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The Justice Department says in court filings it is too early to reject a lawsuit filed against Montgomery County police in the killing of Ryan LeRoux, 21
Montgomery County Chief of Police Marcus Jones and Assistant Chief Darren Francke review bodyworn video footage at the Montgomery County Public Safety Headquarters Tuesday, July 27, 2021 from the July 16, 2021 shooting of Ryan LeRoux, 21, at a McDonald's in Gaithersburg on Flower Hill Way. (Jasmine Hilton/The Washington Post)
The Justice Department has argued that a judge should not support Montgomery County’s recent bid to toss a lawsuit that the family of a man killed by officers in the drive-through of a McDonald’s filed against the police department.
The parents of 21-year-old Ryan LeRoux, Rhonda and Paul LeRoux, sued in April after a Montgomery County grand jury cleared the four police officers who fired 23 shots at LeRoux in July 2021. Police said he had raised a gun and pointed it at officers during the encounter in Gaithersburg. The lawsuit claims that officers knew or should have known of LeRoux’s mental health disabilities and provided accommodations under the Americans With Disabilities Act.
The county filed a motion to dismiss the case, arguing his parents “failed to plead factual allegations” that LeRoux was a “qualified individual with a disability” and establish that his disability limited him, according to court filings. The county also argued that police did not know of LeRoux’s disability during the incident or need for an accommodation and that LeRoux’s parents did not identify reasonable accommodations for officers to have taken. Because of “exigent circumstances” — LeRoux ignoring commands to place his hands in the air and having a gun on the seat next to him — officers had no duty to reasonably accommodate, according to court documents.
“ ‘Exigency’ is not confined to split-second circumstances; it includes unstable situations where there is a known threat of a weapon, such as Mr. LeRoux’s gun and non-compliance,” the county said in a filing in U.S. District Court in Greenbelt.
The Disability Rights Section of the U.S. Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division alleges the county misinterpreted the ADA law and moved too soon to dismiss, according to a statement of interest filed in the lawsuit.
“Courts have also made clear that Title II does not allow public entities to claim ignorance in the face of apparent signs of a person’s disability and need for a modification by simply declining to inquire further,” the statement of interest said. The statement also said that “multiple officers had the opportunity to observe Ryan in a passive, non-responsive state, even as armed officers shouted commands at him.”
Brown, Goldstein & Levy, the law firm representing LeRoux’s family said in a news release Friday that “this case now continues with the Civil Rights Division and BGL on Ryan’s side.”
Officials with Montgomery County and the county police department said the county does not comment on pending litigation. The Office of the County Attorney and police union did not respond to a request for comment.
Lack of training alleged in fatal police shooting outside McDonald’s
The incident began when a McDonald’s employee called 911, telling the dispatcher that LeRoux was “acting crazy” by staying in the drive-through and not paying for his food, according to the complaint.
The complaint alleges that it took more than an hour for county police to respond and that they failed to immediately call the county’s mobile crisis team — a unit staffed with mental health professionals who respond with police to handle mental health emergencies. When an officer arrived, Ryan was reclined in his seat and did not respond to conflicting commands, the complaint alleges. About 20 minutes into the incident, more officers showed and called a crisis negotiator, the complaint says. But before the negotiator could arrive, four of the about 17 officers present fired at LeRoux after they said he had sat up and was “eyeing the gun,” the complaint asserts.
Police have said that six officers saw him lift and point the gun just before the fatal shooting.
Police released body-camera footage that showed LeRoux moving in the car but it was unclear in the video what LeRoux was holding in his hand. LeRoux’s family has long said that LeRoux, who was left-handed, had lifted his cellphone. After the shooting, police found both the gun and cellphone on LeRoux’s lap.
The lawsuit, assigned to Magistrate Judge Ajmel Ahsen Quereshi, argues that there were signs during the encounter that police were dealing with someone in crisis.
Kobie Flowers, an attorney representing LeRoux’s parents, said that he brought an ADA suit because it asks the questions: “Did the police department know this person had a disability, and what did they do to help?”
“Instead of helping people struggling with mental health, too often police end up killing those people,” Flowers said.
According to the complaint, LeRoux had several mental health disabilities including schizophrenia, depression and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
The county argued in its motion to dismiss that “merely identifying the former diagnoses” was not enough to meet requirements under the ADA. The county also argued that it wasn’t obvious for officers to have known LeRoux had a disability and need for an accommodation.
“It can hardly be obvious that any person who refuses to pay for his food or to obey the police has a mental disability which requires an accommodation or what that accommodation would be,” the county said in court filings.
More than 1,000 people have been shot and killed by police in the past year
However, the Justice Department supported the family’s opposition to the county’s dismissal of the case because they agreed that their complaint established that LeRoux’s mental health diagnoses were within the meaning of the ADA and did allege how his disabilities “substantially limited a major life activity,” including his brain function and ability to communicate, according to the statement of interest.
The Justice Department also agreed that LeRoux’s family identified reasonable modifications the county could have taken, including dispatching a mobile crisis team or crisis intervention team or waiting for the crisis negotiator they called to arrive.
The county also “incorrectly states” that exigent circumstances, which the county said was the “threat of extreme violence,” can “absolve” their duty to provide reasonable modifications, the statement of interest said.
The Justice Department concluded that the reasonableness of the proposed modifications “in light of the exigent circumstances present” should not be decided at the motion to dismiss stage and should be resolved “on a more developed factual record.”
An attorney who represented the four officers — Sara Vaughan, John Cerny, Brooks Inman and Cpl. Romand Schmuck — during the investigation into whether the officers should have been charged, had said their actions were justified.
“Mr. LeRoux’s death is unquestionably heartbreaking to his loved ones, a fact not lost on the officers who had to use force,” Chaz Ball said. “None of those officers woke up that day knowing that they would later be put in a position where lethal force would be their only option to protect their own lives, lives of fellow officers, and those of the civilians at the gas station and street behind them.”
External audit finds shortcomings in key areas of Montgomery County policing
The Justice Department files a statement of interest in cases when there is a “substantial legal issue” being resolved that may have implications on the interpretation of the law, said Jonathan Smith, executive director of the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs and former chief of the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.
In this case, the issue is about what police departments must do to accommodate the disability of someone they encounter, Smith said.
“The United States has an interest to make sure that when courts interpret the law, that they do it using the right precedent and the right standards,” Smith said.
Christy Lopez, a professor at Georgetown Law and former deputy chief in the Special Litigation Section of the Civil Rights Division, said the Justice Department is weighing in to try to reduce the likelihood that the law is misinterpreted, which could deprive people of the protections the law is meant to provide.
“If you are a police department or a city, you need to understand that you’re going to come up against people who are in mental health crisis, and you need to have available the tools to respond to that as safely as possible for all concerned,” said Lopez.
Dan Morse contributed to this report. | 2022-10-16T10:14:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DOJ files statement of interest in fatal police shooting of Ryan LeRoux - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/16/doj-ryan-leroux-lawsuit-montgomery/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/16/doj-ryan-leroux-lawsuit-montgomery/ |
Muslims suing over watch-list status say U.S. tactics block scrutiny
Those challenging the constitutionality of the “No-Fly List” and Terrorist Screening Database say that when they sue, they get removed, making it impossible to have their concerns heard in court.
Several people challenging their status on government watch and no-fly lists say they get delisted as their court cases gain traction. (iStock)
Advocates say the reversal is part of a pattern from the government to evade scrutiny of the Terrorist Screening Database, a secret, FBI-maintained list of known or suspected terrorists subject to heightened security screening at borders, and of the smaller No Fly List of those barred from U.S. airspace.
Hundreds of thousands of people have been placed on the lists since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. For years, civil liberties groups have challenged the process of determining who is on the two lists as unconstitutional but say they’re often hampered by the government’s tactics.
“The Government removes people from their secret lists only when they fear that a court might impose restraint on their lawlessness,” said Gadeir Abbas, an attorney with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) litigating Long’s case. “If the FBI has its way, delisting a person will become a kind of cheat code the federal government can use to deny people their day in court.”
The group has eight such examples, he said. The latest involves Abdulkadir Nur, a Somali-born U.S. citizen who lives in Virginia and says in court filings he had been subjected to extensive, intrusive searches at U.S. airports since 2008. That year, Nur was part of a United Nations relief convoy in Somalia that local insurgents raided; he was questioned in the subsequent investigation but never accused of wrongdoing.
Nur got no confirmation that he was ever on the terrorism watch list or taken off it. His attorneys say they can infer both from the scrutiny he consistently received at airports until this month, when he did not get searched or interrogated for the first time in 12 years.
“The Government ... merely has stopped violating the law against Nur, and only to wrangle out of a lawsuit it cannot win,” his attorneys wrote.
CAIR is arguing that Nur’s lawsuit should continue despite the apparent concession. But earlier this year, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit ruled that Long’s challenge to the No Fly List was moot because the government had taken him off. He can keep fighting his placement on the broader watch list.
Because of a 2015 ruling in another federal court, Long was able to learn that he was on the No Fly List. (Placement on the broader watch list remains a mystery.) He was told by the Department of Homeland Security that he was on the list because he had “participated in training that may make you a threat to U.S. national security,” and that an arrest in Turkey in 2015 was also “of concern to the U.S. Government,” according to court records.
Long says his only military training came from the U.S. government and that his arrest on a vacation in Turkey was a direct result of his placement on the No Fly List. Long served in the Air Force from 1987 to 1998. While stationed in Turkey, he converted to Islam and decided he could not be responsible for civilian deaths. Denied conscientious objector status, he ended up leaving the military with an “other than honorable discharge.” He stayed in the Middle East and became an English teacher.
The DHS letter said the government “withheld certain information” about Long’s placement because of “national security concerns.”
But in late 2020, when the case was before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, he was informed he had been removed from the No Fly List and would not be put back on, absent new information; the Department of Justice made a similar guarantee in court.
The same U.S. judge in the Eastern District of Virginia presiding over Nur’s case, Anthony J. Trenga, ruled in 2019 that the watch list system violates due process rights.
“The risk of erroneous deprivation of ... travel-related and reputational liberty interests is high,’” the George W. Bush appointee wrote in response to a suit filed by 23 Muslim Americans.
He noted that for an agency to nominate a name for the list requires only “reasonable suspicion” that someone is a “suspected terrorist,” which does not require any evidence of involvement or interest in criminal activity. Ninety-nine percent of nominations are accepted by the Terrorist Screening Center.
According to court filings, as of 2019 there are roughly 1.1 million people on the broader watch list, of which 81,000 are barred from flying.
“If there were that many terrorists in the world, we would be getting attacked all day long,” said Javed Ali, former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council. “That’s not the way to use a tool like this — if people are in there in error, they should not be there in perpetuity.”
He suggested a court similar to the one that oversees secret surveillance orders could evaluate Americans’ placement on these lists.
The Fourth Circuit overturned Trenga’s decision last year, saying “the delays and burdens experienced by plaintiffs at the border and in airports, although regrettable, do not mandate a complete overhaul.” | 2022-10-16T10:14:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Muslims suing over status on watch lists say U.S. tactics block scrutiny - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/16/no-fly-list-lawsuits-blocked/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/16/no-fly-list-lawsuits-blocked/ |
The former Phoenix TV news anchor has emerged as a Republican phenom by amplifying Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen and embracing the hard-right politics of abortion and immigration
By Ruby Cramer
Republican candidate for governor Kari Lake speaks at a campaign event at San Tan Flat in Queen Creek, Ariz., on Oct. 5. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
PHOENIX — If you’d like to speak with Kari Lake, there are some things you should know first.
One is that Kari Lake does not say “um.” Kari Lake’s words are crisp and clean and, when needed, they can be warm or they can be harsh. The more confrontational you are, the more composed Kari Lake will become. People have said Kari Lake is “Donald Trump in heels,” but really, she is Donald Trump with media training and polish. Her sentences are perfectly complete. Her hair is cropped into a familiar pixie cut, left over from 22 years on the anchor desk at Channel 10, the Fox affiliate in Phoenix, where she entered living rooms every weeknight at 5 and 9. The name Kari Lake, first and last, is known by virtually everyone in Arizona. It has power. When Kari Lake walks into a room, all eyes turn to Kari Lake. She is one of those people.
The other thing you should know is this: When Kari Lake walks into a room, there will be a small lavalier microphone clipped to the collar of her dress or the lapel of her shirt.
The microphone is there whenever Stacey Barchenger, the Arizona Republic reporter assigned to cover Lake, tries to ask a question. “Not you,” the candidate tells Barchenger, looking her in the eye before calling on another journalist, in what has become a familiar bit on the trail. It is there when a CNN reporter tries to ask for an interview: “I’ll do an interview,” Lake says, “as long as it airs on CNN+. Does that still exist? I didn’t think so.” It is there when Dennis Welch, political editor for Phoenix’s 3TV and CBS 5, tries to question Lake, only to have Lake question the questioner: “I don’t even know: Do you guys have any viewers left?” The interactions are packaged into videos, content for her campaign to release and weaponize on social media: “Kari Lake Exposes Bias” … “Kari Lake Goes Mega Viral After Exposing Fake News” … “Watch Kari Lake Put The AZ Republic In Its Place.”
Lake’s microphone captures the magnetism she brings to a stage. It also amplifies the existential danger Democrats see in her candidacy, from her election denialism to her restrictive abortion agenda to the national platform she could assume. But more than that, it is wielded as a weapon and a threat. On a recent Wednesday evening, after a Hispanic forum in the Maryvale neighborhood of Phoenix, a campaign staffer pulls me into a small backroom. The lights are bright fluorescents. Live Latin music from the stage comes booming through the walls. The night before, a campaign aide texted to say Lake would grant a short interview. “Please don’t wear jeans and we ask that you stay away from purple tops. Thank you!” the aide wrote, clarifying the next morning that they were “kidding” about the jeans.
Inside the room, a chair is waiting for me. Lake is wearing royal blue, not purple. Seeing Halperin point his camera in the direction of our faces, as well as the large boom mic hanging inches overhead, I ask if I’m being recorded.
“You are being recorded,” Lake confirms.
She asks if it’s okay. I tell her it’s not my favorite thing.
“It’s not my favorite either,” the candidate says. “But we feel we have to because the media has been so unfair that we feel we have to record everything.” She explains that the campaign releases the recording only “if we feel that we’ve been misrepresented.” If everything “goes great,” Lake says, it’s nothing to worry about.
After spending her life in TV news, Lake, 53, propelled herself to the top of the GOP ticket in Arizona by claiming falsely that President Biden’s election was stolen from Trump, by embracing the hard-right politics of abortion, immigration, pandemic-era mandates and critical race theory — and by casting her television career and her former colleagues, journalists who were once her friends, as part of what she calls the corrupt and immoral “fake news media.” As a candidate, Lake has sought to use her TV news credentials to her advantage — “I know Arizona,” she often says — while simultaneously discrediting the entire enterprise.
Friends from Channel 10 knew Lake as more free-spirited than Bible-loving. They say she was into Buddhism, loved her regular vacations to Jamaica, became swept up in the energy around President Barack Obama, threw big parties at her house, went out to gay bars, and thrived on cultivating a television audience with the same instinct they see in her new life as a candidate for governor. In the years after Trump’s 2016 election, her politics shifted to the right in ways her colleagues found unpredictable and bewildering. On March 2, 2021, she left journalism altogether, and within three months, she launched her first campaign for office. Now she is weeks from a possible victory, driven by the energy of voters young and old — and by a Democratic opponent, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who not only refuses to debate Lake but has struggled to communicate in the most basic ways.
Arizona is both a foundational home for hard-right politics — it gave rise to Barry Goldwater in the 1960s — and an increasingly viable target for Democrats. The state will help determine future presidents, as it did in 2020, and if Lake wins, she will help oversee the management of its elections, possibly in partnership with Arizona’s Republican candidate for secretary of state, Mark Finchem, who has led the conspiracy that mass fraud was at work in 2020. Lake has claimed falsely that Trump was the “real winner” of Arizona, repeating the lie with a frequency and conviction that thrills the former president and his supporters. “It’s funny,” Lake told an audience this summer, “I talk to President Trump. He goes, ‘I love it. No matter what I ask you, you always bring it right back to the election. I can ask you what the weather’s like in Arizona, and you’ll say, ‘Well, it’s nice, but how do I enjoy it when our elections are stolen and we don’t have a country?’ ”
The Kari Lake campaign has become a phenomenon in Arizona. It spans multiple demographics. It draws huge crowds on a day’s notice. People arrive in Lake gear, in Trump T-shirts, in cowboy hats. Lake works the crowd, and an eddy of staff and security circles the woman at its center. Before she faces the press, a posse of supporters appear as if out of nowhere, lining up behind the candidate to form a human backdrop. When the cameras roll, they grip their Kari Lake signs and smile. And here, Lake takes over. She picks public fights with the press at almost every opportunity, to the delight of her followers and her staff, a collection of 20-somethings who snicker as she tees off, their mouths agape in admiration.
It’s a show they’ve all seen before but never grow tired of watching. And it’s on display from the moment I introduce myself to Lake.
“Is this paper owned by — who is it owned by?” she asks.
Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, owns The Washington Post.
“Oh, I thought so,” she says, her voice turning hard.
“You don’t give anybody fair coverage, unfortunately.”
She walks away, and a gaggle of Lake staffers are waiting, laughing.
“That was gonna happen. That was gonna happen,” one of them says.
“She’s actually like that all the time. She’s real!” says another.
“It’s not staged,” he added. “It’s real.”
On a Tuesday morning in October, Lake is preparing to take the stage with Kristi L. Noem, the 50-year-old Republican governor of South Dakota who could be Lake’s closest political contemporary should she win in November. The event is a “Coffee with Kristi & Kari,” but behind a rack of makeshift curtains, in a small holding room backstage, staffers instead drink tallboy cans of Monster Energy as they monitor a playlist of “JAMZ” coming through the loudspeakers. Vape plumes fill the air.
When the two women arrive, a man in the crowd, intrigued, pulls out his phone and types “Kristi Noem” into Google Images, scrolling through photos. Onstage beside her, Lake repeatedly identifies Noem as one of the country’s “two strong governors,” the other being Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, leaving out the other 26 currently serving from her party, including Arizona’s own, the term-limited Doug Ducey. She makes only passing reference to Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who is scheduled to visit Phoenix on Wednesday to campaign on behalf of Lake at two rallies and two fundraisers, according to a campaign aide.
A day after appearing with Noem, at a saloon-style restaurant in Queen Creek, Lake speaks at a rally with Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, who watches from an outdoor pagoda beneath a sign that reads, “If there are idiots in power: It is because those who elected them are well represented.” During her speech, Lake calls for Cruz to replace “that old bat” Mitch McConnell as the top Republican in the U.S. Senate. The crowd roars. “You know what sounds really good? Senate Majority Leader Ted Cruz,” Lake says. Cruz gives an awkward smile and clenches his plastic water bottle.
Four days later, Lake is the star warm-up speaker at a Trump rally in Mesa. Waiting in a hold room for the former president to arrive, a young staffer retrieves a vacuum to clean the red carpet laid out before a backdrop reserved for taking pictures with Trump. Lake walks over and asks to finish the job herself, the vacuum chord snaking around the heel of her black stiletto. She is on camera, of course, and the following day, photos spread on Twitter and Instagram.
Watching Lake campaign across Arizona is an exercise in observing the new Republican Party at work. Lake is not unlike the 20-somethings on her campaign: They are people who crafted an identity in Republican politics not by studying the arc of conservatism in America, but by watching Trump.
Lake shares Trump’s understanding of performance and theater. Former colleagues and friends say Lake was not the most academically minded of the anchors at Channel 10, but she was certainly the savviest. When the pandemic arrived, Lake’s husband, Halperin, helped design a home studio with perfect depth and smooth sepia tones — soft and glossy, like an Instagram filter. “The way to a woman’s heart is through lighting and photography!” she wrote in a post on Facebook.
When station managers asked on-air talent to expand their presence on social media, maintaining a screen in the newsroom to track journalists’ likes and follows, Lake quickly rose to the top of the leader board. The staff called it “the Hunger Games,” but Lake took the exercise seriously, former colleagues said, showing off the activity on her accounts. Instinctively, she understood that including questions in her posts — things like “What do you guys think?” — helped create a more lively and committed following, according to one former colleague. Twelve people who knew Lake from Phoenix’s TV market agreed to interviews for this story, some speaking only on the condition of anonymity to reflect candidly on the candidate.
In 2019, Lake got in trouble at Channel 10 for joining the far-right social media site Parler and promoting the account on her professional Twitter page. “This is my FIRST post on Parler,” she posted that June. “Sounds like this is the only social media site that is actually putting the First Amendment first. Bravo!” By July, someone had leaked hot-mic video footage from the Channel 10 newsroom showing Lake and her longtime co-anchor, John Hook, discussing the controversy. “I think they just think it’s been branded as a far-right kind of place,” Hook told her as they prepared to go live, warning that the station could get blowback from places like the Phoenix New Times, an alt-weekly that covered local media. “F--- them,” Lake said. “That’s a rag for selling marijuana.”
“I know,” Hook replied. “But then they’re in a position where they’ve got to explain it, or you’ve got to explain it.”
The exchange blew up because of Lake’s coarse language, but what stands out now is her rationale for joining Parler in the first place: “I’m reaching people,” Lake told Hook.
As a first-time candidate for office, Lake has an intuitive sense for a crowd and the staging of an event. In January, she spoke at her first Trump rally, her first encounter with an audience of that scale. As she walked to the lectern before thousands of people, Lake knew exactly what to do. She threw out her arms and stared in awe at the scene before her, giving the photographers the shot they wanted.
Republicans in the state had tried to persuade Lake to run for Congress. But no, she told them, she wanted to be governor.
One of the people Lake consulted after leaving Channel 10 was Sal DiCiccio, a Phoenix city councilman and outspoken conservative who became a friend after Lake interviewed him years prior. “I said, ‘Congress would be a slam dunk for you, Kari,’ ” DiCiccio recalled. “But she was very clear: Her heart was in Arizona. She goes, ‘This is where I think—’” DiCiccio cut himself off. “No, not ‘think,’ ” he said. “She never says, ‘I think.’ She said, ‘This is where I believe I can make the greatest impact.’ ”
DiCiccio supported Lake’s Republican primary opponent, Karrin Taylor Robson, a well-funded, establishment-friendly candidate to whom he had made a prior commitment to endorse. When he told Lake he couldn’t stand beside her in the primary, DiCiccio said, she didn’t hold it against him. “Of all the politicians I’ve worked with, she understood that the most,” he said. “She’s very assured of herself.”
Last spring, as she prepared to enter the race, Lake worked with Blake Wilson, a Phoenix-based Republican political brand designer, to create her first campaign logo. She told Wilson she wanted something that would “project confidence,” he recalled. She also asked to see an option that closely resembled Trump’s aesthetic. The mock-up Wilson produced mimicked his big-block, san-serif lettering, with “KARI LAKE” printed beneath a row of five stars, but Lake decided against it. She liked another option better: a distinctive maroon, with a font and cactus icon styled after Arizona’s 1980s license plate. Lake carries Trump’s “America First” banner aggressively and without apology, but she has also made this campaign her own. When you ask people who Kari Lake’s campaign manager is, they tell you that it’s Kari Lake.
The staff below her is an unlikely assortment: There is Colton Duncan, a 27-year-old operative from Texas who met Lake at a dinner last spring and moved to Arizona the following day, where he can now be seen running around campaign events, harried, an iPhone pressed to his ear. There is field director Matthew Martinez, just 21 years old. There is senior adviser Caroline Wren, 35, a longtime Republican fundraiser who served as Trump’s 2020 national finance director and helped fundraise for the Jan. 6, 2021, rally at the Ellipse, where Trump called on his supporters to march on the Capitol. (Wren’s lawyer has said she was not present at the Capitol or the Capitol grounds that day.) And then there is Lake’s best friend, Lisa Dale, a 51-year-old former news anchor who is running campaign operations and is a constant by the candidate’s side. In September, the team asked Jared Small, a longtime Republican advance staffer, to help professionalize the campaign’s events, working hand-in-hand with Lake’s husband to make sure the visuals are just so.
It is easy to view Katie Hobbs as Lake’s opposite. The Democrat oversaw the contentious 2020 election in Arizona as secretary of state and served as minority leader in the state Senate, but struggles as a messenger on the trail. At the Arizona Capitol, reporters would often ask her to repeat her answers because sentences would trail off, making her meaning difficult to decipher, one reporter said. During the primary, Hobbs declined to debate her Democratic opponent, despite the fact that he posed little threat to her campaign. (She won with 72 percent of the vote.) She has since refused to share a stage with Lake, producing a weeks-long saga over debate rules and an uncomfortable running contrast. When Hobbs didn’t show at a voter forum earlier this month, Lake stood for more than an hour next to an empty podium labeled “KATIE HOBBS,” in case there was confusion about her absence. “I have no desire to be a part of the spectacle that she’s looking to create,” Hobbs said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” a few days later.
It’s the same worry you hear from reporters on the campaign trail: If you engage, you risk starring in Lake’s next video.
When Lake was nearing her 20th anniversary at Channel 10, she granted an interview to the Arizona Republic about the pressures women face over their public appearance. She said she got feedback from viewers about how she looked. The criticism didn’t bother her, she told the paper, because she held the experience of being on-air at a certain remove.
“You really become that character when you are in costume,” she said. “Every role we play has a uniform.”
Tracking Lake’s journey to her current role has been an exasperating prospect for many who knew her as an anchor in Phoenix — a spiral of questions with no end.
Lake grew up in eastern Iowa, the youngest of nine kids, eight girls and one boy. Her mother was a nurse. Her father taught government and history at North Scott High, in Eldridge, Iowa, where Lake was a student. When her parents divorced, Lake lived with her father in a country town called Donahue, population 289. “Everything starts with her being the ninth of nine kids,” one former colleague said, describing her as a person who sought attention in the newsroom. She studied mass communications at the University of Iowa, and was still in college when she married her high school sweetheart, Tracy Finnegan, at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Davenport.
After school, Lake started as a production assistant at a TV station in town. It took only a few months before she was on the air: A local affiliate in Rock Island, Ill., just over the Mississippi River, picked her up as a weekend weather anchor. In the summer of 1994, the day after Lake turned 25, the Arizona Republic printed a two-sentence blurb: Kari Lake was coming to Phoenix, the new face of weekend weather at NBC’s Channel 12. By the time she moved, her marriage was ending. It was a new city, a new life and a big TV market. The first friend she made in Arizona was Dale.
Back then, the most comfortable couch in the Channel 12 newsroom was in the weather office. Dale was the morning anchor, and after the show ended, she would walk to the weather office, exhausted, flopping on the couch for a nap. One morning, she woke up and saw Lake, “just bright-eyed and bushy and couldn’t be happier,” Dale recalled. “It’s always funny to me when people say, ‘Oh, Kari’s changed.’ I’m like, ‘I’ve known her for 30 years. She didn’t change. You just didn’t really know her.’ ”
It was Dale who set up Lake and Halperin on their first date. In 1998, the couple got married in Sedona and together, they took jobs at the NBC affiliate in Albany, N.Y., driving across the country with their three dogs. Lake stayed for a little more than a year. The following winter, they moved back to Phoenix, where Lake settled in for a 22-year stay at Fox Channel 10.
Inside the newsroom, Lake was well liked. She could be thoughtful and warm, sending handwritten notes to colleagues in times of hardship, or asking after spouses and children. She was “tough but fair” as a mentor to younger staff, said Mindee Padilla Arritt, who worked at the station in her mid-20s, writing scripts for Lake’s evening newscasts. “She never made me feel less than, and I was at the bottom of the totem pole.” Outside the office, she and Halperin threw big parties at their house. She was not an early riser. The couple took regular trips to Jamaica with their two kids, now ages 18 and 19. Lake never seemed particularly religious, former colleagues said. One remembered her wearing the Kabbalah red string around her wrist, popularized by Madonna in the early 2000s. They balk at campaign ads in which Lake recalls summoning God’s advice or consulting Bible verses. Dale knew her friend to be a “very spiritual person,” she said. “Every day it grows even deeper and deeper, because that’s how heavily she leans on God right now to get her through these times.” Lake was raised Catholic and now identifies as evangelical. If people at Channel 10 didn’t know about her faith, she says now, it’s because she “didn’t wear that on my sleeve at work.”
Former colleagues said Lake could be demanding and difficult, particularly toward the engineers and technicians on set. She got along well with Hook, her Channel 10 co-anchor, but was known to be competitive about the stories they were each assigned. In the newsroom, people recalled, Lake always had something going on — a life change, a new interest — which she would talk about at length. Being around Lake, multiple people said, was like living in “Kari’s world.”
“Everything revolves around Kari Lake,” said Diana Pike, the former human resources director at Channel 10 who worked with Lake for more than 20 years.
Lake believes these people never really knew her. They are going to say “nasty things about me because of politics, and that’s unfortunate,” she says. “I’ve lived my life treating people well.”
Lake’s politics before leaving Channel 10 are difficult to pin down. In 2008, the day after Obama won the Iowa caucuses, Lake changed her party registration to Democrat. She has said she believed the GOP had “lost its way with the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.” In 2012, she switched back to Republican. And three years later, when she saw Trump come down the escalator at Trump Tower to announce his presidential campaign, she “just had a really good feeling that this guy was going to do some things that she completely aligned with,” said Dale. On her personal Facebook account, which she kept separate from her professional page, Lake made comments that registered as liberal one day and conservative the next. In January 2017, the day before Trump’s inauguration, she posted pictures from a 2016 trip to the White House to interview Obama as a “timely (and indulgent) #ThrowbackThursday moment that seems entirely appropriate right now.” After Trump’s election, she urged tolerance toward people who voted against Hillary Clinton, pushing back on comments that attempted to “lump everybody who voted for one candidate” as being racist or misogynistic actors. On yet another post, she left likes on comments such as “Trumpuppetts without a clue.”
Lake’s interview with Obama took place in May 2016, six months before the election. She was one of the anchors given five minutes with the former president, part of the round-robin interviews he would do with reporters from swing-state markets. With 15 seconds remaining in the interview, Lake had time for one last question: “Fill in the blank,” she asked. “Donald Trump will make America (blank) if he’s elected.” She waited for Obama to offer a response. “I haven’t thought too much about it because I don’t think Donald Trump’s gonna end up being president,” he said.
“And you still stand by that?” Lake asked quickly.
In 2017, Lake met a conservative operative named Sam Stone, then working as DiCiccio’s chief of staff, when she called the councilman’s office to report a pothole at 24th Street and Indian School Road. They didn’t talk politics then, but Stone, who would later join her campaign as policy director, said he considered Lake and Hook to be the only television reporters in Phoenix “who would call our office to see if there was a different side to a story.”
Lake’s relationship with the station didn’t sour until the end of the 2010s, when some of her comments on social media drew local headlines. In 2016, she defended Trump’s comments on a secret Access Hollywood tape, where he bragged about sexually assaulting women. “I think DT is talking ‘big’ to fit in with the guys,” she wrote on her Fox 10 Facebook page, “but I do see how it could offend many people.” In 2018, Lake described a movement to increase pay for teachers as “nothing more than a push to legalize pot.” And in 2019, she joined Parler, initiating what would become a protracted back-and-forth with Channel 10. When station leaders told her, “ ‘Hey, you can’t do this. You’re Kari Lake, Fox,’ ” according to Pike, who said she witnessed the exchange, Lake replied that she could because of her First Amendment right to free speech. “That’s when all of this started going downhill,” Pike said. Channel 10 received complaints. Lawyers got involved. Lake was off the air and viewers didn’t know why. It was around that time, “after I got canceled,” Lake tells me, that her daughter asked her to wear a cross “for protection.” On the campaign trail, the silver necklace is visible daily. “I started wearing it from that moment on. I’ve never taken it off," she says.
By the end of 2020, Lake was thinking about leaving Channel 10. She reached out to Andrea Robinson, a former morning anchor who had left the station two years earlier. “We prayed a lot,” Robinson said. “We just talked about where our identity is found: It’s not found in a job.” That December, Lake called Dale to say she wanted to quit. Dale was shocked. She said they needed to talk it through in person. The next morning, she picked up Lake and drove to Scottsdale Bible, a nondenominational megachurch Dale had started visiting before the pandemic. In the car, she tried to talk Lake out of leaving.
“You cannot quit,” she told her. “You make way too much money.” (Pike, the former HR director, said Lake earned more than $400,000 a year at the station; Dale said that Lake made “more than that.” In a five-minute biographical video released this summer, Lake said her “hang-up” about deciding to exit journalism “was walking away from a big salary.”)
At Scottsdale Bible, Dale recalled, the pastor talked about how nothing, including money, was “more important than essentially doing the right thing in life and by your God.” Dale said she and Lake exchanged looks in the pews. “It was as if the pastor was talking directly to us,” she said. “We got in the car and I said, ‘Oh, my gosh, you do need to quit.’ ” After that, according to Dale, Lake continued to go to church, sometimes twice a day. On the trail, they regularly tune in to Scottsdale Bible’s live streams.
In March 2021, Lake resigned from Channel 10.
Reached by text message, Hook declined an interview about his longtime partner on the air: “I’ve made it my policy not to speak about Kari Lake on or off the record.” Doing so, Hook said, would be “unethical.”
In the final months of the race, one of her former colleagues, Steve Krafft, has been releasing homemade cellphone videos of Republicans supporting Hobbs in an attempt to stop Lake from reaching office. Others are on multiple group chats, trading memories and agitated text messages about what they see as Lake’s “hypocrisy.” Some have tried reaching the Hobbs campaign to offer help. Each has their own theory about Lake’s transformation. “The only thing I can come up with in watching this is that her conservative views, little by little, brought her power and recognition that she had never felt before,” said Marlene Galán-Woods, a former Channel 10 anchor whose late husband, Grant Woods, served as a Republican attorney general in Arizona and helped negotiate some of Lake’s contracts. “It’s intoxicating. The Kool-Aid is the power and all these people fawning over you — you forget what the truth is anymore.”
In the background of this campaign, said Galán-Woods, “there are people all over town who are like, ‘Who is this person?’ ”
After the forum in Maryvale, outside the small hold room where Lake sits for our interview, a woman steps forward with a red flat-cap hat that reads, “MAKE CNN GREAT AGAIN.”
“I don’t think it’s possible,” Lake says as she passes by.
Here, former colleagues might rush to point out that this is the same Lake who used to watch CNN all the time in the Channel 10 newsroom. They come back around, again and again, to the question people are left with after seeing Lake transform: Are they witnessing a genuine belief in Trump’s politics or politically calculated performance art? Conviction or opportunism? Four weeks from Election Day, some Republicans in the state have their own answer: “Does it matter?” one operative asked.
Lake has been clear about how she would govern. She wants to remake voting in Arizona on the premise of a baseless claim about 2020. She has spoken well of the 1800s-era abortion ban still on the state books. She has pledged to treat immigration as a crisis and declare an “invasion” along the southern border. You may see her talk less about this in the days leading up to Nov. 8. “You’re not hearing as much election stuff,” said Stone, the policy director. She didn’t mention it when Trump held his rally in Arizona on Oct. 9. “And you’re hearing a little bit less on the border stuff,” Stone said. But if asked, she will happily tell you she wants to lead the country on hard-line immigration policy and is “always worried about voter fraud,” including, potentially, in her own race. Now that she’s the Republican nominee, some of her supporters have urged her to broaden her appeal. DiCiccio, the Phoenix councilman, is one of them. He’d like it if Lake’s message was “maybe softer,” he said. But largely, Kari Lake is still campaigning as Kari Lake — whatever that name means to you.
“She’s changed course less than almost any general-election candidate I can remember,” Stone said. “The only difference is, frankly, which parts of it we’re highlighting.”
When we sit down for our brief interview, Lake has more to say about The Washington Post. She has more to say about the media falling “to a new low.” She repeats, as she often does on the road for voters, that she is not afraid of the press. “I’m not going to sit here and allow the media to tell the story,” she said.
Lake’s campaign is set to one mode, and that is “offense,” as one aide said. When you ask Republicans in the state to name a time they saw her hard exterior crack, a time she appeared vulnerable, they struggle to think of a single example from the 16 months she’s spent as a candidate.
In the hold room, there is one moment when a flash of sadness crosses Lake’s face. I ask if she is still in touch with Hook, the man she sat next to every weeknight for 22 years, or with anyone still at Channel 10. “Not as much as I wish I were.” She works on getting elected from 6 a.m. to midnight, she says, and doesn’t have the time. She no longer watches Channel 10, unless she knows it is running a story on her campaign.
“I harbor nothing but just a wonderful font of memories with them — no ill will,” she says.
Then Lake’s voice falls, as if she feels sorry, maybe for lost friendships, or maybe for them, the people still in news.
“I love them. I really do. I had 22 great years there,” she says. “But God has put me on a different pathway. I used to say it’s a different chapter — we’re in a different book now.” | 2022-10-16T10:14:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Kari Lake turned her campaign for Arizona governor into a phenomenon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/16/kari-lake-arizona-election-governor/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/16/kari-lake-arizona-election-governor/ |
Putin rejecting the rules-based global order makes the world more dangerous
Isolation, economic dislocation, and unchecked military aggression — the classic conditions for war — have returned
Perspective by Gabriel Glickman
Gabriel Glickman is an historian of international relations. He is writing a history of the post-1945 order and is the author of "US-Egypt Diplomacy Under Johnson: Nasser, Komer, and the Limits of Personal Diplomacy."
People in Sevastopol, Crimea watch on a large screen on Sept. 30 as Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers a speech after Moscow annexed four Ukrainian regions. (AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin gave a fiery speech on Sept. 30 declaring that he intends to continue invading Ukraine and that Ukraine and its Western partners were the true instigators of the war. His characterization of himself as an embattled figure against a predatory West is revealing.
While the Biden administration used the new National Security Strategy to reaffirm its commitment to the rules-based order created by the United States after the Second World War, specifically noting that Russia’s actions in Ukraine have “impacted stability everywhere,” Putin’s rejection of the order in the speech shows his resolve to chart a completely different course for Russia’s role in the world moving forward.
The order that Putin recently maligned refers to the collection of international institutions and norms that were developed in the aftermath of the war to prevent further global conflict. The history of the order can be divided into two phases: before and after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. But Russia’s place in this international system is complicated because it developed, in part, to oppose communism and the expansion of the Soviet Union.
After World War II, an elaborate financial network — from lending institutions like the IMF to a currency valuation system — was established to increase economic cooperation between countries. This was done to prevent the harmful economic competitiveness that caused the Great Depression and created the conditions for the rise of fascism. While the Soviet Union attended the negotiations that created this financial pillar of the order, its refusal to ratify the agreements foreshadowed the Cold War.
As the postwar period transitioned to a competition between capitalist and communist nations, military conflict between powerful countries became more likely. NATO was established in 1949 as a form of collective security that could deter Soviet militarism. This was the second pillar of the international order, along with institutions like the United Nations that promoted diplomacy over war.
Preventing the rise of aggressor states that could disrupt the higher living standards of the postwar era became a primary objective of the system. Economic cooperation and collective security were instrumental for this. Increased political rhetoric about a “free world” that was outside the confines of a Soviet one became synonymous with concepts of “the West.” At the same time, leaders like John F. Kennedy promoted terms like “community peace” and “world security system” to appeal to citizens on the margins of the order about the benefits of joining.
Although the Iron Curtain was a barrier between the Soviet system and the postwar order, the Soviet Union continued to have limited access and influence through its participation at the United Nations and by brokering arms limitation agreements with the United States.
Putin is certainly not the first critic of the order. Scholars point out that the United States frequently undermined the rules of the order, as well as its spirit, by toppling foreign governments and coercing smaller states into supporting its objectives. But, over the past two decades, Russia has arguably benefited the most from the rules-based order in its second phase.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the rules-based order went global, and former Soviet republics, as well as countries unaligned with either side during the Cold War, became eligible stakeholders in a truly international community. This helped Russia overcome some of the obstacles of its transition from communism and return to great power status.
In 1998, a financial crisis led to the state defaulting on payments, losing the value of its currency and exhausting its currency reserves. Russian coal miners famously went on strike over unpaid wages, some of which hadn’t been paid in over a year. External debt also ran high, with a large balance due to the IMF for stabilization loans. Russia relied on this assistance, as well as foreign capital, to establish a sustainable macroeconomic system.
Russia didn’t fare better in the military sphere. Despite the relatively peaceful breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, war came in 1994 after three years of breakaway region Chechnya taking steps to formally make itself independent. By the time Putin came to power, the war was not going well for the Russian state. Economics and military power go hand-in-hand, so it was not surprising that Moscow’s defense spending fell to historically low levels in the late 1990s as expenditures became stretched with the debt crisis. This changed estimates of Russia’s military power. In the words of one observer, Russia had a “hollow army.”
But Putin quickly took advantage of the international order to elevate Russia’s global standing. Former Cold War rivals in Europe became comfortable investing in the Russian energy industry and even became reliant on Russia for their energy needs. Moreover, the four biggest oil servicing companies in the world got heavily involved in Russia and invested in expanding its oil drilling and production capabilities during the two decades of Putin’s rule.
Putin utilized this newfound wealth from the international energy markets to raise Russia’s status in the rules-based order. One of the first things he did after assuming the presidency in 2000 was strive to reach the same living standard as Western Europe. To achieve this, Putin positioned himself as a reformer and called for new tax codes that promoted small businesses and land reform that untangled Russia’s complicated pre and post-Soviet restrictions on selling land. He also surrounded himself with market-oriented, and even sometimes liberal, advisers, like Aleksei Kudrin, who encouraged fiscal policies that integrated Russia into the global economy while also making Russia an important influencer.
For a time, Putin’s approach worked. Russia achieved annual growth rates between 5 and 10 percent in his first decade. By some measures, Russia became the seventh-largest economy in the world. In 2012, the Obama administration helped pave the way for Russia to join the World Trade Organization. It was the last of the 20 largest economies in the world to do so, and it symbolized Russia’s accession as a key player in the global economy — a pillar of the rules-based order.
This development occurred despite concerns over Russia’s interventions in the political affairs of its neighbors, including Ukraine, as well as its violation of other states’ sovereignty, such as its invasion of Georgia in 2008. In fact, a desire to avoid an all-out conflagration with Russia prevented the world’s leading powers from engaging, even when Putin loudly violated the rules of the order with such military resurgence. Putin understood this reticence for military action in the international community, particularly after U.S. mistakes in Afghanistan and Iraq paved the way for a philosophy of restraint, and repeatedly exploited it.
Putin established himself as a key player in global affairs, giving Russia a seat at the negotiating table for landmark issues like Iran’s nuclear program and Syria’s chemical weapons. By 2012, leading American politicians, like Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, were asserting that Russia under Putin was a “number one geopolitical foe,” thus demonstrating that Putin had succeeded in working within the order to restore Russia’s geopolitical status.
Russia is now outside the order and, as a result, Putin risks losing his accomplishments. To counter this, Putin seeks to get rid of the order and create a new narrative with himself in the leading role. He wants a new international community with different values — saying, for instance, that new gender norms are “satanic” and therefore Russia will remain an outlier. It is hard to ignore that Putin is inserting himself in an ongoing culture war within the order and setting himself up to be an alternative global leader.
Putin’s speech could be seen as a desperate attempt to shore up his political support in Russia after the backlash he received for ordering the mobilization. But it can also be read as a bold effort to offer a new grand narrative of history that departs from values that have, so far, successfully prevented another world war.
Either way, Putin is signaling that he no longer wishes to participate in the rules-based order. This is significant because not only does it return Russia to its former status on the periphery of the international system, it also means that the classic conditions for war that the rules-based order was created to prevent — isolation, economic dislocation, and unchecked military aggression — have all returned. | 2022-10-16T10:27:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Putin is rejecting the rules-based world order Russia benefited from - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/16/putin-rejecting-rules-based-global-order-makes-world-more-dangerous/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/16/putin-rejecting-rules-based-global-order-makes-world-more-dangerous/ |
If you’re a first-time hearing aid buyer, we have advice about the different features and how to get the best fit
Janice Trent, an audiologist in Bowie, Md., demonstrates how to wear a behind-the-ear hearing aid. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post)
What type of hearing aid is right for me? | 2022-10-16T10:27:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How to buy a hearing aid online or in a store - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/10/16/hearing-aids-over-the-counter-guide/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/10/16/hearing-aids-over-the-counter-guide/ |
A few went to prison. Some have disappeared. But many are rebuilding their careers. And some were barely affected.
Analysis by Ashley Fetters Maloy
Clockwise, from left: Louis C.K., Harvey Weinstein, Aziz Ansari and Andrew Cuomo. (Andrew Burton,Jamie McCarthy,Kena Betancur and Larry Busacca /Washington Post illustration/Getty Images)
As the #MeToo movement took on hurricane strength five years ago, Al Franken was one of the first to get swept away. The U.S. senator for Minnesota resigned under pressure from Democratic colleagues in December 2017, after eight women said that he had inappropriately touched or kissed them.
Today, Franken is representative of the movement’s ambiguous and varied outcomes. Franken has said he regrets resigning. Many of his supporters feel the same way.
And instead of sinking into ignominy, the veteran “Saturday Night Live” comedian and author has rebuilt much of his career. He’s not back in the Senate, but he’s hosting a popular podcast and filling theaters on a busy speaking schedule (marketed, in Franken’s style of humor, as the “Only Former U.S. Senator on Tour Tour”).
