclosed Monday.
Clark enters her junior campaign for Iowa as a unanimous selection for Big Ten preseason player of the year after earning conference player of the year honors for a 2021-22 season in which she became the first Division I women’s player to lead the country in points per game (27) and assists per game (eight) in the same season. Her previous NIL deals included pacts with the Topps trading card manufacturer, tax preparation company H&R Block and the Hy-Vee supermarket chain (per Hawk Central).
Jones, a senior guard, is the defending Pac-12 player of the year. She was the Most Outstanding Player of the 2021 NCAA tournament after leading Stanford to the national championship, and her NIL partners include audio products manufacturer Beats by Dre, financial products firm SoFi and the NBA 2K video game series.
Who’s making the most from NIL? Women’s basketball is near the top.
Watkins is a decorated member of U.S. national youth teams whose accomplishments include earning FIBA U17 Women’s Basketball World Cup MVP honors in July after helping lead her country to a title-clinching win over Spain.
Wagner, 17, is looking to become the NBA’s first third-generation player. His father, Dajuan, had a five-year career in the league after being the No. 6 pick in the 2002 draft, and his grandfather Milt was a second-round pick in 1986 after a stellar career at Louisville.
Bronny James will be eligible for the NBA draft in 2024, but it is unclear whether his skills will be pro-ready at that point. His 37-year-old father, set to enter a 20th NBA season, has indicated he wants to have Bronny as a teammate. | 2022-10-11T13:23:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bronny James, son of LeBron, gets Nike NIL deal ahead of senior high school season - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/bronny-james-lebron-nike-nil/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/bronny-james-lebron-nike-nil/ |
Wizards 116, Hornets 107
The Wizards' Kristaps Porzingis sprained his left ankle late in the first half Monday night. (Jacob Kupferman/AP)
CHARLOTTE — The Washington Wizards tipped off the post-Japan portion of their preseason schedule Monday night without three rotation players.
Bradley Beal did not travel because he exhibited covid-19-like symptoms over the weekend, but he exited the NBA protocols Monday after receiving a negative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. He’ll be listed as day-to-day with a non-covid illness. Corey Kispert also stayed home to nurse a badly sprained left ankle. And Deni Avdija did not play as he continues to recover from a left groin strain suffered during the summer, though he was able to play three-on-three against teammates Monday as he works back toward in-season fitness.
Their absences left abundant opportunity for young players and new faces alike to play significant minutes against the Charlotte Hornets. Coach Wes Unseld Jr. started Monte Morris, Will Barton in Beal’s usual spot, North Carolina native Anthony Gill, Kyle Kuzma and Kristaps Porzingis. The group sparked a solid 36-point first quarter and set the tone for a 116-107 win.
Here’s what else to know about the Wizards’ win:
Porzingis exits early
Porzingis sprained his left ankle late in the first half after driving to the basket and stepping on Terry Rozier’s foot upon landing. The center remained on the court for a few moments before rising to make two free throws but then left early for the locker room and did not emerge after halftime.
Unseld said he didn’t think the injury would be too severe — unlike Kispert’s sprain in Japan, where the coach saw a notable amount of swelling after the game. Unseld said Porzingis wanted to play in the second half, but the team decided to shut him down.
“Just a quick ankle twist — nothing severe,” Unseld said.
Before his injury, Porzingis displayed nice chemistry with Kuzma, who assisted on two of his baskets and delivered a zippy over-the-shoulder pass another time. Preseason numbers don’t mean much, but Porzingis had 20 points on 5-for-10 shooting, made all seven of his free throws and added three rebounds.
No timetable for Beal
Beal is no longer in the league’s coronavirus protocols, so when he rejoins the team depends on when he starts feeling better. The guard played just 17 minutes in the first game of the preseason before sitting out the second, which is one reason Unseld would like him to play Friday at the New York Knicks if possible. (The season opener follows Oct. 19 at Indiana.) Beal still hasn’t spent that much time with Porzingis and Kuzma on the court outside of practice.
Behind closed doors at practice, Unseld has liked what he has seen.
“I have a sense of how it’s supposed to look. But … we’ve got to make sure everyone is up to par in rotation minutes by next week. I’d still like to see him out there, but as far as the chemistry, the synergy between [Beal and Porzingis], it’s been really good,” Unseld said. “I think they’re showing and finding different ways to excel, play off each other. It’s been pretty seamless.”
Hachimura rolls on
Rui Hachimura played well in front of a home crowd at Saitama Super Arena, and he appears to have brought the confidence he gained in Japan back stateside.
On Monday, the 24-year-old looked comfortable, more aware of his spacing and noticeably fit after missing the first half of last season. He had 15 points on 6-for-12 shooting and moved well.
Lax transition defense
Unseld mentioned transition defense as a point of concern following the preseason games in Japan, and the Wizards didn’t tighten up much Monday — they allowed the Hornets to snare 14 offensive rebounds. Kuzma said the team’s lack of alertness and urgency in getting downcourt is driving the issue.
“It’s not like we’re grabbing a lot of offensive rebounds, so we should be able to get back. That’s the most glaring thing that we have — the lack of communication and the lack of getting back on transition defense,” he said. “… Every team in the league wants to get up and down, and we have to win games in the regular season to get to where we want to go. Transition ‘D’ is a big part of it.”
Wizards rookie Johnny Davis is learning about the NBA and fatherhood
Davis converts
Johnny Davis’s first field goal of his (preseason) NBA career came a few minutes into the second quarter. The rookie caught a pass from Daniel Gafford near the top of the key and hit a routine floater over a couple of defenders — a mundane move that nonetheless must have felt good for the guard, who shot 0 for 12 while playing significant minutes in the first two preseason games. He finished with four points Monday.
Unseld kept Davis’s ballhandling duties to a minimum after putting him in an unfamiliar point guard spot while in Japan. The Wisconsin product, the 10th pick of this summer’s draft, looked more fluid with someone else organizing the offense, but Unseld believes Davis can grow into the position.
“He’s got the versatility and tool set to be able to do it. He obviously is not comfortable organizing a group by himself, which is pretty much what I expected, but he’s got the versatility defensively to guard [point guards, shooting guards and small forwards], in my opinion,” Unseld said. | 2022-10-11T13:23:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kristaps Porzingis sprains ankle as Wizards beat Hornets in preseason - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/kristaps-porzingis-injury-wizards/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/10/kristaps-porzingis-injury-wizards/ |
Aaron Judge and the Yankees will face the Cleveland Guardians in the ALDS. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press/AP)
NEW YORK — When the World Series ends and free agency begins, Aaron Judge will give the baseball industry a chance to answer a question that, until this point, had been limited to the realm of historical hypotheticals: What if a player, in his prime and playing for the most famous franchise in the sport, broke a long-standing home run record while nearly winning the Triple Crown … then hit the open market?
The question is particularly fascinating because Judge’s spectacular season tested the boundaries of one player’s impact on his franchise. At times this year, as the New York Yankees’ lineup fell apart around him, Judge kept them steady enough to hold on to the division. At other times, particularly in late September, fans packed ballparks entirely because of his pursuit of the American League home run record.
And now, as the Yankees begin another World Series push with Game 1 of an AL Division Series matchup with the Cleveland Guardians on Tuesday, Judge is the centerpiece of an aging roster that would have no chance to win the franchise’s first title since 2009 without him.
“I feel responsibility [to win a championship] every year, even when I was a rookie. My first postseason in ’17, I felt responsibility not only for this team but this city to bring something home,” Judge said Monday. “As the years have gone on and we’ve fallen short and came close and fallen short, it doesn’t get better every year. You have to learn from all those experiences.”
Not since Derek Jeter have the Yankees had a star so wholly their own, but Jeter was not nearly as formidable offensively. Not since Barry Bonds has anyone charged through a season with such unparalleled power, but he did it under suspicion before MLB was testing for performance-enhancing drugs and without the shiny clubhouse reputation Judge has honed.
Judge has a Jeterian clubhouse reputation and a Bondsian stature in the box. He has the size of a slugger but enough speed to continue being a helpful defensive presence in the outfield for at least a few more seasons. He hits the market as a paragon of baseball stardom, as uncommon on the field as he is, to this point, unimpeachable off it. The only thing he does not have is a World Series title.
“There’s a pot of gold there. I guess it’s yet to be determined how much it weighs, but it’s a pot of gold, no doubt about it,” Yankees General Manager Brian Cashman said. “Good for him. It was already a big pot, and obviously it’ll be bigger. But he’s put himself in an amazing position to have a lot of choices. And clearly, obviously, we’d like to win the day on that discussion.”
The Yankees know better than anyone what they have in Judge. They offered him a seven-year, $213.5 million extension in April, so confident in the adequacy of the offer that Cashman announced the number to reporters himself to prove the team was trying to keep him.
What they have is a player who conducts himself with such careful consideration for every public word, such dogged adherence to a team-first mantra, that he occasionally seems to be crafting the exact persona the baseball world wants him to have.
“It’s not an act. He is who it is. If he’s going to show emotion, it’s after a few drinks in a private setting,” Yankees ace Gerrit Cole said. “I would say that he probably does work on it, though, because he tries to get better at everything.”
Manager Aaron Boone and other teammates have said the same things about him all season, over and over, day after day — particularly when those questions became staples of the routine during Judge’s push for the AL home run record. Boone and others insist Judge is not performing the perfect baseball attitude. He is living it. When he steps in front of dugout cameras to spare struggling teammates the gaze of millions of unforgiving eyes, that is simply who he is and always has been here. His on-field stoicism doesn’t devolve into off-camera tantrums. And his team-first shtick never seems to lapse.
Presenting perfection often comes at the expense of revealing reality, but Judge — who commands a quiet respect from teammates but never seems entirely at ease — insists the person his teammates see is him.
“These are my brothers. This is family. They see every single side of me: happy, mad, the funny side. If there’s one place you can do that, it’s here,” Judge said. “When we step out on the field, I try to keep in mind there’s always cameras watching, there’s always people watching. I try to keep it professional, about the game, about the team.”
That Judge cares about the game, particularly his game, is not in question, either. If potential suitors worry about his ability to maintain his offensive success, about whether he can replicate this remarkable 62-homer season in which he also hit .311, he seems to have found strategies to help him do so.
For years he has relied on his quirky personal hitting coach, a St. Louis-based teacher named Richard Schenck, with whom Judge’s agent connected him before the 2017 season.
After Judge hit .287 with 39 homers in 2021, he decided he wanted more regular work with Schenck, thinking the numbers could improve. So the pair mapped out a meeting schedule throughout the season in which the 5-foot-9, 240-pound teacher and the 6-7 superstar would meet at local facilities before or after games, hitting hours ahead of first pitch or late into the night to hone a swing that has allowed one of the sport’s more unusual bodies to generate all of the power it promises.
That unlikely partnership in some ways speaks to Judge’s dedication to success. He is open enough to consider the help of, as Schenck put it, “a fat old man” who was 62 when they first worked together. He knew Judge was skeptical, but he also sensed desperation. Judge was coming off a disappointing 2016 debut with the Yankees. Then, as now, he was willing to listen to whatever might help.
He gave it a shot when Schenck put a ball on a tee for himself and one for Judge and told them they would be competing, as silly as that may have seemed. The two swung, side by side, and Schenck’s bat beat Judge’s to the ball every time.
“How can a 62-year-old man hit the ball before a 24-year-old athlete?” Schenck remembered. “That got his attention. After we tried it three or four times, he finally looked at me and said, ‘What on Earth are you doing?’ ”
The explanation was simple to understand but difficult to implement. Since his college days, as seen on video from the Cape Cod League, Judge’s swing has looked similar to how it does now: hands low, hands back, front foot down, hands through. By the time he got to the majors, the stride was shorter, his hands even lower.
Schenck taught him that his load — the process of pulling his hands back to gain momentum before throwing them forward — needed to be quicker, that he wasn’t squaring up pitches when he decided to swing at them because his hands weren’t ready to swing when he decided to do so. Missing pitches he thought he could hit undermined his trust in his pitch selection. When everything was on time, he could trust his eyes completely.
The difference was, and still can be, inches. So is the difference between feeling like his bat is on the path he wants and even a bit off — as he thought it was in the days between hitting No. 61 and hitting No. 62. He grew frustrated with his bat path during the last week of the season. Between games of a doubleheader, he texted Schenck to say so.
Schenck reminded him what he needed to do, that he needed to swing as if hitting to the opposite field and let his lower half take care of pulling the ball on inside pitches. A few hours later, he pulled No. 62 into the left field seats at Globe Life Field — quick adjustment made, the swing he wanted restored. Perhaps staying in sync will not be as easy next year as it was during this charmed season. But Judge seems to have learned how to correct for fluctuation.
“He’s a big man, and he does have a tendency to get hot and cold, hot and cold, and I’ve often wondered if his ... long arms, long legs is a detriment to him,” Schenck said. “Then I see him when he’s so good and I think, ‘No, I don’t think it’s that.’ The game is hard. The pitchers are so good. You’re just not always your best. Although this year …”
This year, the best of his career, Judge was almost always at his best. This year, as he has throughout his Yankees tenure, he has done everything the team could have wanted him to do — except, of course, win a title. If another team values Judge more highly than the Yankees do, this could be his last chance to do so here.
“I don’t look at it like that at all. Aaron and I have been together now for five years, and every year we’ve had a realistic shot at this,” Boone said. “We feel that way now. We are so focused on the here and the now and the present that that’s for another day.” | 2022-10-11T13:23:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Aaron Judge leads the Yankees into the ALDS - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/aaron-judge-yankees-alds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/aaron-judge-yankees-alds/ |
Raiders’ Davante Adams apologizes to man he shoved after loss to Chiefs
Davante Adams shushed the Kansas City crowd after scoring a touchdown Monday night. (Ed Zurga/AP)
Las Vegas Raiders wide receiver Davante Adams, frustrated by his team’s 30-29 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday night, took his emotions out on one of the first people he encountered as he left the field at Arrowhead Stadium.
That person happened to be a cameraman whom Adams shoved to the ground as he entered the tunnel to the locker room. The incident was caught by ESPN’s cameras and will probably draw discipline from the NFL. Adams apologized on social media, tweeting that he “felt horrible immediately” and echoing an earlier mea culpa.
The Raiders fell to 1-4 with the one-point defeat. Each of the team’s losses has been by one score, and this one against its AFC West rival was particularly stinging, fueled partly by Coach Josh McDaniels’s decision to try a two-point conversion for the lead rather than an extra point for the tie after Adams scored on a 48-yard touchdown pass from Derek Carr with 4:27 to play.
Adams, who rejoined his Fresno State teammate Carr when he left the Green Bay Packers in an offseason trade, caught three passes for 124 yards and scored touchdowns of 58 and 48 yards, but the Raiders blew a 17-0 second-quarter lead in the loss.
Adams was clearly frustrated as he left the field after the team’s final offensive play with 46 seconds left.
On fourth and one from the Las Vegas 46-yard line, Adams was running downfield as Carr let loose a deep pass, but Adams and fellow wide receiver Hunter Renfrow collided and the ball fell incomplete.
pic.twitter.com/zpsHlxeZBQ
The result left a sour taste in his mouth as the Raiders head into their bye week. Still, he apologized in the locker room as well before sending his contrite tweet. | 2022-10-11T13:23:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Davante Adams apologizes after shoving cameraman following Raiders' loss - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/davante-adams-apology/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/davante-adams-apology/ |
Brenda Frese's roster looks quite different ahead of this season. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Brenda Frese was visiting former assistant Tina Langley’s home when she saw a journal that the University of Washington coach once used as a team-building activity. Two years later, Frese realized how important something like that could be for her Maryland women’s basketball team this season.
The transfer portal and graduations overhauled the Terrapins’ roster this offseason. Five of last season’s top six scorers — Angel Reese, Ashley Owusu, Chloe Bibby, Katie Benzan and Mimi Collins — are gone. Only seniors Diamond Miller and Faith Masonius and sophomores Shyanne Sellers and Emma Chardon have played a game for the Terps.
All of those changes allowed Frese to bring in transfers Brinae Alexander (Vanderbilt), Abby Meyers (Princeton), Elisa Pinzan (South Florida) and Allie Kubek (Towson). (Lavender Briggs also transferred from Florida in January, but Kubek has been lost for this season with a torn ACL.) On top of that, three members of the four-player freshman class — four-star recruits Bri McDaniel, Gia Cooke (Bishop McNamara) and Mila Reynolds — were ranked in the nation’s top 60 by ESPN.
Following all of that, Frese faced a conundrum: How could she get all of the new faces to bond as quickly as possible? Her answer: a weekend retreat and some serious journaling.
“We’ve done a retreat in the past, but it’s been a while,” she said. “It’s a really important thing for us to build trust. And we can’t build trust until we know your story. We know a lot of them — parts of their story — but we don’t know their whole story. We’ve really put a lot of different things into this season that we haven’t had in the past, and rightly so just because there’s so many new names and players this year.”
Assistant coach Kaitlynn Fratz found the location — Luray Caverns in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley — and journals were handed out two weeks ahead of time. The assignment was for players to share their story through words, pictures or whatever other creative manner they like.
Frese needs this group to get on the same page sooner than later, and the players need to get to know one another first. Under Frese, Maryland won a national title in 2006, has made three Final Four appearances, has taken six trips to the Elite Eight, has appeared in every Associated Press poll since the start of the 2010-11 season and hasn’t lost double-digit games since 2009-10. After the Terps lost to top-seeded Stanford in the Sweet 16 last season, the standard remains high.
Maryland expects to compete for Big Ten titles every year, but the media and the conference’s coaches picked the Terps to finish fourth this season. That voting surely was influenced by Maryland’s massive roster changes.
“We have time, but we don’t have a lot of time,” Miller said. “I think the biggest challenge is just knowing each other’s tendencies and stuff like that, just because we were all coming from different teams and different teams do different things and different players do different things. So learning people is a lot of fun, but sometimes it can be a little challenging — like, what are we doing on offense right now?”
A lot rests on the shoulders of Miller, who was slowed by a knee injury last season and then had surgery. She was voted all-Big Ten each of the past two seasons (first team in 2021, second team in 2022) after averaging 17.3 points as a sophomore and 13.1 as a junior. She acknowledged being frustrated last season and said she worked on her ballhandling and getting her confidence back.
The 6-foot-3 New Jersey native wants to get back to playing like a true guard. Last season, she felt she got lost in the offense at times and would end up hanging out in the corner. With Owusu and Reese out of the picture, she is the No. 1 option.
“Junior year was very difficult for me,” she said. “... I’m not going to say I handled it the best, but I was able to push through that very difficult time in my life.”
Reese (now at LSU) and Owusu (Virginia Tech) are two of the top players in the country, but the new-look Terps still have plenty of accolades. Sellers is the reigning Big Ten sixth player of the year and was an all-freshman selection. Briggs was second-team all-SEC in 2020-21; Meyers was an Associated Press honorable-mention all-American last season; Alexander was an SEC all-freshman selection in 2018-19 who led Vanderbilt in scoring last season; and Pinzan was second-team all-AAC in 2020-21.
That adds up to a lot of talent and experience, but the Terps still have to become a cohesive unit. There isn’t a ton of size on the roster, so Frese expects to play faster. Masonius, a defensive stalwart coming off a torn ACL, said she sees an opportunity for the Terps to step up on that end of the floor when the regular season starts Nov. 7 at George Mason.
The many departures exposed clashes within the program, but change is obvious already. That weekend retreat and the players’ journaling provided the first step.
“One thing I will say about all the new girls who just came in this year — the first day we hung out, we were laughing, we were fooling around,” Masonius said. “There was no awkward stage. Everybody came in, and it was just so natural because everyone’s so goofy and funny, and it’s fun. It is fun.” | 2022-10-11T13:23:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland women's basketball has revamped roster, same expectations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/maryland-womens-basketball-new-roster-transfers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/maryland-womens-basketball-new-roster-transfers/ |
The Philadelphia Phillies face the Atlanta Braves in the NLDS. (Jeff Roberson/AP)
After a packed first round — a three-day stretch last weekend that included a 15-inning game, a seven-run comeback and an umpire rubbing a pitcher’s ears during the middle of a gem — the division series round is here. And with it come the Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta Braves, New York Yankees, Houston Astros, San Diego Padres, Philadelphia Phillies, Cleveland Guardians and Seattle Mariners.
Yes, even the Mariners, advancing in October at long last.
Games begin Tuesday, starting with the Braves and Phillies in Atlanta at 1:07 p.m. Eastern. Each series is best-of-five. The Braves, Dodgers, Yankees and Astros have been resting for almost a week, watching their opponents vibe to the “SpongeBob SquarePants” theme song (Guardians), electrify the New York tabloids (Padres), end an era in St. Louis (Phillies) and get contributions from a catcher nicknamed “Big Dumper” (Mariners).
This schedule will update.
The starting pitcher is back. Proof? The Guardians’ Shane Bieber and Triston McKenzie, the Mariners’ Luis Castillo, the Phillies’ Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola, and the San Diego Padres’ Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove. (Yeah, the guy with the shiny ears.) And those are just the pitchers who helped their teams advance past the first round, discounting strong performers from the losing teams — Shane McClanahan, José Quintana, Tyler Glasnow, Jacob deGrom — and the aces looming for top seeds.
Justin Verlander, a 39-year-old Cy Young candidate, will start Game 1 for the Astros. Gerrit Cole will go for the Yankees, with lefty Max Fried leading the Braves into their matchup with Philadelphia. For the Dodgers, lefty Julio Urías has Game 1 and Hall of Fame-bound Clayton Kershaw will pitch Game 2. The Padres will turn to Mike Clevinger against Urías.
So while the past few Octobers have been a referendum on the death of starting pitching, this one feels like a revival of sorts. Sure, there still could be a managerial decision that sends the entire baseball world into a tailspin. Heck, there could be two or three or four. But Bieber, McKenzie, Castillo, Wheeler, Nola, Darvish and Musgrove have already shown the value of having front-line starters in huge games. Now Verlander, Cole, Fried and Braves rookie Spencer Strider, among others, get their turn.
Guardians vs. Yankees is not quite David vs. Goliath. In this version, David’s slingshot is Cleveland’s stellar homegrown rotation and one of the sport’s stingiest bullpens. The Yankees, playing the part of Goliath because of their location and payroll, were 23-31 in July and August, showing cracks after a historically hot start. And then there’s that Aaron Judge guy, who hit all the home runs.
Judge against Cleveland’s staff is one of the most intriguing matchups of the DS round. Beyond him, the Guardians have to also worry about Anthony Rizzo and Giancarlo Stanton of the 99-win Yankees — and trying to score much more than they did while sweeping the Tampa Bay Rays. As MLB’s youngest team, and with its fourth-lowest projected payroll for 2022, the Guardians are like the Yankees in that they both wear cleats and hats and baseball pants to work. Otherwise, these clubs had to travel from opposite ends of the roster-building spectrum to collide.
Postseason baseball returns to Seattle and Philadelphia. For the Mariners, it has been 21 years since they hosted a playoff game. For the Phillies, it has been a decade. Their series will swing to their cities for Game 3, meaning their fans are guaranteed just one contest. But that could grow to two depending on how the week plays out. | 2022-10-11T13:24:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to know about the NLDS and ALDS schedule and matchups - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/nlds-alds-mlb-playoffs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/nlds-alds-mlb-playoffs/ |
The Broncos are off to a 2-3 start in Russell Wilson's first season in Denver. (Jack Dempsey/AP)
Russell Wilson, normally cloaked in self-affirmation, looks distraught right now. Aaron Rodgers, normally the most unbothered star in sports, looks annoyed. Tom Brady looks haggard, Matthew Stafford looks overwhelmed, and Matt Ryan looks done.
After roughly one-third of this ragged NFL season, several prominent quarterbacks have been left to do a lot of soul-searching. Most of them are highly productive veterans or surefire Hall of Famers attempting to handle more responsibility than they should be expected to at this stage in their careers.
Standout quarterbacks receive adulation and high salaries because they maximize a team’s strengths and conceal its flaws. The belief is the same around the league: If you have the quarterback, you always have a chance. Good ones, never mind great ones, are rare and coveted. But as saviors, they are more limited than portrayed. It’s the combination of quarterback and organizational competence that opens a Super Bowl window. As that window starts to close, a special player can prop it open for a while. But injuries turn up, roster-building mistakes add up, and the rules of a parity-based league catch up. After a while, there is only so much a quarterback can do, especially once defenses adjust to stopping him.
It’s true even for Wilson, the youngest of the bunch at 33, who convinced the Seattle Seahawks to trade him to the Denver Broncos in March because he wanted to play in a more autonomous, quarterback-driven system. But instead of amplifying his talent, the Broncos have exposed Wilson in a tenuous situation — rookie coach in over his head, new owner, new team president, more roster holes than perceived. He has been a great player for a decade, but he’s an aging, 5-foot-11 quarterback who needs to adjust his style of play for the sake of longevity. That requires the right talent around him, the right offensive strategist to orchestrate it and the right mind-set from Wilson.
No matter how much we glorify those precious athletes who extend their careers the way Brady has, age isn’t transcended as much as it is circumvented. Masking the body’s growing limitations is just as important as accentuating what you can do. It’s a mental game combined with a physical persistence, and the equation is one that must be constantly adjusted.
At 2-3 under Nathaniel Hackett, Denver has trouble managing games, let alone the big picture with Wilson. The quarterback signed a $245 million extension last month and is now under contract through the 2028 season. Before the season, the deal felt like stability for a franchise that had cycled through bad quarterbacks since Peyton Manning retired. Now, it’s starting to seem like an inescapable burden.
“I’m looking forward to turning it around,” said Wilson, who has completed just 59.4 percent of his throws and posted an 82.8 passer rating through five games, alarmingly below his career numbers of 64.8 percent and 101.1. “Because when we do, it’s going to be a special story.”
The Denver offense ranks 18th in yards per game and has averaged just 15 points, second worst in the NFL. As an individual performer, Wilson probably will play better. The question is whether it will be enough to impact winning.
In the NFL, a confluence of factors is making it far more difficult for quarterbacks of all ages to carry weakening rosters. A year ago, the season ended with these six quarterbacks leading the league in passer rating: Rodgers (111.9), Joe Burrow (108.3), Dak Prescott (104.2), Kirk Cousins (103.1), Wilson (103.1) and Stafford (102.9). Through five weeks, Rodgers is the only one who ranks in the top 10, and he’s 10th at 95.8, well off his MVP pace of the previous two seasons.
Burrow is 14th. Cousins is 16th, Wilson 22nd and Stafford 23rd. Prescott hasn’t been on the field since breaking his thumb in Week 1. Admittedly, I’m comparing a slow start to the sample size of an entire season, but quarterbacks who have great seasons usually start fast. Look at the struggles, then consider the causes, and there’s significant reason to think most of these quarterbacks will labor for the remainder of 2022.
Rodgers, the four-time MVP who turns 39 in December, is operating without wide receiver Davante Adams, who was traded to the Las Vegas Raiders. Rodgers agreed to a $50 million-per-season extension to stay in Green Bay, but now he’s trying to chase the second Super Bowl of his career with a green group of pass catchers. Although he is playing the same efficient style he has since Coach Matt LaFleur came to the Packers, he doesn’t have an elite top target anymore, and no wide receiver has averaged even five receptions and 60 yards so far.
After a shaky, 27-24 overtime victory against New England in Week 4, Rodgers told reporters, “This way of winning, I don’t think, is sustainable because it puts too much pressure on our defense.” Then the Packers went to London in Week 5 and lost, 27-22, to the New York Giants.
They’re 3-2, on the strength of their defense and running game. But Rodgers is right: They’re not a sustainable championship contender functioning this way. As the game in London proved, they’re too vulnerable when their defense isn’t stellar.
Candace Buckner: Herschel Walker and Brett Favre were football gods. It should have ended there.
The margin for error is smaller in a lot of places. Los Angeles Rams Coach Sean McVay said Stafford “needs more help” after a 22-10 loss to Dallas dropped the reigning Super Bowl champions to 2-3. Playing behind a substandard offensive line, Stafford has been sacked 21 times and has committed 10 turnovers. Ryan, 37, seems a bad fit with his new team, Indianapolis (2-2-1).
Like Green Bay, Brady and the Buccaneers are 3-2 because of their elite defense. Brady threw for 351 yards Sunday in a 21-15 victory over Atlanta, but the postgame conversation centered on a terrible roughing-the-passer call on Atlanta defensive lineman Grady Jarrett late in the game, reinforcing the perception that the league protects Brady too much. But he’ll take that controversy over scrutiny of the Bucs, who avoided what would have been just the second three-game losing streak of Brady’s career.
“Five games in, and we’ve got a lot of work to do,” Brady said. “We’re not nearly at the point of where we’re capable of being.”
Brady came out of a brief retirement for another championship chance, and as this season unfolds, he endures rumors of an eroding marriage. During media sessions, he seems burdened most of the time. For quarterbacks used to shining, there’s a lot of that going around. | 2022-10-11T13:24:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | From Russell Wilson to Tom Brady, this NFL season is getting old - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/russell-wilson-aaron-rodgers-tom-brady-nfl-struggles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/russell-wilson-aaron-rodgers-tom-brady-nfl-struggles/ |
Two girls standing on a beach with their left feet raised, circa 1897. (Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division)
I forage regularly through the online images in the Library of Congress’ Prints & Photographs Division, and sometimes I come across a picture — construction equipment at the U.S. Treasury building, tennis players on a bridge, a poster advertising catsup — categorized with the evocative label “Miscellaneous Items in High Demand.” That sounds like one of the world’s most interesting collections of miscellany; I wondered how it worked.
So I went to the Prints & Photographs Division reading room in the library’s Madison Building, where rows of wide maroon file cabinets hold troves of material. A corkboard wall displayed book covers that feature photographs from the library, on topics as varied as baseball and architect Eero Saarinen. The division holds more than 16 million images (on- and off-site) of just about anything conceivable: courtroom sketches and comic drawings along with lithographs, fine prints, Dorothea Lange’s “Migrant Mother” photograph, and a daguerreotype of Abraham Lincoln. About 1.6 million are digitized.
As it turns out, Miscellaneous Items in High Demand is not actually a collection, at least not in the way I’d imagined (i.e., a sturdy box, with a happily messy stack of photos offering hours of vintage-record-store-style serendipity). Instead, it’s an online grouping made up of more than 130,000 images. The items sorted into this category lacked a spot in another specific collection. They were requested and pulled for use in a book, for example, or an exhibition — hence the “high demand.”
Researchers access the Prints & Photographs Division for many reasons, division reference librarian Hanna Soltys told me, including schoolwork or publishing, or because they want to print and hang a favorite picture. Seated at a computer, Soltys pulled up a grid layout of images. “The beauty of Miscellaneous Items in High Demand is really kind of this, I think,” she said, “being able to click the ‘View All.’ ... You scroll through and there’s no rhyme or reason why images are appearing in here. It’s solely because it appeared somewhere, or somebody bought a copy of it, or it was used in an exhibition and so it’s appearing in this bucket.”
“I’m usually looking for something specific and then one of the hits might come from that category,” professional researcher Athena Angelos says. She owns (and is) Pictorial Research Services of Washington, D.C. “Say you were doing something about George Washington — you find there’s some image of an illustration of him chopping down the cherry tree and that’s from Miscellaneous High Demand.” From a specific image page, she might move on to browse others as well. “It branches out,” she says.
Images that a user might be seeking are often also available in the library’s more frequently updated Free to Use and Reuse Sets. (Topics include ice cream, natural disasters, fish and fishing, motion picture theaters and hats.) To maximize results, people can search across all collections. For example, my recent search for “circus horse” turned up 62 results in Miscellaneous Items in High Demand. But a search of the entire online catalogue revealed 168 results, and if you try “circus posters,” which often include horses, you will get 584 hits. In the reading room, Soltys had laid out a few of the images from that expanded search: a circa 1909 photograph of an “educated horse” looking at a blackboard, and one of a performer and her sturdy dapple gray. Others included a photograph of a Barnum & Bailey representative at a horse auction, and a stereograph of Piccadilly Circus in London, in which a horse-drawn carriage advertises an animal feed called Molassine Meal.
Similar discoveries can occur when searching inside the reading room, where some original items are stored. Soltys tugged on a file-cabinet drawer that glided open with a satisfying whoosh, and expertly cruised through photographs stored in protective sleeves. Separators bore labels: carnivals, motor parks, livestock shows.
To sift through the drawers, Soltys says, “you don’t have to come in and tell us what you’re doing; you don’t have to get permission to come in.” Anyone with a reader registration card may have a look. But if you need something specific, Soltys advises, make contact ahead of time, in case, for example, the material you seek is stored off-site or is too fragile to handle.
Angelos emphasized that because of their specialized knowledge, the librarians in the Prints & Photographs Division are key resources. So did Mike Constandy, owner of Westmoreland Research — whom I also asked about any cool discoveries he had made. “From a researcher standpoint, ‘cool’ is actually finding what you’re looking for,” he said.
That practicality may not be a selling point of browsing Miscellaneous Items in High Demand, but, as Soltys said in a later email, the collection has its place: “In essence, the ‘Miscellaneous Items in High Demand’ bucket is a way to keep items from floating around in the catalogue on their own.” For me, it’s a collection that invites a certain restrained chaos into your research projects. Here is an etched illustration of Ursa Major, dating from 1825. Here are Chico, Harpo, Groucho and Zeppo Marx. Two girls stand on a beach in 1897, holding up their left feet. You don’t have to know exactly what you’re looking for. You just have to stay open to what you might find. The demand is high, even if it’s only your own.
Eliza McGraw is a writer in Washington. | 2022-10-11T13:32:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At the Library of Congress, a photographic trove of random beauty - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/11/library-of-congress-photos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/11/library-of-congress-photos/ |
Signage outside the Honeywell avionics facility in Phoenix, Arizona, U.S. on Friday, April 8, 2022. The VA-X4, Vertical Aerospace’s flagship electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, will feature Honeywell’s fly-by-wire controls and next-gen avionics. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
A global economy plagued by high inflation and rising interest rates has tipped the competitive playing field in favor of US industrial companies, and some are taking advantage to make acquisitions. More should join the club — as long as they have a strong appetite for risk.
US companies have a few clear tailwinds. The strong dollar helps with valuations, which have already been sliced by a steep selloff in stocks. Commodity prices, such as copper, have dropped. While high oil prices have a worldwide impact, Europe will bear the brunt as it faces a long winter of cost spikes and shortages of both electricity and natural gas because of the supply disruption stemming from Russia’s war on Ukraine.
US industrials in general have strong balance sheets. Honeywell International Inc., for example, has $9 billion of cash ready to be deployed. Even if a US recession hits, which economists surveyed by Bloomberg put at a 50% probability, many manufacturers have record amounts of orders to fill and pending work that will keep sales afloat. Those backlogs have increased for 27 consecutive months, according to the Institute of Supply Management, as manufacturers struggled throughout the pandemic to obtain enough supplies and workers to fill orders in a timely manner. Those supply chain snags have eased considerably, and companies are now in catch-up mode.
This is when courageous chief executive officers, buoyed by cash and confidence that their companies can ride out a recession, should go shopping.
Some have already started. Ingersoll Rand Inc. is buying a manufacturer of compressed-air dryers for $525 million. Roper Technologies Inc. bought a maker of software for educational organizations recently for $3.7 billion after selling a 51% stake in its industrial operations this summer to Clayton Dubilier & Rice. Roper has been one of the most active in the mergers-and-acquisitions market as it transforms from an old-style industrial company into a software provider to industry.
Europe is the most likely hunting ground, said Brendan Luecke, an analyst with Sanford Co. Bernstein, who also worked on acquisitions while at Fortive Corp. The euro has dropped 19% against the dollar since the beginning of 2021, making deals cheaper for US companies. Europe’s industrial production is expected to lag behind that of the US, and its inflation will run hotter and longer, according to economists’ estimates compiled by Bloomberg. The economy of Germany, Europe’s manufacturing powerhouse, is forecast to contract 0.4% next year, according to 49 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Small European companies are feeling more stress because of the spike in costs, Luecke said.
Just in the last few weeks, such deals have popped up. Rockwell Automation Inc. snapped up Cubic, a maker of motor control systems in Denmark. Trimble Inc., a producer of location-based software, bought a French technology company that specializes in spraying systems for sustainable farming. IDEX Corp., a Chicago-area manufacturer, plans to pay 700 million euros ($698 million) for Muon Group, a Dutch producer of microcomponents used in high-tech equipment.
The targets are likely to be the smaller, bolt-on types — partly because it’s too financially risky to do a large deal while the economy is teetering on recession. The Biden administration has also signaled that it will be an antitrust hawk on big acquisitions.
Private equity firms have been on both ends of deals. Those looking to sell companies don’t have an alternative exit ramp from an investment because initial public offerings have mostly dried up. In these turbulent times, targets must be a good fit to withstand a rocky economy.
“If you’re shopping at the edge of a recession, you want to buy quality because there’s going to be a rough patch,” Luecke said. “But, winners should still emerge.”
Emerson Electric Co. is looking to both shed businesses and buy them. Blackstone Inc. is in talks with the maker of automation equipment and air-conditioner compressors to sell its commercial and residential solutions business for as much as $10 billion, Bloomberg News reported on Oct. 5. Under CEO Lal Karsanbhai, Emerson has made a flurry of acquisitions and divestitures, including the sale of its garbage disposal business and the addition of industrial software makers, to remake the company. Karsanbhai is most likely on the prowl now for acquisitions while in negotiations to shed its residential businesses, which would give it more cash.Analysts have raised concerns that Emerson may end up too dependent on the energy industry if it cleaves off its commercial and residential businesses. Karsanbhai, who took over as CEO last year, is expected to lay out its strategic plan in detail at the end of November.
The acquisition activity of late runs against the sentiment, which has cooled considerably this year compared with the red-hot M&A market last year. There were $333 billion of industrial deals either pending, completed or proposed this year through Oct. 5, a 32% drop from the period a year earlier, according to Bloomberg data.
The psychology of company C-Suites is similar to that of consumers. When times are good, they are feeling flush and ready to buy — not so much with dark clouds on the horizon. After Russia invaded Ukraine, China began Covid-19 lockdowns of entire cities and the Federal Reserve started increasing interest rates aggressively earlier this year, companies pulled back on risk because of all the unknowns.
This has been reflected in this year’s 24% drop in the S&P 500 Index through Monday. The market may be pricing in an earnings-per-share plunge of up to 15% with the recent selloff, while the consensus among analysts still calls for EPS growth, according to Bloomberg Intelligence.
The economic outlook, although still muddied, is a bit clearer than earlier this year. Although interest rates will continue to rise and energy will be expensive this winter, inflation may have crested. The supply chain has become more fluid. Company CEOs have a better feel for how their businesses will hold up over the next few quarters, even if there’s a recession. In other words, a lot of the bad news has been priced in.
“The market has reached a point where people are now looking out six months, a year from now, and I think that will cause activity to pick up,” said Morton Pierce, a mergers-and-acquisitions partner at White & Case.
Times like these are when the more risk-tolerant CEOs should look for opportunity amid the economic wreckage to go hunting for bargains.
• Merger Arbs Play Chicken With a Smoking Giant: Chris Hughes
• Get Ready for the Great British Fire Sale: Chris Hughes | 2022-10-11T13:32:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Industrial CEOs Have a Window for M&A Bargain Hunting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/industrial-ceos-have-a-window-for-manda-bargain-hunting/2022/10/11/aa6f284a-4954-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/industrial-ceos-have-a-window-for-manda-bargain-hunting/2022/10/11/aa6f284a-4954-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
Italy May Find November Is the Cruelest Month
It won’t take much to push highly indebted Italy into a debt crisis, as it is already flirting with bond yields close to unsustainable levels. The big risk is of a buyer’s strike, akin to the recent UK gilt market meltdown. What happens next month will be crucial for the nation’s economic future.
A lot of things have to come together harmoniously in November, including the creation of a new Italian government with an acceptable finance minister and the reconvening of Parliament. Immediately after that comes the annual budget that has to pass scrutiny with the European Commission before year-end. That process, always fraught, is likely to be even more fractious this year because of a wider budget deficit and an increase in borrowing. With €245 billion ($238 billion) of government bonds needing to be refinanced next year and €230 billion in 2024, there is very little room for error.
So far, newly elected Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, head of the Brothers of Italy party and leader of a right-wing coalition, has been careful not to cause too may fiscal waves since winning the Sept. 25 election. Unfortunately it is not all plain sailing as European Central Bank board member Fabio Panetta, reportedly her first choice for finance minister, has declined the opportunity. Italian President Sergio Mattarella has few executive powers, but he does have to approve ministerial appointments; the finance minister is the key role, and a technocrat has usually been preferred to placate nerves in Brussels over fiscal rigor.
Moody’s Investors Service made clear in its Oct. 5 review of Italy’s Baa3 rating, already with a negative outlook, that attempts by the new coalition to redraft the National Recovery and Resilience Plan negotiated by outgoing Prime Minister Mario Draghi would increase the risks of a downgrade. That would leave Italy with a junk assessment.
Italian 10-year yields have more than quadrupled this year, climbing to 4.7%. But it is in shorter maturity debt that the pain of rising ECB official rates is really being felt. Three-year yields, which were negative at the start of the year, are now above 3.5%; borrowing costs rise to more than 4% for debt maturing in five years and longer. The 10-year yield spread between Italy and German debt has widened to more than 250 basis points.
Unfortunately, Italy may find itself at its most vulnerable politically just when the ECB’s ammunition to defend the euro zone’s peripheral bond markets is at its lowest. The central bank is relying on recycling maturing debt acquired under its Pandemic Emergency Purchase Program from wealthier nations such as Germany, France and Netherlands to fund new purchases of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Greek debt.
In June and July, the ECB bought about €8.5 billion of Italian bonds, but the pace declined substantially toward the end of summer. So, in theory, there is some ammunition left. The central bank is understandably coy about how much firepower it keeps in reserve, but there’s a worryingly thin period looming in the final months of this year and the start of 2023. Following a large French redemption in October, there are few available maturities from donor countries available to roll into supporting Italian or other peripheral debt. Austria has €10.5 billion maturing at the end of November and there is a €14 billion German repayment in mid-December, then the pace slows until March. Italy itself has large redemptions but that is of little benefit.
Moreover, what proportion of these maturing bonds is held in the main Asset Purchase Program, which are not eligible for cross-market reinvestment, is unclear. According to Bloomberg Intelligence strategist Huw Worthington, on average less than a quarter of the ECB’s holdings are in the pandemic QE facility. So there may be insufficient capacity to counter renewed selling of peripheral debt. Of course, there is also the ECB’s new anti-fragmentation weapon, the Transmission Protection Instrument, to fall back on. But details of how and when that might be employed remain vanishingly scarce.
With a quarter of a trillion euros of debt to refinance next year, it will cost Italy an extra €11 billion annually if yields stay this high as the average interest rate on its debt will treble. It is hard to know where or when the tipping point comes for Italy’s debt sustainability — but it is surely edging closer to the cliff edge.
• Bank of England Should Pull Its Own U-Turn on Gilt Sales: Marcus Ashworth | 2022-10-11T13:33:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Italy May Find November Is the Cruelest Month - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/italy-may-find-november-is-the-cruelest-month/2022/10/11/b360dd28-4921-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/italy-may-find-november-is-the-cruelest-month/2022/10/11/b360dd28-4921-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
HOUSTON, TEXAS - AUGUST 16: Lynn Gooden, 44, restocks hair supply in her business, Mothers Hair Beauty Supply, on August 16, 2022 in Houston, Texas. “It’s always talk, and the money don’t never reach us. A lot of the funding from the government and organizations gets allocated to staff, it doesn’t necessarily reach us. They always say they got a good message but don’t market it effectively, so it’s really just ear-candy. In the past, the government has said that they put out different funds for programs to help small businesses, but it was hard to find where those programs were and actually apply for them. They may have put funding out, but for us, where do we go to receive the money? Many people don’t have the education and the resources to dig through and truly figure out how at access government funding. When reaching out, we get automated systems and corporations not calling you back,” said Gooden. The Houston Equity Fund has established a new program that will assist minority-owned businesses with funding after it received a $20 million Wells Fargo donation to help combat racial and economic injustice. The fund was set up in response to the murder of George Floyd in 2020, and is set to allocate funds to small, minority businesses to assist with the physical and financial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images) (Photographer: Brandon Bell/Getty Images North America) | 2022-10-11T13:33:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | US Small-Business Optimism Improves for a Third Straight Month - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/us-small-business-optimism-improves-for-a-third-straight-month/2022/10/11/6a16f454-494e-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/us-small-business-optimism-improves-for-a-third-straight-month/2022/10/11/6a16f454-494e-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
A construction worker rests outside the Bank of England (BOE) in the City of London, UK, on Monday, Oct. 3, 2022. Traders are the most negative ever on the pound’s prospects, even after the UK government scrapped one of its new tax policies, a sign it will take a bigger policy U-turn to restore credibility with markets. (Bloomberg)
The UK government bond market is still not working properly. On Tuesday morning, the industry lingo of the Bank of England sounded dispassionate but it is fraught: “Dysfunction in this market, and the prospect of self-reinforcing ‘fire sale’ dynamics pose a material risk to UK financial stability.”
The central bank is now stepping in. In addition to the existing daily purchases of long maturity regular gilts, the BOE will each day also buy as much as £5 billion ($5.5 billion) of inflation index-linked gilts. More importantly, they are from three years out to the longest 2073 maturity (except for three specific bonds that have a material change clause). This is a significant step. Previously, it said it was only buying conventional coupon-bearing gilts longer than 20 years maturity as part of its temporary emergency program, called the Financial Stability Intervention. Gilt prices rose on the news.
The BOE needs to do three things to calm markets further: Extend, widen and cancel.
It must extend the timeline of the £65 billion bond-buying FSI, preferably beyond the end of the month. It should also make clear that this facility will be increased to £100 billion if required. Indeed, in one prescient moment upon approving the facility on Sept. 27, Chancellor of the Exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng, said the increase would be allowed. The market must not be panicked into thinking things are headed toward a cliff-edge this Friday when the timeline is still scheduled to end; we don’t want the Thelma and Louise finale.
Only £5.4 billion of the facility has been used so far, but it’s evidently not solving the problem. The central bank has been careful to avoid any gaming by other market participants, to ensure the provision is focused on pension funds requiring liquidity; and it has only provided bid-side pricing to emphasize that it’s only a backstop.
Unfortunately, we’re at risk of a systemic spiral due to the forced unwinding of liability-driven investments leverage in pension funds.
That is why widening the scope of the FSI’s remit makes sense. The BOE never bought inflation index-linked bonds — known as linkers — as part of its quantitative easing programs, but they form a significant part of pension fund holdings. The liability-driven investing strategy is at the root of this meltdown, and the rush to liquidate any available holdings into cash has spread the rot into whatever assets can be sold. It is becoming an ATM moment: That’s when cash becomes more important than a risk-free asset like a government bond, reminiscent of the US Treasury meltdown in March 2020 at the start of the pandemic.
This isn’t a solvency issue but one of a lack of liquidity. The latest report from the Pension Protection Fund shows that the aggregate surplus of the more than 5,000 funds in its roster was at £375 billion at the end of September, a rise of £60 billion from the previous month. The all-important funding ratio improved from 125% to 135%. But when everyone wants to get out of the same door at the same time it creates a logjam, The BOE must prevent this from becoming a doom loop.
The central bank also temporarily halted its corporate bond sales, part of a wider quantitative tightening program. Maintaining this would have sent a confusing signal. If all sterling bonds are suffering from contagion, the BOE might have to revert to accepting wider types of collateral for longer. It acted Monday to provide a wider net for the short-term secured loans of the repo markets. As the global financial crisis taught us, the world’s financial plumbing has to be kept flowing smoothly. The BOE launched a permanent short-term repo facility last week, which offers an unlimited quantity of reserves at the official Bank Rate each Thursday.
However, none of this has yet staunched the selling.
Which brings us on the need for the BOE to cancel plans to actively sell its gilt holdings back into the market. This was due to start at the beginning of October but, at the start of the crisis brought on by the Truss government’s mini-budget, was delayed to Oct. 31. That’s also the date of the chancellor’s next fiscal event, the presentation of his marked budgetary homework from the Office for Budget Responsibility. The BOE simply has to push back its gilt sales to much later — preferably next year, or indeed never. These are not calm markets — a precondition Governor Andrew Bailey declared was necessary for active QT to proceed.
The sale of £900 million of a 2051 index-linked gilt did go ahead today, because the market was set up for it and it would cause more instability to cancel. The duck must still be seen swimming serenely on the surface, even if its legs are paddling away.