Some of the most galvanizing early #MeToo cases suggested that a thorough and eternal discrediting would be the fate of every accused man, like the now-imprisoned producer Harvey Weinstein or former “Today” show host Matt Lauer, who has barely been seen in public since his 2017 firing. But others have reclaimed some of their careers and public esteem. And outside of a bad news cycle, others haven’t really been affected at all.
Attempts to catalogue the high-profile men accused of sexual misconduct or harassment have been exhaustive and exhausting. The New York Times counted 201 men by late 2018. Vox compiled a roster of 262 before it stopped updating the list in 2019.
Gretchen Carlson argues that the fascination with these men’s fates is misplaced.
“We talk all about rehabilitating the men,” the former Fox News host said in an interview, “but the real question is, where are all the women and why aren’t they working again?”
Carlson sued network chairman and co-founder Roger Ailes for sexual harassment in 2016. Fox settled her complaint for $20 million, but her broadcast roles have been few since then. Other women say their lives and careers were forever disrupted by workplace harassment.
But examining the disparate outcomes for accused men reveals certain patterns. The substance and number of accusations went a long way to determining whether they came back or not. So did the findings of subsequent investigations. The status and power of the accused, and of his accusers, are important factors, too. (Weinstein, for example, was less famous to average Americans than some of the actresses who said he harassed or assaulted them.)
And the amount of media attention certainly matters, too; accusations that drew little journalistic follow-up left some men positioned to avoid serious consequences. What’s more, the perceived sincerity of an apology — or lack thereof — could make a significant difference.
Politics may play a role. In 2018, Christine Blasey Ford testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Brett M. Kavanaugh pinned her on a bed and attempted to remove her clothes when they were both teenagers. He was confirmed to the Supreme Court on a near-party line vote. Donald Trump withstood accusations of misconduct from several women and to win the presidency in 2016; last week, though, a judge cleared the way for him to be deposed in a defamation lawsuit from a writer who says he raped her in the 1990s.
Timing, though, also may be crucial. The revelations about Weinstein triggered an outpouring of accusations against other men from victims who had kept their stories private for years or decades; the sheer pent-up volume kept the issue of harassment on a cultural front burner for months.
But with the passage of time, some of the heat surrounding MeToo dissipated. Bill Murray, for example, reportedly settled an allegation of “inappropriate behavior” on a movie set in April by paying his accuser $100,000. Would the allegations have left a bigger mark on the news cycle, and Murray’s public image, at the height of #MeToo?
Weinstein, now in a New York state prison while facing another trial in California, is among a tiny number who went to prison following MeToo allegations. The actor Danny Masterson is slated for a criminal trial on charges of rape in Los Angeles this month. R. Kelly — found not guilty of child pornography in 2008 after the alleged victim declined to testify — was prosecuted again in 2019 with the testimony of several women and men who said he sexually abused them; he is now serving time in New York while awaiting sentencing in Illinois. (Bill Cosby spent nearly three years behind bars before an appeal court overturned his conviction for sexually assaulting a woman — one of dozens who came forward with their stories about Cosby years before the #MeToo movement picked up force.)
Many others, however, have suffered career death: former CBS boss Les Moonves, former Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, the documentarian Morgan Spurlock. For some men in this category — notably TV hosts Lauer and Charlie Rose as well as Oscar winner Kevin Spacey — a multitude of detailed and corroborated accusations permanently undermined the warm, avuncular images that had propelled them to the A-list. The mere appearance of Spacey in a low-budget movie trailer last spring caused film critics to shudder.
Even Spacey’s attempt at a minor comeback, though, appears to have been thwarted by criminal sexual abuse charges filed against him in England shortly after that trailer made the rounds. Some of the early accusations against him in the U.S. came from men who were teenagers at the time of the alleged incidents. And while public opinion can quickly turn against anyone accused of sexual misconduct — it can be all that much more rapid when the claimant is a child or minor, said Dallas attorney Michelle Simpson Tuegel.
“Sometimes adult survivors and adult women face more scrutiny. That is not warranted and not fair, but they do,” said Simpson Tuegel, who represented more than a dozen former U.S. gymnasts who were abused by team doctor Larry Nassar (who is also now imprisoned).
“There are questions that cannot be asked when it involves a child that will be asked when it involves an adult woman.”
Film director Bryan Singer was quickly excommunicated from his industry after he was accused in 2017 of raping a 17-year-old boy, as was James Levine, the formerly renowned Met Opera conductor accused by several men of sexually abusing them, some whom were teenagers at the time. (Levine has since died.) Roy Moore’s Senate bid crashed after accusations he had dated and sexually abused minors; his comeback attempt, in 2020, flopped with a fourth-place finish in a GOP primary.
In some cases, attempting to downplay allegations stokes more outrage. The celebrity chef Mario Batali, accused in December 2017 of harassing multiple women, responded at first by apologizing in an email newsletter for his “many mistakes,” tossing in a cinnamon-roll recipe for good measure. Fans saw it as callous; he eventually gave up ownership of all his restaurants and his share of the Italian food market Eataly.
“I don’t blame people for wanting to [resume their career], especially when they’re famous and they’re noted in their field,” says Thom Fladung, managing partner at Hennes Communications, which helps organizations tend to their reputations after scandals. But a key to “outrage management” is not to tell people when to get over it, he adds. “You don’t own the right to tell people, ‘It’s time to move on.’”
Others of the #MeToo accused have managed to maintain a presence in their professional fields — but under a cloud. Garrison Keillor, who never apologized and gave shifting explanations for accusations from employees that caused Minneapolis Public Radio to cut ties with him, is still touring but playing much smaller rooms. Washington Commanders owner Daniel Snyder remains in control of his team despite accusations from two women — which he denies — and a finding by the NFL that the franchise’s business operations were rife with harassment, leading to a $10 million fine.
Then again, Snyder himself holds the final word when it comes to disciplinary action at the team he owns, unless his fellow NFL owners force him to sell it — an exceedingly rare occurrence in American professional sports.
Five years after the #MeToo movement began, survivors still face pushback when testifying in public. An expert on gender-based violence explains why. (Video: Hadley Green/The Washington Post, Photo: Sarah Hashemi/The Washington Post)
There are also the MeToo cases you never even heard about — the ones that were quietly settled under the cloak of nondisclosure agreements.
Carlson and another woman who sued Fox — political commentator Julie Roginsky — launched a campaign against these “NDAs” and the mandatory arbitration clauses imposed in many employee contract. They argue that such provisions enable companies to keep harassment and discrimination complaints secret, discouraging reporting and enabling harassers. Their group notched a success with the enactment in March of a federal law banning forced arbitration — “my greatest life achievement other than my children,” Carlson says.
But what about the comebacks from #MeToo? Some have been successful, Fladung posits, because they were preceded by an immediate apology. Louis C.K., accused in 2017 by five women who said he masturbated in front of them, responded the day after the initial allegations with a lengthy apology that admitted wrongdoing. (“I left these women who admired me feeling badly about themselves and cautious around other men who would never have put them in that position.”)
“The way you survive a crisis is you tell the truth. You tell it fast,” Fladung says, “and you tell it to as many people as possible.”
C.K. was out of the public eye for only a short time. A film he wrote and directed lost its distribution slot in 2017, but he began performing again the next year. He continues to tour internationally and won a Grammy in 2021 for Best Comedy Album. If his climb back seemed short, his particular profession probably helped: Stand-up comedians aren’t dependent on networks, production companies or publishers to reach audiences, and are able to rely largely on the goodwill of comedy-club bookers and fans.
Actor and comedian Aziz Ansari took a similarly candid approach after an unnamed woman told a journalist in January 2018 that he had tried to pressure her into sexual acts after a date. He acknowledged that the incident had taken place but that he believed it was consensual until she told him otherwise. “I was surprised and concerned,” he wrote. “I took her words to heart and responded privately after taking the time to process what she had said.”
After a few quiet months, Ansari returned to stand-up comedy later in 2018 and essentially resumed his career afterward — helped, arguably, by the blurriness of the offense (his accuser acknowledged that miscommunication may have played a role) and the fact that no other such stories emerged about him.
There was seemingly more downtime, though, for Dustin Hoffman, who was accused of sexual misconduct by five women in 2017, including two who said they were minors at the time. The two-time Oscar winner issued an apology (“I am sorry. It is not reflective of who I am”), but after decades of steady work mostly disappeared for a while. At 85, though, he now has two small film projects set for release this year and two more in preproduction.
For others plotting comebacks, the verdict is still out. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), who resigned as New York’s governor last year amid a ballooning sexual harassment scandal, is reportedly strategizing a future return to public life. After a few quiet years following accusations by five women, actor James Franco recently signed on to play Fidel Castro in the upcoming film “Alina of Cuba.” Others have not returned to their old fields but seem to be angling for some redemption: Russell Simmons relocated to Bali and recently became a big-name investor in a tech start-up. Former New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman, accused in 2018 of choking, hitting or slapping four women, sat for an extensive interview with BuzzFeed this year to discuss his attempts to understand the harm he had caused.
And, of course, there are the accused men who — well, everyone seemed to quickly forget they had been accused.
Eight women accused Morgan Freeman of sexual harassment in 2018, some citing incidents on film sets of inappropriate touching and comments about women’s clothing and bodies. The actor downplayed the allegations: “It is not right to equate horrific incidents of sexual assault with misplaced compliments or humor.” And his illustrious career has carried on mostly uninterrupted, with roles in several feature films including the 2021 Eddie Murphy project “Coming 2 America.”
It may have helped Freeman that his alleged offenses seemed less severe than other newsworthy allegations that surfaced around the same time. Similarly for Ryan Seacrest, who was accused by a former E! Network stylist in 2017 of showing “unwanted sexual aggression” toward her for years. Seacrest denied the allegations entirely — and seemed to suggest that he had been unfairly swept up in a snowballing, media-driven-#MeToo moment.
“I knew, regardless of the confidence I had that there was no merit to the allegations, my name would likely soon appear on the lists of those suspected of despicable words and deeds,” he wrote in a statement. “The pressures of our overflowing newsfeeds would insist on it.” He continues to co-host “Live With Kelly and Ryan” and “American Idol” and executive-produce “The Kardashians,” among other projects.
The recent case of Cleveland Browns quarterback DeShaun Watson has been puzzling to many. Starting in 2021, he was accused of sexual misconduct during massages by dozens of women and eventually settled more than 20 lawsuits. Though Watson lost sponsorships, he ultimately was fined $5 million and missed just one season of pro football and the first 11 games of the current season.
To Simpson Tuegel, the Dallas attorney, Watson’s apparently triumphant upcoming return is an example of one of the most difficult #MeToo outcomes to accept.
“A lot of these victims of powerful abusers,” she says, “are then stuck with the trauma from the abuse and the knowledge that what they did in coming forward was not valued — and not really heard.” | 2022-10-16T11:19:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Five years on, what happened to the men of #MeToo? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/16/metoo-men-what-happened/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/16/metoo-men-what-happened/ |
Long-term decline may be plateauing, but there are limited signs of factory renaissance
Andrew VanRynen, left, and Jeff Thurman check a tool at IMCO Carbide Tool in Perrysburg, Ohio, on Oct. 7. (Sarah Rice for The Washington Post)
PERRYSBURG, Ohio — The transformation of American manufacturing that is unfolding here promises to reshape the nation’s economy and its politics, with new solar energy, electric vehicle and semiconductor plants sprouting in faded factory towns.
Talk of industrial revival already is starring in the race for Ohio’s open U.S. Senate seat, as both Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democrat, and Republican J.D. Vance seek to embed themselves in the state’s comeback narrative.
In interviews, Ryan embraced the Biden administration’s use of generous government subsidies to encourage creation of new manufacturing jobs while Vance touted former president Donald Trump’s import tariffs and said faster development of the state’s energy resources could spark a boom.
“Our goal needs to be: how do we position ourselves to be in front of as many growing industries as possible? Electric vehicles, cars, trucks, batteries … hydrogen, natural gas, nuclear solar, aerospace. How do you lay the groundwork where we have an industrial policy for all of these?” Ryan said. “There’s an opportunity for us to dominate these industries of the future.”
What’s playing out on the ground, though, is different from what the candidates stress on the stump. Yes, manufacturing jobs are growing in Ohio. But they are not the jobs that disappeared decades ago.
Manufacturing has changed so much in recent years that the blue-collar job gains from new factories, while welcome, are likely to pale alongside the 5 million U.S. jobs lost since the late 1990s, economists said. Many of the new positions will require special skills or education that most blue-collar workers lack. Much of the work will be done by machines.
“When we talk about bringing manufacturing back today, that’s very different than bringing back manufacturing 10 or 20 or 50 years ago,” said Amanda Weinstein, an economics professor at the University of Akron. “It’s not going to produce as many jobs.”
The sparsely-populated factory floor at Toledo Solar illustrates the challenge.
The three-year-old manufacturer of solar panels for homes and businesses is exactly the kind of green-energy, high-tech business that the Biden administration favors. Aaron Bates, the chief executive, announced a major expansion last month, boosted by tax incentives in the climate and health bill the president signed in August.
But like many advanced manufacturers, Toledo Solar’s growth will create a limited number of new jobs, at least in the near term. On a recent visit, just a handful of workers stood alongside the automated production line.
“This isn’t the kind of factory where you just throw bodies at things,” Bates said. “It’s all robotics.”
The White House says manufacturing is booming, thanks to federal investments and the industry’s rethinking of supply chain risks, amid the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
Biden has won passage of three bills designed to promote domestic manufacturing: the Inflation Reduction Act, the bipartisan infrastructure bill, and the CHIPS and Science Act, which subsidizes semiconductor production.
Several leading employers already have responded, including Intel, which broke ground last month on a $20 billion semiconductor complex outside Columbus.
Over the past year, U.S. factories have added 467,000 jobs, marking the sector’s best recovery from recession since the 1950s, according to the White House.
Yet hanging onto those gains — let alone building on them — will be tough.
Manufacturing has enjoyed key advantages over the past two years. Unlike face-to-face businesses such as restaurants, most factories could operate safely through the pandemic. And orders surged as consumers used their stimulus checks to buy computers, furniture and appliances.
Those tail winds are fading. In September, the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing gauge fell to its lowest mark since May 2020 with new orders and employment contracting. Many companies are reducing their head counts through hiring freezes and attrition, ISM said.
As the Federal Reserve and other central banks raise interest rates to fight inflation, Wall Street analysts predict a global slowdown that will weaken factory demand. Higher rates also have lifted the value of the dollar by more than 10 percent since March, which makes U.S. goods more expensive for overseas buyers.
Talk of a manufacturing boom is “more hype than reality,” Michael Feroli, an economist for JPMorgan Chase, wrote in a recent client note.
Both of Ohio’s U.S. Senate candidates grew up in steel towns that had seen better days. On the campaign trail, both Ryan, a native of Niles, and Vance, who was raised in Middletown, draw upon their personal experiences when they talk about manufacturing’s importance.
The type of voters who work in Ohio’s factories may decide the race. White voters without a college degree made up more than half of the electorate here in 2020, and they backed Trump by a 2-to-1 margin, according to CNN exit polls.
One out of every three Ohio manufacturing jobs have vanished since 2000. When pressed, Ryan will acknowledge that it is unlikely all of them can be replaced. “There’s no way,” he said, standing outside a local steelworkers union hall.
Ryan, who has long staked out a spot in the anti-trade wing of the Democratic Party, appeals to blue-collar workers by supporting a blend of tariffs and industrial policy. Wearing a gray T-shirt reading “Beers in Ohio just taste better,” Ryan said the government should go beyond subsidizing new factories and try to steer jobs to towns that suffered as companies moved abroad.
“We want it to happen in the forgotten communities that have been left behind, because those were dominating the older industrial areas,” Ryan said.
Vance, who detailed the social costs of deindustrialization in his best-selling memoir, has attacked Ryan as a career politician who failed to prevent the job losses he now bemoans.
The Republican praised Trump for exploding the bipartisan consensus in favor of free trade, which he said wrongly allowed production jobs to go abroad on the assumption that high-paying research and development jobs would remain in the United States.
“What’s really going on here is that the loss of manufacturing made our economy less innovative,” he said in a telephone interview.
Vance wants Ohio to double down on fracking, to ensure manufacturers have access to inexpensive energy. And he wants policymakers to recognize that reversing the errors of the past will require staying power.
“If you’re really going to rebuild American manufacturing, it is going to be a multi-administration, multi-decade project,” he said.
As a share of total U.S. employment, factory jobs have been sliding since the 1950s. Despite increased hiring over the past year, today’s 12.9 million manufacturing positions account for a slightly smaller slice of total non-farm employment than they did when Biden was inaugurated, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Biden promises the new semiconductor plants will mint good-paying blue-collar jobs. Micron announced last week a $20 billion investment in Upstate New York to create the nation’s largest semiconductor fabrication facility and 9,000 jobs.
But some experts caution that most of the new positions will require skills that are in short supply in places like Ohio.
Many of those hired will have four-year degrees in science or engineering or associate degrees along with certifications in robotics, according to Ned Hill, a professor of economic development at Ohio State University.
“They will not be blue-collar workers,” Hill said via email.
Some new projects also will take years to bear fruit. Micron, for example, does not plan to begin “substantial hiring” until the second half of 2025, the company said in an emailed statement.
Forecasts of sizable job gains also are viewed skeptically on some factory floors.
Perry Osburn, owner of IMCO Carbide Tool, attended a trade show in Chicago last month, where the largest convention center in North America was filled with automated warehouse equipment, laser-measuring devices, and 3D manufacturing systems.
“Everywhere you look, it’s automation,” he said.
Osburn is expanding his toolmaking shop, adding 92 jobs to his current 116 workers. He also plans to double the number of machines, replacing some basic models with fully robotic units.
“I personally think manufacturing will grow slowly. But it’s a very different kind of manufacturing. It’s not as people intensive,” he said. “If you say you’re going to bring millions of jobs back, it’s not the same jobs you had 10 or 20 years ago.”
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Likewise, at Toledo Solar, machines perform the most important tasks. Designed to operate around-the-clock, they move large plates of glass along conveyors, where a substance called cadmium telluride is imprinted on the panels, forming a semiconductor that converts sunlight into energy.
Last month, Toledo Solar said it would expand in response to Biden’s signing this summer of the Inflation Reduction Act, which contained $430 million in tax incentives for renewable energy.
The tax incentives will encourage consumers to buy U.S.-made solar panels. But equally important, Bates said, is that the act signaled Wall Street that solar companies will be a viable investment.
Without the tax benefits, Bates could only have afforded a smaller expansion funded by the company’s profits. Federal backing means capital markets now will be more willing to invest, he said.
“That’s huge,” he said.
His 45-person workforce — median salary around $100,000 — is projected to hit about 115 by the end of next year, he added. Many workers are physicists, engineers or advanced degree holders.
With less than four weeks before Election Day, Ryan and Vance are crisscrossing Ohio in a search for votes.
In an Oct. 10 televised debate, the candidates traded shots about inflation, abortion, and political extremism in exchanges that occasionally veered into insult and sarcasm.
But after an hour of rhetorical combat, when Ryan was offered an opportunity for closing remarks, he listed solar panels in Toledo, electric vehicles in Lordstown, batteries in the Mahoning Valley, and computer chips outside Columbus before concluding with the one comment that Vance might well have applauded: “We have an opportunity to be the manufacturing powerhouse of the world.” | 2022-10-16T11:28:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Senate race in Ohio is ground zero for hopes of more manufacturing jobs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/16/ohio-senate-manufacturing-jobs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/16/ohio-senate-manufacturing-jobs/ |
Cannabis flower at a Coastal Cannabis Club event in Chesapeake, Va., on July 1. (Parker Michels-Boyce for The Washington Post)
While marijuana arrests overall dropped in the year since Virginia became the first state in the South to legalize, Black adults accounted for nearly 60 percent of marijuana-related cases before the state’s general district and circuit courts, an analysis of marijuana-related code citations in the state’s court system concluded, despite Black people accounting for about 20 percent of the state population.
The findings echo results seen in other states and the District of Columbia, as state lawmakers across the country increasingly describe legalization as a vehicle for social equity — an intent of Democratic lawmakers in Virginia who hoped to counter the toll the nation’s war on drugs had on Black communities. Lawmakers in Maryland voiced the same hopes for impact when they decided to ask voters if they want to legalize recreational use on the ballot next month. Yet gaps between intent and implementation persist, with White entrepreneurs so far comprising most of the legal market as Black people continue to comprise a bulk of marijuana-related arrests nationwide.
While racial equity often drives calls for reform — President Biden last week announced that he would grant mass pardons for anyone convicted of federal simple possession charges as a first step to “right these wrongs” — cannabis and criminal justice experts said disparities will remain stubborn against a backdrop of broader, unchanged trends in policing.
“The policing practices haven’t changed,” said Jon Gettman, associate Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Shenandoah University. “The laws they have to enforce have changed, but the practices haven’t.”
The Post’s analysis was drawn from a list of more than 1,700 marijuana-related code citations between July 1, 2021 and the end of June this year, provided by the Supreme Court of Virginia’s Office of the Executive Secretary in response to a Virginia Freedom of Information Act request. The data does not include data from the Alexandria Circuit Court or from the state’s juvenile court, and race data was only labeled as Black, White, Asian and unknown.
“Anytime there’s a criminal consequence it has foreseen and unforeseen consequences with getting a job, with applying for housing,” Shapiro said. “So there are a lot of collateral consequences, even in this time when it’s technically legalized.”
And in a state like Virginia, enforcement could greatly depend on location. Chesterfield County General District Court had the second highest number of arrests in state behind Virginia Beach General District Court, though it is the fifth most populous. In Chesterfield, Black defendants made up 71 percent of 110 pot-related cases in the year after legalization passed, according to The Post’s analysis.
In Fairfax County, the state’s most populous county, Black defendants made up just over 30 percent of 108 pot-related cases in the year after legalization passed.
“This is more proof that there should be no penalty because anyone receiving the penalties, or the majority of the people receiving the penalties, at this point are going to be Black and Brown folks that are already marginalized,” said Chelsea Higgs Wise, Executive Director of Marijuana Justice, a Virginia legalization advocacy group.
“It’s well past time that we stand up a legal marketplace that allows adults to legally purchase and until we do that, we’ll still continue to see trends in disparate enforcement of cannabis crimes,” Ebbin said.
“People need to think of dealing with issues of race in our country as a big, comprehensive, institutional effort, that one policy reform is not going to fix,” Hudak said. “You don’t undo 400 years of racial injustice by the passage of one law in the state.”
And for all of 2021 — which included the six months after legalization went into effect on July 1 — there were just over 2,000 marijuana-related arrests.
JM Pedini, executive director of the Virginia National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said that the lower figures were a victory for Virginia, noting a recent study that while legalization does not eliminate disparities — states that have not legalized showed an increase in the arrest disparities between Black and White people over time.
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“What sensible cannabis policy can do is remove certain tools used for disproportionate policing from the toolbox,” Pedini said. “Notably, decriminalization, the elimination of using the odor of marijuana for search or seizure, and then legalization.”
Police in Virginia said they are adjusting to the new laws, but the complexity of what’s legal and what’s not can at times be difficult to manage, especially changes around not relying on the odor of cannabis as cause.
“The big thing is if you had a traffic stop and you smelled, basically the officer would be in control on whether this person can leave freely to go or not,” said Jeff Guess with the Henrico County Police Department. But now, “We have to show something more, not just the smell.”
“If it’s a simple civil penalty, when you are an administrator and you have to answer for more severe drugs that are out there that people are overdosing and dying off, you kind of gotta weigh your options,” Guess said.
Dana Schrad, executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police, said that managing traffic stops — especially for impaired driving — has been difficult across the state because there are no set standards to measure someone’s impairment from marijuana. As for the disparate enforcement, Schrad said the issue is more nuanced than people tend to think, like considering where calls for service are generated, or where there are a larger number of crashes.
“It’s just something where it’s still a violation of federal law and, theoretically, we should be able to rely on that,” Schrad said. “But we can’t because it’s a different legal framework here in Virginia.” | 2022-10-16T11:28:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Racial disparities in enforcement persist after Va. legalized marijuana - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/16/virginia-marijuana-enforcement-disparities/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/16/virginia-marijuana-enforcement-disparities/ |
What Paul Newman wanted us to know about him — and perhaps didn’t
Nearly 14 years after the actor’s death comes his memoir ‘The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man,’ which offers a glimpse of his private life and what those in it thought of him
Review by Louis Bayard
Paul Newman in 1976. From his posthumously published memoir “The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man.” (Courtesy of Newman family)
What do you do with a memoir that the memoirist may not have wanted you to see? Between 1986 and 1991, Paul Newman sat down with screenwriter pal Stewart Stern to discuss his life and career. At Newman’s behest, Stern also tape-recorded hundreds of hours of interviews with the actor’s friends and family. The whole enterprise was supposed to become some kind of book but somewhere in there, Newman changed his mind, burned the tapes and moved on.
Did he think that would be the end of it? Or did he foresee that, three decades later, surviving family members would dig up Stern’s transcripts and set the process back in motion — creating, through their joint efforts, a kind of multiplatform tell-all?
In July, some 14 years after Newman’s death at 83, came HBO’s absorbing six-hour documentary, “The Last Movie Stars,” in which a cast of elite actors reenacted the old interviews via off-screen table read. (By divine right, George Clooney voiced Newman, but the de facto star was Brooks Ashmanskas, siphoning Gore Vidal straight from heaven’s open bar.) The current month has brought forth an audiobook featuring Jeff Daniels and, nearly as an afterthought, the reconstructed memoir itself.
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Relatively slender in girth, “The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man” is perhaps the least mediated and most conflicted part of the whole renaissance because it bears within it all the riven emotions its subject might be expected to feel at its release.
As narrator, he performs his expected due diligence. He speaks of growing up in Ohio, of serving, mostly out of harm’s way, in the U.S. Navy, of realizing, after a stint in his dad’s sporting-goods store, that his destiny was the Yale Drama School. He relives the early breaks and misfires. He lets other witnesses, ranging from Tom Cruise to his aunt Babette, fill in the details. But he knows that at some point he must speak of sex.
For if he’d been merely handsome, we would not be reading his memoir today. His glacier-blue eyes and Michelangelo bone structure derived their power in large part from being harnessed, like Brando’s Romanesque beauty, to something animal. Even in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” where the plot requires Newman’s Brick to resist, again and again, the overtures of Elizabeth Taylor’s Maggie, his every gaze and gesture confirm that something equally erotic is going on just out of view.
In life, Newman remained diffident on the subject; it was his way. In his memoir, he credits his longtime wife and collaborator Joanne Woodward with making him “a sexual creature,” in part by creating a conjugal hut where they could be “intimate, noisy, and ribald” several nights a week. Yet, as Newman surely intended when he gave Stewart Stern free rein of his address book, dissenting voices emerge. A Kenyon College classmate remembers him as “wild, lascivious, dangerous.” Elia Kazan, who very nearly cast him as the lead in “On the Waterfront,” approvingly noted that Newman had “plenty of power, plenty of insides, plenty of sex.”
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Consider, too, that when Newman and Woodward first hooked up in the wings of the 1953 Broadway production of “Picnic,” he already had a wife and, inconveniently, two children, soon to be three. Those three would then be merged with the three that Newman and Woodward brought into the world. (Scott, the one boy in the mix, would die of an overdose at 28.) In this way love and marriage led to family, a subject on which Newman was also riven.
Maybe the book’s most startling confidence comes six pages in, when he speaks of joining his older brother in pounding their heads against the dining-room wall of their upwardly mobile 1930s Shaker Heights home. “Our own Wailing Wall,” recalls the half-Jewish Newman, a response no doubt to a cold, thwarted, alcoholic father and an emotionally voracious mother who, when she wasn’t battling, was drawing her pretty younger son into her death grip.
By those standards, the blended Newman-Woodward household was a step or two up, though not always more. Newman’s alcohol consumption teetered between functional and not. (He was the owner of Kenyon’s beer-chugalug record, and beer would be a lifelong companion.) Woodward, whom Newman credits with an ego equal to his own, bridled at being relegated to earth mother, and the general mood, writes daughter Melissa in her frank foreword, was “stormy one minute, joyous the next.”
It is the thesis of this memoir, and one might say the entire Newman rehabilitation campaign, that it got better. A broken man, at the prodding of family and his own better nature, became a better husband and father — and even a better actor, according to conventional wisdom and self-serving directors.
George Roy Hill, for instance, contends that, with “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” Newman “finally learned to relax.” Sidney Lumet contends that, with “The Verdict,” Newman (despite being one of the earliest members of the Actors Studio) finally grasped the value of “self-revelation.” Neither director must have spent much time with “The Hustler” or “Hud” or “Cool Hand Luke” or Newman’s never-to-be-surpassed Brick. That cool cat was sitting on top of his own hot tin roof and was no less revealing for pretending it didn’t hurt. In the words of Kazan: “There’s something in him that’s masked but underneath it, there’s a soul that wants to do many things.”
And can’t do them. Can’t do anything about the sheer messiness of being an object of desire or, to quote the man himself, “the imponderable of being a human being.” It was perhaps this same principle that drove Newman to commit all those hundreds of hours of tape-recorded testimony to the flames. Perhaps he just concluded that an actor’s life is — or at least should remain — no more knowable than his art. | 2022-10-16T11:58:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Paul Newman's memoir "The Ordinary Life of an Extraordinary Man" review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/16/paul-newman-memoir/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/16/paul-newman-memoir/ |
Keeping the location a secret is essential to protecting it from overenthusiastic tourists. But drought is also threatening the ancient bristlecone.
A tree that might be Methusaleh, a bristlecone pine about 4,600 years old, is shown in the White Mountains of eastern California in the Inyo National Forest on Nov. 28, 2021. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
What might be the world’s oldest tree — a bristlecone pine named Methusaleh that is thousands of years old — is hidden in plain sight somewhere along the 4.5-mile Methuselah Trail in the Inyo National Forest in California. Even photos of it are rare — the internet is littered with pictures of old and gnarled bristlecone pines mislabeled as Methuselah.
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Schulman announced Methuselah’s existence and shared a photo of the tree in National Geographic in 1958, sparking others’ curiosity. Later, the Forest Service stopped publicizing the tree’s location to protect it from those wishing to take a pine comb or other souvenir from the ancient tree.
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“The tree is giving up something, and I don't want to go and disrespect the tree,” he said. “There is a spiritual part. It is not just pure rational science.” | 2022-10-16T11:58:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why mystery surrounds what may be Earth’s oldest tree - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/16/ancient-tree-secrets/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/16/ancient-tree-secrets/ |
The ‘American Lafayette’ fought for Iranian freedom a century ago
Howard Baskerville, in an undated image. (Wikimedia Commons)
Growing up in Iran, Reza Aslan heard a lot about Howard Baskerville. He was a national hero, “the American Lafayette,” who died fighting in Iran’s Constitutional Revolution in the early 20th century. Schools were named after him, and his grave in the city of Tabriz was a place of pilgrimage.
Then came the Islamic Revolution in 1979, forcing Aslan and his family to flee to the United States, where he was surprised to find few Americans had ever heard of Baskerville.
Now he is trying to correct that with his new book, “An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville.”
That the book is coming out just as Iranians are engaging in massive protests is a coincidence, but Aslan hopes it can inform and inspire readers. This is not the first time the people of Iran have united in a struggle for freedom.
“I want Baskerville to become the eyes of Americans for them to look at Iran — not just Iranian history, but the people, culture and the present moment — through a different lens,” Aslan, a religion scholar and bestselling author, said in a recent interview. “And to recognize the most basic, fundamental truth, which is that we’re all the same. We all want the same things.”
Baskerville was born in Nebraska and raised in South Dakota, the son of a preacher in a long line of preachers. In 1903, he enrolled at Princeton University, where he excelled, studying religion and constitutional government. He even caught the eye of future president and League of Nations architect Woodrow Wilson, then the college’s president, who wrote Baskerville a recommendation letter upon his graduation, when the young man applied to become a Presbyterian missionary abroad.
When Baskerville arrived in Tabriz in 1907, he found an ancient frontier city, full of people of different religions — Muslims, Zoroastrians, Bahaists, Jews, Nestorian and Assyrian Christians — and ethnic groups — Persians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Georgians, Kurds. There were black-clad gangs of outlaws, powerful local councils, tribal leaders, young revolutionaries. There were mud houses, horses and camels, jasmine gardens and the crumbling ruins of a lost empire. In short, it was the Wild West on steroids.
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In the middle of it all was the American Memorial School, a large compound where Presbyterian missionaries and their families offered a curriculum in languages, history, science and a heavy helping of evangelical Christianity. Local parents were happy to send their children there for a good education, regardless of their religious traditions at home.
Baskerville thrived as a teacher there, growing close to the head of the school, Samuel Graham Wilson (no relation to Woodrow), his fellow teachers and his students, who weren’t much younger than he was. He even started a romance with the headmaster’s daughter.
Meanwhile, the crown prince, Mohammed Ali Shah, who had been raised in a palace in Tabriz, had just left for Tehran, where he assumed the Persian throne. He might have expected to rule as an absolute monarch, as the Qajar family had for generations, but his father, shortly before his death and under significant pressure, had agreed to back a constitution, establishing the rule of law and even a parliament. Mohammed Ali Shah wanted nothing to do with it, but he was not in a position to suppress it. At least not at first.
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Eventually, pro-shah forces, with the help of czarist Russia, began to crack down on the parliament and constitutional government as a whole. While other cities fell to these forces, Tabriz resisted, and a leader emerged: Sattar Khan, a former highway robber who had transformed into a principled freedom fighter. People began to see Khan as the “father of the nation,” an Iranian George Washington. A number of his fighters, who included women, were Baskerville’s friends and students.
Baskerville was warned by other missionaries to remain neutral; the whole mission hinged on their ability to stay in the good graces of whoever held power. But as he taught about the American Revolution, he couldn’t help seeing similarities between the Founding Fathers and the struggle for freedom taking place in front of him.
First, he began secretly smuggling information to the freedom fighters, including details on bomb-making and military maneuvers he found in an encyclopedia. Eventually, he left the mission and joined their ranks. When confronted by an American diplomat, he turned in his passport.
The U.S. government had no intention of getting involved, to the shock of the Tabrizis, Aslan said. How could the Americans not see the Tabrizis were just like them? How could they not come to their aid the way France had aided the Continental Army?
Officially, the United States deferred to England and Russia — which had economic interests in the region — and stayed out of it. Unofficially, Aslan said, a stereotype reigned that people of color, especially Muslims, were “not ready” for constitutional government.
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On April 19, 1909, Baskerville led a daring dawn raid to break through the siege, a crucial move that allowed the Tabrizis to gain the upper hand, inspiring other cities to join the fight and eventually depose the shah. But it came at a cost: Baskerville was shot through the heart and died. He was 24.
Khan sent a telegram to Baskerville’s father with news of his death: “Persia regrets the honorable loss of your dear son in the cause of liberty, and we give our parole that future Persia will always preserve his name in her history, like that of Lafayette in America, and will respect his venerable tomb.”
Aslan stressed that Baskerville did not abandon his faith or his American ideals with his actions. In fact, his faith and ideals led him to do what he did. Shortly before his death, he told a fellow missionary, “The only difference between me and these people is my birthplace, and this is not a big difference.” He told another to pass a message to his mother: “Tell her I never regretted coming to Persia, and in this matter, I felt it was my duty.”
“Baskerville was a privileged White man,” Aslan said. “There is a version of this story in which he’s just a White savior ... that went to a foreign exotic world and tried to save them.” But Aslan doesn’t see it that way; in fact, he thinks Baskerville is the “antithesis and antidote to the White savior complex.”
“He gave all the agency to the people that he was trying to help. He literally said ‘What do you need from me?’ to his students, and his students said ‘Fight.’ And he said ‘Okay,’ ” Aslan said, pointing out that many Americans in Tabriz were sympathetic to the people’s cause but unwilling to suffer alongside them. Even when people were starving, the Americans and their families at the missionary school were eating just fine; they had worked out a deal to receive food as long as they agreed not to share it.
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“When it came down to it, [Baskerville] was willing to give up his privilege,” his passport and even his life, Aslan said.
So what happened to the constitutional government for which he fought and died? It ended in 1925, when Britain and Russia, looking to protect their oil interests, helped install a new shah. By the 1950s, he was deposed and his son was installed and propped up by the United States, eventually leading to the Islamic revolution and the current regime with which most Americans are familiar — the one against which many Iranians are rising.
It’s “depressing as [expletive]” that Iranians are still struggling for freedom, Aslan said, not to mention that a majority of Americans now worry that democracy is under threat here, too. But he hopes young people in Iran and the United States will be inspired by Baskerville and the Constitutional Revolution.
“It’s the most perfect historical analogy for what’s happening right now,” he said. “These are young people clamoring for the exact same rights that Howard Baskerville died for 116 years ago.”
A gay first lady? Yes, we’ve already had one, and here are her love letters.
More than 1,800 congressmen once enslaved Black people. This is who they were, and how they shaped the nation.
Ben Franklin’s bitter regret that he didn’t immunize his 4-year-old son against smallpox | 2022-10-16T11:58:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Howard Baskerville, 'American Lafayette' who fought for Iranian freedom - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/10/16/howard-baskerville-reza-aslan-iran/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/10/16/howard-baskerville-reza-aslan-iran/ |
President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in November 1985 in Geneva. (AFP/Getty Images)
There are good reasons for the government to keep secrets, such as protecting sources and methods in intelligence work. Yet it is critical to maintain public confidence in the process. Keeping secrets is a form of “trust us.” An Oct. 4 ruling by U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg undermines that trust. The ruling protects the secrecy of an entire document even though it was already made public — by the government.
In February 2021, the State Department released a volume in the Foreign Relations of the United States, or FRUS, concerning U.S.-Soviet relations from January 1983 through March 1985. This was an important period in the Cold War, during which President Ronald Reagan accused the Soviet Union of being an “evil empire” and Soviet leaders were rattled by a NATO nuclear weapons command exercise, “Able Archer 83.”
Although it was known that the Soviet leadership experienced a “war scare” in the fall of 1983, the FRUS volume revealed a heightened, round-the-clock Soviet alert in the fighter-bomber divisions of forces stationed in East Germany and Poland. They were ordered to load nuclear bombs on one squadron of aircraft in each regiment, and aircraft were placed at “readiness 3,” meaning a 30-minute alert.
Among the disclosures is a retrospective memo from Lt. Gen. Leonard Perroots, who served as assistant chief of staff for intelligence, U.S. Air Forces Europe, during the 1983 exercise, and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from 1985 to 1989. At the end of his DIA tour, he wrote the memo to record his disquiet over what had happened. In the FRUS volume, the text of his memo was published for the first time, with only slight redactions.
The National Security Archive, a nonprofit research group at George Washington University that has used the Freedom of Information Act to explore government decision-making, sought the original of Gen. Perroots’s memo in a FOIA lawsuit, saying the memo was already public in the official history. The CIA released a cover letter but insisted the original must remain secret in its entirety, saying disclosure could “reveal specific intelligence activities, sources, and methods that are either still actively in use or which remain viable for use today.”
In considering the case, Judge Boasberg said he received a classified submission from the CIA. He ruled that the Perroots memo must remain entirely secret, saying the CIA was “not properly involved in the document’s disclosure,” for reasons that are — well, secret. The judge said his analysis was “admittedly cryptic.” The FRUS volume says it was subject to an extensive, four-year declassification review process. Given this, how could the CIA have not been “properly involved”? The process seems to have faltered.
This is not a leak but an official history. The Russians could have easily read the memo in FRUS. If a small part of the memo needed to be redacted to protect sources and methods, a common practice, better to do that and release the rest. Unfortunately, the entire FRUS volume has now been taken offline by the State Department’s Office of the Historian. The State Department says it is “under review.” The Perroots memo and the FRUS volume offer vital history lessons about the difficulty of crisis management in the nuclear age — lessons we could use in this perilous time. | 2022-10-16T11:59:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | An official U.S. history revealed a Cold War nuclear scare. Now back to the vault - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/16/cold-war-government-secrets-nuclear-weapons/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/16/cold-war-government-secrets-nuclear-weapons/ |
Distinguished person of the week: He’s fighting DeSantis’s abuse of power
Andrew Warren, the state attorney for Hillsborough County, Fla., speaks to reporters in Tallahassee on Sept. 19. (Chasity Maynard/AP)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has eagerly displayed his contempt for the First Amendment. The Republican punished Disney for objecting to his “don’t say gay” law. He has repeatedly locked the media out of events. And he has set up a system for suing teachers who discuss race in ways he does not like.
Perhaps one of his most absurd assaults on the freedom of speech is his removal of Hillsborough County prosecutor Andrew Warren for signing on to a letter opposing the “criminalizing” of abortion. Now, Warren is fighting back, and he is threatening to disrupt the Republican governor’s pattern of authoritarian power grabs.
DeSantis claims that he fired Warren because the letter he signed indicated he wouldn’t enforce the law. But as Warren explained in an oped for The Post in August, “In removing me from office, DeSantis offered no examples of specific actions taken by me or my office that broke or ignored the law.” Instead, Warren explained:
The governor cites statements I signed with other prosecutors from around the country regarding gender-affirming care and restrictions on abortion rights, two of his political wedge issues. These are value statements, where I expressed my opposition to laws that I believe violate constitutional rights. Florida’s current 15-week abortion ban was found to violate the Florida Constitution by the first court to review it. And Florida has no criminal law at all regarding medical treatments of gender-affirming care. His allegations of “neglect of duty” and “incompetence” are based not on what I have done but on what he predicts I will do.
Warren filed suit in federal court to fight his suspension without pay, which DeSantis announced at a news conference in early August. “We are not going to allow this pathogen of ignoring the law get a foothold in the state of Florida,” DeSantis stated. “We are going to make sure that our laws are enforced and that no individual prosecutors puts himself above the law.” A slew of former judges, prosecutors and police officials signed on to support Warren.
Not surprisingly, DeSantis is desperately trying to avoid a reckoning. He made a motion to dismiss Warren’s suit, but U.S. District Judge Robert L. Hinkle sternly rejected it. While DeSantis claimed Warren’s declaration in favor of abortion rights “demonstrates both neglect of duty and incompetence,” the judge pointed out that “Florida has no laws criminalizing trans people or gender-affirming health care, and the writing did not include any pledge not to enforce any such laws.”
As for abortion, Hinkle wrote, “Mr. Warren says the commitment to ‘refrain from prosecuting those who seek, provide, or support abortions’ was a promise only to use discretion, not a blanket refusal to prosecute abortion offenses.” That sentence might be the basis of a bench trial, now set for Nov. 29.
The judge also noted during the hearing that DeSantis’s August news conference was “chock-full of general policy disagreements with how Mr. Warren approaches his office.” The judge added that whatever DeSantis’s executive order said, the event clearly showed "the real reason for the removal.” That’s precisely what Warren wants: for a judge to see his firing as a political stunt.
Hinkle warned: “Political loyalty to the Governor is not an appropriate requirement for effective performance of a state attorney’s job.” It is no wonder DeSantis made a motion to make an interlocutory appeal. That failed, too.
Warren told me in a phone interview that the general reaction to his firing in the county has been “outrage.” Some voters have told him they that, even though they voted for DeSantis or wouldn’t vote for Warren when he’s up for election in 2024, DeSantis’s actions “should not happen in a democracy.”
The case boils down to who is in charge: the voters or DeSantis. Warren argues, “The state attorney’s job comes with discretion,” and in Florida, it is the people who elected the prosecutor who should have judgment on that discretion, not the governor. “Don’t the people get to decide in a democracy?” he asks.
DeSantis has been trying to avoid deposition in Warren’s case, but the judge has already said the suit can proceed, meaning DeSantis is not protected by executive privilege. Moreover, DeSantis made the decision to hold a news conference boasting of his decision. He will likely have to explain why — under oath.
Warren is focused on being reinstated and receiving back pay for the time he was suspended. But there are two larger, overarching issues at stake in this case. The first is that when someone disagrees with DeSantis, the governor often uses his power to retaliate. This suit could help put an end to that — or at least give DeSantis second thoughts about squelching dissent in the future. Second, DeSantis has a pattern of championing unconstitutional bills, as he did with his attack on social media companies and his anti-protest bill. A victory for Warren would be a blow to DeSantis’s culture wars.
In short, DeSantis has consistently displayed authoritarian behavior, shredding the First Amendment and bullying state actors to knuckle under to his radical views. For standing up to the bullying and demanding that voters, not DeSantis, pick their county prosecutor, we can say well done, Mr. Warren. | 2022-10-16T11:59:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Andrew Warren is standing up to Ron DeSantis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/16/distinguished-person-andrew-warren/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/16/distinguished-person-andrew-warren/ |
Barry Glassman, the Republican candidate for Maryland comptroller, at a coronavirus vaccination site in Aberdeen, Md., on May 5. (Michael Robinson Chavez/The Washington Post)
Two highly qualified candidates are vying to become Maryland’s next comptroller, whose shorthand descriptor — state tax collector — glosses over the job’s broader brief and real power.