The government certainly needs to do its part, too. As Kit Juckes, currency strategist at Societe Generale SA, puts it, “A near-doubling of public sector borrowing this year compared with the last official forecast does a lot of the damage. Most of that is due to the (unavoidable) energy support package, but tone-deaf tax cuts and the lack of a medium-terms plan to rein spending back in, hurts gilts and sterling, and puts pressure on the MPC to raise rates by even more than they would otherwise.”
The chancellor should by now have received the draft version of the OBR’s evaluation of the nation’s finances. A sense of fiscal restraint would go a long way.
It might be smart to have a bond safety net in place throughout what could be a volatile week at the start of next month. The UK Treasury’s debt management office has a planned sale of a new 2038 gilt that week, probably in excess of £5 billion. Later in the week there are interest-rate decisions from the Federal Reserve and the BOE itself, both likely to raise official rates by at least three-quarters of a percent.
The BOE has shown it can act quickly and comprehensively. Not being hidebound by previously announced QT plans would make a significant difference. Extending and widening the safety net is paramount.
• Jerome Powell to the Rest of the World: Drop Dead: Marcus Ashworth
Inflation’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day: John Authers
Bond Markets Are Nearing a Painful Inflection Point: Mark Gilbert | 2022-10-11T13:33:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The BOE Needs to Extend, Widen and Cancel - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-boe-needs-to-extend-widen-and-cancel/2022/10/11/77c2ca8e-4957-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-boe-needs-to-extend-widen-and-cancel/2022/10/11/77c2ca8e-4957-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
ATHENS, GA - MAY 23: Heisman Trophy winner and Republican candidate for US Senate Herschel Walker speaks at a rally on May 23, 2022 in Athens, Georgia. Tomorrow is the Primary Election Day in the state of Georgia. (Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images) (Photographer: Megan Varner/Getty Images North America)
By ordinary measures, Herschel Walker just experienced the worst week of any politician this cycle — maybe this decade. The Republican Senate candidate and Georgia football legend is running as a staunch pro-life conservative opposed to abortion even in cases of rape or incest. Last week, however, an ex-girlfriend said he’d paid her to have an abortion and later pressured her to have another, dumping her after she refused. Walker’s son publicly denounced him for “destroying other people’s lives.” The news follows earlier revelations that Walker has fathered multiple children out of wedlock. On Friday, he fired his campaign’s political director — never a good sign 30 days before an election, especially since control of the Senate may depend on the race’s outcome. In response to the maelstrom of Walker scandals, a Georgia Republican strategist texted a Bloomberg News reporter an image of a sinking ship.
There’s no doubting that the S.S. Walker hit an iceberg. It’s hit four or five just since Labor Day! There’s also no doubt that in an earlier era, this sort of rank hypocrisy would force a candidate’s swift withdrawal from the race or doom him to a lopsided defeat if he decided to stick around, as Walker has.
But Walker isn’t in any danger of being pushed out of the race. Republican officials have barely wagged a finger. Donald Trump has reaffirmed his endorsement. The new revelations don’t seem to be hurting his poll numbers. And conservative media figures are gleefully flaunting their support for a candidate they don’t even pretend is fit for office. “Herschel Walker today, if you put him under a lie detector, couldn’t tell you how many kids he has,” says Steve Bannon, the ex-Trump svengali and host of the “War Room ” podcast. “But Republicans have seen what happened, letting the Senate slip away in 2020, and they’re not going to let it happen again.”
Walker’s resilience may seem appalling, but it’s the sort of thing we should get used to. That’s the lesson of a new book by a team of political scientists on the shaping forces in the last election. In “ The Bitter End: The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Challenge to American Democracy ,” John Sides, Chris Tausanovitch, and Lynn Vavreck wade through reams of survey data to measure how much the major news events in 2020 shifted voters’ perceptions of the parties and the presidential candidates. The answer is … not by very much.
The intense polarization in American politics is not news. But the authors found that it is now so entrenched and wide-ranging that it quickly subsumes pretty much every new event that comes along. The book’s big illustrative examples are the emergence of Covid and the murder of George Floyd. In both cases, after a brief period of national unity and plenty of think pieces on how “everything is different now,” Republicans and Democrats went right back to diverging sharply on issues of race and policing and added the issue of Covid vaccines, as well. The authors dub this phenomenon “political calcification.” Our predispositions have become so hardened and rigid, they write, that “new events tend to be absorbed into an axis of conflict in which [partisan] identity plays the central role.”
One upshot of political calcification is that ugly tabloid scandals like Walker’s matter less and less to election outcomes. Republican voters who once would have recoiled in disgust and voted Democratic are no longer willing to do so because the prospect of Democratic Senate control strikes them as worse than casting a ballot for Walker.
“If you think of a candidate’s scandal as a news event, there’s no reason a voter would process it any differently than Covid or the January 6th insurrection,” says Vavreck, the Marvin Hoffenberg Professor of American Politics at the University of California Los Angeles. “The thought process would be, ‘I may not like what’s going on, but the stakes are too high for me to abandon my party’.”
It’s entirely possible, of course, that Walker will lose anyway. The shrinking pool of independents don’t have the same partisan commitments, and in a race as close as Georgia’s, even minor defections could be decisive. And while partisan attitudes have hardened, they’re not immovable, even in red states. Four years ago, Roy Moore, the Republican Senate nominee in Alabama, lost a seemingly unlosable race after a flurry of reports that as a grown man he’d lurked at malls trying to pick up young teenage girls.
But Moore’s behavior cost him the support of prominent Republican and evangelical leaders, who withdrew their endorsements (though not Trump). So far, Walker hasn’t faced that problem. Rather than twist themselves into pretzels defending or excusing his behavior, many prominent conservatives have instead simply appealed to a more powerful argument, the one thing that could save Walker’s bacon come November: Republican voters’ own partisanship.
Waving off concerns about hypocrisy with clarifying candor, the conservative radio host Dana Loesch gave her listeners a particularly explicit version of this appeal: “I am concerned about one thing, and one thing only, at this point,” Loesch said. “I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles — I want control of the Senate.”
• We’re Witnessing the Hollowing Out of the Tory Party: Adrian Wooldridge | 2022-10-11T13:33:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The One Thing That Can Save Herschel Walker - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-one-thing-that-can-save-herschel-walker/2022/10/11/8b307004-4960-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-one-thing-that-can-save-herschel-walker/2022/10/11/8b307004-4960-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
This Market Is a Teenager Who Needs to Be Grounded
The US Federal Reserve is under pressure to stop raising interest rates lest it plunge the entire world into recession. This concern is not unfounded. Nonetheless, the Fed must not be deterred from its task: Like a parent disciplining a difficult child, it knows what it has to do, even though it may not relish doing it.
This metaphor — how monetary policy is like parenting — is admittedly homespun but surprisingly useful. Let’s see how far we can take it.
First, about that concern over a recession: It is the very members of the Fed who are most worried about unemployment and the plight of the poor who should be most firm in their resolve to bring down inflation. This may seem contradictory. Economists (like myself) concerned about employment have typically been on the other side of the debate from those concerned about inflation.
But calling on the Fed to stop raising rates before it “breaks” the financial markets — or worse, the labor markets — is overly cautious. It risks exacerbating the pain it seeks to mitigate.
Here’s where the parenting metaphor comes in. The relationship between Fed policy and the financial markets in some ways mirrors that between a parent and a child. It’s not that the Fed always knows best. That type of deification — promoted by the likes of Alan Greenspan, among others — is unhealthy for both the markets and policymakers.
Rather, it’s that the Fed has the responsibility to constrain the ambitions of the financial markets. It doesn’t necessarily enjoy this responsibility, in the same way that a parent does not enjoy disciplining a child — and, as the child is, the markets are aware of this ambivalence and often try to exploit it.
Financial innovation and ubiquitous credit allow the creative spirit of entrepreneurialism to combine capital and labor in ingenious ways. Yet the financial markets have a tendency to take on more ambitious projects than the economy can handle. This can show up as excessive risk, as it did in the aughts, or as soaring inflation, as it is now.
In these cases the Fed must apply the restraint of tighter monetary policy and higher interest rates. In doing so it shuts down not just consumer spending, but new businesses and civic enterprises that might have taken advantage of both easy access to credit and a robust sales environment. There is no way to separate these effects.
The simple fact is that tighter monetary policy leads to rising unemployment and lower productivity even as it brings down inflation. It is a blunt instrument that policymakers rightfully disdain. Many market participants know that the Fed disdains it — and some are willing to place bets that the bank will not have the nerve to go through with it.
They will continue to fund unsustainable levels of spending, even as entrepreneurs and small businesses are crushed by higher interest rates. This spending causes inflation to persist longer, requiring higher interest rates and more punishment.
This unfortunate equilibrium is akin to the teenager who constantly pushes the boundaries of what they can get away with, while the parent reluctantly doles out the minimum punishment without setting firm guidelines and sticking to them, come what may. Both parties suffer.
Likewise, if the Fed does not deliver enough tightening to bring inflation back on track to 2.5% — come what may — it risks entering into an unfortunate equilibrium with the financial markets. The Fed will always be promising to raise interest rates and keep them high, and the markets will always suspect that the Fed will lose its resolve.
Thus inflation will persist and the Fed will have to keep raising interest rates ever higher — or keep already-high rates ever longer — in an attempt to convince financial markets that it’s serious. This outcome is the most painful for entrepreneurs, small businesses and workers on the margin of employment. It should be avoided at all costs.
That’s why Fed governors and regional presidents who are most concerned about inflation must show that they’re serious about raising rates to at least to 4.5%, and further still if inflation persists. Come what may.
• The “Pivot” Is a Mirage: John Authers | 2022-10-11T13:33:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | This Market Is a Teenager Who Needs to Be Grounded - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/this-market-is-a-teenager-who-needs-to-be-grounded/2022/10/11/2afeea38-4958-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/this-market-is-a-teenager-who-needs-to-be-grounded/2022/10/11/2afeea38-4958-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
Man fatally shot in Northeast Washington, police say
The shooting occurred early Tuesday in the 800 block of 21st Street NE
A man was fatally shot early Tuesday in Northeast Washington, police said.
The shooting occurred in the 800 block of 21st Street NE shortly before 6 a.m.
D.C. police said they are investigating the slaying. The department did not immediately identify the person killed or release other details. | 2022-10-11T13:34:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man fatally shot Tuesday morning in Northeast D.C., police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/dc-homicide-october-eleventh-northeast/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/dc-homicide-october-eleventh-northeast/ |
Meet the House Republican who could lead a key environmental committee
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! If you're looking for a new book to read and you don't mind a little climate dystopia, here are four science-fiction novels that “accept the inevitability of climate disruption.” 📚 But first:
Rep. Bruce Westerman eyes Natural Resources Committee gavel
If Republicans regain control of the House in November's midterm elections, Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) would become chair of the Natural Resources Committee, one of the most consequential panels for environmental policy.
In that role, Westerman would be tasked with helping to carve out a Republican agenda on climate and environmental issues, even as some GOP lawmakers continue to reject the scientific consensus on global warming.
Westerman, who received a master's degree in forestry from Yale University and is Congress's only licensed forester, has introduced legislation aimed at planting 1 trillion trees and has long argued that “conservation is conservative.”
In a phone interview with The Climate 202 last week, Westerman detailed how he would lead the Natural Resources Committee and what environmental legislation he would seek to shepherd through the new Congress.
Here are our top takeaways from the conversation:
Oversight of offshore drilling
Republicans plan to launch immediate oversight of the Biden administration if they win control of the House, and the Natural Resources panel would be no exception.
“We will have a lot of oversight hearings if I'm the chairman of the committee,” Westerman said. “I think everybody probably understands that.”
In particular, Westerman said he would seek to conduct oversight of the Interior Department's efforts to craft a new five-year plan for offshore oil and gas leasing in federal waters.
A proposed program released in July opened the door to new drilling in parts of the Gulf of Mexico and off Alaska.
But Republicans have called for the administration to further boost domestic fossil fuel production, while environmentalists and Democrats have warned that doing so would hasten a climate catastrophe.
Manchin's permitting reform push
Westerman said he is willing to work with Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) on a bipartisan bill to overhaul the nation's permitting process for energy projects, particularly after Manchin's controversial permitting bill was pulled from a government funding package last month.
“I think I could work with Senator Manchin on some bipartisan permitting reforms,” Westerman said. “I don't think it can be all just his idea of what he wants to do. But we've got things like the BUILDER Act and other ideas we've put forward, so we could sit down together and work out some hopefully bipartisan legislation that could be passed and signed into law.”
The Building U.S. Infrastructure through Limited Delays and Efficient Reviews (BUILDER) Act, which Westerman and Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) introduced last year, seeks to speed up project reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act. The measure has not attracted any support from Democrats, who generally oppose any action that could weaken NEPA.
To gain Manchin's vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, Democratic leadership promised to pass a permitting reform bill this fall. But Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) dropped the permitting bill from the government funding package after it became clear that the measure lacked the 60 votes needed to pass.
“The Democrats pretty much were turncoats on him with promises they made on permitting reform,” Westerman said. “So hopefully he'll work with us.”
Critical minerals, natural climate solutions
Westerman said he thinks two types of environmental legislation could gain broad Republican support: bills focused on critical minerals and natural climate solutions.
Democrats and Republicans agree on the need to bolster domestic production of critical minerals used in electric vehicles and other green technologies, he said, although they may disagree on the specifics.
“Especially if my colleagues on the left think we need to electrify everything, you've got to have copper and rare earth minerals to do that,” he said.
Meanwhile, Republicans generally support measures that promote natural climate solutions, such as planting trees and sequestering carbon in soil, even as they reject efforts to rapidly phase out fossil fuels, a primary driver of climate change.
“Where Republicans and Democrats differ a lot is Republicans realize the numbers show that you can't just wave a magic wand and get rid of all fossil fuels,” Westerman said.
On Saturday, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) tweeted that Democrats are “so narcissistic that they believe people control the climate,” despite overwhelming scientific evidence that human activity is mainly responsible for climate change.
Asked about his views on climate science, Westerman said he agrees with the scientific consensus that humanity has put more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
“There's over 400 parts per million up there,” he said. “Do I believe that man contributed to that? Absolutely.”
However, Westerman rejected the notion that the world must dramatically reduce carbon emissions within the next decade or face catastrophic consequences — a finding endorsed by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
“Do I think we've only got 10 years left? No,” he said. “I think we've got a lot longer left.”
Ukraine halts electricity exports after Russian strikes damage grid
Ukraine's energy ministry on Monday announced that it would halt electricity exports to other European nations, saying Russia's latest missile strikes marked the largest attack on the country's power grid since the start of the invasion, Zach Schonfeld reports for the Hill.
“Russia is destroying our energy system, killing the very possibility of exporting electricity from Ukraine,” German Galushchenko, Ukraine’s energy minister, said in a statement.
Galushchenko said Ukraine would stop exporting electricity beginning on Tuesday, noting that the nation had continued to meet its export commitments despite fighting around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s state emergency service asked residents to avoid using energy-intensive devices such as heaters, microwaves, washing machines and coffee makers between 7 and 11 p.m. local time on Monday.
Russia launched massive strikes on civilian infrastructure on Monday in nearly a dozen Ukrainian cities far from the front lines, The Washington Post's Karen DeYoung reports. The strikes killed at least 14 people and wounded nearly 100, and left 15 regions with partially disrupted electricity supplies, officials said.
Candidates clash on climate change in tight Wisconsin Senate race
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and his Democratic challenger Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes have expressed vastly different views on climate change in a hotly contested race that could determine which party controls the Senate, Lawrence Andrea reports for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Johnson has criticized government spending aimed at accelerating the nation's transition to clean energy, arguing that such spending is wasteful because climate change is not solvable. Barnes, who leads Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’s climate change task force, has said the government should act urgently to avert the catastrophic consequences of unchecked warming.
During a debate Friday, Johnson and Barnes butted heads over how to address climate change, although the issue has not emerged as a top concern for Wisconsin voters. Climate change ranked as eighth on a list of concerns for voters in the state, according to a mid-September poll from Marquette University Law School, with inflation and crime topping the list.
“The climate has always changed and always will change, so I don’t deny climate change,” Johnson said during the debate. “The question is: Can you really do anything about it when China, when India — they’re going to be burning fossil fuels. America’s going to have to burn fossil fuels.”
Barnes told listeners that “the climate crisis is already here,” citing his conversations with rural farmers “who have had to deal with the impacts of devastation from these 100, 500-year storms that are happening more regularly.”
The scorching temperatures that spread across England this summer caused 2,803 excess deaths among those 65 and older — the highest number of excess deaths ever recorded for the elderly, according to an analysis by the U.K. Health Security Agency and the Office for National Statistics, The Post's Karla Adam reports.
The government agencies said that was the highest figure among the elderly since they started tracking heat-related deaths in 2004. Scientists previously determined that the punishing heat wave in Britain between June and August was made at least 10 times more likely by human-caused climate change.
Meanwhile, extreme heat could make parts of Asia and Africa uninhabitable for up to 600 million people, the United Nations and the Red Cross said Monday, The Post's Andrew Jeong reports.
Projected death rates from heat waves are “staggeringly high,” comparable to all cancers or all infectious diseases, according to the report released ahead of next month’s U.N. climate summit in Egypt.
A report suggests a novel way of curbing climate pollution from air travel: A global tax on people who fly the most, with the proceeds going toward research and development into sustainable aviation fuels, The Post's Shannon Osaka reports.
The report from the nonprofit International Council on Clean Transportation recommends a frequent flier tax that starts on the second flight each person takes per year, at a rate of $9. It would then steadily increase, reaching $177 for the 20th flight in a single year.
While aviation accounts for about 2.5 percent of global carbon emissions, at the personal level, it has an enormous footprint practically unmatched by any other individual action. Avoiding a transatlantic flight from New York City to London, for instance, could prevent 600 kilograms of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere — about double the impact of going vegan for a year.
How climate change is driving monkeys and lemurs from trees to the ground — Scott Dance for The Post
Protesters who shut down Beltway arrested after demanding Biden declare climate emergency — Ellie Silverman for The Post
Shaped by gun violence and climate change, Gen Z weighs whether to vote — Mariana Alfaro for The Post
Drive for climate compensation grows after Pakistan’s floods — Riazat Butt and Adil Jawad Khan for the Associated Press | 2022-10-11T13:34:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Meet the House Republican who could lead a key environmental committee - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/meet-house-republican-who-could-lead-key-environmental-committee/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/meet-house-republican-who-could-lead-key-environmental-committee/ |
Hackers knock some U.S. airport websites offline
Airports in Los Angeles and Atlanta were among those affected. Officials say there was no effect on operations
Updated October 11, 2022 at 9:16 a.m. EDT|Published October 10, 2022 at 5:00 p.m. EDT
American Airlines planes taxi around the air traffic control tower at Los Angeles International Airport. The airport was among a handful that experienced website outages on Monday. (Caroline Brehman/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Websites for a handful of U.S. airports, including those in Atlanta, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, were taken offline during a cyberattack Monday, although officials said there was no effect on flight operations.
Managers at multiple airports said they notified the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration about the cyberattacks. In a statement, the FBI said it was aware of the incident but had no additional information. The TSA declined to comment, referring inquiries to individual airports.
The attacks were carried out by a group of pro-Russian hackers known as Killnet, according to John Hultquist, vice president for intelligence at Mandiant, an American cybersecurity firm. Killnet called for coordinated denial-of-service attacks on cyber targets from a list it posted on its Telegram channel — a list that included several major U.S. airports. Denial-of-service attacks occur when a target is flooded with traffic until it can’t respond or crashes.
Though highly visible, Hultquist characterized such attacks more as a “public nuisance” than serious security threats because they don’t target major internal systems that could affect an airport’s operations. Still, when they do take place, he said, they are effective in drawing public attention.
Officials at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is charged with understanding, managing and reducing risks to the nation’s cyber and physical infrastructure, did not respond to request for comment Monday.
The Port Authority of New York/New Jersey said LaGuardia Airport’s website experienced a denial of service incident about 3 a.m. Monday that resulted in intermittent delays for those who tried to access the site.
“The Port Authority’s cybersecurity defense system did its job by detecting the incident quickly, addressing the problem in 15 minutes, and enabling us to alert others by notifying federal authorities immediately,” the agency said in a statement, adding that there was no effect to any Port Authority facilities.
At Denver International Airport, the attack began around 11 a.m., officials said.
Los Angeles International Airport managers said in a statement the airport’s website was partially disrupted, limited to portions of the public-facing site. They said the airport’s information technology team restored all services and is investigating the cause.
“No internal airport systems were compromised and there were no operational disruptions,” the statement said. | 2022-10-11T13:36:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Killnet, pro-Russian hackers, knock some U.S. airport websites offline - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/10/hackers-cyber-attack-airport-websites/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/10/hackers-cyber-attack-airport-websites/ |
FILE - Flame and smoke rise from the Crimean Bridge connecting Russian mainland and the Crimean peninsula over the Kerch Strait, in Kerch, Crimea, Oct. 8, 2022. Russian authorities say a truck bomb has caused a fire and the partial collapse of a bridge linking Russia-annexed Crimea with Russia. Three people have been killed. The bridge is a key supply artery for Moscow’s faltering war effort in southern Ukraine. (AP Photo/File) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-10-11T13:36:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kremlin war hawks demand more devastating strikes on Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/kremlin-war-hawks-demand-more-devastating-strikes-on-ukraine/2022/10/11/20e80fe6-492d-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/kremlin-war-hawks-demand-more-devastating-strikes-on-ukraine/2022/10/11/20e80fe6-492d-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
FILE - Pope John XXIII stands and prays in the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, Oct. 12, 1962, during a special audience to delegates from foreign governments to the ecumenical council. Pope Francis commemorates the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council by celebrating a Mass in honor of St. John XXIII, the “good pope” who convened the landmark meetings that modernized the Catholic Church. (AP Photo/File) (Uncredited/AP)
ROME — Pope Francis is commemorating the 60th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council, the landmark meetings that brought the 2,000-year-old Catholic Church into the modern era, amid continued disagreements about what the council taught that divides the faithful today. | 2022-10-11T13:37:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pope marks 60th anniversary of Second Vatican Council - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pope-marks-60th-anniversary-of-second-vatican-council/2022/10/11/9f8507f0-4937-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/pope-marks-60th-anniversary-of-second-vatican-council/2022/10/11/9f8507f0-4937-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
By Riaz Khan | AP
Relatives and residents gather with the body of a school van driver who was killed by a gunman in an attack Monday, as they block a road during a protest demanding the immediate arrest of the attacker, in Mingora, Swat Valley, Pakistan, Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022. Thousands of people protested in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday after the attack killed the driver and critically injured a child, a decade after schoolgirl Malala Yousufzai was shot by the Taliban in the same city. (AP Photo/Sherin Zada) (Naveed Ali/AP) | 2022-10-11T13:37:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Thousands protest after deadly attack on Pakistan school van - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/thousands-protest-after-deadly-attack-on-pakistan-school-van/2022/10/11/91be7470-4965-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/thousands-protest-after-deadly-attack-on-pakistan-school-van/2022/10/11/91be7470-4965-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban speaks during a panel discussion about “Storm over Europe: the Ukraine war, the energy crisis and geopolitical challenges” in Berlin, Tuesday. (Markus Schreiber/AP)
BERLIN — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Tuesday accused the United States of perpetuating the war in Ukraine by providing it with weapons and said there should be U.S.-Russian negotiations to bring about a cease-fire.
“The Ukrainians have endless resources because they get all that from the Americans,” Orban said at an event hosted by Germany’s Cicero magazine and the daily Berliner Zeitung during a visit to the German capital.
President Biden, he said, had gone “too far” by saying that Russian President Vladimir Putin should not remain in power. “Hope for peace is named Donald Trump,” said the right-wing populist leader, a longtime ally of the former U.S. president.
Trump offers unusual endorsement of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban ahead of parliamentary elections
Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Orban has been balancing his pro-Putin sympathies with being a member of the European Union. Hungary, also a member of NATO, has backed the bloc’s sanctions packages against Moscow and agreed on measures to reduce corruption as it risks losing of billions of dollars in funding from Brussels over concerns about its slide toward autocracy.
Also on Tuesday, Hungarian President Katalin Novak, who is from the same party as Orban, joined his eastern European counterparts in condemning Putin’s bombardment of Ukrainian cities the day before.
Orban has blamed the E.U. sanctions packages against Russia for surging energy prices and faltering economies. He repeated that European sanctions were a “catastrophe” on Tuesday.
Unusually, there was no scheduled news conference for the two leaders following their meeting on Monday. During his visit, Orban also met with former German chancellor Angela Merkel. If Merkel was in power in Germany “we would not have a Ukraine war,” Orban said during the panel.
There should be U.S.-Russian cease-fire talks, he said, because “anyone who thinks that this war will be concluded through Russian-Ukrainian negotiations is not living in this world.”
Orban has won fans among U.S. Republicans for his positions against immigration, liberals and so-called fake news and spoke at CPAC in Dallas in August. He has attempted to present the two countries as a united front in a battle against progressives.
“After my first day on Twitter, there’s one question on my mind. Where is my good friend, @realDonaldTrump?” Orban tweeted on Tuesday after joining the social networking platform. | 2022-10-11T14:02:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Viktor Orban of Hungary: Trump could bring peace between Ukraine and Russia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/11/viktor-orban-ukraine-hungary-trump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/11/viktor-orban-ukraine-hungary-trump/ |
Adnan Syed, whose case was chronicled in the hit podcast Serial, exits the courthouse after a judge overturned his murder conviction. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
The Baltimore City State’s Attorney Office said Tuesday that prosecutors have dropped the criminal case Adnan Syed, whose murder conviction drew national attention after it was featured on the true-crime podcast “Serial.”
The 7 DMV: Catch up in minutes on what you need and want to know about life in D.C., Maryland and Virginia, delivered to your inbox every weekday morningArrowRight
The move comes after a Baltimore City Circuit Court judge had vacated Syed’s conviction at prosecutors’ request, giving them 30 days to decide whether to retry the man who had spent the past 23 years in custody.
The Maryland Office of the Public Defender said in a statement that DNA testing had “excluded” Syed, and that the State’s Attorney’s Office would thus no longer prosecute the case. The statement noted, though, that the family of the murder victim was still pursuing an appeal of the judge’s order vacating Syed’s conviction.
“Finally, Adnan Syed is able to live as a free man. The DNA results confirmed what we have already known and what underlies all of the current proceedings: that Adnan is innocent and lost 23 years of his life serving time for a crime he did not commit,” Erica Suter, Syed’s attorney, said in a statement.
She added: “While the proceedings are not completely over, this is an important step for Adnan, who has been on house arrest since the motion to vacate was first granted last month.”
Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby is expected to discuss the move at a 1 p.m. news conference.
Syed was convicted in 2000 for the killing of his ex-girlfriend, 18-year-old Hae Min Lee, and sentenced to life in prison. The case drew widespread attention after it was featured on “Serial” in 2014.
Adnan Syed was released from prison. What role did ‘Serial’ play?
Syed had long fought for a new trial, and prosecutors had opposed him. Then, in September, Mosby’s office asked a judge to vacate his conviction, saying prosecutors had lost confidence in the conviction and identified other possible suspects. Baltimore City Circuit Court Judge Melissa Phinn granted that request, but Young Lee, Hae Min Lee’s brother appealed the decision. It was not immediately clear how prosecutors’ move Tuesday would affect that appeal.
Steve Kelly, the Lee family’s attorney, said the appeal was based on “violations of [Lee’s] family’s right to meaningfully participate” in the hearing at which Syed’s conviction was vacated. Young Lee appeared virtually and spoke at the hearing, saying prosecutors’ move had left him feeling “betrayed.” Kelly had complained that the family was not given adequate notice of the hearing.
Mosby previously said that her decision on whether to retry Syed would depend largely on the results of new DNA testing, and she would “certify his innocence” if the tests came back inconclusive. | 2022-10-11T15:21:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Prosecutors drop case against Adnan Syed, subject of ‘Serial’ podcast - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/adnan-syed-serial-case-dropped/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/adnan-syed-serial-case-dropped/ |
The defeated congressman’s next chapter may offer insight into how redemption works, or doesn’t, for a scandal-plagued Republican who still loves Trump
By Paul Schwartzman
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) watches results from the North Carolina May 17 primary election that he would narrowly lose. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
During his first congressional race in 2020, a letter signed by Cawthorn’s former classmates at Patrick Henry College, alleging sexual misconduct and other behavior, did not derail his campaign. “I have never done anything sexually inappropriate in my life,” he said at a debate that September, according to the Citizen Times of Asheville. He beat his Democratic two months later by a comfortable margin. (News articles published after he took office included more details about the allegations, which Cawthorn denied.)
Cawthorn has acknowledged his proverbial hiccups here and there — “Obviously when it comes to driving, I’ve got some work to do,” he said during the campaign this year. Mainly, though, he and his allies have portrayed him as a victim. | 2022-10-11T15:25:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What does Madison Cawthorn do now? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/11/madison-cawthorn-future/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/11/madison-cawthorn-future/ |
By Fernanda Santos
Migrants, mostly from Venezuela, line up to board a bus to New York on Sept. 16 at the Migrant Welcome Center in El Paso. (Jose Luis Gonzalez/Reuters)
He told me he doesn’t remember how he and his mother got from Mexico City to the U.S. border. He was 5. His father was already toiling in the garment factories of Brooklyn’s Sunset Park. His two older brothers had stayed behind; there was no money to pay for their trip.
What he does remember, he said, is the thirst he felt as he and his mother walked across the desert borderland, following a group of strangers. For years afterward, his mother would tell the story of how she prayed to the Virgin of Guadalupe for water and shade, and how he fell asleep and was no longer thirsty when he woke up.
That was 37 years ago. Today, Manuel Castro is the first formerly undocumented person serving as immigrant affairs commissioner in New York City. He is often the first person to greet migrants — many of them asylum seekers — bused to New York by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), pawns in a dirty game of political chess.
Castro shakes their hands and bends down to meet children eye to eye, seeing a bit of himself in them and wondering, just as his parents did: Who might they grow up to be?
On Friday, New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) declared a state of emergency to address the flow of migrants bused north by the thousands, straining city resources. The declaration will, among other things, allow relief centers to be established more quickly and seeks state and federal aid.
I met Castro at the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan one recent morning and watched him play a starring role in this migrant drama.
I positioned myself behind a gaggle of television reporters who had been invited to document the moment. We were all penned in behind bright yellow barricades, close enough to witness the action but not allowed to interrupt its flow.
“I’m here to support these people, to restore the dignity taken from them at the border,” Castro said in Spanish, answering a reporter’s question. “But most of all, I’m here because, as someone who crossed the border, I share some of the same experience as these migrants who are arriving and I want them to be treated as they deserve — as human beings.”
Watching what can only be described as a spectacle, I tried to reason with myself. Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, can tip off Fox News to the arrival of planes full of migrants he shipped to Martha’s Vineyard. Arizona’s Republican governor, Doug Ducey, vying for his piece of spotlight, can send migrants in buses bound for the nation’s capital. Abbott, in an election year, can brag about the many migrants he has shipped to New York — 14,600 had gone through the intake process at city shelters as of Sept. 26, one official told me.
Why shouldn’t Castro be free to invite the New York press corps to document the counternarrative he’s trying to establish?
The only people who seem to not have a say in all of this are the bus passengers, who have every right to be in this country until their cases are adjudicated. No one asked whether they want to be filmed and photographed as they disembarked in New York.
The children were the only ones who looked happy as they stepped off the bus that early morning. Maybe the long trip and arriving in the city registered as a big adventure.
A few days after visiting the bus terminal, I sat with three mothers from Venezuela who had been bused north. We met in a church basement near the shelter where they’re staying on the Upper West Side.
The stories they shared haunted me. In their days crossing “la selva,” the jungle between Colombia and Panama, they saw fellow migrants robbed and raped. One told me she saw people drown as they tried to cross the same raging river she had to cross with her children. She doesn’t know how to swim. But somehow, she made it.
New York is anchored by the idea of open arms, hearts and minds. That’s what created the conditions for Castro’s ascent. But more than a city’s benevolence is needed for these new arrivals to succeed. So far, New York’s response has been laudably well intentioned but unavoidably chaotic — as it would be, given that Texas doesn’t even let the city know when buses are coming or how many passengers they hold. City officials have to rely on nonprofit groups at the border to tell them what to expect.
New York’s perennially overcrowded homeless shelter system is bursting at the seams. Hundreds of migrant children have enrolled in a public school system embroiled in a legal fight over budget cuts. Now, an emergency has been declared. Maybe that’s what Abbott — and DeSantis and Ducey — have wanted all along. | 2022-10-11T15:29:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The dirty politics of busing migrants is officially an emergency - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/abbott-migrant-busing-new-york-emergency/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/abbott-migrant-busing-new-york-emergency/ |
A P2V Neptune patrol plane flies over a Soviet freighter during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. (Getty Images)
Next week marks 60 years since the Cuban missile crisis — the 13-day standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union widely regarded as the closest we ever came to global nuclear war. On this anniversary, as we veer terrifyingly close to the brink of Armageddon once again, we should look to that crisis to guide us in resolving our present one.
Today, as the world faces the threat of obliteration once more, figures of all stripes are calling for dialogue to prevent doomsday. A small but growing list of progressive members of Congress (along with several peace advocacy organizations) are increasingly focused on how best to promote de-escalation and dialogue, inspired by a truth that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has himself maintained: This war “will only definitively end through diplomacy.” Pope Francis issued an unprecedented statement calling for global leaders “to do everything possible to bring an end to the war.” Even former secretary of state Henry Kissinger has reiterated the importance of dialogue. As he recently argued, “This has nothing to do with whether one likes Putin or not. ... We are dealing, when nuclear weapons become introduced, with a historic alteration in the world system. And a dialogue between Russia and the West is important.” | 2022-10-11T15:29:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Cuban missile crisis can guide us on Ukraine and Putin's threats - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/cuban-missile-crisis-ukraine-lessons/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/cuban-missile-crisis-ukraine-lessons/ |
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) at a rally for former president Donald Trump in Minden, Nev., on Saturday. (Jose Luis Villegas/AP)
If it’s the fall of a year ending in an even number, you can be pretty sure Republicans will try to scare you with paranoia about crime — specifically, violent crime committed by dark-skinned people.
Right on schedule comes Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), a former football coach, declaring at a Donald Trump rally in Nevada over the weekend that Democrats want reparations for descendants of enslaved people “because they think the people who do the crime are owed that.” To this false epiphany he added an epithet: “Bulls---!”
Indeed it was, but the clownish Tuberville, who once claimed that the three branches of government were the “the House, the Senate and the executive,” is not the only one making such assertions. Blake Masters, the GOP Senate nominee in Arizona, attributed the nation’s gun violence problem to “Black people, frankly.” (Disclosure: My wife polls for his Democratic opponent.)
The election-season crime scare has become so routine that some Republicans don’t even flinch at the racism. Asked on NBC’s “Meet the Press” about Tuberville’s Bull Connor moment, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said that while Tuberville could “be more polite” in his phrasing, “I’m not going to say he’s being racist.”
Across the country, Republicans and allied groups have spent tens of millions of dollars running tens of thousands of crime-related ads over the past two months — often with racist undertones or worse. The Congressional Leadership Fund, the main super PAC affiliated with House GOP leadership, has emphasized crime more than any other topic but the economy in its ads.
“Murder, shooting, stabbings, rapes, carjackings are skyrocketing. Bloodthirsty criminals are laying waste to Democrat-run cities,” Trump said at one typical rally last month. “Crime is rampant like never before.”
Though the MAGA crowd is not one to let facts get in the way of a good attack, let’s pause the fearmongering for a moment to consider a few relevant truths:
Violent crime is not soaring. In fact, it might be declining.
Most violent crime is committed by White people.
Violent crime is generally worse in Republican-run states.
Crime did soar in 2020 during the pandemic, which also happened to be Trump’s final year in office. But in 2021, the FBI found in its annual report on crime last week, crime was stable. In fact, overall violent crime declined slightly, by 1 percent, from 2020, largely because of a 9 percent drop in robbery. Homicides increased slightly, by 4 percent.
The numbers aren’t highly reliable because a change in data collection requirements in 2021 led fewer jurisdictions to cooperate and forced the FBI to rely more than usual on estimates. Still, the FBI findings are consistent with others. The Council on Criminal Justice found that homicides increased in the cities it studied by 5 percent in 2021, about the same as the FBI found. Also, year-to-date statistics from 90 big U.S. cities compiled by AH Datalytics show homicides are down about 5 percent this year.
Those “who do the crime,” as Tuberville put it, aren’t the color the Alabamian supposes they are. A report last year from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, using 2018 data, found that White people were offenders in 52 percent of nonfatal violent crimes overall (and 56 percent of rapes or sexual assaults) in which the victim identified the race of the offender. Black people were offenders in 29 percent of nonfatal violent crimes (22 percent of rapes or sexual assaults). Hispanics were offenders in 14 percent of nonfatal violent crimes. The proportion of Black offenders was high relative to the Black proportion of the population (likely a reflection of poverty) but not the stuff of Republican ad-makers’ crime fantasies.
If MAGA leaders are truly concerned about violent crime, they might look inward. Earlier this year, the centrist Democratic group Third Way crunched the 2020 homicide figures and found that per capita homicide rates were on average 40 percent higher in states won by Trump than by Joe Biden. Eight of the 10 states with the highest homicide rates have been reliably red states for the past two decades. Republican-led cities weren’t any safer than Democratic-led cities.
Among the 10 states with the highest per capita homicide rates — Mississippi, Louisiana, Kentucky, Alabama, Missouri, South Carolina, New Mexico, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee — most were in the South and relatively rural. The findings were broadly consistent with other rankings of states (and counties) by violent crime.
This isn’t the fault of Republican leaders, of course, any more than Democratic leaders are to blame for crime in blue states. The South, for reasons sociologists debate, has been more violent than the rest of the country for centuries. But those who are truly worried about violent crime should consider decamping to blue America. Living in a Republican state is much more likely to get you killed. | 2022-10-11T15:29:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Republicans' crime message ignores their own murder problem - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/republican-states-crime-rates-tuberville/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/republican-states-crime-rates-tuberville/ |
The Army may be unprepared to win a war against bad-faith criticism
A commencement ceremony for the Army's annual observance of Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month in the Pentagon Center Courtyard on March 31, 2015, in Arlington, Va. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
The Army has a problem: It needs to enlist tens of thousands of recruits each year but is struggling to do so.
In a memo released in July, it articulated central challenges to getting commitments including “intense competition with the private sector” — employment is back to pre-pandemic levels — “and a declining number of young Americans interested in uniformed service.” The military has requirements for enlistment centering on education and physical fitness, limiting its pool of possible recruits to only 23 percent of the population of American 17- to 24-year-olds — about 8 million people.
Of that group, though, the vast majority have no interest in serving. The Department of Defense figures that only 9 percent of that pool would consider enlisting, or just over 700,000 young people.
The July memo identified three central factors limiting the appeal of the military.
The first is what they called the “knowledge gap,” a lack of familiarity with military culture and experience. As baby boomers age, veterans make up a smaller percentage of the population — no more than about 5 percent of Americans.
Then there’s the “trust gap,” the reduced trust in institutions seen throughout society. In the 2021 General Social Survey, a fifth of adults under 35 said they had “hardly any” confidence in the military, the highest level of any age group. A third said they had a “great deal” of confidence, the lowest of any age group.
The third factor identified in the memo was the “identity gap.”
“Potential recruits cannot see themselves in the Army,” the memo read, “often due to assumptions about Army life and culture.”
At a news conference Monday, Army Secretary Christine Wormuth addressed that point.
“I think we do have a wide range of soldiers in our Army and we’ve got to make them all feel included,” Wormuth said, “and that’s why a lot of our diversity, equity and inclusion programs are important.”
For a certain group of listeners, that last phrase — diversity, equity and inclusion — triggered an immediate reaction. These programs, often collected under the abbreviation DEI, have been a focus of relentless attack from the right when promoted in the military and elsewhere. They’re derided as efforts to pander to minority groups or, more nefariously, as encumbrances on White Americans.
That the Army makes efforts to proactively encourage diversity has led to a particular flavor of criticism from the political right. The Army’s gone “woke!” It’s too soft, unlike the tough, impressive military deployed by, uh, Russia.
There’s a good reason for the Army to want to make sure it appeals to as broad a range of Americans as possible: Younger Americans are much more diverse than older ones. Census Bureau data shows that just over half of those ages 17 to 24 are non-Hispanic White, compared to three-quarters of those 65 and older.
Only about a quarter of 17- to 24-year-olds are White males; any recruitment effort that doesn’t loop in women and Black, Hispanic or Asian young people is going to exclude an enormous part of the available recruitment pool.
“I’m not sure what ‘woke’ means. I think ‘woke’ means a lot of different things to different people,” Wormuth said at the news conference. “I would say if ‘woke’ means we are not focused on warfighting, we are not focused on readiness — that doesn’t reflect what I see at installations all around the country or overseas when I go and visit.”
Yet, in that same news conference, Wormuth suggested that her organization may not be ready to fight against one particular foe: that same bad-faith criticism from the right.
In March 2021, Fox News host Tucker Carlson attacked the military for trying to “change the culture and habits that cause women to leave the military,” as President Biden said.
“It’s a mockery of the U.S. military,” Carlson said, comparing the U.S. military unfavorably to China’s. “Our military needs to become more feminine — whatever feminine means anymore since men and women no longer exist. The bottom line is it’s out of control, and the Pentagon’s going along with this. This is a mockery of the U.S. military and its core mission, which is winning wars.”
A number of military leaders — no doubt more concerned than Carlson about ensuring that women remain enlisted — pushed back on Carlson’s comments. Among them was Maj. Gen. Patrick Donahoe.
Last month, the Army Times reported that Donahoe’s planned retirement had been put on hold as the Defense Department reviewed his use of social media. Task and Purpose detailed the outcome of that review by the Army inspector general last week.
“Investigators ultimately said that Donahoe’s tweets to Carlson ‘exhibited poor judgment,’ ” Haley Britzky reported, “and that the ‘subsequent media coverage drew national attention … and it cast the Army in a negative light.’ ”
Britzky noted that Donahoe was given a chance to respond to the criticism, saying that if “Army leaders are unwilling to defend them in public, I think that is a tremendous threat to the cohesion of our Army.”
“One of the things I think that’s most important to Gen. McConville and I is keeping the Army apolitical and keeping it out of the culture wars,” Wormuth said Monday, referring to Army Chief of Staff James C. McConville. “Because frankly, we have got to be able to have a broad appeal. When only 9 percent of kids are interested in serving, we have got to make sure that we are careful about not alienating wide swaths of the American public to the Army.”
Donahoe is right. Wormuth is wrong.
The extent to which Tucker Carlson actually cares about the Army’s retention of soldiers or preparations for combat can be debated. But he clearly cares about using the Army as a wedge in his ongoing efforts to paint the Biden administration as soft and dangerous. Carlson is, in fact, fighting a culture-war fight. That part is true. But viewing Carlson’s commentary through that lens allows you to understand how pushing back against it is apolitical, however eagerly Carlson wants to deploy his culture-war shtick in service of right-wing politics.
You can’t defeat a culture-war attack on the Army by ignoring it any more than you can defeat an actual attack on a military by turning the other cheek. Yes, there is a risk to joining Carlson on his own terrain. But it’s a fight in which the military can’t resort to pacifism.
After all, it’s not just that Carlson is attacking diversity efforts, efforts focused on ensuring that more young Americans feel as though the Army would be a good fit for them. He’s not just widening the “identity gap” but the “trust gap.” His efforts to undermine DEI and to undermine the military under Biden are one and the same. Allowing Carlson and his allies to simply disparage the Army as laughable and hopelessly “woke” undermines the institution on multiple fronts.
Aiming to avoid national media attention, as the inspector general appears to endorse, actually hands critics a powerful weapon of their own to use. Carlson can draw such attention to anyone he chooses! He can make even anodyne commentary seem nefarious — and, it seems, generate sanction. It’s a lesson the mainstream media has learned and is still learning: responding to trolls with capitulation is not going to prevent trolling. It’s a lesson you’d think military leaders would understand in other contexts.
But also: What’s the national media attention that tweets like Donahoe’s drew? That military leaders saw an important place for women in their ranks? That they would defend their soldiers even when it was painful to do so?
America’s military needs volunteers willing to commit to our national defense. It hopes to recruit people from a more-diverse population at a moment when there are plenty of other jobs available. And it has to do so as it has become a target of bad-faith criticism from people seeking to cast engagement as toxic and the institution as wobbly.
It has a conflict on its hand domestically, too.
The latest: Sen. Durbin says Trump made finding GOP support for DACA impossible
3:10 PMOn our radar: Pence appearing with GOP Senate hopeful Masters in Arizona
2:35 PMThis just in: Biden to join Fetterman at Philadelphia fundraiser
2:13 PMTake a look: In new ad, Demings distances herself from ‘defund the police’
1:55 PMNoted: Bennet has apparent advantage in Colorado Senate race, poll finds | 2022-10-11T15:56:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Army may be unprepared to win a war against bad-faith criticism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/army-tucker-carlson-recruiting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/army-tucker-carlson-recruiting/ |
Two cheetah cubs were born Oct. 3 to first-time mom Amani at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Va. (Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute)
Two cheetah cubs were born at the National Zoo’s facility in Northern Virginia.
The cubs were born to Amani, their 4-year-old mother, on Oct. 3, about two hours apart. Amani is a first-time mom, as is the cubs’ father, Asante, who is 7. They were paired as part of a national cheetah breeding program and bred naturally in July, zoo officials said.
Keepers at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal where the cubs were born said the pair are “strong, active, vocalizing and nursing well” in a statement. Since 2007, officials said, 17 litters of cheetahs have been born at the Front Royal facility, which serves as a breeding and research site.
Abandoned baby cheetah in Virginia is adopted by new family in Oregon
Like any cute and popular animals these days, the new cheetah cubs have a web camera that allows the public to watch them.
The cubs will stay with their mother so they can bond. Keepers said they will not interfere to figure out the cubs’ sexes yet and they will do a health checkup on them once mama cheetah is “comfortable leaving them for an extended period.”
Officials said the cubs are a “significant addition” to a nationwide program that breeds and manages cheetahs in captivity.
In the wild, experts said, cheetahs are mainly in eastern and southern African parks where they live in small and isolated populations. There are roughly 7,000 to 7,500 cheetahs left in the wild, experts said, because of poaching, loss to their habitat and other issues.
Cheetahs are considered “vulnerable to extinction,” according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. | 2022-10-11T16:48:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two baby cheetahs born at National Zoo's facility in Northern Virginia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/baby-cheetahs-born-national-zoo/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/baby-cheetahs-born-national-zoo/ |
Montgomery audit finds school system lacking clear approach to anti-racism
Parents and students cross the road on the first day of school to get to the new Harriet Tubman Elementary School in Gaithersburg, Md. on Aug. 29, 2022. Results of the county's anti-racist audit are being released Tuesday. (Robb Hill for The Washington Post)
Students of color in Montgomery County have a less satisfactory experience within the school system compared to their White peers, according to results of a months-long audit released Tuesday.
The results proved the initial theory held by administrators about differences in experiences, and also found that the school system lacks “a clear systemwide comprehensive approach to anti-racism.”
The findings were scheduled to be shared with the county’s school board Tuesday.
The school system initiated its anti-racist audit earlier this year, after years of planning. It follows a trend of school systems across the country who have re-examined their curriculums and policies in an effort to address systemic bias and be more inclusive toward students of color following a racial reckoning after the 2020 murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis.
Montgomery County schools’ anti-racist audit to examine its curriculums
Montgomery County — a liberal, racially diverse D.C. suburb — has traditionally sought out measures that would make its policies more inclusive to students of color. After Floyd’s death, students of color across the district began making social media accounts — such as like Black At Whitman, Black At Wheaton and Black At Rockville ― that documented regular racism they experienced at county schools. The school system also began planning for the broader systemwide audit. The school system approved a social studies framework in June that would expose fourth- and fifth-graders to more American history — particularly Black history — at a younger age.
The audit initiative was led by Superintendent Monifa B. McKnight, the first Black woman to lead the large school system.
“This is not one person’s problem … this is something we should all own collectively,” she said about the audit results during a media briefing this week. She pointed to fifth grade academic data that showed Black students and Hispanic/Latino students were disproportionately less proficient in reading and math compared to Asian and White students.
“When I took this seat [as superintendent], I said that I think of the 161,000 students in the system as I do my own son,” McKnight said. “If I were to look at the predictors of that data, he would be grouped into one of those groups where the data does not look positive. That concerns me, it upsets me, and it makes it not OK.”
The audit was conducted by Mid-Atlantic Equity Consortium, a Bethesda-based nonprofit which received a $454,860 contract in November 2020. It reviewed six key areas: workplace diversity, school culture, work conditions, curriculums, community engagement and equity of access. Parents, staff members and students were surveyed earlier this year about their experience with the school system. There were over 130,000 responses.