Democrat Del. Brooke E. Lierman is a diligent, detail-oriented Baltimore lawyer who has served eight years in the House of Delegates, where she is respected as a workhorse. Republican Barry Glassman is the term-limited Harford County executive, a well-liked conservative whose meat-and-potatoes style of competent government has guided him for more than 20 years in public service, which included stints in the House of Delegates and state Senate.
We endorse Mr. Glassman, a traditional Republican who rejects the GOP’s MAGA wing and would take a restrained approach to the office, managing it as intended by the state’s laws and constitution. He represents the only realistic chance in this election cycle for any Republican to win statewide office in Maryland. The other two GOP nominees on the Nov. 8 ballot — Del. Dan Cox, for governor, and Michael Anthony Peroutka, for attorney general — are extremists who trail by more than 20 percentage points in the polls.
One-party rule in any state is a recipe for immoderation and poor governance. Maryland’s legislature has long been controlled by Democrats, with the party’s liberal wing ascendant. Over the past eight years, only Gov. Larry Hogan, a moderate Republican, has provided a check on Democratic dominance in Annapolis. In the process he gained huge popularity in Maryland, where Democrats outnumber Republicans by a 2-to-1 ratio.
Mr. Hogan has shunned the other two GOP candidates on the statewide ballot, but embraced Mr. Glassman, whom he sees in his own mold — a sane, traditional Republican untainted by the “big lie” and former president Donald Trump’s cult of personality.
Mr. Glassman has the right perspective on the job he seeks, which oversees an office of more than 1,000 employees. As comptroller, he would be one of three members of Maryland’s powerful Board of Public Works, which can make or break major state contracts for highways, rail lines and other important infrastructure. In that capacity, he would support Mr. Hogan’s sensible plan to widen portions of the Beltway and Interstate 270 — the only plausible way to prevent much worse traffic in the long run on highways already notorious for some of the country’s worst congestion; Ms. Lierman opposes it.
Mr. Glassman would take a responsible approach to another key part of the comptroller’s job: helping oversee the state’s pension fund, worth roughly $68 billion at the start of this year. In that capacity, he says he would focus not on politics but on investment returns that ensure benefits for tens of thousands of retired teachers, state police, judges and others. Ms. Lierman, by contrast, wants to leverage the fund to advance her policy views, directing investments toward or away from companies depending on their priorities. We might agree with some of those policy preferences — for example, in favor of firms that embrace measures to combat climate change, shun Russia or help struggling communities. But we share Mr. Glassman’s reluctance to use the pension fund as an ideological tool.
Both candidates are capable. Mr. Glassman is a better fit for the job. | 2022-10-16T11:59:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Barry Glassman for Md. comptroller - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/16/maryland-comptroller-barry-glassman-endorsement/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/16/maryland-comptroller-barry-glassman-endorsement/ |
A smoker puffs on an electronic cigarette in Chicago. (Nam Y. Huh/AP)
Teen vaping continues to be a public health crisis. For evidence, look no further than new data released by the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on youth e-cigarette use. The study, drawn from the 2022 National Youth Tobacco Survey, found that an alarming number of adolescents regularly use these harmful, addictive products. The FDA will need to respond forcefully.
According to the paper, 9.4 percent of middle and high schoolers — more than 2.5 million young people — reported using e-cigarettes in the month before taking the survey. That includes approximately 14 percent of high school students. This finding might be lower than the whopping 28 percent of high schoolers reported in 2019, but it is still far too many. E-cigarettes can contain substantial amounts of nicotine, which can harm adolescents’ cognitive development and raise the risk of addiction.
Researchers warn that assessing trends over time is fraught, because the pandemic affected data collection. Nevertheless, the findings raise worrisome questions for regulators. Nearly 30 percent of young people who reported using e-cigarettes said they consumed these products daily, and approximately 85 percent consumed flavored e-cigarettes, which can come in sweet flavors designed to appeal to youths. In 2020, the FDA prohibited flavors in refillable cartridge-based products, but allowed disposable devices to continue to be sold in flavors such as “banana ice” and “cool mint.” Teens’ preferences appear to have shifted as a result: Single-use devices are now the most popular among teens, with fruit and candy flavors especially prevalent.
For years, policymakers have struggled to find the right balance on e-cigarettes. Vaping offers a less toxic alternative to regular cigarettes for older smokers seeking to kick the habit. At the same time, these products can quickly hook young people because of their convenience, range of flavors and nicotine levels.
Recognizing those dangers, the FDA has attempted to crack down, with some responses more successful than others. The centerpiece of the agency’s strategy was its long-awaited partial ban on flavored products in 2020. Yet the final rule included many exceptions — not only for disposable devices but also e-liquids in other forms.
The new survey data should prompt regulators to close as many of those loopholes as they can. They should also vigorously enforce existing rules, including by imposing financial penalties on bad actors. The agency received some help from Congress this year, when lawmakers gave the FDA new authority to regulate products that used synthetic nicotine. In a statement this month, the FDA announced it had sent a warning letter to Puff Bar — the most popular e-cigarette brand among teens today, which uses synthetic nicotine — and denied marketing orders for 32 e-cigarettes from another company, Hyde. This is a start, but the agency should quickly finish reviewing pending e-cigarette applications and double down on getting illegal products off the shelves and streets.
Until most flavored products are taken off the market, teenagers will continue to consume them. Don’t be fooled by the colorful packaging and innocuous names. It is past time to protect children from the lifelong health and behavioral risks associated with adolescent vaping. | 2022-10-16T11:59:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Teen vaping remains a serious public health crisis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/16/teen-vaping-health-risks-fda/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/16/teen-vaping-health-risks-fda/ |
Emmanuel, TikTok-famous emu, fights for life amid deadly bird flu crisis
Emmanuel and farmer Taylor Blake earlier this year. (Taylor Blake)
Emmanuel the emu — who went viral on TikTok for hilariously pecking his owner’s phone as she filmed educational videos about farming — is fighting for his life amid a deadly outbreak of avian influenza that has killed most of the birds on the farm where he lives, his owner said.
Emmanuel is experiencing nerve damage in his right leg and can’t eat or drink on his own after contracting the disease on Wednesday, content creator and hobby farmer Taylor Blake shared late Saturday on social media. Blake, whose family owns Knuckle Bump Farms in South Florida, said the farm lost more than 50 birds in three days — all but Emmanuel and Rico the swan.
Emmanuel — the roughly 5-foot-8, 120-pound emu, whom The Washington Post interviewed in July — faces “a long road ahead” to recovery, Blake said. But he is a “fighter,” she added.
Emmanuel the Emu has become a star of Knuckle Bump Farms’ TikToks. Taylor Blake, whose family owns the farm, helped facilitate Emmanuel’s interview. (Video: Annabelle Timsit/The Washington Post)
The United States is in the midst of a months-long avian influenza outbreak that experts have said is the most severe since 2015, when a “highly pathogenic” strain of the disease affected more than 49 million birds. The Department of Agriculture called it “the most costly animal health emergency” in its history.
Blake said she suspects the outbreak of avian influenza at the farm was spread by throngs of wild Egyptian geese, a type of aquatic bird known as waterfowl, who routinely fly in “under the cover of darkness.” She said she believes they spread the disease among the domesticated birds there.
“The virus hit them extremely hard and very quickly,” Blake wrote on Twitter as she described the extent of her family farm’s loss: “Every single” chicken, duck, goose, female black swan and turkey at the farm died in just three days.
Emmanuel’s videos have reached millions of people on TikTok, Instagram and Twitter. Blake and a puppet of Emmanuel were featured on “The Tonight Show” with Jimmy Fallon in July, and Knuckle Bump Farms began to sell merchandise with the emu’s face on it.
Now, Blake wants to use what happened to her farm to raise awareness about the disease. She said she is “dedicated” to ensuring that Emmanuel survives it — describing a sling she and girlfriend Kristian Haggerty built so the emu could “start physical therapy.”
In a video posted late Saturday, Emmanuel appeared alert, at one point looking straight into the camera as Blake showered kisses on his head.
Avian influenza is a viral disease that typically spreads from wild birds to domesticated birds through bodily fluids, including saliva and feces. In its highly pathogenic form, it is extremely infectious and deadly and cannot be treated.
The virus affects birds differently: Some are simply found dead with no signs of illness, while in others, it can lead to neurological damage, including seizures, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
While experts say the risk of it spreading from birds to humans is low, it can happen and can cause severe illness or death. In April, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed that a person in Colorado involved “in the culling (depopulating) of poultry with presumptive H5N1 bird flu” had tested positive for the virus, experienced symptoms and then recovered. It said the health risk to the general population remains low.
Highly contagious bird flu circulating in D.C. region is not a danger to humans, officials say
The current outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza began in January 2022 in Canada and is believed to have spread from Europe. Wild birds migrating to the United States are thought to have brought the virus to dozens of states — including, for the first time, Florida, where the outbreak has been “unprecedented,” the commission said.
Blake said Saturday that she had been in contact with Florida officials, who she said told her that standing water left behind by Hurricane Ian, which battered the state in late September, had “made the virus run rampant.”
Florida wildlife officials could not be immediately reached for comment early Sunday. Various studies have shown that the risk of highly pathogenic avian influenza spreading increases with proximity to contaminated bodies of water.
In a previous interview with The Post, Blake described how she began posting videos with the animals at Knuckle Bump Farms in 2018 to entertain and educate people about farm life. The first time Emmanuel interrupted her as she was filming a video on the farm, Blake was irritated and didn’t post it. About a month later, she was re-watching the video on her phone and thought the interruption was funny.
“I just posted it, not thinking anything of it,” she said at the time. It “completely spiraled from there.”
Blake said Emmanuel has a genuine “obsession with the camera” — and with her. “No matter where I am … he always has to be right next to me.”
Soon after Blake posted about Emmanuel’s condition on Twitter, messages of support began to pour in from well-wishers who have grown to love Emmanuel and his relentless pursuit of his owner’s cellphone.
“DONT YOU DARE DO IT Emmanuel Todd Lopez. You are the king of birds and YOU WILL SURVIVE!!!,” one said, using Emmanuel’s full name and echoing Blake’s standard rebuke for the rebel bird.
“We love you Emmanuel! You were put on this earth to bring joy to the world,” one wrote. “Keep fighting!!!” | 2022-10-16T11:59:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Emmanuel, famous emu, sick with avian flu at Knuckle Bump Farms - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/10/16/emmanuel-emu-avian-influenza-knuckle-bump/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/10/16/emmanuel-emu-avian-influenza-knuckle-bump/ |
By Les Carpenter
Barry Goldberg is coaching his 34th season at American University. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
Barry Goldberg is an optimistic man, the kind who tells people it’s a great day regardless of the weather. For the past 33 years, he has built a dominant women’s volleyball program at American University, a school not known much for sports, by never obsessing over what others had and he didn’t. Instead, he says, he can’t believe he gets paid to coach volleyball.
“Your whole career has been: ‘Make the most of it,’” his wife Bonnie recently told him.
And so now at 60, with cancer in his stomach that has spread to his bones, making it Stage 4, there is a matter-of-factness to Goldberg’s tone. He doesn’t talk much about what is going on inside his body. He always has told his players to ignore their worries “because the whole world’s got problems.” There’s always a solution.
He seems to see his health situation as being the same. Instead of sitting home, he continues to coach because it is what he’s always done. He won’t be profound about his cancer. He won’t count days. He hasn’t asked his players how they feel about his illness. He doesn’t seem to have much room for sadness.
Weeks after he receiving his diagnosis in February, he went recruiting.
“Let’s make something,” he says. “Let’s do something while we’re living.”
Over the years he has never coached much during matches, choosing instead to sit quietly, legs crossed, face frozen in a seemingly perpetual calm even as matches fell apart. He had done his coaching in practice, he believed, so it was up to the players to solve the situation, just like they’ll have to for the rest of their lives.
“Figure it out,” he always says.
The cancer exhausts him, so he sleeps most mornings at the house in Damascus, Md., where he and Bonnie raised their children. But then Bonnie or his oldest son Mitch drive him to his office at Bender Arena, where he plans practices, watches film, devises strategies and tries to coach the way he always has. He says he does this to create normalcy for his players after two abbreviated during the pandemic.
But everyone knows the reason he continues to coach American’s volleyball team is because it’s the only thing he’s ever wanted to do.
“We like kind of use each other, the team and him,” senior setter Inbal Peleg says. “We need him here, but he also needs us.”
Goldberg loves talking about his team. His biggest bursts of energy come when the topic is volleyball. His eyes dance as he tells stories of past players and championships. Balls from each of his milestone wins are displayed on his office wall. A few years ago, the NCAA’s website ran a story ranking the 10 biggest upsets in women’s college volleyball. American had two of them: a first-round NCAA tournament win over Kentucky in 2015 and a second-round win over Duke in 2013 that gave AU its only Sweet 16.
“It was a little school compared to all these other giant schools that we’re playing,” he says.
He took AU’s volleyball team from nothing to 18 NCAA tournament appearances, making it perhaps the sport’s most improbable power. His Presidents’ Day weekend tournament at the Washington Convention Center is one of the biggest in youth volleyball. His top assistant coach, Sarah Katz-Yiljep, says she “can’t take five steps” with him at coaches’ conventions without someone saying hello.
Throughout, Bonnie has been at his side. A former volleyball player and coach herself, she and Barry began dating as assistant coaches at Georgetown in the late 1980s, and married after he took the American job in 1989. They’ve been together ever since: building a program, raising of their children, running a tournament that became a full-time job and now talking to a parade of doctors.
Players describe Bonnie as being “like a mother” to them, who has been talking to the team when Barry cannot, who explains to the players’ parents what is happening to her husband. She has managed the chemotherapy, watched him suffer as the treatments left him aching and overseen the decision to stop when scans showed that the cancer wasn’t going away.
Now, she spends her mornings planning the tournament and the rest of her days navigating the new doctors who are trying integrative treatments with innovative ideas about diets. Twice a week, she and Mitch take Barry for IV drips loaded with vitamins. She reads everything she can about therapies. She tells Barry about successes such as a recent study in which patients saw their cancers vanish though no one could fully explain why.
“We’ll take the unexplainable,” she says.
Barry latches onto these stories. They give him hope even though the lack of a visible tumor in his stomach prohibits him from being part of a clinical trial. He made a miracle with AU’s volleyball program, why can’t he with this?
Bonnie really didn’t want Barry to go recruiting last summer, but of course, she agreed. “It’s his battle,” she says. “The harder he fights, the harder I fight.”
She packed 50 pounds of special foods and blenders, and they went on the road. They went to Orlando for the AAU championships. They went to Melbourne Beach, Fla., for a short vacation. They went to Indianapolis for the USA junior nationals. They returned to Washington for his summer volleyball camps. They took the AU team on a bonding trip to Sand Bridge, Va.
Then they came home, and the season started. In September, Barry won his 800th match, something just three other active coaches have done. It happened during a tournament with several teams playing multiple times that day at Bender Arena. Between matches, Bonnie took Barry to a local hotel so he could sleep.
“I don’t think we ever asked or ever felt: Why? Why him or why us?” Bonnie says sitting across from Barry in his office. “That’s just isn’t who we are. It was, why not us? Why would this not happen to us? This happens every day to people all the time. Why would we think we’re immune? …
“It’s more we have had so much in our life. We have great kids, three great kids. We’ve got five great grandchildren. He’s had this career, this storied career here. We’ve had we’ve had just so much. Why wouldn’t it happen to us?”
Across the room, Barry listens, then nods.
“We can see how much more there is for us,” he says.
There was no reason to suspect American University volleyball would boom when Goldberg was hired in 1989, two years after the program was revived after having been dropped for much of the decade1980s. The job didn’t pay well, meaning he would have to keep his second job as a drug counselor to get by, but it was his only chance to have his own team.
He knew he would have to do things differently. He invented traditions when there were none. To inspire leadership, he made each player give a pregame speech, starting with the oldest senior on Game 1 and working down to the youngest freshman. To build attitude, he had the team write the name of every opponent it beat 3-0 on the wooden boxes the players stood on to spike balls in practice.
He recruited countries such as Israel, Poland and Turkey, finding gifted prospects who liked that AU was in the middle of a big city and didn’t care that it wasn’t in a big conference. He searched youth tournaments for tall players who were not as polished but who he believed someday would be good if he was patient while coaching them. He made himself the coach who didn’t coach in games.
“Every time you play for him you can understand why he’s been able to build here,” AU senior Onuchi Ndee says. “He’s just cool as a cucumber.”
Eventually, the winning came. American won the Colonial Athletic Association in Goldberg’s ninth season, then won the CAA two more times before moving to the Patriot League, where AU didn’t lose a conference match for four years and lost just 18 matches in its first 19 seasons.
“We’re this small school in D.C. that, you know, many people haven’t heard of, yet talk to the people in volleyball about American University and they all know because the unusual has happened here,” Goldberg says.
One decade led to another and another after that. Inside this gym below a parking lot, memories were built: Goldberg’s daughter Arielle and son Jared knocking volleyballs around the court, Mitch hitting lacrosse balls on a side wall, Jared and Mitch playing hours of Candystand mini golf on an assistant’s computer, the day Shaquille O’Neal showed up at Bender and the kids — still tiny — climbed all over him.
At times, bigger schools called Goldberg, and he always said no. He had a home; he didn’t need a new one.
“I think he’s not as focused on, like, winning the volleyball game as he is on building a team and building individual players that can play on a team and building that culture,” his son Mitch says.
Lately, Goldberg’s old players have been coming back as word of his illness has spread. This has excited him. He likes seeing the women he coached and meeting their children. He wants to know everything about their lives. A few weeks ago, a setter from some of his earliest teams showed up. Though she was a gifted player, she and Goldberg battled a lot — the young player and new coach not quite understanding each other — and when she graduated, he figured he’d never see her again. But there she was, some 30 years later, with her kids.
He was floored. They talked for two hours about their lives, about volleyball, about regrets.
“It was amazing,” he says.
Inside his office, Barry looks at Bonnie. They had been talking about his will to keep coaching and the players and the joy volleyball brings him. But he also had been wondering about the burden his care was putting on her.
“My question to you is: are you doing what you want to do?” he asks.
“I am,” she replies.
She turns to a visitor sitting near them on the office’s couch.
“I’ve been married to this guy for 35 years, and I haven’t needed a break. Why would I take a break now?” she says. “This is not the time to take a break. This is a time to turn it up. We know there’s a clock. We all have a clock. We just know that his is ticking, and we just need to do the things that we can do. And then what happens, happens.”
American is just 4-4 in the Patriot League this season and has not been dominant since 2019. Other Patriot League teams have been adding scholarships, getting closer to the 12 a season Goldberg got the school to fund years ago. The rise of international scouting services means that instead of competing with one or two colleges for an overseas player, Goldberg is now fighting as many as 25 or 30. There have been injuries too.
A few days after talking in his office, Goldberg stands beside the Bender Arena court following a victory. It had been a long day for him, with an early-afternoon IV drip. He had napped in his office until about 90 minutes before the game. He looked tired during the game. A couple of times he dropped his head and stared at the floor. Bonnie spent the game sitting beside him.
But the victory has revived him. He glows as players and their parents gather outside the locker room to celebrate. He shakes hands. He tells stories. He smiles. For a moment, it was nothing more than a normal game night at American like so many the previous 33 years.
After most have left, Goldberg gazes up at the long row of conference championship banners hanging above him and smiles.
“A nice little legacy at a place like this,” he says. “I’d like to have a couple more of these before I get out of here, but don’t know if I will.”
Then he looks down. It’s late, he is tired again and ready to go home. He turns to Bonnie, and wordlessly they begin walking away from the court and out of the place he has loves the most. | 2022-10-16T11:59:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Barry Goldberg coaches American University volleyball despite cancer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/16/barry-goldberg-american-university-volleyball/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/16/barry-goldberg-american-university-volleyball/ |
By Netana Markovitz
If you’re a young adult in your 20s and consider yourself healthy, going to the doctor for a checkup may be low on your priority list. Nearly 50 percent of people in their 20s don’t even have a primary care doctor.
Allison Ruff, a primary care doctor and clinical associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, thinks it’s essential.
“The truth is: Things really do happen. And if you get an illness, it gives you someone to see,” she said. “Having a relationship with a primary care doctor gives you someone to call when you need someone, even if you thought you never would need someone.”
Richard Chung, an adolescent and young adult medicine specialist at Duke Health, agrees. “Many health issues, especially in this earlier time of adulthood, may not be obvious to the person … and yet they do have health impacts both today and also into the far future,” Chung says. “And so getting a checkup … is a great opportunity just to confirm that these issues are not starting up for a particular young person.”
A variety of chronic conditions can start to develop in your 20s — or even earlier — that can be harmful long term if left untreated.
How old is too old to see a pediatrician? Is it 26?
Once the doctor enters the clinic room, the visit usually starts by getting to know you and addressing any specific concerns you may have. “If you came to the office not just to establish care but because one of your loved ones is prodding you to get something taken care of or have someone look at a mole, or you’re having a lot of anxiety or you’re interested in preventing pregnancy — whatever that may be — we’ll address that first, get it off your mind,” Ruff said.
You should also be ready to talk about your medical history. “What is their health history?” Chung said. “What conditions have they been diagnosed with in the past? What injuries or procedures or other facets of their health history should we know about so we can understand who they are and what they might need? If they are taking medications or over-the-counter treatments of any sort, that’s all relevant, so that we have a full context for then assessing and making recommendations that day.”
It’s equally important to know about the health of your family members. “So do all of your family members have heart disease, or is it common for people to get a certain kind of cancer really early? And then we’ll address what we can do to prevent that for you,” Ruff said.
Lastly, the doctor will ask about your “social history.” In this portion of the visit, the doctor will ask about behaviors that contribute to health.
It’s “really important that young folks know we do this at every visit … we really need to understand their overall health habits,” Ruff said. “So are you smoking? Are you vaping? What does your relationship with alcohol look like? And it’s important for folks to know: It’s okay to have a relationship with alcohol, it’s okay to have an active sex life. … We want to make sure that you’re doing these things and participating in these behaviors as safely as you can.”
After completion of the history comes the thorough head-to-toe physical exam. Chung said the goal is to “make sure none of these signs of potential health problems are there.”
“The health-care provider will make a recommendation around what might be needed on that day to keep that young person well. So that could be updating immunizations, it could be getting certain screening lab tests, or just kind of making recommendations around health behaviors or other things,” Chung said.
People in their 20s with cervices need Pap smears every three years, although the interval may be shorter if you’ve had abnormal results in the past. Those who are sexually active can expect routine screening for sexually transmitted infections, many of which may be asymptomatic, and it’s recommended that everyone is screened for HIV at least once in their lives and in many cases for hepatitis C, as well.
Hepatitis C and the case for more testing of this viral liver infection
You can expect fewer vaccines than in childhood, although it’s not too late to catch up on vaccinations you may have missed, such as the one against human papillomavirus.
You’ll also need a tetanus booster every 10 years, and it is strongly recommended that everyone get a flu vaccine every year. Of course, the doctor will ask whether you’ve had all recommended doses of the coronavirus vaccine. Depending on your medical conditions, your doctor may advise other vaccines or screening tests.
Ruff drove home the importance of yearly checkups even for young people: “I think having a primary care doctor who you can go to, who knows you, who can answer basic questions, treat you for everything from a cold to cancer, it’s important. And I think having that relationship is super important.”
Netana Markovitz is a resident physician in internal medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess/Harvard Medical School in Boston. | 2022-10-16T12:00:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Even in your 20s, you should have a doctor you can see regularly - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/10/16/20-somethings-doctor-visits/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/10/16/20-somethings-doctor-visits/ |
Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, adds to a chart during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Friday, Dec. 10, 2021. The U.S. Senate yesterday passed legislation creating a fast track to raising the nation’s debt ceiling, paving the way for Congress to act next week to eliminate the risk of a U.S. default. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
“Entitlements” and “nondiscretionary” are Congress-speak for programs whose eligibility and benefit rules are set by Congress rather than subject to the annual appropriations process. The largest such program is Social Security, followed by Medicare, followed by Medicaid. A few smaller programs, such as Affordable Care Act subsidies, food stamps, and most classes of farm aid and veterans’ benefits, also fall under the non-discretionary umbrella.
These programs account for the large majority of non-military federal spending. So if the goal is to reduce inflation by cutting spending — which is what Republicans keep saying they want to do — then these programs need to be cut.
It has been a bit difficult to have a frank conversation about these issues because every time Republicans hint that this is what they want to do, Democrats pounce and the GOP gets skittish. This happened in February when the head of Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, Rick Scott of Florida, released a plan calling for all federal programs to be sunset every five years. That would be the end of federal health and retirement programs as we know it, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell quickly distanced himself from the proposal — but didn’t release any alternative policy agenda.
The Republican House members will also undoubtedly decline to say which specific programs should be cut, lest it be too easy to identify whose oxen they want gored. But the Republican Study Committee did release a budget plan in June that called for cutting Social Security benefits for anyone who retires before 70, raising the Medicare eligibility age to 70, and scheduling the eligibility age for both programs to steadily increase over time. And all of this is over and above their proposed $3.3 trillion cut to Medicaid over 10 years.
The study committee is the largest bloc of House Republicans, though it represents mostly members with safe seats and a GOP majority would likely rein in these plans for sweeping cuts in popular programs. How much it would do so is impossible to say, since House Republicans (like their Senate colleagues) won’t get specific before Nov. 8. But in terms of broad direction, this is clearly where the party is going, with the debt ceiling as a leverage point.
Using the debt ceiling as leverage to try and extract cuts to Medicare and Medicaid is exactly what House Republicans did in 2011, the last time a new majority faced off against an incumbent Democratic president.
Which is a reminder that one of the biggest myths in contemporary politics — popular in both parties — is the idea that there is an interesting “new” conservative movement that has cast aside the small-government orthodoxy of the 2012 presidential ticket of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. It’s certainly true that the Republican Party has become home to a cast of more colorful characters and now relies on a much more economically downscale voter base. But its core economic-policy commitments haven’t changed.
Of course, just because Republicans have the same aspirations doesn’t mean they’ll succeed if they win. The last round of debt-ceiling brinksmanship produced economically costly financial uncertainty but was ultimately resolved with cuts to military and domestic discretionary spending, rather than the Medicare privatization that Republicans were pushing for.
A new round of brinksmanship could end up with that same result. It also might work. Or it could fail spectacularly. Whatever happens, however, a Republican win is pretty much a guarantee of a political and economic crisis whose goal is to enact fiscal austerity.
In a sane world, that looming crisis — and the prospect of cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — would be dominating the political debate right now. Unfortunately, as has been clear for some time, sanity is in short supply in US politics.
• Republicans, Don’t Skip Out on America’s Bills: Michael R. Bloomberg
• Dump the Debt Ceiling Before Republicans Win the House: Jonathan Bernstein
• The US Debt Limit Constrains Nothing But Honesty: Ramesh Ponnuru
• Raise the Debt Ceiling, Republicans. You’ll Be Glad You Did: Michael Strain | 2022-10-16T13:30:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Another Debt Crisis Is on the 2023 Republican Agenda - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/another-debt-crisis-is-on-the-2023-republicanagenda/2022/10/16/46de3a98-4d53-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/another-debt-crisis-is-on-the-2023-republicanagenda/2022/10/16/46de3a98-4d53-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
Amid all the noise, here’s how I learned to build a sound oasis
Perspective by Pepita Sándwich
Living in New York City – one of the loudest cities in the world – I find myself being exposed to ear-splitting sounds on a daily basis. In a world where silence feels precious, noise affects our everyday lives and our well- being. With noise pollution, sometimes I feel like I can’t even listen to myself.
So I found a way to create my own sound oasis and unlocked a way of encountering creativity in new waves. I discovered how sound and rhythm can affect my creative life. | 2022-10-16T14:40:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amid all the noise, here’s how I learned to build a sound oasis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/16/amid-all-noise-heres-how-i-learned-build-sound-oasis/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/16/amid-all-noise-heres-how-i-learned-build-sound-oasis/ |
By Mehmet Guzel and Zeynep Bilginsoy | AP
AMASRA, Turkey — “My one and only, where are you,” a mother cried at a cemetery beside a freshly-laid mound of earth. She couldn’t process the death of her 33-year-old son who was killed in a coal mine explosion in northern Turkey. | 2022-10-16T15:01:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Family mourns miner's death in Turkey, demanding punishment - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/family-mourns-miners-death-in-turkey-demanding-punishment/2022/10/16/55554ffe-4d61-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/family-mourns-miners-death-in-turkey-demanding-punishment/2022/10/16/55554ffe-4d61-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
A tax U-turn won’t be sufficient for the prime minister. (Photographer: Pool/Getty Images Europe)
This assessment is consistent with last week’s financial market reaction. Going into Truss’s press conference Friday, and reflecting expectations of policy change, the yield on 30-year UK government bonds had declined from a two-decade high of some 5.1% to 4.5%. By the end of the day, however, this yield had retraced half of its fall and closed at around 4.8% — a similar partial round trip to the one experienced by 10-year gilts.
The government still needs to take greater action. Otherwise, UK economic well-being will continue to be undermined by higher borrowing costs, more patchy availability of financing to household and companies, and higher uncertainty undermining both corporate and consumer confidence.
Progress on most, if not all, of the following five factors would greatly facilitate this.
First, additional policy measures are required to close more of the budget hole. To be consistent with the type of inclusive growth that many think is needed, the vast majority of this would need to come from increased revenue rather than spending cuts — an outcome that the government can achieve through some combination of windfall taxes, solidarity taxes and the rollback of more of the tax cuts announced in late September.
Second, the details of the growth drivers underpinning the government’s policy approach need to be made explicit and well debated and validated. This is best done in the context of the institutional framework that gives the Office for Budget Responsibility an important role, and for good reasons. It is not a perfect setup, but it provides not just some degree of assurance but also, and perhaps more important, the type of information that is needed for informed analysis by economists and market participants.
Third, whether it is by giving the prime minister its strong political backing or opting for yet another transition, the governing Conservative Party needs to reduce the political uncertainty unleashed by the recent turmoil. Otherwise, its economic and financial plans will continue to be hindered by a significant uncertainty premium related to continuity — one that keeps borrowing costs high and undermines investment sentiment.
Fourth, working with other prudential agencies, the Bank of England must continue to successfully combat the financial fragility in the nonbank sector that could undermine the functioning of markets. This includes the crisis-management role of maintaining the right mix between ensuring proper liquidity and pressuring the deleveraging of overextended balance sheets; and it also means doing more to preempt problems elsewhere.
Finally, the UK needs help from less volatile global markets, which are navigating some significant economic and financial transitions.
Absent progress on most or all of these, UK financial markets are likely to remain jittery and exposed to sudden air pockets. This, in turn, would continuously undermine the effectiveness of the other two components of the government’s mini-budget: supply-side measures aimed at promoting productivity and increasing both actual and potential growth; and energy price stabilization to reduce an important element of economic insecurity facing households and businesses.
The UK can still undo most, though not all, of the damage created by one component of the mini-budget announced three weeks ago. This requires a more comprehensive reset and time for the shaken policy credibility to regain its footing. It also needs luck in the form of a global economy that is not tripped up by the combined threat of recession, persistent inflation, debt and financial market instability. | 2022-10-16T16:32:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UK Needs to Do More to Restore Stability and Growth - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/uk-needs-to-do-more-to-restore-stability-and-growth/2022/10/16/643d0c22-4d6c-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/uk-needs-to-do-more-to-restore-stability-and-growth/2022/10/16/643d0c22-4d6c-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
Learning of the atrocities of World War II
German nurses take babies out for fresh air on June 12, 1945, on the grounds of a former hotel in the Bavarian resort of Bad Wiessee, Germany. (William C. Allen/Associated Press) (AP)
Regarding Kathleen Parker’s Oct. 12 op-ed, “A new novel tells the story of the Nazis’ birthing farms”:
In 1964, while chaperoning American high school students studying German in Austria, I met a young German man and his father who were vacationing together. My German was limited, as was the young man’s English. In telling me about his life, he said his father was “dead.” I thought at first the man with him must have been his stepfather.
With help from a German-English dictionary, I learned that at some point in the war, the young man had been taken as a very young child from his parents in Finland and sent to Stuttgart, Germany, where he was adopted by a German officer.
That was the first I had ever heard of another one of the World War II atrocities that are now coming to light.
Rochelle Zohn, Arlington | 2022-10-16T16:33:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Learning of the atrocities of World War II - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/16/learning-atrocities-world-war-ii/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/16/learning-atrocities-world-war-ii/ |
Forward Sonny Milano will start his season with the Caps' American League affiliate in Hershey. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
The Washington Capitals signed forward Sonny Milano to a one-year, $750,000 contract, the team announced Sunday. Milano was placed on waivers for purpose of loan to the Capitals’ American Hockey League affiliate in Hershey, Pa. If he clears waivers, Milano will start his season in Hershey.
Milano was on a professional tryout with the Calgary Flames in training camp after he didn’t sign with any teams during the offseason. The Flames released Milano from that professional tryout in early October. He went scoreless through four preseason games.
Milano, 26, scored 14 goals and recorded 20 assists in 66 games for Anaheim last season. He was selected 16th overall by Columbus in the 2014 NHL draft.
“He was a good player last year,” Capitals Coach Peter Laviolette said. “He was available … he’s a real good young player and adds depth to our organization.”
Washington lost prospects Brett Leason and Axel Jonsson-Fjallby to waivers last week.
Leason, a 6-foot-5 second-round pick in 2019, was picked up by Anaheim. The 23-year-old winger played 36 regular season games for Washington last season and notched three goals and three assists. Jonsson-Fjallby, a 24-year-old Swedish winger, was claimed by Winnipeg. The 2016 fifth-round draft pick had two goals and two assists in 23 games.
It’s unclear when Milano could make the jump back up to the NHL, but Laviolette said Hershey will just be a starting point until the team sees how things shake out in front of him. Washington has 14 forwards on its roster, with Connor McMichael and Joe Snively acting as the two extras at that position.
If McMichael — who does not need to clear waivers to be sent to the AHL — does not see NHL game action in the near future, Washington could opt to send him down to Hershey. If Washington wanted to move Snively to Hershey, he would have to do so through waivers and would be at risk of getting claimed.
Prospect Aliaksei Protas, who has played in all three games for the Capitals this season, also does not need waivers but it appears he has made a strong impression on Washington’s coaching staff.
“He’s done a really good job,” Laviolette said of Protas. “We’re going to meet with him [Sunday] just to go over some of the details of the game and stuff like that but he is working really hard and generating a few chances a night Hasn’t gone in for him yet and he’s noticeable. His numbers are good. He plays in the offensive zone, he is pretty good defensively.” | 2022-10-16T17:25:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Capitals add depth by signing forward Sonny Milano to a one-year deal - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/16/capitals-sign-forward-sonny-milano/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/16/capitals-sign-forward-sonny-milano/ |
Man slain in Southeast Washington
A man was shot and killed early Sunday morning in Southeast Washington, D.C. police said.
At about 12:10 a.m., police responded to the 2500 block of Pomeroy Road in Southeast after a report of gunshots. When they arrived, they found an adult male with gunshot wounds.
He was examined by D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services and then transported to the office of the chief medical examiner. The man’s identity was being withheld Sunday as authorities worked to inform his family. | 2022-10-16T17:33:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man slain overnight in Southeast D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/16/fatal-shooting-southeast-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/16/fatal-shooting-southeast-dc/ |
Trump attacks U.S. Jews, posting they must ‘get their act together’ on Israel
President Donald Trump smiles with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2019. (Susan Walsh/Associated Press)
Former president Donald Trump attacked American Jews in a post on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, saying Jews in the United States must “get their act together” and show more appreciation for the state of Israel “before it is too late.”
Trump also complained in the post that “no president” had done more for Israel than he had but that Christian evangelicals are “far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.”
Racist Republican appeals heat up in final weeks before midterms
It also comes as leading Republican figures have failed to disavow musician and sometime-Trump supporter Ye, the rapper and fashion designer formerly known as Kanye West. Ye earlier this month tweeted that he wanted to go “death con 3” on “JEWISH PEOPLE,” an apparent reference to Defcon, the U.S. military defense readiness system. Instagram and Twitter removed posts by the artist, who had been featured on conservative Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s show.
Trump has long been frustrated that he has not drawn more support from American Jews, particularly when as president, he moved the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and his Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner, helped negotiate new treaties between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors.
Trump’s post drew quick criticism.
“We don’t need the former president, who curries favor with extremists and antisemites, to lecture us about the US-Israel relationship,” Anti-Defamation League chief executive and national director Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “It is not about a quid pro quo; it rests on shared values and security interests. This ‘Jewsplaining’ is insulting and disgusting.”
On her personal Twitter account, Neera Tanden, a senior adviser to President Biden, wrote, “We should all stand against what feels like a growing chorus of anti-Semitism. There should be no quarter for it in our politics or culture.” | 2022-10-16T18:00:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump attacks U.S. Jews in a Truth Social post - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/16/trump-jews-israel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/16/trump-jews-israel/ |
Steve Lacy, cool and comfortable while grappling with newfound fame
The singer-songwriter-producer with the nation’s top hit (“Bad Habit”) brought his silky sonics to Silver Spring
Review by Chris Kelly
Steve Lacy performs Saturday at the Fillmore Silver Spring. Lacy released his second studio album, “Gemini Rights,” in July. (Photos by Kyle Gustafson for The Washington Post)
Steve Lacy currently has the No. 1 song in the country, “Bad Habit,” a gentle pop earworm that sounds like staring at stars glued to a bedroom ceiling. On Saturday night at a sold-out Fillmore Silver Spring, the audience had to wait until the end of his set to hear it — not that anyone seemed to mind. Youthful yearning is a theme, not just in “Bad Habit” but also in much of the singer-songwriter-producer’s compositions, and it’s one that resonated with a crowd full of Lacy obsessives.
Just 24 years old, the Compton, Calif., native has quickly proved himself to be a bard of young love, setting tales of make-outs and breakups to silky sonics that would feel at home any time in the past half-century. His instantly timeless songs traverse funk-soul brotherhood, with walking bass lines, jangly chords, percussive wallop and a vocal tone that drips with Cali cool. On the microphone, he effortlessly slips into a falsetto that can seduce or shatter glass, depending on the moment.
Lacy’s latest album, “Gemini Rights,” is the fullest expression yet of his craft, and he played almost all of it Saturday, along with highlights from 2019’s “Apollo XXI” and an album of demos that were recorded — like many of his early productions — through a guitar jury-rigged to an iPhone. In concert, his DIY ditties were full of life, each extra fill, lick or solo drawing them farther out of his phone.
Lacy is the latest in a line of preternaturally gifted and prematurely accomplished talents, such as Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes, who established themselves behind the board and in the studio before making waves on their own. Like many of his peers, he seems to have grown up on the works of Pharrell Williams and André 3000’s “The Love Below,” but seems ready to surpass his teachers.
On Saturday, Lacy looked cool and comfortable in the spotlight, with braids and wraparound shades that connected the stylistic dots back to Stevie Wonder, another prodigy who penned songs that were keyed into young life. But he also seemed hesitant to accept the adulation of the audience, even one that bought up every ticket long before he topped Billboard. As in his songs, is the love for real?
Even while grappling with his newfound fame, Lacy looked out for his fans, asking people to step back from the stage and taking an extended break late in the night, so lightheaded revelers could get water or be evacuated. (The tragedy at Astroworld is less than a year in the rearview, after all.) The pause tanked the momentum, but “Bad Habit” and an encore of crowd favorites put the night — and Lacy’s future — in perspective.
“I feel like everything’s changing right now,” he told the crowd. “I’m happy you guys are here to witness this change with me.” | 2022-10-16T18:04:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Steve Lacy, cool and comfortable while grappling with newfound fame - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/16/steve-lacy-concert-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/10/16/steve-lacy-concert-review/ |
The Los Angeles Dodgers were the best team in the majors all season. No one scored more runs or had a higher team OPS. No one allowed fewer earned runs. They were dominant. And they are done.
They are done because their audacious NL West challengers down the coast, the San Diego Padres, hit when they needed to. They are done because their rotation was a little less proven than usual, gave fewer innings than they would prefer, and forced the bullpen to carry them with the season on the line. But more importantly, they are done after a year defined by anything other than urgency, one that ended with their inability to adjust to it in time.
“Shock factor, very high. Disappointment, very high. It’s crushing,” Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts said. “Each guy gave everything they had all year long, and a tremendous season. The great thing about baseball is the unpredictability, and the tough thing about it is the same thing.”
The Dodgers are the most dominant regular season team of the last decade. They have won 73 more regular season games in the last 10 years than anyone else. They have beaten their regular season opponents by more than 1,700 runs in that span, more than 700 more than the second-best Houston Astros, according to MLB.com. They have won just one World Series in that time, and it came in the 2020 covid-shortened season.
“It’s always disappointing to lose in the postseason. I think that’s what makes winning so great, what makes losing so bad,” Clayton Kershaw told reporters, including NBC Los Angeles, Saturday. “It’s just abrupt. It just ends when you don’t expect it to.”
In the Dodgers’ case, it ended five days after a six-day layoff while they waited for the wild-card round to determine their opponent. When coupled with the fall of the Atlanta Braves and the potential demise of the New York Yankees, the Dodgers’ loss tempts observers to draw conclusions about the new playoff format. All three of those teams received byes into the first round after winning difficult divisions. All three played teams that finished at least seven games (in the case of the Cleveland Guardians) and as many as 22 games (in the case of the Padres) behind their division series opponents in the regular season. And all three of them looked downright beatable from the start of the division series to the finish.
“Point your fingers to whatever you want, but the bottom line is we didn’t get the job done,” Justin Turner told reporters after the game, when asked about the layoff.
“Not for me,” Freddie Freeman told reporters, when asked if that break had an effect.
Brewer: An epic, 18-inning win for the Astros produces only pain in Seattle
Almost everyone besides Houston Astros Manager Dusty Baker — whose team was the only one with a bye to clinch a championship series berth so far — has dismissed the idea that the layoff matters. Baker said he remembered from his playing days that timing starts to deteriorate after even a day or two without a game. But every team expected that. Every team planned for that and did their best to simulate game situations while they waited. The layoff, like the grueling 162-game schedule, like the similarly unforgiving playoff schedule, is simply something to be dealt with.
And besides, one year’s worth of sample is not enough to say much for sure. What the Dodgers’ loss does suggest, however, is that even a perfectly crafted lineup that scored 40 more runs over 162 games than any other team in baseball, became the first National League team to win at least 111 games since 1906, and tied for the fourth-highest run differential (plus 334) since 1900, must change something in October. Because they simply must find a way to hit.
“We just didn’t hit, man,” Mookie Betts said. “That’s on us. That’s on the hitters side. We didn’t execute any type of plan or anything. During the season we did.”
The Dodgers didn’t necessarily hit less than other playoff teams did this October. Their .227 batting average in five games was just a point lower than the Cleveland Guardians have through four. Their .704 OPS was second highest among teams that played at least four postseason games this year. They scored 12 runs in four games against the Padres. San Diego scored all of three more. The Padres had seven hits with runners in scoring position. The Dodgers had five.
Nothing he can say offers a perfect explanation, either. Perhaps the Dodgers could have gotten the few more hits they needed if Cody Bellinger was hitting, or if they had brought in one more bat to bolster the bottom of the order. But they did add Freddie Freeman to a team that already included annual MVP candidates Trea Turner and Mookie Betts, one of the game’s best offensive catchers in Will Smith and a proven playoff performer in Justin Turner. How many bats is enough to guarantee October success? And if the Dodgers didn’t have enough, can anyone?
The Dodgers could undergo significant renovations in the offseason. Trea Turner will be a free agent. Kershaw will be, too, if he decides to play another year. Justin Turner can hit the open market. Andrew Heaney and Tyler Anderson and other key depth members of their pitching staff can leave, as well. The Dodgers could try to replace them with the likes of Aaron Judge or Jacob deGrom if they want to try to make flashy offers to draw either to Hollywood. But even if they do, could either player bring a guarantee of October success?
If there is any consolation to the Dodgers, it is that no one has figured out the formula for winning regularly in October. When the Braves lost to the Phillies on Saturday, they guaranteed that MLB would not have a repeat champion until at least 2023. No one has won back-to-back titles since the Yankees in the late 1990s. For years, especially the last few, the Dodgers looked like a team built to end the drought. Instead, they have served as a powerful reminder that building for October means crossing your fingers and hoping the big hit is there when you need it. | 2022-10-16T18:05:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Dodgers won 111 games. That meant nothing in the playoffs. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/16/dodgers-early-postseason-exit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/16/dodgers-early-postseason-exit/ |
With 12 players who had never before played organized football, the winless Coyotes are in for a transformative season
Clarksburg’s varsity football team has several members who before this season hadn't played organized football or their particular position, including, from left, Kurt Hull, Andrew Shin, Jonathan Travis, Nigel Knight-Tabron and Georges Monga Mande. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
So the Williams brothers set out looking for players. They spent time around P.E. classes, keeping an eye out for a combination that Ernest Williams described as “size and confidence.” When they found a student who might fit the bill, they offered rewards both concrete and abstract: We can give you playing time and we might give you the opportunity to change your future.
After their conversation, Monga Mande considered Williams’s pitch. He was looking for a change in his life. Two days later, he stayed after school to work out with the team.
When in high school, very few things can change your day-to-day life quicker than joining a sports team. That’s especially true for football, which presents constant physical and mental challenges.