For Black Americans, teaching about systemic racism is more urgent than ever
The audit found the school system had many elements to eliminate racial disparities among students, staff and families, but the implementation of policies varied school by school, “suggesting that the system is currently fragmented,” according to the report. Through stakeholder groups sessions, it found there was a lack of coordination in the central office, distrust that the school system wouldn’t be honest about the audit results, and a “culture where there is a ‘cost’ to speaking up and power dynamics that stifle honest dialogue.”
The nonprofit recommended that the district make a clear action plan for tackling its next steps. A draft action plan will be released in January for community input. A final report will be issued in March. It also recommended the school district continually collect data, build more relational trust, “equity-centered capacity building” and accountability for racial equity work. | 2022-10-11T16:48:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Montgomery audit finds school system lacking clear approach to anti-racism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/11/montgomery-schools-antiracist-audit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/11/montgomery-schools-antiracist-audit/ |
Queen Elizabeth II: 1926-2022
King Charles III’s coronation date set for May 6 at Westminster Abbey
Britain's King Charles III carries out official government duties from a traditional red box at Buckingham Palace on Sept. 11. (Victoria Jones/PA via AP)
LONDON — King Charles III’s coronation, the first for Britain in more than 70 years, has been set for May 6 and is expected to be a somewhat less extravagant affair than his mother’s coronation in 1953.
Buckingham Palace announced in a statement Tuesday that the ceremony will be “rooted in longstanding traditions and pageantry” but also “reflect the monarch’s role today and look towards the future.”
Charles’s biographers say he has talked about wanting a slimmed-down British monarchy, and there is a sense that the coronation may be slimmed down, as well — though still involving a cast of thousands.
May 6, a Saturday, is also the birthday of Charles’s grandson Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, the oldest child of Prince Harry and Meghan. It is unclear if the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who quit their jobs as “working royals,” will take part in the coronation. Royal watchers say that Prince William, the heir to the throne, is expected to play a role.
In accordance with tradition dating back to 1066, the ceremony is scheduled to take place at London’s Westminster Abbey. Charles would be the 40th sovereign to be crowned there.
Westminster is also where Queen Elizabeth II’s state funeral took place last month — an event involving 2,000 guests, including nearly 90 world leaders, and 4,000 military personnel on parade. Though the cost hasn’t been made public, security officials said the expense was far greater than anything else they have ever undertaken.
Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral: U.K.’s biggest security detail post-WWII
The front page of the Daily Mail this week carried a headline, “Is King right to plan cut-price Coronation?,” with commentators and historians debating whether it should be pared back when millions are feeling the pinch or if such a ceremony would squander the chance to showcase Britain’s “soft power” on the world stage.
Few actual details have been announced. But several British papers have reported in concert that the coronation — reportedly dubbed “Operation Golden Orb” — will have a guest list of “only” 2,000, will last an hour and will nix some of the more arcane traditions, including the presentation of gold ingots.
Queen Elizabeth II has been buried in her final resting place next to Prince Philip, her husband of more than 70 years, capping an elaborate state funeral, which was invested with all the pomp, circumstance and showmanship that the monarchy, military and state could put on display for a global broadcast audience of millions. Here are some of the most memorable moments in photos and videos.
A new monarch
King Charles III is Britain’s new monarch and may bring a markedly different personal vision of religion and spirituality to the role.
Britons will also need to swiftly adjust to seeing his face on these staples of daily life, including postage stamps and the national anthem.
Charles ascended the throne the moment his mother passed away. Here’s a look at the next 10 royals who are next in line to the throne.
In 1953, guests were “instructed that ‘knee breeches’ were in order, while women were advised to wear headgear, preferably tiaras,” the paper said.
There are also questions over how many elaborate robes and tunics will be worn by the new king. “King Charles to trim ‘costume changes’ in slimmer coronation,” ran a headline in the Daily Telegraph.
To be sure, a “slimmed down” coronation is a matter of perspective. Nobody thinks they’ll leave out the gold state coach and crowns and orbs and plenty of pomp and pageantry. If world leaders descend on the capital, as expected, there will also be a huge security operation.
Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation in 1953, a year after she became queen, was a three-hour spectacle, costing £1.57 million or £31 million in modern money, according to the Times of London
One of the facts we do know for certain is that Queen Camilla will be crowned Queen Consort alongside her husband. In 1953, Philip wasn’t crowned alongside Elizabeth II, as is the tradition for male consorts.
Queen Elizabeth II buried after historic state funeral
Queen Elizabeth’s corgis and pony get their final goodbye
Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral: Memorable moments in photos and videos | 2022-10-11T17:05:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | When is King Charles III's coronation? May 6 date announced. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/11/king-charles-coronation-date-may/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/11/king-charles-coronation-date-may/ |
Venezuelan officials survey the damage in Las Tejerías caused when five streams overflowed their banks on Saturday. (Miguel Gutierrez/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
LAS TEJERÍAS, Venezuela — Yessenia Galindez was standing in the entrance of her home, about to leave for work, when she felt the water beneath her feet.
The 43-year-old hospital janitor thought it was just a puddle of rain, seeping onto her floor.
But then a wave of murky brown water crashed into her home, knocking Galindez off her feet, dragging her down the road and pushing her up against the walls of her neighbors’ homes as they were quickly covered with mud.
The renegade river carried her brother-in-law out of his home next door. “Hold on!” Galindez shouted as she tried to stretch a leg out toward him. Galindez’s sister cried out for help: Her 1-year-old granddaughter was still inside.
Galindez’s nephew tried to grab the child, but the water pushed the door shut on his hand.
Cuba suffers total electrical outage as Hurricane Ian roars through
The 1-year-old girl, whose body was later recovered, was among at least 35 people killed when five streams jumped their banks on Saturday and consumed the town of Las Tejerías, about an hour southwest of Caracas. Torrential rains triggered a landslide that leveled hundreds of homes — and left Venezuelans blaming the socialist government of President Nicolás Maduro for failing to protect the country’s most vulnerable communities against a disaster caused by foreseeable weather conditions.
At least 56 people remain missing, Interior Minister Remigio Ceballos told reporters in Las Tejerías on Monday. Many people are still trapped under the mud and debris. One of them is believed to be Galindez’s 54-year-old brother-in-law.
Maduro, visiting the community on Monday, described the area as a “total catastrophe.” He said his government had been concerned that the soil was oversaturated after days of heavy rains.
“The mountains were becoming saturated and we ordered them to be checked,” he said. He did not say whether the government took any specific actions. “This is a landslide unlike any we have experienced in many years in Venezuela.”
Heavy rains are typically seen this time of year in Venezuela and may have been linked to this year’s La Niña phenomenon. The torrential rain in several Venezuelan states over the weekend may have also been connected to activity in the Intertropical Convergence Zone, meteorologists said, or to the impact of the nearby tropical storm, Julia, which strengthened to a hurricane and prompted flooding and mudslides in parts of Central America.
Authorities blamed the deluge in part on weather patterns exacerbated by climate change.
“The effects of the climate crisis are causing this tragedy,” Vice President Delcy Rodriguez said.
But others blamed years of neglect by Venezuela’s crumbling socialist state, which they said had failed to prepare the impoverished communities most vulnerable to flooding.
Valdemar Andrade, a hydrometeorological engineer and retired professor, said the disaster underscored a lack of investment in the country’s water infrastructure and in key tools to help track rain information.
In 1999, the year Hugo Chávez founded the socialist state, the country stopped collecting rainfall information through a national network of the sort used by many countries to measure precipitation, Andrade said. That data is used by engineers to design, update and maintain bridges, reservoirs and other infrastructure.
“Few efforts have been made to reactivate it,” Andrade said. He described the neglect as “very unusual” worldwide.
“In Venezuela, these kinds of intense phenomena shouldn’t surprise us, and we should be better prepared to address them,” said Juan Carlos Sánchez, a former Venezuelan environmental official who participated in the negotiation of the 1992 U.N. Climate Change Convention and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Sánchez said the government must do a better job of alerting communities in the areas most likely to be affected by a natural disaster, particularly now that climate change is making them more frequent.
Colombia wants him adopted. But he has a family — and they want him back.
From a balcony in Las Tejerías on Monday evening, Maduro said affected families would be housed in shelters while authorities rebuild the properties damaged.
“Rest assured that we are going to recover every last business and every last house,” he said.
Hundreds of government officials, military officers and paramedics descended on the community Monday to survey the damage. At midday, one official asked why bulldozers couldn’t access the area. “The vice president is up there and no one can get in,” another responded.
Townspeople, meanwhile, dug amid smashed cars, felled trees, and mountains of mud in search of missing family members, neighbors and belongings. A few people stood on a bridge, silently looking at what remained of their community.
“This feels like Vargas all over again,” Lourdes López said. Flash flooding in that state in 1999 killed tens of thousands of people, a disaster that still haunts the nation.
Galindez sat atop what used to be her house: a mound of mud, trees, and debris the river had dragged across town. She lost everything but the clothes she was wearing when she was swept away. Her sister’s house, right next door, was covered by sludge. Only the third floor still stands, now just a few yards above the ground.
She walked amid children’s books, other people’s family photographs, rotten food. Then she stopped and took a deep breath.
“Smell that?” she asked. “There have to be more people under here because that’s what death smells like.”
‘Fat Leonard’ caught in Venezuela after fleeing Navy bribery sentencing
She recalled how, on the day the river rushed in, her 1-year-old great niece was dancing in the kitchen while Galindez finished decorating cakes for her side job as a baker. “She was a ray of sunshine,” Galindez said, in tears. “She was there, with me, asking me to give her some cake. Hours later, she was gone.”
Her sister, the baby’s grandmother, walked around the rubble, pausing occasionally to look to the sky.
The silence was interrupted only by the occasional sound of machinery digging.
But suddenly, Galindez’s sister began to shout.
“Thank you, God, thank you!” she cried out, holding a small book.
Wrapped in the book, she found $100 in U.S. currency. A day before he disappeared in the mud, her husband had given her the prayer book, which contained a series of verses from the Bible.
“My husband asked me to take care of this,” she said. “And look.”
Calling her family over, she read the Bible verse on the page where her husband had left the cash.
“The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing,” she read. “When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were frightened. But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.”
Her family members listened until she was finished.
“Amen,” they said in unison. | 2022-10-11T17:05:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Landslides leveled a Venezuelan town. Critics blame government neglect. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/11/venezuela-landslide-flood/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/11/venezuela-landslide-flood/ |
Madonna, in a TikTok, suggests she’s gay. Her fans aren’t surprised.
Madonna, 64, already had long been lauded as a queer icon. (Washington Post illustration)
In a TikTok video Madonna posted Sunday, the 64-year-old megastar is seen holding hot-pink underwear, with the on-screen caption “If I miss, I’m Gay!” She then throws the panties toward a nearby wastebasket, and misses — by a lot.
It was, perhaps not coincidentally, two days shy of Tuesday’s National Coming Out Day.
“What in the 80s is happening 😳,” one TikTok user commented under the video. “Did Madonna just come out? And I’m witnessing it in real time??” wrote another.
The singer’s apparent coming out may have surprised those who haven’t watched her and her career closely. But dedicated Madonna fans, especially those in the LGBTQ community, were less shocked, noting that the video follows hints she’s dropped over the years about her own sexual orientation and her decades of support for gay people that turned her into a queer icon.
Madonna, who surged to ’80s stardom with hits like “Lucky Star,” “Like a Virgin” and “Material Girl,” began raising awareness about HIV/AIDS during that decade’s epidemic, fighting against the HIV stigma and fundraising for research at a time when the subject was unpopular to talk about. Her music and performances also leaned into her support of LGBTQ issues. Her 1989 song “Express Yourself,” for instance, became a gay anthem and something of a precursor to Lady Gaga’s 2011 single “Born This Way.” 1990’s “Vogue” brought prominence to the Black, Latino and queer ballroom scene subculture, in which underground drag queen pageants popularized the vogue dance style.
“She was a gay icon before we saw the gay in her,” Ankit Verma, a Madonna fan who lives in Bangalore, India, said after the TikTok was posted.
Many fans have assumed Madonna was bisexual since she told the Advocate in 1991 that she thinks “everybody has a bisexual nature.” Her video does not rule out that possibility, because “gay” has often been used as an umbrella term, especially for older LGBTQ members.
How Beyoncé honors Black queer culture in ‘Renaissance’
Verma, 25, said he found Madonna’s TikTok clip a “beautiful coalescence of a journey that has inspired generations of [the] queer community to find their voice.”
Verma, who is queer, said he became a Madonna fan when he heard her song “Ray of Light,” which portrayed Buddhism and Hinduism in a way he never had seen in the West before.
“For someone like me who comes from India, she’s made me feel that I belonged. It was okay to be different. My deviance wasn’t wrong,” he said. “We had no representation here. She gave us that.”
“It connects me to my community and my culture, my history,” he said. “I think there’s a real importance to that.”
Because of Madonna’s prominent presence and contributions in the LGBTQ community, he believes she’s well deserving of respect and the freedom to express herself the way she wants.
“When people Madonna’s age were young, it was much less safe to come out,” Bernstein said. “I’m always holding space for queer adults.” | 2022-10-11T17:40:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Madonna TikTok shows megastar singer apparently coming out as gay - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/11/madonna-tiktok-gay-coming-out/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/11/madonna-tiktok-gay-coming-out/ |
‘If you submitted that to a peer-reviewed journal ... it would get rejected,’ vaccine safety expert says about study on which it is based
Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo speaks before a bill signing by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Nov. 18, 2021. (Chris O'Meara/AP)
The guidance from the Florida health department came in a terse release at 6:12 on Friday evening, ahead of a three-day weekend: Joseph Ladapo, the state’s top health official, warned young adult men to stop taking coronavirus vaccines by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, citing an “abnormally high risk” of heart-related deaths.
But Ladapo’s recommendation — extrapolated from a short state analysis that has not been peer-reviewed, carries no authors and warns that its findings are “preliminary” and “should be interpreted with caution” — was swiftly condemned by medical and public health leaders, who said the Florida surgeon general’s announcement was politics masquerading as science and could lead Americans to forgo lifesaving interventions.
More than a dozen experts interviewed by The Washington Post — including specialists in vaccines, patient safety and study design — listed concerns with Florida’s analysis, saying it relies on information gleaned from frequently inaccurate death certificates rather than medical records, skews the results by trying to exclude anyone with covid-19 or a covid-related death, and draws conclusions from a total of 20 cardiac-related deaths in men 18-to-39 that occurred within four weeks of vaccination. Experts noted the deaths might have been caused by other factors, including underlying illnesses or undetected covid.
“If you submitted that to a peer-reviewed journal, unless you were paying them to publish it, it would get rejected,” added Daniel Salmon, who leads the Institute of Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He called Florida’s report “a dangerous thing to do.”
Twitter briefly removed Ladapo’s post touting the study over the weekend, citing it as misinformation, before restoring it hours later; the tweet has since been shared more than 50,000 times, cheered by anti-vaccine advocates and amplified by conservative media highlighting Ladapo’s claim that his state will “not be silent on the truth.”
The firestorm has put a spotlight on Ladapo, a Harvard-trained physician and researcher who had not specialized in infectious disease but rose to prominence after writing a number of op-eds in the Wall Street Journal questioning coronavirus vaccines, mask-wearing and other interventions. The columns caught the attention of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who late last summer offered Ladapo the job of overseeing a roughly 15,000-person health department in the nation’s third-most-populous state.
As surgeon general, Ladapo’s efforts to discourage parents from getting their children vaccinated, challenge mask mandates and oppose gender dysphoria treatments for children have been opposed by medical associations, such as the Florida chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. Those stances have also won accolades from conservatives and helped the governor burnish his credentials as a populist conservative as he runs for reelection and positions himself for the 2024 GOP presidential contest.
Kids’ coronavirus vaccines are hard to find in Fla. Many blame DeSantis.
In an interview Monday, Ladapo defended the vaccine study as an overdue effort to investigate risks associated with the vaccines. He has argued that high levels of immunity to the virus raise fresh questions about the shots’ risks versus benefits. The Florida analysis sought to explore the relationship between the shots and cardiac-related deaths, as well as deaths from all causes, by examining the death certificates of Florida residents 18 and older who died within 25-weeks of vaccination between December 2020 and June 2022.
“This should have been done by anyone who had the ability to do it, in terms of the data and the technical expertise,” Ladapo said.
Ladapo declined to name who worked on the analysis — saying that was a “fake issue” — and suggested it did not need to be submitted to a journal or go through peer review. “The point of this analysis was to look at a question that was important to answer,” he said.
In fact, the link between conditions known as myocarditis and pericarditis, which are types of heart inflammation, and the messenger RNA coronavirus vaccines has been and continues to be heavily researched across several continents.
“We’ve all been asking these questions,” said Peter Marks, the top vaccine official at the Food and Drug Administration. “We already know that myocarditis and pericarditis are somewhat increased in younger males who get the vaccine, but we also know that it’s far outweighed by the benefits.”
Salmon, who previously oversaw vaccine safety for the federal government’s National Vaccine Program Office, agreed that there are real, but rare, heart risks associated with the vaccines — an issue he knows well because he is leading a global study of it.
But Salmon said he would still recommend the vaccines for adult men under 40, including for his two sons in that age group. “The vaccines are not perfect, but the benefits still outweigh the risks,” he said.
Both the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have said the vaccines can cause heart inflammation in rare cases, but the symptoms are temporary, with cases generally resolved within hours or days. Large-scale observational studies on hundreds of millions of vaccine recipients have shown that while heart inflammation can be a rare side effect of the messenger RNA vaccines that disproportionately affect young men, the small number of deaths in that age group and protective effects of the vaccines at preventing severe covid, outweigh those risks.
Ladapo told The Post that he hoped his mentors at Harvard, such as health economist David Cutler, would support the methods used in Florida’s study. But reached by phone Monday evening, Cutler criticized the vaccine study as deeply flawed, and said he worried it would discourage people who could benefit from the shots.
Cutler said he was proud of Ladapo’s work as a student and supported his inquisitiveness, including his initial Wall Street Journal essays raising questions about the long-term risks of lockdowns, and more recently, his efforts to probe whether vaccines might cause harms. “We should never be afraid of asking questions, no matter how strong the received wisdom,” he said.
But Cutler said Florida’s vaccine study had severe methodological problems.
“If I was a reviewer at a journal, I would recommend rejecting it,” Cutler said, adding that Ladapo was wrong to base Florida’s vaccine policy on it.
“Anytime you tell people to do something incorrect, you risk causing harm,” Cutler added, saying the Florida surgeon general has increasingly staked out positions on vaccines and other public health issues that aren’t backed by rigorous data. “Some of his statements have become more strident than the evidence warrants.”
In May 2022, Florida Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo said on “Tucker Carlson Today” that physicians are “indoctrinated” about vaccines in medical school. (Video: “Tucker Carlson Today”/ Fox Nation)
Ladapo’s positions have won him a growing following in conservative circles, however, particularly his claims that doctors are “indoctrinated” about vaccines in medical school and that “greed” is motivating them to recommend shots for many conditions.
“I never thought I would listen to a surgeon general of any kind, and certainly not a state surgeon general, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you appear,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson said in May, when hosting Ladapo for a nearly hour-long conversation on his daytime talk show. “I think a lot of people — I’m speaking, for myself for sure — believe you much more than health authorities that we hear in Washington.”
“More than the surgeon general of the country, I hope so,” Ladapo responded, chuckling. “Only one of these two is telling the truth.”
Ladapo’s path to Florida
Born in Nigeria before moving to the United States as a young child, Ladapo became a star athlete who ran track at Wake Forest University, then went to Harvard for a joint medical degree and PhD.
In 2008, Ladapo told a Harvard publication he felt lucky “to have been here and able to benefit and grow in this tremendously rich environment.”
But he was already wrestling with some of the questions that now define his career. “One day, I think we will look back and be amazed at the crudeness of the methods we once used to make decisions about our patients’ lives,” Ladapo wrote in 2010 as a second-year medical resident.
After leaving Harvard, he took jobs first at New York University and then, the University of California at Los Angeles, where he became a tenured professor and mostly focused on research, winning multiple federal grants while still seeing patients about one day a week.
Ladapo took some traditionally liberal positions in those years, posting on Facebook that he had signed petitions in 2016 criticizing the media for using terms like “alt-right” and “nationalism” instead of “White supremacist.” He also urged Republicans not to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017 and decried the Trump administration’s efforts to separate migrant families at the border in 2018.
“Access to basic care is something every human should have,” Ladapo wrote on Facebook in 2017, as doctors mobilized to fight ACA repeal.
Five people who had collaborated closely with Ladapo on research said he had seemed on a similar path as many of his colleagues, if more willing to embrace contrarian positions in staff debates, before his abrupt right turn in 2020 that several described as “mystifying” and a “conundrum.”
“His work over the pandemic is really shocking to me,” said one person who worked closely with Ladapo on multiple research studies, and like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted by anti-vaccine groups.
In his memoir, “Transcend Fear,” published in August, Ladapo offers clues to his professional transformation, writing that he spent decades grappling with personal trauma linked to memories of being sexually abused by a babysitter as a young child. He said his journey overcoming that experience empowered him to see medicine in a new light and to challenge its orthodoxies.
Ladapo credits several days of therapy in December 2019 with Christopher Maher, a former Navy SEAL, with freeing him of the anxiety linked to his abuse and making him “literally a new man” — just in time to face the pandemic, he says.
“Maybe I would have been one of those ‘the end justifies the means’ doctors had I not worked with Christopher Maher and rid myself of the fear that was compromising my judgment,” Ladapo writes.
Ladapo also says that as he continued to pen Wall Street Journal op-eds and criticize pandemic policies — joining groups like America’s Frontline Doctors that were pushing hydroxychloroquine as a covid treatment in July 2020 despite warnings from experts that it didn’t work — he was ostracized at UCLA, with some colleagues refusing to work with him.
His supervisor at UCLA later told Florida agents conducting a background check on Ladapo that she would not recommend him for state surgeon general, citing his decision-making, the Orlando Sentinel first reported.
UCLA declined to comment.
In Monday’s interview, Ladapo acknowledged that his beliefs evolved over time, and he suggested that the political climate — and the powerful responses to the pandemic — had made it harder to hold nuanced positions.
“There’s no space for people to have different ideas,” he said, adding that the medical field’s hostility to those raising questions about coronavirus vaccines “gradually opened me up to seeing that more was going on than just objective evaluation.”
Vaccine disinformation has had real-world effects on Americans who have been confused or frightened by reports they may be unsafe, researchers say.
Jason Schwartz, a Yale University associate professor who specializes in vaccine policy, co-authored a study released last month that found “substantially higher excess death rates for registered Republicans when compared to registered Democrats, with almost all of the difference concentrated in the period after vaccines were widely available in our study states.”
He argued that Florida’s analysis appeared part of a “relentless effort … to sow confusion and undermine the public health response.”
Other experts also worried that Ladapo’s warning would hamper efforts to encourage millions of people to get coronavirus booster shots before a predicted fall and winter surge of cases.
“People in the public go, ‘Wow, a government report shows that vaccines are dangerous.’ It’s going to scare people,” Salmon said.
Biden officials, initially blindsided by Florida’s warning, spent the weekend deliberating about how and even whether to respond, according to four people with knowledge of the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment. White House and health department leaders worried that, if unanswered, Ladapo’s message would inflame vaccine fears — but they were also concerned that attempting to rebut him would amplify his message.
“We do take very carefully, and we debate very closely, whether or not it’s the right thing to give attention to something like this,” said the FDA’s Marks.
By Monday, federal officials had crafted a statement that called Florida’s recommendation “flawed and a far cry from the science,” Sarah Lovenheim, spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote in an email. “COVID-19 vaccines have been proven safe and effective, and severe adverse reactions are rare. The benefits of COVID-19 vaccination — preventing death and hospitalization — are well-established and continue to outweigh any potential risks.”
Florida’s study also arrived as White House leaders were pushing their own vaccine message. Earlier that same day, Biden health officials had trumpeted study findings showing the shots resulted in about 675,000 fewer hospitalizations and about 350,000 fewer deaths among seniors last year. | 2022-10-11T17:53:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Experts slam Florida surgeon general’s warning on coronavirus vaccines - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/11/florida-surgeon-general-ladapo-covid-vaccines/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/11/florida-surgeon-general-ladapo-covid-vaccines/ |
At long last, the Killers deliver a post-pandemic shot of the spirit
The popular rockers return to D.C. with new material, old hits and meaningful covers in a souped-up show that should have taken place two years ago
Review by Dave McKenna
Brandon Flowers of the Killers performs at Capital One Arena on Monday. (Chris Phelps)
Arena rock has symptoms of long covid. The impact of the pandemic was all over the Killers’ sweaty and stellar show Monday at Capital One Arena.
The concert was originally scheduled to take place Oct. 3, 2020, and tickets for the show went on sale about 2½ years ago. Frontman Brandon Flowers, earnest as ever and seeming almost desperate to provide comfort, counseled the fans who packed the big room that merely getting together for the show was proof that their hardest times are in the rearview mirror.
“The pandemic is behind us,” he said. “The leaves have begun to blush. The Killers are back in town. Damn right you’re all right!”
The Las Vegas-born combo released two albums of new material by the time the world finally opened up enough for rockers to get on the road again. The band didn’t seem to have much faith that the songs, particularly the newer ones, would by themselves be enough to hold the crowd’s interest post-hiatus. This show relied on more gadgetry than did previous Killers gigs. For “Caution,” a peppy synth-heavy song from 2020’s “Imploding the Mirage,” walls of sparks fell from the ceiling and shot up from the floor. During “Fire in Bone,” a cut off the same album that tells a spiritual redemption tale, a la “Amazing Grace,” there were confetti guns. The oddest of the newish tunes was “Cody,” off 2021’s “Pressure Machine” LP, a song about an avowed atheist whose search for deeper meaning leads him to burn things down.
Yet the special effects even showed up on Killers’ classics: Red and green laser beams shot from the stage to the rafters during “Somebody Told Me,” a 2004 rock radio smash with a chorus so memorable and great the fans would have surely screamed along without any artificial enticement.
The Killers have always exuded Christian-rock overtones on record and in concert. But Flowers flaunted much more of his ecclesiastical side on this night than he had in pre-pandemic tour stops. Before rendering “The Way It Was,” Flowers suddenly declared that the key to getting to heaven was in “service to others.”
“We want to get to heaven,” he said. “Tonight we’re here to serve you.” The 2012 tune, one of the more obvious Bruce Springsteen homages in the Killers’ catalogue, gave the flock reason to believe in the power of rock-and-roll. As did the night’s reprise of “A Dustland Fairytale,” a Killers song the band rerecorded last year with Springsteen.
And while imploring fans to sing along to “Runaways,” Flowers asked the crowd to “Let the angels in!” Seemingly everybody in the building followed his command. The harmonies were just as overpowering on “Spaceman,” a tune about being under the influence of some sort of spirits in the sky.
Flowers toned things way down for an amazing and spare cover version of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” backed only by a single, lightly plucked guitar. That’s a timeless love ballad made most famous from a 1972 single by Roberta Flack, a graduate of and former teacher at Howard University, just a mile north up 7th Street NW from the arena. Flowers, whether he knew the song’s local roots or not, did Flack proud.
Flowers also took a break in the middle of a characteristically exuberant version of “Read My Mind” to throw in a few swoony stanzas of “Lean On Me,” a soul standard also released in 1972 by Bill Withers.
Appreciation: Bill Withers, on repeat
The night’s final cover came when Johnny Marr, the show’s opening act and founding guitarist of the massively influential mid-’80s Manchester combo the Smiths, returned to the stage to help the Killers redo his old band’s underappreciated 1987 gem, “You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby.”
The Killers sent folks home with one last screamalong, “Mr. Brightside,” a tune so popular in Britain it’s often referred to as the unofficial British national anthem. As for whether the nearly two-hour performance would be enough to earn Flowers et al. the eternal reward he claimed they seek, well, God only knows. But every man (and woman) upstairs or in the arena’s lower pews surely acted blessed to once again just be in the same building as this band. Hearing 20,000 folks simultaneously singing every chorus, song after song after song, is an inspirational experience regardless of creed. Just as Flowers had predicted, damn right they were all right. | 2022-10-11T17:58:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In concert, the Killers deliver a post-pandemic shot of the spirit - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/11/killers-concert-review-washington-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/11/killers-concert-review-washington-dc/ |
Students from Alexandria's Maury Elementary School gather for a WTOP radio quiz show around 1948. Anne Solley, then Anne Flynt, is in the front row, third from the right. Behind her is Anne Shine, then Anne Briggs. (Family photo) (Family photo)
Anne Shine still remembers how nervous she was when she and some of her Maury Elementary School classmates were contestants on a D.C. radio quiz show around 1948.
“My sole memory is being terrified they would ask me a question I wouldn't know the answer to,” Shine said.
And she was an alternate, not even guaranteed a spot on the program.
“It was more like a spelling bee,” said Anne Solley, a Maury classmate. Solley was on the show, too, along with 10 other kids from Alexandria, Va., who were memorialized in a black-and-white photo taken that day.
“I was wearing a plaid check skirt and a brown sweater, my bangs cut way too short,” Solley said.
I wrote last week about TV’s “It’s Academic” and what it’s been through in recent years, but it’s worth remembering that children’s quiz shows have long been popular. The octogenarian Maury alumna I spoke with couldn’t recall the exact name of the show they were on. The name “Quiz Kids” rang a bell, but that show was primarily broadcast out of New York City, with a regular cast of precocious youngsters.
Hosted by Joe Kelly (no relation), “Quiz Kids” was broadcast Sundays at 7:30 p.m. on WMAL. Whatever show the Maury students were on was locally produced and, they think, aired on WTOP.
“It was a big deal for us,” said Shine, who still lives in Alexandria. It turned out that her services weren’t needed at the microphone that day. Solley — then known as Anne Flynt — did compete.
“You can't really study for such a thing at that age,” said Solley, who lives in Maine now. “I don’t remember the words I spelled right. I was in several rounds. I do remember that I finally misspelled a word. The word was ‘occurred.’ I hope I can spell it now.”
She thought for a moment, then said, “It has two Cs and two Rs. I spelled it with one R.”
Both women remember their mothers fussing over their outfits and hair — ironic, given that they were going to be on the radio, not television. And they never got to hear the show. It went out over the airwaves live. They do remember that Maury was a good school. (It was also a segregated one. Named for a Confederate naval officer, Maury was renamed last year in honor of Naomi L. Brooks, a former teacher in Alexandria.)
Americans love quiz shows. And we love kid quiz shows.
“I think people like to test themselves and see how they can do,” said Susan Altman, producer of “It’s Academic.”
Altman said the questions are ones that a high school student should be able to answer.
“That's something your viewers can all relate to and can test themselves against,” she said.
Altman said the format of some “It’s Academic” questions is arranged with viewers in mind. They know people will be playing along at home so sometimes the show includes visual clues to make it more engaging for them.
“It’s Academic” is for high school students. Oakton, Va., reader Carolin Ringwall remembers a similar show from the 1970s that her daughter, Karin, was on. Called “It’s Elementary,” it was for elementary-age kids and was hosted by former Washington wide receiver Roy Jefferson.
It, too, was produced by the “It’s Academic” folks.
“It was a kind of thing where a school would send down its entire fourth- or fifth-grade and we would pull kids out for various games,” Altman said.
Altman and her team felt the “It’s Academic” format was too competitive for the younger students. Instead, games included the “Intergalactic Spelling Patrol,” where misspelled words were zapped, and a “Concentration”-style game where correct answers unveiled sections of an image that had to be identified.
“It was on for about seven years then we replaced it with ‘Pick Up the Beat,’” Altman said.
That show — hosted by Erik King and, later, Chuck Jeffreys — wasn’t a quiz show at all. It used music videos produced by local teens to explore issues such as friendship, dating woes, drunken driving and teen pregnancy.
In other words, a far cry from the spelling words those Maury 10-year-olds faced in 1948.
Pop goes the Rage
In Tuesday’s column, I got a bit of 1970s D.C. band drama wrong. The band that Tommy Keene left in 1978 to join Razz was the Rage, not the Pop. | 2022-10-11T18:32:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Octogenarians remember their turn at the radio quiz microphone in 1948 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/kid-quiz-radio-show/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/kid-quiz-radio-show/ |
Prince George’s juvenile curfew enforcement will extend to end of the year
Prince George’s County Executive Angela Alsobrooks (D) with Prince George’s County Police Chief Malik Aziz. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
Enforcement of the juvenile curfew in Prince George’s County will be extended through the end of the year, County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D) announced Tuesday.
The curfew for youth under 17 was set to expire Wednesday before county officials said they would continue to enforce the regulation.
Alsobrooks had announced the curfew crackdown on Labor Day following one of the deadliest months for homicides in Prince George’s history. The move was met with mixed reviews, with some applauding her for addressing community concerns about crime and others criticizing what they called was a quick, political fix to a complex problem.
The last weekend of the curfew came and went with no violations issued. Over the last month, however, police have issued four warning letters for violations.
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.
Data collected from Prince George’s County shows that violent crimes this summer grew to one of its highest points in recent years. During August, there were 24 homicides in the county, the highest in recent decades, the department said.
Alsobrooks called the curfew a “tool” to add to the county’s toolbox to collect additional information and data about crime.
“The curfew was not meant to be punitive to our children, but to require parents, grandparents, aunties, uncles … to step up and do what was necessary to protect our kids,” Alsobrooks said.
Alsobrooks acknowledged that young people, including her own daughter, were displeased with the curfew and questioned why it was needed.
“I say to them, it was for their protection,” she said, adding that there was a decrease of violent crime during curfew hours and amount of youth on the street.
At a recent town hall meeting, Prince George’s Deputy Chief James McCreary said the county has seen a “significant reduction” in violence compared to August since curfew enforcement. He also said the department dedicated a “significant amount” of overtime resources in recent weeks, with school resource officers conducting truancy sweeps to ensure youth were in school during daytime hours.
It is 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 Washington Post. | 2022-10-11T18:33:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Prince George's youth curfew enforcement will extend to the end of year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/prince-georges-juvenile-curfew-extended/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/prince-georges-juvenile-curfew-extended/ |
Montgomery County Council President Gabe Albornoz (D) says the Thrive 2050 plan will move ahead amid scrutiny of the county planning agency’s leadership
Montgomery County Council President Gabe Albornoz (D-At Large) said the council will move ahead on a 30-year growth plan amid scrutiny of the planning agency's leadership. (Cheryl Diaz Meyer for The Washington Post)
The Montgomery County Council will move ahead with a controversial long-term growth plan as the county’s planning agency faces turmoil at the top, the council’s president said Tuesday.
“It is our intent to continue to go forward,” council President Gabe Albornoz (D-At Large) said at the council’s final work session on the plan, known as Thrive 2050.
The council is expected to approve the plan Oct. 25.
Some opponents have said on social media that Thrive 2050, which will guide growth in the county for the next 30 years, should be put on hold amid upheaval in the Montgomery planning department’s leadership.
Montgomery planning board fires planning agency chief
On Friday, the county’s planning board fired director Gwen Wright without citing a reason, three months before she was set to retire. Wright, who had led the agency since mid-2013, said in an interview that she was fired for publicly defending the board’s chair, Casey Anderson.
Anderson was recently docked a month’s pay after an investigation found that he had kept and served alcohol in his agency office. Anderson, who had apologized for the alcohol, recused himself from the vote about Wright’s termination.
The council, which appoints the planning board, held a closed-door meeting about Wright’s firing Monday afternoon.
At its Tuesday morning work session, Albornoz began the discussion by saying, “I’m just going to address the elephant in the room.”
Wright, who had been listed on the agenda as an “expected attendee,” was not there. In her place was acting planning director Tanya Stern, along with Anderson.
“The council has been asked whether we should continue moving forward with Thrive 2050 in light of what has transpired over the last few weeks” at the planning department, Albornoz said.
The plan, which has been in the works since mid-2019, had involved a “record” amount of public communication, Albornoz said, referring to multiple council meetings and a consultant being hired to increase outreach to lower-income residents and communities of color.
“This document is long overdue, and it will never be perfect in the eyes of everyone in the public,” Albornoz said. “We have done our best to strike a responsible balance based on the feedback and input we have heard. What has occurred within the planning department, in our opinion at this time, does not impact our ability to wrap up this important document.”
Single-family zoning preserves century-old segregation, planners say
County planners and supporters say the plan will increase the amount of housing for residents at all income levels. They say it also will help the county grow and attract economic development in an environmentally sustainable way by focusing growth in “activity centers” and along transit lines.
Opponents say some of the policies in the plan would undermine the quality of life in their suburban neighborhoods by encouraging too much dense development, which would add to traffic congestion, school crowding and flooding from storm water runoff. | 2022-10-11T18:33:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Montgomery's Thrive 2050 plan to move ahead amid planning agency turmoil - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/11/montgomery-thrive-2050-council-vote/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/11/montgomery-thrive-2050-council-vote/ |
Elsie who? At one time, millions read Elsie Robinson’s columns.
The new book ‘Listen, World!’ illuminates the life and work of a pioneering journalist who overcame many hurdles to become the most popular columnist of her time
Review by Mary Jo Murphy
Elsie Robinson was a journalist, fiction writer and poet. (Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley)
Female journalists of bygone eras make good copy. There’s Nellie Bly, who got herself checked in to a psychiatric hospital to investigate the inhumane conditions there and later trekked around the world in a record 72 days; Dorothy Thompson, who profiled Adolf Hitler during his rise and became the first U.S. reporter expelled from Nazi Germany; the “sob sisters,” so named because they covered the murder trial of a railroad baron’s son with tear-jerking flair; and even Hildy Johnson, the fictional “His Girl Friday.”
These reporters were always a little extra. In a man’s game, they had to be. As Ishbel Ross put it in her 1936 history “Ladies of the Press,” back then women needed to be “free to leap nimbly through fire lines, dodge missiles at a strike, board a liner from a swaying ladder, write copy calmly in the heat of a Senate debate, or count the dead in a catastrophe” without wondering why nobody will “change the ribbon of her typewriter or hold smelling salts to her nose as she views a scene of horror.”
As pioneering women journalists finally begin to get the recognition they deserve, the name Elsie Robinson is rarely part of the conversation. Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert aim to change that with “Listen, World! How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America’s Most-Read Woman,” the first biography of this forgotten California dynamo.
My great-grandmother Ida B. Wells left a legacy of activism in education
Robinson certainly meets the threshold for intrepidness, although in her case most of it happened before she set foot in a newsroom. Born and raised in near poverty in the San Francisco Bay area, she married East Coast money as a teenager in 1903 and then spent a decade yearning to escape that loveless marriage. She grabbed her chance when her dour husband allowed her to leave Vermont to take their asthmatic son West to visit her family for a spell. That spell grew. After four years, her husband filed for divorce. He cited desertion and adultery and cut off funds. For three years, Robinson, now a destitute single mother, worked in a gold mine in the Sierra Nevada foothills, where she had sought a more forgiving climate for her son. Young George did indeed improve greatly, while Elsie earned a living on her belly, “gophering” through the cracks in the landscape in search of overlooked gold. “Mucking, panning, timbering — during the first summer it was all one blurred delirium” under a 114 degree sun, she wrote in her midcareer memoir, “I Wanted Out!”
The memoir’s title referred to her marriage and the stifling conventions of her married life — not her rough but liberating miner’s life — yet eventually she made her way back to San Francisco. She had long written and illustrated stories for her son. Back in Vermont, she had even sold a few articles, and in her mining town’s old post office she had access to a typewriter. But her efforts to sell her work or get any job at all in San Francisco failed. At 35, she thought she was washed up. In her memoir she writes that she contemplated both suicide and prostitution. Instead, she redoubled her efforts. She wrote and illustrated a children’s story and made the rounds of the city’s three newspapers. All three turned her away. Across the bay, the Oakland Tribune, which until then had no children’s department, hired her. She was to write a weekly children’s column of illustrated animal stories for $12 a week.
At this point — the start of her newspaper career — the book “Listen, World!” is more than two-thirds finished. And that may be something of a clue as to why Robinson is not well remembered. What made her most interesting is the nervy life that came before, which Scheeres and Gilbert have ably stitched together in no small part, they acknowledge, by fact-checking Robinson’s 1934 memoir. What stands out most about Robinson’s career, though, is her astounding productivity.
Her first column, published just before Christmas 1918, was a hit. Children wrote in. The column ran next to L. Frank Baum’s “Wonderful Stories of Oz” series, but when Baum died several months later, the editor turned over an entire page to Robinson for a weekly feature called “Aunt Elsie’s Magazine for the Kiddies of the Oakland Tribune.” It soon became two pages, then eight, all of it written and illustrated by Robinson. Aunt Elsie clubs sprouted in Northern California cities. Parents noticed and wanted in. Robinson began her first column for adults, “Curtains, Collars and Cutlets: Cheer-Up Column.” A relationship column, “Cry on Geraldine’s Shoulder,” was next, followed by “Listen, World!” which was nationally syndicated.
Three female journalists who braved the chaos of Vietnam
These columns ran simultaneously, and Robinson had no secretary or assistant. She jumped to one of the San Francisco papers that had rejected her, where she continued her prodigious output. In addition to her columns, she covered big events and breaking news such as the Lindbergh kidnapping for the front page. She was the highest-paid newspaperwoman in the Hearst organization, but the overwork came at a cost. Some years later she got wise to it and wrote to William Randolph Hearst himself. “I am not a columnist. I am a factory. You’ve not been getting a feature. You’ve been getting mass production for nearly 20 years.”
So, what exactly did that factory produce in nearly 40 years of operation? Scheeres, author of the memoir “Jesus Land,” and Gilbert, a journalist who has written extensively on the 9/11 attacks, quote liberally from Robinson’s columns, stories, poems and memoir (serialized in Hearst’s Cosmopolitan magazine), and also include a generous sampling of her editorial cartoons and children’s drawings. What emerges is a portrait of an amiable populist who at her peak reached 20 million readers (” double the number of current subscribers to the New York Times,” as the authors put it). The allure is apparent, as Robinson dispensed wisdom and comfort by the bucket. Her advice was more obvious than profound, and she perfected a voice that was above all familiar. It was jolly, chummy, slangy, chirpy.
“Tell me about the happys — and tell me about the sads,” she urged young readers in her first columns.
“Is your husband or your complexion growing dull?” she wrote in introducing her “Cry on Geraldine’s Shoulder” column. “Let us then discuss the value of soft soap on complexions — and husbands. … We shall sit together on the edge of the world. You have wanted a friend. I’M IT.”
“I have learned to build my happiness — collecting it bit by bit,” she wrote in a poem for her “Listen, World!” column.
The aphorisms flew freely, often emphasizing perseverance: “The only person who fails in life is the person who doesn’t dare live it” and “Life is common bread. Hoard it and you lose it.”
It wasn’t all bromides, apparently. The authors write that particularly in later decades, “she used her national platform to express her increasingly progressive and political views,” calling out racism (“You happened to be born white, and that is no great feat”), antisemitism and the death penalty (fit for the “stone age”).
Her “acres” of words, as she described them, evidently hit their mark. The authors have included Robinson’s poem “Pain” (her beloved son had died at 21), which includes the lines “Why must those who love generously,/Live honorably, feel deeply/All that is good — and beautiful/Be so hurt.” If the sentiment sounds familiar, you’ve probably seen something similar on a T-shirt or a plaque in a suburban kitchen or kitschy catalogue: “Live simply, love generously, care deeply, speak kindly, leave the rest to God.” The quotation is attributed to Ronald Reagan, but I’d bet a gold nugget he adapted it from Elsie Robinson. After all, before he was the Great Communicator, she was.
Mary Jo Murphy is an editor at The Washington Post.
Listen, World!
How the Intrepid Elsie Robinson Became America’s Most-Read Woman
By Julia Scheeres and Allison Gilbert
Seal Press. 352 pp. $30 | 2022-10-11T18:33:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Listen, World! by by Allison Gilbert and Julia Scheeres book review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/11/elsie-robinson-book/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/11/elsie-robinson-book/ |
Hockey Canada leadership steps down amid ongoing sexual assault scandal
Hockey Canada CEO Scott Smith, shown in July, has departed the organization. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press/AP)
Hockey Canada CEO Scott Smith departed and the entire board of directors stepped down, the organization announced Tuesday, as it continues to grapple with the fallout from its handling of sexual assault allegations against players. The sport’s national governing body noted in a statement announcing the departures an “urgent need for new leadership and perspectives.”
“The Hockey Canada Board of Directors has announced important changes to Hockey Canada’s leadership team,” the statement read. “Effective immediately, it announced the departure of chief executive officer Scott Smith. The entire Board has also agreed to step down to make room for a new slate of directors.”
The departures are the latest development in a saga that’s seen reopened investigations, news of a secret fund to settle abuse claims and the release of an action plan meant to “eliminate toxic behavior.” The Canadian government froze Hockey Canada’s federal funding in June, and sponsors began to cut ties with the organization later that month.
Those developments stem from the May revelation that Hockey Canada had settled a lawsuit with a woman who alleged she was sexually assaulted by eight players from the country’s 2018 world junior men’s hockey team that June.
Although the allegations have not been proved in court, Hockey Canada’s board chairs faced the latest round of questioning by Canadian Parliament last Tuesday, when former chair Michael Brind’Amour and interim chair Andrea Skinner were asked why Smith had not been fired.
Skinner said: “Our board does not share the view that Hockey Canada should be making more leadership changes at this time. As a board, we continue to support the CEO and management.” She resigned Saturday.
Hockey Canada sponsors in recent days have continued to reassess their relationship with the organization over its handling of the accusation and subsequent revelations about its practices.
Nike on Friday suspended its relationship, telling Reuters it will “continue to monitor the situation and await more information regarding Hockey Canada’s actions to address the findings in these investigations and create a safe environment for all athletes.”
On Tuesday, Canadian hockey equipment manufacturer Bauer Hockey paused its partnership with the men’s team, noting that it will continue to supply equipment to the country’s women’s programs. | 2022-10-11T18:37:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hockey Canada CEO, board of directors step down amid sexual assault scandal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/hockey-canada-scandal-resignations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/hockey-canada-scandal-resignations/ |
Photos of fentanyl victims on display at the Faces of Fentanyl Memorial at the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration headquarters in Arlington, Va., in September. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) would like to be elected to the Senate in his increasingly red home state. That means that Ryan has consistently tried to stake out positions that (he hopes) sit somewhere between those of his opponent, venture capitalist and author J.D. Vance, and his party’s mainstream.
So, during a debate with Vance on Monday night, Ryan criticized President Biden and Vice President Harris, particularly on the subject of immigration. He declared, for example, that the border was not secure, contradicting Harris.
But since this is October 2022, that conversation about the border became intermingled with one about fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that makes up a disproportionately large percentage of drug overdose deaths in the United States, particularly in Midwestern states including Ohio.
“Tim Ryan has done nothing to stop the flow of fentanyl,” Vance said during the debate. “He talks about wanting to support a stronger border. … Tim, you’ve been in Congress for 20 years and the border problem has gotten worse.”
“We do have more work to do,” Ryan replied, “which is why I have a resolution to designate fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction, which is why I vote for more border patrol, why I vote for a barrier, why I vote for technology.”
That exchange is telling. Fentanyl is mostly imported and often transported into the United States across the border with Mexico, primarily by being smuggled through existing ports of entry. That means that criticism of Biden administration border policies can be elevated as a life-or-death concern — and yield proportionately elevated proposals as solutions.
But if we extract the debate from the political moment (and the looming midterm elections), the situation and context change.
One of the strange aspects of how fentanyl has been covered over the past year is how the immediate danger it presents appears to be situational. In August 2021, the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department released a video purporting to show an officer passing out after coming into indirect contact with fentanyl. It was a warning, offered to colleagues about the danger of the drug.
It was also quickly debunked. There’s no robust evidence that someone brushing against fentanyl can suddenly overdose from it. It’s just as unlikely for that officer as it was for the woman who claimed that she picked up a dollar bill coated with fentanyl at a McDonald’s and subsequently collapsed.
That latter story, though, ended up on Fox News in July, thanks to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.). His argument was that fentanyl was terrifyingly deadly — and, therefore, that the administration’s border policies were deadly themselves.
And yet, at the same time, Republicans are amplifying the idea that fentanyl dealers are trying to get children hooked on fentanyl by passing around rainbow-colored versions of the substance. These children, impervious to the immediate physical threat that law enforcement faces, are being given drugs that … look like candy … so they, I guess, become addicted? And start paying for it? But not overdose?
It doesn’t really make sense, but the United States has a long history of worrying about what nefarious things might be slipped into children’s Halloween bags. And here’s Republican Party Chair Ronna McDaniel magnifying the purported danger.
“As Halloween approaches, mothers like me are terrified,” she wrote for FoxNews.com — “thanks to reckless open-border policies that create perfect conditions for ruthless drug cartels, our children are now on the front line of a drug crisis.”
See that? Your children are imperiled because of the border — again, ignoring that the conduit for bringing fentanyl into the country is smuggling it through checkpoints, and ignoring that the idea that drug dealers will hand out fentanyl to kids makes no sense.
The war on fentanyl provides an elegant vehicle for elected officials to demonstrate their toughness. The war on terror is over; the war on drugs is back. So we get allies of former president Donald Trump announcing that they’d like to pull a “Clear and Present Danger” on Mexico, declaring literal war on drug cartels in Mexico. We get Ryan’s analogizing to weapons of mass destruction, which 20 years ago meant nukes.
None of this is to diminish overdose deaths caused by fentanyl. The most recent data available from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that a little over 69,000 people died of overdoses of synthetic opioids (excluding methadone) in the 12 months before April. That’s more than 1,300 people a week, on average. It’s also down a bit from the 12-month period ending in January.
There’s another danger to which we can compare this: the coronavirus. In the same 12-month period that nearly 70,000 people died of synthetic opioids, over 417,000 died of covid-19 — 8,000 a week. The number of covid-19 deaths is dropping, happily; in the past three months, the country has averaged far fewer deaths. But it’s still more than 3,400 deaths per week, on average.
There are obvious differences between an infectious disease and an addictive drug. Each involves different decisions, different levels of personal responsibility, different external pressures and triggers. But each, as we’ve seen repeatedly over the past two years, does include elements of those things. How we consider the politics of covid-19 or of fentanyl is often intertwined with how we present the level of victimhood of those who’ve succumbed.
It’s interesting to note an additional measure of how politics overlaps here. In general, the three major cable-news networks covered covid-19 far more than fentanyl. There are two big differences, though. Fox News, where both McCarthy and McDaniel opined on the dangers of fentanyl, was about as likely to mention the coronavirus on air at the outset of the pandemic, but less likely to do so over the rest of 2020 — as Trump was seeking reelection in part by putting the pandemic behind him.
Then, beginning in 2021, Fox News began mentioning fentanyl far more than its competitors, and now, after accelerating its coverage over the past few months, the network mentions it about as much as it does the virus — even as the virus continues to claim nearly three times as many lives.
We’ve seen Fox News’s coverage of controversial issues gear up before past midterm elections, of course: Ebola before the 2014 midterms; migrant “caravans” before 2018. In each case, coverage evaporated once the elections were over.
For candidates like Ryan, though, fentanyl is not something he can ignore. It’s a real danger in Ohio, unlike Ebola or those purported caravans, and has been for some time. His opponents have done a good job of centering the debate about the drug on immigration policies. So he reacts: Fentanyl is a WMD, something he proposed legislatively back in June.
Shortly after the November general election matchup was set in place.
The latest: Scott, Cotton avoid abortion reports while rallying for Walker in Georgia
5:23 PMNoted: Five largest tribes in Oklahoma endorse Democrat Hofmeister for governor
5:13 PMThis just in: Biden hails deal between Israeli and Lebanese leaders on maritime border | 2022-10-11T19:42:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The politics of fighting fentanyl — and of fear - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/border-fentanyl-midterm-elections/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/border-fentanyl-midterm-elections/ |
People run while police fire tear gas during a protest demanding the resignation of Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry after weeks of shortages, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on Monday. (Ralph Tedy Erol/Reuters)
After 15 months of Haiti’s convulsive descent into pandemonium following the assassination of its president, there is at last serious discussion of international intervention to prevent a humanitarian disaster in the tormented island nation. U.N. Secretary General António Guterres on Sunday, the Associated Press reported, proposed that one or more countries deploy a rapid action force immediately in response to Haiti’s own plea for help to break the paralyzing grip of violence and the accelerating breakdown of infrastructure and public order.
That’s a step in the right direction, but it comes with a critical asterisk: Any move to put international boots on the ground to restore a semblance of stability in Haiti risks additional bloodshed, at least in the short term — and will fail if it props up the current government, which is widely despised.
Largely owing to Washington’s puppeteering, Haitian Prime Minister Ariel Henry was sworn in in July 2021 after the assassination of President Jovenel Moïse. His unelected, illegitimate government has been a predictable disaster. It has either enabled or promoted the country’s dissolution into criminal gang fiefdoms allied with the country’s elite. It has made no serious attempt to prepare the country for elections, nor undertaken good-faith negotiations with Haitian political parties and civil society. It has demonstrated its impotence by ceding control of the capital, Port-au-Prince, to mounting violence.
The result is dire. Water and fuel supplies have been blocked, schools are closed, grocery stores are mostly shuttered, and a resurgence of cholera is taking its toll.
In a letter to President Biden last week, a group of Democratic lawmakers provided additional detail about the Henry government’s failures. The letter also noted that even as Haiti’s turmoil has deepened, the Biden administration has failed to replace its special envoy to the country; the previous one resigned a year ago.
The Biden administration’s heedlessness has been compounded by its ongoing campaign of deportations; to date, it has flown more than 26,000 Haitian border crossers back to their native country, in most cases without allowing them to apply for asylum. It is unconscionable for the Western Hemisphere’s richest country to saddle the poorest with a stream of migrants amid an economic, humanitarian and security meltdown.
No one should take lightly the prospect of an international intervention in Haiti. Such efforts in recent decades, by the Clinton administration and the United Nations, have provided few long-term improvements. A U.N. peacekeeping force that was deployed for 13 years, until 2017, provided a modicum of stability but was responsible for introducing what became one of the world’s worst recent outbreaks of cholera. Some of its troops sexually abused Haitian girls and women.
That’s a cautionary tale. Yet weighed against the cratering prospects of a failed state whose main export is asylum seekers, many Haitians would support — if with misgivings — the chance at restoring some semblance of normal life. For an intervention to succeed, however, it’s not enough to suppress the chaos. New hope for Haiti must involve a path toward democracy — and a transition toward a legitimate government with popular support. | 2022-10-11T19:51:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | United Nations should intervene in Haiti to push for democracy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/haiti-intervention-united-nations-democracy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/haiti-intervention-united-nations-democracy/ |
Post Elizabeth: Charles to be crowned May 6. How elaborate will the ceremony be?
Britain's Gold State Coach passes in front of Buckingham Palace during the Platinum Jubilee pageant in London on June 5. (HANNAH MCKAY/AFP)
👑 Alert! The real 👑. Britain’s King Charles III will be crowned on May 6, 2023, Buckingham Palace announced Tuesday, setting the stage for a spectacle of royal pomp and ceremony next spring.
Exactly how much spectacle and ceremony is not yet clear — and will be debated a lot over the next six-plus months. A palace statement said the coronation would involve traditional elements and would “reflect the monarch’s role today and look towards the future.” This points to a few challenges.
With energy prices rising and blackouts a risk this winter, Britain has economic problems beyond the currency’s recent plunge against the U.S. dollar. One issue: the optics of a lavish royal display at a moment of economic hardship for many. There’s the sheer expense of military and horse-drawn carriage parades across central London. The grand funeral processions of Queen Elizabeth II were a reminder of how Britain does this sort of pageantry — on a bigger scale than anyone else. But such grandeur also has high security costs, borne by the government.
A key question of Charles’s reign is how he will modernize the monarchy, with many expecting fewer members of the royal family to be supported by taxpayers. Going all-in on regal razzle-dazzle wouldn’t exactly dovetail with that approach. But for a once-in-a-reign event, it’s also not clear he would be willing to, say, ditch the elaborate gold coronation coach in favor of a procession of electric vehicles. (Even if Charles got the royal family’s first electric car, in 2018.)
Charles automatically became king on the death of his mother, Elizabeth II, on Sept. 8. Similarly, Elizabeth instantly became queen after the death of her father, King George VI, on Feb. 6, 1952. That tradition is the basis for the historic proclamation: The king is dead! Long live the king! But the ceremony in which the new sovereign is officially crowned usually happens much later.
Here are the front covers of The Washington Post from Feb. 8, 1952, and June 3, 1953.
Queen Elizabeth II’s reign began in February 1952 after the death of her father, King George VI.
Her coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on June 2, 1953. https://t.co/D1jdSxgz2f pic.twitter.com/xHjoka7yXv
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) September 8, 2022
There are a few reasons for the gap between the funeral of one monarch and the coronation of his or her successor. One simple factor involves mourning: The national mourning period set for Elizabeth II was 10 days; the royal family observed a slightly longer period. But in generations past, royal mourning went on for many months.
After the appointed time for grieving had passed, a committee would be formed to oversee the coronation — both the lengthy, multifaceted ceremony (and the dress code of those in attendance) and the various projects necessary to pull it off. The ceremony would often be timed for spring or early summer, in hopes of better weather for crowds lining the procession route.
For the 1953 ceremony, miles of stands were built along streets in central London to allow seating for thousands of people who wanted to see the procession. (Tickets, originally priced around 5 pounds, resold for as much as 40 and 50 pounds, according to one report — that would be about 1,500 pounds today.) In Westminster Abbey, tiers were constructed to fit the Britons, visiting royals and other international dignitaries; some reports say there were 8,000 guests, others say about 7,000. This time around, they’ll stick with the 2,000 or so seats that fit on the floor of the abbey.
During her three-hour coronation ceremony, the queen donned a plain gown before being anointed. The matters being decided today are not just costume changes (unlikely) and how to shorten the service (probably to something closer to an hour) but also the symbolism of the ceremony: Will Charles pledge to be Defender of the Faith, as past sovereigns have, or seek to broaden beyond the Church of England?
We’ll be watching for these and other details and will of course report back.
Birthday boy: May 6 might stand out to royal watchers for another reason. It’s also the birthday of Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, son of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Archie turns 4 on his grandpa’s coronation day.
Fun fact: Charles officially knighted the person who will coordinate the coronation ceremony, the Duke of Norfolk, last month.
Speak up: What are you hoping to see in the coronation — the ceremony itself or related processions? Tweet your ideas and questions to me (@Autumnsan1).
Who follows King Charles to the throne? The Post’s Júlia Ledur and Jennifer Hassan have mapped out the Windsor family tree, giving a visual guide to the line of succession.
Can Charles modernize the monarchy and still keep the magic? asks Opinions columnist Eugene Robinson. “The question now is whether, in Britain, the phrase ‘modern monarchy’ turns out to be an oxymoron.”
Our collection of memorable photos and videos from Queen Elizabeth’s funeral.
We know. Emma, the late queen’s fell pony, is not part of the coronation news. But we appreciated her role in last month’s funeral procession, and we enjoy royal animal content.
Opinion|Post Elizabeth: Will King Charles be silenced on environmental issues? | 2022-10-11T19:51:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Post Elizabeth newsletter: Charles to be crowned May 6 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/post-elizabeth-newsletter-charles-coronation-date-details/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/post-elizabeth-newsletter-charles-coronation-date-details/ |
She also excelled as the world’s most evil mother in the film ‘The Manchurian Candidate’
Angela Lansbury in 1989 on the set of “Murder, She Wrote.” (Douglas Pizac/AP)
Angela Lansbury, the English-born actress who excelled as the world’s most evil mother in “The Manchurian Candidate,” became a luminary of Broadway musical theater, and starred for 12 years as a warmhearted crime writer and sleuth in the TV series “Murder, She Wrote,” died Oct. 11 at her home in Los Angeles. She was 96.
Her death was confirmed by her lawyer, Bob Myman, who said she had been in declining health but did not give a specific cause.
“Murder, She Wrote” — with its opening montage of Ms. Lansbury pecking at a typewriter and facing down danger in a coastal Maine town — was one of the most popular TV shows of the 1980s and 1990s. To tens of millions of viewers, the veteran actress with a trace of a British accent personified Jessica Fletcher, the widow-turned-detective whose genteel manner masked her wits.
To a younger generation, Ms. Lansbury was best remembered as the voice of Mrs. Potts, the tenderhearted teapot who sings the Oscar-winning title song in the animated Disney feature “Beauty and the Beast” (1991).
Such cherished performances may have suggested that Ms. Lansbury was a specialist in plucky, non-threatening roles. Yet over seven decades in show business, she had two earlier and distinct phases of her career — on-screen and then on Broadway — in which she revealed herself as an artist of immense range and power.
In her teens, Ms. Lansbury earned Oscar nominations for supporting roles in her first two movie appearances: as an impudent and seductive Cockney maid in “Gaslight” (1944) and as a sweetly innocent music-hall singer in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” (1945). In the latter, her high and light voice was used to poignant effect in the ditty “Goodbye, Little Yellow Bird,” forecasting her own doom.
Ms. Lansbury had photogenic features: peaches-and-cream skin, blue eyes and a blond mane. To her dismay, she never made the leap into leading roles, in part because she lacked the ethereal and glamorous presence of a 1940s star.
She could act years, even decades, beyond her age and settled into a long run of scolding and ruthless character roles opposite much-older leading men such as Walter Pidgeon (“If Winter Comes” in 1947) and Spencer Tracy (“State of the Union” in 1948).
Later, Ms. Lansbury was the movie mother to performers marginally her junior: Elvis Presley in “Blue Hawaii” (1961), Warren Beatty in “All Fall Down” (1962) and Laurence Harvey in “The Manchurian Candidate” (1962). Presley, she later said, “used to send me Mother’s Day cards.”
In “The Manchurian Candidate,” based on Richard Condon’s novel about Cold War paranoia, she played a domineering political wife and mother who helps carry out a communist plot to take over the White House, in part by manipulating her son into serving as an assassin.
“Lansbury creates a modern-age Lady Macbeth with the skill of a sorceress,” critic Peter Travers wrote in People magazine upon the film’s 1988 rerelease. “It’s an astonishing, engulfing performance.”
The film, also starring Frank Sinatra, is now regarded as a taut classic. But on its initial release, it flopped at the box office and did little to advance Ms. Lansbury’s career, despite having brought the actress her third and final Oscar nomination.
“Everyone kept telling me, ‘You’re shoo-in,’ and I sat there with my speech prepared,” she told her biographer, Martin Gottfried. When Patty Duke won for playing Helen Keller in “The Miracle Worker,” Ms. Lansbury continued, “it was like your stomach has fallen out of your body. It bothered me desperately.”
Tired of playing unsympathetic or over-the-hill women — “I’ve played so many old hags most people think I’m 65 years old,” she quipped at 41 — she turned to theater work.
On Broadway, Ms. Lansbury received six Tony Awards, including four for best actress in a musical and one for lifetime achievement. Her first win recognized her performance as a bohemian socialite caring for her orphaned nephew in Jerry Herman’s musical comedy “Mame” (1966). The show brimmed with chorus boys and flamboyant costumes and provided Ms. Lansbury with the showstopper “It’s Today.”
In Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd” (1979), a brooding and dissonant “musical thriller,” Ms. Lansbury garnered a Tony as a London piebaker who becomes an accessory to murder and cannibalism.
Stephen Sondheim, central figure in American musical theater, dies at 91
She collected a Tony for her starring role in the 1969 Herman musical and anti-capitalist satire “Dear World.” As the forceful stage mother Mama Rose, she won again for “Gypsy,” a 1974 revival of the Sondheim-Jule Styne-Arthur Laurents musical that allowed her to reinvent with nuance and subtlety a part that had all-but-been defined for years by the Broadway belter Ethel Merman.
Ms. Lansbury’s final competitive win — for best featured actress in a play — was for “Blithe Spirit,” a 2009 revival of the Noel Coward comedy in which she played a dotty clairvoyant.
For all her film and stage work, it was on television that Ms. Lansbury, nearing 60, became a household name with “Murder, She Wrote” on CBS. Her character was canny but understated, upbeat but not Pollyannaish, bemused but not cynical.
“She embraced the concept of being a middle-aged woman who was a widow and lived in a small town,” Basinger said, noting the show’s range from scary to funny to sentimental. “She didn’t try to glamorize it or deviate from it. The show would not have been a success with anyone else.”
The Jessica Fletcher role, initially turned down by “All in the Family” star Jean Stapleton, brought Ms. Lansbury 12 Emmy nominations. “Murder, She Wrote” drew mostly older viewers who tuned in to see long-ago movie stars such as June Allyson, Kathryn Grayson and Hurd Hatfield as murder suspects in the weekly plotlines. Ms. Lansbury had known many of the actors from her formative years at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer — only this time she was the headliner.
After 11 seasons, ratings plummeted when, in an attempt to draw younger viewers, CBS moved the program from its longtime Sunday night spot to Thursdays. Forced to compete with shows like “Friends” on NBC, “Murder, She Wrote” was canceled.
“It was really a fluke success and came at a time when that kind of family entertainment seemed needed,” Ms. Lansbury told the New York Times. “The character was very calming.”
Fled the German blitz
Angela Brigid Lansbury was born in London on Oct. 16, 1925. Her paternal grandfather, George Lansbury, became leader of England’s Labour Party in the 1930s. Her father, Edgar, was a businessman, and her mother was a stage and film actress known as Moyna Macgill.
Fleeing the German blitz during World War II, the family came to New York in 1940 and later settled in Los Angeles, where Macgill used her contacts among Britons in the film colony to find acting work for herself and Angela. At 17, Ms. Lansbury won a screen test at MGM, which led to roles in “Gaslight” and “The Picture of Dorian Gray.”
Studio executives declined to give Ms. Lansbury leading roles she coveted, such as the wily Lady de Winter in “The Three Musketeers” (1948), a role that went to Lana Turner. Ms. Lansbury played the queen of France.
Sensing a downward career trajectory, Ms. Lansbury eventually negotiated a release from her MGM contract. As a freelancer, she played a princess in the Danny Kaye comedy “The Court Jester” (1954), Orson Welles’s blowzy lover in “The Long, Hot Summer” (1958) and a series of overbearing mother and wife roles in the 1960s.
Ms. Lansbury grew so tired of unpleasant or sinister parts that she turned down director Milos Forman’s offer to play Nurse Ratched in “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (1975), a role for which Louise Fletcher won the Oscar for best actress.
For the rest of her screen career, Ms. Lansbury vowed to play likable characters, from the apprentice witch in Disney’s “Bedknobs and Broomsticks” (1971) to a society matron in the Jim Carrey comedy “Mr. Popper’s Penguins” (2011).
A ‘journeyman actor’
Broadway fully showcased the sweep of her abilities. She proved a deft farceuse in “Hotel Paradiso” (1957), featuring the comic great Bert Lahr, and played a vulgar mother in “A Taste of Honey” (1960), a drama with Joan Plowright as her pregnant and abandoned daughter.
Ms. Lansbury’s musical theater debut came in “Anyone Can Whistle” (1964), a Laurents and Sondheim musical in which she was the imperious mayor of a seedy town. Critics loathed the show — finding its absurdist satire and nonconformist theme too clever by half — and it ran only nine performances.
But one ticket-buyer, composer Jerry Herman, loved it and became Ms. Lansbury’s champion for his show “Mame.” She spent two years in the role, which transformed her into a theatrical star.
Ms. Lansbury’s accolades included the National Medal of Arts in 1997 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2000. In 2013, she received an honorary Oscar and was made a Dame of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
In addition to the struggles of her career, Ms. Lansbury spoke openly about complications in her personal life. She had a brief early marriage to actor Richard Cromwell, who she said was gay. In 1949, she wed Peter Shaw, who became a top talent agent. She said their two children, Deirdre and Anthony, developed drug problems, leading the family to leave their home in Malibu, Calif., and spend much of the 1970s in County Cork, Ireland, to stay at a remove from what she said was the negative influence of Hollywood.
Shaw died in 2003. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available. | 2022-10-11T19:55:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Angela Lansbury, Broadway luminary and ‘Murder, She Wrote’ star, dies at 96 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/11/angela-lansbury-actress-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/11/angela-lansbury-actress-dead/ |
Herschel Walker is emblematic of the hypocrisy of the Republican Party
Herschel Walker, the Republican U.S. Senate nominee in Georgia, at a campaign event on Sept. 9 in Norcross, Ga., with support from former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Regarding the Oct. 8 front-page article “Democrats aim to keep election focus on abortion”:
The story of Georgia Republican U.S. Senate nominee Herschel Walker is emblematic of the hypocrisy of the Republican Party. The story shows that every woman might need or want an abortion for her own very personal reasons. I am sure that many Republicans and evangelical Christians have had abortions. Still, they thump their Bibles and proclaim some kind of sanctity of life.
When I went to medical school, the Bible was not part of the curriculum to base my medical decisions on. Plus, I am not a Christian. If I treated patients based on what medical books said more than 100 years ago, my license would be instantly taken away.
Ron A. Virmani, Charlotte | 2022-10-11T20:30:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Herschel Walker is emblematic of the hypocrisy of the Republican Party - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/hypocrisy-republican-party/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/hypocrisy-republican-party/ |
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative’s benefits are greater than its costs
Power transmission lines along the Washington and Old Dominion Trail adjacent to Sunset Hills Road between Wiehle Avenue and Reston Parkway. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
Acting secretary of the Virginia Department of Natural and Historic Resources Travis Voyles’s Oct. 2 Local Opinions essay, “The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative is bad for Virginia,” misrepresented the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI). The facts are common sense and do not support Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s (R) position.
The RGGI fee is not a tax. The RGGI sells allowances to individual generators for the right to emit one metric ton of carbon dioxide. The revenue is earmarked for specific programs, such as energy efficiency and flood mitigation. The cost of the allowances incentivizes non-carbon-dioxide-emitting electricity production.
The continued operation of fossil-fuel-fired plants is needed to maintain reliable electric service. However, that does not authorize the Virginia government to ignore the contribution of emitted carbon dioxide to the acceleration of climate change or the costs to Virginians of more severe storms as well as ocean rise. The Youngkin administration nowhere identifies the base amount of electricity-generation carbon dioxide emissions that it deems appropriate. Mr. Youngkin comes from an environment of double-entry accounting: He should apply the same logic here to account for benefits from the RGGI, not just costs.
RGGI revenue supports energy efficiency matters and climate change resilience. Energy efficiency reduces demand for electricity. The lower the demand, the lower the need for fossil-fired generation. That’s how the market works. A governor with a business background ought to know that. Conversely, the better funded the energy resilience efforts, particularly for coastal Virginia communities, the better their ability to resist the damage caused by climate change.
This was the understanding of the Virginia legislature. That statutory language and justification hold just as true today.
David P. Yaffe, Arlington
The Youngkin administration alleges the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in Virginia “is not effective,” despite that Virginia’s RGGI program slashed energy-sector air pollution by 14 percent in its first year alone. Virginia is a relative newcomer to the RGGI. In the decade-plus the program has been in operation, RGGI states have reduced climate-warming emissions 90 percent faster than the rest of the country while growing 31 percent faster economically.
The results of this program are clear: cleaner air and better health outcomes and billions of dollars of revenue that has helped drive down electricity costs while boosting clean energy deployment.
Adam Ebbin, Alexandria
The writer, a Democrat, represents Alexandria in the Virginia Senate, where he sits on the Commerce & Labor Committee, which oversees energy regulation in the commonwealth. | 2022-10-11T20:30:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative’s benefits are greater than its costs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/rggis-benefits-are-greater-than-its-costs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/rggis-benefits-are-greater-than-its-costs/ |
How we’re working to make sports truly safe
The English and U.S. women's national teams stand together as a show of solidarity for victims of abuse before their soccer match at Wembley Stadium in London on Friday. (Nick Potts/PA/AP)
Regarding Sally Jenkins’s Oct. 4 Sports column, “Another abuse report? Enough is enough.”:
Abuse in sport has persisted far too long. Changing that culture to make athletes’ well-being the top priority is our mission at the U.S. Center for SafeSport.
The center is the first of its kind globally. We have an investigative unit composed of former prosecutors; local, state and federal law enforcement; and child-safety professionals. In addition to creating safety policies, training and tools where none existed, we now audit the the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee and every sport governing body to further promote athlete safety. Since our inception in 2017, the center has suspended and otherwise punished more individuals for sexual misconduct than all sports within our jurisdiction combined. The stats indicate just how important it was to establish and fund an independent and professional organization such as SafeSport.
It’s a great responsibility to be trusted by victims, particularly those of sexual abuse, and it’s something we take seriously. These issues are far too important and sensitive to be reduced to wild claims that undermine the massive progress being made and the important work that lies ahead.
Ju’Riese Colón, Denver
The writer is chief executive of the U.S. Center for SafeSport. | 2022-10-11T20:30:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How we’re working to make sports truly safe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/working-make-sports-truly-safe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/working-make-sports-truly-safe/ |
President Biden and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, far right, attend the Gulf Cooperation Council in July in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia. (Evan Vucci/AP)
The story of the U.S.-Saudi Arabia relationship is perhaps best summed up by an anecdote my colleague Glenn Kessler shared a few months back. When then-Democratic presidential nominee John F. Kerry was preaching a tough-on-the-Saudis message in 2004, Kessler asked a senior Saudi diplomat how worried the kingdom was.
The diplomat smirked: “That ends as soon as the new president gets his first security briefing.”
That has certainly been the story of the Biden administration thus far. Despite President Biden’s campaign-trail pledge to turn Saudi Arabia into a “pariah” over the gruesome assassination of Washington Post global opinions columnist Jamal Khashoggi, Biden hasn’t followed through. He took some relatively minor steps, including releasing a report that confirmed the sordid details of the butchering and blamed Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. But this summer, there he was meeting with the Saudis in hopes of alleviating high gas prices, fist-bumping the crown prince in a way that projected quite the opposite of “pariah.”
Yet suddenly, Biden has been presented with a second chance to make good on his promise — or at least come closer to it. And he’s getting some not-so-gentle nudging in that direction, both by circumstance and from high-profile members of his party.
The decision last week by OPEC Plus to reduce oil production in a way that could further drive prices up and help Russia fund its war in Ukraine has set off bipartisan calls for action. But particularly pitched are the comments of some top Democrats.
Last week, it was the No. 2 Senate Democrat, Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.). He cited not just Khashoggi and the OPEC Plus decision, but also “unanswered questions about 9/11.” He added: “It’s time for our foreign policy to imagine a world without this alliance with these royal backstabbers.”
Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) followed that up Monday by accusing the Saudis of choosing “war criminal” Vladimir Putin over the United States. He said he would use his post to halt “any cooperation with Riyadh until the kingdom reassesses its position with respect to the war in Ukraine.”
There appear to be two main options on the table: scaling back defense cooperation and arms sales, and targeting OPEC itself. But one of them is much more readily available — to the point where it would seem to be just sitting there waiting for Congress to pass it.
That would be what’s known as the No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act, or NOPEC. The bill, which would explicitly give the Justice Department the power to sue oil cartels for antitrust violations and market manipulation, has been introduced in each Congress for more than two decades. And it has occasionally gained some momentum — particularly during times when gas prices are high.
Versions of it were approved by the House in both 2007 and 2008, and by the Senate in 2007 — each time with at least 70 percent of the chamber voting in favor. But then-President George W. Bush threatened to veto it, so it never became law. The current bill already passed out of the Senate Judiciary Committee this Congress by a vote of 17-4 in May, while another version passed out of the House Judiciary Committee by a voice vote.
The question from here is how much will there is to vote on a bill that the past suggests would pass both chambers quite easily.
Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, is pushing hard for just that. He said last week that NOPEC should be passed in the lame duck, and he reiterated Tuesday that it must be passed.
Both Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) have supported NOPEC in the past, but thus far Schumer is noncommittal about bringing it up for a vote. Asked about Durbin re-upping his call Tuesday, Schumer’s office merely referred to Schumer’s statement last week that NOPEC was on the table.
Biden, too, has expressed support for NOPEC in the past. And a statement last week, the White House obliquely pointed in its direction, saying the administration would consult with Congress on ways to “reduce OPEC’s control over energy prices.”
But perhaps tellingly, when the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced the bill in May, the White House was circumspect. Then-press secretary Jen Psaki urged that the impacts of the bill be better studied, and she pointed to the potential pitfalls.
“We do believe that the potential implications and unintended consequences of this legislation require further study and deliberation, particularly during this dynamic moment in the global energy markets brought about by President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine,” Psaki said. “So, we’re taking a look at it and certainly have some concerns about what the potential implications could be.”
And that’s the rub. Politicians like the idea of talking tough of Saudi Arabia, as evidenced by the long history of top U.S. politicians speaking in these kinds of terms, only to back down. It’s also easy for members of Congress to press for this action in the abstract, and it has potential value as a bluff directed toward the Saudis. Following through is quite another matter.
The Atlantic Council’s Randolph Bell last year pointed to some of the reasons he was dubious the bill would be made law, and many would seem to apply today. Among them is the domestic impact of the potential sharp decline in oil prices. “Criminalizing the existing OPEC+ agreement to cut production would inevitably flood the market with oil and likely send prices through the floor,” Bell wrote, saying this would have unintended consequences for oil-producing states like Pennsylvania and Texas. There’s also the possibility that OPEC would retaliate by cutting oil production even further and causing prices to skyrocket — which wouldn’t seem particularly appealing as we near $4 per gallon again.
Indeed, some have compellingly argued that high prices make this precisely the wrong time to take this step. While there is currently momentum behind such a move due to obvious economic factors, doing so when prices are lower could mitigate some of the immediate economic harm.
But momentum is often required to take such a step. And the White House is saying now is the time to do, well, something.
“The timeline’s now, and I think [Biden] is going to be willing to start to have those conversations right away,” a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, John Kirby, told CNN on Monday. “I don’t think this is anything that’s going to have to wait or should wait, quite frankly, for much longer.”
We’ll soon find out whether this is just more empty rhetoric about getting tough on the Saudis. Another variable pushing in favor of action is how embarrassing this episode has been for Biden — OPEC making this announcement after Biden sacrificed some of his credibility this summer.
But the Saudis have certainly seen American politicians swallow their pride before.
Noted: Fetterman says his stroke recovery is ongoing but that he’s fit to serve as senator
7:30 PMThe latest: Scott, Cotton avoid abortion reports while rallying for Walker in Georgia | 2022-10-11T20:43:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden has another chance to get tough on the Saudis. But will he and Congress act on it? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/biden-democrats-saudi-arabia-nopec/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/biden-democrats-saudi-arabia-nopec/ |
Md. man sentenced to 37 years in 2014 fatal stabbing of D.C. woman
Authorities say Tracy Womack was sleeping in her Southeast Washington home when Mark Bowser entered and stabbed her 47 times.
Tracy Womack in 2014. (U.S. Attorney’s Office, D.C.)
A Capitol Heights man was sentenced to 37 years in prison for fatally stabbing a D.C. woman in 2014, the U.S. attorney’s office in the District announced Tuesday.
Mark Bowser, 42, was found guilty of first-degree murder while armed and other offenses by a D.C. Superior Court jury following a trial in March.
Prosecutors said that at 1:30 a.m. on Sept. 20, 2014, Bowser entered the Southeast Washington home of Tracy Womack as she was asleep in her bed.
Prosecutors said Bowser attacked the 39-year-old Womack with a knife, stabbing her 47 times. Bowser was also convicted of assault with a dangerous weapon for lunging at a second person who was at Bowser’s apartment that morning.
Bowser’s attorney argued his client was not involved in Womack’s death. But prosecutors connected him to the killing using DNA evidence and the testimony of several witnesses, who said they either saw or heard Bowser in the apartment at the time of the attack. Bowser and Womack were acquaintances, authorities said.
Bowser was arrested the following day and has been in custody at D.C. jail ever since. He was sentenced on Friday by Judge Milton C. Lee, prosecutors said. | 2022-10-11T20:48:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Md. man sentenced to 37 years for fatally stabbing D.C. woman - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/bowser-womack-fatal-stabbing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/bowser-womack-fatal-stabbing/ |
Labor Department moves to make it harder to misclassify gig workers
A proposed rule could affect Uber, Lyft and other companies that rely on independent contractors
A Lyft ride-sharing car in New York in March 2019. Lyft and Uber are among the companies that rely on gig workers. (Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)
The Labor Department has proposed a rule that could make it harder to classify gig workers as independent contractors, a move that may have implications for Uber, Lyft and a host of other companies that rely on freelancers.
The rule is not final and would not have an immediate impact on drivers or delivery workers even if approved. But Uber, Lyft and DoorDash saw their share prices slide on the news, as it signals that the White House is taking the issue seriously and could set a standard for municipalities.
The proposed rule, which still must go through a public comment period, would rescind a Trump administration rule that some believed made it easier for workers to be classified as independent contractors.
The gig economy taps technology platforms and informal networks to connect millions of independent workers with piecemeal jobs. Many companies rely on gig workers to staff their businesses, including drivers at Uber and Lyft and delivery workers for takeout and grocery apps. Freelancers also make up significant shares of the workers in other industries, such as caregivers, writers, designers and construction workers. All told, 16 percent of Americans have earned money through gig work, a 2021 Pew Research study found.
California judge rules unconstitutional the measure classifying Uber and Lyft drivers as contractors
Independent contractors run their own businesses, and companies that work with them have long contended that the ability to set their own hours and manage their own operations is beneficial to them. But critics say companies misclassify workers as independent contractors when they are actually treated as employees. Employees are generally afforded more benefits than contractors.
The proposed rule would revert to a test used before the 2021 rule was adopted to determine whether a worker is classified as an employee or independent contractor. It would consider several factors, including whether such people are in business for themselves and whether their work is an “integral” part of a company’s business.
“The Department believes that its proposed rule would reduce the risk that employees are misclassified as independent contractors, while providing added certainty for businesses that engage (or wish to engage) with individuals who are in business for themselves,” the Labor Department said in a news release Tuesday.
Uber and Lyft quickly sought to quell concerns about the rule. Uber said that the Labor Department listened to drivers, reiterating the company’s view that drivers prefer the “flexibility” of working as independent contractors.
“Today’s proposed rule takes a measured approach, essentially returning us to the Obama era, during which our industry grew exponentially,” Uber’s head of federal affairs, CR Wooters, said in a statement.
Lyft echoed that it would return the industry to a similar rule under the Obama administration, saying that “did not result in reclassification of drivers.”
In its proposed rule, the Labor Department said it would return its guidance to its “decades-long” approach before 2021.
The Gig Workers Rising campaign and the AFL-CIO applauded Tuesday’s proposed rule. But some said it did not go far enough to protect workers.
Veena Dubal, a professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, said the proposed rule was a “disappointing” move from the Biden administration and returns the standard to a test she criticized as ambiguous.
“I think that this will not have a huge impact, actually,” she said.
Dubal wrote an amicus brief on behalf of petitioners who sought to have a California ballot measure overturned. The measure, Prop 22, was passed by voters and defined Uber and Lyft drivers as independent contractors. But a judge ruled the measure unconstitutional in a decision that is being appealed. | 2022-10-11T21:14:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Labor Department moves to make it harder to misclassify gig workers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/11/labor-department-gig-work/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/11/labor-department-gig-work/ |
Justice Dept. asks Supreme Court to deny Trump’s request in Mar-a-Lago case
The former president’s lawyers asked the court to intervene last week, saying the outside legal expert reviewing the materials should be allowed to examine classified items
Former president Donald Trump attends a rally in Mesa, Ariz., on Sunday. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
The Justice Department asked the Supreme Court on Tuesday to deny a petition from Donald Trump’s attorneys in the Mar-a-Lago search case, arguing that allowing an outside arbiter to review the classified documents seized from the former president’s Florida residence would “irreparably injure” the government and that Trump has no “plausible” claims of ownership over these sensitive government materials.
Trump’s legal team last week made a technical and narrow petition to the court, asking the justices to reconsider a portion of an appeals court ruling that granted the Justice Department’s request to keep the classified documents separate from a review of seized material being conducted by the outside expert, known as a special master.
FBI agents seized more than 11,000 documents from Trump’s Florida residence and private club, including 103 with a variety of classification markings.
The former president’s lawyers have argued that the appeals court lacked authority to prohibit the special master from reviewing the classified materials. They asked the Supreme Court to allow the outside expert to examine those sensitive government documents.
In its September ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit also said Justice Department could immediately resume using the classified documents in its criminal investigation — something that the lower court had prohibited until the special master completed his review. While Trump’s lawyers requested that the Supreme Court allow the classified documents to be reviewed, they did not ask the justices to prohibit the government from using those materials in its criminal probe.
The Justice Department on Tuesday pushed back against the Trump lawyers’ arguments that the appeals court lacked jurisdiction to say what the special master could review, saying the panel of judges had authority to review the entire ruling appointing a special master, not just portions of it. | 2022-10-11T21:27:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Justice Dept. asks Supreme Court to deny Trump’s request in Mar-a-Lago case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/11/trump-supreme-court-special-master-justice-department/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/11/trump-supreme-court-special-master-justice-department/ |
With few ads airing, Md. gubernatorial candidates to hit debate stage
Del. Dan Cox, left, on June 30. Wes Moore on April 29. (Photos by Brian Witte/AP; Eric Lee for The Washington Post)
Turn the television on in Florida and Texas and voters are being bombarded daily with ads for gubernatorial candidates who have spent upward of $25 million in the past month making their pitches. The same holds true in Georgia, where candidates have spent almost $22 million in the past 30 days.
Meanwhile, in Maryland, where Wes Moore and Dan Cox are competing to fill the seat being vacated by Republican Gov. Larry Hogan, the airwaves are silent.
That changes on Wednesday when Moore and Cox will take center stage to make their pitches in the first and only televised debate — in what essentially amounts to free advertising for the candidates.
With a lack of money to purchase ads and trailing by double-digits in polls, the stakes are high for Cox, a hard-right, Trump-endorsed conservative delegate from Frederick County.
Cox, who defeated Gov. Larry Hogan’s protege, Kelly Schulz, in the primary, faces a fractured state GOP, with some top officials, including Hogan, refusing to support him.
Political observers and strategists say there is little Cox can do to make up for where he stands in the lopsided contest. Cox reported about $130,000 on hand in late August and trailed by a 2 to 1 margin in a recent Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.
“Because he does not have the money to run advertising, this is really his one opportunity to be seen statewide,” Todd Eberly, a political science professor at St. Mary’s College said of Cox. “It’s his one chance to try to define himself in the minds of voters and if he wants to have any hope of sort of raising money and maybe having enough to run a couple of ads, it’s important that he do well in this debate.”
Dan Cox was a backbench Md. lawmaker. Then the pandemic hit.
Eberly said Moore, a best-selling author and former nonprofit chief, needs to simply “not make any mistakes that could undermine the solid lead he’s got.”
The debate airs as mail-in ballots are starting to land at voters’ homes and about two weeks before early voting begins on Oct. 27. Election Day is Nov. 8.
Both candidates are relative unknowns to voters. Cox is a freshman delegate who sponsored 14 bills restricting abortion access and has said coronavirus mandates inspired his run for governor. Moore, a veteran and Rhodes Scholar who has aspired to run for public office since he was in college, is making his first bid.
Moore, who had $1.3 million in his coffer in late August and has been consistently raising money the last two months, has spent $104,000 on ad buys in the past 30 days, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm. By comparison, Moore’s total is one-sixth of the spending on the agriculture commissioner race in Georgia over the past month and about $5,000 more than what has been spent in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, for its county executive race.
Cox, who benefited from an ad buy from the Democratic Governor’s Association during the primary, has not bought any ads since he won the GOP nomination.
Justin Schall, a Democratic strategist who managed Anthony G. Brown’s 27-point gubernatorial primary victory in 2014, said if Cox, who has a fundraiser hosted by former president Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Largo estate scheduled for next week, cannot raise enough money to get on the air, Moore does not need to rush to make his buys. Schall predicts Moore is not likely to saturate the airways anytime soon.
“If you’re Wes Moore what you need to do is make sure people who tune in late, vote,” said Schall, noting that Democrats will need a strong get-out-the-vote effort. “If I’m him, I would do a very heavy media buy in the last two weeks, not only in Baltimore and D.C. but even in Salisbury.”
Moore’s current 30-second ad, which is on broadcast and streaming devices, introduces him to voters. He speaks to the camera about losing his father as a toddler, interacting with police as a youngster, and becoming a top executive of a nonprofit. Moore, who has centered his campaign around investments in education, job creation and the environment, among other things, ends the spot by saying “everyone deserves a fair shot of success no matter where their story begins.”
Eberly said this race bucks a trend of Maryland gubernatorial campaigns becoming more expensive. To win reelection, Hogan began airing ads against his Democratic opponent, Ben Jealous, in July and continued for months.
Schall said given the state of the 2022 race, it is not surprising that there have been few ads from Moore’s campaign, which will lower the overall costs of the campaign and allows the Democratic nominee to create a bigger war chest for the future.
“Advertising is like a chess game and Cox can’t make a move,” he said.
The debate is scheduled to be broadcast at 7 p.m. statewide on Maryland Public Television; on WBAL-TV and WBAL-AM in Baltimore; and on WRC-TV in D.C. | 2022-10-11T21:35:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wes Moore and Dan Cox set for first and only debate in governor's race - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/moore-cox-debate-advertising/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/moore-cox-debate-advertising/ |
Robert Toll, home developer who redefined suburbs, dies at 81
As co-founder of Toll Brothers, he used some of his wealth for philanthropy, including covering school costs for students from elementary to college
Robert Toll, co-founder of Toll Brothers home developers, on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange in an undated photograph. (Courtesy of Toll Brothers)
Robert Toll, co-founder of Toll Brothers home builders that transformed rural tracts across the country into planned communities of expansive houses and multi-acre lots but also faced resistance from preservationists trying to halt suburban-style sprawl, died Oct. 7 at his home in Manhattan. He was 81.
Mr. Toll’s brother and business partner, Bruce, confirmed the death. Mr. Toll had health issues related to Parkinson’s disease.
The brothers built their first model colonial-style homes in suburban Philadelphia after founding Toll Brothers in 1967. The company soon became among the most ambitious developers pushing to build a new generation of tony commuter enclaves farther out from cities in farmland and wooded groves.
The Toll Brothers blueprint includes targeted land purchases, appeals for quick zoning approval and predesigned houses — now often selling for $1 million or more and typified by high-ceiling great rooms and elaborate master suites — that allow buyers to make some personalized changes. The business model made Mr. Toll and his brother wealthy and put the company on the Fortune 500 list. That also opened doors for philanthropic initiatives by Mr. Toll that included a program in Maine, Seeds of Peace, that brings together children from global conflict zones to share experiences at a former summer camp.
Mr. Toll’s company, meanwhile, has received praise for its growth and ire for its hard-charging corporate vision.
It has been targeted with various complaints over the years for alleged construction flaws and by opposition to “McMansion” subdivisions disrupting life in once-bucolic areas. In April, activists in Ann Arbor, Mich., climbed into trees in attempts to block a 57-home Toll Brothers development known as Concord Pines. (In the Washington area, Toll Brothers have more than a dozen projects, ranging from homes worth more than $2.5 million in the Arden development in Great Falls, Va., to leased apartments in Navy Yard.)
Mr. Toll’s company heavily promotes its brand as “luxury” living, but he also acknowledged that developers have their own image problems to overcome — often seen, he told a journalist in 1989, as “big, ugly builders with black hats, mustaches, gold chains and big Cadillacs.”
“Toll Brothers recognized the shifting demographics,” said James W. Hughes, a professor of urban planning and policy development at Rutgers University.
In the 1980s, baby boomers were looking to “trade up” in a surging economy, he said. At the same time, officials in suburban fringes and rural areas in the Northeast were looking to control density by putting restrictions such as minimum two-acre lot sizes.
“Toll was perfectly placed with the kind of developments they were pushing,” Hughes said. “This is when they really took off.”
But Mr. Toll, as the son of a developer, knew that mistakes were still possible in land deals. As a joking but unsubtle reminder of what awaited colleagues who took unnecessary risks, he kept a pitchfork in the corner of his office to symbolize the jab one could expect for erring.
Started with two houses
Robert Irwin Toll was born in Elkins Park, Pa., in Philadelphia’s northern suburbs, on Dec. 30, 1940. His father was involved in Philadelphia-area real estate, struggling during the Depression and then rebuilding his career.
He graduated in 1963 from Cornell University, where he majored in political science, and he received a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1966. He worked briefly at the Philadelphia law firm Wolf Block before leaving to start Toll Brothers with his younger brother, Bruce.
“We built two homes,” Robert Toll recalled. “Instead of selling them, we used them as samples for the lots we owned down the street.” That landed contracts to build 20 more like them, only a little bit “fancier” than the models that were priced at about $17,500.
“Those houses today sell for $1 million,” Bruce Toll said.
At the time, the suburbs were pushing beyond the first wave of postwar, track-house developments. Mr. Toll and his brother were among the first developers to recognize how the trends in highway construction and retail changes such as malls that would open up areas that were largely still farmland.
In the late 1960s, Mr. Toll wrote in a New York Times essay in 2005, he was tracked down by a man who just bought a home in a Toll Brothers development in Pennsylvania farm country. A farmer was leading his pigs through the man’s backyard. The farmer told Mr. Toll that his family had a colonial-era covenant, from Pennsylvania’s namesake William Penn no less, that gave him access to a water site on the Toll subdivision. “It was true. … They had to buy the rights back from the farmer for about $30,000,” he wrote.
As Toll Brothers grew — now in 60 markets across 24 states — Mr. Toll became increasingly frustrated by the vagaries and volatility of local politics, including pressure on officials to change zoning rules to block development.
“I fully support preservationists who buy land to be set aside, which is the correct way to do it,” he wrote in the Times. “But some towns think they can change zoning laws after we’ve applied for approval of a subdivision by coming up with spurious reasons why we can’t build.”
Still, some of Mr. Toll’s challenges came from within. A Boston Globe investigation in 2001, amid rising claims of problems with Toll Brothers construction across the country, found a variety of apparent flaws such as wall panels improperly cut and other shortcuts. At the time, a Toll Brothers statement to the Globe said that no national home builder “has customers who are more satisfied than Toll’s.”
In 2010, Toll Brothers agreed to a $25 million settlement in an investor lawsuit that claimed the company overstated its ability to manage the housing slump during the Great Recession. (The company went public in 1986.) Toll Brothers denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle.
The company bounced back as the economy recovered, however, currently building about 10,000 homes a year. Forbes estimated Mr. Toll’s net worth at $1.1 billion.
In addition to his brother, Mr. Toll is survived by his wife of 38 years, Jane Snyder Goldfein; five children; and 12 grandchildren. Mr. Toll retired as chairman and chief executive of Toll Brothers in 2010.
In 1990, Mr. Toll and his wife pledged to sponsor 58 third-grade students at a predominantly Black elementary school in West Philadelphia as part of the Say Yes to Education Foundation. The couple paid for the students’ school programs and then covered their tuition at college or vocational institutions.
One of the students, Naeemah Nelson, 40, went on to a degree in anthropology from George Washington University in 2004 (with tuition covered) and a master’s in business at the University of North Carolina in 2012 (with the Tolls covering some housing). Her career has taken her from local initiatives in Philadelphia, such as helping former inmates find jobs, to working on development programs in Egypt and Indonesia with General Electric. She also joined a national Say Yes to Education board to help the next generation.
“I fully understood the value of the Tolls generosity,” said Nelson, who now works at the health-care technology firm Medtronic. “I wanted to make sure to give back and have some impact.”
In southern Maine, Mr. Toll purchased the former site of Camp Powhatan, where he was a counselor when he was 18. The site became Seeds of Peace, an organization that brings together young people and educators from areas of ethnic and political tensions such as the Balkans, India and Pakistan and the Middle East including Israelis and Arabs.
The idea, said Mr. Toll, was to get them “to bunk together, eat together, and go to conflict-resolution sessions to discuss face-to-face their anger with their enemy.”
“You have a tremendous opportunity to end the conflict,” Mr. Toll said. As an avid sailor, Mr. Toll sometimes taught boating classes.
Koby Sadan attended Seeds of Peace in 1994 as a 13-year-old student from south Tel Aviv and returned later as a counselor. When Sadan was accepted to Yale University in 2002, he was taken under the wing of Mr. Toll and his wife, who became a “surrogate family.” He found Mr. Toll’s optimism — about life, business and the ideals of liberal democracy — a point of inspiration.
“It may sound trivial, but his views really had a deep effect,” said Sadan, who went onto attend Harvard Law School. “It really set the trajectory of my life.” | 2022-10-11T21:53:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Robert Toll, co-founder of Toll Brothers housing developers, dies at 81 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/11/robert-toll-homes-builder-dies/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/11/robert-toll-homes-builder-dies/ |
Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III and National Gallery of Art Director Kaywin Feldman preside over a formal ceremony signing over the artifacts, which are expected to be displayed in the new Edo Museum of West African Art in Benin City
Lai Mohammed, Nigeria's culture minister, and Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III sign paperwork during a repatriation ceremony Tuesday at the National Museum of African Art in Washington. (Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post)
Several Benin bronzes that have been in Washington museums for decades are finally headed home to Nigeria — 125 years after British troops plundered them from present-day Nigeria, 62 years after Nigerian independence brought calls for their return, and two years after a nationwide reckoning with institutional racism gave renewed attention to those calls.