He tried out for the wrestling team last winter and enjoyed it. So, when Isaac Williams approached him during a workout and asked if he would consider football, he jumped at the opportunity.
Nigel Knight-Tabron was a Clarksburg basketball player for three years before he considered playing football. Some uncles and cousins had played, and he long had been interested, but his mother had concerns about safety. Ahead of his senior year, his last real chance to play organized football, he convinced her.
At the encouragement of friends, he attended a seven-on-seven event last spring. With no knowledge of technique, footwork or play calls, Shin played well enough to keep his dream alive and spent the summer practicing. By the time August arrived he realized he had a chance to be Clarksburg’s starting quarterback.
Over time, Knight-Tabron didn’t mind getting hit. He enjoyed the spike of adrenaline that often came with it. The more he practiced, the less flinchy his body became. Jonathan Travis, another senior wide receiver playing football for the first time, also found that his initial notions faded away.
“For a good week, I was wondering if this was really for me,” he said. “First of all, there was a lot of screaming. And I do not like getting yelled at. I would line up wrong and get yelled at. And sometimes it wasn’t even my mistake but I would get yelled at for it.”
But at the first snap of the game, Monga Mande said his nerves dissipated. “I got hit and I thought ‘Oh, that’s it?’ ” Monga Mande said.
That game against Seneca Valley did not go well for the Coyotes, and neither have the six games since. Clarksburg is 0-7 after Friday’s 40-7 loss to Bethesda-Chevy Chase, having been outscored 321-42.
And Monga Mande mentions the NFL game he watched in September, the first of his life. He found himself studying the offensive linemen. Their technique, he says, it was beautiful. | 2022-10-16T19:36:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | ‘You know anything about football?’ How Clarksburg fielded a team this fall. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/13/you-know-anything-about-football-how-clarksburg-fielded-team-this-fall/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/13/you-know-anything-about-football-how-clarksburg-fielded-team-this-fall/ |
Real Madrid players celebrate their 3-1 victory over Barcelona. (Sergio Perez/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Barcelona sported a different look, with a twist on its iconic jersey, in Sunday’s 250th “El Clásico” against Real Madrid.
The jerseys bore the owl-shaped logo of the Canadian rapper Drake’s company thanks to a new 12-year sponsorship deal with Spotify as well as Drake’s 50 billion streams on the site, for the game in Santiago Bernabeu Stadium. But the result was the same as it has been in six of the teams’ last seven meetings. Real Madrid won, 3-1, handing Barcelona its first La Liga loss this season.
It was a sobering loss for Barcelona, which went on a roughly $140 million spending spree to land players such as Polish striker Robert Lewandowski and Brazilian winger Raphinha, and remains in need of a small miracle to avoid Champions League group-stage elimination for the second straight year. It failed to advance to the knockout round last year in its first season without Lionel Messi, and a 3-3 draw against Inter Milan last week all but put its hopes on life support with two rounds left in the group stage.
Real Madrid presented a stiffer challenge for Barcelona, which, in its previous six La Liga games had not faced high-scoring teams. Real Madrid sprinted to a 2-0 first-half lead on goals by Karim Benzema and Federico Valverde, but Ferran Torres closed the margin for Barcelona to 2-1 in the 83rd minute. Rodrygo provided the final margin in stoppage time with a penalty shot after being tripped.
Real Madrid manager Carlo Ancelotti learned from his team’s 4-0 loss to Barcelona last year. “Last season I changed something, but in this game I tried not to change and to put the players in their place,” he said, citing tactical decisions involving Luka Modric and other changes. “There are many players who deserve to be in the starting eleven. The type of match was one of energy to put Valverde in and, if things didn’t go well, there was Valverde and [Eduarco] Camavinga.”
Barcelona trails undefeated Real Madrid by three points now in La Liga and its bid to close the distance between the teams by spending so freely in the hope of immediate success seems not to have worked. Losing a Clásico is a sobering prospect for Xavi Hernandez, its manager.
Although he professed his optimism, Hernandez told reporters he did not “feel happy about anything, the feeling is bad. Nothing comes out of this game despite faith and self-respect,” he said. “Today’s match was a very good opportunity to continue leading but we came out empty-handed, we had options for a draw but we didn’t take advantage of our moments.” | 2022-10-16T19:36:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Barcelona spent freely on players. Real Madrid still won El Clásico. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/16/el-clasico-real-madrid-barcelona/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/16/el-clasico-real-madrid-barcelona/ |
The Democrat suffered a stroke in May, and his recovery has become a focal point in the closing phase of the Senate race in Pennsylvania, drawing growing attention from the campaigns and others
John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, has sought to make his recovery from a stroke this year a lesson in empathy. (Hannah Beier for The Washington Post)
WALLINGFORD, Pa. — A few minutes into his rally, John Fetterman told the crowd he wanted to address the “elephant in the room.”
Republicans, including Fetterman’s opponent, Mehmet Oz, have made the aftermath of the stroke central to their attacks against him. Some have called attention to his verbal struggles, reliance on closed captioning and summer absence from the trail. The Republican National Committee last week shared a montage of Fetterman’s verbal stumbles with the caption, “Does it sound like Fetterman is fit for office?” Oz has suggested Fetterman has something to hide, recently tweeting: “John Fetterman won’t answer questions from voters, he won’t debate more than once, and he won’t be honest about his health.”
The Fetterman campaign has declined repeated requests to interview his doctors or review updated medical information beyond what it has previously released. The last medical information from a doctor made public by the Fetterman campaign came in a letter from his cardiologist on June 3, explaining that surgery conducted 17 days earlier to install a defibrillator was to treat a previously undisclosed diagnosis of cardiomyopathy, and not for atrial fibrillation (A-fib) as the campaign originally claimed.
Recently, after an NBC News reporter in Fetterman’s first in-person interview since his stroke questioned whether he had understood her without captioning, disability advocates and Fetterman supporters rallied to his defense. The campaign released a TV ad last week that shows Fetterman with his family at home, where he discusses his stroke and how it made him appreciate what really matters.
In a statement, Fetterman spokesman Joe Calvello said in part, “John is clearly sharp and healthy, and he also still has a lingering auditory processing issue that his doctors expect will go away.” The campaign declined to make Fetterman available for an interview.
Fetterman’s team has said he is fit to serve in the Senate and continues to improve. He has picked up the pace of campaign events and recently took questions for nearly an hour in a live interview with a local news outlet, with few verbal stumbles. His rally remarks are longer than when he first returned to the campaign trail in the summer. He continues to work with a speech therapist and blocks time off nearly every day for a several-mile walk, according to a person with knowledge of his activities who spoke on the condition of anonymity to more openly discuss Fetterman’s recovery.
Four top neurologists consulted by The Washington Post who are not treating Fetterman said he appears to have recovered well from a serious stroke with no obvious long-term effects other than his acknowledged difficulty understanding spoken language and finding words. Two based their assessments in part on reviewing the NBC News interview, while two others based their commentary on a review of his symptoms.
All the physicians interviewed for this story stressed that they are not caring for Fetterman and don’t have access to his medical records, cognitive tests or images of his brain, so they couldn’t speak conclusively about his specific case.
“It won’t get worse,” said Lee H. Schwamm, the C. Miller Fisher chair of vascular neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. “It could recover in weeks to months, or it could recover in a year, or it could not recover any further.”
Fetterman gestured equally with both hands during his interview with NBC News, said Wade Smith, a professor of neurology at the University of California at San Francisco who watched the session. Both sides of his face moved equally well and in public he is walking without the use of a cane or other support, Smith said. All are signs he is not suffering other damage typical of a major stroke.
Republicans said they are not satisfied with the level of information Fetterman has shared about his health and are using it to advance a larger argument against his candidacy. “I’m of the opinion he has not been very transparent and forthright about that situation,” said former Republican congressman Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, who is supporting Oz. “It seemed they understated the problem initially.”
Fetterman won the Democratic nomination days after the stroke without fully disclosing the extent of his physical condition. He revealed more than two weeks later that he had been diagnosed in 2017 with cardiomyopathy that decreased the amount of blood his heart could pump and had failed to take his medications and follow up with a doctor.
The June letter released by Fetterman’s doctor, Ramesh Chandra, said, “The prognosis I can give for John’s heart is this: if he takes his medications, eats healthy, and exercises, he’ll be fine. If he does what I’ve told him, and I do believe that he is taking his recovery and his health very seriously at this time, he should be able to campaign and serve in the U.S. Senate without a problem.”
During an interview with the PennLive editorial board, Fetterman defended not releasing more recent medical records. “If anything changed I would have updated that,” he said.
Jeffrey Teuteberg, section chief for heart failure for Stanford Medicine, said that people with weakened hearts have a wide range of outcomes, from those with few or no symptoms such as breathlessness to those with severe symptoms that include fluid retention and inability to tolerate medications.
Oz, 62, has released three letters written by his doctor in 2014, 2018 and 2022 that describe his health as “excellent,” including a nearly ideal body mass index of 25. He has “borderline elevated” cholesterol, but because of his favorable ratio of “good” cholesterol to “bad” cholesterol was not prescribed medication such as a statin. A polyp was removed from his colon in 2010. Follow-up a year later was normal.
After speaking for more than 20 minutes without a teleprompter here Saturday, Fetterman came into the crowd to shake hands and pose for selfies with supporters, smiling and nodding as he moved between them. When he saw Mary Battle, 70, an Air Force veteran who fixed jets during the Vietnam War, in a wheelchair, he knelt down to her level. She had a mini-stroke three months ago, she said. She gifted him miniature guardian angel charms to watch over him.
“So, I know where he’s coming from,” Battle said. “I know how hard it is to get the words to come together right, so I’m totally in sync with him.”
Earlier in the day, Fetterman made brief remarks at a health-care union rally in North Philadelphia. When he stumbled over the word “workforce,” a woman yelled out, “Take your time, baby.”
Zelma Carroll, 55, a certified nursing assistant, said, in her opinion, he looked physically weakened but mentally strong.
“I honestly think he’s taking every strength he has to come here,” she said. “He showed up for us. He knows his purpose.”
Still ahead is a live, in-person debate between Fetterman and Oz set for Oct. 25. Fetterman plans to use a closed-caption system during the debate, as he has during recent interviews, to compensate for his auditory issues. Disability advocates said those type of accommodations should be normalized rather than viewed as a detriment.
“Once someone with an auditory processing problem has gotten the information, what they do with that information is as healthy as it would have been through any other mechanism,” said Brooke Hatfield, an associate director at the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association. “The decisions they make, the way they use that information or analyze that information and what they do with it isn’t an impaired process.”
On Capitol Hill, captioning accommodations have been provided, both to witnesses who come to Congress to give testimony and to staff workers such as David Bahar, a deaf former legislative assistant to Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) during Inslee’s time in the House of Representatives.
Bahar recalled that he was able to receive real-time transcription services in meetings, hearings and on the House floor. Bahar also pointed out that there are already television screens in the Senate floor gallery, where visitors can follow along with a live recording of discussions on the floor that includes on-screen captions.
“If they can provide that, they can figure out how to provide captions on the Senate floor as well,” he said.
Sarah Blahovec, a disability civic engagement expert, voiced frustration regarding what she sees as a stigmatization of cognitive disabilities for politicians in both parties. “It’s discourse we see all the time,” she said. “We’re focusing on one thing in exclusion of all other things that could or could not make them qualified to run for office.”
Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) said he believes Fetterman has made “remarkable” progress, based on several conversations he has had with him in the past few months. Casey said Fetterman demonstrated his ability to understand when someone was talking to him and respond accordingly. In smaller meetings, he said, Fetterman “seems to be just fine.” But Casey wouldn’t speculate on whether Fetterman will fully recover from his auditory processing issues by January.
Other politicians, such as former senator Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Rep. Anthony G. Brown (D-Md.), have had strokes of varying degrees of severity, but all returned to work.
Kirk faced a grueling recovery, returning to the Senate in early 2013, about a year after his stroke. He later lost his 2016 reelection bid to Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), who was a House member at the time. In an interview Friday, Duckworth said that she did not focus on Kirk’s stroke during her campaign against him and that he remained effective until his last day in office. She said the focus on Fetterman’s stroke recovery is concerning, because accommodations are made for other lawmakers on a routine basis.
Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), who has served in office for two decades, was the first quadriplegic to serve in the U.S. House and remembers facing doubts about his ability to do the job because of his disability, he said.
“There was this undertone of ‘Can he do his job? Is he going to be able to effectively serve?’ ” he added.
He also recalled when former senator Tim Johnson (D-S.D.) suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2006 while in office. Johnson was initially in critical condition and later required months of rehabilitation to work on his speech and mobility issues. But Johnson eventually returned to work and was able to serve as chairman of the Banking Committee. Johnson was still able to do his job well with some accommodations, Langevin recalled. Johnson ran for reelection in 2008, and his opponent raised questions about his mental fitness. Johnson won by a wide margin.
At a recent focus group conducted by Rich Thau, a market research executive who has run a nonpartisan “Swing Voter Project,” 13 voters who supported Donald Trump in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020 were asked about Fetterman’s health. Most said it wouldn’t factor into their support for him and expressed general concern for his overall health.
A Fox News poll released at the end of September asked if Pennsylvania voters were concerned that Fetterman “may not be healthy enough to carry out the job of senator effectively.” Forty-three percent said they weren’t concerned at all, 24 percent said they were extremely concerned, 10 percent said they were very concerned, and 18 percent said they were somewhat concerned.
At the Saturday rally, where raised hands affirmed attendees’ experience with major health challenges, Fetterman told the crowd, “I certainly hope that you did not have a doctor in your life making fun of it or telling you that you aren’t able to work or fit to serve.”
Bernstein and Morris reported from Washington. Paul Kane contributed to this report. | 2022-10-16T20:14:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Pa., Fetterman’s health sparks contentious debate in final stretch - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/10/16/fetterman-health-pennsylvania-senate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/10/16/fetterman-health-pennsylvania-senate/ |
WASHINGTON, DC- SEP 23: Judia Williams glances out to the street from a vacant apartment that's above her unit in the Lincoln Heights area in NE Washington, D.C. on September 23, 2022. Street traffic sometimes makes her nervous as she's already had to deal with a drive-by shooting event on her street that sent a bullet through her living room window. One in every four of D.C.’s roughly 8,000 public housing units sits vacant, a glaring mark of neglect by an agency charged with providing homes for some of the District’s poorest residents during a long-running affordable housing crisis. On average, these units have been empty about two years. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
It’s among the more than one in four of D.C.’s roughly 8,000 public housing units that sit vacant, at an average length of about two years, agency records reveal. Nationwide, public housing occupancy rates average 95 percent. DCHA’s is the lowest it has ever experienced, even as the District’s long-running affordable housing crisis intensifies and more and more people find themselves priced out of decent homes.
The occupancy decline underscores entrenched troubles at the agency tasked with housing some of the District’s poorest residents. The city’s largest landlord, the authority serves about 28,000 households through housing vouchers and traditional public housing properties.
These vacancies cost more than $10 million annually in forgone rent and federal subsidies, according to a federal housing department estimate, and they drag down communities the authority is supposed to serve. Their boarded-up doors and windows are often pried loose and attract crime, and residents here say the trash left behind fuels roach and rodent infestations.
Brenda Donald, who has been director for just over a year, has blamed the worsening vacancies on her predecessor while pledging to make it her top priority. “I’ve run big, complex systems, and they don’t get broken overnight, and you can’t fix them overnight,” Donald said in a recent interview.
But her own goals have not been met. In March, as the occupancy rate stood at 79 percent, Donald pledged to raise it ten percentage points by the end of September. Instead, it has fallen below 74 percent.
Among its findings: dangerous conditions including lead-paint hazards; out-of-code plumbing; water damage and mold; emergency work orders going unaddressed at night due to high crime; and prospective tenants declining units because they fear for their safety.
Bowser said at a news conference Wednesday she was saddened by the report’s findings “and embarrassed by the conditions” it reveals in D.C.'s public housing.
Today, fewer than 2 percent of the nation’s roughly 2,800 public housing authorities have occupancy rates lower than the District’s, HUD data shows.
Of DCHA’s 8,084 public housing units, only 5,512 are leased, according to HUD data. Some of the vacant units are exempted from HUD’s occupancy rate calculation this month of 73.64 percent, because the federal agency has approved DCHA applications to take them offline for demolition or remediation. But the numbers aren’t clear. In their recent report, HUD evaluators said DCHA did not have an accurate listing of vacant units and was not accurately reporting them.
Then director Tyrone Garrett, who had taken the post in late 2017, faced a dilemma: Let deteriorating units go vacant and wait to demolish and redevelop them, or spend money on stopgap fixes to allow residents to stay in deplorable conditions. Public housing agencies nationwide have struggled to maintain aging properties as federal funding for improvements shrinks.
Garrett put 15 properties on a 'do not re-occupy’ list, citing extreme conditions, a DCHA report in 2020 said. Those properties — which included Lincoln Heights in Northeast Washington, where the girl whose name means princess once lived — were included on a “20-Year Transformation Plan” for redevelopment.
This was a reversal of the agency’s previous approach. “Our job is to house people,'' Adrianne Todman, then-DCHA-director, told The Post in 2014. She said the Housing Authority shouldn’t stop reoccupying properties planned for redevelopment until “there’s a good, hard plan for what’s going to happen next.’ ”
As DCHA also failed to re-occupy units not on the list, occupancy kept falling. Garrett learned in May of 2021 that the board would not renew his contract. The board, with Bowser-appointed members voting as a bloc, named Donald interim director, and ultimately forwent a national search, offering her a two-year term.
But progress has been slow. In March, for example, Donald told the board that to speed re-occupancy, the agency would start offering units to more than one prospective tenant at a time. But the adjustment, according to a recent interview with DCHA officials, wasn’t made until August.
Still, Donald says the agency is poised to turn a corner. It has hired more than a dozen contractors to turnaround vacant units, her staff has told the board.
Crystal Ballard lives in a third-floor two-bedroom in Hopkins Apartments, a 158-unit DCHA complex in Southeast Washington. Trash in the vacant unit next door, which neighborhood youths have used as a hangout, has fed mice and roach infestations. Several years ago, she says, DCHA fixed up the unit.
When a tenant moves out, the housing authority must accomplish two main goals to move someone else in: make repairs, and match the unit with another eligible tenant. Units that need expensive remediation wait for funding. Those in need of smaller repairs compete for staffers’ attention with a backlog of thousands of work orders for occupied units.
Those numbers paint a vivid picture of the occupancy decline, because several hundred tenants leave every year. Just to hold steady, the agency would need to admit new tenants about ten times faster than it has been.
But the agency is hobbled by mismanagement. Its property management staffers “lack knowledge of unit turnaround procedures and could not provide the status of vacant units,” the recent HUD report says. Four years ago, the agency spent $4.35 million on real estate management software that it still can’t use effectively, because staffers were never properly trained, according to the HUD report and other records.
As of January, the families, elderly people, women displaced by domestic violence, disabled people and others who filled DCHA’s frozen waiting list for public housing numbered 24,386, according to an agency report. This is almost double the average for the largest housing authorities, which was 12,986 according to a 2016 survey by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. The recent HUD report, however, said DCHA was unable to provide reviewers documentation on the number of people on the list.
Nearly a decade later, the whittled down list remains closed. Those who wait for traditional public housing are mingled with those who wait for vouchers. Many signed up for both. In all, the list runs nearly 40,000 names, according to DCHA figures from January.
“In at least one instance,” the report said, “a unit was turned down by an applicant. After several months a second applicant was not identified.”
People’s kids had grown. Or they’d moved out of the District. Or they’d died waiting.
“It was like a rainforest inside my apartment, ” Williams said. DCHA eventually fixed the pipe, but the water damage to her unit persists. She submits request after request, but they rarely come and fix anything, she said. | 2022-10-16T22:08:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. has more public housing vacancy than any other major city. Why? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/16/dc-public-housing-vacancy-spirals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/16/dc-public-housing-vacancy-spirals/ |
From Italy to Brazil to the United States, political leaders increasingly are echoing Russian President Vladimir Putin and one another by embracing far-right authoritarianism
Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen on a screen at Red Square in Moscow as he addresses a rally Sept. 30 marking Russia’s declaration that it annexed four regions of Ukraine. (Afp Contributor#afp/AFP/Getty Images)
In a flurry of elections, some of the world’s major democracies have been leaning toward or outright embracing far-right authoritarian leaders, who have echoed one another by promising to crack down on loose morals, open borders and power-hungry elites.
Voters in Italy last month elected a nationalist leader whose party proposes a U-turn from the effects of globalization. In Brazil, right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro injected doubt into the results of his reelection bid by speculating that the vote would be rigged against him in a conspiracy driven by the country’s elites. In the Philippines this year, voters chose the son of their former dictator Ferdinand Marcos as president, electing to stick with strongman politics.
Though hardly a champion of democracy, Russian President Vladimir Putin late last month delivered an address that would sound familiar — and, to many people, attractive — in democracies from the United States to much of Europe. Putin railed against expansive definitions of gender, calling the idea a “perversion,” part of a “complete denial of man [and an] overthrow of faith and traditional values” by “Western elites.”
“The world has entered a period of revolutionary transformations,” which Russia aims to resist, Putin said in a speech that echoed the rhetoric of Russia-friendly right-wing politicians in many democracies.
In the United States, former president Donald Trump has presumptively rejected future election results, and a majority of Republican candidates on the ballot this fall for major state and federal elective offices have joined him in repudiating the outcome of the 2020 presidential election — an epidemic of election denialism in the United States that historians and political scientists define as a core element in any country’s drift toward authoritarian rule.
Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet communism heralded a new era of democratic governance and a huge expansion of global trade, that democratic wave has been replaced in many countries by a tide of authoritarianism.
The street demonstrations and passion for the freedom to travel, trade and speak out that brought down the Soviet empire seemed to promise a vast expansion of people power — and for a time, democracy broke out in most of the former satellite nations of the Eastern Bloc. Similarly, the Arab Spring revolutions that began in 2010 raised the promise — but no enduring reality — of democratization across the Middle East.
Recent years have brought a sharp reaction in many parts of the world, as globalization, political polarization, the rise of social media and a collapse of trust in major institutions have left many people feeling betrayed by their governments, torn apart from their careers and alone in their communities, according to historians, political scientists and sociologists who have studied these shifts in the world’s economies and governments.
The result has been a similar quest for nationalist solutions in country after country, and a growing bond among the far-right autocrats in those places. For example, Hungary’s prime minister, Victor Orban, and Italy’s likely new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, have spoken to acclaim at gatherings of the Conservative Political Action Coalition — a group that has helped propel Trump’s movement in the United States.
“The trend we are seeing reflects a disillusionment around the world that the democratic process fails to produce effective, charismatic leaders,” said Nikolas Gvosdev, a professor of national security studies at the U.S. Naval War College. “In country after country, the idea spreads that we need strong leaders who get things done. And it’s not just in politics: We see the valorization of tech CEOs like Elon Musk as problem solvers who get the job done.”
In the United States, if there’s one thing President Biden and Trump agree on, it is the existence of what Biden calls “a battle for the soul of this nation.” The two men phrase the nature of that struggle very differently. To Biden, the threat is authoritarianism; to Trump, it is socialism and the country’s internal ills as “a failing nation.” But the polarization that the two politicians represent is a corrosive fact, and it mirrors divisions that are leading other large democracies around the world to embrace populist, right-wing leaders who promise a return to order, traditional values and a focus on the frustrations of working people.
Trump’s definition of American greatness has long included open admiration of strongmen around the world. After China’s communist regime put down pro-democracy student protests in 1989, Trump praised the Beijing government, saying, “That shows you the power of strength.” During his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump said he admired how Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein killed terrorists. “They didn’t read them the rights,” he said. “They were a terrorist: It was over.”
This year, at a rally in Georgia, Trump praised Chinese President Xi Jinping’s control of his people: “He runs 1.5 billion people with an iron fist. Yeah, I think he’s smart.” Also this year, Trump called Putin’s rationale for invading Ukraine “genius,” saying the Russian autocrat is “a tough cookie, got a lot of the great charm and a lot of pride, and he loves his country.”
More Republicans are adopting the kind of strongman rhetoric that seemed to play so well for Trump. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), for example, has turned the “authoritarian” label around to malign countries that have long been generally well regarded for good governance. He has declared Canada and Australia to be under the thumb of “authoritarian rule” because of their efforts to limit the spread of covid-19, and he has proposed to create a state military force “not encumbered by the federal government” to handle local emergencies, as well as a state law enforcement agency in charge of protecting “election integrity.”
It is no coincidence that populist leaders, many from business or other nonpolitical backgrounds, are rising in many countries around the same time. “In each of these countries, far-right movements have exploited resentments made much more acute by globalization,” said Kathleen Frydl, a historian at Johns Hopkins University who studies conservative institutions. “Each country has its own reasons why authoritarianism becomes appealing, its own inequalities or racial tensions. But there’s a validation across all these countries, where far-right leaders can point to Putin as a model of authority and control.”
What the authoritarian regimes have in common is their roots in what Moisés Naím, a former Venezuelan cabinet minister who is now a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, calls the three P’s: populism, polarization and post-truth.
Populist leaders “use ‘divide and conquer’ to explain everything,” Naím said. “Through identity politics, parties become like sports clubs, polarizing people into hard and fixed camps. And with the rise of social media, anything goes and people don’t know whom to believe, taking us into the post-truth era.”
In a time when governments around the world are finding it “devilishly difficult to deliver what citizens feel they deserve,” the three P’s result in a craving for the order that strongmen promise, said Naím, the author of “The Revenge of Power.”
In the United States, trust in government, business, media and other major institutions has been on the decline for decades. A pervasive sense of insecurity spread among many Americans after the 9/11 attacks, the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting economic upheaval, and the collapse of local communities as the internet nationalized the culture. All of that led the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance to conclude that the United States has fallen into “democratic backsliding.”
Putin has been only too happy to encourage the insecurities that lead to support for such displays of strength. The Russian president directed his government to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to undermine faith in the democratic process and to help Trump win, according to U.S. intelligence agencies. He also has latched onto controversies such as gender politics, as he did in his speech last week, “as part of a deliberate effort to destabilize the politics of Western countries,” Gvosdev said.
But the polarization and the spread of disinformation on social media that have altered American politics stemmed primarily from internal domestic changes and dislocations, not from Russia’s interference, Gvosdev said.
And for many Americans, the idea that the country’s democracy is threatened does not weigh as heavily as the impact of inflation and the disrupted nature of work in the era of a pandemic and massive technological change. A new Monmouth University poll asked people what issues were most important as they considered their votes this fall, and 54 percent cited concerns about the economy and cost of living, while 38 percent said they were most concerned about fundamental rights and democratic processes. Republicans overwhelmingly put the economy first — 71 percent of them — and Democrats largely put rights first, at 67 percent. But although there is widespread agreement that authoritarian parties and movements have been gaining traction in many countries, the ultimate success and lasting impact of this wave of far-right populism remains the subject of great debate.
Some political leaders and academics fear an enduring era of authoritarian rule, driven by the promise to return to working people some of the stability and security that has been swept away by globalization and the resulting transfer of many jobs either to lower-paying regions of the world or to automation. The trend has been exacerbated by the division of people into agitated and aggressive factions on social media.
But others say the authoritarian wave will be just that, a short-lived surge that recedes as it becomes evident that the far-right populists do not have any good solutions for most people’s frustrations, either.
“As quickly as authoritarian movements gain steam, they lose it because they can’t deliver on their promises,” Gvosdev said. “They inevitably get ensnared in corruption because they have a ‘rules for you but not for me’ approach.” He cited Bolsonaro, Orban and Rodrigo Duterte, a former president of the Philippines, as examples of strongman leaders who came under criticism for perceived hypocrisy and sweetheart deals in their administrations.
Populism by itself doesn’t necessarily succeed or fail at resolving the kind of frustrations — the economic, cultural and social dislocations of the past 20 years — that plague much of the world, Frydl said. Populism can take the form of George Wallace’s 1968 presidential campaign, with its overtly racist appeals to White voters, or it can lead to reforms such as the direct election of senators and legalized marijuana use, she noted.
Authoritarian governments generally take power on the wings of charismatic and powerful figures such as Trump, Bolsonaro, Orban and Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, the business magnate who led the country in four stints as prime minister between 1994 and 2011.
In many cases, those leaders prevail with a message that only they can turn their countries’ focus away from regional or global issues and back to themselves and their own dire needs.
But analysts are divided over whether authoritarian surges tend to peter out when the strong leader fades from the scene. Some say it’s a mistake to assume that the departure of such a dominant figure spells the end of the authoritarian chapter in that country’s history.
For one thing, it’s not clear what happens to the fading strongmen. “There are dictators who have nowhere to go,” Naím said. “They have to stay in power to protect themselves from jail and to protect their assets. Should you provide an exit ramp for them or go after them?”
In the United States, Frydl pointed to the mistake of concluding that the anti-intellectualism and far-right exclusionary attitudes of McCarthyism — the anti-communist crusade led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) in the 1950s — ended with the senator’s disgrace. Rather, she noted, McCarthyism led directly to the popularity of the racist, anti-immigrant John Birch Society in the 1960s, the Wallace campaigns in 1968 and 1972, and on to Trump’s focus on the damage to U.S. society he said had been caused by Mexican and Muslim immigrants.
“When we name the man and not the movement, we delude ourselves into thinking that when the man goes away, so does the movement,” Frydl said.
The latent tendencies toward extremism often linger in a society, “but it usually takes a charismatic leader to bring them to the fore,” Gvosdev said.
The U.S. case is on the cusp of that kind of shift, Gvosdev said: “The question is, can Trumpism be sustained by a more effective leader or does it follow the pattern of not easily translating to someone else?”
There appear to be two main ways countries pull themselves out of an authoritarian spiral, historians say. In some cases, political leaders take a stand for democracy, as Franklin D. Roosevelt did in the face of pro-Nazi protests that broke out in some parts of the United States in the early years of Hitler’s rule. In other instances, the resistance to authoritarian rule comes from below, from activists, unions or political groups — as happened in East Germany, South Africa and during the American civil rights movement.
Authoritarian rule’s end is not quite as simple as the famous scene in the 1987 movie “Moonstruck,” in which Cher slaps Nicolas Cage and instructs him to “snap out of it,” Frydl said. But neither is it always necessary for a society to confront its embrace of extremism and force its adherents to repent. Even as South Africa and the Czech Republic confronted authoritarian pasts by setting up formal truth and reconciliation commissions, West Germany and Japan were transformed after World War II into thriving democracies without going through that kind of process.
The way to end authoritarianism has been documented through the years, but that doesn’t mean there’s an easy recipe to follow. “Nobody can predict the collapse of an authoritarian regime, but we do know the ingredients,” Naím said. “Elections, independent judiciary, term limits — that’s the magic sauce. We used to talk about that recipe for banana republics, but now it applies to the United States.” | 2022-10-16T22:25:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Leaders of democracies increasingly echo Putin in authoritarian tilt - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/16/authoritarian-world-leaders-putin/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/16/authoritarian-world-leaders-putin/ |
Smartphone apps could ease international money transfers. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
Unrealistic as it was technically, the idea of a pan-Asian currency always had some political support: Since 2005, the Japanese have published the exchange value of something called the Asian Monetary Unit, a precursor to what would one day become the region’s equivalent of the euro. The debt crisis in southern Europe — and the threat it posed to the single currency in the early part of the last decade — ended that pipe dream.
The banking industry’s annual payments revenue pool is dominated by the Asia-Pacific region, which churns out roughly $90 billion from cross-border commerce.(1)Financial institutions are resigned to the idea that their fees per transaction will fall. What they don’t want is for volumes to disappear, which can happen if blockchain-based private stablecoins or central bank digital currencies become the preferred technology for international transfers. From their standpoint, Nexus’s advantage is that it won’t seek to bypass banks.
• The Mobile Phone Is Asia’s Dollar Hedge: Andy Mukherjee
• The Post-SWIFT Era Must Get Started: Andy Mukherjee
• A Catch-22 with Central Bank Digital Currencies: Paul J. Davies
(1) These include business-to-business, business-to-consumer and consumer-to-business transactions as well as consumer-to-consumer remittances. | 2022-10-17T00:10:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Smartphone Apps Bury the Case for a Pan-Asian Currency - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/smartphone-apps-bury-the-case-for-a-pan-asian-currency/2022/10/16/142000a6-4da7-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/smartphone-apps-bury-the-case-for-a-pan-asian-currency/2022/10/16/142000a6-4da7-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
By Marcos AlemÁn | AP
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — A Salvadoran judge has ordered the provisional arrest of several retired high-ranking members of the armed forces accused of having participated in the killings of four Dutch journalists in 1982 while they were covering the Central American nation’s civil war. | 2022-10-17T00:11:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Salvador court orders arrests in Dutch journalist killings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/salvador-court-orders-arrests-in-dutch-journalist-killings/2022/10/16/c6b3489e-4dad-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/salvador-court-orders-arrests-in-dutch-journalist-killings/2022/10/16/c6b3489e-4dad-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
Panthers’ Robbie Anderson kicked off field after jawing with WR coach
“It’s third down and I’m being taken out of the game — I don’t think I should be okay with that, you know what I’m saying?” Robbie Anderson told reporters. (Jacob Kupferman/AP)
The Carolina Panthers kicked an “upset” Robbie Anderson off the field during Sunday’s game against the Los Angeles Rams after the wide receiver got into verbal altercations with an assistant coach.
Anderson was sent to the locker room by interim coach Steve Wilks in the fourth quarter of a 24-10 road loss. Anderson, who did not have a pass target in the game, had been jawing with wide receivers coach Joe Dailey.
“I’ve never been told, in X amount of years, to get out of the game in the fourth quarter, so I was honestly confused and upset by that, as I should be,” Anderson told reporters after the game. “I don’t see nobody that’s a true competitor and know the value they bring, and has true passion toward the game, being okay with being told not to do something, or being taken out of something when they didn’t do nothing wrong.”
Anderson had a heated exchange with Dailey in the first half, after which the seventh-year player spent much of the rest of the half on the sideline.
Per accounts from the game, Anderson was back on the field early in the second half but was quickly relegated to a stationary bicycle on the sideline. At one point, Anderson was spotted sitting on a cooler well away from the area of the Panthers’ bench where the rest of the team’s wide receivers were congregated.
Later, after another unhappy exchange with Dailey, Anderson was sent off by a visibly agitated Wilks.
Anderson’s departure was reported during the broadcast of the game as not related to any injury.
“No one is bigger than the team,” Wilks told reporters at a postgame news conference. “I’m not going to focus and put a lot of attention on one individual.”
Adding that he was more than willing to talk about the game and how the Panthers might move forward, Wilks said, “I’m not putting a lot of energy into one individual.”
Anderson and the Panthers were playing in their first game since the team fired coach Matt Rhule, who coached the wide receiver at Temple University and brought him to Carolina as a free agent in 2020. Anderson had spent his first four seasons with the New York Jets, where at times he looked like one of the NFL’s more dangerous deep threats.
He blossomed in his first season in Carolina, setting career highs with 95 catches for 1,096 yards. However, those numbers were almost cut in half last season, and he entered Sunday’s game with 13 catches in five games for 206 yards, plus one touchdown.
Before the game, in which the Panthers fell to 1-5, Fox Sports reported that the team was “shopping” Anderson around the league, in addition to taking calls about star running back Christian McCaffrey.
Asked if Anderson and perhaps any other Panthers had been shaken by Rhule’s departure, Wilks replied that “all the guys were all-in” during “a great week of practice.”
In a somewhat surprising move, the Panthers also allowed Anderson to take the postgame podium. He said it was his choice to take questions from reporters, calling that “the best decision for me.”
“My job is, and I’m here, to do all I can to help us win,” Anderson said. “It’s third down and I’m being taken out of the game — I don’t think I should be okay with that, you know what I’m saying? So I made a comment: ‘It’s a money down; why am I being taken out?’ And that’s that.”
Anderson claimed he had “no idea” why he was taken out of the game and insisted he always gave “my all and my everything” to aid a winning effort.
“I don’t play this game for money, and I don’t play this game for fame or things like that,” he told reporters. “I play this game because I love the game of football, and regardless of what’s been going on in the past week, I always keep my head down and keep working. All I want to do is help us win the Super Bowl … so I’m never going to belittle myself from that aspect or let my character be diminished and be misunderstood, because that’s really all it is.”
Asked whether he wanted to be traded, Anderson replied that he was content to “let God follow his plans for my life.” | 2022-10-17T01:06:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Robbie Anderson kicked off field by Panthers after altercation with coach - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/16/robbie-anderson-kicked-off-field-panthers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/16/robbie-anderson-kicked-off-field-panthers/ |
Minnesota Vikings linebacker Brian Asamoah II (33), cornerbacks Kris Boyd (29) and Cameron Dantzler Sr. (3) and safeties Camryn Bynum (24), Myles Dorn (46) and Josh Metellus (44) celebrate in the end zone. (Alex Menendez/AP)
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. — In the underbelly of Hard Rock Stadium, the Minnesota Vikings streamed off the field in a sunny, subdued manner. Some players hooted, and some mugged for the team’s camera, but most, including edge rusher Za’Darius Smith and quarterback Kirk Cousins, clapped softly to themselves or nodded politely to a small group of fans. If defensive lineman Harrison Phillips hadn’t counted off the team’s wins from thumb to pinkie — “That’s five!” he shouted — it would’ve been difficult to tell this was one of the top teams in the NFL.
But after another shaky victory, this one by a score of 24-16 over the Miami Dolphins, Minnesota (5-1) is indeed tied with a select few teams for the league’s second-best record. The Vikings’ offense sputtered badly Sunday — going three-and-out on 10 of 14 full possessions — but it hit just enough big plays to complement a defense that came up with three turnovers against a rotation of Miami’s backup quarterbacks.
In the locker room, every player harped on how the team could improve. Receiver Adam Thielen said the offense needed to sustain drives. Linebacker Jordan Hicks said the defense could’ve snuffed out the Dolphins sooner. But several players said the start to this season has felt like the opposite of 2021, when seven of the Vikings’ nine losses came by one score.
“Very much the inverse of ’21,” Cousins said Sunday. “[Last year,] I would walk off the field after we had lost and say: ‘We’re playing so well, and somehow, some way, we lost. But we’re playing at a very high level.’ This year I’m saying, ‘Gosh, we can play better, but we won.’ . . . I’ll take this any day.”
Data supports the Vikings’ self-criticism. Entering Week 6, the two most widely used advanced metrics to measure team performance — expected points added (EPA) and defense-adjusted value over average (DVOA) — ranked Minnesota 13th and 20th, respectively.
But in the first year of a new front office and coaching staff, the Vikings have found ways to win and staked themselves to a two-game lead in the NFC North over the reeling Green Bay Packers (3-3), who just lost at home to the New York Jets. More than a third of the way through the season, FiveThirtyEight’s model projects Minnesota has a 92 percent chance to make the playoffs.
“Way too much of a struggle today, but to find a way to score some points to help our team win, I think it speaks to the mental toughness of those guys in that locker room,” Coach Kevin O’Connell said. “We can do a lot of things as coaches better to help our guys. But I’m really, really proud to be 5-1 right now.”
Early on, the Dolphins didn’t have a problem moving the ball, even with third-string quarterback Skylar Thompson, because receivers Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle racked up yards after the catch. But the Dolphins struggled with penalties, and after Thompson left with a thumb injury, Teddy Bridgewater replaced him.
Several Vikings, including defensive end Danielle Hunter, said their familiarity with Bridgewater, who played for the Vikings from 2014 to 2017, helped. Hunter said players knew Bridgewater wanted to throw long, which helped the pass rush have one of its best games, picking up six sacks and 13 quarterback hits.
Near the end of the first half, Minnesota’s offense found its footing. Cousins threw a short touchdown to tight end Irv Smith, and after Bridgewater threw an interception, Minnesota scrambled 26 yards in 18 seconds to take a 10-3 lead into the locker room.
In the second half, the Vikings’ defense looked exhausted. It was on the field for long drives, the visitors’ sideline at Hard Rock Stadium was about 30 degrees hotter than the home side, and Minnesota’s defenders had to regularly chase Hill and Waddle, two of the league’s fastest players. But the Vikings forced a turnover on downs and three straight punts.
Midway through the fourth quarter, with Minnesota clinging to a 16-10 lead, Waddle caught a deep over route toward the sideline. The Dolphins’ offense had moved the ball well but hadn’t put up the points to match its efforts, and it seemed as though it was about to break through. But Waddle tripped and lost the ball, which Vikings safety Camryn Bynum picked up.
“Practice, preparation — it’s all the corny words,” Bynum said later, explaining how the Vikings always seem to get a fortuitous bounce or timely turnover. “Last season, we had so many games down to the last series, [and] we lost a lot of 'em. So this year, I’ll just say it’s a mind-set. We’re not going to fold.”
The turnover gave Minnesota possession at its 41-yard line with 4:10 left. It needed a score or a clock-killer to put the game away. On second down, running back Dalvin Cook took the ball on a wide zone run left. Left tackle Christian Darrisaw prevented the defensive end from setting the edge, and right guard Ed Ingram made a difficult cutoff block by stepping in front of the nose tackle and sealing him off to create a lane Cook didn’t miss. The running back took it 53 yards for the win-sealing touchdown.
“That’s an attrition type of run where our guys are leaning on him, leaning on him,” O’Connell said. “They were a tough front to run the ball against, but you pop one like that and get yourself to a two-touchdown lead.”
But even after snapping the offense from its stupor, even after calling game, even after his run secured the team’s best start in years, Cook downplayed its significance. The sixth-year player, like his teammates, said the team needed to use its upcoming bye week to get better.
“At this point in my career, I just want to win,” he said. “I want to bring something bigger to Minnesota than it ever seen before.” | 2022-10-17T01:06:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vikings keep finding ways to win, beat Miami Dolphins to go to 5-1 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/16/vikings-dolphins-nfc-north/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/16/vikings-dolphins-nfc-north/ |
After mass layoffs less than a year after its return, Comcast’s video game-centric television and online network G4 is shutting down, according to a report from Deadline citing an internal email from Comcast Spectacor CEO Dave Scott.
“Over the past several months, we worked hard to generate … interest in G4, but viewership is low and the network has not achieved sustainable financial results,” Scott wrote. “This is certainly not what we hoped for, and, as a result, we have made the very difficult decision to discontinue G4’s operations, effective immediately.”
While G4 has struggled throughout 2022, the shutdown itself was sudden. The Washington Post viewed another email sent Sunday from G4 head Joe Marsh to employees that informed staff that G4′s Los Angeles facility would be closed until Oct. 18 — and that all streams were postponed. But that email did not mention the network’s shutdown. Additionally, former G4 employees who requested anonymity due to the signing of nondisclosure agreements told The Post that staff were locked out of internal communication services like Slack and Google Drive without immediate explanation. This came after crew from “Arena,” a show produced as part of a crucial deal with the WWE, quit last week, according to ex-employees.
G4 is Comcast’s attempt at reviving a network from the early 2000s that imagined what televised video game coverage and entertainment could look like years before content creators on YouTube and Twitch began amassing millions of viewers. Despite repeated attempts at bringing said creators into the fold — shows such as “Name Your Price” were hosted by Twitch stars like AustinShow (who has not publicly divulged his full name) — the network never found its footing when competing against individual influencers, who themselves were inspired by G4′s original, 2002-2014 iteration.
Expenditures for guest talent appear to have played a role in the closure. According to multiple G4 employees interviewed by The Post, some high-profile creators demanded day rates of $25,000-$30,000 when invited to appear as guests on G4.
Several events presaged G4′s demise. The nosedive that culminated Sunday began when then-president Russell Arons exited G4 at the end of August. In September, G4 laid off more than 20 crew members, many of whom worked on shows like video game review and commentary flagship “X-Play.” A week later, Kotaku reported that one of the revived G4′s most prominent faces, “X-Play” host Indiana “Froskurinn” Black, was no longer with the network. Later that same month, Kevin Pereira — one of the biggest names to come out of the original 2005-13 run of geek culture variety program “Attack of the Show,” who also hosted its reboot — also departed.
In Sunday’s memo, Scott expressed his regrets.
“I know this is disappointing news, and I’m disappointed, too,” he wrote. “I want to thank you and everyone on the G4 team for the hard work and commitment to the network.” | 2022-10-17T01:41:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | G4 shuts down after layoffs, Frosk firing, WWE deal falls apart - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/10/16/g4-shutdown-frosk-layoffs-wwe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2022/10/16/g4-shutdown-frosk-layoffs-wwe/ |
Eight wounded in shooting near JMU, officials say
None of the school’s students were reported to be among the victims.
Eight people were wounded Sunday morning in Harrisonburg, Va., when shots were fired at a gathering, officials said.
The wounds were said not to be life-threatening, and the Harrisonburg police said someone was in custody.
Harrisonburg, about 120 miles southwest of Washington, is the home of James Madison University, but the university said none of those wounded was currently a student. It was not clear whether any were former students. | 2022-10-17T03:51:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Eight shot near Virginia university, authorities say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/16/shooting-james-madison-virginia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/16/shooting-james-madison-virginia/ |
Xi’s moment of dominance can’t hide his weakness
Think of the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th National Congress, underway in Beijing, as the Marxist-Leninist version of a papal conclave. Dispense with the cardinals’ robes and Vatican ceremony and you still have a world shrouded in opacity and mystery, shaped by the maneuverings of expressionless apparatchiks and the imperatives of an anointed regime always wary of losing its grip over the faithful.