At a ceremony Tuesday at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art, officials of the museum transferred ownership of 29 bronzes and the National Gallery of Art handed over one to representatives of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments. Nine will remain in Washington on long-term loan.
Bunch highlighted the Smithsonian’s new collection policy, which authorizes repatriation of objects for ethical reasons — the first significant update to the 176-year-old institution’s collections management since 2001. “We hope that today’s ceremony sets an example for all cultural institutions,” he said.
Smithsonian updates collection policy to promote ethical returns
The Benin bronzes have become an international symbol of the fraught, colonialist histories of Western cultural institutions — from Boston to Berlin. They are at the center of a worldwide movement calling for the return of looted and dubiously acquired artifacts — the Elgin marbles, the Gilgamesh tablet, the Easter Island Moai statute and others — to their places of origin. Tuesday’s ceremony echoed similar ones in Europe in 2021, when Cambridge University and the Quai Branly museum gave up their bronzes. With this latest move, the high-profile Smithsonian — the largest museum system of its kind in the world — hopes to inspire other museums to follow suit.
Tuesday’s ceremony was just one step on a long, complicated journey — the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History still has 20 Benin bronzes, which have been placed under review, and the institution has many other objects with controversial origins, including thousands of human remains. Bunch says there are no plans for a comprehensive review of the full collection of 155 million objects. Blankenberg said that her museum is working through a list of objects but declined to give specifics.
U.S. museums are trying to return hundreds of looted Benin treasures
“Benin bronzes” is a catchall term for a wide body of artifacts that date to at least the 16th century. It includes thousands of items made of different materials and depicting various subject matter — for example, commemorative busts of kings and animals from folklore. It is estimated that between 3,000 and 10,000 such objects were stolen by the British, many ransacked from the Kingdom of Benin (present-day Nigeria) in 1897 during a retaliatory, deadly British invasion now known as the “Punitive Expedition.” The largest group of stolen works — about 900 — remain in the British Museum. | 2022-10-11T22:02:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Smithsonian gives back 29 Benin bronzes to Nigeria: ‘We are not owners’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/11/smithsonian-benin-bronzes-nigeria/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/11/smithsonian-benin-bronzes-nigeria/ |
Federal court leaders agree to refund fees for online records
The proposed settlement would resolve a long-running lawsuit aimed at reducing the cost to access court records through PACER, an acronym for Public Access to Court Electronic Records
The federal court system has agreed to reimburse thousands of users who paid to access court records online. (iStock)
The federal judiciary has agreed to pay $125 million to reimburse hundreds of thousands of users of the nationwide online records system as part of a proposed settlement made public Tuesday in a long-running lawsuit aimed at reducing the cost to access court records.
Three nonprofits accused the judiciary in 2016 of overcharging to review and download records through the service known as PACER, an acronym for Public Access to Court Electronic Records. The agreement, which must be approved by a federal judge in Washington, mainly would refund up to $350 for fees paid between April 2010 and May 2018. Users who paid more during that period would receive an additional share of the remaining funds.
The settlement does not eliminate charges for using PACER. But advocates for court transparency say the unusual case has put pressure on the judiciary to overhaul the system and prompted Congress to act.
“When we filed this case, it was unthinkable that we could bring a class action lawsuit against the federal judiciary—in the federal judiciary—and end up getting 100 cents on the dollar in refunds for the average PACER user,” Deepak Gupta, the lead attorney for the three nonprofit groups behind the lawsuit, said in an email. “This settlement has already struck an important blow for transparency going forward.”
The National Veterans Legal Services Program, National Consumer Law Center and Alliance for Justice claimed that the dime-per-page fee unlawfully exceeded the cost of running the system. The proposed settlement is estimated to refund more than 400,000 class members, a group that includes individual users, companies, academics and media organizations.
A federal appeals court in 2020 upheld a lower court finding that the current 10 cents per page charge is “higher than necessary to operate the system” and the court limited fees to the amount needed to cover the cost of providing access online. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts will spend an estimated $64 million to run its court records system this year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The cost of storing data has declined since the electronic repository was created in the 1980s, while PACER fees have increased. The litigation showed that the administrative office previously used PACER fees to fund some unrelated projects, including for flat-screen TVs for jurors and to send notices to bankruptcy creditors.
In a statement Tuesday, the administrative office said it is “pleased this matter has been resolved” and "taking steps to modernize the system for the benefit of the courts, litigants, and the public who seek to access court records via PACER.”
The judiciary does not charge users to read court opinions and there are waivers for some users to review other documents. While the lawsuit was pending, the judiciary eliminated fees for about 75 percent of users and doubled the quarterly fee waiver to $30, according to court records.
Lawmakers in the House passed a bipartisan bill to ensure free public access to PACER and a similar proposal passed the Senate Judiciary Committee last year.
Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.), the lead sponsor of the House bill, said the lawsuit “laid bare how the judiciary had been unlawfully using PACER fees to create a slush fund that evaded Congressional oversight, impaired the public’s First Amendment right of access to the courts, and ultimately put taxpayers on the hook.” Even so, he added in a statement, Congress should pass legislation to “make federal court records freely available to the public once and for all.”
Federal judiciary leaders in March separately endorsed a proposal to make PACER searches free for “non-commercial users of any future new modernized” system. To update PACER, court leaders have appointed an advisory group with members from the legal profession, government workforce, media and academia to help develop a more user-friendly system.
After the case was returned to District Court, the nonprofits and the Justice Department negotiated the agreement through a mediator for the government to pay $125 million for overcharges related to PACER use during the eight-year period.
In their filing of the proposed settlement Tuesday, the nonprofit groups emphasized the impact of the high fees, which they said “hinder equal access to justice, impose often insuperable barriers for low-income and pro se litigants, discourage academic research and journalism, and thereby inhibit public understanding of the courts.” | 2022-10-11T22:02:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Federal court leaders agree to refund fees for online records - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/federal-judiciary-records-fees/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/federal-judiciary-records-fees/ |
Brett Favre says he has ‘done nothing wrong’ in Mississippi welfare scandal
With his name linked to a Mississippi welfare scandal, Brett Favre said in a statement that, “I have done nothing wrong,” (Rogelio V. Solis/Associated Press File)
Brett Favre denied wrongdoing in the Mississippi welfare scandal, speaking out for the first time on the controversy in a statement to Fox News Digital, saying, “I have done nothing wrong and it is past time to set the record straight.” He added that he has “been unjustly smeared in the media.”
Favre has been embroiled in Mississippi’s largest public corruption case, one in which tens of millions of dollars earmarked for needy families was misspent. He faces no criminal charges, but his alleged involvement has helped bring the case to broader national attention and cost him endorsement deals.
Favre received $1.1 million intended for welfare recipients in exchange for speeches and appearances the state auditor says he never made. And text messages included in court filings last month showed Favre was heavily involved in discussions that resulted in $5 million in welfare money going toward construction of a volleyball facility at his alma mater, the University of Southern Mississippi, where his daughter played volleyball. Favre later repaid the $1.1 million, but $228,000 in interest remains in dispute.
The money for the appearances and volleyball facility was channeled through a nonprofit called Mississippi Community Education Center run by Nancy New and her son, Zach, who have pleaded guilty and are cooperating with investigators. John Davis, the former head of the state’s Department of Human Services, pleaded guilty on Sept. 22 to federal counts of conspiracy and theft and state counts of conspiracy and fraud against the government and has agreed to testify against others.
“No one ever told me, and I did not know, that funds designated for welfare recipients were going to the University or me. I tried to help my alma mater USM, a public Mississippi state university, raise funds for a wellness center,” Favre’s statement, given to Fox News Digital, said. “My goal was and always will be to improve the athletic facilities at my university.
“State agencies provided the funds to Nancy New’s charity, the Mississippi Community Education Center, which then gave the funds to the University, all with the full knowledge and approval of other State agencies, including the statewide Institute for Higher Learning, the Governor’s office and the Attorney General’s office. I was told that the legal work to ensure that these funds could be accepted by the university was done by State attorneys and State employees.”
The office of state auditor Shad White discovered the misspending and fraud and told Fox News Digital that a grant approved by an attorney in the office for the court used incorrect analysis.
“The volleyball court needed to be used to benefit the needy in Hattiesburg,” White said. “And fast-forward to today, what we know now is that the volleyball court has not been used to benefit the needy. So, this is an unallowable use of TANF [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families] funds for a few different reasons. And for those reasons, it doesn’t matter that the attorney signed off on this. What matters is that it simply is not an allowable use of TANF funds, and it’s our job in the auditor’s office to point that out when we see it.”
Funds from TANF must not be used for “bricks and mortar” projects and White told Fox that there is no proof Favre knew that the money was coming from TANF. However, White said Favre did know the money was coming from programs “geared toward helping the poor.”
“Based on the documents that have come out publicly, mainly through filings in the civil case, we can see text messages that show that Mr. Favre knew that the money that was being paid out was coming from John Davis, who is the head of the Mississippi Department of Human Services and also coming from the nonprofit that was receiving money from DHS,” White told Fox News Digital. “So, he knows that it’s government money basically, and he knows that the money is coming from the Department of Human Services.”
According to the U.S. Census, one in five people in Mississippi lives in poverty — the worst rate in the nation — including 28 percent of children. Money from the federal government is given to states to distribute to families through TANF.
In May 2020, Favre tweeted that he had “never received monies for obligations I didn’t meet” and “was unaware that the money being dispersed was paid for out of funds not intended for that purpose.” But court filings last month suggested he had at least some awareness of where the money was coming from. Filings also suggested that he continually pressed state officials for money to pay for the volleyball facility. “We obviously need your help big time and time is working against us,” Favre texted Gov. Phil Bryant (R) on Sept. 4, 2019. “And we feel that your name is the perfect choice for this facility and we are not taking No for an answer!”
“We are going to get there,” the then-governor responded. “This was a great meeting. But we have to follow the law. I am [too] old for Federal Prison.”
Favre previously told Mississippi Today that he had not discussed the volleyball facility project with Bryant. | 2022-10-11T22:15:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brett Favre breaks silence on Mississippi welfare scandal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/brett-favre-statement-mississippi-welfare/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/brett-favre-statement-mississippi-welfare/ |
Washington Capitals winger Carl Hagelin is out indefinitely. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Washington Capitals winger Carl Hagelin underwent arthroscopic hip surgery Monday and is out indefinitely, the team announced Tuesday.
Hagelin, 34, was set to play in his 12th NHL season before he opted to get the minimally invasive procedure to address lingering issues with his left hip. He is also recovering from an eye injury he suffered in March. He underwent two surgeries to repair damage to his left eye after a high stick made its way under his visor during a drill.
“It’s the most pain I’ve ever been through because the stick hit me right in the eyeball,” Hagelin said in May. “It wasn’t any bones around it that really took any of the impact. It was scary. Those first two weeks were some of the toughest in my life, especially early on when you can’t see anything with the eye. It’s just total darkness.”
There was doubt that Hagelin would be able to make enough progress to suit up for Washington this season. But his status looked promising in the summer, when he participated in informal skates with the team. However, the Capitals announced on the first day of training camp that he also was dealing with a lower-body injury and would not be available at the start of the season.
Capitals General Manager Brian MacLellan said in late September that Hagelin’s hip was an issue that lingered, and over time it has gotten worse.
The Swede is on the injured non-roster list, so his $2.75 million salary will not count toward the cap unless he is activated. Hagelin joins Tom Wilson (knee) on the injured non-roster list to start the year. Nicklas Backstrom (hip) is on long-term injured reserve.
Hagelin is entering the last year of the four-year, $11 million deal he signed in 2019. He scored three goals and recorded 11 assists in 53 games last season, playing mostly on the fourth line with Nic Dowd and Garnet Hathaway.
An elite penalty killer, Hagelin showcased speed and tenacity on the puck that made him an asset despite his limited offensive contributions. He helped Dowd and Hathaway play with speed as the line filled a crucial shutdown role for Coach Peter Laviolette.
Washington also announced that prospect Kody Clark underwent surgery to address his left quadriceps tendon. He is expected to miss six to eight months. The 22-year-old winger spent all of last season with the Hershey Bears, the Capitals’ American Hockey League affiliate.
The Capitals open the season Wednesday night at home against the Boston Bruins. | 2022-10-11T22:15:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carl Hagelin, Capitals winger, undergoes hip surgery - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/carl-hagelin-capitals-hip-surgery/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/carl-hagelin-capitals-hip-surgery/ |
Chris Jones of the Chiefs is penalized for roughing the passer on his sack of Raiders quarterback Derek Carr during Monday night’s game at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City. (David Eulitt/Getty Images)
Complaints about the NFL’s enforcement of roughing-the-passer penalties have been rampant in recent days. After two controversial calls over a two-day span, there were renewed public exhortations for the league to make such rulings reviewable by instant replay.
But it does not appear the NFL and the rulemaking competition committee feel the same sense of urgency, at least for now. There is no inclination for the league and committee to intervene during the season by issuing a clarification to the on-field officials, as they did on the roughing-the-passer issue in 2018, according to people familiar with the matter.
And though the league and competition committee expect teams to make another round of rule-change proposals in the offseason related to potential replay tweaks, they seemingly remain wary of making a judgment call such as roughing the passer subject to replay. They are mindful of how poorly things went with the failed one-year experiment when the NFL and team owners made pass interference calls and non-calls reviewable by instant replay in the 2019 season.
“I’m sure there will be a proposal or two, and there will be a discussion about replay and how this might fit into it,” one person familiar with the NFL rulemaking process said Tuesday. “But I’m not sure it will lead to anything.”
Roughing-the-passer penalties actually are down 45 percent this season. Officials have assessed 28 such penalties through the Week 5 games, down from 51 roughing-the-passer calls through five weeks last season.
But many people vented their outrage after Atlanta Falcons defensive lineman Grady Jarrett was called for a not-so-rough roughing penalty on Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady at a key moment in Sunday’s game, preventing the Falcons from having an opportunity to get the ball back late in a six-point loss.
The criticism continued when Kansas City Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones’ sack of Las Vegas Raiders quarterback Derek Carr and fumble recovery were nullified during Monday night’s game when Jones was penalized for roughing, even as he took the football from Carr. That call ultimately did not affect the outcome; the Chiefs won, 30-29.
“If we’re going to continue to call roughing the passer at that high of a velocity, then we’ve got to be able to view it in the booth to make sure, because sometimes that look can be deceiving,” Jones told reporters in the Chiefs’ locker room after the game. “ … From the ref’s point of view, [it] probably looked like that initially. And when you look at the replay, it’s a whole different thing.”
Jones said that “of course” he had seen the call made Sunday on Jarrett. It was “all over Twitter,” he noted.
“If we’re able to view it in the booth, and the referee can get a second look because it’s happening so fast,” Jones said, “maybe we can change that, because now it’s getting absurd … Now it’s costing teams games.”
Many took to social media to express similar views.
“This is not football anymore,” former NFL coach Tony Dungy wrote on Twitter. “I know we have to protect the [quarterback,] but Chris Jones was recovering a fumble. We have gotten ridiculous with this.”
In September 2018, the competition committee took the unusual step of intervening during a season following a series of controversial roughing-the-passer calls. Generally, the league’s and committee’s rulemaking deliberations take place during the offseason. But in 2018, roughing-the-passer penalties were up sharply early in the season, and committee members met via conference call and released a video in an attempt to modify officials’ on-field enforcement of the rule.
“The committee clarified techniques that constitute a foul,” Troy Vincent, the NFL’s executive vice president of football operations, said then in a written statement.
There is no current consideration of a similar in-season clarification, people familiar with the situation said Tuesday, citing the decrease in roughing-the-passer penalties.
The competition committee did make roughing the passer a point of clarification (formerly known as a point of emphasis) to the on-field officials for this season. The committee’s report dealt with several categories of roughing calls, including low hits on quarterbacks and forcible hits to quarterbacks’ heads.
The committee also wrote that it “believes game officials are properly officiating ‘body weight’ plays and that defenders are doing a better job of getting their bodies to the side of the quarterback.”
In a pool report following Monday’s game, referee Carl Cheffers explained the call on Jones by saying he’d ruled “the defender landed on [Carr] with full body weight.” That is illegal, and Cheffers said the fact that the football came free on the play “is not relevant” under the rules.
Jones did appear to put his hand on the ground, as the rules require, to prevent him from landing on Carr with his full body weight. After Sunday’s call against Jarrett, referee Jerome Boger told a pool reporter he’d penalized Jarrett for “unnecessarily throwing [Brady] to the ground.”
The only immediate solution, it seems, is for the league to hope on-field officials get the calls right. The NFL is not likely to instruct the officials to be generally more permissive about the hits they allow on quarterbacks. The latest roughing-the-passer furor comes within the context of the NFL and the NFL Players Association adjusting their concussion protocols Saturday as they completed their joint review of the Tua Tagovailoa case.
There have been a series of rule-change proposals made by teams over the years to make roughing the passer (or illegal hits, or all personal fouls, or even all plays) reviewable by replay. But those proposals have failed to gain the necessary votes to be enacted.
The league and the owners made pass interference reviewable by replay after an erroneous call on a far bigger stage: the missed call in the NFC championship game in the 2018 season that sent the Los Angeles Rams rather than the New Orleans Saints to the Super Bowl.
But things went poorly with that one-year experiment in place in 2019. Coaches and fans expressed displeasure with how the revised replay system functioned. Teams were overwhelmingly against keeping it, according to the results of a survey the competition committee conducted following that season. The NFL and the owners allowed the rule to expire after only one season.
“Everyone needs to remember that experience with pass interference,” the person with knowledge of the rulemaking process said, “when we look at the next set of [replay] proposals.” | 2022-10-11T22:15:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL faces a new round of criticism of roughing-the-passer calls - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/nfl-roughing-passer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/nfl-roughing-passer/ |
Commanders Coach Ron Rivera and quarterback Carson Wentz stand before the game Sunday against the Tennessee Titans at FedEx Field. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
A day after causing a stir with his comments about quarterbacks, Commanders Coach Ron Rivera addressed his team and spoke to Carson Wentz to clarify his intent.
“I basically told them I said some things that were misconstrued,” Rivera said Tuesday. “I didn’t present it properly, and that’s on me. So I took accountability, told the guys that I should know better, and, s---, I had a bad day.”
He added: “I’ve been doing this quite some time, and for me not to finish my thought completely, I messed up. And so I just told the guys that it was [on] me, and it won’t happen again.”
Rivera said he apologized to his players because he worried the comments had become a distraction.
On Monday, when asked by a reporter why the Commanders have struggled this season as the other teams in the NFC East have so far thrived, Rivera responded tersely: “Quarterback.”
He was asked multiple times to clarify, and he added that the New York Giants, Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles all have quarterbacks who have been with their respective teams for quite some time.
“It’s like walking into a new job,” Rivera said. “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.”
Rivera’s comments went viral Monday night, in part because only a portion of his response was clipped and shared. NFL players past and present, fans and media weighed in, criticizing the coach for essentially blaming his quarterback for the team’s woes.
Left out in many of those clips were his answers to the follow-up questions, in which he attempted to clarify his view and said the Commanders “chose [Wentz] because we believe in him.”
Former Washington quarterback Alex Smith, now an analyst for ESPN, said on the network’s “Monday Night Countdown” show: “When I heard it, I couldn’t believe it. … This is a defensive head coach that is absolutely driving the bus over his quarterback.”
Robert Griffin III, another former Washington quarterback, chimed in on Twitter: “You NEVER do this to your Quarterback. The difference between Washington and the rest of the division is Coaching. Daniel Jones has a 1st time Head Coach and they look the best they have in YEARS. The Cowboys have gone undefeated with their BACK UP QB. Coaching matters.”
Yet, some Commanders players said Tuesday that their initial reaction wasn’t nearly as strong.
“When I saw the video, I knew what he meant,” quarterback Taylor Heinicke said. “So it was nice that he stood up in front of the team and told everyone what he was thinking. I think everyone kind of assumed that’s what he meant, but again, it was nice of him to clear that up.”
Added running back Antonio Gibson: “He apologized to the team for that and said he shouldn’t have made that mistake, but it happens. … You just got to be careful with what you say and how you approach it.”
Wentz said he wasn’t even aware of Rivera’s comments and the reaction they created until the Commanders’ director of football communications, Sean DeBarbieri, informed him.
“Coach addressed it, handled it, and there’s nothing … I’m overly concerned about,” Wentz said Tuesday. “Coach is a very straightforward, upfront guy, and he addressed it in the team meeting, which I thought was really cool.”
Wentz seemed to agree with Rivera’s belief that it takes time for even a veteran quarterback to acclimate to a new system and playmakers, but he declined to place blame on injuries, especially on the offensive line. The Commanders are on their third center, Nick Martin, and last week they changed their starters at right guard and right tackle.
“There’s always a million reasons, and you can make excuses, and for us, there’s none,” Wentz said. “We got to execute. We got to deliver, and I got to do better making sure everybody’s on the same page with the communication.”
After the Commanders’ loss to Tennessee, Wentz came away with multiple issues that still need correcting. Left tackle Charles Leno agreed with the assessment and said the Commanders seem to “take two steps forward and five steps back,” hindering their ability to be consistent and put up points.
But Washington has limited time to try to correct the issues and recover physically before facing the Chicago Bears on the road Thursday night. The team added Wentz to the injury report this week because of soreness in his throwing (right) shoulder, but Rivera said Wentz took all of his reps in the team’s non-padded practice, and Wentz added that he “feels fine.”
“It’s just kind of a little more expedited this week,” Wentz said. “It’s very tough, very challenging, but it’s also prime time, and guys get fired up to go play and hopefully put on a good performance.”
Injuries elsewhere — including to rookie receiver Jahan Dotson (hamstring) and starting tight end Logan Thomas (calf), both of whom did not participate in Tuesday’s walk-through — could leave the Commanders limited.
But at 1-4, players have said they feel the urgency fans do and are eager to get on track.
“I was talking to Carson today; we had a four-game losing streak last year, and we came back with a four-game winning streak,” Heinicke said. “And I feel like we have a better roster this year, so there’s no reason we can’t do it again this year. It’s still early, so there’s time.”
A win against Chicago (2-3) could be the start to the Commanders’ turnaround, the confidence-builder the team needs.
A loss, however, could prompt much more significant change in Washington.
“It’s do or die right now,” defensive tackle Jonathan Allen said. “This is a must-win for us.” | 2022-10-11T22:15:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ron Rivera apologizes to Commanders players for ‘misconstrued’ comments - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/ron-rivera-apologizes-commanders-quarterbacks/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/ron-rivera-apologizes-commanders-quarterbacks/ |
Trent Grisham was a star against the Mets. The goal now? ‘Repeat, repeat, repeat.’
In Trent Grisham, the Padres have a low-cost, high-ceiling 25-year-old who demonstrated an unmistakable knack for handling big moments this weekend. (Frank Franklin II/AP Photo)
NEW YORK — The only thing to outshine Joe Musgrove’s ears during the San Diego Padres’ first-round defeat of the New York Mets this past weekend was Tre — sorry, never mind. Had to be done.
Speaking of sticky stuff, the one thing that will likely stick in the minds of Padres fans and front office executives after San Diego’s first-round series win will probably be Trent — Shoot. Sorry. Did it again.
But seriously, if it hadn’t been for Musgrove’s ears and his stellar pitching performance, the lingering image of the Padres’ first full-season playoff series win since 1998 would almost certainly have been Trent Grisham. Not only did he go 4-for-8 with homers against Max Scherzer and Jacob deGrom, but he reached base three times in San Diego’s Game 3 win, scoring a run and driving home another. He also likely saved a run or two with a running catch at the wall in deep center field that stalled what could have been a fifth-inning Mets rally.
“Anytime you play well like that in that situation, it’s going to give you confidence going forward. But the main goal is just repeat, repeat, repeat,” Grisham told reporters in Los Angeles as his Padres prepared to play the Dodgers in the division series, which starts Tuesday. “It was just a weekend. We’re looking to play for another three weeks to a month, so I’m worried about keeping it going.”
The Padres acquired Grisham from the Milwaukee Brewers in a deal that sent Eric Lauer to Milwaukee and brought Zach Davies to San Diego. At the time, Grisham was the Brewers’ No. 7 prospect according to Baseball America — a promising young outfielder, but no lock for stardom.
He started 59 of San Diego’s 60 regular season games in 2020 and won a Gold Glove. He hit .251 with an .808 on-base-plus-slugging and 10 homers in those 59 games, suggesting a future full of above-average power and elite defense, if not necessarily high batting average. He had a similar season in 2021. But this year, something changed. He played more games (152) than any year in his career. But he hit .184 with nearly double the number of strikeouts as hits. He struggled so much that by mid-September, the Padres started using rookie José Azócar in center more regularly, to see if he might be able to provide even slightly more offense than Grisham could.
“He’s just had a difficult season, and sometimes that beats you down a little bit. I think reinvigorated by being in the postseason again. But Trent’s got a lot more in his game,” Padres Manager Bob Melvin said. “I really believe not only can he be a premier outfielder, he’s got power, he’s got speed. His career should take off into a different trajectory.”
The Padres could certainly use Grisham to anchor their outfield in years to come. Until they traded for Juan Soto at the deadline, San Diego was relying on ever-shifting combinations of versatile Jurickson Profar and Wil Myers around Grisham. Myers will likely be a free agent after this season because the Padres seem unlikely to pick up his 2023 option for $20 million. Profar is a utility man, useful anywhere, not necessarily the solution in the outfield long-term.
And while there was some notion that Fernando Tatis Jr. might spend some time in the outfield as he made his way back from injury this year, the point became moot when he tested positive for a banned substance and was suspended for the rest of the season in August. He will not return until next May.
But in Grisham, the Padres have a low-cost, high-ceiling 25-year-old who demonstrated an unmistakable knack for handling big moments this weekend, though the sample was small.
“He has the ability to be an all-star,” Melvin said. “I think his track — he was on the track to being one and then got off to a little bit of a slow start this year. He still hit some home runs, some deep home runs. His defense, if you look at the metrics, is outstanding, and some of the plays he’s made here, too.”
He, like his Padres, enters the division series with very little pressure and a very big opportunity to impress. The Dodgers ran away from the Padres in the National League West this year. They have played deep into the playoffs every year since Grisham was in high school. The Padres are built around Soto and Manny Machado and the rest. They are not expecting Grisham to carry them, even though he looked suddenly ready to do so for a few days in New York. He hit .100 with a .428 OPS in 16 games against the Dodgers, a team that, in theory, knows him best. Three games does not a revival make. But a few more certainly wouldn’t hurt. | 2022-10-11T22:15:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Padres' Trent Grisham emerges as bright spot in MLB playoffs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/trent-grisham-mlb-playoffs-san-diego-padres/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/trent-grisham-mlb-playoffs-san-diego-padres/ |
Spain celebrates a first-half goal against Megan Rapinoe and the top-ranked United States. (Juan Manuel Serrano Arce / Getty Images)
Over its glorious 37-year history, the U.S. women’s national soccer team hasn’t lost very often, never mind two games in a row. But with a 2-0 defeat against shorthanded Spain on Tuesday, the four-time world champions were saddled with their first losing streak in 5½ years and third in 20 years.
The friendly in Pamplona, Spain, came four days after a 2-1 defeat to No. 4 England at Wembley Stadium. While that setback against the European champions was not a big surprise, Tuesday’s game was a major disappointment. Spain is ranked No. 8 but was missing 15 players in a dispute with Coach Jorge Vilda and the Spanish soccer federation.
The last time the top-ranked Americans dropped consecutive matches was in the SheBelieves Cup in March 2017 against England in Harrison, N.J., and France in Washington.
On Tuesday, Laia Codina took advantage of a scramble following a corner kick in the 39th minute, and Esther González scored a wonderful volley in the 72nd.
It was the first time the United States had conceded multiple goals in consecutive defeats since March 2001 and marked the 14th time since 1985 they’ve lost back-to-back matches. Seven of those mini-skids came in the program’s first nine years.
The path does not getting any easier: friendlies against second-ranked Germany on Nov. 10 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Nov. 13 in Harrison.
The United States, England, Spain and Germany are in the early stages of preparation for the World Cup next summer in Australia and New Zealand. The Americans are two-time defending champions.
Several U.S. regulars missed the European tour, including Alex Morgan, Mallory Pugh, Sam Mewis and Kelley O’Hara. But the player pool is considered deep enough to beat most teams with a mix of stars and prospects.
The games also fell near the end of the National Women’s Soccer League season and amid the fallout from the league’s abuse scandal, leaving the national team fatigued both physically and mentally. | 2022-10-11T22:15:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | USWNT loses second straight game; falls to Spain - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/uswnt-loses-spain-friendly/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/uswnt-loses-spain-friendly/ |
Alex Ovechkin remains the core, but Connor Brown (28) and Dylan Strome will add some new blood to the Capitals' roster. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Another 82-game joyride-slash-slog begins for Alex Ovechkin and the Washington Capitals on Wednesday night, and in so many ways the veil that hangs over it all isn’t how the season starts against the Boston Bruins but how it ends in the playoffs. Four straight first-round exits will color a lot.
“It motivates you when you start your training in the summer,” veteran defenseman John Carlson said. “It motivates you when camp starts. It motivates you when the season starts. … Certainly, we’ll be ready with a little extra jazz to change that narrative.”
Part of the narrative, though, needs to be that the Capitals have been as reliable a regular season machine as there is in the league for longer than some of those fans who rock the red have been alive. That doesn’t make up for the 0-for-4 playoff record since the pinnacle that was the 2018 Stanley Cup. But it does put the Caps and their more-familiar-than-anyone-in-town core back in a position they were in Ovechkin’s early days: closer to contending for a title than any other District team.
That’s not saying, before the first puck is dropped, that this group is going to win Cup No. 2. They’re not at the level of Colorado, the Cup champ, or Tampa Bay, which has been to the finals three straight times and won two — among others.
But as the Commanders are crumbling (again), the Nationals are overhauling, the Wizards are searching for relevance, United is flailing and the Mystics haven’t won a playoff series since their own 2019 title, the Caps are here, constantly cranking it up. They tweak and touch up rather than tear down and start over. Cast their experience against everyone else in town, and where is your money best spent for a reliable result?
“With what’s gone on here for way longer than I’ve been here,” said Peter Laviolette, entering his third season as coach, “this team has done a good job of putting itself in position to qualify for the Stanley Cup playoffs.”
There’s an idea that in hockey, everybody makes the playoffs. It’s not the case. Check the numbers. Since Ovechkin’s first appearance in the playoffs — which came in 2008, when he was 22, not 37 — the Capitals have qualified for the postseason 14 times in 15 years. Only Pittsburgh has more postseason appearances in that stretch. No team has accumulated more regular season points over that period than the Caps, and only the Penguins have won more games and scored more goals.
And now, as they go into the breach again, it’s worth asking how this happens — and appreciating that it continues — without obsessing about what will happen in the April playoffs when it’s just now October.
“We’ve done a good job of identifying and addressing our issues,” General Manager Brian MacLellan said.
On this year’s roster, that’s most noticeable in net, which MacLellan basically blew up. Out is the young combination of Ilya Samsonov and Vitek Vanecek, because each was given a bazillion chances to take the job and make it his own and each returned every one of those chances. In is Darcy Kuemper, who was last seen stopping 22 of 23 shots by the Lightning in Game 6 of the Stanley Cup finals, then hoisting the chalice with his Avalanche teammates afterward. Kuemper is a clear No. 1, something the Caps haven’t had since Braden Holtby’s departure — and frankly didn’t always have when Holtby was around.
But there are other tinkers, too. Former Maple Leaf and Senator Connor Brown will immediately fill in for injured mainstay Tom Wilson on the opposite wing from Ovechkin on the top line, centered by Evgeny Kuznetsov. Former Coyote and Blackhawk Dylan Strome will take the place of injured mainstay Nicklas Backstrom as the second-line center.
The core is still the group that hoisted the Cup together — Ovechkin, Kuznetsov, Backstrom, Carlson, Wilson, T.J. Oshie, Dmitry Orlov and Lars Eller. The new pieces show both the fan base and the locker room that management is trying replicate and improve on past regular seasons rather than just rolling out the same group and hoping for different results.
“It’s really kind of fun to learn and create new chemistry on and off the ice with guys who could maybe bring something to our team that we don’t already have,” Oshie said. “Keeping it fresh is super-important, I think, when you have a core group that’s been together for so long.”
Backstrom, whose future is decidedly TBD after offseason hip surgery, has been teammates with Ovechkin since 2007-08. Carlson joined them in 2009-10. Orlov arrived in 2011-12. Wilson and Kuznetsov first appeared in 2013-14. Oshie came via trade in 2015-16, Eller by trade the following offseason. That’s a lot of years together. It also means a lot of years — period.
So the Capitals can’t handle themselves as if they’re the old Young Guns. Shoot, Alexander Semin and Mike Green are retired. The rest of the core has to figure out a way to endure and thrive in yet another regular season that could seem endless.
“If you look at it as 82 games, especially as an older team,” Oshie said, “the season can get really long.”
“If you start thinking about way down here,” said Laviolette, holding his hand away from him before sliding it toward his chest, “you’re going to lose right here where we are with Game 1 coming up here. We need to make sure that we’re ready to play Game 1.”
Game 1, in which the Capitals will have a new face in net and new faces up and down the lineup, is Wednesday night. The expectation will be the same: Win.
They haven’t won a playoff series since they won the Cup. That can’t be solved on Opening Night five seasons later. The Capitals have established a regular season standard that is not just among the best in the sport. It’s absolutely the best in town. | 2022-10-11T22:15:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Washington Capitals face the same expectations: Win - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/washington-capitals-dc-sports/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/washington-capitals-dc-sports/ |
WASHINGTON — The International Monetary Fund is downgrading its outlook for the world economy for 2023, citing a long list of threats that include Russia’s war against Ukraine, chronic inflation pressures, punishing interest rates and the lingering consequences of the global pandemic. The 190-country lending agency is forecasting that the global economy will eke out growth of just 2.7% next year, down from the 2.9% it had estimated in July. The IMF left unchanged its forecast for international growth this year — a modest 3.2%, a sharp deceleration from last year’s 6% expansion.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Labor is publishing a new proposal on how workers should be classified saying that thousands of people have been incorrectly labeled as contractors rather than employees, potentially curtailing access to benefits and protections they rightfully deserve. The department said Tuesday that misclassifying workers as independent contractors denies those workers protections under federal labor standards, promotes wage theft, allows certain employers to gain an unfair advantage over businesses, and hurts the economy. Shares of major gig companies such as Uber and Lyft plummeted.
LONDON — The Bank of England has expanded its emergency effort to stabilize the financial markets amid concerns the government’s plan to slash taxes pose a “material risk” to Britain’s fiscal stability. The central bank said Tuesday that it will now buy inflation-linked securities that offer protection from inflation as well as conventional government bonds as it seeks to “restore orderly conditions” in the market. The bank says purchases will total up to 10 billion pounds, or $11 billion, a day split evenly between both types of bonds. The program expanded after yields on government bonds jumped again Monday. Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey says the purchases will end Friday as originally planned.
PARIS — French Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne has announced a decision to requisition workers operating petrol depots of the ExxonMobil’s French branch Esso and threatened to do the same for those of Total group, amid strikes that have led fuel pumps to run dry in the country. Drivers queuing to fill the tanks of their vehicles and petrol stations closed temporarily while waiting for deliveries have become an increasingly familiar sight in France in recent days. Borne spoke Tuesday at the National Assembly. She said about 30% of France’s petrol stations are experiencing temporary shortages with at least one or more type of fuel. She called for urgent dialogue between unions and companies’ management as strikers are asking for pay rises amid fueling inflation in the country.
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Honda says it will build a $3.5 billion joint-venture battery factory in rural southern Ohio and hire 2,200 people to staff it as it starts to turn the state into its North American electric vehicle hub. The company also plans to invest $700 million and add 300 jobs at three of its own Ohio factories to prepare them to start making EVs and components. The battery plant, to be built jointly with LG Energy Solution of South Korea, could see a total investment of $4.4 billion. The plant site is off Interstate 71 in Fayette County, about 40 miles southwest of the state capital of Columbus. | 2022-10-11T22:23:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Business Highlights: IMF's outlook, rules for gig workers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-imfs-outlook-rules-for-gig-workers/2022/10/11/19a2cc4e-49aa-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/business-highlights-imfs-outlook-rules-for-gig-workers/2022/10/11/19a2cc4e-49aa-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
The immediate trigger was the death in police custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, which was announced on Sept. 16. According to state media, she’d traveled from the western province of Kurdistan with family to Tehran, where a Guidance Patrol team detained her outside a metro station claiming she was inappropriately dressed. Amini was forced into a minivan and taken to a police station, according to an account in the reformist Shargh newspaper. The Guidance Patrols have increased their activity since the election last year of conservative Ebrahim Raisi to the Iranian presidency. After news of Amini’s death emerged, Iranian state TV released CCTV footage of Amini collapsing over a chair and onto the floor. Tehran’s police force said she suffered “heart failure.” Her father, Amjad Amini, told the BBC that doctors found her collapsed outside the hospital with no explanation of who she was or what had happened to her. She went into a coma and died two days later. Her family accused authorities of beating her and covering it up, saying she had no underlying health conditions.
Large protests have been reported in scores of cities across Iran. They have transcended ethnic lines, touching an especially raw nerve in Mahsa Amini’s Kurdish community in western Iran, where people have long complained of being sidelined by the state. Oil workers have also joined the protests, staging strikes in solidarity at two facilities on the Persian Gulf, according to social media reports. Industrial action in the energy sector was crucial to the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled Iran’s monarchy. Celebrities, politicians and athletes condemned the police on social media and criticized the Guidance Patrols. Young women have removed and, in many cases, burned their head scarves or cut their hair in public to show solidarity with Amini. Footage of the protests on social media, none of which can be verified by Bloomberg, has shown demonstrators beating back security forces, demonstrating a level of fearlessness unseen in previous protests.
The unrest is tapping into broader frustration with Iran’s hard-line rulers over the state of the heavily sanctioned economy, entrenched corruption and social restrictions. Many of the grievances cited by the protesters in slogans and songs go back decades.
One of the most unusual aspects about the protests is that they’re being led by women. At a minimum the protesters want laws imposing mandatory hijab (the term used in Islam to describe modest dress) for all females from the age of nine to be overturned. More broadly, they want Iranian law to be less governed by religious dictats that usually come from elderly clerics who are often out of touch with society. Many of the protests have included chants calling for the complete end of the Islamic Republic. The rules stipulate a “chador” -- a black cloak that envelopes the body from head to toe -- or long, loose-fitting overcoats and tightly tied head scarves. The laws came into effect after the revolution when exiled cleric Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini returned to Iran, deposing the pro-Western Shah. They became immediately unpopular among the country’s educated middle class and divided female activists who had fought for the revolution. Over the years, women have gradually pushed the boundaries of what’s permissible. Loose shawls and robes, often open and worn with leggings, are common attire in most cities; that’s how Amini was dressed when she was detained.
5. Are these the first protests against hijab laws?
Opposition to the dress code has been a feature of the country’s tightly controlled civil society ever since the revolution. The first major protests were on International Women’s Day in 1979 when both secular and religious women joined forces to challenge the proposed law in rallies in Tehran. In more recent years, public rebukes have taken the form of silent acts of protest such as in 2017 when a number of women were photographed standing on public electrical cabinets and benches in Tehran, holding their head scarves aloft. They were all arrested, and some were seen being aggressively pushed to the ground by police. In August, a woman named Sepideh Rashno was arrested and forced to make a confession on state TV after being filmed arguing with a chador-clad individual who’d been harassing another young woman over her attire. Rashno’s face showed clear signs of bruises and swelling.
The security forces, which include armed riot police, plainclothes security forces and a religious militia known as the Basij, have tried to suppress protests by charging at demonstrators with tear gas, batons and Tasers. There’s widespread reports of riot shotguns and paintball guns being used. Several social media videos, which can’t be verified by Bloomberg, have shown riot police clubbing people on the head and body. The Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights has said at least 185 people have been killed so far, including 19 children. Despite this, it appeared that authorities weren’t resorting to killings to the extent they did during protests in November 2019, when human rights groups said hundreds of people were shot dead in the streets. On Oct. 4, in his first comments addressing the protests, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pledged his support for the security forces, denouncing protesters for challenging the police and claiming the demonstrations are designed by the US and Israel. There were reports that the Guidance Patrol had disappeared from the streets, but it was unclear whether this would last.
There is no legitimate, organized opposition inside Iran. People criticize the leadership privately, but such views are rarely reflected in the country’s tightly regulated media. The only political factions that can function are those that support the core values of the Islamic Republic. Secularists, communists and groups that promote religions other than Islam are effectively banned. Iranian politicians fall roughly into three categories: ultra-conservatives such as Khamenei, moderate or pragmatic conservatives like former President Hassan Rouhani or Ali Larijani, and reformists like former President Mohammad Khatami. The reformists believe that the political system should be open to improvement. However, their popularity and influence has declined substantially since Rouhani’s government failed to keep several promises to improve civil liberties. His administration was also widely blamed for mismanaging the economy after the US reimposed sanctions in 2018 after abandoning a 2015 agreement concerning Iran’s nuclear program. | 2022-10-11T22:23:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Iran Protests Over Dress Codes Stoked Broader Public Anger - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-iran-protests-over-dress-codes-stoked-broader-public-anger/2022/10/11/d73a5b96-497d-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/how-iran-protests-over-dress-codes-stoked-broader-public-anger/2022/10/11/d73a5b96-497d-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
The turmoil in the UK bond market threatens not only the stability of the country’s financial system but also the economic and social well-being of most of its citizens. It is a situation that is going from bad to worse, and other countries must watch it carefully. Underpinning the recent disruption is the reemergence of the bond vigilantes — a debt-disciplining financial force that, long repressed, is starting to reassert itself.
The UK narrative is well known by now. A “government in a hurry” goes all out and promises not just protection from higher energy prices for both households and companies and growth-enhancing structural reforms but also large unfunded tax cuts. It does so in the context of a global increase in borrowing costs. Not surprisingly, markets push back strongly against the implied increases in the amount of debt, interest payments and debt-to-GDP ratio. The resulting sharp surge in yields exposes the significant fragility of a pension system that resorted to financial engineering to enhance returns.
Given the threat of financial and economic contagion, the Bank of England has no choice but to intervene in a manner contrary to its continuing mission to reduce high inflation. The government does a partial U-turn, but it’s not meaningful enough to improve the dynamics in play in a sustainable way. The resulting market calm quickly gives way to more turmoil, forcing an expansion of the BOE’s intervention.
It is tempting to think that the underlying market dynamics are limited to the UK. They are not. They risk extending in varying degrees to a growing number of countries around the world, including those traditionally viewed as the strongest, such as Germany.
What we are seeing is the return of the so-called bond vigilantes. Their de facto role is to impose debt discipline. Their ammunition is stepping back from the purchase of bonds issued by those they deem to be misbehaving. Their strength comes from the threat of financial disruptions contaminating economic and social well-being. Their weakness comes from their tendency to overshoot.
These vigilantes had been deeply repressed by more than a decade of unconventional monetary policies — that is, interest rates floored at zero and huge and recurring central bank purchases of bonds. Unable to withstand such force, they slumbered. Their inattention was rational, and they were largely forgotten by bond issuers.
High and persistent inflation has changed all this as central banks now have no choice but to exit unconventional monetary policies. As once-repressed and highly artificial interest rates started moving up, bond vigilantes awakened. The recent UK government fiscal slippage provided them with an opening few of them could have foreseen. They are now looking beyond the UK.
Significantly, their presence was felt in the German bond market on Monday, albeit in a much milder way. Rumors of the government agreeing to European-wide issuance of bonds caused an immediate spike in yields there. While the size and shape of the spike was small compared with what the UK has experienced, it was nevertheless notable for close watchers of European bond markets.
Italian yields have also been moving up, both in absolute terms and relative to their more “risk-free” German counterparts, and in a more worrisome manner. The proximate cause has been concern that the new government would not maintain fiscal discipline and, with that, its access to large European funding.
Then there is the emerging world. There, the vigilantes never really went to sleep completely as they did in advanced economies. But their influence has increased in a world where the sources of financial volatility come mainly from the core of the financial system that is anchored by a Federal Reserve scrambling to contain inflation.
In 1993, James Carville, the political consultant, famously said: “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or a .400 baseball hitter. But now I want to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.” Risky fiscal and monetary policies have stirred the bond market vigilantes and given them reason to start doing what they did so effectively before they were repressed by the prolonged period of unconventional central bank policies.
The good news is that their actions will limit the type of fiscal and monetary irresponsibility that can cause long-term harm to so many. The bad news is that their resurgence is coming at a time of weakening growth and financial fragility borne itself of the central bank repression.
• The BOE Must Extend, Widen and Cancel: Marcus Ashworth | 2022-10-11T22:24:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UK Turmoil Spawns the Return of Bond Vigilantes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/uk-turmoil-spawns-the-return-of-bond-vigilantes/2022/10/11/7aeac188-497c-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/uk-turmoil-spawns-the-return-of-bond-vigilantes/2022/10/11/7aeac188-497c-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made the Marshall Plan relevant again
By Gordon F. Sander
A statue of Gen. George C. Marshall is outside the barracks at Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Va., in 2021. Marshall was a graduate of VMI in the class of 1901. (Zachary Wajsgras for The Washington Post)
George C. Marshall was doubtless moved to be equated with George Washington. As Harvard University granted the secretary of state an honorary law doctorate on June 5, 1947, its citation called him “a soldier and statesman whose character and ability brook only one comparison in the history of this country.”
But Marshall — the former Army chief of staff during World War II and then arguably the country’s most admired public servant — had something else in mind as he received applause from a crowd of 15,000 in Harvard Yard: pitching a multibillion-dollar aid plan for the broken European continent.
Seventy-five years later, as Russia’s war against Ukraine retests the historic bond between Western Europe and the United States, the legacy of the Marshall Plan has gained renewed relevance — as has the need to understand the frequently miscast initiative.
“The Marshall Plan has become a favorite analogy for policymakers,” said Harvard political scientist Graham T. Allison, “yet few know much about it.”
One reason for the confusion was the anodyne nature of Marshall’s speech itself. “It is logical that the United States do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world,” Marshall told his receptive, if somewhat puzzled, audience that day, “without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.” That was about as rousing — or as specific — as his short address got.
There was no mention of the Soviet Union, against whose influence the plan was directed. “Any government which maneuvers to block the recovery of other countries cannot expect help from us,” he said. That was it.
JFK’s secret weapon in the Cold War: James Bond
Marshall’s speech was vaguely worded for two reasons, said Benn Steil, director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of “The Marshall Plan: Dawn of the Cold War.” “First, Marshall wanted to put the burden on the European countries themselves to come up with an integrated recovery plan. Also, Marshall wanted to avoid the impression that he was trying to divide Europe.”
The Soviet Union was nominally welcome to join too. “Moscow was carefully not excluded,” said Steil, but behind the scenes it “was prodded to exclude itself.”
European leaders certainly got the message. Within hours of Marshall’s speech, the British and French foreign ministers were conferring about how much aid they needed to regain their “economic health” and in what form. This collaboration — and the economic ties that bound the 16 nations that ultimately received U.S. loans, grants or commodities over the four-year plan — laid the groundwork for European integration.
Marshall has recently come under criticism from revisionist historians for claiming principal authorship of the plan. But Marshall never denied that the European Recovery Plan — the policy’s official name, which he always used — was the work of many hands.
The plan’s true godfather, according to Steil, was Marshall’s boss, President Harry S. Truman. Truman laid the ideological groundwork for it in a March 1947 speech in which he asked Congress to provide financial support for the Greek government against a communist insurgency. Articulating what would become known as the Truman Doctrine, the president argued that the United States was “compelled to assist free people in their struggles against totalitarianism” lest its “spread undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.”
Truman’s belief that the Soviets would meddle in Greece turned out to be wrong. But when Marshall led a delegation to Moscow the following month, he came away convinced that the Kremlin had little interest in aiding Europe, which was in social and economic turmoil and had just struggled through the “hunger winter” of 1946-1947.
“The patient is sick,” Marshall said in a nationally broadcast radio address upon his return from Russia, “while the doctors debate the cure.” Something had to be done to help Europe and fend off Moscow’s efforts at expanding communism. Piecemeal aid of the sort that Congress had just granted Greece would no longer do.