Analysts watching the CCP event, typically staged every half decade, look for its own smoke signals: Which cadres get cycled out of prominent positions? Who ascends to the ranks of the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee? Whose trusted technocrats are coming to the fore? The public spectacle is highly choreographed, the deliberations stiff and mirthless. But they offer a rare glimpse into an institution that, despite its unquestioned clout and reach, still has to find ways to resolve internal frictions and factionalisms.
This year, though, there’s a new wrinkle. Chinese President Xi Jinping is set to emerge from the meetings with a third five-year term as the party’s general secretary and chairman of its Central Military Commission, two posts that underlie the presidency. Though long in the works, Xi’s extended mandate is in defiance of established convention as his predecessors kept to two-term rules.
Xi has spent the past decade cracking down on potential rivals through the pretext of mass anti-corruption purges, while further restricting the already tiny space afforded to Chinese civil society. His iron hand crushed political freedoms in the semiautonomous coastal city of Hong Kong and placed a dystopian dragnet over the far-western region of Xinjiang, where more than a million people largely from Muslim ethnic minorities were sent to detention camps and countless more became the guinea pigs of an invasive, tech-driven surveillance state.
That China’s regime looks and feels more like a one-man dictatorship under Xi is no coincidence. Across the machinery of the Communist Party, Xi has installed loyal lieutenants in positions of influence. According to the Wall Street Journal, “all but seven of the 281 members of the Communist Party’s provincial-level Standing Committees” are Xi appointees. “It’s not about age any more,” Yang Zhang, a sociologist at American University’s School of International Service, told my colleague Christian Shepherd, referring to the unofficial retirement ages that circumscribed the careers of ambitious party officials. “It’s about whether you are on Xi’s side.”
Xi Jinping's opening speech at the Party Congress was just under 2 hours, much shorter than previous years.
Now, propaganda gets to work praising Xi.
Summary of his vision: "Xi sits on top of the party, the party sits on top of China, and China sits on top of the world." pic.twitter.com/t738vTeTPb
The meetings this week will cement Xi’s political triumph. But the depth of his control and power can do little to address the uncertainty that faces the Communist leadership at home and abroad. China’s economy is in the midst of a generational slowdown, impacted in part by Xi’s draconian pandemic-era restrictions as well as policies aimed at reining in the private sector. Its global image, meanwhile, has been tarnished by Xi’s assertive nationalism and Beijing’s perceived bullying on the world stage.
At the center of concern over Xi’s next term is the question of Taiwan, the island democracy that the Chinese Communists see as an integral part of their territory and a historical aberration that will inevitably be corrected. Analysts believe Xi, who has previously yoked his legitimacy to unification with Taiwan, is bent on realizing this vision. “He doesn’t regard it as just a slogan. It’s an action plan that must be implemented,” said Chang Wu-ueh, an adviser to Taiwan’s government, to my colleagues. “Before, leaders talked about unification as something to be achieved in the long run. Now, it’s number one on the agenda.”
Delivering an opening address on Sunday from the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, Xi warned that China reserved “the option of taking all measures necessary” when it came to denying Taiwanese independence and pushing through unification. He also spoke of making China a “great modern socialist country” that represents a “new choice” in global politics — a gesture to the geopolitical rupture between China and the West that has started to define Xi’s time in power.
The war in Ukraine has only sharpened tensions around Taiwan. Xi has shown support for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of his neighbor, while also ratcheting up pressure on Taiwan with saber-rattling rhetoric and greater military encroachments. While projecting greater confidence and might makes sense for a nationalist regime that has invested hugely in its military, Xi’s rule has led to the hardening of anti-Chinese coalitions that have taken shape in the region, including the “Quad” alliance between India, Australia, Japan and the United States. It has also undermined earlier Chinese efforts to build bridges with nations in the West.
“For the world, the positive thing is that Xi reveals the true face of the CCP regime, which is the combination of political repression, economic predation, and ‘adventurist’ ambition in dominating the entire world,” Wu Guoguang, a China scholar at Stanford University, told the Hindustan Times, an Indian newspaper. “If Xi’s two terms have not been sufficient to ‘educate the world,’ here comes his third one.”
The line to pick up printed copies of Xi Jinping’s speech pic.twitter.com/B6esngjsrZ
— David Rennie 任大伟 (@DSORennie) October 16, 2022
For Xi, the biggest challenges will remain at home. On one level, he presides over an undeniable success story. Since Xi came to power in 2012, the Chinese economy more than doubled in size. Its gross domestic product now surpasses the United States when measured based on purchasing power parity. Close to 100 million more people have been lifted out of poverty, according to Chinese state media, leading Xi to declare China’s “complete victory” over poverty last year.
Yet this is not Xi’s story. “China’s growth during Xi’s decade in power is attributable mainly to the general economic approach adopted by his predecessors, which focused on rapid expansion through investment, manufacturing, and trade,” said Neil Thomas, a senior analyst for China and Northeast Asia at Eurasia Group, to CNN. “But this model had reached a point of significantly diminishing returns and was increasing economic inequality, financial debt, and environmental damage.”
The moon, Mars and the return of strongman rule: How China has changed since the 2008 Olympics
Xi’s attempts to pivot China toward a more self-sufficient economy less dependent on foreign purchasers have yet to bear fruit and have left seismic disruption in their wake, including the wipeout of more than $1 trillion in market value of some of China’s biggest tech companies.
China’s “zero covid” policy was once hailed by Xi as a measure of Beijing’s superiority over its Western counterparts, which were laid low by the coronavirus in the pandemic’s early stages. But now the sweeping lockdowns still in place over hundreds of millions of people hang like an albatross around Xi’s neck. No matter the evidence, public disquiet and real harm to critical sectors of the Chinese economy, Xi has maintained an uncompromising line, letting what was once a public health response turn into a kind of ideology of autocratic power.
Chinese leadership may also fear the sudden spread of the virus should restrictions be lifted, given the questionable efficacy of China’s own vaccines and the limited immunity accrued by the general population. The consequences appear stark. “While experts had long projected China’s economy would slow as it matured, Xi’s unwillingness to bend this year has expedited that shift in ways that many economists believe could leave permanent scars,” wrote Jonathan Cheng of the Wall Street Journal.
“Xi’s approach has dented consumer confidence and spending — key to China’s goal of transitioning to a more consumer-led economy — while compounding such issues as rising youth unemployment and a deteriorating property market,” wrote my colleague Lily Kuo. “The International Monetary Fund on Tuesday lowered its 2022 growth forecast for China to 3.2 percent from a projection of 8.1 percent last year.”
Xi may appear supreme in his authority this week, but the ground could be slowly shifting beneath his feet as party cadres grapple with the mounting woes facing the country.
“Although the prospect of a leadership challenge or coup remains remote owing to the sheer scale of logistical hurdles and political dangers, Xi’s positioning as a potential ruler for life simply aggravates the incentives for opponents to scuttle his agenda or plot his exit,” wrote Jude Blanchette of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Authoritarian systems and authoritarian leaders always appear solid on the outside — until suddenly, they don’t.” | 2022-10-17T04:09:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China Communist Party National Congress: Xi’s moment of dominance can’t hide his weakness - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/17/china-xi-weakness-power-party-congress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/17/china-xi-weakness-power-party-congress/ |
Man dies in Montgomery crash
Victim was Jeep passenger, authorities say
A man was killed in Montgomery County on Saturday night in a collision between a Jeep and a truck, police said.
The man was riding in the Jeep when the collision occurred about 11:15 p.m. near Frederick Road and Plummer Drive, police said. He died at the scene, they said. The site is in the Germantown area.
The man’s name was not immediately available. | 2022-10-17T04:13:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man killed in Montgomery crash, authorities sat - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/16/man-killed-jeep-crash-montgomery/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/16/man-killed-jeep-crash-montgomery/ |
I need to move and leave my current job, but I will not jump ship until I have something else lined up. I attend conventions and trade shows to make connections in the professional world, learn new skills and keep up with trends.
It’s an investment in myself. My parents express their disappointment and call my efforts a waste of money — and dangerous. I can’t understand why.
Recently, I was very down, because I had to cancel a three-hour trip to a skills development show. I’d spent weeks preparing. My parents said I should be happy that I saved money by not attending. They refuse to acknowledge this as a lost opportunity.
I’ve expressed what I need from them. I only want moral support. They refuse. If I have to hide my interest for professional growth, I don’t know how we’ll be able to maintain a close relationship.
Striving: I agree with you that counseling would be beneficial — for you.
You are 27. You are doing exactly what you should be doing with your life: charting the course of your future and working hard to succeed. Other ambitious self-starters will counsel you to hitch up your trousers and keep at it.
This is the entrepreneur’s journey you have chosen. You must encounter some risk to reap your reward. Where you seem to have strayed from the path is in your reliance on your parents for applause, assent or moral support. They won’t give it to you, so stop asking for or expecting it.
It is so frustrating when people won’t give you what you want, but if you change your focus away from others and train it on your development, your frustration will also disappear.
If your profession and your efforts are all you have to talk to your folks about, then you’ll have to steel yourself to their negative responses. Otherwise, do what young adults the world over do when talking to their folks, and edit your narrative.
My (unsolicited) opinion is that you should get a second part-time gig to pay the bills, and plow ahead with your efforts to develop your skills and network with other pros. You’ll get there.
He is a sweet guy, and a great husband and father. Sadly, he’s been laid off from many jobs over the years. I think he only left a job once to take a better job, and that was early in his career.
He thinks he has excellent communication and leadership skills. I think his writing skills are good, but his in-person communication skills are a big problem. He does not present well. Also, he is very passive and does not have leadership skills.
Saddened: If your son approaches you for career advice, you should offer it. Be honest, but not brutal.
I appreciated your analysis of what was going on: She was hurt, and now she was consciously hurting other people. I am also ashamed that I did the same thing after I was cheated on.
Recovered: I hope not too many people were hurt before you wised up. | 2022-10-17T04:22:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: My parents are not supportive of my career ambitions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/17/ask-amy-parents-unsupportive-career/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/17/ask-amy-parents-unsupportive-career/ |
Europe Misses Another Chance to Fix Its Union
Russia’s efforts to use natural-gas exports as a geopolitical weapon present Europe with a challenge: When faced with such a clear and present threat, can it muster the solidarity required of a true union?
Policymakers might be coalescing around what they see as an adequate plan. They should be more ambitious: Europe needs a permanent solution to its chronic coordination failures.
Not since the onset of the pandemic in 2020 has Europe had such an opportunity to demonstrate its cohesion. Vladimir Putin’s energy cutoff — intended to punish opposition to his invasion of Ukraine — is a classic external shock that will affect countries differently according to their dependence on Russian gas supplies, with both Germany and Italy among the hardest hit. To mitigate the impact of rising prices, help the most vulnerable get through the winter and speed the transition to other energy sources, public spending on the scale of hundreds of billions of euros is justified.
In a fully integrated union, the fiscal response would be largely automatic. Support would immediately flow to the hardest-hit areas, initially through direct aid and later through income-tax relief and credits for both businesses and households. This is the kind of burden-sharing required for governments to share a currency. Without it, some could end up with debts that would be too much to bear.
Not so in the EU. Just as in other crises, its 27 member states have been struggling to mount an ad hoc response to the gas shortage, divided by everything from domestic politics to the physical structure of the energy network. Some countries, including France, Italy and Spain, pushed for price caps that they hoped would reduce the cost of their own liquified natural gas imports. Germany, for its part, unilaterally announced a €200 billion ($195 billion) price-mitigation program. Markets reacted to the dissonance by increasing borrowing costs for Italy, where the government’s already heavy debt burden would make additional spending particularly fraught.
Fortunately, Europe’s leaders may be headed toward some form of cooperation. According to Bloomberg News, Germany may be open to providing EU loans to struggling governments, funded by jointly issued debt. This could somewhat lower borrowing costs for the likes of Italy. But it would fall short of the pandemic recovery fund, which was hailed as a breakthrough for including some grants along with loans — and far short of the kind of fiscal burden-sharing required to ensure the currency union’s longer-term viability.
Such half-measures leave Europe unprepared for further challenges and gradually slipping toward another debt crisis. No doubt, efforts to expand risk-sharing face strong political headwinds in individual countries. But at the very least, the EU should be able to establish a permanent fund to provide both loans and grants in emergencies — with clear procedures on its use, so that EU members needn’t negotiate a new program every time a crisis arises.
Ultimately, what’s needed is a central fiscal authority, with its own revenue source and the power to spend when needed to mitigate asymmetric shocks. If neither the pandemic nor a hybrid war with Russia can bring the EU to even consider such a possibility, it’s hard to imagine what will. The longer Europe waits, the greater the chance that its experiment in unification will fail.
• Putin Helps Forge European Unity on Energy Aid: Lionel Laurent | 2022-10-17T06:15:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Europe Misses Another Chance to Fix Its Union - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/europe-misses-another-chance-to-fix-its-union/2022/10/17/6312c234-4dd9-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/europe-misses-another-chance-to-fix-its-union/2022/10/17/6312c234-4dd9-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
Can things get worse? (Photographer: Apu Gomes/Getty Images North America)
The last thing the global bond market needs on top of aggressive interest rate hikes is more trouble. Yet, there’s more coming, and from an unlikely source: a rapidly deteriorating relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia.
Earlier this month, Riyadh defied Washington, leading the OPEC+ cartel, which includes Russia, to cut oil production. The move has put a floor on oil prices, which have stabilized between $90 and $100 a barrel. As a result, inflation is likely to be more persistent than previously expected, probably forcing central banks into further monetary tightening, which would bite bond investors. This enraged the US.
Now American-Saudi relations are at their worst than since the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in October 2018. Since Riyadh agreed to cut oil output, the kingdom and the White House have engaged in a war of words. The Saudi Foreign Affairs Ministry released a statement saying that Washington wanted OPEC+ to delay the cut by a month — implying that the problem was really the US midterm elections. The White House responded accusing Riyadh of “spinning” excuses.
The key for what comes next is NOPEC. This is the “No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels” Act, a bill that proposes subjecting OPEC to the Sherman antitrust law that was used more than a century ago to break up the oil empire of John Rockefeller. If enacted, the White House would be able to sue Saudi Arabia and its allies, currently protected by sovereign immunity, for manipulating the global oil market.
There’s a real possibility the bill may see the light of day. But despite how much Biden wants to punish Saudi Arabia and OPEC for cutting oil supply, it would be far wiser to avoid escalating the legislation. Otherwise, the risk is that Saudis dump US financial assets, redirect oil sales and openly talk about pricing oil in other currencies.
For the last 25 years, NOPEC has been a staple of Washington — always a threat but never a law. President after president, whether Republican and Democrat, have argued against passing it. But Joe Biden, who once supported a similar bill as Senator, has said he’s ready to work with Congress to curb OPEC influence.
“There is a real risk that this diplomatic dispute could intensify,” said Helima Croft, an oil analyst at RBC Capital Markets who’s well connected in Washington and Riyadh. “We would not be surprised to see suggestions in the coming days that Gulf countries could liquidate their US financial holdings if NOPEC becomes law.”
The White House needs to think about those questions — and whether it really wants to answer them. Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, has now attached NOPEC as an amendment to the annual Pentagon spending bill, giving it a serious chance of getting a vote on the floor of the Senate next month. It’s unclear if the amendment has the votes. But the last time the bill came this close to passing was in 2007, when it got approved by the House of Representatives in a 345-72 vote and the Senate by 70-23, only to die after George W. Bush threatened a veto.
Biden must finally decide where he stands. In 2000, when oil prices were rising, he co-wrote a letter as senator to then-President Bill Clinton urging the White House to sue OPEC either in US federal court or at the International Court of Justice in the Hague. In 2007, Senator Biden was the co-sponsor of a version of the NOPEC bill, but then he abstained during the vote. For now, the White House hasn’t said whether it supports the legislation.
NOPEC goes hand-in-hand with oil prices. If Brent crude stays under $100 a barrel, the bill may die. But if prices rise, just a touch, it has a fighting chance of passing. If that’s the case, it’s likely to create more problems than it would resolve. | 2022-10-17T06:15:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Making OPEC+ Subject to US Antitrust Law Will Backfire - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/making-opec-subject-to-us-antitrust-law-will-backfire/2022/10/17/635aac70-4dd9-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/making-opec-subject-to-us-antitrust-law-will-backfire/2022/10/17/635aac70-4dd9-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
To Stop Urban Crime and Disorder, Read Hobbes
CHICAGO, IL - MAY 27: Crime scene tape is stretched around the front of a home where a man was shot on May 28, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. Chicago police have added more than 1,000 officers to the streets over the Memorial Day weekend, hoping to put a dent in crime, during what is typically one of the more violent weekends of the year. In 2016, 6 people were killed and another 65 were wounded by gun violence over the Memorial Day weekend. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images) (Photographer: Scott Olson/Getty Images North America)
The great 17th-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes believed that the most basic of human instincts is to escape from the threat of bodily harm. Corporate America is currently engaged in an experiment to see if Hobbes was right. Will companies stick to their loudly expressed commitment to social responsibility? Or will they follow Hobbes and retreat from the rising crime and disorder of urban America?
Chicago has the dubious distinction of being at the center of this great experiment, with 802 people shot to death in 2021, according to the University of Chicago Crime Lab, up from 774 in 2020, and violence and disorder rampant. Fear is clearly winning. On Oct. 5 Tyson Foods Inc. announced that it is closing its office in downtown Chicago in order to consolidate office employees in its global headquarters in Springdale, Arkansas.
This comes on top of a spate of high-profile moves: In May, Boeing Co., the aerospace giant, announced that it was moving its headquarters to the Washington, DC, suburbs; in June, Caterpillar Inc., the construction titan, announced that it is moving its base from Chicago to the Dallas region; a week later, Ken Griffin announced that he is moving the primary office of his Citadel hedge fund to Miami. Griffin made it clear that his main reason for leaving Chicago (which he likened to “Afghanistan, on a good day”) was that his employees no longer felt safe going to and from work.
US crime statistics are notoriously difficult to interpret given the size of the country and the variety of its 18,000 state and police authorities, ranging from leviathans to minnows. The difficulty of interpretation is multiplied by changes the FBI is making to its method of calculating crime and the failure of more than one third of the country’s law enforcement agencies to submit evidence for the 2021 Crime in the Nation report.
The picture is complicated but depressing. The FBI reported that overall violent crime fell by 1% over 2020 but homicides rose by 4.3%. By contrast, a survey by the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA) of 70 urban areas revealed that homicides and rapes declined slightly between the first half of 2021 and the same period in 2022, but violent crime in general has increased by 4.4%.
Still, it is fair to say that violent crime is significantly higher than it was in the early 2000s. (Changes over time in the methodology and size of nationwide surveys can confound direct comparisons.) The level of violent crime fell sharply from the 1990s before stabilizing at a lower level. In particular, the big cities entered a relatively tranquil period, as a new breed of pragmatic (and often Republican) big city mayors such as Richard Riordan in Los Angeles, Bob Lanier in Houston and Rudy Giuliani in New York City implemented tough crime policies. (It is easy to forget, given his current pitiable state, that Giuliani made his name as a crime-fighting mayor.) Then everything began to change again, starting in the mid-2010s and then accelerating: between the middle of 2019 and the middle of 2020, MCCA member cities experienced a 50% increase in murders and a 36% increase in aggravated assaults.
The jump in violent crime is taking place against the background of increasing civic disorder. When I visited America a few months ago after a long absence during the Covid-19 pandemic, taking in Washington, Philadelphia, New York City and Boston, I was struck by how much the tenor of daily life had deteriorated. Tent cities were proliferating, evidence that homelessness was not a problem that was being tackled but a way of life. Panhandlers were more aggressive as well as more ubiquitous. Urban drug stores had taken to putting everything behind lock and key, creating a sense of a society under siege. The streets of New York made the streets of London look spick and span by comparison. The sickly-sweet smell of marijuana was ubiquitous. A disconcerting number of people on the street seemed to behave oddly if not dangerously, perhaps reflecting the high prevalence (as much as 25%) of severe mental illness among the homeless. Problems that had always been there on the margins of urban society were moving to the center stage.
In addition to driving some big corporate headquarters out of city centers, the Hobbesian imperative is directly and indirectly having two other marked effects on urban life.
First, stores are closing their operations in the most crime-infested areas. Starbucks is shuttering branches over worries about violence and drug use, a reversal of its earlier commitment to welcome everyone and anyone, regardless of their behavior or willingness to buy coffee. Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens are closing dozens of stores over worries about crime and disorder. Mom-and-pop stores are also closing: One study suggests that every additional gun homicide in a city reduced the number of retail and service businesses by two over the following year.
Second, companies are having to take distressing measures to train their employees to deal with the reality of violent crime. Stores that remain in downtowns are increasing the number of security guards they employ while also reducing their opening hours. Noodles & Company is training its workers on how to respond if they discover casual drug use in their bathrooms. MOD Pizza is installing panic buttons in stores and offering emotional support resources to employees after an incident. Employees are instructed never to leave the back doors of restaurants open. Fresh Market Place in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood gives all employees safety training and coaches them to avoid confrontations and defuse conflicts. This columnist was surprised when, as part of his training as a “new hire” at Bloomberg Opinion, he was asked to watch a video on what to do if an armed assailant invades the office.
Before the pandemic it was fashionable to talk of an urban renaissance as young workers returned to cities in search of stimulation, and savvy companies followed them. The New York Times ran a celebratory article on “why corporate America is leaving the suburbs for the city.” McDonald’s Corp. and Motorola Solutions Inc. moved their headquarters to downtown Chicago from their respective suburbs, Oak Brook and Schaumburg. General Electric moved its headquarters from its 70-acre wooded campus in Fairfield, Connecticut, to a red-brick warehouse in Boston in a bid to rebrand itself and attract what then-Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt called a “diverse, technologically-fluent workforce.”
The urban renaissance is now well and truly over: Far from waxing sentimental about urban life, McDonald’s CEO, Chris Kempczinksi, recently delivered a cri de coeur to the Economic Club of Chicago. “What’s going on in Chicago?…There is a general sense out there that our city is in crisis…We have violent crime that is happening in our restaurants…we are seeing homelessness issues in our restaurants, we are having drug overdoses that are happening in our restaurants.”
But two things are worth noting as we write the obituary of the renaissance. First, it was always exaggerated. The flight of both people and businesses from cities to suburbs and from the Northeast to the Sunbelt continued throughout the supposed revival (though California increasingly acted like a Northeastern rather than a Sunbelt state). In particular, New York, Chicago and Boston continued to lose corporate headquarters just as Sunbelt cities and suburbs continued to gain them.
Second, it’s wrong to think that the renaissance is just another victim of Covid and the work-from-home movement that Covid intensified. It’s the result of the toxic combination of Covid and growing disorder. Rates of return to the office are significantly higher in Sunbelt cities where people drive to work than they are in cities where they rely on public transport. No matter how many perks companies provide or warnings they issue, workers are reluctant to commute to work if it means putting themselves in danger on the subway (in late May a Goldman Sachs employee was shot to death on a New York subway train) or negotiating their way past homeless encampments and aggressive panhandlers as they walk from subway to the office.
The tragedy of the flight of American business from core cities is that policy makers have a tried-and-tested solution to the problem. This is Hobbes-ism plus: Accept the truth of Hobbes’ insight that the basic duty of the state is to preserve law and order but add that it can only succeed in doing this if it addresses broader social problems of homelessness and drug addiction. Hobbes-ism plus was once mainstream center left thinking when the left dominated politics, mostly memorably expressed by Tony Blair’s formula “tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.” It was also influential in Republican circles as Republican reformers captured the mayorships of several great cities by promising to mix crime-fighting with a wider range of policies to help the poor.
Today it’s hard to see a mainstream politician embracing both the “Hobbes” and the “plus” side of this formula. True, New York City has replaced Bill de Blasio with the more moderate Eric Adams, a former police officer, and San Francisco has recalled some of its more extreme progressives. But the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is still ascendant while the Republican Party has all but abandoned the “urbia” for “ex-urbia” and the countryside. Hobbes taught that the “war of all against all” can only be solved by a strong and responsible Leviathan. Until America can solve its urban government crisis, dreams of an urban renaissance driven by knowledge workers and agglomeration effects are destined to remain just that.
• Don’t Blame Progressive Prosecutors for Rising Crime: Jennifer Doleac
• New York’s Crime Wave Is Showing Signs of Breaking: Justin Fox
• What’s Dangerous Is America’s Lack of Crime Data: Matthew Yglesias | 2022-10-17T06:15:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | To Stop Urban Crime and Disorder, Read Hobbes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/to-stop-urban-crime-and-disorder-read-hobbes/2022/10/17/63991532-4dd9-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/to-stop-urban-crime-and-disorder-read-hobbes/2022/10/17/63991532-4dd9-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A California ballot measure that would tax the rich to help put more electric cars on the road may seem tailor-made to win support from Democrats in a state known for climate leadership, but Proposition 30 has one notable opponent: Gov. Gavin Newsom. That’s put the Democratic governor on the opposite side of his own party and against his traditional environmental allies. | 2022-10-17T06:16:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tax the rich for more EVs? California Democrats split - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/tax-the-rich-for-more-evs-california-democrats-split/2022/10/17/e6fd48ce-4dd6-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/tax-the-rich-for-more-evs-california-democrats-split/2022/10/17/e6fd48ce-4dd6-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
In this photo provided by Islamic Republic News Agency, IRNA, on Sunday, Oct. 16, 2022, a charred building is seen after a fire on the property of the Evin prison, in Tehran, Iran. Flames and smoke rising from the prison had been widely visible Saturday evening, as nationwide anti-government protests triggered by the death of a young woman in police custody entered a fifth week. (IRNA via AP) (Uncredited/Islamic Republic News Agency IRNA) | 2022-10-17T06:16:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Iran prison fire death toll rises to 8 inmates killed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iran-prison-fire-death-toll-rises-to-8-inmates-killed/2022/10/17/8521d722-4ddc-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/iran-prison-fire-death-toll-rises-to-8-inmates-killed/2022/10/17/8521d722-4ddc-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
Mustafa Salim
A suspected drug dealer is arrested in Basra, Iraq, on Aug. 18. The drug trade in Iraq is protected by powerful armed groups, some of them linked to Iran, as well as tribal networks and corrupt officials, according to Iraqi security, border and judicial officials. (Younes Mohammad for The Washington Post)
At the center of this blight is the cloying heat and crushing poverty of Basra, where jail cells are full and dealers have police on their payroll so kingpins remain untouched. But the origins are far away, in the cool mountains of Afghanistan and the underground laboratories of Iran where new supplies and techniques have led to a flourishing trade.
“We have a disaster here,” said Col. Ehab, a career intelligence officer who was directing the house raids on a recent night. He spoke on the condition that only his first name be used over concerns for his security.
Since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion opened Iraq’s border with Iran, there has been a constant flow of people, religious pilgrims, trade — and smuggling, including of drugs. But it was around 2017 that a new menace appeared: crystal meth.
In Turkey, security forces seized more than 5½ tons of methamphetamine last year with raids along the Iranian border and in Istanbul. In just the first seven months of 2022, the number jumped to 8.6 tons.
“[The year] 2017 was a game changer,” said David Mansfield, an expert on Afghanistan’s illicit economy whose work draws from fieldwork and aerial imagery. Local producers shifted from using over-the-counter medicines — used in the rest of the world to make ephedrine — to the widely available ephedra, growing wild on Afghan hillsides.
Reports of drug seizures top news broadcasts almost daily. While the reported annual seizures of hundreds of kilograms are likely a deep undercount, even these numbers are doubling every year.
“We’ve had officers arrested for this. They covered for criminals and they were on the dealers’ monthly payrolls,” said Ammar Shaker Fajr, a judge in Basra’s Third Investigative Court.
In February, gunmen killed a senior judge in next-door Maysan province. In September, a general from the region’s anti-drug squad was shot dead outside a restaurant.
Basra’s drug squad is receiving a growing tide of threats, too. “There are days I just think about quitting,” Ehab said. “I already feel like a dead man.”
“Our young people want an escape but they don’t understand what they’re taking,” said Enas Kareem, the founder of Iraq’s only charity dedicated to helping users. She said there are no solid figures for addiction rates, but some officials estimate that up to 40 percent of Iraqi’s youth in some areas have tried drugs.
Crystal meth floods the user with a sense of euphoria and invulnerability. When addiction sets in, paranoia takes over and the immune system breaks down as organs are pushed to failure.
In many cases, former addicts say that they started using drugs as solace from troubled lives. They spoke on condition that only their first names be used, due to the social stigma that comes with addiction.
Maher, 30-year-old baker in Baghdad, said that he fell in with the crowd that introduced him to alcohol and amphetamines after growing cripplingly lonely at home. His sister was killed during the U.S. invasion, his brothers during the subsequent sectarian civil war, and his parents, three years later, in a car crash.
“Say we have 30,000 addicts in Basra, and there are just 22 beds in which the patients need three months each to recover. Well, how does anyone get a place in those beds?” asked Gen. Ismail Ghanem, the head of Basra’s anti-drug unit.
When Firas went to bed at night, he’d ask himself whether he could ever stop using. When he woke in the morning, he would buy his next dose from the taxi hangar, where he worked.
He said that it was a volunteer with Kareem’s charity who saved him. The young man, Hassan Majeed al-Maliki, visited and said the nearby hospital had a spare bed.
Below the chandeliers of a luxury hotel in Baghdad in June, officials from all major ministries outlined their thoughts for how to tackle the crisis at its root. They spoke of the need to provide young people with spaces for sport and social activities, of the need to improve the education system and launch awareness campaigns. But no further action was taken in the months that followed, as political factions squabbled over the shape of a new government, preventing ministries from carrying out any new initiatives.
“Iraqis are very good at talking, but where’s the action? We don’t see it,” Ghanem said. “All we do is arrest people.”
That is precisely why many Maher’s friends have been scared to seek help for their addiction. “If they arrest someone taking drugs, they will beat the crap out of them,” he said.
The drug squad’s first target was down an unpaved road without streetlights. They said that an informant had identified the location, and when the SWAT team stormed out with guns readied, a man in his 40s surrendered without a fight. Inside his one-story house, the unit found dozens of small pouches containing a white crystal-like substance that the officers believed to be meth, a set of small measuring scales and a loaded gun in each of the three rooms.
But at a house several districts to the north, the scene grew messier. Two women were already screaming obscenities at the police force by the time they reached the front gate. Four young men were pulled out for questioning, and a 17-year-old with messy hair was sobbing.
Inside the house, an officer found three tabs of captagon, an amphetamine, and one of the women began pleading with him. “It’s not drugs, it’s for his injury,” she kept saying.
Around the corner, another officer was scrolling through the teenager’s phone as the boy nodded frantically through his tears. The unit later said that he had been asked to cooperate with future investigations — a new informant to fuel the cycle of arrests.
It was past midnight by the time the convoy finally finished for the night. The streets were empty and the vehicles drove fast now, gliding down the highways and making sharp turns on street corners hung with pictures of the clerics and politicians.
Back at the station, the suspects were placed in a holding cell and brought for interrogation one by one. Last up was Moslem Dawoud, the alleged dealer whose home, police said, contained 16 doses of crystal meth. He kept his eyes on the floor for the most part and had stopped protesting his innocence.
An officer looked down at a faint tattoo on the man’s forearm and asked if he’d been in prison before. Dawoud nodded.
Downstairs, the yells of other prisoners were floating out through the night air. After a long silence, Dawoud shared what he said was the name of his dealer.
“It’s like this every night,” he said blankly. “You do the raids, you do the paperwork, you’re in a loop. Then you lie down, you wake up and you start again.” | 2022-10-17T07:12:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Crystal meth pours into Iraq across porous borders with Iran - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/17/iraq-meth-iraq-drugs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/17/iraq-meth-iraq-drugs/ |
Paul Bellar, right, at his trial in Jackson, Mich., early this month. (J. Scott Park/Jackson Citizen Patriot/AP)
Several people in the courtroom — including the judge — said they’d noticed it: a juror glancing and smiling at Paul Bellar, one of three men accused of assisting with an unsuccessful 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D).
Where opinions diverged was what the woman’s glances and smiles meant — and whether the juror should continue playing a role in deciding Bellar’s fate.
“We’re very concerned about this juror,” William Rollstin, a Michigan assistant attorney general, said in court last week. The prosecution, he said, had two witnesses who could testify about what Rollstin characterized as “nonverbal communication” between Bellar and the juror.
“It didn’t just happen on one day — it happened over multiple days,” Wilson said on Friday, according to the paper. “I decided it’s safer to err on the side of caution.”
The dismissal came less than two weeks into the trial for Bellar, Joseph Morrison and Pete Musico — alleged members of a self-styled militia group called the Wolverine Watchmen. Prosecutors accuse the three of providing material support for terrorist acts, gang membership and carrying or possessing a firearm in the commission of a felony. Prosecutors say Morrison and Musico hosted trainings at their property, while Bellar is accused of providing ammunition and plans for tactical maneuvers and of hosting meetings at his house, according to an affidavit.
In August, a federal jury convicted Barry Croft Jr. and Adam Fox of plotting to kidnap Whitmer at her vacation home in northern Michigan and detonate a bridge to disrupt responding police. Prosecutors said the men believed that, by doing so, they’d start a second American civil war. The convictions came after a jury acquitted two other men charged with conspiring in the kidnapping plot in a separate trial, while two other men pleaded guilty to roles in the plot.
Two men convicted of plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer
On Wednesday, Rollstin told the judge that the alleged nonverbal communication between Bellar and the juror had been happening since the beginning of the trial. Rollstin claimed that, earlier in the day, Bellar had responded to the juror when he “clenched both his fists and shook them in an affirmative way” and spoke to his co-defendant immediately afterward, Rollstin said.
Andrew Kirkpatrick, Bellar’s attorney, disputed that. He said his client shook his fists to celebrate after he received a bag of Skittles for his birthday.
However, Kirkpatrick said he had noticed the juror looking at Bellar and even spoke to his client about it. He argued that the juror’s looks were not inappropriate and Bellar had done nothing to compromise her ability to make judgments about the case.
“They haven’t spoken outside of this. He’s not winking at her,” Kirkpatrick said. “He’s not doing anything to her to encourage her.”
“If she’s got an issue, she’s got an issue,” he added. “But I don’t think that’s a basis to get rid of this juror.”
Kareem Johnson, Musico’s attorney, argued the juror was not doing anything unusual. He said jurors often react to defendants during trials.
“For people to suggest that simply because a young woman — who’s been tasked with the duty of evaluating somebody’s guilt or innocence — and is looking over here, it must be some sort of flirtation or romantic involvement, is just sexist,” Johnson said.
Ultimately, Wilson disagreed. At first, he said, he did not pay much attention but soon noticed the juror, who sits in his line of sight, look at Bellar and “smile a number of times.” He said he had noticed Bellar looking back at her.
“It’s enough that it’s drawn my attention,” Wilson said. | 2022-10-17T07:47:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Juror accused of flirting with defendant in Mich. governor kidnap plot - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/17/bellar-whitmer-juror-dismissed-flirting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/17/bellar-whitmer-juror-dismissed-flirting/ |
Many of the taxis across the Seoul metropolitan area run on Kakao T, the company’s ride-hailing app. (SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg)
SEOUL — In South Korea, Kakao is ubiquitous. Nearly everyone, from schoolchildren to the elderly, uses the Korean tech company’s apps for messaging, taxis, navigation and payments. It’s Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Uber, Google Maps and Venmo wrapped into one.
So when a fire at the building where the company’s servers are run broke out this weekend, disabling its apps, people joked that the country would shut down.
But the outage forced a serious reckoning over security and monopoly concerns in Korea, where a handful of giant conglomerates hold dominance over the country’s economy. (Hyundai, known for its cars in the United States, operates apartment complexes and department stores here; Samsung, the technology giant, also sells insurance and owns a high-end clothing company.)
Kakao said in a presentation to investors in August that its customer base had grown to 53.3 million active users, with 47.5 million of those in South Korea — striking dominance in a country of more than 51 million. Many stores accept Kakao Pay, most of the taxis across the Seoul metropolitan area run on Kakao T, the company’s ride-hailing app, and friends, companies and even the government use Kakao Talk to exchange messages.
It’s not uncommon for websites and apps to experience outages — Amazon Web Services, Slack, Facebook, WhatsApp and Apple have all made headlines and panicked consumers — but they usually last hours, not days, and they don’t often affect so many parts of people’s lives.
On Monday, as Kakao was still getting some of its services back online, President Yoon Suk-yeol said his administration would investigate whether Kakao had a monopoly over the market. If that was the case, with Kakao becoming “nationwide infrastructure,” Yoon said, “then the state must take necessary measures for the good of the people.”
On Sunday, Yoon’s spokeswoman, Kim Eun-hye, said that the disruption “not only damages people’s livelihoods, but also causes fatal problems to national security in case of emergency.” Resilience in the face of such incidents, Kim said, “is a corporate responsibility and a social promise.”
Kakao shares plunged 9.5 percent on Monday morning before closing nearly 6 percent lower from Friday’s close.
“Risk management in Korea is not a strong suit of most companies,” said J.R. Reagan, an American cybersecurity adviser in Korea who runs the consulting firm IdeaXplorer Global. “They don’t like planning for things that haven’t happened yet.”
Kakao’s first problem, he said, was that there didn’t appear to be backup generators to make up for the power outage. Second, “you don’t put all your servers in one location — you spread those out,” so that one incident — like the fire — doesn’t cause such a widespread and slow-to-fix outage, he said. He said U.S. tech companies have “learned their lessons” there.
Why Korean companies are forcing their workers to go by English names
Kakao and SK Telecom, another conglomerate that runs Kakao’s servers, did not respond to requests for comment Monday. Kakao said in a statement Sunday that it had created an emergency response committee to address the incident. Some features such as messaging and Kakao T were restored as of Sunday evening, the statement said.
Hong Eun-taek, co-chief executive of Kakao, said in the statement, “We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience caused by this accident, and we are currently doing our best to normalize the service.” He added that the company was working to prevent similar incidents from happening again, and that it was preparing a “compensation policy” for those affected.
Tammy Lee, a student at Korea University, turned 21 on Sunday. “When the outage happened a day before, I started to get super nervous,” Lee said. In Korea, young people often use Kakao to send birthday presents; the recipient gets a message and can choose the color or size of the item and confirm the delivery address.
“When I realized that I would not be able to receive any gifts this year, I was really sad,” Lee told The Washington Post on Monday (in a Kakao message). By the time the gifting feature came back online Sunday night, “only a few people” who had texted her birthday messages had checked back in to send a present, she said.
“I think the past few days show why Kakao’s dominance can be a threat, but honestly I don’t think any other ‘competitor’ will replace Kakao at this point because it’s SO deeply rooted in our lives,” she said. “I can’t imagine people abandoning a whole life style just to move on to another application.”
That didn’t stop competitors from trying to take advantage of the moment. Line, a messaging app run by Korean internet giant Naver — Korea’s version of Google — promoted its reliability. Line, Uber, and messaging app Telegram rose to the top of the App Store charts in Korea. Telegram taunted Kakao on Twitter, saying, “We welcome our new Korean users and hope they will enjoy the stability of Telegram’s multiple data center infrastructure.”
Hwang Lee, director of the Innovation, Competition and Regulation Law Center at Korea University, said Kakao can be called monopolistic “in a plain sense,” but said he did not want to go so far as declaring it a monopoly in regards to antitrust enforcement.
Korea’s Fair Trade Commission “has kept a close eye on Kakao and other monopolistic digital platforms for a long time,” Lee said. But “their efficient services have survived government regulations so far” as the government weighs the pros and cons of the well-integrated platform, he said.
Still, the outage was a wake-up call for Koreans, Lee said. “They realized the potential dangers of a platform monopoly, which have been overlooked.” | 2022-10-17T08:30:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kakao outage in South Korea prompts security, monopoly concerns - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/17/kakao-outage-south-korea-fire/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/17/kakao-outage-south-korea-fire/ |
A vivid tale of the men who tried and failed to ‘civilize’ the Nazis
Review by Andrew Nagorski
German standard-bearers parade through Vienna on March 24, 1938, shortly after Nazi troops invaded Austria. (AP)
In January 1935, Philip Kerr, the British Liberal politician better known as Lord Lothian, traveled to Berlin for a series of meetings with top Nazi officials, culminating in a two-hour session with Adolf Hitler. When the German leader called World War I “the greatest madness” because it pitted their countries against each other, Lothian was suitably impressed. Upon his return to London, he declared, “Germany does not want war and is prepared to renounce it absolutely … provided she is given real authority.”
In “Coffee With Hitler: The Story of the Amateur Spies Who Tried to Civilize the Nazis,” British historian Charles Spicer demonstrates that Lothian’s visit was the initial step in a carefully orchestrated campaign by the founders of the Anglo-German Fellowship, which was officially launched a few months later. Funded by Britain’s industrialists and bankers — and encouraged by German officials — it was a group of energetic amateurs with close ties to Germany who “hoped to cultivate personal connections, build trust and engender mutual respect by breaking bread together,” Spicer writes. “Their ambition was to civilise the Nazis.”
This was wishful thinking of the highest order, but Spicer argues that his protagonists should not be lumped in with the discredited appeasement camp led by Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. His meticulously researched, vividly written book takes “civilising rather than appeasing as its central theme,” he notes. The distinction between caving to the Nazis and wooing them can feel contrived at times, but Spicer insists that the men who guided the fellowship’s activities in this fraught period ultimately served their country better than generally recognized — despite the presence of some outright Nazi sympathizers in their midst.
A trio of largely forgotten characters were the key players: Philip Conwell-Evans, a Welsh historian and pacifist who did a stint as a visiting lecturer at the University of Königsberg; Ernest Tennant, a decorated World War I veteran and leading businessman; and Group Captain M.G. Christie, a former British air attache in Berlin and Washington whom Spicer describes as “a self-employed independent intelligence agent.” With the help of Kerr and Leopold von Hoesch, the German ambassador in London, they attracted financial support from “the cream of British industry and finance.”
They also developed ties to top Nazis: Joachim Ribbentrop, who served as Hitler’s bumbling ambassador to the Court of St. James’s and then as foreign minister; Hermann Göring, the Luftwaffe’s commander in chief and president of the Reichstag; and Hitler’s nominal deputy, Rudolf Hess. At various times, they dangled Hitler’s idea for peace, which he did not entirely abandon even after the outbreak of the war: The terms, Hitler explained, would be British acceptance of German hegemony on the continent in return for German recognition of the “vital interests” of the British Empire. This would have been, Spicer writes, a “Faustian pact.”
Given Britain’s commitments to Poland and France, along with the mounting alarm about Hitler’s increasingly violent implementation of his racist ideology, it was inevitable that many early appeasers were forced to jettison their illusions. After Kristallnacht, “The Night of Broken Glass” targeting Jews and their property across the country, the fellowship lost about half of its members. The outbreak of the war in 1939 triggered its final dissolution.
But Spicer demonstrates that its founders remained active in the final run-up to the global conflagration, employing their knowledge of Germany and the Nazi leadership to stiffen — rather than soften — Britain’s resolve. Their intelligence “now reached the apex of British government,” he writes.
A tale of WWII derring-do that reveals the humanity of its heroes
Sir Robert Vansittart, the government’s chief diplomatic adviser and a fervent opponent of appeasement, commissioned Conwell-Evans and Christie to produce a report on Hitler’s intentions. The resulting document was blistering, describing Hitler as “little better than a monster in his ruthlessness and cruelty” who was driven by his “hatred and envy of England.” Vansittart pointedly noted in his introduction that it was written by “two Englishmen who know Germany best” and that they had been, until recently, considered Germanophiles. One of the great virtues of Spicer’s book is that it brings Vansittart out of the shadows, exploring his critical role in bolstering the kind of policies championed by Winston Churchill: no compromises with Hitler.
By contrast, Spicer repeatedly skewers Ribbentrop, “this wine-salesman-turned-dilettante-turned-diplomat” who would be the first top Nazi hanged at Nuremberg. Because he spoke English and had lived abroad, Hitler was convinced that he could represent his regime well in London. But Ribbentrop was the ultimate pretentious boor and, as Spicer writes, “intellectually deficient”; even his mother-in-law dismissed him as a fool. When he felt snubbed by British society, he pivoted from his posture as a faux peacemaker to open bellicosity.
Spicer also focuses on the roles that Conwell-Evans and others played during the mounting tensions over Hitler’s push to dismember Czechoslovakia in 1938. Gen. Ludwig Beck, chief of the German general staff, was so alarmed that this would trigger a major war that he plotted, along with other military and intelligence officers, to mount a coup. The plotters kept in touch with Conwell-Evans and others in the fellowship, treating them as the best conduit for their message that London should stand firm. Chamberlain’s capitulation to Hitler’s demands at Munich aborted what was, Spicer argues, the most serious effort to topple the dictator.
This is a complex tale, but as skillfully narrated by Spicer, it moves along briskly. His main characters are not easy to characterize either, but he brings them to life, with all their contradictions.
No one figure illustrates the arc of Spicer’s story better than Lord Lothian, who was so effusive after his meeting with Hitler in 1935. Arriving in Washington to take up his ambassadorial post a few days before the outbreak of World War II, he worked feverishly to bolster U.S. support for the British war effort right until he died unexpectedly in late 1940. Hailed by both Churchill and President Franklin Roosevelt for his prodigious efforts on behalf of their partnership, he demonstrated that at least some members of the fellowship deserved redemption.
Coffee With Hitler
The Untold Story of the Amateur Spies Who Tried to Civilize the Nazis
By Charles Spicer
Pegasus Books. 392 pp. $29.95 | 2022-10-17T09:13:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of "Coffee with Hitler" by Charles Spicer - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/17/coffee-hitler-review-charles-spicer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/17/coffee-hitler-review-charles-spicer/ |
A man is pulled at the gate of the Chinese consulate after a demonstration against China's President Xi Jinping, in Manchester, Britain on Sunday. (Matthew Leung/The Chaser News/via REUTERS)
British lawmakers and rights activists on Monday called for an investigation into the case of a Hong Kong demonstrator who was dragged into the Chinese consulate in Manchester and beaten by staffers after he protested against the Chinese government.
According to the Hong Kong Indigenous Defense Force, which organized a rally to coincide with the opening of a Chinese Communist Party meeting in Beijing on Sunday, the protester was among about 60 people who had gathered outside of the consulate to demonstrate against Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Protest banners and flags calling for Hong Kong independence were draped outside the consulate. One poster was an image of Xi standing before a mirror wearing nothing but a crown and a pair of boxers — a play on the fable of the emperor’s new clothes.
As one of the demonstrators began to speak, staff in riot gear came out from the consulate and attempted to seize the poster from the demonstrators, according to a statement from the group. A demonstrator identified by the group as Bob was holding up the painting when he was dragged into the consulate where he was beaten by a group of men.
Video captured by a BBC journalist at the scene showed the men punching and holding the demonstrator down on the ground. According to rally organizers, British police eventually stopped the attack and set up a cordon separating protesters from the consulate staff.
The injured demonstrator was taken to hospital and is in stable condition, the group said. The Chinese Consulate in Manchester confirmed the incident to The Washington Post but declined to give further comment. The Chinese Embassy in London did not respond to a request for comment.
Xi, who is expected to secure a third term at the party congress that began on Oct. 16, oversaw a severe crackdown on Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement that culminated in a far-reaching national security law that has severely curtailed the city’s once active democracy movement. | 2022-10-17T09:57:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Manchester Chinese consulate protest attacked by staffers in riot gear - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/17/manchester-china-consulate-protest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/17/manchester-china-consulate-protest/ |
Bills quarterback Josh Allen hurdled Chiefs safety Justin Reid on his way to a redemptive win. (Peter Aiken/AP)
Week 6 delivered a blend of sublime and strange. Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes traded blows in a classic game that lived up to the hype. At night, the Philadelphia Eagles played brilliant, efficient football to maintain their unbeaten record. Before that, Mitchell Trubisky beat Tom Brady, Daniel Jones beat Lamar Jackson, and Zach Wilson beat Aaron Rodgers at Lambeau Field.
This week reaffirmed that the Buffalo Bills, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Eagles are excellent — and everything else is a guess. Here is what to know.
The road to the Super Bowl goes through Buffalo. Sunday’s showdown between the Bills and Chiefs was billed as the sequel to January’s divisional-round epic. Really, it was a prequel. Barring injury or a shocking upset, the Bills and Chiefs will meet again in the playoffs. The level of play during the Bills’ 24-20 victory made clear that they are a cut above the rest of the conference, if not the entire league. When they play next, the confrontation probably will occur in Buffalo.
The Bills began to heal the psychological scars from their 13-second postseason collapse as they seized control of the AFC behind one player who vaulted them into the NFL’s elite and another whom they acquired to push them over the top. Allen led the Bills on a 12-play, 76-yard drive in the final minutes, finishing with a 14-yard dart to Dawson Knox in the back of the end zone with 1:04 left. Last year, the Bills couldn’t hold a three-point lead with 13 seconds left. On Sunday, Von Miller recorded a crucial third-down sack with six minutes left and pressured Mahomes out of the pocket before he threw a game-sealing interception in the final minute.
Allen-Mahomes has become the best rivalry in the NFL, the evolution of Brady-Manning. Both teams know each other well, and the smallest margin could decide any game they play. During 124 minutes of game time between January and Sunday, the biggest lead was seven points.
The Chiefs led all of Sunday until the final drive, when Allen earned a first down on a quarterback sneak on fourth down deep in his own territory and ripped off a long run by hurdling a defensive back. He plays quarterback with extraterrestrial talent. He still has to get past Mahomes, but this year he should get to face him at home.
Sunday takeaways: Brady and Rodgers are looking old
The Eagles might be on their way to a historically great record. Philadelphia stayed undefeated with its 26-17 victory over the Cowboys, taking control with a 20-point second quarter and holding on by running the ball down Dallas’s throat. It may be a while before the Eagles lose, for two reasons: They’re really good, and their schedule is really easy.
The Eagles have excellent depth on both lines, waves of capable skill players and a quarterback in Jalen Hurts who has improved greatly and seemingly always makes the right decision. Their offense is creative and smart. On Sunday night, they neutralized Micah Parsons by running option plays at him that forced him to hesitate. Parsons is basically unblockable, so on many plays the Eagles by design didn’t block him at all.
Look at the schedule. After a bye next week, Philadelphia’s next three games come against the Pittsburgh Steelers, Houston Texans and Washington Commanders. If the odds were available today, they would be favored in every game for the rest of the season. That doesn’t mean they’ll win them all, of course. But it’s fair to expect the Eagles will get to mid-November without a loss. The most wins in franchise history is 13; at this point, it would be a surprise if the Eagles don’t surpass that.
The Packers are unraveling. Any notion that having Rodgers makes the Green Bay Packers immune to a lost season faded during their 27-10 loss to the New York Jets, a performance packed with ugly football and self-sabotage. The Packers have the talent and track record to turn their season around, but it cannot be taken for granted.
The Jets blocked a field goal and a punt, returning the latter for a touchdown. Green Bay’s run defense was gashed for the third straight week. Its offensive line crumbled. Rodgers kept shaking out his right hand after taking a hit to it. After a fumble in the first half, the entire offense huddled around Coach Matt LaFleur, who gave his players a tongue-lashing. Randall Cobb, the receiver Rodgers trusts most on third down, suffered an ankle injury and rode to the locker room on a cart with tears in his eyes. Late in the game, defensive tackle Tedarrell Slaton ripped the helmet off a Jets lineman and drew a 15-yard penalty.
It was not the kind of performance that can be explained away as the product of figuring things out after the departure of Davante Adams. The Packers won 39 regular season games in the previous three years, but the evidence that they are a good team this year is lacking. They have been outscored by 16 points. For one of their three victories, they needed to deny a two-point conversion in the final seconds. In another, they made a field goal as overtime expired. They already trail the Minnesota Vikings (5-1) by two games in the NFC North.
Brewer: For many NFL quarterbacks, 2022 is already getting old
The Giants aren’t going away. Their victories may require a forensic investigation to determine how they pulled them off, but the 5-1 New York Giants stand alone in second place in the surging NFC East after an improbable 24-20 victory over the Baltimore Ravens. For the third time in six weeks, and on the heels of a 17-point comeback in London, the Giants won after trailing by double digits. Former Baltimore defensive coordinator Wink Martindale, in his first season with the Giants, stymied the Ravens, and No. 5 pick Kayvon Thibodeaux clinched the victory by stripping Jackson on Baltimore’s final drive.
For Baltimore, the maddening loss turned on a disastrous sequence. The Ravens were in full control of the game up 20-17 with 3:09 left, at their 44-yard line and facing third and inches. Jackson plunged for an easy first down — only for a flag to wipe it out because the Ravens had lined up incorrectly. The next snap flew over Jackson’s head, and after he scooped the ball up, he scrambled away and heaved a wholly avoidable interception. The Giants returned it to the 13 and scored the go-ahead touchdown in three plays.
“It feels like we’re beating ourselves,” Jackson said. The Giants’ opponents always seem to feel that way.
The Patriots have something in Bailey Zappe. Three weeks ago, Zappe was a fourth-round pick with a funny name on the bottom of the Patriots’ quarterback depth chart. After New England thrashed the Cleveland Browns, 38-15, on Sunday, Zappe is 2-0 as the starter and the surprise instigator of a potential quarterback controversy.
Zappe is not a threat to take incumbent Mac Jones’s job yet, but he has done enough to put Jones on notice when he returns from a high-ankle sprain. In three appearances, Zappe has completed 73 percent of his passes and played with total control of New England’s offense. He has taken five sacks — only two as a starter — and thrown just one interception. He operates like a veteran, not a rookie who had been getting third-string reps.
Against the pitiful Browns defense, Zappe completed 24 of 34 passes for 309 yards and two touchdowns. He constantly made quick reads and found the open man; four Patriots receivers gained at least 60 yards, and rookie Tyquan Thornton added 37 and a touchdown catch.
Jones, the 2021 first-round pick who led the Patriots to the playoffs as a rookie, probably doesn’t need to look over his shoulder. But if he struggles after returning from his injury or his early-season turnover issues resurface, Bill Belichick has another option. Belichick has shown over and over that he doesn’t care where a player was drafted or how much he is paid. It’s too early to declare Zappe an NFL starter, but his performance has at least raised the possibility.
The Jets are becoming a bully. In Coach Robert Saleh’s second season, the Jets may be arriving ahead of schedule. They improved to 4-2 with a nothing-fluky-about-it mauling of the Packers that gave them their first three-game winning streak in three years. They are a game behind Buffalo and a game ahead of New England in the AFC East. If they can win next week in Denver, their subsequent games against the Patriots and Bills would be their most important in years.
The Jets have drafted seven players in the top 40 picks over the past two years. At the start of the season, it seemed that talent would need time to coalesce. Suddenly, the Jets are beating up other teams as Saleh’s San Francisco defenses used to.
Two Sundays in a row, the Jets have destroyed an opponent in the fourth quarter; they scored 21 points against the Dolphins last week and 10 against the Packers on Sunday. Entering Week 6, the Jets had pressured the quarterback on 28.9 percent of dropbacks, fifth best in the NFL. They hit Rodgers nine times and dropped him for four sacks. Defensive tackle Quinnen Williams has been a force, one of the best interior pass rushers in the NFL.
Wilson, the Jets’ second-year quarterback, remains inconsistent, but his team isn’t asking him to do much, and his improvisation and athleticism allow him to make one or two explosive plays each game. Rookie running back Breece Hall has excelled in offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur’s running game. And the Jets have attitude to spare — rookie cornerback Sauce Gardner walked off the field Sunday wearing a foam cheesehead. This is what a Saleh team looks like, and it looks pretty good.
Crankiness is going around. It’s the time of the season when reality is starting to smack hope in the mouth. Frustration spilled over for the Panthers and the Buccaneers.
In Los Angeles, Carolina interim coach Steve Wilks sent wide receiver Robbie Anderson to the locker room after he got into a verbal spat with wide receivers coach Joe Dailey. Wilks was coaching his first game as the replacement for Matt Rhule, who was fired last week. With Anderson watching, the Panthers lost to the Rams, 24-10.
During a 20-18 upset loss in Pittsburgh, Brady screamed at his offensive linemen on the sideline. One wonders what those linemen thought about getting yelled at by Brady, who missed Saturday’s walk-through and meetings and traveled to Pittsburgh on his own after he attended the wedding of Patriots owner Robert Kraft. | 2022-10-17T10:06:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL Week 6: The Bills are the team to beat, and the Packers are unraveling - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/17/nfl-week-6-bills-packers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/17/nfl-week-6-bills-packers/ |
How NFL owners use Black interim coaches to steady the ship
To fix a broken hiring system, star White coaches need to get out of the film room and speak loud enough for NFL team owners to hear
Andy Reid rose from his chair and, at 6-foot-3 and portly, cut an imposing figure while walking to a microphone in the center of the room. In the middle of a heated discussion about coaching diversity, the Kansas City Chiefs coach challenged an audience of NFL head coaches, executives and owners.
“I want to know about my guy,” multiple people in attendance remembered Reid saying of his offensive coordinator, Eric Bieniemy, a Black man and perhaps the most accomplished active assistant who has never been a head coach. “About one-third of the teams in this room have interviewed him. I’ve had a few of my guys become head coaches, none of them more prepared than Eric Bieniemy.”
Eric Bieniemy, left, has been Kansas City Chiefs Coach Andy Reid's offensive coordinator since 2018. (Reed Hoffmann/AP)
It was late March, seven weeks after former Miami Dolphins coach Brian Flores sued the NFL for racial discrimination. With the league in crisis, and with the bosses all in one place, Reid was among a few prominent coaches who recognized the moment. They realized the time for complacency was over. They could not be White and passive anymore.
Reid kept stumping for Bieniemy.
“If you think you know something about him that I don’t,” Reid proclaimed, “call me.”
He stood and stared, lips pursed beneath his thick, graying mustache, suggesting the emergence, finally, of an advocate imperative for progress in the plodding pursuit of football equity: the White coach, untangled from privilege and myopia, who refuses to watch from the sideline.
Andy Reid spoke out during a March meeting of NFL leaders. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)
On that March day, NFL decision-makers entered the ballroom of a swanky resort in Palm Beach, Fla., ready for confrontation. They were at the annual league meetings, an opulent business retreat, but they were not there to luxuriate.
The Breakers hotel buzzed with speculation that Flores soon would amend his lawsuit to add more plaintiffs. With the latest hiring cycle complete, White head coaches looked around and saw just five men of color, two of whom were Black. At a session about the career mobility of Black coaches, the profession’s long and vexing culture of silence dissipated.
The session turned into “a lot of aggressive discussion,” according to one person briefed afterward. Others in the room described it as “emotional” and “authentic” and “powerful.” All spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic, but they painted the picture of a tense atmosphere in which unrestrained honesty prevailed over feelings.
Houston Coach Lovie Smith spoke from a Black perspective, but the audacity of White men calling out mostly White owners increased the urgency. Seattle Coach Pete Carroll, passionate and long-winded, called for team owners to venture beyond their sheltered lives and hire the best leaders, not familiar faces. While expressing his exasperation, Baltimore Coach John Harbaugh told the audience, “Hey, if you need names, let me know.” Indianapolis Coach Frank Reich trembled with emotion as he detailed how African Americans have enriched his life in football.
John Harbaugh, a former Andy Reid assistant, has coached the Baltimore Ravens since 2008. (Nick Wass/AP)
The effort to combat systemic racism in the NFL needs the best and most secure coaches to acknowledge the problem. It needs them to influence change. Inevitably, it means respected White coaches must exit the film room and take a stand. They are not needed to be saviors or racial justice warriors but simply responsible stewards of a sport so terrible at hiring. Most choose not to brandish their power, though.
When Flores filed his lawsuit in February, he disclosed the infamous “wrong Brian” text messages to provide a peek into the NFL’s backroom behavior. New England Coach Bill Belichick, who has won six Super Bowls with the Patriots, accidentally sent word to Flores that he was getting the New York Giants job. Flores hadn’t even interviewed yet. Belichick evidently thought he was writing to another former assistant, Brian Daboll. In initiating his lawsuit, Flores used the texts as evidence of a sham interview. Belichick has said he “can’t comment” on the matter.
Belichick has so much sway that teams keep leering at coaches connected to him even though most of his NFL proteges haven’t succeeded without him. But the promotion of minority candidates hasn’t been a priority. He neither impedes nor intentionally tries to advance racial progress. He just coaches ball, and few have done it better. But he missed a chance to be a major part of a solution.
Text messages from Patriots Coach Bill Belichick, right, appeared in the racial discrimination lawsuit filed by former Dolphins coach Brian Flores, left. (Adam Glanzman/Getty Images)
Fourteen of Belichick’s former players or assistants have become head coaches. Just two are Black: Flores and Romeo Crennel. In his approach, Belichick is much like Bill Parcells, his Hall of Fame mentor. They welcome anyone who can help them win. They don’t consider intentionality an important factor, though.
“Just purposely going forward and do something for somebody, I wouldn’t do that,” said Parcells, who had three African Americans among his 15 former players or assistants who went on to lead franchises. “He had to be able to coach. And if he could coach, then I don’t care what he looks like.”
On the surface, it is an objective statement, but it ignores the subjectivity of coaching, which owners and front-office executives have abused throughout NFL history to make leadership monolithic. Coaches should step back and see all of the dimensions. Instead, they sequester themselves from real life, obsessing over the next game, worried about their disposability. The job pressure makes them care about little beyond the granularity of each hour.
Since 1990, the average full-time NFL head coaching stint has lasted 4.1 years. That is evidence of both the fickle nature and the hiring ineptitude of the league’s franchises. It shreds the misguided assumption that the best candidates always get hired and that inclusion is merely a virtue mission. If NFL teams were more assiduous about identifying coaches, there wouldn’t be so much failure and turnover in a league legislated for parity.
Just eight current coaches have held their jobs for more than five seasons. Six of them have won the Super Bowl. One, the San Francisco 49ers’ Kyle Shanahan, lost in the Super Bowl. The eighth coach, Sean McDermott, guides a Buffalo Bills team widely considered to be a championship favorite this season.
One of those eight is Black: Pittsburgh’s Mike Tomlin.
Pittsburgh's Mike Tomlin is the second-longest-tenured NFL head coach, having led the Steelers since 2007. (Dylan Buell/Getty Images)
On the list of most coveted football assets, the long-tenured head coach ranks behind only the franchise quarterback. He is hard to find, obscured by constant NFL acts of irresponsibility. For healthy stewardship of the game, the people who can lead must lead. The people who have knowledge must share. The people who can speak truth to owners must speak.
With profane candor, former Tampa Bay Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians slices through the delusion of coaching meritocracy. The hiring game is dirty and loathsome, he said. Most owners don’t have a deep understanding of the sport. General managers chase leaguewide trends. Self-interested coaches pay off favors, engage in disingenuous promotion of candidates and use their authority to maintain the same old standard. And the coaches who could do some good often keep their heads down, consumed with winning and focused on survival.
“It’s unbelievable. It’s the same ol’ s---,” Arians said. “The coaches know who can coach, but we’re not always thinking about our messaging. I think there is a huge disconnect between who TV and broadcasters and the media are pushing and who can actually do the job. I look at it as it’s my job to hire the best people, make it an eclectic mix because that makes me better, and have them ready when it’s their time to shine. It’s just making sure your head is out of your ass and helping the game grow.”
Bruce Arians twice won the Super Bowl as an assistant with the Steelers. (Karl Walter/Getty Images)
The hiring problem extends beyond race. The sport is so afflicted with homogeneous, elitist thought that all kinds of exceptional talent gets overlooked.
Ten years ago, Arians left the game out of resentment. He had helped Pittsburgh win two Super Bowls, the first as wide receivers coach and the second as offensive coordinator. The previous two Steelers offensive coordinators, Mike Mularkey and Ken Whisenhunt, had been rewarded with head coaching jobs elsewhere. No one called to interview Arians. He was a White coach on a Black path.
In January 2012, the Steelers announced Arians would retire, but Tomlin and the organization had decided not to renew his contract because of philosophical differences over his ultra-aggressive, pass-heavy, quarterback-endangering style of offense. He was broken. In a football culture of conformity, he was a maverick who couldn’t possibly handle an entire team. Arians, 59 at the time, thought he would stay retired.
“I figured being a head coach in the NFL wasn’t in the cards for me,” he said. “I couldn’t keep the damn job I was good at because of politics. A lot of the time, the people in this league are more concerned with keeping the status quo and pigeonholing coaches than letting go and trying something different that will work better. I was frustrated, but I was fine with leaving all that s--- behind.”
Arians was destined for a second act. He returned to the NFL soon after he left. Chuck Pagano convinced him to be his offensive coordinator in Indianapolis. After Pagano was diagnosed with leukemia in 2012, Arians served as the interim coach and led the Colts on a magical 9-3 run. The maverick really could do it all.
Filling in for Chuck Pagano, Bruce Arians led the Colts to nine wins in 12 games in 2012. (Joe Robbins/Getty Images)
At 60, Arians accomplished his dream when Arizona hired him to be its head coach. Then he went to Tampa Bay, acquired Tom Brady and won Super Bowl LV with the Buccaneers two seasons ago. All the while, Arians employed the NFL’s most diverse coaching staff — Black and White, men and women, young and old — a group that he considers his crowning achievement.
Arians owns three championship rings. He developed a reputation for grooming elite quarterbacks and orchestrating flashy offenses. He won 62.4 percent of his games as an NFL head coach. But he hopes to be remembered most for succeeding his way — and, because of what he went through, he made sure it was an inclusive way.
“I was 60 when I got a chance,” Arians said. “I could do what I want and not give a s---.”
Former 49ers coach Bill Walsh's push for diversity still resonates. (AP)
Bill Walsh was 48 when he got a chance. He liked to remind people that the league made him wait too long.
He was an assistant in Cincinnati when Paul Brown retired from coaching. Walsh should’ve replaced him. However, Brown didn’t think Walsh’s professorial approach would work. He declined to push Walsh for other jobs, too. Like that of Arians, Walsh’s experience strengthened his desire to embrace fresh faces and ideas.
“People thought he was too cerebral, too soft,” said Harry Edwards, the renowned sociologist, civil rights activist and longtime friend who eulogized Walsh during his 2007 funeral. “He would say: ‘I wasn’t a hardcore coach. And I’m not going to change. Because this is a better way.’ ”
In the mid-1980s, Walsh noticed shifting demographics in the locker room. For the first time, the NFL had become a majority Black league. Walsh, already coaching a championship San Francisco 49ers organization, called Edwards for help with an idea.
“He was concerned that his Black players didn’t have the same post-playing options,” Edwards said. “What Bill wanted to create was a system that, in its totality, made them better football players by caring for them off the field.”
Bill Walsh led San Francisco to three Super Bowl titles in an eight-year span. (Michael Zagaris/Getty Images)
Edwards was intrigued. He consulted with Walsh and the organization as they implemented programs that covered counseling, prevention of drug use, financial planning, tax assistance and college degree completion. They also initiated the Bill Walsh Diversity Coaching Fellowship, which has helped a who’s who of Black coaches enter the business for more than three decades.
No White coach nourished diversity more than Walsh. From the time San Francisco recruited him in 1979, he established himself as an important figure in changing the game. He hired assistants without bias. He was an early identifier of young players, regardless of talent level, who could lead and teach the game. He inspired many to pursue coaching careers, including Tony Dungy, who became a Hall of Famer and the contemporary model for developing minority coaches.
Combine his coaching tree with the fellowship, and Walsh has a broad and enduring network.
“Bill Walsh was a very special coach,” said Ray Rhodes, a former Walsh assistant who coached the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers. “He not only just talked it. He acted upon everything. He opened the door for me. He gave me an opportunity to come right into coaching.”
Ray Rhodes was a Bill Walsh assistant for most of his time in San Francisco. (Doug Pensinger/Allsport)
Said Herm Edwards, the former coach of the New York Jets and Chiefs: “You’re talking about a guy that was a change agent as a head coach.”
Late in the 1988 season, the job at Stanford University came open. Word reached Walsh that Mike Holmgren, the 49ers’ quarterbacks coach, was being considered. Walsh was perplexed. He called Holmgren into his office.
“How did this happen?” Walsh asked pointedly.
Holmgren, who is White, explained that he wasn’t campaigning for the Stanford job, but he had a family connection. A friend of his brother-in-law was on the board of trustees. Walsh chose to be intentional about endorsing an assistant he thought was a better fit: Dennis Green, his wide receivers coach.
“Well, listen, Mike: You’re not ready for Stanford,” Walsh told him. “I’m recommending Denny for Stanford.”
Walsh suggested several lower-profile college jobs for Holmgren. Green, a Black man who later coached the Minnesota Vikings and Arizona Cardinals, got the Stanford job.
Dennis Green, right, took over at Stanford in 1989. (Sal Veder/AP)
At first, Holmgren was offended that Walsh thought he was too green. He moved past it quickly. Though he disagreed, Holmgren comprehended Walsh’s lesson about merit, access and race.
A few weeks later, San Francisco would win its third Super Bowl under Walsh. After 10 triumphant seasons, he retired as an NFL coach, leaving no doubt that his approach was indeed a better way.
The 49ers' 1980s dynasty, powered by quarterback Joe Montana, second from left with Steve Young, was built by Bill Walsh with inclusivity in mind. (Michael Zagaris/Getty Images)
Holmgren has regrets he can’t quite verbalize. The game was so good to him, but it tortured one of the best people he knew: Sherman Lewis.
As assistants on a loaded San Francisco staff, Holmgren, Rhodes and Lewis dreamed together. They envisioned becoming head coaches. The first to ascend would hire the other two as coordinators.
Rhodes and Lewis told Holmgren they would be working for him. Holmgren disagreed because he respected them so much and they had been part of the 49ers’ dynasty for longer. But his friends laid out the particulars: Holmgren coached quarterbacks under Walsh, then became offensive coordinator under George Seifert. And he was White. In the early 1990s, the NFL had one Black head coach. Rhodes and Lewis knew they would be working for Holmgren.
In 1992, the Packers hired Holmgren, who had been courted by six teams. He tabbed Rhodes to run the defense and Lewis to guide the offense, though Holmgren would call the plays. He was the first head coach in NFL history to hire two Black coordinators. Rhodes and Lewis represented half of the league’s Black coordinators at the time.
Ray Rhodes, left, and Sherman Lewis guided the dominant 49ers, but only one of them would land an NFL head coaching job. (Paul Spinelli/NFL Photos/AP)
By 1995, Rhodes was named the head coach in Philadelphia. Seven assistants from Holmgren’s time in Green Bay were elevated to top jobs. Five were on the offensive staff that Lewis managed: Andy Reid, Steve Mariucci, Jon Gruden, Mike Sherman and Marty Mornhinweg.
Lewis never received an opportunity.
At Holmgren’s side, Lewis helped develop the Packers into a Super Bowl champion and a consistent force. The Green Bay variation of Walsh’s West Coast offense became one of the most popular schemes in the sport. But the man who did most of the teaching was overlooked.
“All those years, we worked side by side in the offensive room in San Francisco,” Holmgren said. “He was exactly what Coach Walsh loved in a coach. He’s not a screamer or yeller. He’s a great teacher, with a great sense of humor. In Green Bay, he did it all. He ran all the meetings, did the install, everything. The only thing I kept for myself was the red-zone stuff. The only reason he didn’t call plays during games was because that was one of the fun things about coaching for me.”
Holmgren, who was 43 when he took the Green Bay job, would “get so mad I couldn’t think straight” during some games. That’s when Lewis stepped forward.
“I don’t always like to admit this because I never did anything wrong, you know?” Holmgren said, laughing before turning serious. “Sherm was the only one who was allowed to talk to me in the headset. When I was angry, I would say: ‘Sherm, take it. I’ve got to catch my breath.’ And he would take over for a while, and we would be more than fine.”
In 1999, Holmgren left Green Bay for the Seattle Seahawks to serve as head coach, general manager and executive vice president. The Packers hired Rhodes to replace him. Holmgren asked Lewis to come to Seattle. He declined because Rhodes offered him the chance to call the plays. He thought it would complete his résumé. Later, Lewis was a coordinator for Minnesota and Detroit, but he ended his career as one of the most successful assistant coaches never to run his own team.
Holmgren’s tone changes as he thinks back. He recommended Lewis often, but could he have been more persuasive? Should he have been more proactive and unabashedly campaigned for him? Did he fail to share enough of the credit for the Packers’ success?
“It still bothers me,” Holmgren said. “I thought I did everything I could, but I just couldn’t help him enough.”
The 49ers' Kyle Shanahan, left, on having a diverse coaching staff: “We can’t win without these people, and that’s just how it works out.” (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
Kyle Shanahan, whose father, Mike, won two Super Bowls as the Denver Broncos’ head coach, came to the 49ers in 2017 determined to shun any sense of entitlement. He made a purposeful effort to build a staff that reflected all of America — in terms of race, gender, religion and sexual orientation, as many good coaches with different perspectives as he could find — and the variety only enhanced the quality.
In 2020, after the murder of George Floyd, Shanahan criticized the NFL for having just four minority head coaches and two minority general managers.
“We have everything, and it’s not just to show people that we’re trying to be diverse,” said Shanahan, who has had two assistants of color, Robert Saleh (Lebanese American) and Mike McDaniel (biracial), hired elsewhere as head coaches. “It’s because I’ve been around these people, and they are really good at what they do. We can’t win without these people, and that’s just how it works out.
“I don’t know why the numbers [throughout the NFL] aren’t like that, but the numbers are wrong. That’s stuff that, hell yeah, we want to fix. … Those numbers don’t lie. That’s what makes it a fact. That’s what White people have to admit.”
But for Shanahan and other young offensive minds in his network, their success inadvertently creates a problem. The competition’s copycat desire to hire assistant coaches most like the trendsetters exacerbates an imbalance that they would like to remedy.
The success of Kyle Shanahan and other White coaches like him inadvertently creates a problem for Black coaches. (AAron Ontiveroz/Denver Post/Getty Images)
Los Angeles Rams Coach Sean McVay is 36, and his tree already has produced four head coaches — three of them from the offensive side, all of them White. Unconscious bias complicates appreciation of a phenomenon known as the Sean McVay effect because, so far, it has elevated the same kind of under-40 coach from a staff with a diverse array of gifted teachers.
“I’ve been around a lot of great coaches with a lot of different backgrounds,” McVay said. “It’s the people that make this place so special.”
McVay tries to redirect the hype to some of his deserving Black assistants: defensive coordinator Raheem Morris, defensive line coach Eric Henderson and assistant head coach/tight ends coach Thomas Brown. He doesn’t want the perception of his brilliance to block progress. But can a coach, programmed for self-protection, manage to stay altruistic? Do other teams care to consider Rams assistants who don’t resemble McVay?
The coach downplays the Sean McVay effect. He wants those making hires to realize ingenuity lies in ideas and initiative, not appearance and age.
Todd Bowles, left, took over the Buccaneers when Bruce Arians stepped aside. (Chris O'Meara/AP)
Bruce Arians was done hoping. For his final coaching act, he wouldn’t leave fairness to chance. After returning to Tampa from the league meetings, he announced his latest retirement. And his defensive coordinator, Todd Bowles, would replace him.
Arians, 70, has health issues. He reportedly has a strained relationship with Tom Brady, and though Arians denies the claims, whispers persist that the quarterback played a role in his departure. But the coach’s explanation was more profound: He had long imagined being part of a succession plan.
In the past two hiring cycles, Arians relived his buried pain through his hopes for coordinators Bowles and Byron Leftwich. Arians anticipated job offers for both. He was mistaken.
Because of his Pittsburgh experience, Arians is set off by the shunning of championship-caliber coordinators. As preparations for the 2022 season began, he was torn. He retained his top two assistants, but disappointment interfered with his gratitude.
“We were at the top of the league, and they were being slept on,” Arians said. “At least they got interviews, but it kind of felt like Pittsburgh all over again to me.”
Arians ditched a solid chance to win another Super Bowl and persuaded the franchise to elevate Bowles, whom he had coached in college at Temple. If the rest of the league couldn’t recognize the former Jets coach deserved a second chance, at least Arians could.
Who knew diversity had to be so subversive?
Commissioner Roger Goodell regularly laments the NFL's shortfalls in head coaching equity. (Rebecca Blackwell/AP)
During the heated session at the league meetings, a few team owners grew angry. They despised the stereotypes that they are too eccentric and removed from reality to make sound decisions. A couple of them shot back. None of the coaches backed down, and executives such as 49ers General Manager John Lynch spoke to broaden the feedback.
Then other owners gave testimonials that echoed the coaches’ sentiments, led by Indianapolis’s Jim Irsay, Kansas City’s Clark Hunt and the Jets’ Woody Johnson. They touted the value of running franchises that have hired multiple minority head coaches, but there was humility in their tone. Their comments, according to people in the room, felt like “a rallying cry.”
Of course, the NFL has perfected vague, conciliatory acceptance of blame. It seems Commissioner Roger Goodell lowers his head at the end of every hiring cycle and admits the need to do better. But the vows made at this convention felt more personal and, perhaps of greater significance, the threat of future face-to-face conflict loomed.
White coaches, untethered from apathy, took over a discussion that shook owners from their positions of comfort. It was a cathartic moment but not yet a breakthrough. It won’t take long to find out whether the March conflict made an impact. The next hiring cycle — already underway after the Carolina Panthers fired Matt Rhule in October — provides the latest opportunity.
Even if there is immediate progress, more than a century of NFL history suggests the league will revert to exclusion. One noisy moment won’t be enough. A broken system needs the leading coaches to lend more of themselves to fixing it.
Editing by Matt Rennie. Copy editing by Michael Petre. Photo editing by Toni L. Sandys. Design and development by Brianna Schroer and Joe Fox. Design editing by Virginia Singarayar. Project management by Wendy Galietta.
By Jerry Brewer
Jerry Brewer is a sports columnist at The Washington Post. He joined The Post in 2015 after more than eight years as a columnist with the Seattle Times. Twitter Twitter | 2022-10-17T10:06:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | White NFL coaches must a take a stand to combat systemic racism - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/interactive/2022/white-nfl-coaches-hiring-racism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/interactive/2022/white-nfl-coaches-hiring-racism/ |
Horses graze in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forests. (Alpine Wild Horse Advocates )
“It's an absolute atrocity out there. The horses are scared to death,” Netherlands added. “You can see horses running around trying to look for their families, calling to each other.”
The Jakes Valley killings “are far from an isolated incident,” a BLM spokesperson said. Other firearm slayings listed by BLM include two wild horses in the Spar Canyon area near Challis, Idaho, in November; “46 wild burro carcasses with gunshot wounds” found along Interstate 15 between Halloran Springs, Calif., and Primm, Nev., from May through October 2019; 13 wild burros near Beatty, Nev., in May 2018; seven wild horses found between November 2018 and January 2019 near U.S. Highway 287 in Wyoming’s Red Desert; three female wild burros near Lake Pleasant, Ariz., in May 2016; and a wild horse in October 2015 at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center, near Carson City. The agency provided no information about arrests in these cases.
Netherlands’s organization and the American Wild Horse Campaign complained in a statement that the Forest Service “failed to designate these horses as free-roaming wild horses, thus removing any opportunity for federal protection under the 1971 Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act. … Without federal protections, these horses are classified as ‘unauthorized livestock.’ ” The organizations say 400 horses live on the Apache side of the land. | 2022-10-17T10:14:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | With dozens of horses shot dead on federal land, wildlife activists say protections lacking - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/wild-horses-shot-apache-forest-federal-land/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/wild-horses-shot-apache-forest-federal-land/ |
The John Wilson Building, home to the D.C. Council (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
As D.C. lawmakers prepare to award some of the city’s most lucrative contracts — paying three insurance companies more than $2 billion to provide health care for about a third of all D.C. residents — council members are caught in a bitter fight over which insurers should win.
The city’s Medicaid program has been wracked by controversy for years. After a court ruling against the old contracts with insurers, a threat by a major hospital system to stop seeing Medicaid patients, and legislative infighting, Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) vowed last year to start over with a new procurement to re-select the three insurance companies that the District would pay to provide care to Medicaid recipients.
D.C. plans to rebid its troubled Medicaid contracts
The city’s Office of Contracting and Procurement accepted bids, scored the proposals and awarded the contract to two providers already in the system — MedStar and AmeriHealth — along with a third company, Amerigroup, in place of existing provider CareFirst.
Bowser has asked the D.C. Council to approve the contracts at its legislative meeting Tuesday. But some council members have raised concerns about whether Amerigroup is fit to insure low-income patients.
The company has a troubled track record, as lobbyists for CareFirst, including former D.C. Council member David Catania, have pointed out: More than a decade ago, an audit found that Amerigroup overcharged the District. It has been criticized for its role in other states’ Medicaid programs as well, including in Florida, where it paid a $2 million fine for denying children speech therapy.
“We are poised to bring back an [insurance plan] with a checkered history in the District and a well-known reputation for denying care to vulnerable Medicaid members,” Council member Vincent C. Gray (D-Ward 7) wrote in a letter to City Administrator Kevin Donahue and council members, saying he was “strongly considering” urging members to vote down all three contracts on the grounds that the process had gone poorly and resulted in a bad winner. “We cannot stick our low-income residents with underperforming health plans for the next five years and pretend that our hands are tied and that we have done the best for our residents.”
But CareFirst, too, has a history of overcharging the District, recently agreeing to pay a $95 million settlement to end an over 13-year legal battle over long-ago Medicaid charges. And Adrian Jordan, president of Amerigroup’s D.C. plan, said that many of the problems Gray alluded to have nothing to do with his plan. The Amerigroup brand includes insurance plans that act completely separately from state to state, he said, and the company is under different ownership than the plan that performed poorly in the District in the 2000s.
“The health plans are completely separate and independent,” Jordan said. “Amerigroup D.C. is a stand-alone health plan answerable to me and me alone. I have no visibility into any other plans in the country.”
Amerigroup proved unpopular in D.C. the last time it held a Medicaid contract. Twenty percent of its members chose to switch to a different Medicaid provider, more than those who switched from other plans.
Jordan — who is himself close to some council members as a former council staffer — said that won’t happen again. MedStar runs both an insurance program and a major hospital system popular with low-income patients in the District, and in the past, the company didn’t reach agreement on a contract with some other insurers, including Amerigroup. That meant a large number of Amerigroup patients who wanted to see a MedStar doctor had to switch plans.
MedStar’s dual role became far more of a problem last year, when the company, faced with the prospect of losing its insurance contract, threatened to stop letting its doctors treat patients on any other Medicaid plan, an ultimatum that threw the Medicaid system into chaos and led to the new procurement that the city is now conducting.
Since then, the D.C. Department of Health Care Finance has worked on rules and agreements meant to compel all hospitals in the District to accept all Medicaid patients. If those agreements work, Amerigroup patients won’t have that same reason to switch insurers.
Still, in its attempt not to lose the high-paying contract, CareFirst hired lobbyists, including Catania, to try to convince council members that switching tens of thousands of Medicaid patients from its plan to other plans would be detrimental, particularly if the switch is to Amerigroup.
“If the council approves the contracts, over 70,000 D.C. Medicaid enrollees would be moved from a proven, high-quality plan to a plan with a demonstrated history of overcharging and denying care to patients,” said Ieisha Gray, COO of CareFirst’s D.C. plan. CareFirst has argued that it lost out to Amerigroup based on small technicalities in the way D.C. scores procurements, not on quality or cost. “Minor typos could cost over 70,000 District residents their health care, and I don’t think that point could be underscored enough.”
In 2017 and in 2020, judges on D.C.'s Contract Appeals Board ruled that the Office of Contracting and Procurement erred in awarding Medicaid contracts. But this time, the Contract Appeals Board heard CareFirst’s protest and ruled that the procurement process had been conducted properly.
Judge says D.C. erred in awarding lucrative Medicaid contracts
Council member Robert C. White Jr. (D-At Large) has urged members to vote yes on the three contracts, saying they should respect the procurement process. “The size of these contracts is so large that there has been more scrutiny and more money and lobbying poured into it. At the end of the day, this is a procurement that the city has run, that has been appealed, that has been finalized, and that the council should not interfere in,” White said in an interview. “It would be a catastrophe for the council to send the message that we will get involved in procurements. Because every time there’s a major procurement, we’re going to be swarmed with lobbyists.”
White also criticized the focus on Amerigroup’s fitness to hold the contract, noting that its competitors have also caused major problems in the District’s Medicaid program.
CareFirst will pay $95 million to D.C., ending 13-year legal battle over surplus funds
“We should not be looking for the good actor, because we’re going to be looking for a long time. The city just finalized a $95 million lawsuit with CareFirst. MedStar single-handedly broke our Medicaid system,” he said. “Everybody has issues here.” | 2022-10-17T10:19:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. leaders clash over best insurer to care for low-income patients - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/17/dc-medicaid-contracts-council/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/17/dc-medicaid-contracts-council/ |
‘Not only do we not have enough women in science, but we aren’t doing enough to celebrate the ones we have,’ said physicist Jess Wade.
Jess Wade, 33, a British physicist, spends her spare time writing Wikipedia biographies for women and minority scientists. (Courtesy of Jess Wade)
On a whim, Jess Wade typed out her first Wikipedia page five years ago. It was a biography of Kim Cobb, an American climatologist who — despite earning several scientific accolades — had never been written about on the popular online encyclopedia.
“I met her at a science event, and I was massively impressed,” said Wade, 33, a British physicist, who, after a quick search online, was stunned to see that Cobb had no profile on the public platform.
Wade had stumbled into something she found troubling: Cobb was one of countless deserving women whose names — and lengthy list of achievements — had yet to be chronicled on Wikipedia, the go-to site for an estimated 2 billion people a month who are seeking information about individuals, ideas and topics large and small.
Wikipedia is “used by pretty much everyone,” Wade said. She realized that “despite it being this incredibly important resource, it was suffering from a lack of content, particularly about women, but also about people of color.”
Wade said there’s still much work to be done.
Currently, just 19 percent of English Wikipedia biographies are of women, according to WikiProject Women in Red, a group dedicated to addressing Wikipedia’s gender gap.
“Having people know who you are means you get more opportunities,” Wade said, adding that she wants to “make sure people’s stories were on there and in the public domain.”
“We do an awful lot of talking about underrepresentation,” Wade added, “but not enough acting on it.”
“I’ve never sat down and not had someone to write about,” said Wade, who scours archived documents, scientific papers, journals and social media in search of notable people without a Wikipedia page.
She’ll often have 20 internet tabs open at one time, sifting through library archives and institutional sites to scrape together as much information as possible. Each profile takes a few hours to produce.
While it can be a tedious task, it’s also uniquely fulfilling — and educational.
“In the process, I actually learn so much science,” she said. “It’s a fun journey.”
“thanks to the @Wikipedia editor who spent their wednesday night tagging the recent biographies i’ve started for #WomenInSTEM as not notable enough to be included in the encyclopaedia. it’s really constructive and helpful work.”
Wade fought to get Phelps’s page restored, and ultimately succeeded.
“It’s really hard to get a public profile unless you have a big shiny award,” Wade said.
“You’re stuck in a spiral where you have to be double exceptional as a woman or person of color to fulfill these requirements,” Wade said.
Wade is not alone in her work to make Wikipedia more equitable. Emily Temple-Wood, 28, has also become known for writing Wikipedia pages about women scientists.
“Jess and Emily are among a fantastic group of women having a big impact on the quality of content of Wikipedia,” Wales told The Washington Post. “We are very eager to have a more diverse community and the people who are making that happen are heroes to me.”
Anusha Alikhan, vice president of communications at the nonprofit Wikimedia Foundation — which hosts Wikipedia — wrote in an email to The Washington Post that the number of biographies about women is growing, a trend the company favors.
“Through the efforts of Dr. Jess Wade and other volunteer contributors, real progress is being made,” Alikhan said. “In the past three years the percentage of biographies on English Wikipedia that are about women has increased from 15 to 19 percent. That may seem like a small change, yet it represents more than 75,000 new biographies about women.”
She holds Wikipedia training workshops and “editathons” at conferences, schools and colleges, and has published papers on inequality in academia, including a recent article on Black physicists and engineers, which she co-authored with a group of scientists. She has also partnered with 500 Women Scientists, a grass-roots organization that promotes inclusivity and accessibility in science.
Farah Qaiser is a member of 500 Women Scientists and a participant in what the organization calls the “Wiki Wolfpack.” She got involved after reading an op-ed by Wade and fellow scientist Maryam Zaringhalam.
“It just blew my mind that Wikipedia is something that I use often, and I never noticed this glaring gender bias,” said Qaiser, who is a Toronto-based scientist.
Wade has found other ways to advocate for more STEM accessibility, including publishing a children’s book last year, titled “Nano,” in the hope of getting young people excited about science.
“We need to do more to make the process more transparent and equitable for people,” she said.
What gives her the most joy, she said, is seeing a person’s name whose profile she created go on to earn a fellowship or award. She called it her “happiest thing.”
“I truly love seeing people being recognized and honored,” which, Wade said, is “made more possible by having a public profile on something like Wikipedia.”
“I’m a tiny fish in a massive sea,” she said. “But I’ll keep doing everything I can to make science a more accessible and inclusive place to be.” | 2022-10-17T10:41:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jess Wade has written 1,750 Wikipedia bios about women scientists - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/17/jess-wade-scientist-wikiepdia-women/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/17/jess-wade-scientist-wikiepdia-women/ |
Fat parrot ineligible for ‘Bird of the Year’ because it keeps winning
The kākāpō has been eliminated from the competition. Here are some other birds that could clinch the win this year.
The New Zealand kākāpō parrot. (iStock)
There’s bad news for those hoping to crown — yet again — the kākāpō as New Zealand’s “Bird of the Year”: The flightless bird, also known as the world’s fattest parrot, isn’t in the running this year.
The reason came down to its overshadowing cuteness, said Ellen Rykers, a spokesperson for Forest & Bird, which organizes the annual competition.
“The kākāpō has already won twice,” Rykers told The Washington Post. “And while he’s definitely a fan favorite, we want to make sure that we’re able to give attention to other birds that tend to get overlooked. It will be a brief hiatus, though, not a complete barring.”