Marshall enlisted the big thinkers on the State Department planning staff, led by George Kennan, known as the author of the “containment” policy for deterring the USSR. The result was the Marshall Plan — a moniker Truman fostered “because I wanted General Marshall to get full credit for his brilliant contribution to the measure he helped formulate,” the president said in his memoir.
Marshall led a furious campaign to pass the plan, crisscrossing the country giving pep talks and interviews. “I worked on that as if I was running for the Senate or the presidency,” he later said.
On Nov. 11, 1947, Marshall made an impassioned case for the plan before a joint session of the House and Senate foreign affairs committees. Now his words were anything but anodyne.
“We must not permit the free community of Europe to be extinguished,” he said. “Should this occur, it would be a tragedy for the world.”
Nor was there any need to mince words about Moscow. After briefly flirting with the idea of cooperating, Joseph Stalin had made clear his opposition to the plan, forcing Europe’s communist bloc to reject it.
“It is now clear that only one power, the Soviet Union, does not for its own reasons share” the goal of restoring Europe, Marshall said.
The Cold War, a phrase that had just come into use that fall, was on. And so was America’s first line of defense: the Marshall Plan.
Ukraine war gives Gen Xers flashbacks to Cold War songs and movies
Seven months later, Congress enacted the Economic Cooperation Act, providing $17 billion ($160 billion today) in loans and grants to the 16 participating countries.
Did it work? Economically, it’s not clear: The plan’s own accounting showed that the aid to the recipient countries accounted for just about 3 percent of their combined national income between 1948 and 1951. “The importance of the Plan to Europe’s recovery remains a bone of contention amongst historians,” said Fredrik Logevall, a Harvard historian and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam.”
But there is little doubt of its success in fortifying European unity and democracy. “It strengthened Western Europeans’ belief in democracy and capitalism and tied the region more firmly in a U.S.-led economic union and later a military alliance,” Logevall said. “Moreover, it helped to undermine Soviet influence in Europe.”
Logevall added, “It served America’s strategic purposes, but it was also charitable to a degree seldom seen in international politics.”
“It is impossible to imagine the E.U. or NATO without the Marshall Plan,” Steil said.
However, the plan’s political and moral legacy was undermined by the Trump administration’s derisive treatment of the U.S.-European alliance, Steil said. And now it’s being tested again by Vladimir Putin’s Russia after the invasion of Ukraine.
Amid that fight, a Marshall successor, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, is invoking the Marshall Plan in an effort to maintain the transatlantic unity that has bound the United States and its European allies for three-quarters of a century.
In June, on the anniversary of Marshall’s Harvard speech, Blinken tweeted that in 1947, “European nations rallied to the call to come together, united in purpose, contributing to the revival of Europe. Answering the call together, we can once again prevail, just as the U.S. and Europe did together 75 years ago.”
More on European history
An elementary school massacre spurred tighter gun control in the U.K.
Lessons from Poland, the other developed country curtailing abortion rights
How France’s treasured Bastille key ended up at Mount Vernon | 2022-10-11T22:24:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marshall Plan, forging U.S.-Europe alliance, tested by Ukraine war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/10/08/marshall-plan-russia-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/10/08/marshall-plan-russia-ukraine/ |
Oil production move has prompted calls in Congress to cut arms sales and take other punitive measures
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, attending a meeting in Riyadh last year, and President Biden in Washington in October.
President Biden is kicking off a process of reevaluating, and potentially altering, the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia following the announcement by a Saudi-led coalition that it would slash oil production, the White House said Tuesday.
That move by OPEC Plus last week to cut its oil output by 2 million barrels a day could boost oil prices in the United States and worldwide, potentially hurting consumers during a tough winter, and its timing a month before the midterm elections was a political blow to Biden that some in the president’s circle saw as a personal shot at the president.
Since then, calls to revisit America’s support for Saudi Arabia have emerged in Congress and elsewhere. Officials said Tuesday that Biden is doing so, but they offered no details on how the relationship might shift or what policies the president is considering.
“In light of recent developments and the OPEC Plus decision about oil production, the president believes we should review the bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia and take a look to see if that relationship is where it needs to be,” White House spokesman John Kirby told reporters Tuesday, reiterating Biden’s disappointment in the decision by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and its partners.
Kirby said discussions about a reevaluation of the U.S.-Saudi relationship have not yet taken place, adding that Biden is “willing to discuss this relationship with members of Congress.”
“We’re not announcing a formal policy review here with a special team or anything like that,” Kirby added. “This is something the president’s been thinking about certainly in light of OPEC’s decision last week.”
Kirby said Biden was open to discussing proposals put forward by Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Robert Menendez (N.J.), Richard J. Durbin (Ill.) and Chris Murphy (Conn.). Those senators have proposed various changes to the U.S.-Saudi relationship, including limiting security cooperation; reducing arms sales; and removing OPEC Plus’s exemption from U.S. antitrust laws.
U.S. officials have worked to press Saudi Arabia to produce more oil to compensate for the global shortage and price increase caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The president personally visited Saudi leaders in Jiddah in July, taking part in a two-hour meeting that included Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto ruler.
Biden Saudi trip faces new scrutiny after oil production cut
The trip was criticized at the time by human rights activists, given the crown prince’s role in the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The scrutiny has been renewed in the aftermath of the oil production cut, as detractors ask what Biden got in return for the visit.
Biden aides say the purpose of the trip was not to ensure that Saudi Arabia keep producing oil at a certain level, but to improve the U.S.-Saudi relationship in multiple areas.
“Clearly the Biden administration made an attempt to try to repair the relationship. I supported that effort but it failed,” Murphy said in an interview. “The whole point of looking the other way when it comes to the Saudi war in Yemen and their awful human rights record was to make sure they would pick us in the middle of an international crisis, and instead they chose the Russians.”
“For a long time, Saudi Arabia was a really imperfect ally. Now, there’s a question as to whether they’re an ally at all,” Murphy added.
With last week’s announcement, however, Saudi Arabia appeared to signal a rejection of the overture, at least in part. During the campaign, Biden had promised to make the kingdom a “pariah,” a comment that seemed to deeply anger the crown prince and other Saudi leaders.
While OPEC has 13 member countries, joined by several partners to make up OPEC Plus, “clearly Saudi Arabia is the leader of that cartel,” Kirby said.
The nearly 80-year U.S.-Saudi relationship has experienced myriad ups and downs and vexed several U.S. presidents. It has endured several crises, including the 1973 oil embargo and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
The cut in oil production helps Russian President Vladimir Putin as he wages war on Ukraine and could trigger higher gas prices in the United States weeks before the midterm elections, when Democrats’ slim majorities in the House and Senate are in jeopardy.
While the review announced Tuesday may serve the purpose of putting the administration on record as considering punitive steps against the Saudis, any significant downgrading of ties would probably have a cost beyond oil.
The administration, like many before it, has been trying to persuade Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Persian Gulf to invest in a coordinated surface-to-air missile system to fend off any potential attack from Iran. American officials would like such a system to be purchased from the United States, which has tens of thousands of troops in the region, and to be interoperable with its systems.
This month, the State Department approved a $3 billion sale of the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System to Kuwait — the same system it now plans to send to Ukraine to protect against Russian missile attacks.
But other gulf countries, including Saudi Arabia, have been more reticent about committing to similar purchases, even as they separately have discussed sophisticated arms purchases with Russia and other suppliers.
On Monday, Menendez, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, criticized the kingdom for the production cut and called for an immediate freeze “on all aspects of our cooperation with Saudi Arabia.” He promised to wield his power as committee chairman to block any future arms sales.
On Tuesday, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) introduced legislation to stop U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
“This simple yet urgent measure would halt U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia after their deeply offensive, destructive blunder: siding with Russia at this historic moment,” Blumenthal said. “Saudis must reverse their oil supply cuts, which aid and abet Russia’s savage criminal invasion, endanger the world economy and threaten higher gas prices at U.S. pumps.”
The legislation would immediately pause all U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia, including military supplies, sales and other weapons aid. It also would impose a one-year halt to all direct commercial sales and foreign military sales of weapons and munitions to Saudi Arabia.
But Saudi Arabia is a powerful player in the Middle East and the Arab world, and the United States looks to the kingdom for an array of things beyond oil. The administration is depending on continuing Saudi cooperation, for example, in extending a truce in Yemen.
During his July visit, Biden signed an agreement with Saudi leaders to cooperate on advanced communication technologies, clean energy, cybersecurity and other areas.
An administration statement after the visit said that “Saudi Arabia has committed to support global oil market balancing for sustained economic growth” and that the United States welcomed Saudi plans to increase production levels.
“These steps and further steps that we anticipate over the coming weeks have and will stabilize markets considerably,” it said. | 2022-10-11T22:24:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden to re-evaluate U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia, White House says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/11/biden-saudi-arabia-oil/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/11/biden-saudi-arabia-oil/ |
In this screenshot from video, the U.S. Coast Guard rescues boaters off the coast of Empire, La., on Sunday, Oct. 9, 2022. Three men whose fishing boat sank in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast were rescued after surviving for more than a day despite being attacked by sharks that inflicted deep cuts on their hands and shredded one of their life jackets, according to their rescuers. (U.S. Coast Guard via AP) (Uncredited/U.S. Coast Guard) | 2022-10-11T22:25:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Will to live, life jackets: Boaters survive 28 hours, sharks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-lucky-fishermen-rescued-fighting-off-sharks-in-gulf/2022/10/11/ce56fff2-496e-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/how-lucky-fishermen-rescued-fighting-off-sharks-in-gulf/2022/10/11/ce56fff2-496e-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
Marilyn Mosby, Maryland State Attorney for Baltimore City, speaks during a news conference pertaining to a case against Adnan Syed, Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022, in Baltimore. Mosby apologized to Syed and the family of Hae Min Lee after announcing that her office would not retry Syed for Lee’s 1999 killing. A Baltimore judge last month overturned Syed’s murder conviction and ordered him released from prison, where the 41-year-old had spent more than two decades. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez) | 2022-10-11T22:25:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Prosecutors drop charges against Adnan Syed in 'Serial' case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/report-prosecutors-drop-charges-in-serial-podcast-case/2022/10/11/5ae4adda-496e-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/report-prosecutors-drop-charges-in-serial-podcast-case/2022/10/11/5ae4adda-496e-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
It’s going to take all of Iran’s oppressed groups to win change
An image of Mahsa Amini at a Los Angeles vigil after her death in custody of Iran's "morality police" in September. (Reuters/Bing Guan)
Women might be at the forefront of the uprising overwhelming Iran, but they certainly aren’t alone.
Since the death last month of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s “morality police,” who had detained her for allegedly wearing an improper head covering, the world has watched Iranian women march, shout and shear their hair in protest of unfair, violent treatment. But while the imposed hijab makes women the most visibly suppressed group in the Islamic Republic, ethnic minorities including Kurds, Baluchis, Azeris and Arabs have also long struggled for equality.
These minority groups have joined this wave of protest, too, continuing their own long-standing quest for rights within the Islamic republic’s social hierarchy. It’s the first time Iran’s disparate movements have risen up simultaneously, and authorities are shaken. The republic will buckle only under combined pressure from all oppressed quarters of its society — and the international community must back each of them.
The coalescing of the women’s and ethnic rights movements in Iran is something Kurdish Iranian journalist and author Behrouz Boochani has been predicting for years. “We want our own rights and freedom. ... The ethnic minorities movement represents a hope for a democratic future in Iran,” Boochani, who now lives in New Zealand, told me.
Among Iran’s minorities, the Kurds are unique. They form a large share of the population of Iran (and Iraq, Syria and Turkey) and are the world’s largest ethnic group without a state of their own. From that sprang a Kurdish nationalist movement that the Islamic republic has always deemed a threat.
While other out-groups don’t share these particularities, ultimately, all the country’s minorities are struggling for equal representation and opportunity. Like Iran’s women, they also all know that the only way they can get it is with the downfall of a political system that favors ethnic Persian Shiite men and no one else. Persian chauvinism and the group’s outsize access to opportunities are facts of life from the very start: Ethnic languages and cultural traditions aren’t even taught in schools.
These group are not separatists, though. They are Iranians who simply want to be equals in the land their ancestors inhabited for centuries. And in the case of Kurds, they have rebelled against the oppressive central government since the earliest days of the Islamic Republic in 1979, with thousands being executed in the years following the revolution.
“Kurdistan’s resistance now is peaceful and progressive,” Boochani said. “It’s important to acknowledge the effect Kurdistan is having on other parts of the country.” You only have to look as far as the rallying cry “Woman, Life, Freedom”; it’s been adopted within Iran and across the world in support of the Amini protests — but its roots are as a Kurdish political slogan.
“The international community doesn’t understand the different layers of our struggle,” Boochani said. “Minorities in Iran have a big problem, which is that the rest of the world only understands Iran through the lens of Tehran. We need the international media to look at us. To see us.”
He’s right. But with very few international news organizations able to operate inside Iran, that’s easier said than done. For the reporters who are in the country, that often means getting access only to the capital or other cities in the Persian heartland. Parts of the country with large minority majorities are particularly difficult for journalists to secure government-approved travel to.
Right now, Iran isn’t letting foreign journalists in the country — and certainly not into minority enclaves: This week, regime forces have opened an offensive on Sanandaj, the Kurdish provincial capital to which protests have spread over the past month. Humanitarian organizations working in the area confirmed the deaths of at least four demonstrators, but the death toll could be much higher. Information coming out of the area has been scarce, given that security forces control the hospitals there and internet outages are frequent.
The regime is threatened, and its crackdowns will continue. Most likely, independent media won’t be able to observe. That’s why it’s all the more critical that Kurdish voices, Arab voices, Baluchi voices, Azeri voices, female voices and more be amplified outside Iran as they call louder and louder for freedom. The groups oppressed by the Islamic republic won’t succeed without working together; the world can’t support one of them without supporting them all.
Opinion|It’s going to take all of Iran’s oppressed groups to win change
Opinion|Can Elon Musk’s satellites beat Iranian internet blackouts? It depends.
Opinion|Biden gave Mohammed bin Salman a fist bump. His reward? A gut punch. | 2022-10-11T22:25:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Change in Iran requires protests from women, Kurds and all minorities - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/iran-protests-women-kurds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/iran-protests-women-kurds/ |
Ken Paxton is America’s worst attorney general. He’ll win anyway.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) delivers remarks at a gathering of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas on Aug. 5. (Dylan Hollingsworth/Bloomberg News)
Ken Paxton, the Republican attorney general of Texas, has been under felony indictment for securities fraud since 2015, and a judge has ordered him to sit for a deposition in the case next month. He is under FBI investigation for assisting a real estate developer who allegedly hired his mistress and remodeled his home. Four of Paxton’s former top lieutenants are suing to get their jobs back, saying they were fired in violation of the Texas Whistleblower Act for reporting potential crimes by the attorney general to the feds.
No Democrat has won statewide in Texas since 1994, and former congressman Beto O’Rourke is extremely unlikely to win his race against Gov. Greg Abbott. Beating Paxton should have been Democrats’ best chance to end the drought. But they nominated former ACLU lawyer Rochelle Garza, whose claim to fame is helping a 17-year-old undocumented immigrant get an abortion while in federal custody.
Paxton now appears likely to be reelected next month as the chief law enforcement officer in a state of nearly 30 million people. Meanwhile, the Texas State Bar’s Commission for Lawyer Discipline is seeking court sanctions against him for peddling false claims of voter fraud after the 2020 election. It was Paxton who filed Texas’s frivolous lawsuit seeking to throw out the votes of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. After the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case, Paxton warmed up the crowd for President Donald Trump at the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, that preceded the Capitol insurrection.
Just 34 percent of Texans think Paxton has the integrity to serve as attorney general, according to a poll conducted last month by the Dallas Morning News and the University of Texas at Tyler, including only 50 percent of Republicans. But Paxton led Garza by seven points in the same survey because 68 percent of Republicans nevertheless plan to vote for him.
Paxton has filed as many lawsuits challenging President Biden’s policies as anyone, including about a dozen on immigration alone, which plays to his advantage. He has earned loyalty from social conservatives as an outspoken foe of reproductive rights. He recently ran away from someone serving him a subpoena in a case seeking to clarify whether abortion rights groups will be liable for helping women cross state lines to access care. A federal judge has ordered Paxton to testify in that suit.
Paxton announced in June that he would defend Texas’s long-unenforced law against sodomy if the Supreme Court followed Justice Clarence Thomas’s suggestion to “correct the error” of its 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down a 1973 state law criminalizing gay sex.
This fixation on cultural issues might have distracted Paxton from the core responsibilities of his job. The Associated Press reports that his office recently dropped a series of human trafficking and child sexual assault cases after losing track of one of the victims. The story also revealed that a Paxton adviser was quietly let go after less than two months on the job when he showed child pornography during a staff meeting.
“One prosecutor said he quit in January after supervisors pressured him to withhold evidence in a murder case. Another attorney signed a resignation letter in March that warned of growing hostility toward LGBTQ employees,” according to the Associated Press.
That office drama followed a 2020 revolt by senior staff. Eight former deputies accused Paxton of abusing power, accepting bribes and tampering with government documents. Everyone who reported Paxton was either fired or left under pressure. Among the allegations was that Paxton, who otherwise opposed covid-related restrictions, invoked the public health emergency to issue an opinion in the middle of the night that delayed a foreclosure sale for one of the developer’s properties.
Paxton issued a 374-page report last August that he claimed exonerates him and argues that he has the right to fire any appointees for any reason. He denies all wrongdoing in every case and, channeling Trump, cries that he’s the victim of a “witch hunt.” He’s said he’s being persecuted by “the Biden FBI,” even though the investigation began when Trump was still president and Trump appointed the current FBI director. Paxton’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment, including an interview request.
Garza highlights Paxton’s ethics problems on the stump, but abortion is what animates her. The Morning News poll showed the limits of this issue: Texans are evenly split over whether Roe v. Wade should have been overturned, and 49 percent believe abortion should be illegal in most or all cases. As a result, no prominent Republican has endorsed Garza.
Paxton is so well-positioned that he is not even bothering to air television commercials in what has been a frustratingly sleepy contest. He doesn’t publicize campaign events and mostly restricts appearances to friendly MAGA outlets. Last month, Trump appeared at a Paxton fundraiser in Bedminster, N.J.
The former president has been Paxton’s ace up his sleeve. His support is how Paxton held off a well-funded primary challenge from George P. Bush this past spring, and it’s why he’s favored to win a third term next month despite being the worst attorney general in the United States. Tribalism is a hell of a drug. | 2022-10-11T22:26:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Ken Paxton is America’s worst attorney general. He’ll win anyway. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/ken-paxton-worst-attorney-general-texas/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/ken-paxton-worst-attorney-general-texas/ |
FILE - New York Yankees relief pitcher Scott Effross pitches during the seventh inning of an MLB baseball game against the Seattle Mariners on Aug. 2, 2022, in New York. Effross needs Tommy John surgery to repair a torn ligament in his right elbow, an injury that will cause him to miss the playoffs and likely the entire 2023 season. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin II, File) | 2022-10-11T22:27:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Yankees reliever Scott Effross needs Tommy John surgery - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/yankees-reliever-scott-effross-needs-tommy-john-surgery/2022/10/11/47849af6-49a1-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mlb/yankees-reliever-scott-effross-needs-tommy-john-surgery/2022/10/11/47849af6-49a1-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
COPENHAGEN, Denmark — The Manchester City juggernaut ground to a halt in the unlikeliest of places on Tuesday.
One of the VAR calls resulted in a red card for City left back Sergio Gomez in the 30th minute for pulling back Hákon Arnar Haraldsson as the last man, harming the visitors attacking ambitions at the atmospheric Parken Stadium. | 2022-10-11T22:29:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Without Haaland, 10-man City held by Copenhagen but advances - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/without-haaland-10-man-man-city-held-0-0-by-fc-copenhagen/2022/10/11/790e01ee-4996-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/soccer/without-haaland-10-man-man-city-held-0-0-by-fc-copenhagen/2022/10/11/790e01ee-4996-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
The lawsuit from the Maryland chapter of the Sierra Club and three other groups cites flaws in the toll lane project’s environmental study.
The western part of the Capital Beltway in Maryland, including the American Legion Bridge, would be expanded under a state plan to add toll lanes to the Beltway and I-270. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
The Maryland chapter of the Sierra Club and three other groups filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against a state plan to widen Interstate 270 and part of the Capital Beltway with toll lanes, saying the proposal’s environmental analysis was “deficient.”
The lawsuit asks that the U.S. District Court in Maryland vacate the project’s federal environmental approval and prevent the state “from taking further steps to finance, build and operate the project until they fully comply” with federal environmental law.
Federal highway officials approved Maryland’s environmental study of the toll lanes proposal in August “without disclosing crucial information about their conclusion that the project would reduce traffic congestion,” the lawsuit says. Government officials also “refused to examine key threats to public health and historic sites,” according to the 46-page filing.
Toll lanes critics cite possible flaws in Maryland toll lanes traffic analysis
The lawsuit has been expected, as court action on environmental grounds is common for large infrastructure projects. Project opponents also have argued since Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) first announced the plan in 2017 that expanding highways promotes auto-dependent sprawl and exacerbates climate change.
In addition to the state chapter of the Sierra Club, the lawsuit was filed by Friends of Moses Hall, the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the Natural Resources Defense Council. It was filed against the Federal Highway Administration and the Maryland Department of Transportation, as well as top federal and state highway officials. Officials with the highway administration and MDOT didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit says the proposal threatens two historical sites: the Morningstar Moses Cemetery in Cabin John and Plummers Island, a research site for the Washington Biologists’ Field Club along the Potomac River below the American Legion Bridge.
Biologists say a wider American Legion Bridge would destroy critical research site
“This harmful and unnecessary project would increase air pollution while saddling drivers with millions of dollars in new tolls and failing to address the region’s traffic woes,” the Sierra Club’s Maryland chapter said.
Under Hogan’s plan, the state would partner with a private concessionaire that would finance the lanes, build them and operate them for 50 years, in exchange for keeping most of the toll revenue. The project would add two toll lanes in each direction to both highways, though one of the I-270 toll lanes would be converted from a carpool lane. The regular lanes would remain free.
The first segment would include the Beltway between the Virginia side of a new and expanded American Legion Bridge and the exit for Old Georgetown Road in Bethesda, and then up I-270 to near I-370. The northern section of I-270 between I-370 and Frederick is undergoing a separate federally required environmental analysis. | 2022-10-11T22:29:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opponents sue over Maryland plan to add toll lanes to Beltway, I-270 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/11/maryland-toll-lanes-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/11/maryland-toll-lanes-lawsuit/ |
Transcript: Future of Work: American Innovation
Today we have two segments on American innovation and the future of work. First, I'll be joined by Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat from Silicon Valley, and then MIT president, Rafael Reif. So be sure to stick around for both conversations.
Now, Congressman Khanna, welcome back to Washington Post Live.
REP. KHANNA: Thank you. I appreciate you having me, and I have so much admiration for Rafael Reif. So I'm sure your audience will have a great discussion with him as well.
MR. LYNCH: Great. I want to start with a major piece of legislation that President Biden signed back in August, the CHIPS and Science Act, which as you know provides $52 billion in federal subsidies for domestic semiconductor production, and I wonder how did we end up in a place where such a quintessentially American industry requires such massive federal support. Does this represent or reflect a failure of American trade policy, our approach to globalization, insufficient government investment in technology over the years, or all of the above?
REP. KHANNA: Well, all of the above. I was proud to coauthor the CHIPS and Science Act with Senator Schumer, Representative Gallagher, and Todd Young. It started out as the Endless Frontiers, but we made a strategic mistake in this country, and that is we said that manufacturing was somehow dirty, production, didn't matter.
Andy Grove warned about this in 2010. People can look at his Business Week articles saying how can you just let all the jobs leave, that if the production leaves, the innovation will leave as well.
We didn't invent the automobile. We mass produced it in America. We didn't invent the jet engine. We mass produced it in America. That's what made us an economy.
We did invent the semiconductor chip, we did invent the solar panel, and we said the production didn't matter. This was 50 years of misguided thinking, and the reality is we should care about production in America.
Some of the trade agreements had negative consequences, but the fact was that we were not building in our industrial capacity that requires government partnership in workforce and with industry to provide them often with financing that other countries were providing to have the production offshore, and of course, there should be public standards, whether or not stock buybacks and workers are treated well. But we just did not have any of that policy. We thought let the markets do what they want, and let globalization run its course. That, in my view, was a mistake.
MR. LYNCH: Now, some of the corporate investment announcements that have come in response to the CHIPS Act are truly eye‑catching. Intel has said it will spend $20 billion to develop a new facility outside Columbus, Ohio. IBM is going to spend $20 billion up in the Hudson Valley in New York, Micron, yet another $20 billion program also in New York, tens of thousands of good‑paying jobs promised, although many won't materialize for several years. I wonder, how confident are you that all of these plans and projects will actually come to life or bear fruit to the scale that they're being described as doing today?
REP. KHANNA: If we do our job well, they should. I mean, a lot depends on the Commerce Department, and they have good people there. A lot depends on making sure that they're collaborating with the private sector, collaborating with local universities, investing in workforce, making sure we have a rational immigration policy. Some of the people we need are in Taiwan and other parts of the world to revitalize our industries, but I believe, directionally, it will come together.
Now, the problem is that, you know, China, as Eric Schmidt says, does one of these CHIPS Acts every year. We have sort of an ad hoc approach. It took Schumer, myself, Todd Young, three years to get this across the finish line over the course of two different presidencies. We need‑‑and we just did it on semiconductors. What about all of the other industries in America? Steel where we've gone from 20 percent to 5 percent, aluminum where we've gone from 37 percent to 2 percent, graphite where we make zero, basically, here. You could go industry after industry where we're not doing much to be in competition for the next generation of production. So we need a much more comprehensive approach to the development of new industry, factories, jobs, making things here in the next decade.
MR. LYNCH: I want to talk about the extent to which this can be applied to other industries in a moment, but I also want to ask you about another provision of the legislation, which establishes regional technology hubs in parts of the country that haven't traditionally been thought of as tech hotbeds, and this idea has obviously appeal. But I also wonder whether it's vulnerable to sort of traditional pork barrel politics in terms of choosing the locations for these sites. How confident are you that‑‑or how do we make sure that these new centers can actually stand on their own and will pay off in a genuine way? And can we really replicate the sort of Silicon Valley success model just by having the government write checks?
REP. KHANNA: Surely no to the latter, nor do we want to replicate Silicon Valley everywhere, nor does everyone want to become Silicon Valley, but the reality is we can create massive production clusters on robotics, on automobile supplies, on electric vehicles, on batteries, on clean energy in different parts of the country. And different parts of the country may have different assets in what they want to emerge as, and they don't all have to be, quote/unquote, "high tech." You can't put a semiconductor fab everywhere, but they may be new manufacturing processes for making old things, better ways of making refrigerators and dishwashers and car parts. So I do think it can emerge.
Now, on your question of should it be‑‑can it be free of politics, what I would say is members of Congress like me should have no say in it, neither should Senators, and it needs to be an independent process. Commerce is going to be doing a lot of it. I don't think ideally that's sufficient. Senator Rubio and I have been working on a bill to create an economic development council with different agencies, the private sector, to really work with local and state governments to be more strategic in how we develop these types of industries across America. But, at the very least, with the system we have now, we need Commerce to implement it in a way that is apolitical, and I'm hopeful they will.
MR. LYNCH: Now, you mentioned earlier that we've spent the last several decades really letting the market sort out these questions of where manufacturing and other activities should take place. We're clearly now in an environment where members of both parties seem more comfortable with the government playing a more active role in directing economic activity. Industrial policy used to be an insult. Now it's become a shared objective.
But I wonder how you distinguish or where you draw the line in separating legitimate government functions designed to spur innovation and sort of create opportunity for new ventures across the country and inappropriate wasteful government largess. Today it's semiconductors, but you've mentioned several other industries already today, and you could, I think, expect to see a lot of industries lining up on Capitol Hill with their hands out.
REP. KHANNA: Well, I don't think we have to reinvent the wheel. We just need to look at what Alexander Hamilton said and how FDR developed America to be the most productive economy, and the way it developed was a partnership with the private sector, with government purchasing, government financing, and investment in people, in education and workforce development. And that partnership, I think we should do across geographies, across industries in developing America.
Now, how do we make sure that it's not just a handout? We make sure that they're public standards, that corporations that get financing or businesses that get financing are paying a fair wage, that they aren't using that money just to enrich shareholders, that they are‑‑have some differential in terms of their corporate CEO salary and worker salary.
But I believe we can through such an economic development council‑‑I call it a new economic patriotism‑‑actually have industry across America, new mask‑‑build masks here, make more baby formula here, make the thick steel here that's going to be needed for windmills, make graphite here that's going to be needed for electric cars, and we should be more intentional about it.
MR. LYNCH: Over time, won't efforts to promote domestic production inevitably carry an inflationary cost to it? Perhaps it's a cost that folks would be willing to bear, but presumably, the most cost‑effective situation or setup is what we've got, and if you add additional requirements to buy American‑made products or to make things here at the expense of overseas locales, that is going to cost more, isn't it?
REP. KHANNA: Not necessarily. I mean, if you look at Germany as a model, where they ran trade surpluses, our last trade surplus was in 1975. Now, we have a stronger dollar, and we can get into what we need to do in terms of the dollar being a reserve currency. But Germany managed to have much less of a decline in manufacturing, much more stable, almost 25 percent manufacturing work base because they invested in productivity. And our workforce is productive, and I believe the advantages of productivity coupled with the savings from the risks particularly in the geopolitical world we face, coupled with the risk to savings of shipping cost can make it productive here. So, if you're bringing back manufacturing, if inflation is just too much money chasing too few goods and you're adding to the goods, then that can actually be deflationary.
The question is really, are you adding to the goods in a way that is more than if you were adding to the goods from imports? And a lot of that is a question of productivity, and that's why I'm arguing that what we should be bringing back is manufacturing where we either have high technology focus like semiconductors or productivity advantages because of new processes.
MR. LYNCH: Now, we've heard a lot about China in the context of the CHIPS Act as a motivation for making these investments. How do you assess the overall technological balance between the U.S. and China? In what areas do you worry that we're at greatest risk of being eclipsed?
REP. KHANNA: In production over--across the board. I mean, they are producing more electric vehicles. They're producing almost all the graphite that goes into batteries. They're producing almost all the lithium. They're producing almost all the cobalt in terms of the processing. They are producing almost all the solar panels.
Now, we still have a lot of the Nobel laureates here. We still have a lot of the advantageous science here, but ultimately, there's innovation in production. And China has been doing that at scale.
What won World War II was that we outproduced Japan and Germany two to one during World War II. I'm not sure that we had that capacity as a nation right now to massively outproduce other countries. So we need to build our productive capacity. We also need to invest in AI and quantum computing. We're doing better than China in the private sector there, but our public investments there are lagging China.
MR. LYNCH: Now, you mentioned it took three years to get the CHIPS Act across the finish line. It was a heavy lift, even though you did have support on both sides of the aisle. Having a foreign threat has always been a good way to argue for government action. The famous example, as you know, is President Eisenhower selling the interstate highway system as a way to evacuate American cities in the event of a nuclear war. How important was the specter of Chinese progress in these areas, in an area of innovation and technology that I think many Americans sort of do see as a birthright of this country? Was that sort of the key that allowed this to finally come together?
REP. KHANNA: I do think it was a significant factor, especially in getting Republican support, this idea that America wants to remain preeminent, that we want to make sure that we are leading in technology and production, but there was also a recognition, especially after the 2016 election, that something had gone wrong in this country, and the fact that millions of people were deprived of their jobs, that jobs are just shipped offshore because of cheaper labor and corporations searching for lesser environmental standards, that there was a problem, and that production matters. So I think the combination of those two led to this bill which was remarkably bipartisan, probably the most bipartisan thing that has happened under President Biden and certainly in my six years in Congress.
MR. LYNCH: We also want to talk about the human dimension of innovation which involves immigration, education, and also making better use of those who are still on the sidelines of today's economy. And that brings us to a question from a reader, Richard Hood‑‑or a member of our audience, I should say. Richard Hood from Florida asks, how do you engage so many men who seem to be disconnected from the economy? Disconnected, I think he means from the world of work.
REP. KHANNA: Well, there's a great book that Richard Reeves has written recently about how one in seven men between the ages of 25 and 54, prime‑age men, have basically chosen to opt out of the workforce, and that is quite depressing. And he argues it's the highest we've seen in American modern history.
I believe one of the reasons of that was deindustrialization, that people's communities were destroyed, their plants moved offshore. They lost a lot of pride, and so there are multiple causes, and I certainly wouldn't say that I have a silver bullet. But I do think if we bring back production, if we are focused on making things in our country again, and if we're focused on investing in our workforce, that we can make progress in getting communities revitalized and getting people back into the workforce.
MR. LYNCH: There's also already been some talk that these new semiconductor facilities may encounter a shortage of engineers or the highly trained specialists that they're going to need for this work, particularly in specific communities. How concerning is that prospect, and does government have a role in trying to encourage the development of more people to fill those jobs, or are you confident the market will take care of that part of the picture?
REP. KHANNA: No, we need education in this country. Look, China is going to have twice the number of college graduates as us by 2040. I'd say it should be a wakeup call. You can't have in this country--pit blue‑collar workers against PhDs. Columbus, Ohio, showed to get 7,000 blue‑collar jobs in construction and manufacturing, you need the PhDs. You need the BAs as well, and that's why we need to have a massive investment in education in this country, for STEM education certainly but lowering the cost of college. I've been for free public college for that reason, having land grant universities have programs with private industry, and incentivizing people to go into engineering and electrical and manufacturing fields, and so that has to be a huge priority.
The lesson, you know, if I can make a comment that is slightly partisan, you know, Trump talked about bringing all these factories back, but the reality is just giving corporate tax cuts and deregulation isn't going to bring new factories. It's much harder than that. It requires financing. It requires government purchasing. It requires a developed workforce, and that's why I look to Hamilton and FDR who were actually able to bring many new factories to America.
MR. LYNCH: Now, of course, there's plenty of talent outside the United States as well, and you know coming from Silicon Valley how important immigrants have been to development of some of our greatest technological success stories. But we've made it harder for immigrants to come into the country in recent years. Chinese students who used to fill the ranks of many of our top universities are not coming in the same numbers as relations between the U.S. and China have soured. What would you like to see happen in immigration? And given the fact that this issue has been blocked on Capitol Hill indefinitely, is there any prospect of reaching some sort of sensible compromise that would allow us to get access to the technology‑‑or to the competencies that we need and still satisfy those who are concerned about the border?
REP. KHANNA: Well, my parents were immigrants and beneficiaries and part of Sputnik, where after Sputnik and the Soviets beat us to have the first satellite in space, our country said we needed engineers from any part of the world. And after the '65 Immigration Act, many Indian Americans, including my parents, came here. My father came here to study engineering at the University of Michigan. So I obviously believe that immigrants are critical to America's sense of innovation, to our sense of comparative advantage with the rest of the world.
What I would say is that we should link the immigration with massive investment in our own land grant universities, in our own educational institutions, so that we are also giving people born in America the tools and opportunities to become the engineers and scientists, and that it's not an either/or but collaborative. And I would invest in border security but also have some program for people to come across the border in an orderly way to work here.
And George W. Bush started a proposal of guest workers. I would have it be more permanent as the Lofgren bill in the House which we passed is, but there are the elements to come to a compromise. It's the politics that have unfortunately not made that possible for the last 30 years.
MR. LYNCH: Okay. Well, unfortunately, that takes care of the time we have. I'm sure we could go on all afternoon, but we are out of time. We're going to have to wrap up. Congressman, thanks very much for joining us today. We're grateful for your time.
REP. KHANNA: Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
MR. LYNCH: And up next, we'll hear from MIT president Rafael Reif. So stick around right after this video.
MS. KOCH: Hi. I'm Kathleen Koch. They say change is the one constant in life. Well, that applies in the workplace too.
But as disruptive as uncertainty can be, new research by Adobe has found that it can also have benefits. Here to talk with me about that today is Todd Gerber. Todd is vice president of Adobe Document Cloud. Welcome, Todd.
MR. GERBER: Thanks, Kathleen. Great to be here.
MS. KOCH: Todd, Adobe just released its second annual Future of Time study, and I had a chance to read it, and I found it so fascinating. In particular, I was surprised to see how much concerns about things like economic stability, covid‑19, or even climate change are impacting people's work experience. Tell us about what you learned.
MR. GERBER: Sure thing. There are a couple of things that we wanted to dive into in this particular study. We looked at productivity, work culture, and innovation, and a couple of things that really popped out were that change is the new constant in the workplace. I mean, if you need to know, look no further than the news to see that every day there's some‑‑you know, there's wars. There's weather. There's winds blowing of recession and the like.
The top two things that we saw pop out from an economic instability and inflation were the key concerns that employees and managers both cited, and the other thing that was really surprising was that both managers and employees, despite those distractions, found that work itself is a place of solace, a safe harbor, if you will, in these times of uncertainty.
MS. KOCH: Very interesting. So being at work really is helping people get through these difficult times we're in.
MR. GERBER: That's right, and I think part of it is it does provide a forum to talk with your peers and leadership. I know during the pandemic, we didn't just jump right into a meeting. There was always a little bit of an informal wellness check of how are things, what's going on in your life, before we would dive in, when everything was 100 percent virtual, and I think that spirit of that really has continued now that we're in a more hybrid state with people both virtual and in the office.
MS. KOCH: Well, it's great to see that that is bringing people together.
Today's event is focusing on the pace of innovation. How would you say that the uncertainty that we just discussed‑‑how did the survey find that that is affecting the way that companies innovate?
MR. GERBER: Well, it's definitely connected. In times of uncertainty, it forces certain choices and to reevaluate how and the ways in which you're getting the work done itself. Collaboration in particular is one that comes to mind. We didn't all used to be on a video screen, like we're doing this conversation. We would be in a physical room in most cases, and a handful of people would be on the phone. Now it's a very connected, integrated experience where whether you're physically in the office or somewhere else in the world, that we have the same types of tools, regardless of where you are, and it makes connecting and collaborating a lot easier.
I think the other thing too that we found is that employees really valued their organizations that have invested in digital solutions, particularly because they experience a better work‑life balance. Now you don't need to take that call from the car in the morning. You can take that from home, make sure that you still get the kids off to daycare, if you will, and then come into the office if that suits you at a later point in time and not miss out on the types of conversations or the decision‑making that is happening in an ever increasing, faster pace.
MS. KOCH: And just why companies are investing more in digitalization, because I read in the survey that over 70 percent of employees felt that they were getting support in that way from their companies, support that they needed.
MR. GERBER: That's right, and digitization has been a longstanding item on a list of many IT and chief digital officer‑type initiatives but in the last couple years really accelerated the pace of that and prioritization of that, you know, everything from experiences like employee on‑boarding to filling out forms with a bank, all of that, if you think back not that long ago, might have been very paper‑intensive and required physical signatures, digitization takes that and makes it 100 percent electronic. You know, it's an audible workflow, and oftentimes things that would take hours or days now is mere minutes when you take it to a digital‑type process.
MS. KOCH: Let's talk a little bit about productivity. What can companies do to help employees when they're having a hard time focusing? Again, at the start of this, we discussed how people are really being distracted by all the breaking news, all this uncertainty, and I do think we've all experienced it. This just feels like one of the big challenges of hybrid work today.
MR. GERBER: It sure is, and I think one of the first important steps is having that authentic conversation with your management team and your employee base. What problems are you trying to solve? Is it collaboration? Is it the way in which you're coauthoring, say, a document? And so understand what the core needs are, like, productivity might be defined very differently from organization to organization, and I think you need to have that overall alignment on what are the types of problems that you're solving so that you can evaluate the best set of tools that are going to be best suited to meeting those respective needs.
And then test things out. I think the great thing about this age in which we live in is that there are a lot of options, and it's easy to try and experiment and get real‑time feedback and adapt along the way. And given that changes the new constant, I think we'll continue to see a lot more of that testing and iteration‑type mindset in the workplace as well.
MS. KOCH: One final takeaway, what would you say is the most important one from the survey?
MR. GERBER: I think one of the key ones is really having a supportive environment between management team and employee, having those authentic conversations, to be able to have a clear understanding of what the concerns of the day are, provide space for that, and a technology environment that helps people be their best selves and getting their personal and professional work done.
MS. KOCH: Great. Todd Gerber, vice president of Adobe Document Cloud, thanks so much for joining us.
MR. GERBER: Thank you for having me.
MS. KOCH: And now I'll had it back over to The Washington Post.
MR. LYNCH: Welcome back, and for those of you just joining us, welcome to Washington Post Live. I'm David J. Lynch, global economics correspondent here at The Post.
I'm joined now by Rafael Reif, president of MIT, an institution that's right on the forefront of science, technology, and innovation.
President Reif, welcome.
DR. REIF: Thank you, David. Welcome. Thank you for inviting me here, and I'm delighted to be part of a segment with Representative Ro Khanna, who has been such a great supporter for the innovation ecosystem that we want to establish and reestablish at MIT and in the country.
MR. LYNCH: Well, we're thrilled to have you with us.
I want to go right to a question from a member of our audience, Stephen Tolle from Florida, who says some commentators claim that innovation in the United States has stalled since the turn of the century, a claim, Stephen says, that's supported by the woeful state of productivity improvement in the country. What is your take on this assessment? Is the U.S. still innovating the way it once did?
DR. REIF: Well, yes. The U.S. is still innovating the way it once did. The problem is that the way it once did is not good enough now. So we are still innovating. We're still doing very well, but the environment, the ecosystem, the global ecosystem is much more competitive. Others are doing very, very well. Others are catching up or running ahead of us, and we just have to reassess our innovation ecosystem to figure out how to fine‑tune it to adapt to this new reality.
MR. LYNCH: So how would you describe the formula or the recipe for innovation that the U.S. used in the past, perhaps at its heyday in the '50s, '60s, '70s, whatever period you'd like to choose? How would you describe sort of the classic formula by which the U.S. developed the innovations that led the world?
DR. REIF: Well, the classic formula really started, I would say, after World War II, by the way, but it's very simple, and it's a formula that other countries are also trying to copy from us.
First of all, you have to start with supporting basic science, basic science research. I mean, advancing knowledge is critical. Without advancing knowledge‑‑the more knowledge we have, the more tools we have to advance technologies and do innovation. So supporting of basic science is critical.
As a result of that, again, creative people in this country develop new technologies, and once you have new technologies, not every science would develop new technologies, but eventually they all engage and continue to develop new technologies.
And then once you have new technologies, you have new tools to create, to innovate. You can innovate with Uber [phonetic]. You can innovate with Google or [unclear] changes. We can innovate with an iPhone. It all is based on existing technologies at the time which was based from science that was created‑‑developed before. So science is the foundation of everything. Advancing knowledge is key. The U.S. has been very good at it. Then comes technology development as a result of the advancement of knowledge, and then you leave the technologies to whoever people to come up with innovative ways, clever ways to use technologies to create new markets. That has been the model for the last 70‑some years, and that model still works.
The only problem is that it does not move as fast as we need to move right now to be competitive with some other countries who are doing very well.
MR. LYNCH: And so where did we go wrong? That model, as you describe it, was fantastically successful over the years. Was there a particular turning point that caused things to go in the wrong direction? How did we take our eye off the ball as a country?
DR. REIF: We did not go wrong. It's that others are doing much better. I mean, we have competitors now. We used to have the whole field for ourselves. It was a racetrack in which the only race was us. So we raced, and we won. And right now, there are other companies, countries racing with us, and that's the issue.
I think if you believe my simplified model that we have to advance science and then from that we come up with new technologies and from that we come up with innovation, what we need to do is do that even better. So advanced knowledge, well, that comes with research funding. We need to do more of that, and then we need to do more of the kind of advances of knowledge that can produce new technologies. And that is‑‑you know, we talk about science as discovery science, curiosity‑driven, and that has been traditionally what much of the federal funding of research does and has been doing for years, not all of it but a good chunk of it. So curiosity‑driven science is a very good thing. We need more of that.
But the goal in a competitive environment is to come up with technologies. As I said, some of the science in the near term produce technologies. Some will produce technologies much later. We need to move that a little bit faster. For that, we need‑‑in addition to discovery science, curiosity‑driven, we need to do what I call or we call in the scientific circles "use‑inspired science," so science which is driven for a purpose, science that is driven to develop new technologies. That is the part that we need to do more of.
In fact, that is the kind of science that we had in the 1940s, mid‑1940s. The laboratories had produced a semiconductor that is the parent of everything we are doing today in the electronics and photonics and just about every product we use today, the chips. All we are talking about comes from that use‑inspired science of the 1940s, late 1940s.
So I think we need to go back to doing more of that, not to stop doing discovery science. That is extremely important. That is the mother of all developing of creative‑‑creation of knowledge, but we need to do more use‑inspired basic science so that we can move more of the research of science into advancing knowledge into technologies. That's the first element, the first part of the ecosystem we have to tinker with, and in fact, the science part of the CHIPS and Science Act is actually driven, the whole idea of that is to address use‑inspired basic science research. And that is what Representative Ro Khanna also pushed in the House with what we called the Endless Frontier Act, which is to focus what ended up being the science part of the CHIPS and Science Act.
MR. LYNCH: I think many Americans have also seen that a link between the ability to innovate the nature of a society, free or controlled, and have believed that over time, free societies, democratic societies, will inevitably do better because people are allowed to pursue their research and their innovations, no matter whose ox gets gored or no matter what a government leader might think. And, in that light, I want to ask you whether that's at all naïve or whether it remains the case, and second, how you would assess the current technological balance between the U.S. and China and where is‑‑where is the U.S. most at risk of being overtaken by Chinese specialists.
DR. REIF: Well, I think‑‑I think, yes, I agree that a free society would produce more innovation, and I don't know that I can tell you. I've done experiments with that, and I know the results, and I know that I'm right. But I think evidence, historical evidence has shown that that is the case, and I strongly believe that that is the case. So I think that I don't have any issues with that statement. I fully agree with that.
So, in the long run, if the countries that want to compete with us, they want to compete with us by having central control of what they do, I think at the end of the day, the U.S., the system of just being a little more open and more liberal in terms of research, will win. That's my strong belief in that.
In terms of technology, look, there are some areas‑‑countries like China are focused on advancing some technological areas. They are focusing on advancing, whether it's chips from manufacturing or whether it's communications, 5G communications. They focus on addressing whether it's pitch [phonetic] processing. They focus on those areas. So because they are so focused in some of those areas, they are, I would argue, even ahead of us. But I think that is because they are particularly focused.
I think, in general‑‑in general, we are‑‑the U.S. as a whole is ahead of them. Let me just give you an example of something that I heard. I was in a hosted‑‑at a dinner event. It must have been like six years ago, seven years ago in China, in Beijing, and there were at the time captains of the industry being there at the dinner. And I was kind of their guest. And they said two things to me at that dinner. They said when it comes to scale, "The U.S. cannot compete with us. We're going to beat them every time because we have much more market, much more‑‑in terms of scale, we're going to‑‑we know how to do that much better than the U.S." And I felt, boy, that's pretty arrogant, but, you know, I guess that's true. And then they said right away after that. They said, "But when it comes to innovation, when it comes to creativity, we will never beat the U.S.," and I said, "Wait a minute. How come you said to me‑‑you were so arrogant on the first half and so humble on the second half? How do you explain that?" And they said, "Because the U.S. is heterogeneous. You bring the best brains for the whole world that come with different ways, different ways of thinking, and come with new ideas. We are much more homogenous." This is them telling me. So even they believe that when it comes to being very creative and very innovative, the U.S. will always be ahead.
I think the question is that is a fact. We recognize that; they recognize that. So how do we take advantage of that fact? And that's the key issue here.
MR. LYNCH: Well, in that regard, tell me a little bit about turning innovations, scientific breakthroughs and the like, into marketable products that people can benefit from in their daily life? I think you have some experience with that at MIT through something called The Engine. How does it work?
DR. REIF: Well, it's working very well, but that is the other‑‑that is the other fine‑tuning that we need to do in our ecosystem. The first fine‑tuning that I'm suggesting is that we need to continue to advance and to have federal support and all sorts of support for basic science, for basic research, for advancing knowledge, but all of it cannot be just discovery curiosity. We have to do use‑inspired as well. That's one fine‑tuning that I would like us to do, and that's what the Science Act‑‑the science part of the CHIPS and Science Act hopefully will address.
The second issue is exactly the point you made. So, okay, you have advancing knowledge from science. You have technologies. From technologies, you start innovating. Well, in our ecosystem, the way America works, you can innovate in the software space, in a digital space. You can innovate products that you know very early. Investors can tell very early and they will be very successful or they will fail, and they can just cut the funding off. So it's a much faster way to get a return on the investment, and that produces all these large companies that we have today that we invest so heavily and so successfully.