In other words: Think of it as a term limit of sorts.
New Zealand aims to save the ‘strangest parrot on Earth’
Forest & Bird, a New Zealand-based conservation organization, has been running the “Bird of the Year” competition since 2005 as a way to raise awareness for native New Zealand bird species that may be threatened with extinction or whose populations are in low numbers, Rykers said. Anyone around the world is able to participate by casting online votes for their top five birds.
In the past 17 years, though, it has turned into a full-blown electoral race — with people signing up as campaign managers for each bird and masterminding creative ways to get votes. In recent years, for example, campaign managers have strutted down streets in penguin costumes or urged their Tinder matches to vote for their favorite bird, Rykers said.
And just like other — perhaps, higher-stakes — elections, “Bird of the Year” has faced a string of scandals. In 2018, fraudulent votes were cast in Australia for the shag. The next year, a large number of Russian votes sparked rumors of election meddling, though they were later deemed legitimate. And then last year, “Bird of the Year” went to … a bat. The reason for that, Rykers said, was linguistics — the name of the competition reads slightly differently in Māori, the language of the Indigenous people of New Zealand.
“The translation for ‘Bird of the Year’ in Māori is ‘Te Manu Rongonui o Te Tau.’ The word ‘manu’ doesn’t just refer to birds. It refers to any creature with wings,” she explained.
Hundreds of fraudulent votes were discovered. Then a fat green parrot was elected.
Rykers said Forest & Bird doesn’t want its competition to rank among the recent rash of cheating scandals happening in chess, Irish dancing, fishing and even Bear Week. They’re requiring email-verified votes and have systems to check for unique IP addresses. The first step toward fairness, for better or for worse, was barring the kākāpō.
Now that the chunky, bright-green parrot isn’t an option, here are some of the other birds you can vote for starting Oct. 17.
If charismatic birds are your thing
The Kererū, a New Zealand wood pigeon with a taste for fermented fruit, was crowned 2018 Bird of the Year. (Video: Melissa Boardman)
Some birds just operate like humans. Take the kererū: a pigeon with iridescent feathers and a mad obsession for berries. Occasionally their fruit of choice will be fermented — nature’s version of wine — making them a tad too tipsy to fly and prone to falling from trees.
The hākoakoa, or subantarctic skua, is the bird equivalent of a pirate, Rykers said. While on land, they love harassing other birds and eating their chicks. But in the sky, they’ll get into high-speed chases with other large birds in pursuit of a fine bounty of regurgitated food.
The takahē was thought to be extinct for decades — only to come back to life “as a juice extractor on legs,” Rykers said. These “rainbow chickens” turn grass into juice, and their chicks look like itty-bitty, black fluffballs.
If you’re rooting for birds on the edge of extinction
New Zealand dotterels nest in open sites close to beaches or lagoons. Their nests are easily damaged by people, dogs and vehicles. (Video: Melissa Boardman)
In New Zealand, some birds have made it out of the danger zone, but others are still fighting for the survival of their species. For instance, the tūturuatu, or shore plover, is known for its love of dramatics — often fluttering its wings or pretending to cry to save its babies from a predator. There are only 250 of these little drama queens left.
The South Island kōkako hadn’t been seen in the wild since 1967, so it was declared extinct. However, in 2007, someone recorded a bird call that was remarkably similar to the kōkako’s. Now nicknamed “the grey ghost,” it has inspired missions to prove it’s still out there, somewhere.
There are about 144 Southern New Zealand dotterels, or Tūturiwhatu, left in existence, Rykers said. During non-mating seasons, the little birds’ plumage is white or slightly off-white. But when it’s breeding season, the feathers in their chest area turn a rusty shade of red.
If you’re into birds with interesting features
Kōtuku ngutupapas, or royal spoonbills, are immediately distinguishable by the shape of their black bill. (Video: Melissa Boardman)
The king of crazy hairdos is none other than the Rockhopper penguin. With their yellow, spiky crest, these penguins made money pieces cool before they were a thing. Another penguin with a cool 'do: the Tawaki, or Fiordland crested penguin. Though their crest is slightly more tamed, one of its names means “gleaming head” in Māori. They’re also the only penguins to live in the rainforest.
The tākapu, or Australasian gannet, has nostrils in its mouth and eyes that can change shapes. It also has bubble-wrap-type tissue on its face and chest. Why? Because it needs something to cushion the blow when it divebombs into the water.
The beak of a Royal Spoonbill, or Kōtuku ngutupapa, looks like it was squished down in a sandwich press. The spatula-shaped feature allows it to hunt for crabs and other crustaceans in shallow waters. (It also has a bit of a crest on its head.)
The competition’s stakes are low, but the fun is big. The winner becomes “the ultimate bird influencer” and will inspire a line of merchandise, Rykers said. The winner will be announced Oct. 31. | 2022-10-17T10:41:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World's fattest parrot can't compete for New Zealand's 'Bird of the Year' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/17/fat-parrot-bird-of-year/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/17/fat-parrot-bird-of-year/ |
Americans paid down billions of dollars in credit card debt during the pandemic. But higher costs are leading many to start borrowing again.
(Keith Srakocic/AP)
After a coronavirus-era reprieve, Americans are borrowing heavily again to keep up with decades-high inflation on essentials such as food, gas and housing. Credit card debt is rising at its fastest clip in more than 20 years, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Overall, Americans owe $887 billion on their credit cards, a 13 percent increase from a year ago.
Now, with the Fed rapidly raising interest rates to contain inflation, families are feeling the pinch of higher borrowing costs, too. Average credit card rates, at 18.7 percent, are at their highest level in 30 years and will probably continue rising, according to Bankrate.
Credit card debt surges as inflation pushes Americans to borrow more
A number of worrisome economic wild cards also remain. Widespread job losses, for example, could mean that even borrowers who have so far been able to keep up with monthly payments may quickly fall behind. Experts say that could lead to spate of personal bankruptcy filings that could depress consumer spending and deepen a recession.
“The worry is what’s going to happen two years from now if people aren’t able to pay down this debt,” said Mary Eschelbach Hansen, an economics professor at American University. “Bankruptcy filings were very low during the pandemic but there is a real concern that could change, which has the potential to be a really serious problem.”
7 ways to lower your credit card debt after the Fed rate hike
Americans paid off an unprecedented $83 billion of credit card debt in 2020, according to estimates from WalletHub. Federal stimulus money, combined with a slowdown in spending — on gas, travel, dining out and goods — meant families suddenly had more cash to devote to long-standing debts. But as the economy has reopened and inflation has surged to 40-year highs, Americans are borrowing more, for longer.
There are also signs that people are increasingly falling behind. The share of borrowers who are least 30 days behind on their credit card payments has grown, to 4.8 percent from 4.4 percent a year ago, according to the New York Fed, although they are still well below historic levels.
And Americans with credit card debt are taking longer to pay it off. Sixty percent of those with balances are at least a year past due, up from 50 percent a year ago, according to a CreditCards.com survey by YouGov. The percentage of borrowers carrying at least two years of debt also rose, to 40 percent from 32 percent.
“With prices rising as they are, people are accumulating more and more debt — and that’s quite concerning because it could lead to higher rates of default,” said Olga Gorbachev, an economics professor at the University of Delaware whose work focuses on credit cards and inequality. “That is particularly going to fall on the typically disadvantaged consumers: the poor, single mothers, people who are already in bad shape financially and income-wise.”
Prices rose again in September, ensuring tough interest rates to come
Should you use retirement money to pay off credit card debt?
“I’m like, ‘Gosh, I wish I could just pay this off and get rid of it,' ” she said. “But now we’re in this cycle that we can’t really break. And it’s just going to get worse.” | 2022-10-17T10:49:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Credit card debt and interest rates are both rising as consumers struggle with inflation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/17/credit-card-debt-interest-rates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/17/credit-card-debt-interest-rates/ |
Today’s book bans echo a panic against comic books in the 1950s
When a climate of fear exists, people don’t scrutinize the evidence behind claims about children’s reading material
Perspective by Jeremy C. Young
A display of banned books in a Barnes & Noble store in Pittsford, N.Y., last month. (Ted Shaffrey/AP)
Today there is a rising movement to ban books, especially in schools and libraries where children might access them. This movement comes despite book banning being wildly unpopular nationally, including in red states, and even in a messaging poll designed to test the most effective conservative arguments on education.
Some of the opposition stems from a crisis of credibility among book banners. The advocacy organizations driving the movement are a motley crew.
But opposition and a lack of credibility — or evidence to support their claims — may not doom today’s book-banning efforts. Already, school districts in 32 states have taken some action to ban books. And history shows that when Americans grow panicked about the impact of reading material on children, they often don’t scrutinize specific claims against materials.
This was the case in the 1950s when a movement arose to ban comic books. At its center was a respected child psychologist pushing wild accusations about the dangers of illustrated literature for children. His analysis was misguided, his evidence misleading or fabricated, and his concerns about children’s literature overblown, but Americans bought his claims anyway. This history serves as a cautionary tale, as graphic novels once again draw the ire of book banners.
During the golden age of comic books, which stretched from 1938 to the mid-1950s, comics exploded in popularity. This period saw the introduction of such characters as Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Captain America. According to comics historian Carol Tilley, over 90 percent of children and over 80 percent of teens were reading comic books at the time the efforts to ban them accelerated.
Like other forms of popular literature such as science fiction, fantasy and today’s young adult novels, comic books addressed important social controversies and challenging themes. In 1946, a Superman radio serial exposed the secret rituals of the resurgent Ku Klux Klan, embarrassing the white supremacist organization and hastening its decline. More controversially, some comics also told luridly illustrated stories of crime, horror and the supernatural.
After World War II, America’s Cold War with the Soviet Union drove a nationwide Red Scare that culminated in anti-communist witch hunts at congressional hearings led by Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-Wis.) and others. This fear of communism drove what historians have termed “containment culture” — a fear of any sort of deviance or difference from established cultural norms, including stories of forbidden crimes, passions and identities.
These fears drove figures like children’s novelist Sterling North and Jesuit priest Robert E. Southard to oppose the proliferation of comic books. And they had an unlikely ally laboring to demonstrate the supposed harm caused by books: the noted child psychologist Fredric Wertham.
Born in Germany in 1895, Wertham had corresponded with Sigmund Freud and trained with the renowned psychologist Emil Kraepelin before immigrating to the United States in 1922. Inspired by Kraepelin’s belief that psychological conditions were caused by environmental factors, Wertham became convinced that exposure to any negative experiences or ideas would cause children to develop mental disorders as adults.
This belief led Wertham to staunchly oppose racial segregation for its negative psychological effects on Black children. In this regard, Wertham was something of a hero. He founded the Lafargue Clinic, one of the first comprehensive, low-cost mental health clinics for low-income Black children; befriended the Black writers Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison; and testified at a hearing that helped inspire the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that ended legal segregation of public schools.
But Wertham’s experiences at the Lafargue Clinic also sent him down a book-banning rabbit hole. Surrounded by children with mental health challenges, Wertham soon realized that most of them read comic books. Wertham concluded that these must be the negative environmental stimuli responsible for their disordered mental states — ignoring the fact that the vast majority of healthy children were reading comics, too.
Wertham claimed to have interviewed thousands of children who were harmed by reading comic books — and he produced endless alleged examples.
In 1954, Wertham wrote the surprise bestseller “Seduction of the Innocent,” in which he launched a one-man crusade against the comics industry with the shrill alarmism of the recently disgraced McCarthy. “Comic books stimulate children sexually,” Wertham wrote, “a sexual arousal which amounts to seduction.” He claimed that Superman encouraged juvenile delinquency, that Batman and Robin were gay lovers, and that Wonder Woman encouraged lesbianism.
To support such assertions, “Seduction of the Innocent” purported to quote liberally from Wertham’s patients, including a child who told Wertham that when he grew up “I want to be a sex maniac” and a 12-year-old who reported that “I get sexually excited” when comic book villains tie up and beat women. Perhaps Wertham’s most shocking claims were about comic book stores — “obscure” places “where children congregate, often in backrooms, to read and buy secondhand comic books” — which the psychologist labeled “foci of childhood prostitution.” “Evidently,” Wertham wrote, “comic books prepare the little girls well.”
The panic set off by Wertham’s book crushed entire sectors of the comic book industry. The worst part: The anecdotes in the book weren’t even true.
In 2012, Tilley gained access to Wertham’s long-sealed papers and discovered that the psychologist had taken broad liberties in reporting his interviews with children. Some quotes were “composites,” phrases taken from multiple real patients and compiled into a single fictitious case. Other quotes Wertham claimed he had heard directly were in fact reported to him by colleagues. Still others were simply false; the child trafficking ring at the comic book store that Wertham discussed? It was actually a candy store and the trafficking victims were adults.
But the fearful climate of the era, along with Wertham’s professional authority, meant that many Americans accepted his claims without much scrutiny. In 1954, Wertham repeated his theatrical claims before a rapt Senate subcommittee and, in the face of likely government intervention, the comics industry elected to self-regulate instead. The resulting Comics Code Authority restricted comics content for over 60 years and brought an end to comics’ golden age. Bowing to societal pressure, the code banned openly LGBTQ characters and created content standards so stringent that they eliminated nearly all comics written for teenagers and adults.
Despite this self-regulation, 14 states passed laws restricting the sale of comics within a year after the subcommittee hearings. Between the comics code and the bans, comics readership predictably dried up, never to return to the heights of the early 1950s. Just as with McCarthy’s witch hunts, many Americans were eager to believe that there was an enemy in their midst, and that purging such an enemy could solve the problems of their society.
Seventy years on, Wertham’s success at convincing a broad swath of Americans that Superman and Batman were destroying children’s minds is a frightening reminder of how easily people can be “seduced” by fears about literature for young people, even when those fears are not supported by the evidence. Baseless accusations being hurled at librarians and teachers today, suggesting that they are “groomers” who are circulating “pornography,” are an eerie parallel. “There is some hysteria associated with the idea of reading,” Toni Morrison once said about book bans, “that is all out of proportion to what … in fact happens when one reads.” She was right.
The comic book scare resulted in the censorship of minority identities in fiction, ruined the careers of authors and illustrators, and drove many young people away from the stories that spoke to them. Facing a new movement to ban books today, and with the benefit of hindsight, Americans have an opportunity to do better.
This essay is the eighth in the Freedom to Learn series sponsored by PEN America, providing historical context for controversies surrounding free expression in education today. | 2022-10-17T10:50:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 1950s crusade against comic books exposes the danger of book bans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/17/book-ban-comic-books-panic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/17/book-ban-comic-books-panic/ |
Liz Truss is trying to channel Margaret Thatcher. Why it’s not working.
Both painted themselves as the solution to British decline, but Thatcher was an outsider, which made her claims credible
Perspective by Robert Ralston
Robert Ralston is a lecturer at the University of Birmingham and a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Liz Truss, left, and Margaret Thatcher. (Leon Neal/Getty Images; Gabriel Duval/AFP/Getty Images)
Britain is facing a tough winter ahead. Energy prices are skyrocketing, the pound has fallen relative to the dollar, mortgage rates have climbed sharply, and the National Health Service is under strain. Industrial action has ground trains to a halt and slowed down Royal Mail delivery. For older Britons, this is all eerily reminiscent of the problems Britain faced during the “Winter of Discontent” in 1978 and 1979.
And new Prime Minister Liz Truss is trying to pattern herself on a political figure who rose to prominence during that period: Margaret Thatcher. Like Thatcher in 1979, Truss is claiming that Britain is in decline and that she is the answer. She has scapegoated global conditions, including the covid-19 pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as domestic opponents. During her speech to the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham on Oct. 5, Truss acknowledged, “The status quo is not an option.” She asserted, then, that her party was “the only party with a clear plan to get Britain moving” and “the determination to deliver.”
Yet while Thatcher spun a dominant narrative of decline that resonated with the public and enabled her to prescribe a path to renewal, Truss’s speech rang hollow.
Despite the two confronting a similar period of domestic turmoil and torment, Truss’s position is fundamentally different from Thatcher’s because her party has been in power for the last 12 years, and she does not credibly represent a new kind of politics like Thatcher did.
The 1979 election was dominated by claims of British decline. The preface of the Conservative Manifesto — laying out the party’s agenda of law and order and austerity to combat inflation — proclaimed that there was a “feeling of helplessness” because many Britons saw their country as “a once great nation that has somehow fallen behind” and worried “that it is too late now to turn things round.” Thatcher herself went on the BBC and declared, “I can’t bear Britain in decline. I just can’t.”
As historian Guy Ortolano argues, Thatcher weaponized public fears about decline during the campaign and into her early years as prime minister. She successfully blamed the incumbent Labour Party for Britain’s problems and took umbrage at Labour’s attempts to fault world conditions for British decline.
Thatcher’s effort to harness fears about decline also worked because she was an outsider, both with respect to her relationship with the Conservative Party, as well as her sex and class. She was from Britain’s middle class — a “grocer’s daughter”— and was a woman in a male-dominated world of British politics (when she was first elected, she was one of only 25 women in a Parliament of 630). In 1975, she had become the leader of the Conservative Party by toppling Edward Heath thanks to support from backbenchers — and over the opposition of senior party figures and the establishment Conservative press. Many in her own party held Thatcher in disdain, because they saw her style as abrasive, no doubt influenced by sexist and classist tropes.
Being a genuine outsider enabled Thatcher to campaign against the ruling establishment across the political spectrum. She aimed her declinist rhetoric at status quo politics — both the Labour Party’s brand and her party’s version — and blamed the establishment in both parties for British decline. This claim resonated with the British public because it rang true.
Thatcher also cultivated an image that she was a new kind of leader, someone who was ready to make major changes. She was not interested in tinkering at the margins of policy. She continually stressed that, “however difficult the road might be and however long it took us to reach our destination, we intended to achieve a fundamental change of direction. We stood for a new beginning, not more of the same,” she wrote in her memoir “The Downing Street Years.” She pushed for dismantling the welfare state through tax cuts and a more militant approach to the trade unions.
Thatcher understood British decline not only in economic terms, but in terms of morality and values as well. She stressed Britain’s drift from good, old-fashioned, Victorian values as well as the moral decay evidenced by riots, strikes and crime in late 1970s Britain. Individual responsibility was key for Thatcher. “At the heart of a new mood in the nation must be a recovery of our self-confidence and our self-respect,” Thatcher argued, claiming that “Nothing is beyond us. Decline is [not] inevitable. … The foundation of this new confidence has to be individual responsibility.”
For Thatcher and her “new right” political movement, convincing Britons that the nation was in decline and needed their new prescriptions became the key message — indeed, core to their political identity. As Thatcher remarked in her memoir: “Everything we wished to do had to fit into the overall strategy of reversing Britain’s economic decline, for without an end to that decline there was no hope of success for our other objectives.”
Thatcher’s outsider status and her call for major changes stand in contrast to Truss’s situation. The Conservative Party has controlled the British government for 12 years. Truss’s ideas don’t represent something new or fresh. Instead, her polices represent a continuation of past Conservative policy, from foreign affairs to health and social care to the major tax cut she has proposed. Truss has not, yet, offered any clear vision distinct from her Tory predecessors. Because her party has been in power so long, and she has been a part of the government, Truss also can’t easily cast both Labour and Conservative policy as complicit in British decline.
Under these circumstances, Truss’s declinist rhetoric rings hollow. Even Britons convinced their nation is in decline find it hard to see Truss, with her now-standard Conservative prescriptions, as the one who can reverse this trend. | 2022-10-17T10:50:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Liz Truss is trying to channel Margaret Thatcher. Why it’s not working. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/17/truss-thatcher-britain-decline-conservatives/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/17/truss-thatcher-britain-decline-conservatives/ |
From “Little Cities,” published by Little Oak. PRESS, 2022. (Rich-Joseph Facun)
Rich-Joseph Facun’s new book, “Little Cities” (Little Oak.PRESS, 2022) is a meditation on the landscape of Appalachia.
A lot of portrayals of Appalachia have centered on photos of people diminished by poverty, coal mining or drug use. And, rightly so, many of the people living in that area of the United States have been offended and angered by the picture that paints of them.
Facun is a relative newcomer to the area but has chosen to live there and claim it as home. He is sensitive to how the area has been portrayed in the past and he isn’t interested in rehashing old tropes about the place.
At the very end of “Little Cities,” Facun writes in an essay, “These observations are born from the desire to understand who we were, who we are, and who we may become.” This is an excellent summation of the photos in the book.
Facun approaches the landscape in the areas where he photographed with a contemplative, muted lens. The photos focus on the architecture of the place and how people have shaped and imposed themselves on it. So there you have a meditation on the present, but it is also informed by a past that still lingers.
As Facun writes in that essay at the end of the book:
“Sacred Indian burial mounds sit between suburban tract homes, webbed powerlines, scrawled graffiti, acid mine drainage, banal Midwestern commerce, parking lots and one-room post offices, closing the gap between past hopes and present regrets. Within these spaces, the physical and psychological merge.”
The muted color palette and elegant compositions of Facun’s photographs help establish a psychological space in which we can contemplate the clashes he so eloquently describes in his words. But this approach also lends emotional resonance to the overall work, not unlike a tightly crafted album or movie.
This is, to be sure, not a project about Appalachia as a whole, per se. It’s focus is on the communities found in Southeast Ohio. And I think it bears repeating that Facun lives in this area. He has not decided for photography’s sake to swoop in, snap some scenes, call it a book and then swoop out again. No, this is his, and his family’s, home.
There is a sincere desire to come to grips with the surroundings of these places in Southeast Ohio. Beyond that, Facun’s photographs grapple with the complexity of how things form and become what they are — one of life’s biggest mysteries. So while the location is Appalachia, the questions are somewhat universal — who are we? How did we become who we are? And why? | 2022-10-17T10:50:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Photos of Appalachia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/10/17/photos-appalachia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2022/10/17/photos-appalachia/ |
Cheri Beasley, left, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in North Carolina, speaks to Beatrice Marong, proprietor of Amman Farm, during a campaign stop last week. (Logan Cyrus/The Washington Post)
ASHEVILLE, N.C. — Cheri Beasley had spent a day last week pinballing around western North Carolina, stumping for the state’s soon-to-be-open Senate seat. At her last event, a brewery in this liberal mountain stronghold, the Democratic candidate eased onto a stool as a moderator asked whether anyone had a question.
When the microphone came to Ann Baxter, she unloaded her concerns. She’d seen an avalanche of ominous ads from Republican Rep. Ted Budd’s camp, tearing into Beasley’s record and painting what Baxter said is an untrue and unflattering picture. But she had seen only two pro-Beasley ads. When, she asked, was Beasley going to fight back?
“When I talk to a lot of my friends, most of them don’t know who she is,” Baxter, an 81-year-old retired hospital administrator, said in an interview after the event. “I think people aren’t hearing her voice.”
The paucity of ads — and money from deep-pocketed political action committees and donors that would fund them — has been an enduring worry for Beasley’s supporters days before voters begin to head to the polls to determine who will replace Sen. Richard Burr (R), with control of the Senate up for grabs.
Since August, Beasley, a former North Carolina Supreme Court chief justice, has been in a dead heat with Budd, a three-term congressman endorsed by former president Donald Trump. North Carolina Democrats have been raising the alarm that without more help, their chance to end a 14-year streak of Senate losses will evaporate.
Last week, a political action committee aligned with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer announced it was putting $8 million more into North Carolina, and noted that it had already spent $15 million in the race. But Beasley’s backers say those contributions are dwarfed by the $26.38 million that the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the conservative Senate Leadership Fund have spent backing Budd.
Beasley’s supporters say they worry that the woman seeking to become the first Black Senator from North Carolina is receiving only a trickle of the cash from national Democrats that is flowing into key contests — and that an opportunity to retain the Senate is being squandered.
“I hope we don’t wake up in a few weeks and realize, man, if we had just spent some more time, gave some more resources diverted from other places, we could have won North Carolina,” Zeb Smathers, the mayor of Canton, N.C., who introduced Beasley at a stop in nearby Waynesville, said in an interview, adding that the attacks on Beasley in his area seem to be going unanswered.
Smathers said the race is “not getting the national attention for a candidate who is just as strong, if not stronger, in a race that is as winnable if not more winnable than in some other places.”
Beasley, in an interview, said she was not concerned about the disparity in outside spending. And campaign officials note that because she’s outraised Budd — and ads purchased by the campaign don’t cost as much as ads paid for by outside groups — the gap is not as extreme as it seems.
On Saturday, her campaign announced that she had raised $13.3 million in the third fundraising quarter, and it boasted that she had outraised Budd in every quarter — bring in a total of $29.2 million for the race.
“If anybody’s afraid, it’s Ted Budd and his national Republican allies,” Beasley said in an interview. “I mean, they’re the ones who are spending the millions of dollars against me, and they’re spending that kind of money because they know that we really can win. We’re doing well in this race and really excited that folks have offered a lot of energy in this race.”
On the campaign trail, Beasley has stressed her biography and spoken about a return to civility in Washington. She’s also spoken with urgency about the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, telling voters that if Republicans take control of the Senate, more rights could be stripped away.
After the Republican primary, observers say, Budd has kept a low profile and has sought to downplay his more controversial positions, including expressing support for a nationwide 15-week abortion ban, denying the results of the 2020 president election and calling the Jan. 6 insurrectionists “patriots standing up.” In an interview, he said no amount of money will help Democrats win because their stances are out of touch with the North Carolinians he’s been talking to.
“I mean, that’s up to them, but they’ve wasted a lot of (outside) money here in the past, and I’m going to do everything I can to make sure the Democrats are still wasting money here,” Budd said in an interview last week. “Because we’re going to run a good campaign and the issues are not on their side. And you can’t overcome bad stances on inflation, crime, education, national security, energy. All five of those issues are on our side and not on the Democratic side.”
In interviews, 27 strategists, consultants, politicians and voters offered a litany of reasons for the lack of national attention on a coveted seat. The Democratic Party’s funding apparatus is trying to defend a large number of seats, and Democrats in high-profile contests are eating up the attention and dollars. Democrats in North Carolina have also endured 14 years of letdowns in Senate races, stoking subtle skepticism about Beasley’s viability. North Carolina hasn’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since Kay Hagan was elected in 2008. That same year, presidential nominee Barack Obama also won the state in the general election.
Beasley has twice won statewide election and lost a third bid in 2020, for chief justice of the Supreme Court, by 401 votes. She has kept the Senate race close mostly on her own, even though her résumé and performance should have brought her attention — and help — a lot earlier, said Stefanie Brown James, co-founder of the Collective PAC, which supports Black candidates.
“Coming into this race, she should have been one who was looked at as a person who has shown that they have the chops to have this sophisticated campaign to win the statewide U.S. Senate race,” Brown James said. “That being said, she has had to almost prove herself over and over and over again.”
Aimy Steele, CEO of the New North Carolina Project, who ran unsuccessfully for a state House seat, said it’s naive for Democrats across the nation to not account for the fact that Black female candidates face stronger head winds.
“The type of support and a level of support is starkly different for black women, and that’s just a fact,” said Steele, who is Black. “I wish it were just an opinion. It’s a fact. It’s patriarchal, then it’s just the whiteness of politics. … Now if you take race out of it and gender, oh, she’s the perfect candidate for every investment guru, every business owner who wants to invest, every entity, DSCC, DCCC, all the C’s.”
Some of Beasley’s supporters, including Brown James, say the late-in-coming funding shows an ignorance of the distinct hurdles of running as a Black woman in a southern state. North Carolina has never elected a Black person to the Senate and has sent only two women to the upper chamber.
Several groups are trying to get her more resources in a year when midterm elections will determine whether Democrats continue to control Congress.
Brown James said she is trying to enlist help from Black Hollywood celebrities to campaign with Beasley, or at least tape ads for her. Sens. Cory Booker (N.J.) and Jon Ossoff (Ga.) campaigned with Beasley this weekend. Democratic Reps. David E. Price and G.K. Butterfield of North Carolina have lobbied the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee to pump more cash into the state.
Butterfield said he recently talked to Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), head of the DSCC. “He tells me that his first obligation is to take care of his incumbents, the Senator Warnocks and the like … and now it’s time to invest in red-to-blue seats in battleground states,” Butterfield said. “And I believe based on my conversation with him that he’s guaranteed that there will be more investment. I certainly hope so.”
With weeks left in the race, Beasley and Budd traveled throughout the state last week, trying to energize their respective bases and put a fine point on the choice voters have.
Beasley has said she’s running a North Carolina-centric campaign and sought to distance herself from the national referendum on the president that midterm elections frequently become. In most events, she stressed her family’s humble origin story, which starts with her grandfather leaving Alabama with 76 cents in his pocket.
Budd and Beasley’s only debate, which was held this month and wasn’t aired in the entire state, featured a clear difference but no flame-throwing. On the campaign trail, Beasley’s most incendiary stinger is telling voters “this Budd’s not for you.”
Budd’s stump speeches last week — and those of guests at his events, including Sen. John Neely Kennedy (R-La.) and Donald Trump Jr. — blasted President Biden and the Democratic Party for rising inflation, increasing crime and what they call out-of-touch policies. On the stump and in their debate, Budd has said Beasley would be “a rubber stamp for Joe Biden.”
Democratic Party insiders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss national strategy, say their first priority is to defend incumbents in New Hampshire, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia. They also are trying to win Senate races in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, two states Biden won in 2020. Defending incumbents and giving steam to surging campaigns is an annual balancing act for organizations with massive but still finite coffers.
“Cheri Beasley’s strong campaign and record of independence, integrity, and protecting our constitutional freedoms has made this race more competitive by the day, which is why National Republicans are being forced to burn through precious resources to distract from Ted Budd’s extreme record,” JB Poersch, president of the Senate Majority PAC, said in a statement.
DSCC spokesperson Amanda Sherman Baity said the group has helped Beasley from the outset of her general election campaign.
“Cheri Beasley has put Republicans on defense in North Carolina — the DSCC has been proud to provide support and resources to her campaign over the course of the general election and the Democratic eco-system has been spending consistently and aggressively on air in the state,” Baity said in a statement. “North Carolina is a Senate battleground and we view the race as highly competitive.”
But experts say concerns about the viability of a Democratic Senate candidate in North Carolina are based on more than just electoral math. The state’s demographics, increasing urbanization and voter registration totals put it strongly in the purple category. Both the governor and attorney general are Democrats, and there are four Democrats in the Council of State, a collection of 10 statewide elected offices. But a Senate seat has remained just out of reach.
Perhaps the most crushing turnabout for the party came in 2020, when North Carolina’s contest between Democrat Cal Cunningham and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis became the most expensive Senate race in history — with more than $282 million spent. Cunningham, a former state senator, had opened a small lead when he acknowledged sending explicit texts to a woman who was not his wife, shattering his family-man image. The admission unraveled Cunningham’s campaign. Tillis won a month later.
“We’ve been burned so many times with so much money. It’s something I fight every day in talking to folks nationally,” said Morgan Jackson, a Raleigh-based Democratic consultant and a longtime adviser to Gov. Roy Cooper (D). “You come up just short each time. And if you’re in D.C. or New York or California or somewhere outside of the state, you’re looking at it like North Carolina is always the bridesmaid, never the bride.” | 2022-10-17T10:50:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cheri Beasley backers seek more party money in Senate race vs. Ted Budd - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/beasley-budd-nc-senate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/beasley-budd-nc-senate/ |
Oz has promoted false health claims. What if he pushed vaccinations?
When Oz urged viewers to vaccinate against the measles, many listened, our research finds
Analysis by Dominik Stecuła
Matt Motta
Supporters watch Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, speak during a campaign event in Malvern, Pa., on Oct. 15. (Laurence Kesterson/AP)
Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for Senate in Pennsylvania, for 16 years hosted a popular, syndicated daytime television show. He has leaned on his TV doctor credentials in his campaign.
But his candidacy has encouraged the news media to examine his longtime spread of misinformation, including what University of Alberta professor Timothy Caulfield called in Scientific American “misleading, science-free and unproven alternative therapies.” His Democratic opponent, John Fetterman, has been running television ads about Oz’s questionable recommendations, which public health professionals scorn. A group of Pennsylvania doctors called “Real Doctors Against Oz” have begun campaigning against his candidacy, pronouncing it “a major threat to public health.”
Oz’s false claims are being showcased just as public health officials are warning of a possible increase in coronavirus transmission, and as only 4 percent of Americans have received the latest omicron-focused booster vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As a GOP nominee for Senate in the nation’s fifth most-populous state, Oz has a political platform to advocate for — or against — vaccine safety in a race that is capturing national attention. If he chooses to promote vaccines, our research suggests that Oz could use his campaign to affect public health and increase Americans’ vaccination rates. In particular, he has an opportunity to reach his base supporters, who cluster on the vaccine-skeptical ideological right.
Throwing away his shot?
Oz’s supporters tend to be more willing to accept vaccine misinformation, less likely to plan to or get vaccinated against the coronavirus; more skeptical of the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC; and less likely to worry about getting the new variants. After several years of highly politicized and polarized discussion about the pandemic, Republicans are less likely to heed the advice of health experts like Anthony S. Fauci.
But Oz, as a medical doctor and a well-known and trusted former host of a television show, could be an effective messenger for why Americans should get vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Social science research finds that when people listen to leaders they trust, they are more likely to change their minds about politically and socially contentious issues. Issues relating to the pandemic are politically contentious, given that over the course of the past two years the coronavirus has become a highly polarized partisan issue. But because Oz and rank-and-file Republicans — in Pennsylvania and nationally — share a common partisan identity and stances on other hot-button political issues, they might be more likely to find him credible on vaccines. He is therefore more likely to be able to change their minds.
Who's getting vaccinated? The answer has changed since the first wave.
Here’s how we did our research
We tested this theory in our research and find that, yes, he probably could change minds.
Here’s the background. Oz has not always supported vaccination in his daytime talk show. He occasionally let anti-vaccination individuals on his show, where they promoted scientific misinformation. He has promoted common anti-vaccination ideas, such as advising parents to unnecessarily space out childhood vaccines beyond what the CDC recommends.
And yet Oz has also, at times, used his show to promote vaccination. For instance, in a March 4, 2019, episode, after an outbreak of measles in Rockland, N.Y., Oz warned his viewers about the risks measles posed, and promoted the two-dose MMR (measles mumps rubella) vaccine as “97 percent effective.” At the time, our research team happened to be fielding a nationally representative longitudinal survey using the National Opinion Research Center’s AmeriSpeak panel of 3,005 respondents (1,803 of whom were available for recontact) at the University of Chicago. AmeriSpeak is a probability-based, nationally representative sample of U.S. adults, created using a two-stage stratified sampling frame that covers 97 percent of U.S. households. Panelists can respond either online or over the phone. We took advantage of this natural experiment to assess what Oz’s regular viewers believed before this episode and just afterward.
Indeed, Oz made a difference. Before this episode, only 12 percent of his viewers — the ones who knew the least about vaccines — saw routine vaccinations as low risk. Afterward, 31 percent did.
We don’t yet know whether Oz will risk promoting vaccines and vaccine safety on the campaign trail this fall. He might have difficulty changing minds on the ideological right, after several years in which coronavirus vaccination has become politicized as part of the partisan culture wars.
Prominent anti-vaxxers like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. continue to promote Oz’s anti-Fauci statements since he has chosen to leverage Republican attitudes for his political gain. But should he choose to change direction, our research suggests that when Oz talks, his audience listens.
Dominik Stecuła (@decustecu) is an assistant professor of political science at Colorado State University.
Matt Motta (@matt_motta) is an assistant professor of health law, policy and management at Boston University School of Public Health. | 2022-10-17T10:50:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How Dr. Oz's Pennsylvania candidacy could boost public health - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/oz-senate-anti-vaxxers-covid/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/oz-senate-anti-vaxxers-covid/ |
Your best bet is likely going to be minoxidil, either in its topical or oral form
Advice by Jennifer N. Choi, MD
(Chelsea Conrad/The Washington Post; stock)
Jennifer N. Choi is the division chief of medical dermatology and oncodermatology at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
Q: Are there any treatments that actually work for women with thinning hair?
A: Topical minoxidil, often known by the over-the-counter brand name of Rogaine, is my first go-to treatment for the most common cause of thinning hair in women: female androgenetic alopecia (AGA).
Not only is topical minoxidil the most well-studied treatment available, it’s also the only topical product that’s been approved by the FDA for the treatment of AGA.
If you’ve noticed hair loss, the first step you should take is getting a diagnosis from a primary care physician or a dermatologist, who may do a scalp biopsy and order bloodwork to look for potential causes, such as anemia or thyroid disorders.
But if your hair loss has been gradual and started as widening at your part, with your frontal hairline still intact, you likely have AGA. It can start any time after puberty and becomes more common as women get older. By age 70, up to 50 percent of women have some degree of AGA. White people are more likely to be affected, followed by Asian and Black people. If either your mother or father has AGA, you’re more likely to develop it.
When it comes to treatments, patience and managing expectations are important. You have several options, including topicals, prescriptions, supplements and procedures. But I advise my patients to wait at least six months before deciding if any of them are working.
Unfortunately, many women will still have hair thinning even after trying multiple treatments: There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution, and the odds of success vary in each case.
Here’s what you need to know about your options for treating AGA.
How should I use topical minoxidil?
Topical minoxidil is available in either 2 percent or 5 percent concentrations over the counter and can be applied once or twice daily. I usually recommend the 5 percent version since it’s been shown to be more effective, but it also has an increased likelihood of side effects, such as scalp irritation, flaking, itching and facial hair growth. Higher concentrations are available by prescription.
You can choose between a solution or a foam. The solution, which is applied with a dropper, can sometimes drip onto your face or leave your hair looking greasier. The foam has more of a controlled application with your hands, and it doesn’t have propylene glycol, which can cause irritation or an allergy in rare cases. Both should be gently rubbed into the scalp — just make sure to wash your hands afterward.
You do need to keep applying topical minoxidil even after seeing results. If you stop, you may notice hair shedding of the new growth within four to six months.
What about oral minoxidil?
Oral minoxidil has traditionally been used to treat high blood pressure, but it’s been getting a lot of buzz lately as an off-label treatment for hair loss in low doses. More rigorous research is needed to confirm its overall safety and efficacy, but in my practice, I’ve been using it more and more in both men and women, with most of them experiencing at least some degree of noticeable hair growth.
Studies have been promising so far. A 2020 review of the medical literature found that 17 studies with 634 patients showed it can help, but the reported efficacy varied widely: from 10 to 90 percent in terms of stabilization of hair loss, increase in total hair density, improved hair thickness and decreased hair shedding. Topical minoxidil has been shown to have a reported efficacy in treating AGA in women ranging from 13 to 63 percent.
If you don’t like the messiness of applying topical minoxidil or have experienced a reaction to it, talk to your dermatologist about taking the medication orally. I usually start patients with 1.25 milligrams or 2.5 milligrams daily, with room for higher doses if needed. It’s only available by prescription, and there are possible side effects, including hair growth in places besides the scalp (such as the face), low blood pressure and lower-leg swelling.
Other oral prescription medications have been used to treat hair loss over the past 10 to 20 years: spironolactone, finasteride and dutasteride. They haven’t been compared directly to oral minoxidil, so it’s unclear which is more effective, and women who can get pregnant shouldn’t use these medications unless they’re using strict birth control methods since they can cause fetal abnormalities. Finasteride and dutasteride are generally reserved for women who are postmenopausal for this reason.
Do supplements work?
The evidence isn’t as strong for supplements as it is for topical minoxidil.
My patients often ask me about two popular oral supplements: Nutrafol, which contains saw palmetto, and Viviscal, which contains a compound of marine extracts and polysaccharides. Several of the studies on these components and supplements have funding or interests linked to the industry, but they have suggested some efficacy with few adverse effects.
Oral biotin supplements have long been touted to help with hair growth. But these supplements at high doses have actually not been shown to be effective.
Large-scale randomized clinical trials from independent researchers are still needed on supplements, but I occasionally mention Nutrafol and Viviscal — instead of plain biotin — to patients who want to try a nonprescription supplement, though I can’t promise they’ll see significant results.
Make sure to check with your doctor before trying any supplements, even if they’re labeled as natural. For example, for breast cancer survivors taking long-term estrogen inhibitor medications, such as tamoxifen, certain supplements may interfere with the metabolism of the estrogen inhibitor, potentially making it less effective.
What if none of these other options work?
You may want to consider trying one of these therapies or procedures, but they usually aren’t covered by insurance and can get quite expensive. There also isn’t rigorous evidence yet that they’ll work.
Red light devices: These devices use low-level light therapy (LLLT) and come in different forms, such as a comb, hood or helmet. The HairMax LaserComb is a handheld, noninvasive device that was approved by the FDA for the safe treatment of male and female AGA with a starting cost of $199. I’d recommend this treatment to highly motivated patients who can commit to using it at least three times a week — preferably in combination with another treatment, such as minoxidil — since it’s easy to use, relatively affordable and is generally considered safe.
Platelet-rich plasma: Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) is a preparation of plasma that comes from your own blood. Some small studies have suggested that scalp injections with PRP might help certain patients, but more rigorous evidence is needed, especially since the cost can be so high and the procedure can be painful. Three monthly sessions, followed by a three- to six-month maintenance period, is typically recommended. The cost of each session is usually around $250 to $750. PRP also tends to be used as an adjunctive therapy in combination with other treatments, and not everyone is a candidate.
Surgical hair transplantation: If any of the therapies don’t work, surgical hair transplantation is another option. Intact hairs are surgically removed from a part of your scalp that still has thick hairs, separated into individual hair follicle units and surgically transplanted into tiny holes on the part of the scalp affected by hair loss or thinning. This procedure usually takes several hours at a time, requires local anesthesia and can be very costly — ranging from $6,000 to $60,000, depending on the amount of hair transferred, the technique used and the surgeon’s experience — but many of my patients have achieved great long-term results.
Learn more — USGS offers free online science lectures | 2022-10-17T10:51:21Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What treatments work for women with thinning hair? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/10/17/women-thinning-hair-treatment-oral-minoxidil/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/10/17/women-thinning-hair-treatment-oral-minoxidil/ |
Britain’s new finance chief reverses prime minister’s economic policies
British Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt gestures as he walks outside Downing Street in London, Monday. (Henry Nicholls/Reuters)
LONDON — Seeking to bring stability to jittery debt and stock markets — and to help Prime Minister Liz Truss survive — Britain’s brand new finance minister, Jeremy Hunt, on Monday said that the government would not slash taxes but would instead see them rise, in a stunning reversal of trickle-down growth policy announced just three weeks ago.
“The most important objective for our country right now is stability,” said Hunt, the chancellor of the exchequer, Britain’s title for finance minister. “Instability affects the prices of things in shops, the costs of mortgages and the value of pensions.”
The new prime minister won office by promising to slash taxes as a way to supercharge growth in Britain, which has been battered by Brexit, covid, and soaring energy prices, brought about in part by the war in Ukraine.
With Hunt’s announcement Monday, Truss’s supply-side plan for growth — which once drew broad support from her Conservative Party and admiring comparison to Margaret Thatcher — has been gutted.
David Lammy, a leading member of the opposition Labour Party, said Truss’s missteps have “made Britain’s economy an international punchline.”
But the markets appear to be calming. The falling British pound has stabilized. The country’s leading stock index, the FTSE 100, was up. And the cost of government borrowing was coming down — though still higher that it was before Truss took over.
Hunt’s video statement — which will be followed by debate later in the day in parliament — isn’t just intended to calm the markets, he’ll also be hoping to calm mutinous lawmakers in the Conservative Party who want Truss gone just weeks after she took office.
Over the weekend, three Conservative lawmakers broke cover and called on her to quit. Some commentators are speaking about when she goes, not if she goes. One British tabloid is live-streaming a head of iceberg lettuce placed next to a picture of Truss and asking which will last longer.
“Truss has wrecked the Conservative Party’s reputation for fiscal competence and humiliated Britain on the international stage. Senior Tories must now act in the national interest and remove her from Downing Street as quickly as possible,” declared an editorial in the Sunday Times that also called Hunt the “de factor prime minister.”
Hunt, a moderate Conservative who is considered to be a safe pair of hands, told the BBC in an earlier interview that Truss was “in charge,” despite the ripping up of much of her economic agenda.
“She's listened. She's changed. She's been willing to do that most difficult thing in politics, which is to change tack,” he added.
Robert Halfon, a Conservative lawmaker, called for a “dramatic reset” and didn’t deny that plotters within the party were plotting. “Of course colleagues are unhappy with what is going on,” he told Sky News. In recent days, the government has “looked like libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as kind of laboratory mice.”
A poll by Opinium showed that if there was an election today, the opposition Labour Party would win a landslide with 411 seats, compared to the Conservatives with just 136.
The Conservatives are no strangers to regicide, and will ruthlessly jettison leaders they think are no longer election winners. Boris Johnson won the Conservatives a stunning victory in 2019 general election but after a series of scandals — and a dip in the polls — he was forced to resign. Truss’s personal poll ratings are worse that Johnson’s ever were and her party’s poll ratings have nosedived.
The names being bandied about as possible replaces are Rishi Sunak and Penny Mordaunt, two of Truss’s rivals in the last leadership contest. Ben Wallace, the popular defense secretary, is thought to be another possible contender. Some even wonder if Johnson could make a comeback — many of the grass roots were upset when he was forced to resign.