But there is this other kind of investment based on new science, based on new technology that society needs, that society needs to address climate change, to address a variety of issues, things that are not just digital, things that you have to build, whether it's a new way of creating energy like fusion energy or new storage device, things that you need to build based on new technology. Those take time, and by and large, our market economy doesn't have the patience to invest in products that take time to develop, even though society may need them. And I think that's the other area which we have to fine‑tune.
I saw that years ago. I saw that many of the ideas coming out of this space and other places like this one, like MIT, they could do wonders for society. They would not get venture funding because they would take too long to develop. If you have money to invest, you put it in areas in which you are going to get a quick return of the investment. Why invest in something which may take them years? Society needs them, but you want to invest in what gives you a better, fast return.
So The Engine that we created here was to address that, what I call "market failure," to address companies that are going to produce products that we need them in society but that the capital system, the risk capital of today or of five years ago, even today, is not willing to invest heavily on them because there are other avenues in which they can get a return faster. That's why The Engine was created. I want not just for those products to reach the marketplace. I want the young people here at MIT and other universities to see that their ideas can change the world, change society, and improve standards of living. They can find a way to the marketplace as opposed to being filed away. That was the heart of it.
The Engine is funded. It's another‑‑it's funded by private capital, investors that want a return on their investment, but they can be patient. They don't want it in three years or five years. They could wait ten years. That is the other part of our ecosystem that I think needs a little bit more attention too.
MR. LYNCH: Interesting. I want to ask you about the partial decoupling that we're seeing between the U.S. and China, most notably in the technology arena, barriers going up just this week to the sale of sophisticated semiconductor equipment to the Chinese. U.S. and Chinese scientists working together in recent decades have collaborated on a lot of important work. What sort of impact will the separation of these two countries into different realms, if you will‑‑how much of an impact do you think that's going to have on our ability to innovate and innovation globally?
DR. REIF: Well, time will tell, but in my view, it's going to hurt both countries. Of course, China needs these kind of products for them to advance faster, but we also need to sell these products so we can continue to innovate.
So I think, you know, it remains to be seen. I understand the policy. I understand some of the reasons for doing it, but I'm afraid that I don't know which country is going to hurt the most because for us to advance our technology, for us to keep producing the next generations of technology‑‑and we've been doing that for decades‑‑we need to sell the products to customers that want to buy them. So that, I'm actually concerned about the impact of that to our own economy, to our country, and to our own technology development.
MR. LYNCH: And I'm curious. I want to ask you in the time we have left about one specific area of innovation, which deals with the climate crisis. As every year goes by, we're sort of missing a chance to do something about greenhouse gases. Can we innovate our way out of climate change?
DR. REIF: I'm certain we can innovate a way out of climate‑‑I'm certain of that. We have‑‑in The Engine‑‑you mentioned that earlier, David‑‑there are 38 companies support it and that a large a number of them are basically in the climate space. So I think we can innovate through it, but they will have to believe me, that we have to support them.
I mean, I've been saying for a while that we need to advance on two separate tracks to address climate change. One is we have technologies right now. We have renewables. We have solar. We have wind. We need to figure out how to employ them as fast as possible and introduce them to the market and as affordable as possible. That is necessary, and that is doable if we are committed to it, but that alone will not get us to zero carbon by 2050, which we have to get there. So we need to‑‑we need the Track 2, which is basically advance these technologies and get them to the marketplace as soon as possible. That will take a little longer, but if Track 1 can move very fast as we should, Track 2 can take a little longer, and we still can get there by 2050.
So can we innovate a way? Yes, we can, but we just have to do the three elements that I talked about. We have to do the basic science. We have to let that basic science lead to technologies, and then let the technologies lead to innovation. That has worked always in this country. We just have to fine‑tune that a little bit more, a little but further for this to work this time around as well.
MR. LYNCH: Interesting. We're coming up just against a hard stop here, but I did want to ask you. I understand you're retiring as president of MIT at the end of the year. What's next for you?
DR. REIF: Oh, that needs another half an hour. I think, number one, calendar '23‑‑I mean, I'm staying in my job until the end of calendar '22. Calendar '23, I'm going to take a sabbatical, and then most likely, calendar '24, I'll get back to MIT. I think I want to use my sabbatical to figure out‑‑I've been enjoying myself while at the same time driving MIT to be the place it wants to be, which is the place where good things for the world happen. Now I have to learn in '23 how to do that without doing it with MIT but doing it on my own. Lots for me to think about, so maybe a year from now, we can talk about this.
MR. LYNCH: Fair enough.
Well, Rafael Reif, thanks very much for your time today. A very interesting conversation. I wish we had more time for it, but thanks for stopping by.
And thanks to all of you for joining us in this conversation. You want to see what's next for us, head over to Washington Post Live for a list of upcoming programs. | 2022-10-11T22:29:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: Future of Work: American Innovation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/10/11/transcript-future-work-american-innovation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/10/11/transcript-future-work-american-innovation/ |
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine war live updates: G-7 pledges ‘steadfast’ commitment to Kyiv...
Yulia Datsenko, 38, in her apartment in central Kyiv, which was damaged on Monday when Russia fired a barrage of missiles at Ukrainian cities, including the capital. (Gleb Garanich/Reuters)
KYIV, Ukraine — With Kyiv facing rolling electricity outages, authorities on Tuesday raced to repair the damage from a barrage of Russian missiles that slammed into the heart of the Ukrainian capital, in a significant escalation of the nearly eight-month-old war that drew international condemnation of Moscow.
Many Kyiv residents hurried on Tuesday to make whatever preparations they could ahead of potential cuts to power, heat and water — fearful that the missile strikes, which killed at least 20 people across Ukraine on Monday, were a bleak prelude to what they will face repeatedly in coming months.
The attack, which Russian President Vladimir Putin said was retaliation for an explosion over the weekend on the Crimean Bridge, targeted power plants and other critical infrastructure, and underscored the continuing vulnerability of Ukrainian cities despite a surge in Western military aid since Putin’s Feb. 24 invasion.
Speaking to leaders of the Group of Seven via video link on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky voiced his own apprehension about Russia’s intentions in the coming months, and he pleaded again with leaders of the world’s advanced democratic economies for more advanced air defense systems.
Even as they began bracing for difficult months ahead, Kyiv residents voiced determination and resolve.
Olga Sali, who was surveying the gaping crater a Russian bomb left near a playground in one of the city’s central parks, said that she had just dropped her 10-year-old daughter at school on Monday morning before the first missiles struck. Terrified, she hurried to an underground shelter.
But on Tuesday, when the air alert rang out again — in another attack that authorities said was thwarted by air defenses — Sali stayed put. “It’s a pity all that has happened in our country,” she said. But: “We decided to stay here, because it’s our home.”
In Kyiv, authorities said they were working to protect vital infrastructure while acknowledging the limits of what they could do without more comprehensive air defenses for the city of an estimated 3 million wartime residents.
Officials said that 83 missiles were fired at different areas of Ukraine on Monday, and that about half of them were shot down.
In response to the attack, in-person schooling in Kyiv was suspended for the remainder of the week. And across the broader capital region, police said they were increasing their patrols in anticipation of evening power cuts, Kyiv regional Police Chief Andriy Nebitov said.
Monday’s strikes created “a certain deficit” in energy capacity in Kyiv, the city’s power company said after the attacks.
To help ease the strain on the grid, the utility announced rolling power outages lasting up to four hours across sectors of the city. It asked people to refrain from using washing machines and other heavy-demand appliances during peak consumption hours, and also urged them to keep devices charged as much as possible given likely service cuts. Water service was also disrupted temporarily in some areas.
Additional strikes on Tuesday left 0ne-third of Ukraine’s western city of Lviv without power, and parts of the city without water, Mayor Andriy Sadovyi reported on Telegram. A power plant in the Vinnytsia region, southwest of Kyiv, was hit twice on Tuesday, officials said, with the second attack injuring at least six workers who were making repairs after the earlier strike.
Kyiv Major Vitali Klitschko described the immense scale of the challenges his administration now faces in sustaining utilities, education, medical care and public transport for a city that may well come under sustained aerial siege.
Unlike earlier in the war, when Russia struck areas outside the city center as it mounted a failed attempt to seize the capital, Monday’s attacks targeted Kyiv’s historic, commercial and government core.
Klitschko said the challenges would only increase during the winter, when Ukraine’s intense cold will make the impact of possible power cuts more painful for residents. More than three-quarters of Kyiv’s buildings are connected to a central heating system powered by gas, which can be disrupted by explosions.
In an interview on Tuesday, Klitschko decried attacks on civilian sites and vital infrastructure.
“War has clear rules,” he said, which Russia has violated. Klitschko said Russia’s leaders were trying “to make people helpless without services, but it’s not successful.”
The mayor contrasted the Russian strike on a largely glass bridge in central Kyiv — a tourist attraction known as the “Klitschko Bridge” because of his involvement in its construction — with the explosion on the Crimean Bridge, a vital road and rail link between mainland Russia and occupied Crimea, which Russia has used as a conduit for weapons, equipment and other supplies for its troops in Ukraine.
Ukraine has not officially claimed responsibility for that attack, but Putin blamed the country’s special services and warned Monday of further missile strikes in the event of other attacks by Ukraine.
Klitschko described the Crimean Bridge as a military target because it has been used to move military resources, and he noted with satisfaction that the Kyiv bridge had suffered only minor damage in Putin’s attack. “It’s a signal they are weak,” he said.
Already the city is planning mobile heating points as a backup to help hospitals and schools during outages. The U.S. government meanwhile announced it would provide Ukraine with $55 million in “winterization” aid to repair heating networks and help Ukrainians prepare to withstand the cold weather ahead.
In a visit to Kyiv last week, Samantha Power, the head of the U.S. Agency for International Development, joined Klitschko in touring a U.S.-funded project to rebuild and upgrade heating pipes damaged by an earlier Russian strike.
Some Kyiv residents aren’t waiting for winter to act. In one electronics store on Tuesday, external power bricks for cellphones were nearly sold out only a few hours after the store opened following a prolonged air alert that morning.
Oleksandr Petrenko, a sales clerk, said the chargers were customers’ biggest request, followed by electronic heaters, and he said the store was were in danger of running out. In the store kitchen, even many employees were talking about buying bricks for themselves.
“Because who would have thought that we were going to experience electricity problems here in Kyiv even two days ago?” Petrenko said. “But yesterday’s attack on Kyiv changed the demand.”
Petrenko, 25, shrugged off the possibility of further Russian attacks, which he called “predictable.” He said he was more worried about how the crisis would affect his finances. Because he works on commission, he said he won’t have earnings if the store closes due to air raid sirens. “It’s my only income,” he said.
While Igor Moiseyev’s apartment didn’t lose power on Monday, he wasn’t taking any chances. He and his family have already stocked up on water and groceries, and ordered candles. He’s now planning to assemble a homemade ethanol fireplace so they’ll be able heat at least part of their apartment.
On Monday, Moiseyev was taking his 12-year-old daughter to school when the air raid siren went off. After he dropped her off — she spent the day in the school bunker with her classmates — he rushed home to seek shelter himself.
Others in Kyiv were not so lucky. Among those killed on Monday was a medical worker named Oksana Leontieva, who was driving to work after dropping her son off at kindergarten, according to a government official.
But Moiseyev said Kyiv residents were steeled against Russia’s aggression unlike when the war first started. “Of course I’m scared for my family,” he said. “But it’s different now then back in February. We are prepared and know exactly what to do and how to act.”
Moiseyev was out looking for a charging brick on Tuesday capable of powering his laptop so that he could continue his remote work for an insurance company if extended blackouts occur.
He cited reports that the United States and Germany may be sending Ukraine additional air defense systems. “I hope we’re going to be better protected,” he said. “We badly need those systems.”
For 22-year-old Victoria Krupenko, who spent the first month of the war in Poland, Monday marked the first time she heard such an explosion — extremely loud, and close to the apartment where she lives.
“I hope never to hear it again,” she said. But she expressed confidence in Ukraine’s military and their ability to shield the city. “They’re doing their best. I believe the Russians just wanted to test us yesterday.”
Isabelle Khurshudyan in Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, contributed to this report. | 2022-10-11T22:29:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kyiv authorities repair missile damage as residents prepare for blackouts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/11/kyiv-power-outage-missile-strike/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/11/kyiv-power-outage-missile-strike/ |
FILE - Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), presents the report “2021 State of Climate Services: Water”, during press conference, at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, on Oct. 5, 2021. The head of the U.N. weather agency says the war in Ukraine “may be seen as a blessing” from a climate perspective because it is accelerating the development of and investment in green energies over the longer term — even though fossil fuels are being used at a time of high demand now. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP) (Salvatore di Nolfe/Keystone) | 2022-10-11T22:30:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Weather chief: Ukraine war may be 'blessing' for climate - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/weather-chief-ukraine-war-may-be-blessing-for-climate/2022/10/11/cfb49db4-4969-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/weather-chief-ukraine-war-may-be-blessing-for-climate/2022/10/11/cfb49db4-4969-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
Supreme Court weighs far-reaching effects of Calif. pork restrictions
Penned pigs in Ryan, Iowa, in 2018. (Ben Brewer/Reuters)
Supreme Court justices on Tuesday pondered trade embargoes, morality and the ability of a “behemoth” state to impose the ethical and safety concerns of its people on other Americans who don’t share those views.
Justices across the court’s ideological spectrum were deeply engaged in a constitutional challenge to California’s humane-pork law, passed by nearly 63 percent of Californians in 2018. Proposition 12 doesn’t just regulate the way pregnant sows are treated in the Golden State — very little pork is produced there — but bans the sale of products derived from sows that are not allowed at least 24 square feet of space and the ability to stand up and turn around in their pens.
The National Pork Producers Council and the American Farm Bureau Federation say such a measure violates the Constitution’s restraints on the authority of states to regulate industry beyond their borders.
Sorting out the arguments from lawyers for the pork producers, the Biden administration (which agrees with the farmers), the state of California and the Humane Society of the United States took nearly two hours and 15 minutes — more time than the court spent last term on the case that overturned Roe v. Wade.
In the end, it appeared that some of the justices favored passing on the constitutionality issue for now and returning the case to California, where a judge might be forced to weigh the law’s burdens on interstate commerce against the moral and health benefits of the regulations California voters seek to impose.
“A lot of policy disputes can be incorporated into laws like yours,” Justice Elena Kagan told California Solicitor General Michael J. Mongan, adding, “we live in a divided country, and the balkanization that the framers were concerned about is surely present today.”
Kagan said, “Do we want to live in a world where we’re constantly at each others’ throats and, you know, Texas is at war with California and California at war with Texas?”
In this case, it’s mostly farmers from the Midwest and South who say they would suffer for the incredible costs that California’s regulations would impose on the companies that produce pork. Californians consume 13 percent of the nation’s pork, but 99.9 percent of it produced beyond the state’s borders.
“We’ve heard a lot about morality,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said to Jeffrey A. Lamken, representing the Humane Society. “I think people in some states, maybe the ones that produce a lot of pork, in Iowa or North Carolina or Indiana, may think there’s a moral value in providing a low-cost source of protein to people, maybe particularly at times of rising food prices. But under your analysis, it’s California’s view of morality that prevails over the views of people in other states because of the market power that they have.”
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. seemed to agree with that, saying California’s “behemoth” stature allowed it to do what smaller states could not. “You can bully the other states, and so you’re not really that concerned about retaliation? Is that part of your position?” he asked.
Mongan said the state wasn’t attempting to coerce anyone. “California voters chose to pay higher prices to serve their local interest in refusing to provide a market to products they viewed as morally objectionable and potentially unsafe,” he said. “The Commerce Clause does not prohibit that choice. Prop 12 is not protectionist or discriminatory.”
Lamken said other states have required more room for pregnant sows, and made their health and moral concerns clear. In addition, “nine states, from Louisiana to Nevada to Virginia, ban the in-state sale of cosmetics that are tested on animals,” he said.
Justice Clarence Thomas has expressed skepticism about the dormant Commerce Clause, a doctrine that says evenhanded regulations can be unlawful if the burdens on interstate commerce are excessive compared to the benefits. Justice Neil M. Gorsuch indicated that he had such concerns as well.
He asked Timothy S. Bishop, representing the pork producers, why the balancing test he wants courts to perform is not just a way of “enshrining non-textual economic liberties into the Constitution, something this court … disavowed a long time ago?”
“We’re going to have to balance your veterinary experts against California’s veterinary experts, the economic interests of Iowa farmers against California’s moral concerns and their views about complicity in animal cruelty. Is that any job for a court of law?” he asked.
Bishop replied that courts have not had problems in the past in applying such balancing tests and that very few state laws are struck down. But he said California’s law will affect all consumers.
“The price increase from Prop 12 cannot be contained within California because, at the time the farmer raises the sow, it doesn’t know where six months later the pork is going to be sold to,” Bishop said.
“You know, we sell everything except the oink, is the phrase. So the blood, the fat, the collagen, everything is sold, and it’s sold around the world in response to demand. Every piece of that pig is going to bear the cost, the significant cost, of raising pork the way that California demands.”
Justice Department lawyer Edwin S. Kneedler also said California had gone too far. “Proposition 12 imposes a trade barrier based on conduct beyond California’s borders,” he said. “It fails to respect the autonomy of California’s sister states. It invites conflict and retaliation and threatens the balkanization of the national economic union.”
“I have a dozen pork farmers in the court today who would testify at trial that they are being forced by distributors and packers and retailers to comply with Prop 12 in a way that they think kills pigs, that harms their workers,” Bishop said. “And we believe we’re entitled to a trial to show that.” | 2022-10-11T22:32:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court considers effects of California pork restrictions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/supreme-court-california-pork-law/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/supreme-court-california-pork-law/ |
School buses involved in two crashes in an hour in Prince George’s
The collisions occurred in the early evening, police say
Two school buses were in traffic crashes within an hour Tuesday evening in Prince George’s County, the police said.
One of the buses carried children, but no injuries were reported in either crash, according to Cpl. Erik Marsh, a spokesman for the county police.
He said children were aboard a county school bus that was in a collision with a private vehicle about 5:10 p.m. near Enterprise and Annapolis roads. No injuries were reported in either vehicle, he said.
The site is a major traffic intersection in the Bowie area.
About a half-hour later, a school bus and another vehicle collided in the 100 block of Harry S. Truman Drive, Marsh said. He said no children were on that bus, and no injuries were reported. The site is in the Largo area, southeast of a major interchange between the Capital Beltway and Route 214.
No causes could be immediately learned for the two collisions. | 2022-10-11T23:07:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Two school bus crashes in an hour in Prince George's, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/11/school-bus-crashes-prince-georges/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/11/school-bus-crashes-prince-georges/ |
The account, echoed by a person she confided in at the time, deepens the questions swirling around the anti-abortion Senate GOP candidate in Georgia.
Alice Crites
Herschel Walker and former ambassador Nikki Haley speak with the media during Herschel’s Unite Georgia Bus Stop rally in Norcross, Ga on Sept. 9, 2022. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
The mother of one of Herschel Walker’s children had to repeatedly press the former football star and now-Republican Senate nominee in Georgia for funds to pay for a 2009 abortion that she said he wanted her to have, according to the woman and a person she confided in at the time.
“When I talked to him, I said, 'You need to send — I can’t afford to pay for this," the woman said in one of several interviews with The Washington Post in recent days, adding that she also told him: "We did this too. Both of us did this. We both know how babies are made.”
The extended discussion over payment for the procedure to end the first pregnancy has not been previously reported. The woman and the person she confided in both spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect the privacy of themselves and their loved ones.
As previously reported, the same woman also says Walker pressured her to have an abortion again when she became pregnant a second time; she chose to give birth to her son, who is now 10. The woman sued Walker in New York in 2013 for child support after he allegedly refused to provide it, according to a person familiar with the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details. Walker, who now says he is a multimillionaire, said in that case that he made only about $140,000 per year, the person said.
The new revelations deepen questions about Walker’s treatment of women and his children, as well as the conflict between his public opposition to abortion and his alleged private behavior. Walker and his campaign have denied the woman’s claims that he wanted her to have two abortions, and Walker initially claimed he did not know the woman who was making them.
“I know nothing about any woman having an abortion,” Walker said to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt last week after the Daily Beast first reported the allegation about paying for an abortion. “Had that happened, I would have said it, because it’s nothing to be ashamed of there."
Walker is running on a platform that opposes abortion in all cases, without exceptions for rape or incest or to protect the life of the mother. He has said he would vote for a national ban of the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy. He also has also criticized Black men for being absent parents — a criticism now leveled at him by the woman and by his grown son by another mother, Christian Walker. Herschel Walker has acknowledged having four children with four different women.
Three women, including his first wife, have told police that Walker threatened them in various ways. Walker has not disputed his first wife’s account, but he or his campaign have denied the others.
The Daily Beast first reported the woman’s account of Walker paying for the cost of an abortion and the New York Times later reported the woman’s account of Walker’s unsuccessful efforts to persuade her to have another abortion. The woman has told The Post that those reports accurately described her experiences.
The woman was initially supportive of Walker’s Senate campaign, but said that changed after he announced that he would ban all abortions.
The woman described an on-and-off-again relationship with Walker; the lawyer who represented her during the child support case said in a statement at the time that it lasted from from November 2008 to September 2011. In the weeks before and after the 2009 abortion, the person she confided in at the time recalled her explaining she had to press Walker to send funds, which the person remembered interpreting as an attempt to make the former football player take some accountability for his actions.
“She was like, ‘I’ll do it as soon as you send the check,'” recalled the person. “And he was like ‘I sent the check.’ And she was like, ‘It’s been seven days. I didn’t get it.’”
Walker reported in August 2022 that he had income and assets worth between about $27 million and $59 million, according to financial disclosure forms.
Walker is seeking to unseat Democratic Sen. Raphael G. Warnock in November. The race is close, polls show. Both parties see Georgia as a key battleground in the larger fight for the control of the Senate. Walker and Warnock are set to debate on Friday in Savannah.
Antiabortion groups have rallied to Walker’s side as have some national Republican leaders. Some Republicans in Georgia have said they worry that they erred in elevating an unvetted nominee.
On Tuesday, Sen. Rick Scott (Fla.), who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ala.) appeared at a rally for Walker in Georgia. Former president Donald Trump has had discussions about coming to Georgia for a rally in the final weeks before Election Day.
A central part of Walker’s pitch is that he has struggled with mental illness and recovered from it, a story of redemption that his team believes will resonate with Georgia voters. He authored a book published in 2008 called “Breaking Free,” in which he details violent thoughts he had while struggling with Dissociative Identity Disorder. He also says these episodes ended after he said he received professional help for his condition.
In 2009, at least two women that Walker dated were pregnant, according to public records in one case and three people familiar with the other pregnancy. One gave birth to a boy in February 2009, public records show. Later that year, the woman who spoke to The Post began making repeated calls to Walker to tell him she was pregnant.
When Walker eventually responded, he told the woman that it was “not a good time” for a baby, she said. “We should do this the right way,” he added, implying that the couple could have a planned pregnancy some time in the future, according to the woman. The woman said she did not know he had just fathered a child who was born in February 2009.
The woman agreed to have an abortion, and said she asked him repeatedly for money to cover the cost. The woman had less than $600 in her checking account, according to her account and an ATM receipt. Amid the Great Recession, she had lost her job, she said.
Days after the procedure, Walker sent a $700 check along with a get-well card that features a drawing of a steaming cup of tea and included a handwritten note from Walker. “Pray you are feeling better,” signed, “H.” It was the first time Walker had ever sent money to the woman, she said.
The card was seen as an acknowledgment of the abortion, according to the woman and two other people with contemporaneous memories of it.
The woman also supplied a copy of receipt for $575 from the Atlanta Women’s Medical Center, showing she had paid for the procedure with a Visa card on Sept. 12, 2009. And she had a pamphlet from the center detailing “Post-operative Instructions.”
The second time she became pregnant, in 2011, Walker also did not respond immediately to her calls, she said. Walker again said she should not have the baby, according to the woman and her confidant. Again, Walker said it was “not a good time” for a baby, she said.
But the woman said she did not want to undergo a second abortion and felt fate had intervened, with the second pregnancy as a “sign” that she should raise the child.
Walker sent occasional checks to the woman during her second pregnancy, she said, but the money didn’t come on any regular schedule so she could not depend on it. “It was just whenever he felt like getting around to it,” the woman recalled. Eventually the woman took Walker to court to get child support, records show.
“The child’s mother is a graduate student … struggling to make ends meet,” according to a May 2013 statement about that case from her lawyer at the time, Andres Alonso. “Unfortunately, Mr. Walker has thus far decided not to take full financial responsibility for the care of his alleged son.”
Walker was ordered to pay $3,500 a month in child support, according to the person familiar with the case. He also paid a lump sum of $15,000 to help cover hospital costs connected to his son’s birth and early child care, the person said. The child support payments were based on Walker having an annual income of about $140,000 a year in 2013, the person said.
The financial disclosures Walker filed this year for his Senate run show annual income of $3 million from H. Walker Enterprises, LLC, an entity that he reported being worth between $25 million and $50 million.
Walker’s behavior toward his family has come up repeatedly during the campaign. Walker has been harshly critical of absentee Black fathers, once calling the behavior a “major, major problem.”
“The father leaves in the Black family. He leaves the boys alone so they’ll be raised by their mom,” Walker said in a 2021 interview. “If you have a child with a woman, even if you have to leave that woman — even if you have to leave that woman — you don’t leave that child.”
But he had only publicly discussed one of his four children until the Daily Beast published a report earlier this year that he had fathered a second child.
He subsequently acknowledged three sons and a daughter, and pointed to a form he filled out ahead of his May 2018 appointment to the President’s Council on Sports, Nutrition and Fitness, where he identified all of them as evidence he was not hiding anything. They include a boy born in 2012; a boy born in 2009, Christian Walker, 23; and a daughter in her 40s. Herschel Walker’s daughter has her own children, making him a grandfather.
Walker has had very limited in-person contact with his 10-year-old son despite repeated invitations to be part of his life, including only a handful of in-person meetings, according to the woman and her confidant.
Walker’s adult son, a conservative media influencer, has also recently been publicly critical of his father for not being present. “You’re not a ‘family man’ when you left us to [have sex with] a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence,” Christian Walker wrote on Twitter after the Daily Beast article published. “[H]ow DARE YOU LIE and act as though you’re some ‘moral, Christian, upright man.’ You’ve lived a life of DESTROYING other peoples lives. How dare you.”
The Post has not independently verified Christian Walker’s claims. Herschel Walker was married to his mother Cindy Grossman from 1983 to 2002, according to public records.
The mothers of Walker’s other children declined to comment or did not respond to messages.
Grossman said in two 2008 television interviews that Walker held a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. Walker does not dispute the account but has said he does not remember it.
Another woman, a former Dallas Cowboys cheerleader, contacted the police in May 2002 and accused him of stalking her. A third woman, Myka Dean, told police in 2012 that Walker threatened to “blow her head off” when she told him she wanted to date other people. Walker’s campaign has denied both of those accounts.
In May 2021, Walker married his current wife, Julie Blanchard, a woman with whom he has had a long-term relationship.
Aaron Davis, Shayna Jacobs, Hannah Knowles, Cara McGoogan, Eva Ruth Moravec, Lori Rozsa and Michael Scherer contributed to this report.
The latest: Woman says she had to press Herschel Walker to pay for abortion he wanted
10:18 PMTake a look: Wife of Nebraska’s Republican governor endorses Democrat in House race | 2022-10-11T23:07:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woman says she had to press Herschel Walker to pay for abortion he wanted - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/herschel-walker-abortion-payment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/herschel-walker-abortion-payment/ |
Ticket-splitting could be making a comeback. Democrats should hope so.
Voters in the Maryland primary line up to cast their ballots at the Silver Spring Civic Center on July 19. (Robb Hill For The Washington Post)
During an election season in which it seems political polarization could not get much worse, there are signs that something counterintuitive is going on in crucial races across the map: the tentative re-emergence of the split-ticket voter, a species that was thought to have gone all but extinct.
It is this share of less robotically partisan voters that could make all the difference, given the tightness of the contests that will determine which party controls Congress and state houses throughout the country. The shift is a reflection of both the seriousness of what’s at stake and the unseriousness of many of the candidates that the Republican Party has placed on the ballot, largely at the behest of former president Donald Trump. It also could reflect the higher quality of the candidates the Democrats have put forward — who in the races that matter most are generally outperforming President Biden’s approval rating — and the degree to which the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade has shifted the political dynamic.
Split-ticket voting has been on a long decline, beginning in the 1970s when congressional and gubernatorial elections started becoming more nationalized. As a result, the conservative Democrats of the South and the moderate Republicans of the Northeast, once formidable blocs, have disappeared in Congress.
Daniel J. Moskowitz, a political scientist at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy, has identified another contributing factor: There are fewer local news outlets these days to give voters information they can trust on the issues that most affect their daily lives, so they turn more to their own partisan inclinations.
The trend reached a milestone in 2016, when — for the first time since the country began directly electing its senators in the early 20th century — every single state that had a Senate race on the ballot voted in that contest the same way it did in the presidential one. In 2020, Maine was the only state where there was a split decision: Biden won the popular vote, even as the state sent Republican Susan Collins back to the Senate for a fifth term. (Trump did, however, pick up Maine’s 2nd Congressional District and its corresponding electoral vote.)
There is evidence that things might be shifting back in some of the polls. In Arizona, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly has held a consistent lead against Trumpist challenger Blake Masters, even as the edge in the governor’s race between Katie Hobbs (D) and Kari Lake (R) has tipped back and forth. In the Pennsylvania governor’s race, Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro holds a prohibitive lead over extremist election-denier Doug Mastriano (R), while Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman and TV personality Mehmet Oz (R) battle it out in the most closely watched Senate race in the country.
In Georgia and Ohio, Republican incumbent governors appear headed for comfortable victories, but the Senate races in those states have been tight. Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Greg Bluestein reported in July that he found a surprising number of voters who planned to vote for both Gov. Brian Kemp (R) and Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D). DeKalb County GOP Chair Marci McCarthy told Bluestein the growing phenomenon is “very real” — and that several of her own friends were planning to split their votes that way.
That is one reason to be skeptical of the rapidly congealing conventional wisdom that the GOP faithful would rally behind Senate nominee Herschel Walker following reports that the former University of Georgia football star paid for a former girlfriend’s abortion and tried to get her to have a second one. (Walker has denied the allegations.) Even before the scandal broke, Walker was proving to be a walking disaster for the Republican Party that had unwisely coronated him as its nominee, despite being aware of his liabilities, including allegations of domestic violence.
There is an argument to be made that, given how different the two parties have become in their ideologies and even their perceptions of reality, nostalgic ideas about the virtues of split-ticket voting are dangerous, especially in federal races. What is the benefit of electing a seemingly reasonable Republican if his first act upon arriving in Washington is to help elect Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) as speaker of the House or to return power over judicial nominations to Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.)? Intensely partisan voting is another way in which voters can make their priorities clear.
But with the president’s poll numbers underwater, Democrats would have the most to gain if even small numbers of voters in key battlegrounds can be unmoored from their partisan leanings. It might be their party’s best hope of defying what history suggests could be a wipeout election. In fact, it might be their only one. | 2022-10-11T23:46:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Split-ticket voting could be a blessing for Democrats - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/ticket-splitting-voting-midterm-election-democrats/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/ticket-splitting-voting-midterm-election-democrats/ |
How Ukrainians define their enemy: ‘It’s not Putin; it’s Russia’
A man works in a building after a missile strike damaged a residential area near Kyiv's main train station on Tuesday in Ukraine. (Ed Ram/Getty Images)
During a visit to Kyiv last weekend, I kept asking Ukrainians a question that vexes me: Is your war against President Vladimir Putin — or against Russia itself? Nearly every time, I got the same unyielding answer. The enemy is a Russia that must be defeated and transformed.
Through Ukrainian eyes, this terrible conflict has become a clash of civilizations. They argue that most Russians support Putin’s brutal war in the way that most Germans supported Adolf Hitler. Unless Russia as a nation abandons the imperial dreams that Putin has evoked, the conflict cannot be resolved through negotiations.
“Russia has to go through the same process that Germany did after World War II,” presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak insisted Saturday in an interview with me and the other members of a group organized by the German Marshall Fund, of which I’m a trustee. “If Russian society doesn’t understand what they’ve done, the world will be brought into chaos.” He enthusiastically predicts that postwar Russia will dissolve into five or six smaller nations.
This Ukrainian desire for total victory — though understandable for a country that has suffered a vicious assault on its civilian population — poses a painful dilemma for the Biden administration. As President Biden made clear in a May 31 essay in the New York Times, the United States seeks “a negotiated end to the conflict” in which Russia withdraws from occupied territory. Biden seeks a Ukrainian victory, but not a total Russian defeat.
For me, thinking about how this war ends juxtaposes two conflicting lessons of the 20th century. Historians generally agree that the punitive peace imposed on Germany after World War I helped bring on the vicious Nazi quest for revenge. But historians also agree that the decisive outcome of World War II, with Germany and Japan pounded into unconditional surrender, allowed the miraculous postwar rebirth of both countries.
Ukrainians, from senior leaders to ordinary citizens, appear convinced that Putin’s Russia must be vanquished, not just Putin himself. Olga Datsiuk, a 33-year-old television producer, relaxing over lunch in a cafe, was smiling but emphatic in an interview Saturday. “We feel that Russia and Russians are responsible for all of it,” she said. The same view was expressed by Sergiy Gerasymchuk, who runs a foreign policy think tank called Prism: “It’s not Putin; it’s Russia,” he told us. “There is a chance for reconciliation, but not in my lifetime.”
The Ukrainian narrative centers on the diverging paths the two countries took after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Ukrainians turned West, toward the European Union and embraced a freewheeling if corrupt version of democracy. Russia flirted with the West at first, under President Boris Yeltsin, but after a decade of chaos and humiliation, Russians welcomed the strong hand of Putin when he was elected president in 2000.
Russia never had a through post-communist housecleaning, and in the Ukrainian view, that’s the root of the current catastrophe. “Russians, somehow, are afraid [of democracy],” said Datsiuk. “This is what Ukrainians will never understand. They choose safe space and warm food instead of freedom.” The two societies diverged, says Alina Frolova, a former deputy defense minister who now heads a think tank called the Center for Defense Strategies. “Russia had 10 years of freedom after 1991, but they chose to go back to their traditional empire.”
Ukraine’s pro-Western democracy threatened Putin, and he has worked relentlessly, obsessively, to crush it. His war against Ukraine began in 2014, when he seized Crimea and parts of the Donbas region, and it culminated in this year’s scorched-earth invasion.
But Russian assaults have only deepened Ukraine’s separate identity. A gathering of Ukrainian intellectuals in June sponsored by two leading universities drew up a list of 74 ways the war had changed society. Valerii Pekar, a member of the group, described this new spirit as “civic Ukrainianism” — in its national pride, love for its armed forces and embrace of a European, democratic future.
So how will this clash of civilizations end? In the West, people try to imagine a negotiated peace. Putin might withdraw to the preinvasion lines. … Or mediators might devise a formula to defer final resolution of the status of the occupied territories. … Or the Russian army might rebel against the Kremlin’s dictates. ... Or Putin might be replaced by a successor who is unable or unwilling to continue the war.
Ukrainians I met in Kyiv unanimously rejected any such interim settlement. They want Ukraine to win back all of its territory, and Russia to lose decisively. The war will end, said Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of the national security and defense council, “when the Russians understand that they have zero chance of victory.”
Americans have the painless exhilaration of watching Ukrainians fight for freedom. But there will be growing risks for us, too, if the war continues to escalate. We should calibrate them carefully and avoid direct U.S.-Russian conflict. But we can’t escape the dangers entirely.
Surely, this is a war worth winning. I don’t want to see Russia destroyed, and I think any argument that it is forever an alien civilization is wrong. But the ideology that Putin represents, and that many Russians embrace, must be defeated. | 2022-10-11T23:46:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How Ukrainians define their enemy: 'It’s not Putin, it’s Russia’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/ukrainians-war-define-enemy-putin-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/ukrainians-war-define-enemy-putin-russia/ |
A new novel tells the story of Nazi birthing farms
German nurses take babies out for fresh air on the grounds of a former hotel in the Bavarian resort of Bad Wiessee, Germany, on June 12, 1945. The hotel, renamed "kurheim Alpenrose," was just one of 15 in the town that were converted into maternity homes for expectant German mothers by the Allies. Approximately 15 percent of the babies were conceived under the Lebensborn program. (William C. Allen/AP)
Part of the program’s attraction was that unwed pregnant girls could give birth in secret. In 1939, about 58 percent of the mothers-to-be who applied to the program were unwed, according to the American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise; by 1940, that number had swelled to 70 percent. Often, the homes were converted estates decorated by Himmler himself, using the highest quality loot confiscated from Jewish homes after their owners had been killed or sent to camps. | 2022-10-12T00:21:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | 'Cradles of the Reich' tells the story of Nazi birthing farms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/novel-story-nazi-birthing-farms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/11/novel-story-nazi-birthing-farms/ |
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Biden says Putin ‘totally miscalculated’ U...
In a speech to the Group of Seven leaders, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called for more air defense after a second day of Russian attacks on civilians
Loveday Morris
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky addresses leaders of the Group of Seven on Tuesday. (Presidential Press Service/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
The Group of Seven nations on Tuesday committed themselves to continue supplying Ukraine’s “urgent requirements” for military equipment and demanded that Russia “completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its troops and military equipment from Ukraine,” including Crimea and all “annexed” regions.
In a speech to the meeting, held via video among the leaders of the United States, Canada, Japan and major European allies, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky detailed a second straight day of Russian bombardment of civilian areas, far from the front lines of the war. Tuesday brought dozens of armed drones, “plus 28 launches of Russian missiles,” he told them. “And that’s just for this morning.”
Later, in his regular evening address to Ukrainians, Zelensky said that 20 Russian missiles, and “most” of 15 attack drones, had been shot down. Citizens were working “quickly and efficiently” to repair Monday’s damage, he said, and “if it weren’t for today’s strikes, we would have already restored the power supply, water supply and communication that the terrorists damaged yesterday.”
Live updates: Russia again bombards Ukraine
Zelensky repeatedly appealed to the G-7 for a more comprehensive “air shield” for Ukraine. “When Ukraine receives a large number of modern and effective air defense systems, the key element of Russian terror — missile strikes — will cease to work,” he told them. Russia, he said, was already losing the war, but President Vladimir Putin, “who is now in the final stages of his reign, still has room for further escalation.”
Monday’s massive attack sent residents in peaceful urban areas running for shelters, as administrative buildings and residences were destroyed. The strikes caused widespread outrage, as well as increased optimism in the Biden administration that heretofore fence-sitting countries would join in condemning Russia in a vote scheduled for later this week in the United Nations General Assembly.
Both the United States and Russia have been heavily lobbying among the U.N.’s 193 member nations, 35 of which abstained the last time the assembly voted on a condemnation resolution, just 10 days after Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in February. The vote is nonbinding but is seen by its U.S. sponsor and Western allies as an important test of global rejection of Russia.
China and India, whose leaders have publicly taken issue with Moscow’s actions, will be carefully watched — although there is little indication that either will take a firm stand. So will countries such as the United Arab Emirates, which has vacillated between approving and abstaining during previous votes condemning Russia.
U.A.E. President Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan visited Moscow on Tuesday, where Putin told him that his country could play a “significant” role in efforts to reach a solution in Ukraine. Mohamed, considered a close defense partner of the United States, later posted to Twitter photos of himself with Putin, along with a message saying they had “discussed several issues of mutual concern, including the Ukraine crisis, and the importance of engaging in dialogue to reduce tensions and arrive at a diplomatic solution.”
At an international meeting last week, Valentina Matviyenko, speaker of Russia’s Federation Council, or upper house, called for talks between the Russian and Ukrainian parliaments in a theatrical show of Russia’s willingness to discuss peace. But the proposal had little credibility, coming after Putin’s demand that Ukraine accept Moscow’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian territories of Crimea (in 2014) and now Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, Luhansk and Kherson.
Ukraine maintains that there is no point in dialogue or negotiations until Russia ends the war and withdraws its troops from all areas within Ukraine’s internationally recognized territorial boundaries. “We must admit the obvious fact,” Zelensky said to the G-7 leaders. “There can be no dialogue with this leader of Russia, who has no future. He himself rejected the dialogue.”
In a communique after their meeting, the G-7 leaders welcomed Zelensky’s “readiness for a just peace,” which they said included the complete restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity; safeguarding its future ability to defend itself; ensuring its recovery and reconstruction, including using Russian funds; and pursuing accountability for Russian war crimes.
After his meeting with Mohamed, Putin hosted Rafael Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Grossi, who met last week with Zelensky and expects to return to Ukraine, has been engaged in intense efforts to establish a protection zone around the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. The immediate vicinity of the reactors has been shelled in the past several months, with both sides blaming the other.
Putin, who has threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine as his forces have lost ground, criticized “elements of excessive dangerous politicization of everything to do with nuclear activity” during his meeting with Grossi, according to Russia’s Interfax news agency. He said “it will be our pleasure to discuss all our issues of mutual interest, and perhaps concern,” including the Zaporizhzhia facility.
Meanwhile, Energoatom, the Ukrainian energy agency, on Tuesday accused Russia of kidnapping a second senior official from the plant, which is being operated by Ukrainian staff while under Russian control. “They keep holding him at an unknown location and [are] probably using methods of torture and intimidation,” the agency said on its Telegram channel. Late last month, the Russians detained and then released the Ukrainian director of the facility.
Much of the G-7 discussion, held privately among leaders following Zelensky’s address, concerned Ukraine’s “urgent” request for air defense systems. But the leaders pledged their continued support to Ukraine rather than any significant expansion of it, said an official with direct knowledge of the conversation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the closed-door meeting.
President Biden, the official said, “emphasized the importance” of the systems, but there was little indication that the United States was prepared to move beyond commitments it has already made to furnish them.
The administration is “working hard” to deliver to Ukraine the first two units of a promised midrange air defense system, the NASAMS, National Security Council coordinator John Kirby told reporters in Washington. Defense officials have said the system is scheduled for delivery between now and December. An additional six units are also destined for Ukraine, but manufacturing them is likely to take a year or more.
Kirby noted that Ukraine already has elements of a “layered air defense” in its arsenal, including short-range Stingers sent early in the conflict and longer-range, Russian-made S-300 systems from the Soviet era. Ukraine has said it shot down about half of approximately 80 missiles Russia fired at cities far from the front lines Monday, most of them air-launched cruise missiles.
“There is no one silver-bullet weapons system that is best used against cruise missiles,” Kirby said, adding that variables include how soon after launch they are detected and their flight path. “There’s not one system that somehow is going to solve that problem.
“I’m not going to get ahead of where we are in the decision process” of what weapons to send, and when, he added. “We have provided air defense systems to Ukraine, and we plan to continue. When there is something to announce in that regard … we will do that.”
In Germany, Der Spiegel magazine said the first of four German IRIS-T vehicle-mounted air defense systems had arrived in Ukraine, a day after Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said that shipment of the long-promised systems was being accelerated.
In Brussels, where a gathering of the Ukraine “contact group” of more than 40 nations contributing supplies to Ukraine is scheduled this week, along with a meeting of NATO defense ministers, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg told reporters that they would discuss how to “ramp up production” of defense equipment, both to send it to Ukraine and to replenish their own stocks. The German systems, he said, were “something that Germany was expecting to order for itself.”
“I expect ministers to make decisions … on how to use the NATO planning process” to agree on production targets and provide industry with long-term orders, he said.
Energy prices were also a major theme of the G-7 discussions, with leaders saying that while there had been good progress on cutting energy use, “there was concern on prices and a broad agreement that more needs to be done through mechanisms like oil and gas price caps,” the official with direct knowledge of the talks said. Biden, the official said, spoke about the United States’ willingness to support the energy market with liquefied natural-gas deliveries and expressed concern about announced production cuts by the OPEC Plus cartel, of which both Russia and Saudi Arabia are members.
Kirby later told reporters that the administration was “reviewing” the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia.
Morris reported from Berlin, Khurshudyan from Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, and Rauhala from Brussels. Robyn Dixon and Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, and Louisa Loveluck in Dnipro, Ukraine, contributed to this report. | 2022-10-12T00:43:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | G-7 demands Russian withdrawal from Ukraine, pledges continued support - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/11/g-7-russia-ukraine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/11/g-7-russia-ukraine/ |
GOP senators ‘Huddle with Herschel’ in latest show of support
Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) join Herschel Walker during a campaign stop Tuesday in Carrolton, Ga. (Megan Varner/AP)
CARROLLTON, Ga. — Republican Sens. Rick Scott and Tom Cotton on Tuesday delivered a clear message to voters here that they stand with Herschel Walker, despite recent allegations that he paid for a former girlfriend to have an abortion and urged her to have a second one.
Scott (Fla.), the head of the Senate GOP’s campaign arm, and Cotton (Ark.) traveled to Georgia to campaign with Walker in the latest display that national Republicans are still strongly backing the former football star in his tight race against Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.). Warnock has been polling ahead of Walker, but Republicans have targeted the state as one of their best opportunities to pick up a Senate seat and gain the majority.
“Herschel Walker will be a leader in the Senate just like he’s been a leader in sports and in business for the state of Georgia,” Cotton said, prompting the crowd to cheer and clap.
“If you want to vote for a man who believes America is a great country, a man who has overcome great adversity, a man who wants to bring the people of Georgia together and a man who believes our best days can be ahead of us,” Scott said. “Well, then you should vote for the next U.S. senator from the great state of Georgia: Herschel Walker.”
Both senators kept their speeches short at the campaign event, dubbed a “Huddle with Herschel,” speaking for a combined nine minutes. They made no mention of the allegations against Walker and instead emphasized that their top priority is defeating Warnock and securing the Senate majority.
“Georgia took a chance on Raphael Warnock two years ago — put him on a little trial run for two years,” Cotton said. “And for two years, Raphael Warnock has been nothing but a rubber stamp for Joe Biden and the Democratic agenda.”
Scott, in his three-minute speech, repeatedly slammed Warnock, saying he’s “working for Joe Biden and the radical Democrats in Washington.” He listed all the issues he feels Warnock and President Biden have failed to address, including the economy, crime and immigration — issues the GOP has largely focused on in their attack of Democrats in campaigns across the country.
Speaking to reporters after the event, Scott said he feels voters will ultimately cast their ballots based on the issues.
“I think what people are going to vote about is how it impacts their family — inflation, crime, parents not being involved in schools and open borders,” Scott said. “That’s what people are gonna vote on.”
More national Republicans will also be making the trip to Georgia to campaign with Walker in the final weeks leading up to the election, Scott said.
Walker and the Republican senators received a loud and excited reception from the large crowd that gathered at the event in the parking lot of a health and wellness shopping center. Before Walker’s arrival, one protester, holding a sign that read, “The GOP wants to control you. Don’t be fooled,” was removed from the event. As she was escorted out of the roped off area for the event, she yelled: “He’s afraid of the truth ... He’s still a liar,” mentioning allegations about past incidents of violence and the more recent allegations about the abortion.
The allegations have come after Walker has been campaigning as a staunch opponent of abortion, with no exceptions. The Senate candidate has said he supports a national abortion ban.
Walker has repeatedly denied paying for the abortion, and initially insisted that he didn’t know the woman who made the allegations that were first reported by the Daily Beast. The woman later said she was the mother of Walker’s 10-year-old son, and that he had pressured her to get a second abortion but she decided to have the child. Walker has continued to maintain that the allegations are false. A former wife also said that Walker put a gun to her head and threatened to kill her. Walker has said he doesn’t remember the incident and instead pointed to his history of mental illness.
As Walker’s campaign bus pulled up, supporters — some of who brought lawn chairs to sit while they waited for his arrival — crowded toward the stage as George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone” played in the background.
The crowd of largely older White supporters chanted his name and cheered him on as “God Bless the USA” by Lee Greenwood played in the background and Walker took the stage with Scott and Cotton.
Walker also did not address the allegations in his nine-minute speech, but did emphasize that he has no plans to back down.
“They’ll do whatever it takes or say whatever they have to say because they want this seat right here. But I don’t think they know that they woke up a bear,” Walker said as his supporters loudly cheered. “I’m a bear. They gotta bring more than that.”
Meanwhile, Walker supporters at the event expressed full-throated support for the Senate candidate, largely dismissing the allegations against him.
“I don’t know of any living person who doesn’t have a past. I’ve got one. My wife’s got one, too. That’s just the way it is,” said Willie Chappell, a retiree who attended the event with his wife. “We should get to the point where we can consider the measure of a person to be based on the changes they’ve made in their lives for the better.”
In the crowd, one married couple held up signs that said, “Please vote pro-life” and “Without life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness aren’t possible. Vote pro-life.” After the event, the couple, Duane and Karen, shared that they specifically brought out the signs to show they support Walker regardless of the accusations that have come out against him. Karen, 58, who declined to share her last name, shared that she doesn’t believe the allegations and if any of it is true “we have a God who can redeem us.”
“So, all those claims that they were showing are from years ago. He’s redeemed himself to Christ,” said Duane, 64, who works in sales and also declined to share his last name. “I mean, if Warnock is such a reverend, how come he doesn’t believe in redemption?”
In his remarks, Walker also mentioned redemption — a word he has long used to discuss his journey. In recent days, he’s slammed Warnock by arguing the senator doesn’t believe in redemption.
“He’s a minister. Has he ever heard of forgiveness? … Has he ever heard of redemption,” Walker said. “So, it’s time for all of us to stand up. We can’t continue to do this. We gotta get out and vote. We’ve gotta change it.” | 2022-10-12T00:47:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | GOP senators ‘Huddle with Herschel’ in latest show of support - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/gop-senators-huddle-with-herschel-latest-show-support/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/11/gop-senators-huddle-with-herschel-latest-show-support/ |
For decades, Black people and Latinos made common cause in the diverse city. Now, racist comments from some Latino leaders threaten the partnership.
Veronica Sance participates in a rally outside Los Angeles City Hall to denounce racism and demand change, on Tuesday. (Frederic J. Brown/AFP/Getty Images)
Fallout from a leaked recording of three Latino members of the Los Angeles City Council engaged in a conversation involving racist comments about Black people has imploded the city’s Democratic leadership and destabilized a political partnership built over decades in a place that holds itself up as a model of ethnically diverse governance.
The tape published Sunday has sliced jaggedly through the Latino political hierarchy in the state’s largest city. Latino power broker Ron Herrera resigned late Monday as head of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, and on Tuesday, council member Nury Martinez announced that she would take a leave of absence after resigning the body’s presidency the previous day.
In her daily news briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday that President Biden “believes that they all should resign.”
“The language that was used and tolerated during that conversation was unacceptable and it was appalling,” she said. “They should all step down.”
The four — among the most powerful Democrats in the city — were recorded secretly last year in a conversation that included racist criticism of the young Black son of a colleague, councilman Mike Bonin, and of groups of city voters.
In the taped conversation, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, Martinez is heard referring to Bonin’s adopted son in Spanish as “a little monkey.” Martinez also said that “this kid needs a beatdown” after she disapproved of the boy’s behavior on a council parade float.
Martinez also called Bonin, who is gay, a “little b----” in the conversation. At one point, she disparaged Indigenous immigrants from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, and in referring to the district attorney, George Gascón, she cursed him, adding that “he’s with the Blacks.”
While the recording quickly became an existential political threat to the participants, it also exposed fractures in a political partnership that has developed in fits and starts since the 1990s as the city’s Latino population has swelled and the Black population has declined.
To many who have worked in local politics over that time, the recording was a reminder that, while much progress in forming an ethnically diverse coalition has been made, a contest for power and representation endures between some of the city’s most important Black and Latino leaders. The criticism transcended racial lines, with former council member and current U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D) among those demanding resignations.
“On the surface, they appear very much at odds,” said Fernando Guerra, a professor of political science and Chicano studies at Loyola Marymount University. “But so much has been built over the past 30 years, that while this is certainly a strain, I think it could provide an opportunity to reinvigorate a relationship that has been taken for granted for too long.”
The Latino-Black coalition in Los Angeles began taking shape after the long tenure of Tom Bradley, the city’s first and only African American mayor, who served over the two decades ending in 1993.
In his first win in 1973, Bradley assembled a strong coalition of Black and Jewish voters on the city’s wealthy Westside, at a time when Latinos were far fewer in number and held far less political clout. That has changed dramatically: Today, Latinos account for almost half the city’s population while Black people make up less than 10 percent, according to the most recent census figures.
“The relationship has a long history and it’s had its ups and downs,” said Raphael Sonenshein, the executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at California State University at Los Angeles. “There was really a period of searching in L.A. politics following the decline of the Bradley coalition and a lot of work went into that searching. I don’t think this episode will eviscerate all of that.”
Sonenshein said the tensions are in part the result of the diverging fortunes — and numbers — of the two electorates.
“This is going to test some relationships that were trusting relationships before,” he said. “That will certainly be a blow to cooperation and will take a lot of work going forward.”
The fallout from the recording could badly damage — or end — the careers of three of the city’s most prominent Latino politicians. It has also drawn old allies into conflict and added a delicate political element to a competitive mayoral race — one that could see the election of the city’s second Black mayor.
“I suspect that Martinez’s leave of absence is not going to be enough for her or for the other council members involved,” said Manuel Pastor, a professor of sociology, American studies, and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. “The tide now is so strong, and while it will be up to the council members themselves to decide whether to resign, I think that will turn out to be the outcome.”
Pastor traced the modern rise of the city’s Black-Latino political partnership to the years following Bradley’s departure, culminating in the 2005 election of Antonio Villaraigosa as the first Latino mayor of Los Angeles.
Although Villaraigosa did not secure enough of the Black vote in his unsuccessful 2001 mayoral campaign, which he lost to longtime city official James Hahn — who is White but had close relationships with the Black community because of his father’s long representation as a county supervisor — he did so by the next election. Pastor described Villaraigosa’s victory in the rematch as “a definitive coming together of the two,” Black and Latino voting blocs.
“There is something to build on,” Pastor said. “But it should be remembered that it takes years to build trust and seconds to tear it down — in this case a phone call that lasted less than an hour. There will be efforts to fix this, but people have been injured.”
Hours later, at the first council meeting since the recording was made public, Bonin teared up and said he needed “to focus on love” after several difficult days.
“Like most Angelenos I am reeling from the revelations of what these people said — trusted servants who voiced hate,” said Bonin, who reiterated his call for the council members to resign and seek his son’s forgiveness. “I take a lot of hits, and hell, I know I practically invite a bunch of them, but my son? That makes my soul bleed and it makes my temper burn and I know I’m not alone because Los Angeles has spoken and it feels the same way.”
At the raucous council session, residents shouted down the proceedings, forcing a temporary stoppage as they demanded, often in Spanish, the members’ departures.
Damien Goodmon, a community activist whose great-great-grandfather came to Los Angeles in 1904 from the Jim Crow South, told the council that “over 118 years later, much has changed, but so much remains the same.”
“The tapes have simply brought to the surface an anti-Black racism that permeates within this city government,” Goodmon said. “It is reflected in your policies. It is reflected in your budget. It is reflected in your hiring. It’s no wonder we have a Black displacement crisis and an attempt at Black erasure.”
Bass, who is Black and has worked for years with many of those implicated on the tape, initially stopped short of calling for the council members’ resignation, although she said the comments amounted to “appalling anti-Black racism.” She later called on all three council members to resign.
Caruso, Bass’s opponent in the November election, noted pointedly in a statement calling for the council members’ resignations that his opponent has been endorsed by some of those caught on the tape.
Assemblymember Isaac Bryan (D-Los Angeles), who is Black, grew up in the years following Bradley’s tenure and said he and many of his colleagues “have moved in Black and Brown solidarity” ever since.
“I was surprised by what I heard, and if you weren’t, you should have been blowing the whistle far earlier,” said Bryan, who was elected last year. “But I don’t think this does much damage to Black and Brown political relationships. There is nobody defending what was said, and I think this shows that we are in a time of solidarity.”
Emmanuel Felton and Andrea Salcedo contributed to this report. | 2022-10-12T01:35:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Leaked tape fractures Black-Latino coalition in Los Angeles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/11/los-angeles-latinos-racist/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/11/los-angeles-latinos-racist/ |
Man is found slain in the District on Tuesday, police say
Shooting was on 21st Street NE, according to authorities
A man was shot and killed Tuesday morning in Northeast Washington, the D.C. police said.
Eric King, 28, of Northeast, was found inside living quarters in the 800 block of 21st Street NE about 5:30 a.m. after a shooting was reported there, the police said.
They said he had apparent gunshot wounds and died at the scene.
No information could be learned about a suspect or motive.
The address is on a tree-lined residential street of both apartments and single family houses. It is north of Benning Road and between the prominent “starburst” intersection to the west and the Langston golf course to the east.
Few homicides occur at the reported hour, about 11 hours after nightfall and an hour and a half before sunrise, when much of the city is just beginning to awaken to a new day. | 2022-10-12T02:10:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man fatally shot in Northeast, D.C. police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/man-shot-killed-northeast-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/11/man-shot-killed-northeast-dc/ |
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda inspects soldiers of the German Bundeswehr 41st Mechanized Infantry Brigade at the Gaiziunai training ground Oct. 10. (Mindaugas Kulbis/AP)
RIGA, Latvia — Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv’s strongest allies against President Vladimir Putin have been the nations that know his Soviet playbook best: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, all invaded and brutalized by the Soviet Union and historically wary of Russia.
Their warnings about Russian aggression and calls for stronger Western action to deter Putin were long brushed aside by many in Europe, even after Russia’s 2008 invasion of Georgia and the Kremlin’s 2014 invasion and annexation of Crimea.
“One lesson from this war is we should have listened to those who know Putin,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in her State of the European Union speech last month. “They have been telling us for years that Putin would not stop.”
Since February, the Baltics and Poland have repeatedly called for the provision of more and faster military assistance, including more powerful offensive weapons, only to be rebuffed by the United States and Western European allies who wanted to make clear that they were not in a direct conflict with Russia.
Slowly, that’s started to change, after Putin proved his wary neighbors right — repeatedly.
The Russian president’s shocking escalation on Monday, firing dozens of missiles at Ukrainian civilian targets including power stations, was strongly condemned around the world. Western leaders are beginning to acknowledge that they may need to take more decisive steps to assure Ukraine’s victory.
Ahead of key NATO meetings in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday, the leaders of Baltic states have called on the West to scale up the supply of weapons to Kyiv, in particular air defense systems. The NATO Contact Group on Ukraine meets in Brussels on Wednesday and NATO defense ministers meet on Thursday.
But in a sign the easternmost allies are already making progress, leaders of the Group of Seven on Tuesday issued a forceful statement endorsing Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s call for a “just peace” that leaves no room for capitulation to Putin’s demands. The G-7 insisted on the restoration of Ukraine’s sovereign territory, safeguarding Ukraine’s future security and reconstruction financed by Russia.
Still, leaders in the Baltics are insisting more must be done.
On Tuesday, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas and von der Leyen, who is a former German defense minister, stood about 100 yards from Estonia’s border with Russia in the town of Narva, sending a strong signal to the Kremlin that its escalation had not undermined Western support for Ukraine.
Kallas called for more military aid for Ukraine, especially modern antimissile systems and air defenses, as fast as possible.
“Ukraine’s success on the battlefield means that we have been on the right track and that we must make use of this momentum,” Kallas wrote in an email to The Washington Post after the appearance with von der Leyen. “It must be translated into ever increasing and stronger support to Ukrainian soldiers, economy and its people. Especially now when Russia is escalating in the most serious way since 24 February.”
“Estonia knows the face of Russian occupation firsthand,” Kallas added. “We know that peace under occupation doesn’t mean the end of atrocities but more of them.”
Baltic leaders have long argued that Western sanctions adopted in 2014 after Putin illegally annexed Crimea showed the West’s lack of resolve in confronting the Russian president over his land grab. European leaders seemed to think the Baltics were so traumatized by Soviet occupation that they could not be objective.
“Jokingly, you know, we call this ‘West-splaining,’” Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis said. The West’s message, he said, was that “after 50 years of occupation, it’s understandable that you would have trust issues with a country that occupied you.”
“For us in the Baltics, it all boils down to this notion of appeasement: that basically we can appease Russia,” Landsbergis continued. “For us, it was always very clear, black and white. If a country is eager to cross another country’s border, they’re an aggressor and they will do that again, if they’re not stopped. And they have not been stopped.”
“That notion is quite pervasive, this notion of peaceful settlement with an aggressor,” he added. “I’m really hopeful that it’s now waning.”
Amid Putin’s threats of using nuclear weapons, his claimed annexation of four more regions of Ukraine and military escalation, the leaders of Poland and the Baltic states are once again urging Western leaders not to blink.
“This is also a war of nerves,” Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics said. “The Russians are trying to figure out if they are going to be allowed to take over Ukraine and if we will yield to nuclear blackmail, or will we try to negotiate a deal, land for peace.”
Rinkevics said Ukraine clearly needed air defense systems to protect the country from Russian missile attacks on civilian targets and critical infrastructure such as power stations.
“That’s one thing I think that they also have been calling for weeks and months — more of all kinds of weapons,” he said. “Actually, my bottom line is that we should give Ukraine everything they ask for.”
Landsbergis said Ukraine urgently needed tanks and aviation as well as air defense systems.
“We need to stop debating whether we should provide more weapons to Ukraine and provide everything that we have that they would be able to use, and they are able to use a lot,” he said.
Estonia and Latvia have supplied more military aid to Ukraine per capita than any other country. The Baltic countries and Poland have also been the staunchest backers of economic sanctions against Russia, even though, as neighbors, their own economies have been the hardest hit by the measures cutting off business with a large market right next door.
Kristi Raik, director of the International Center for Defense and Security’s Estonian Foreign Policy Institute, said Western policy toward Russia since 2007 ignored clear signs of Russia’s revanchist imperialism and autocratic path.
“The Western failure was that they did not take it seriously or believe that Russia was serious about it,” Raik said. “And then when Russia was getting more aggressive and trying to impose its agenda, the Western response was not to put limits on Russian aggression and to make it clear that if Russia violates the core principles of international security, there will be costs and consequences.”
The West’s soft response, particularly after Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, only encouraged Moscow, Raik said: “If the response had been stronger, it might have been possible to avoid the situation we are in now, with a full-scale war in Europe.”
She said Western restrictions on the types of weapons sent to Ukraine did not prevent Russian escalation. “Russia was determined to win and to destroy Ukraine’s independent statehood, and Russia is using all the means it can to achieve that goal,” she said. “The West’s restrictions on assistance to Ukraine doesn’t really help the situation.”
Rinkevics said the West would have to sharply scale up military production in coming years.
“It is absolutely clear that the next five to 10 years are going to be very difficult. We need equipment to replenish our stocks. We need more equipment for NATO members. We need equipment for Ukraine. I think we need to acknowledge that this is going to be a long-lasting war.”
Unless the West stands firm, the easternmost allies argue, Putin would defeat Ukraine, before potentially attacking northern Kazakhstan in future years, expanding his grip on the Caucasus, or trying to push further West into Moldova or beyond.
“If he sees that there is only talk and no action at this point, then of course he will try to challenge NATO itself,” Rinkevics said.
For Landsbergis, only a Ukrainian victory will insure his own country’s security and that of others. “They have to win for all of our sakes,” he said.
Kallas said only a show of force would stop Russia’s aggression and end the war. “The way to peace,” she said, “is to push Russia out of Ukraine.”
Natalia Abbakumova in Riga, Latvia, and Emily Rauhala in Brussels contributed to this report. | 2022-10-12T05:17:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Poland warned about Russia. No one listened. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/12/baltics-poland-russia-warnings-nato/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/12/baltics-poland-russia-warnings-nato/ |
Yankees pitcher Gerrit Cole acknowledges the Yankee Stadium crowd after retiring the Guardians in the sixth inning of Game 1 of the ALDS on Tuesday in New York. (Justin Lane/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
NEW YORK — Gerrit Cole waited his whole life to start a playoff game at Yankee Stadium. He signed a nine-year deal with the New York Yankees before the 2020 season and waited three more years for the stars to align. But Tuesday night, moments before Cole took the mound for his first October start as the Yankees ace he always dreamed of being, he was suddenly content to wait.
The Yankees staged a pregame ceremony consisting of flashing lights and a massive Yankees flag flown by frenetic former Yankee Nick Swisher to begin their latest October push and celebrate their first home playoff game.
“I don’t want to be doing that, walking in with Swisher running around,” Cole said.
His task was too important to subject to that kind of chaos. The Yankees brought him here for nights like this, and he chose the Yankees for the same reason. And Cole did exactly what they hired him to do in the Yankees’ 4-1 win over the Cleveland Guardians in Game 1 of the American League Division Series. He pitched deep into the game. He left with a lead. He set the tone for a team that could have returned to action after a bye looking stale, as so many other higher seeds did Tuesday. He won.
“It was just a really awesome experience overall. Sometimes, when you feel the crowd or the energy, it sometimes can become a little easier just to quiet things down because it’s so loud,” Cole said. “I don’t know if that made sense. But it does for me.”
That crowd roared as Cole waited before the game, greeting the last Yankees ace to lead his team to a title, CC Sabathia, who headed to the mound to throw the ceremonial first pitch. This is what awaits those who win in the Bronx in October: lifetime treasured status.
Jenkins: How to draw the line between sports cheaters and sports strivers?
Cole doesn’t have that yet. He entered Tuesday with a 4.05 ERA in four playoff starts with the Yankees. None of those have come beyond the division series. The most recent came in last year’s winner-take-all wild-card matchup with the Boston Red Sox, a game in which Cole allowed three runs before Manager Aaron Boone pulled him after two-plus innings. Games like those are disappointments for any ace. Here, they qualify as character indictments.
“I haven’t put much thought into legacy,” Cole said before his start.
He has six years left on his deal. He has time.
But everything with the Yankees is about legacy, which is why this postseason is so uniquely poignant. Aaron Judge will be a free agent in the offseason. Beyond him, there is no natural beloved Yankees core. He and Cole are the anchors of this team. Perhaps that there are so few others explains why Judge and Cole have yet to play deep into October. Either way, this may be their last run together.
None of this is to say Cole hasn’t already written his way into Yankee history. He broke the Yankees’ single-season strikeout record this year and earned a postgame phone call from Ron Guidry to mark the occasion. He was third among major league starters with 11.5 strikeouts per nine innings, which made his matchup with the scrappy Guardians a particularly fascinating collision of skill sets. The Guardians struck out less than any other team in baseball, and it wasn’t particularly close. They also hit the second-fewest home runs in baseball, while the Yankees led the majors.
Cole struck out four of the first eight batters he faced with a heavy dose of breaking balls early in counts. But when leadoff man Steven Kwan came up a second time, Cole challenged him with a fastball that found the middle of the plate. Kwan is generously listed at 5-foot-9 and 170 pounds and hit six homers in 600-plus plate appearances. He connected to give the Guardians a one-run lead in the third.
The Guardians loaded the bases after that, but Cole was able to escape trouble with his fifth strikeout. Such is the Gerrit Cole experience, particularly this year: Strikeout or home run are the dominant outcomes — only two pitchers allowed more homers.
One person who did not contribute to the Yankees’ major league-leading home run total was Harrison Bader. When the Yankees traded left-hander Jordan Montgomery to the St. Louis Cardinals for the defense-first Bader at the deadline, the move seemed a bit . . . well, lateral. The Yankees weren’t exactly brimming with pitching depth, and Bader wasn’t exactly the kind of big-name acquisition the Yankees always seem to be rumored to be making. Plus, he was injured. As Montgomery starred in St. Louis, Bader rehabbed an injury in New York.
The 28-year-old New York native didn’t make his Yankees debut until mid-September. And when he hit a solo homer to tie the score in the third Tuesday, it was his first home run as a Yankee. By the time Bader tied it, Cole had thrown 63 pitches, enough to make you wonder whether he would be able to pitch as deep into the game as you would want a $324 million ace on a team with a crumbling bullpen to pitch. But Cole threw almost half as many pitches to get through the fourth, fifth and sixth.
“He can have overwhelming stuff,” Guardians Manager Terry Francona said. “He starts to speed you up, then he spins it. It can get tough.”
That stuff bought the Yankees time to take what they thought was a lead when Josh Donaldson poked a line drive to right field that appeared to just sneak over the wall before bouncing back into play. Donaldson believed the ball was gone, so he stopped running and found himself tagged out between first and second. A Guardians error later in the inning allowed Isiah Kiner-Falefa to get to third. He scored on a sacrifice fly a batter later, giving the Yankees the one-run lead they thought they had before.
So the Yankees led when Cole started the seventh with 97 pitches. They led when he walked off the mound two batters later having recorded one out.
“I thought he did a really good job of kind of owning the moment,” Boone said.
For many recent Yankees teams, dripping with dominant relief pitching, Cole’s outing would yield not only redemption for last year’s wild-card showing but also a comfortable number of outs to leave in the bullpen’s hands.
But these Yankees watched their relief pitching disintegrate before their eyes because of injury and, in the case of Aroldis Chapman, off-field antics. Last weekend, one of the relievers they were going to lean on in the interim, Scott Effross, learned he would need Tommy John surgery. Their presumptive closer, Clay Holmes, was injured for the final days of the regular season and hadn’t pitched in a game for two weeks before he finished Game 1.
That hadn’t happened when Cole walked off the mound for the final time, so he couldn’t exactly celebrate as he left in the seventh to a standing ovation for the first time in the Bronx in October.
“It’s not the most comfortable time to acknowledge the crowd,” he said. “But I definitely felt it.” | 2022-10-12T05:39:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gerrit Cole keeps the Guardians at bay, lifts Yankees in ALDS opener - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/yankees-guardians-gerrit-cole-alds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/11/yankees-guardians-gerrit-cole-alds/ |
Brett and his wife had to move off his mother’s property. Brett asked me whether they could temporarily park their motor home in my driveway. I told them they could temporarily park it there.
Before long, my property became a junkyard, storage bin and trash heap. I told Brett and his wife that they had to clean up and gave them a month and a half, because they had so much stuff. The last day of the deadline, they decided to start cleaning up.
Eventually, they got rid of the three cars that were stored on my property. There is still stuff everywhere. They don’t pay rent, nor do they help out with anything else.
I wrote them a letter telling them I wanted them to move, but yet here they still are. I didn’t want to tell them that they are now trespassing, but they have taken advantage of my generosity and kindness.
Upset: You have written “Brett” and his wife a letter telling them that you want them to vacate your property. They decided to steal your electricity instead.
Dear Amy: I’ve been with my husband for 18 years (married for two years). We have two children. His mother has never been nice to me. She’s very passive-aggressive. She acts as if I stole her son from her.
I used to brush it off, but it took a turn for the worse after our first baby was born. They’ve only visited twice (they live a distance away), but her behavior includes: requesting group pictures without me in them; saying my cooking was “just okay”; and — the worst — leaving a voice mail (accidentally) calling me a b-word for not answering the phone.
I had a horrible C-section, and my baby was in the NICU.
I know I would be happier if she wasn’t like this. My kids would have a happier mom if I didn’t have to put up with this. I’ve taken Facebook breaks because of her, but it’s the only way I connect with my family, who also live far away.
I really don’t like her negative energy and don’t know what to do about it. Your advice, please?
Tired: Your mother-in-law lives far away from you and doesn’t visit.
Unfriend her, block her or hide all of her posts on Facebook. This is easily done. Without this constant triggering, you should be able to catch a breath, stiffen your backbone and advocate for yourself.
I completely agree with him. No one needs to see this woman using the toilet. Breastfeeding should be equally private.
Also: As long as you equate a mother feeding her child to “using the toilet,” I’m going to disagree. | 2022-10-12T05:48:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: Son's friend asked to stay temporarily and never left - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/12/ask-amy-trespassing-driveway-motor-home/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/12/ask-amy-trespassing-driveway-motor-home/ |
Dear Carolyn: Our son and daughter-in-law recently gave us another blessed grandchild. Their older child just turned 3 and is in preschool. The couple both work full time, she outside the home and he from home.
After her return from maternity leave with their older, I and two other relatives tag-teamed to watch the baby for three months until they placed him in full-time care. With my son’s paternity leave, this broke down to about three weeks each.
During this pregnancy they indicated they may need me to “help out” again and I began asking multiple times for an idea of what that schedule would look like, with no response until just weeks before her return to work, when they informed me I was going to be the primary caretaker, as the other two relatives were not available. She then texted me a schedule for the next four months.
I am thankfully in good health, but I am also 70 and have a dog and a part-time job. They expect me to drive to their home in rush hour three to five times a week to work eight hours a day.
I was speechless that they would think nothing of expecting this.
I really am struggling with how to tell them this is too much.
We have supported them in many other ways financially and emotionally during their marriage but this is way too much. I just can’t seem to be honest about my feelings without feeling guilty for not being a good grandparent.
Confidential: Oh wow no, that guilt has no foundation. The couple’s entitlement is 100 percent out of line.
The best way to say no is … well, “no,” as always. It's a great word and its two wee letters contain all the justifications you ever need.
But I feel your ache to be “good.” (Even though you are already and would remain so even if you stuck to the two-letter “no.” To be clear.) So the best way for you to say no is to say YES! … only to the thing you’re willing to do. “Yes! I will care for my new grandbaby … X days a week,” instead of five, or “X hours per day,” instead of eight.
Cheekier than their babies, these parents.
Anyway. Expect them to blanch/balk/flip out so that you are prepared to hold firm when they do: “That's what I can offer. Let me know if you still want me and on what days.”
If this earns you a full blast of their disapproval, then 1. Wow; 2. That’s their problem, even though it’ll feel like yours; and 3. “I was excited to share the caregiving again, but I never realized you had me in mind for all of it indefinitely. I am not prepared to do that.” That’s an optional fleshing out of your position, mind you, and only to help you feel better. It is not owed.
Look to the other two relatives, not the couple, for reassurance. They are “not available” even part time, much less full, so if you’re a bad grandparent (you aren’t, to be clear), then they’re just as bad or worse grandwhatevers themselves (they aren’t, either).
This does raise the specter of their cutting you off from the kids. That would be cruel and unjustified, and you’d be wrong to cave to that fear, but it is a risk to weigh.
I do feel for the parents on some level, since the whole child-care-business model basically got long covid and hasn’t recovered. They’ll struggle to find care. But that’s not license to assume they can drop it all on you. | 2022-10-12T05:48:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Baby's here, and now they're expecting grandparental help - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/12/carolyn-hax-grandparent-child-care/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/12/carolyn-hax-grandparent-child-care/ |
Policing the fruit is not your job, which Miss Manners assumes comes as welcome news. This does not absolve you of all responsibility, but it will be easier to report the offender to a store employee than to confront her yourself.
However, he’s not sure how to pick out a golf course. We live in a part of the country where everything is very overpriced, golf included. There are many courses in the area that my husband says are ridiculously expensive. (His words; I know very little about golf.)
Apparently, some of the more reasonably priced courses are booked for the day that they are planning to get together. So now he’s wondering whether he should reserve a tee time at a course that charges double what he would normally pay, or take his new friends to a course he considers subpar (no pun intended).
I’ve always spent outings with people who had similar budgets to me or politely declined expensive outings, so I don’t know how to help. How would you advise him?
The group rotates coordinators as a way of sharing the cost — without the unpleasant necessity of having pockets emptied in the parking lot after every outing.
This will be more easily accomplished if the selected courses are not wholly out of line with what others are paying when it comes to be their turn. If his preferred courses are known to be less expensive, your husband will either have to pay more or rely on his newfound friends to understand that the companionship and the quality of the course are more important than the dollars spent. | 2022-10-12T05:48:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Miss Manners: Customer touched multiple blueberries she didn't purchase - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/12/miss-manners-grocery-blueberry-touch/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/12/miss-manners-grocery-blueberry-touch/ |
MOSCOW, RUSSIA - SEPTEMBER 30: (RUSSIA OUT) Russian President Vladimir Putin attends the signing ceremony with separatist leaders on the annexation of four Ukrainian regions at the Grand Kremlin Palace, September 30, 2022, in Moscow, Russia. Separatist leaders of annexed Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions of Ukriane has arrived in Moscow to sign joint documents. (Photo by Contributor/Getty Images) (Photographer: Contributor/Getty Images Europe)
The asymmetrical fury of Russia’s apparent response to last week’s bombing of the symbolically significant Kerch Strait bridge seems to signal that the attack crossed one of Vladimir Putin’s important red lines. It’s still not certain, however, that the much-used concept of red lines — cited, on occasion, by Putin himself, too — in fact applies to the Russian dictator. And that is exactly why answering the question of whether Putin is actually prepared to use nuclear weapons is so tough.
The notion of “red lines” that, when crossed, can trigger the imposition of dire consequences may go back to the line a Roman envoy drew in the sand at the feet of Seleucid King Antiochus IV to dissuade him from attacking Alexandria. The lines somehow turned red in the 1970s, and various leaders since have set them down as a warning or a threat, sometimes without really meaning it. Barack Obama insisted the use of chemical weapons by Bashar Assad in Syria would be a “red line” — but Assad, who almost certainly did use the weapons, still leads that country long after Obama ceased to be US president.
Putin saw his Syrian ally cross Obama’s line without any particular consequences, but that didn’t prevent him from often talking of his own “red lines,” though in an intentionally vague manner.
“I hope nobody will get it into their heads to cross Russia’s so-called red line,” he said in April 2021. “Where it will be drawn, we will decide ourselves in each specific case.”
Despite the vagueness, Putin appeared to assume his Western counterparts knew where the line was. “We understand, of course, that our partners are quite particular and — how shall I put it mildly — that they have a very superficial attitude toward all our warnings and our talk of ‘red lines’,” he complained in November of the same year.
Three months later, he ordered the invasion of Ukraine, himself crossing the most important “red line” that has existed in Europe since the defeat of Nazi Germany — the one between fragile peace and a major war. The gamble hasn’t gone well for Putin. Time after time, Ukrainians have crossed what many would assume to be military superpower Russia’s “red lines.” They sank the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s flagship, named after the Russian capital — the Moskva; they have shelled, and continue to shell, Russian regions across the internationally recognized border; they have even ignored Putin’s formal annexation of conquered territories and taken some of them back mere hours after Putin’s announcement. In other words, they have consistently defied and mocked Putin — to a point where many, both inside and outside Russia, wondered if he really had the means for a forceful response — or if he really cared much about the damage being done to Russia’s prestige as a major power.Igor Girkin (Strelkov), one of Putin’s most eloquent and consistent critics on the ultranationalist Russian right, has regularly restated on his Telegram channel his belief that the Russian elite’s only real “red line” passes somewhere in the vicinity of Novo-Ogaryovo near Moscow, where Putin has his official residence and many of Moscow’s rich and powerful have built villas.
And yet, a mere two days after a truck bomb blew a 12-meter-long hole in the Kerch bridge and Ukraine’s leaders rejoiced — they even announced a commemorative postage stamp — Ukrainian cities were hit with what may be the worst missile barrage since the war began. Some 200 cruise missiles were fired. Although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has claimed that half of them were deflected, the damage — including to residential areas and busy intersections hit during the morning rush hour — was obvious and terrifying.
Russian officials played this as payback for the bridge explosion. “Episode One has been enacted,” former president Dmitri Medvedev, who had warned that an attack on the Kerch bridge would mean an “instant judgment day” for Ukraine, wrote triumphantly on Telegram. “There will be others.” “Patriotic” and official commentators also presented the missile barrage as an act of revenge. Putin himself linked the two events in a brief speech to his Security Council on Monday, warning, “In case attempted terror arracks continue on our territory, Russia’s responses will be harsh and on a scale commensurate with the threat level.”
Does this mean, however, that Putin, who missed many a previous pretext for retaliation, actually had a “red line” drawn cross that bridge? No matter the importance of the artery that linked occupied Crimea to Russia and overcame a Ukrainian blockade, its bombing — for which Ukraine actually never claimed responsibility — is not the most significant blow to the Kremlin’s prestige since the war began. Besides, railroad traffic across the bridge resumed, albeit fitfully at first, soon after the explosion, so the blow to Russia’s military logistics has hardly been deadly. Abandoning entire towns and sending Russian collaborators fleeing across the border has been a far greater embarrassment — and a far costlier loss, undermining the trust of potential sympathizers across Ukraine.
Putin’s emotional involvement in the conflict with Ukraine is painfully obvious in his pallor, his tight lips, his white knuckles. It’s possible that the bridge — of personal significance, since he actually drove the first truck across it — was one insult too far in his visibly unstable condition.
On the other hand — and especially given the Russian military’s oft-demonstrated disorganization — the missile strike likely couldn’t have been planned and prepared in the short time since the explosion. And even if the Kerch bridge had not been attacked, the barrage matches the personal style of the new commander of the Russian invasion force, Army General Sergei Surovikin, a man known for his ruthlessness and, among other things, for the near-complete destruction of Syria’s second city, Aleppo. The missile attack aimed to take offline much of Ukraine’s energy and heat generation infrastructure; indeed, a number of Ukrainian cities suffered electricity, heating and water supply outages. On Tuesday, the attacks continued in a similar vein, hitting more power stations and network infrastructure — long after a mere retaliatory strike would have been over.There is no evidence that Putin has ever cared about any “red lines” — his own or those drawn by others. Rather, he has hit out when he felt he could get away with it, not guided by any kind of principles except a clear enough understanding of who his enemies are. People have often wondered at his ability to take meekly what many a great power leader would not have tolerated — like, for example, Turkey’s downing of a Russian warplane in 2015, which only led to comically inadequate consequences that included a ban on Turkish tomatoes. But Putin doesn’t really operate according to the logic of provocation and response. Instead, he is constantly searching for opportunities to gain an advantage; when he doesn’t see them, he just loses — and, yes, loses face.The way to beat Putin, then, isn’t to provoke him until he’s off balance. It’s to deny him the openings he seeks. I’ve often been wrong about his motives — but it would not fit the logic of his previous behavior, such as it is, to use a nuclear weapon in response to further defeats on the battlefields of conventional war. If Ukraine manages to win on the ground despite Russia’s remaining formidable firepower, and despite the newly mobilized Russian forces heading to the front lines, it wouldn’t be like Putin to launch an apocalypse; he’d take a loss, take steps to minimize it and — while he still can — look for his next chance.That is, of course, if he is still relatively sane — something there have been many reasons to doubt in recent months. | 2022-10-12T05:48:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Putin Has Never Cared About Red Lines - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/putin-has-never-cared-about-red-lines/2022/10/12/88ef000e-49eb-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/putin-has-never-cared-about-red-lines/2022/10/12/88ef000e-49eb-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
Putin is resurrecting one of Stalin’s tactics in Ukraine
Staged referendums are an attempt to discipline Ukrainians into accepting Putin’s rule, not to provide democratic legitimacy
Perspective by Alexandra Sukalo
Kristo Nurmis
Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen on a screen set at Red Square in Moscow on Sept. 30 as he addresses a rally and a concert marking the annexation of four regions of Ukraine. (Alexander Nemenov/AFP/Getty Images)
On Sept. 30, in an impassioned speech riddled with historical errors, Vladimir Putin announced Russia’s annexation of more than 40,000 square miles of Ukraine. A celebration in Moscow’s Red Square followed Putin’s televised address, welcoming the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions into the Russian Federation.
Russia held fraudulent referendums in the occupied regions to provide a pretext for Putin’s announcement. To nobody’s surprise, Russian state media reported that all four voted overwhelmingly to join Russia. The Kremlin’s propaganda machine pumped out videos of elderly Ukrainians voting to join Russia and claiming that the Russian Federation is their homeland — even as videos on social media showed local “election officials” canvassing door-to-door with armed paramilitaries, intimidating people into voting.
The West decried these rigged elections, reiterated its support for Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty and denounced Putin’s latest claims. But these were not simply rigged elections, an imitation of democracy or a media exercise, as some analysts have claimed. Instead, they reflect a much more aggressive and intrusive attempt to discipline citizens of the occupied territories — teaching them how they must behave under Putin. This move comes straight from the playbook of Joseph Stalin.
The Soviet Union under Stalin deployed this type of “education” campaign — including voting in sham elections — to subjugate and teach people in Poland and the Baltic states how to speak the language of the Communist Party. Putin is convinced that like Stalin, he can override Ukrainians’ political consciousness, which he sees as having been corrupted by decades of liberal and nationalist propaganda. In its place, he wants to reveal Ukrainians’ “true” and historically predetermined interest: joining Mother Russia.
The Russian referendums in occupied Ukraine bear a striking resemblance to the sovietization of Eastern Poland and the Baltic States in 1939 and 1940. Once the Soviets secured military control of a country, they implemented hasty elections to the “people’s assemblies” and “people’s parliaments,” claiming more than 90 percent support for pro-Soviet deputies. These deputies then appealed to Moscow to join the USSR, requests that Moscow promptly granted in lavish Kremlin unification ceremonies in the same white Hall of the Order of St. George as Putin’s annexation ceremony.
Many historians have assumed that these elections aimed to feign democracy and legality. But that is not true. The Kremlin was implementing a crucial element of Marxist-Leninist thinking. Essentially, the Soviet leadership saw people as being blinded by a bourgeois “false consciousness.” Only through reeducation in Communist thinking and ways could they be liberated.
For this reeducation to be successful, a firm hand was needed. The Soviets referred to this ideological reeducation effort as an “ideo-political upbringing” or ideino-politicheskoe vospitanie. In this phrase, the inclusion of the Russian word vospitanie — akin to the idea of “raising children” — suggests a quasi-violent parental authority over the “immature” society. This concept legitimized the Communist Party leadership over the “backward” peasant masses and “unenlightened” workers. It also justified brutal economic and political tactics deemed to be in the interest of the “workers’ state.”
Self-determination evaporated in the countries newly controlled by the Soviets. Guided by this belief in the need for a firm hand, the Soviets imposed a singular Marxist-Leninist future on them. They mobilized hundreds of thousands of local citizens in Poland and the Baltic states to participate in what they openly admitted were illegal (given the “extraordinary times”) elections. Their goal was to initiate the local peoples into their new political reality.
The Soviets boasted of the superiority of these single party elections over liberal democratic pluralist ones, blaming the latter for being inherently skewed by financial interest or akin to a lottery, where the people’s future was left to random chance rather than to the realization of the inevitability of socialist progress. In the Baltics, the Communist-controlled media openly intimidated people into voting, forcing every individual to place themselves on the side of either historical progress or reaction. “Let’s not be the enemies of the people,” the Latvian paper Rīts declared. “Anyone who abstains from voting today and tomorrow is unquestionably an enemy of the people … backsliders and cowards will not be able to halt history.”
A few days after the elections, the Communist-run papers celebrated the fantastic results, with the Union of the Working People of Estonia receiving 92.9 percent of the vote in an election with 81.6 percent participation, the Latvian Working People’s Bloc getting 97.6 percent with 94.7 percent turnout and the Union of the Working People of Lithuania securing a whopping 99.19 percent of the vote with 95.51 percent participation. In early August 1940, the Baltic states were officially “admitted” to the Soviet Union and full-scale sovietization and mass repression commenced.
From then on, the Soviet Baltic republics were subject to regular Soviet elections (except for the brief Nazi occupation, 1941-1944) to the republican and central Supreme Soviets, always preceded by a month-long campaign of intense propaganda and intrusive door-to-door canvassing by “agitators.” These regular elections served primarily to “raise” the New Soviet People rather than feigning democratic legitimacy. “The polling station must be a school for the political upbringing of the masses,” Lithuanian ideology chief Kazys Preikšas instructed his cadres for the 1941 January elections.
By means of discipline and punishment, Moscow maintained its hegemony over the Baltic states for the next half-century, but given the ease by which the Balts threw off the Soviet order from their shoulders in the early 1990s, the waves of purges and the steady diet of forcible reeducation had a very limited long-term impact.
While Putin is not a communist, the former KGB officer embraces a similar philosophy toward society as the Soviets. For him, too, the move to hold sham referendums is an attempt to teach Ukrainians a “lesson.” He wants to discipline them to behave and accept their future in his ethnonational project of the “Russian World.”
Western observers have often interpreted Putin as an idea-less tyrant, a cold Realpolitiker or a vile kleptocrat. But Putin is also an ideologue, and spreading ideas clearly matters to him. He sees himself as providing tough education and discipline in the face of Ukrainian resistance. As far as Putin is concerned, the “Little Russians,” as he likes to call Ukrainians, need to learn what is “in their best interest.”
Putin’s reliance on old Soviet attitudes and practices portends an utter lack of imagination. He and his cronies operate with obsolete ideas, practices and assumptions without developing them much further. Putin's stubborn denial of empirical reality, including his belief that societies have no autonomous agency, is highly reminiscent of the dogmas that doomed the Soviet order.
Ukraine, unlike Poland and the Baltic States in 1939-1940, enjoys much stronger international moral and material support, and is fighting off the enemy with admirable success. Putin’s lack of original ideas may not prevent him from wreaking further havoc, displacing people and committing mass murder. But it will continue to undercut his international status, as well as his legitimacy at home, as reflected in the concerned and unenthusiastic faces of Russian elites at his annexation ceremony. | 2022-10-12T05:49:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Putin is resurrecting one of Stalin's tactics in Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/11/ukraine-putin-occupied-territories-stalin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/11/ukraine-putin-occupied-territories-stalin/ |
Vegas Golden Knights’ Jack Eichel, center right, loses balance while being pressured by Los Angeles Kings’ Phillip Danault during the second period of an NHL hockey game Tuesday, Oct. 11, 2022, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
LOS ANGELES — Mark Stone scored the tiebreaking goal with 24.9 seconds to play, and the Vegas Golden Knights punctuated coach Bruce Cassidy’s debut with a 4-3 victory over the Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday night. | 2022-10-12T05:51:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mark Stone's last-minute goal sends Vegas past Kings 4-3 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nhl/mark-stones-last-minute-goal-sends-vegas-past-kings-4-3/2022/10/12/5b24610a-49eb-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nhl/mark-stones-last-minute-goal-sends-vegas-past-kings-4-3/2022/10/12/5b24610a-49eb-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html |
Erik Cantu looks toward San Antonio Police Officer James Brennand while holding a hamburger in a fast-food restaurant parking lot, in a still released from police body-camera footage. (AP)
A former San Antonio police officer who shot an unarmed teenager while he was eating a hamburger in a McDonald’s parking lot earlier this month has been arrested and charged with two felony counts of aggravated assault by a public official.
James Brennand turned himself in to police on Tuesday evening, San Antonio police chief William McManus told reporters at a news conference. The 17-year-old driver, Erik Cantu, was seriously wounded in the incident and remains in hospital, in a “critical but stable condition” McManus said.
On the evening of Oct. 2, while investigating an unrelated disturbance at the fast-food restaurant, the officer spotted a vehicle that he believed had fled from him during an attempted stop the night before. He suspected that it was stolen, and called for backup, according to a police account.
Body-camera footage released by police showed Brennand abruptly opening the driver’s door and ordering Cantu to get out of the car. The startled teenager reversed the car, with the door still open. Brennand — who was struck by the door — stepped back and opened fire. He continued to shoot as the car drove away. Cantu was hit multiple times, while a female passenger was uninjured, according to police.
The police chief told reporters that the rookie officer was certified to patrol alone at the time of his encounter with Cantu in the parking lot. However, his actions were “unjustified, both administratively and criminally,” McManus said.
Brennand couldn’t be reached for comment on Tuesday night. It was unclear whether he has appointed an attorney.
The day after the shooting, police command and training academy staff met to discuss the episode and concluded that their training practices were “sound,” McManus added.
Bexar County Criminal District Attorney Joe Gonzales on Friday said that the evidence he had reviewed so far led him to reject police charges against Cantu for further investigation, though his office would later do a full review.
The prosecutor’s office couldn’t immediately be reached for comment overnight Tuesday on Brennand’s arrest, which comes several days after he was fired over the incident.
The police chief was asked Tuesday whether investigators had considered filing attempted murder charges against the former officer.
“This is still an open case,” McManus said, adding that the investigation was led by homicide detectives and that the district attorney could request more information before taking the case to a grand jury. “Our goal right now is to get him in custody and that’s been accomplished.”
A lawyer for the family of the wounded teenager said that Cantu is unconscious and on life support, and that there had been no improvement in his condition, the Associated Press reported. | 2022-10-12T06:01:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Texas police arrest ex-officer who shot teen eating hamburger - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/12/teen-eating-hamburger-shot-aggravated-assault/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/12/teen-eating-hamburger-shot-aggravated-assault/ |
By Sanam Mahoozi
Iranians, some with their hands painted red, hold pictures of Mahsa Amini during a protest outside the Iranian Consulate in Istanbul on Tuesday. (Sedat Suna/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
When her classmates organized a protest at their university in Tehran, the young woman decided to join. It would be safer there than on the streets, she thought, where demonstrators were being shot at and beaten by Iranian security forces. And she felt she had to do something.
“For us women, life is a constant battle and struggle,” the 20-year-old student told The Washington Post.
There were only 10 of them protesting that day, chanting, “Woman, Life, Freedom,” avoiding the more aggressive slogans calling for the downfall of the government. It didn’t matter. Anti-riot police soon swarmed the campus, she recalled, sending the students running for cover.
“I feel rage and loathing for the way people are being treated,” she said.
The protests that began over the death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of Iran’s notorious “morality police” have turned into a full-fledged anti-government movement, with chants of “death to the dictator” echoing in cities across the nation. The Post spoke to four Iranians in the capital, Tehran, about the uprising and how it is transforming a country long ruled by fear. All spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid reprisals by the authorities.
“We want them gone. I ask God every day to somehow demolish this regime,” a 53-year-old woman told The Post.
In a series of voice messages, she related how her son had recently been hit by a bullet as he tried to run away from security forces.
“When I saw my child in pain with blood over his body, I felt destroyed,” she said, explaining that she takes anti-anxiety medication during the day and sleeping pills at night to cope with the emotional strain.
Her 30-year-old son has joined the protests, but on that day he was a bystander. He was on a run with a friend when they heard men shouting, he said. As they approached, they saw police attacking a crowd of protesters that had gathered under a bridge.
“We were lucky we were runners, so we managed to get away faster than other people, but that didn’t stop me from getting shot in the buttock,” he told The Post from his home, where he was recovering.
The Post could not independently verify his account, but it is consistent with reports of the Iranian government’s widening crackdown. Dozens of protesters have been killed, including at least 19 children, hundreds injured and thousands arrested. Reporting restrictions make the true toll difficult to verify. Security forces have fired live ammunition at protesters, misused tear gas and water cannons, and brutally beaten people with batons, according to Amnesty International. Activists, journalists and lawyers have been rounded up. But the repression has not crushed the movement.
Over the course of the past month, the days in Tehran have taken on a strange but familiar pattern, said the man, who works as a personal trainer.
“You don’t feel the revolutionary rage as much in the mornings because people need to work to feed their families,” he said.
But in the afternoon, drivers start honking their horns in solidarity with the protesters. As night sets in, the man said, people take to the streets, knowing it will be harder for security forces to recognize them in the darkness. And then, before dawn, he and others wake up early to chant “death to Khamenei” from inside their homes — a reference to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — even as government agents roam the streets listening for signs of dissent.
“I had to try a few different places to join these chants because there are actually people monitoring these houses,” the man said. “We have to turn off all the lights when we chant.”
His mother said she panics every time he leaves the house, knowing he could be killed or injured. “But I don’t want to stop him,” she said, because “then what kind of future are these kids going to have?”
“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid every day, but the odd thing is that my feeling of hope is somehow more dominant,” she told The Post. “It’s like we have nothing left to lose.”
Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said the anger and frustration driving the protests is broad and deep, and felt across generations.
“Crowds aren’t individually as big [as in past protests], but in many ways they are more determined, with a sense that the regime must change,” he said. “Youth are in many ways in the forefront, but there are many different groups coming together.”
The trainer said he spends most of his days trying to find a stable internet connection in Tehran — which he needs to teach fitness classes remotely — but that has gotten “20 times harder” since the government started throttling internet service. Despite the obstacles put up by the state and the deadly force it has used against protesters, he is confident the movement will keep growing.
“The breaking point is near in Iran, and a day will come soon that the crowds will be too large for the system to control,” he predicted.
Others have more modest hopes. Another woman in her mid-50s, a mother of two, said her life has been marked by turmoil — first the upheaval of the 1979 revolution, then the trauma of the Iran-Iraq War, followed by decades of economic and social struggle.
She doesn’t consider herself a political person, but the violence unleashed by the government has shocked her.
“Everyone is depressed and melancholy, no one is smiling and there is no sign of life; it’s like a ghost town,” she said of walking through the capital in the mornings.
Her daughter has now joined the demonstrations at her university. She and the other protesters across Iran are fighting for freedom, her mother said, noting that freedom means different things to different people.
What did it mean to her?
“Freedom is when you don’t have to constantly worry that someone is going to bring you the news of your child’s death,” she answered. | 2022-10-12T06:14:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Across generations, Iranian protesters struggle for change - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/12/iran-protests-mahsa-amini-hijab/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/12/iran-protests-mahsa-amini-hijab/ |
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