Others are urging calm and say that Truss and Hunt should be given a second chance.
Mordant, the Conservative Party’s leader in the parliament wrote in the Sunday Telegraph that this was not the time to change prime ministers.
“Our country needs stability,” she said, “not a soap opera.”
But in a sign of the emotion of the moment, she dredged up Winston Churchill’s warning to the British people at the start of World War II that the future would hold “blood, toil, tears and sweat.”
Damian Green, a former deputy prime minister, told BBC radio that Truss has learned some hard lessons and “that means we can hopefully put the past few weeks behind us and start again.”
Green, a Tory lawmaker, said the timing and extent of the tax cuts announced three weeks ago were “wrong and simply couldn’t be accepted by the financial markets.”
He called Truss “a pragmatist” who “realized the first budget didn’t work in spectacular fashion and made sensible view to try something else.”
So far, almost all the Truss tax cuts have now been revoked.
Hunt said Monday that the base rate for income tax would remain the same — at 20 percent.
Last week, the government reversed its plan to cut corporate tax, and will now allow the rate to increase from the current 19 percent to 25 percent in April 2023.
Earlier, the government also scraped its plan to cut income tax for top earners from 45 percent to 40 percent.
Truss spent the summer campaigning about Conservative Party members for the top job — and her pitch was all about tax cuts and transforming Britain into a “low tax, high wage, high growth economy.”
Many now are asking what is the point of Truss if Trussonomics — her main pitch was to be the leader who lowered taxes — is all but dead.
But as the Tories will have noted by now, switching out leaders is no guarantee that they will get a boost in the polls.
Over the weekend, President Biden was asked by a reporter what he thought of Truss’s “trickle-down plan that she had to walk back from.”
The president replied, “Well, it’s predictable. I wasn’t the only one that thought it was a mistake.”
Usually, American presidents don’t comment on an ally’s budget, but Biden weighed in, saying “I think that the idea of cutting taxes on the super wealthy at a time when — anyway, I just think — I disagreed with the policy, but that’s up to Great Britain to make that judgment, not me.” | 2022-10-17T11:46:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jeremy Hunt reverses Liz Truss budget in first statement as chancellor - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/17/jeremy-hunt-liz-truss-uk-budget-reversal/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/17/jeremy-hunt-liz-truss-uk-budget-reversal/ |
Nick Cave became a beacon to grieving parents. Then he lost another son.
In his book ‘Faith, Hope and Carnage,’ Nick Cave illuminates a way back to the world after loss — a path that is his to walk again.
Perspective by Caitlin Gibson
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds perform at the Metronome Prague music festival in Czech Republic on June 23. (Michal Kamaryt/CTK/AP Images)
In the time before, Nick Cave was known for his intimidating, indecipherable aura — an enigmatic Australian rock star who shared little of his interior life beyond the searing lyrics he sang or snarled from the stage. Then Cave, the famous frontman of the band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, lost his teenage son, and became something else entirely. Or rather, something more.
It’s been seven years since 15-year-old Arthur Cave died after falling from a cliff near the family’s home in Brighton, England, and since then, his father has undergone a striking, highly visible transformation. He is now something akin to existential oracle, someone who shares his hard-won epiphanies and most vulnerable reflections with anyone who cares to write to him, responding with empathy and affection to their probing inquiries through a weekly email newsletter called The Red Hand Files. On tour in 2019, Cave invited audience members to ask him unscripted questions between songs.
Through this work, his audience expanded beyond his devout fan base, reaching those who found him as they searched for meaning in their own wounded lives. In processing his own grief so publicly, he has become a guide of sorts to others who mourn — and particularly to those who, like Cave, have experienced the death of a child.
Now Cave is revealing himself anew to this wider following through the book “Faith, Hope and Carnage." Written with Irish journalist Seán O’Hagan, the book is a series of transcribed conversations between the two. It delves into spirituality and creativity, Cave’s turbulent past, the perils of self-destructive behavior, his thoughts about what lies ahead. But above all, the book explores the ongoing reverberations of Arthur’s death and the profound reorientation that followed. In doing so, it is perhaps another gift from Cave to fellow grieving parents, those who are trying to make sense of what their radically altered future might look like.
“Again and again, almost in spite of itself, [the book] circles around to the subject of grief and its potentially transcendent dimension,” Cave said in a written response to questions about his recent work. “Grief is a magnetizing force from which the book cannot escape.”
This feels especially true in light of the tragedy that occurred just before the book’s publication: On May 9, Cave lost another son, 31-year-old Jethro Lazenby. Lazenby, who was found in a motel in Melbourne, Australia, had reportedly struggled with mental illness and addiction, though no cause of death has been confirmed.
His death is acknowledged briefly in the last paragraphs of the book: Sadly, as I began writing this afterword, the death was announced of Nick’s oldest son, Jethro, in Melbourne, O’Hagan wrote. On the final page of a book devoted in large part to chronicling the reimagining of life and self after the loss of a child, the impact of this one sentence feels seismic.
For now, there is little more Cave feels ready to say. “I don’t know how to speak about Jethro’s death,” Cave told me. “I’m trying to work it out. It’s not like you get used to these things. In times like these all you can really do is take the next least-wounding step.”
After Arthur’s death, the least-wounding step for Cave ultimately proved to be a pivot toward openness, an urge to somehow give voice to the mute bewilderment of loss, and the beginning of a dialogue that has since only grown in intensity. Cave says he receives anywhere from 50 to 100 letters each day through The Red Hand Files, with tens of thousands more in a queue.
The transcendence of Nick Cave: After losing his son, the post-punk icon found communion with his fans
“I am a musician and songwriter and any authority I have to speak about matters of grief and loss come entirely from personal experience — a grieving man living within a grieving family. So, I am no expert,” he wrote to me. “But over the last few years, through The Red Hand Files, I’ve developed a way to articulate my feelings and give people an opportunity to talk about their own experience dealing with the mechanics of grief.”
What happens if the son dies? asked one grieving father identified only as “K,” who wanted to know if he would be forever trapped in the pain of losing his little boy. Do we lose the ability to be saved and evolve?
I am 16 weeks and three days in at losing my child, wrote Luna from New Zealand. How did Susie and yourself find peace with your agonising grief?
How have you and your family been able to create meaning through such devastation? asked Carol from the U.K., who had lost her son, Dominik.
These are only a few of many. “I hear from grieving parents all the time,” Cave told me. “It is truly devastating to see the difference between the letters from fathers who have lost a child and letters from mothers who have lost a child. Fathers tend to be a little more circumspect around loss, and their letters can be deeply moving as a result, but there is clearly a circle of hell reserved for grieving mothers that no one else can enter. The mother is at the heart of the whirlwind, and her grief is so primal, so complex, so self-punishing and riddled with feelings of shame and failure and deep, furious love that the letters are almost impossible to read. But I feel a duty to acknowledge their suffering, these mothers and fathers in pain.”
He includes one such letter in the book, from a woman named Tiffany who told Cave that she was overcome by guilt and post-traumatic stress after the sudden death of her 22-year-old son from an overdose. She included a poem she wrote immediately after losing her child, an unfiltered torrent of half-broken lines that seem to vibrate with anguish. In his book, Cave offers Tiffany’s letter as an example of how powerful the experience of mutual witness can be, for all involved: “The power of her poem made it safe to turn around and face my own point of trauma,” he told O’Hagan.
It’s clear that these letter-writers trust Cave’s capacity to recognize them exactly as they are. While so many common cultural depictions of grief gravitate toward opposite extremes — presenting either a portrait of relentless torment, or an inspirational message of perseverance that glosses over the raw agony of loss — Cave’s writing offers an unflinching view of both obliteration and hope. Though it is an undeniably emotional effort to engage with strangers in this way, Cave says that he finds these connections to be meaningful, and ultimately healing.
“Because of the anonymous nature of the letters, it is clear that many people are saying the things they are saying for the first time. Because, you know, there is no adequate language around grief, and people don’t want to talk about these things because they understand that there are constraints on the extent of their sufferings — that there is a sell-by date to grief,” he told me. “So, they ... write their letters, and I read them, and well, they help me, and perhaps I help them. I hope so.”
In “Faith, Hope and Carnage,” Cave offers more expansive reflections of his own experience, shared with the hope of reaching those who fear they will never know anything beyond boundless sorrow.
“It was as if the experience of grief enlarged my heart in some way. I have experienced periods of happiness more than I have ever felt before, even though it was the most devastating thing ever to happen to me,” he told O’Hagan. “I say all this with huge caution and a million caveats, but I also say it because there are those who think there is no way back from the catastrophic event. That they will never laugh again. But there is, and they will.”
As he faces a new grief, Cave carries with him this more evolved understanding of what lies ahead. From the stage, through his letters, and now in his book, Cave illuminates a way back to the world after calamity — a path that is his to walk, again.
“I have learned that things get better, in time. I know that fundamentally,” he told me. “I also know that there is a terrible beauty that exists beyond the borders of grief, where we can become connected to the world in a startling way. Life takes on a kind of resonance, you know, a spiritual clarity that is dependent on an understanding of our fragile and undefended nature. Life becomes precious.” | 2022-10-17T11:46:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nick Cave became a beacon to grieving parents. Then he lost another son. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/10/17/nick-cave-faith-hope-carnage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/parenting/2022/10/17/nick-cave-faith-hope-carnage/ |
Bradley Jacobs, chief executive officer of XPO Logistics Inc., speaks during an interview in New York, U.S., on Thursday, Jan. 28, 2016. Jacobs said XPO sees up to $1billion in organic sales in 2016 and may return to making acquisitions in 2017. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
If there’s a surefire way to make money during these bleak economic and geopolitical times, it may be a bet on Brad Jacobs’s next move.
The billionaire chief executive officer of XPO Logistics Inc. is hunting for a new industry in which to invest after spending just more than a decade building a company that jumped in market value to about $10 billion from about $160 million. He’s now splitting XPO into three parts and, for the most part, exiting the business.
Although he still has work to do to wrap up the last XPO spinoff, he’s already looking ahead to building up a new company.
“It’s the best possible time to start a business when valuations are low and capital is tight, so I’m looking forward to the hunt,” Jacobs, 66, said in a Bloomberg TV interview on Oct. 11 while participating in the Greenwich Economic Forum.XPO will keep the lucrative less-than-truckload business, which is a more consolidated sector of the trucking industry and has higher margins than long-haul transportation. GXO, a warehouse operator, was spun out last year, and RXO, an automated freight broker, will begin trading as a separate company on Nov. 1. Jacobs will be chairman of all three companies but otherwise will be free to search for his next venture.
Investors know they can’t predict future outcomes based on past results, but Jacobs has done this five times before and has yet to stub his toe, enriching shareholders along the way.
When Jacobs was 23, he started an oil brokerage that he later sold and then founded an oil-trading business. He has rolled up industries in garbage collection and tool rental. The garbage business was sold to what is now Waste Management Inc., and United Rentals Inc., which Jacobs founded and exited, has a market value of $19 billion. Jacobs has said he’s made more than 500 acquisitions in his career.
At the Greenwich forum, he dropped some hints about where he’ll be searching for acquisitions: financial services, health care, biotechnology and “fallen SPACs.” A lot of the so-called blank-check companies were valued too high but have become more attractive after their shares have taken a pounding, “I’m stumbling across some that are actually really good businesses,’’ Jacobs said. They lack capital and vision, he added, hinting that he could provide both.
Judging from his record, there’s no reason to doubt that. Jacobs likes to find sectors that are overlooked, perhaps because they just aren’t terribly sexy, like picking up garbage, renting tools or operating a warehouse. He likes to add technology to those activities, giving him an edge in mundane industries peppered with small players.
The ride can be rocky at times. XPO was winning over investors as Jacobs snapped up truck brokerages and contract logistics companies and cobbled together a last-mile delivery business that used contractors, which meant he didn’t have to own the trucks and hire drivers. XPO was a fast-growing, mostly asset-light business.
The more he hunted for deals, the more he began to see the power of owning trucks. Investors balked when he bought France’s Norbert Dentressangle SA, a European trucking company. That unease turned into rebellion after Jacobs surprised the market in 2015 with the $3 billion purchase of Con-way Inc., a US trucking company that operated both long-haul and short-haul businesses. XPO was no longer asset light, and the stock sank by a third.
Jacobs stood his ground and at the time called the Con-way acquisition the most attractive one he’s ever done. Investors came around to his point of view as Jacobs proved to the market that he’s a savvy operator of companies and not just a dealmaker.
In 2018, XPO was attacked by a short seller, Spruce Point Capital Management, after the company hit a patch of cash-flow weakness and the shares plunged. Jacobs reacted by buying back $1 billion of shares financed with borrowed money. XPO regained its footing and Spruce slinked away.
Even before the pandemic hit in 2020, Jacobs was already contemplating an XPO breakup. His original idea was to offer a one-stop shop of logistics from handling customers’ inventory at the warehouse to moving it around the country. Over time, he concluded that the business was too complicated for Wall Street, and in January 2020 he hired investment bankers to explore cleaving off businesses to become more of a pure-play company that investors could easily understand. Jacobs was no longer on the hunt to buy companies. He was looking to sell.
Critics may take issue with Jacobs plowing forward with the breakup of XPO in the teeth of a market downturn. XPO announced last week that the spinoff of the truck brokerage piece will be completed and that the new company, RXO, is selling $355 million of notes due 2027 that have an annual interest rate of 7%. Perhaps Jacobs could have ridden out this market swoon and held out for more favorable conditions.
But Jacobs isn’t the type to sit around and wait. He’s itching to get back into the hunt. Investors would be wise to keep an eye on what he snares.
• Industrial CEOs Have a Window for M&A Bargains: Thomas Black
• The Secret Sauce for Private Equity Runs Dry: Shuli Ren | 2022-10-17T12:21:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brad Jacobs Is on the Hunt. Investors Should Pay Attention. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/brad-jacobs-is-on-the-hunt-investors-should-pay-attention/2022/10/17/a8fd45ee-4e0b-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/brad-jacobs-is-on-the-hunt-investors-should-pay-attention/2022/10/17/a8fd45ee-4e0b-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
“American Sirens” book cover; author Kevin Hazzard. (Bonnie J. Heath)
Not so long ago, emergency medical services didn’t exist in the United States. But a group of brave Black men in Pittsburgh and a pioneering White physician changed that.
“American Sirens: The Incredible Story of the Black Men Who Became America’s First Paramedics” tells their story. Journalist and former paramedic Kevin Hazzard paints a vivid picture of the nation’s first EMS service, the Freedom House Ambulance Service of Pittsburgh. Segregated by redlining, railroads and “urban renewal” projects, the city contracted with the police for its primitive ambulance service.
Then in November 1966, former Pennsylvania governor David L. Lawrence, who had also served as Pittsburgh mayor, suffered a heart attack at a political event and was transported to a hospital in a police ambulance. Lawrence fell into a coma and died weeks later. What happened next is the stuff of medical legend.
Hazzard weaves together the stories of John Moon, a young Black man bent on becoming a paramedic; Peter Safar, a physician who had treated Lawrence and felt strongly that laypeople should be trained in emergency medicine and what is now known as cardiopulmonary resuscitation; and a large cast of marginalized people on an unlikely medical mission.
Those first student paramedics were men many saw as disposable. “It felt as if the whole thing were meant to fail,” Hazzard writes.
His book succeeds in recalling long-overlooked events. It’s a medical and human drama that will make readers appreciate the courage of the first paramedics, the foresight of a physician not content to restrict emergency medicine to other doctors and the artistry of modern EMS workers.
It’s also a narrative bristling with the indignities of racism and medical ignorance. Hazzard’s subjects defied and overcame prejudice but also were often overwhelmed by both.
“They were here, and maybe they’re gone, but they’d like you to remember them,” Hazzard writes. “American Sirens” isn’t a book you’re likely to forget. | 2022-10-17T12:21:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book tells story of Black men who were the first paramedics in U.S. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/17/black-paramedic-pioneers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/17/black-paramedic-pioneers/ |
About 1 in 10 babies is born too soon, risking lifelong complications and death. (BSIP/Universal Images Group/Getty Images)
“Help give your baby more time.” The eye-catching bright pink ads for the drug Makena tout its ability to reduce the risk of preterm birth. Introduced in 2011, it has been seen as a potential miracle drug for women at high-risk.
In a highly unusual move, the agency has indicated it will make the case to withdraw Makena from the market during several advisory committee meetings in Washington beginning Monday. Covis Pharma, the company that owns the patent, is fighting to continue sales, making arguments about racial equity.
The company’s CEO Michael Porter has argued that there is evidence to suggest the drug may work in a narrow population that includes Black women, who have historically been at higher risk of maternal complications. That claim is based on a 2003 study that was used to grant the treatment accelerated approval in the first place. Several Black health groups support keeping Makena on the market for further testing, and the NAACP said it worries that pulling the drug may “deepen profound existing maternal and infant health inequities in the U.S.” given the lack of alternatives.
Adriane Fugh-Berman, a Georgetown University Medical Center professor who studies pharmaceutical marketing practices, accuses Covis of exploiting racial sensitivities to maximize profits. The Luxembourg-based company is owned by private equity firm Apollo Global Management, which purchased it in 2020 in a deal estimated to have been worth $700 million, in large part because of optimism about Makena’s blockbuster sales potential. The drug has already been used by an estimated 350,000 women across the country. Fugh-Berman said the drug is not only expensive for women — costing upward of $10,000 in some cases — but it carries risks.
Adam C. Urato, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist in Framingham, Mass. who has filed testimony for the FDA advisory meeting, said experts inside and outside the agency have repeatedly analyzed clinical trials looking for evidence of Makena’s efficacy, but have found none.
He recently tweeted that “No one should be fooled by the racial equity spin for Makena.” In his prepared remarks, he called Covis “unethical” for using “high-risk, Black pregnant women as ‘props’ to make a racial equity argument.”
Keeping Makena on the market does nothing to help racial equity -- it just puts Black moms & their babies at risk.
The price immediately skyrocketed, Peaceman remembered, to $7,500 for the same amount of medication “which upset a lot of people.” But the FDA’s stamp of approval also paved the way to insurance coverage which allowed many more women, including those on Medicaid, to get the drug. Pharmacies could still continue to produce less expensive versions of the drug, but the market largely shifted to Makena.
Makena was authorized in 2011 under a fast-tracked process intended to speed the availability of drugs that treat serious or life-threatening conditions, but which requires follow-up data that confirms or refutes the drug’s benefits. The FDA typically likes to see multiple studies before approving drugs, and the original trial, with 310 women in the progesterone group with 153 women getting a placebo, was considered well-designed and promising, but not definitive.
Covis has said the “inconsistent” outcomes in the two trials may be due to the differing patient populations. The patient population in the original, promising trial was 59 percent Black women, while the participants in the larger one that showed no benefit from the drug were largely Eastern European, with only 7 percent Black participants. In a filing with the FDA, the drug company called the latter trial “flawed,” not only because of its racial demographics, but because the population was low-risk and the women had access to national health care systems that differ greatly from the complex, piecemeal system in the United States.
The FDA’s efforts to withdraw Makena go back as far back as 2019 when an expert advisory panel voted 9 to 7 that the drug should be pulled, but due to regulatory requirements and the pandemic, the process was delayed.
In a 153-page slide presentation posted in advance of this month’s meetings of the Obstetrics, Reproductive and Urologic Drugs Advisory Committee, FDA experts did not hint at a compromise, arguing the drug exposes women to “serious risks without demonstrated benefit.”
“Makena’s unfavorable benefit-risk balance supports removal from [the] market,” wrote Patrizia Cavazzoni, the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, and her team.
In fact, when experts sliced the numbers in several other ways — a strategy that researchers sometimes use to try to find statistical links — the conclusion remained the same: No evidence of treatment benefit by geographical region. No evidence of treatment benefit by gestational age. No evidence of treatment benefit by other risk factors.
Moreover, the list of Makena’s reported side effects the FDA lists is long and unnerving: blood clots, allergic reactions, decreased tolerance of glucose which can exacerbate diabetes, fluid retention which can worsen preeclampsia and depression that led to hospitalization. The FDA also pointed out the possibility of an increased cancer risk for the children treated with the active ingredient in Makena.
Regulators noted that leaving the drug on the market does not address health disparities. On the contrary, they said, it inhibits development of other effective treatments, and does the “greatest disservice” to those at greatest risk of preterm birth.
Mary Norton, also a maternal fetal medicine specialist and a spokesperson for The Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine, said the organization continues to support use of the drug “in pregnant people with a profile more representative of the very-high-risk population” in the first trial, but that other women should discuss known risks and benefits with their doctors. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists already updated its guidance in 2021 after the second trial results were published to reflect a similar approach.
Seeming to indicate its support for the FDA’s efforts to withdraw the drug, Henderson wrote, “we respect the scientific review process and decisions made by the agency.”
The FDA typically follows the recommendations of its expert panels, and has previously taken action within a few months of a committee’s vote.
Rachel Roubein contributed to this report. | 2022-10-17T12:22:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | FDA wants to pull Makena, saying it doesn't stop premature births - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/17/preterm-birth-makena-fda-black-women/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/17/preterm-birth-makena-fda-black-women/ |
America should spend billions to revive local news
Freshly printed copies of the San Francisco Chronicle roll off the printing press at one of the Chronicle's printing facilities on Sept. 20, 2007 in San Francisco. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
My vision for addressing the huge decline in local journalism involves hiring 87,000 new journalists for about 1,300 news organizations with more than $10 billion in funding. Such a massive investment in local news isn’t going to happen next week and probably not next year, either.
But it is also not a pipe dream. There is a growing recognition that the collapse of local news and information is a crisis undermining the United States’ politics and communities. Ten billion isn’t much money for the United States to spend on something the nation defines as a crisis. Millions of dollars are already being pumped into reviving local journalism, although right now that’s largely limited to a few major cities such as Chicago and Philadelphia.
Where would the $10 billion and all those reporters go? There are five principles for local news that can and should be implemented as widely and quickly as possible: news outlets in communities across the country; more outlets with a well-defined, transparent point of view; coverage that is free for everyone; a lot of in-depth reporting available in multiple formats; and news organizations that are nonprofits.
In every community. This is the most important, fundamental principle. A growing number of areas, particularly small towns, either don’t have any news organizations or those organizations are so under-staffed that they don’t cover much of anything. It’s hard to have real democracy in local decision-making when people have fairly little information about what public officials are doing.
So, here’s the solution. The United States is divided into 435 congressional districts, each with about 760,000 people. We need at least one 100-staffer news organization in every district. Some of those districts aren’t a single community or city. And districts, of course, change every 10 years. But if there were well-staffed news organizations in 435 distinct geographic areas around the country, that would result in a huge increase in journalism, particularly places that are now “news deserts.”
This would not merely add new outlets in rural areas. Inevitably, a big metro area has suburbs, exurbs and distinct neighborhoods within the central city. In most cases, the central business district within city limits gets the vast majority of coverage. But the people who live in Prince George’s County don’t get much value from news about D.C.’s mayor.
Having well-staffed news organizations in every community isn’t just about making sure city council and school board meetings get covered. It’s a way to build stronger communities. News organizations should be a forum through which communities hash out their goals and priorities. They can, through their coverage and selection of writers and columnists, elevate voices who aren’t rich or powerful.
In-depth, multiplatform. Local newspapers once did a lot of in-depth reporting but they have laid off tens of thousands of reporters over the past two decades due to declining revenue. Local TV still has high profits but never really had a tradition of in-depth reporting. This is a huge problem. It is essential that local news organizations have beat reporters and investigative teams who do real scrutiny of the police, schools, politicians and other centers of power in each community. These organizations should also cover major business and cultural news.
Because people consume news in such a variety of ways, local news organizations need to be producing stories in text, audio, video and whatever formats emerge in the future. Essentially, we need local versions of outlets like The Post, the New York Times, CNN and NPR — lots of original reporting, accessible in many formats.
Free. Anyone born after 1985 has lived in a world where at least some news was on the internet for free. It will be hard to get them to pay for it. When I visit college campuses, students chafe at the very idea of paywalls.
Paywalls often result in the journalism with the most rigorous reporting and editing (like that of The Post, the Times, the Wall Street Journal and many local newspapers) reaching a paying audience that is upper-income and older, while younger and less wealthy nonsubscribers can’t access important stories they might otherwise read. Once you graduate from high school or college, journalism is one of your primary sources of education, particularly about policy and government. Walling off this information might be good economics, but it is bad civics.
Also, as U.S. politics becomes more nationalized, people in, say, Boise, Idaho, might want to read the news in Atlanta for a few weeks during the final stretch of a crucial Senate race without having to subscribe to an entire Atlanta-based publication.
Nonprofit. The internet has killed the business model for local newspapers, which had been the central place for in-depth reporting about towns, cities and states. And those papers weren’t all that great at in-depth reporting in the first place. Truly implementing the three principles I laid out above (everywhere, in-depth, free) isn’t going to be profitable. And profit-seeking in news often results in flawed coverage, such as the excessive focus on crime in local TV.
It’s time to just accept that good local news won’t make anyone much money and will need philanthropic and perhaps even government funding.
With a point of view. Some journalism should try to reach people of all parties and ideologies. I am not sure if any news organization or individual journalist can be truly objective, neutral, balanced or whatever word we are currently using for the kind of mass audience news that PBS, NPR, The Post and other such organizations try to produce. That said, it’s important to have a core news organization in every community that is trying to reach a mass audience.
At the same time, there is a case for news sources that aren’t as focused on appealing to everyone. Many journalists I know, particularly Black ones, are exhausted and frustrated by the constant demands to prove they are not too harsh toward a Republican Party that tried to overturn the 2020 election and bans books by Black and LGBTQ authors from public schools. Much of the journalism over the past decade that has most accurately captured the radical turn of the Republican Party has been done by opinion writers and those at left-wing publications who are not bound by mainstream journalism conventions. And ratings for MSNBC and Fox News often being higher than CNN indicates that many news consumers actually prefer a product that openly aligns with their values.
So it would be ideal to have a news outlet with 50 or so staffers in each community that acknowledges and prioritizes, say, reducing economic and racial inequality and a second outlet of similar size that would, for example, come from the perspective that capitalism and religion are generally forces for good. I’m not envisioning partisan Democratic and Republican news outlets. My model for these organizations would be the present-day TV program Democracy Now and the Black-owned newspapers of the 1950s and ’60s that challenged leaders of both parties to advance the civil rights of Black Americans. The flip side would ideally be akin to the Salt Lake City-based, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints-affiliated Deseret News or the TV network CNBC.
I haven’t laid out who exactly is going to fund this journalism or the precise structure of these outlets. Perhaps a big newsroom of 150 to 220 staffers is necessary to cover 750,000 people, or maybe 75 would be sufficient. And I understand some obvious objections, such as whether a single publication in each community could in any way represent the views of all people on the right or the left.
But this captures a broad view of what a healthy local journalism sector would look like. If you paid 200 journalists an average salary of $80,000 in each of 435 congressional districts, that’s about $7 billion. Add in operating costs and you’re almost certainly over $10 billion a year. That might sound like a lot, but it’s about $30 per American, far less than the per capita spending on public media in many nations abroad. And this would be for journalism literally across the country, freely available to anyone.
This is not a fantasy. We aren’t as far away from it as you might think. The NPR affiliates in many large and middle-sized cities are already doing in-depth reporting in audio and text and are free and nonprofit. They raise about $1 billion a year through a combination of grants, sponsorships and private donations. Pumping much more money into existing public radio stations and creating more of them would be the easiest, most obvious step toward broad-based news in all 435 congressional districts.
The more ideological outlets would not start with a traditional funding model or an existing network of news sources that could be expanded. But it would probably be easy to raise money for them.
The old version of local news had many more reporters than today’s does, and anyone could buy that day’s paper with the money in their pocket. But those papers largely carried the perspective of the White establishment of a given city and presented that perspective as the objective news. So the old model wasn’t that good. What’s replaced it is even worse — the same papers and approach but fewer staffers.
All of the crises of the United States in 2022 — the decline of newspapers, the deep racial tensions in many cities, the nation’s growing partisan polarization — show the need to create a new and improved version of local news. Let’s do it. | 2022-10-17T12:22:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How to fix the crisis in local news: Spend $10 billion a year on it - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/17/local-news-crisis-plan-fix-perry-bacon/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/17/local-news-crisis-plan-fix-perry-bacon/ |
Analysis by Josh Dawsey
Tim Starks
Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202! Check out that triple byline, huh?
Below: A former reporter sued a law firm for allegedly hiring hackers to ruin his reputation, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken is going to Silicon Valley. But first:
U.S. government warns that Chinese group are probing Democrats, Republicans for vulnerabilities
Chinese government hackers are scanning U.S. political party domains ahead of next month’s midterm elections, looking for vulnerable systems as a potential precursor to hacking operations, and the FBI is making a big push to alert potential victims to batten down the hatches.
Over the past week, FBI agents in field offices across the country have notified some Republican and Democratic state party headquarters they might be targets of the Chinese hackers, according to party and U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
None of the potential targets were hacked or breached, the officials said.
“The FBI is being considerably more proactive,” one senior U.S. official said. “It’s part of a larger move that the FBI isn’t waiting for the attack to occur. They’re increasingly trying to prevent.”
The network scanning is part of a “comprehensive broad campaign” by the Chinese to seek potential victims, the official said. “This is what they do.”
The FBI visited at least a dozen Republican Party headquarters in recent days.
“The RNC remains secure and we have not been compromised,” Republican National Committee spokesperson Emma Vaughn said in an email. “Cybersecurity remains a top priority for the entire Republican ecosystem, which is why we place a premium on ensuring our stakeholders have the necessary tools, resources and training on best practices so that our Party remains protected and vigilant.”
Agents similarly spoke to Democratic parties in several states, a Democratic National Committee official said. “The DNC and state parties have been in contact with the FBI,” the official said. “There is no evidence that any systems have been compromised.”
The FBI declined to comment.
A National Security Agency memo this month said the Chinese hackers scanned more than 100 U.S. state-level political party domains altogether. The memo said the hackers are suspected to be the group formerly known as APT 1. In 2013, cybersecurity firm Mandiant publicly revealed the existence of the espionage outfit, its connections to the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the fact that it had stolen hundreds of terabytes worth of data from at least 141 companies.
The political party domains were scanned “likely so the PRC cyber actor could build a target network for possible future operations,” the NSA said in its memo. An FBI notice said the hackers’ effort appeared centered on obtaining additional sub-domains to help build that network.
Party organizations whose domains the Chinese hackers scanned should audit their network logs and logins, the FBI recommended. They also should make sure their systems have been patched.
Government-backed hackers have a history of targeting U.S. political campaigns.
Chinese government hackers in the past have compromised presidential campaign systems to conduct political espionage. In 2008, according to U.S. intelligence officials, they infiltrated the computer networks of the campaigns of Barack Obama and John McCain, looking for information that, for instance, might shed light on the campaigns’ positions on China.
In 2015 and 2016, Russian cyberspies hacked the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign for espionage and to interfere in the election. They also hacked into Republican state political campaign arms, FBI Director James B. Comey said in 2017.
With less than a month until midterm elections, U.S. officials are not seeing any signs of active threats by foreign governments to election-related networks.
“We are seeing obviously a number of different actors that continue to operate in terms of influence,” U.S. Cyber Command and NSA chief Gen. Paul Nakasone said at a Council on Foreign Relations event last week. “We are seeing no significant indications of attacks that are being planned right now.”
As the 2016 presidential race showed, hackers can release stolen information from political parties in an attempt to embarrass their victims.
“Political parties are excellent sources of intelligence on developing policy and they’ve been targeted for that purpose by cyberespionage actors for some time, but as foreign election interference has become commonplace, the risk is no longer just quiet spy work,” said John Hultquist, vice president of threat intelligence at Mandiant. When successful, “intrusions like these can be leveraged in hack-and-leak activity designed to manipulate the democratic process.”
Other Chinese efforts
Separately, China has stepped up attempts to sway U.S. voters in the midterms, cybersecurity company Recorded Future’s Insikt Group concluded in a report last week.
“We’ve noticed an increase in China’s state-sponsored influencers, such as ‘wolf warrior’ diplomats, political pundits, and inauthentic accounts, attempting to influence US voters,” Craig Terron, director of Insikt Group’s global issues team, said via email. “This cycle, China’s influencers are actively conducting malign influence operations campaigns against the 2022 elections, which signifies a shift in tactics from previous US elections, where China’s influencers were less active in attempts to influence US voters.”
More from Terron: “While we’ve seen China attempt to influence voters, we have seen only limited attempts for China to directly interfere with the midterm elections (whereby an agent from the Ministry of State Security hired a private investigator to interfere in the congressional election bid of a candidate). We expect operations to continue at a similar pace as a result, particularly as China’s influence efforts generally seek to change perspectives over the longer term rather than immediately impact decision-making.”
Hackers, physical threats against election workers, insiders gaining unauthorized access to election equipment and influence operations are making the election threat environment “more complex than it has ever been,” Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly told reporters last week in a briefing about efforts to protect the midterms.
“The security challenges are intertwined,” she said. “They can’t be viewed in isolation when you think about foreign interference. In many cases, the threat actors who are attempting to breach our election systems are the same ones who are conducting influence operations that seek to sow discord in our country.”
China has denied past U.S. accusations of malfeasance in cyberspace, saying the United States has instead victimized its country with cyberattacks.
Former Wall Street Journal reporter accuses law firm of hiring hackers to ruin his reputation
Former Wall Street Journal chief foreign correspondent Jay Solomon argued in a lawsuit that law firm Dechert worked with Indian hackers to steal his emails between him and a source, Reuters’s Raphael Satter reports. The source, Iranian American aviation executive Farhad Azima, filed his own lawsuit against Dechert last week.
“Solomon said the messages, which showed Azima floating the idea of the two of them going into business together, were put into a dossier and circulated in a successful effort to get him fired,” Satter writes. Solomon’s lawsuit says that Dechert “wrongfully disclosed this dossier first to Mr. Solomon’s employer, the Wall Street Journal, at its Washington DC bureau, and then to other media outlets in an attempt to malign and discredit him,” which resulted in Solomon being effectively “blackballed by the journalistic and publishing community.”
Dechert told Reuters that it disputed the allegation and would fight it in court. Azima didn’t have an immediate comment for the outlet.
The U.S. government needs to do more, though some companies took action in the wake of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, Fick told the Wall Street Journal. “We can’t just rely on people’s goodwill,” Mr. Fick said. “We actually have to work with the private sector to develop market competitive options. I don’t think that’s impossible.”
Fick also said the U.S. government has had “unclear swim lanes” on interagency coordination, hampering the country’s ability to lead in tech competition. “We have redundancies, we have gaps,” he told the outlet. “Clarity of roles and responsibilities — some of that’s inside the department, some of it is with other agencies — is a big piece of it.”
Microsoft says Ukraine, Poland targetted with novel ransomware attack (Reuters)
Israeli officer reveals intricate details of IDF's first ever cyberattack (Ynetnews)
The voting machine hacking threat you probably haven’t heard about (Politico)
Sidney Powell’s nonprofit raised $16 million as she spread election falsehoods (Jon Swaine and Emma Brown)
How a Microsoft blunder opened millions of PCs to potent malware attacks (Ars Technica)
Hacker gets $50 million in heist of DeFi’s Mango (Bloomberg News)
Emily Goldman, a strategist at U.S. Cyber Command, discusses cyberspace strategy at a Heritage Foundation event today at noon.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace holds an event on Russian information warfare today at 2 p.m.
Former CISA director Chris Krebs speaks at an event hosted by the American University Washington College of Law’s Tech, Law and Security Program today at 3 p.m.
Back in Seoul after 2+ months and of course I happen upon a performance by a didgeridoo beatboxer, Yoon Hwan Kim. Yes, a didgeridoo beatboxer pic.twitter.com/chO5IhHwnX
11:00 AMThe latest: Trump lashes after Paul Ryan says Trump won’t be 2024 nominee | 2022-10-17T12:22:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chinese hackers are scanning state political party headquarters, FBI says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/chinese-hackers-are-scanning-state-political-party-headquarters-fbi-says/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/chinese-hackers-are-scanning-state-political-party-headquarters-fbi-says/ |
An advertisement featuring the K-pop boy band BTS. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg (SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg)
SEOUL — Members of South Korean boy band BTS will do their mandatory military service and it will be about three years for the fantastically popular septet to return as a group, their agency said on Monday.
The band’s oldest member, Kim Seok-jin or just Jin, had delayed his conscription for as long as possible and will now rescind his postponement request, said Big Hit Music. He plans to initiate his enlistment process as soon as his solo release is concluded later this month.
The six other members will also fulfill their military duties based on individual timelines. “Both the company and the members of BTS are looking forward to reconvening as a group again around 2025 following their service commitment,” the agency said.
In a country where pop culture has wielded enormous influence on politics and economy, BTS’s worldwide success ignited debates about whether pop culture stars should be excused from military duties for their artistic achievements.
Since the late 2010s, officials, business giants and the group’s massive fan base, known as the BTS Army, have been lobbying to keep the seven men out of the barracks. Exemption supporters say the K-pop megahit heightened South Korea’s reputation as a cultural powerhouse and contributed to the country’s economy.
Critics say such an exception would bend the conscription rules to help the rich and powerful skip national duty. South Korea’s Culture Ministry said on Monday that it will continue to review the conscription rules for pop culture stars, with considerations for “fairness.”
Under a conscription system established to counter threats from North Korea, South Korea requires all able-bodied men in the country to serve at least 18 months in the armed forces by age 28.
When Jin was turning 28 two years ago, he became one of the first K-pop stars to be offered a two-year reprieve from the army for his contribution to “enhancing Korea’s international image.”
The Military Manpower Administration under the Defense Ministry, which is in charge of the exemption rules, recognizes five domestic and 37 international competitions for artists (mostly classical and traditional arts) — none of which BTS has won. Fans argue that the K-pop act has contributed no less to Korea’s international reputation than classical artists who are waived their duties under the category.
Since its debut in 2013, BTS has sold tens of millions of records and scored Grammy nominations. The K-pop stars met President Biden earlier this year to discuss Asian inclusion and addressed U.N. General Assembly last year on youth issues and climate change.
In June, BTS announced a hiatus in group activities to focus on solo pursuits, sending shock waves across its millions-strong fan base. The band’s seven members reunited on Saturday for a concert in Busan to promote South Korea’s bid to host the 2030 World Expo in Busan city. At the concert, which was likely the band’s last gig for years to come, members told fans that they will stay active for “decades.” | 2022-10-17T12:23:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | BTS K-pop stars to do military service - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/17/bts-south-korea-military-service/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/17/bts-south-korea-military-service/ |
Georgia GOP Senate nominee Herschel Walker, Oct. 6, 2022, in Wadley, Ga. (AP Photo/Meg Kinnard)
Georgia Republican Senate nominee Herschel Walker acknowledged giving a $700 check to an ex-partner in 2009, but in an interview broadcast Monday, he continued to deny the woman’s claim that the money was provided to pay for an abortion.
Shown images of a receipt from an abortion clinic and a check dated days later with his name, Walker said, “Yes, that’s my check,” during the interview that aired on NBC’s “Today Show.”
Walker said it was his signature on the check but rejected the allegation from the woman, who is the mother of one of Walker’s children, that it was to pay for an abortion.
“It’s a lie,” said Walker, who has opposed abortion in all cases as a Senate candidate. “Prove that I did that. Just to show me things like that does nothing for me.”
He also said he has “no idea what that could be for” when presented with a copy of the check.
Asked why voters should trust him, Walker said, “I’ve been very transparent about everything I’ve done.”
The woman said that Walker paid for her to have an abortion in 2009 and that he ended a relationship with her in 2011 after she refused to have the procedure again. The woman has told The Washington Post that reports in the Daily Beast, which first reported the story, and the New York Times accurately described her experiences. She spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect her privacy and that of her child, who is now 10.
Walker has denied that he paid for an abortion or knew about one at the time. The woman and one of Walker’s adult children by a different woman have accused him of failing to be present as a father.
Walker has campaigned as an opponent of abortion in all cases, including rape, incest and to protect the life of the mother. He also has endorsed a proposal by Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) for a federal ban on abortion at 15 weeks.
But Walker has shifted his position in recent days while insisting that he hasn’t changed his views.
During his debate with Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) on Friday night, Walker said he supported a Georgia abortion ban with exceptions. But days later, he denied that he was reversing his “no exception in my mind” stance.
In the NBC interview, which was conducted over the weekend, Walker also defended pulling out a sheriff’s badge during a debate Friday, calling the badge “legit.”
“This is from my hometown. This is from Johnson County from the sheriff from Johnson County, which is a legit badge,” Walker said in the NBC interview.
Walker displayed the badge — which apparently is honorary in nature — during Friday’s debate after Warnock said that Walker had “pretended to be a police officer,” a reference to claims by Walker about working with the FBI and a local police department.
“Everyone can make fun, but this badge gives me the right … if anything happened in this county, I have the right to work with the police in getting things done,” Walker said in the NBC interview.
On our radar: Chinese hackers are scanning state political party headquarters, FBI warns | 2022-10-17T13:00:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Herschel Walker acknowledges check to woman, denies it was for abortion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/walker-georgia-senate-abortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/walker-georgia-senate-abortion/ |
House Democrats said the Trump loyalist had foreknowledge of the president’s plans to falsely claim election victory and of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol
Stephen K. Bannon is seen on the screen as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol holds a hearing on Capitol Hill on Oct. 13. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Federal prosecutors urged a judge Monday to make former president Donald Trump’s political confidant Stephen K. Bannon the first person to be incarcerated for contempt of Congress in more than half a century, recommending he serve six months in prison for refusing to cooperate with a House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.
They also sought to fine Bannon the maximum $200,000 allowed because he refused to cooperate with court officials’ routine presentencing investigation and divulge his financial records.
“The Defendant’s contempt of Congress was absolute and undertaken in bad faith. To date he remains in default,” wrote prosecutors J.P. Cooney and Amanda R. Vaughn. “For his sustained, bad-faith contempt of Congress, the Defendant should be sentenced to six months’ imprisonment … and fined $200,000—based on his insistence on paying the maximum fine rather than cooperate with the Probation Office’s routine pre-sentencing financial investigation."
Bannon was convicted at trial in July by a federal jury in Washington on two misdemeanor counts — for refusing to provide either documents or documents — each punishable by at least 30 days and up to one year in jail.
Steve Bannon found guilty in Jan. 6 contempt of Congress trial
The House committee investigating the Capitol attack featured Bannon in its final public hearing Thursday, citing evidence lawmakers said indicated he had advance knowledge of Trump’s intent to declare victory falsely on election night and his plans for Jan. 6.
Bannon’s defense is expected to request a noncustodial sentence or probation. Attorney M. Evan Corcoran on Friday asked with the government’s assent to have until noon Monday to file its recommendation to the judge writing that a presentencing report laying out disputed sentencing factors was only filed with the court after noon Friday.
Bannon, 68, a right-wing podcaster and former chief Trump campaign and White House strategist, is the closest person to Trump to be convicted of a crime following the attack on Congress as it met to confirm the 2020 presidential election result. Bannon was not at the Capitol that day, but the contempt case came after lawmakers’ attempt to enforce their calls for witnesses with information to come forward, employing a rarely used criminal statute meant to ensure people comply with congressional subpoenas.
Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the House panel, and Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair, said Congress referred Bannon for prosecution to enforce accountability for those responsible for the events of Jan. 6 as well as for anyone who obstructed lawmakers’ investigation.
The trial judge, U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols, has set sentencing for Friday.
Bannon’s lawyers contend the case will be reversed on appeal and are expected to seek a stay of any sentence pending its resolution.
They have challenged Nichols’s rulings that a defendant charged with contempt of Congress cannot raise as a defense that they were relying on the advice of counsel or believed their cooperation was barred by a president’s claim of executive privilege.
During Bannon’s trial, Corcoran suggested that the committee’s subpoena was illegitimate and politically motivated, and that the deadlines for Bannon to comply were merely “placeholders” for further negotiation. Corcoran, who is also a lawyer for Trump, has become enmeshed as a key figure of the Justice Department and FBI investigation of alleged mishandling of classified documents at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
‘Hollywood Ten’ were jailed for contempt of Congress
U.S. prosecutors highlighted Bannon’s failure to respond or to produce a single document before the subpoena deadline, after which Bannon’s attorneys asserted that Trump intended to invoke executive privilege.
In fact, an attorney for Trump made clear to Bannon’s attorney privately that the former president had given no such instruction, and prosecutors Monday ran through a litany of Bannon’s use “hyperbolic and sometimes violent rhetoric” disparaging the House investigation, lawmakers and criminal justice system.
“The Defendant’s statements prove that his contempt was not aimed at protecting executive privilege or the Constitution, rather it was aimed at undermining the Committee’s efforts to investigate an historic attack on government,” prosecutors Vaughn and Cooney wrote.
No one has been jailed for contempt of Congress since the red-baiting House Un-American Activity Committee hearings of the Cold War era. President Ronald Reagan’s former assistant secretary of state, Elliott Abrams, and former senior CIA official Alan D. Fiers Jr. each served less than a year of probation and community service for taking part in a cover up of the Iran-contra scandal, court records show, before receiving pardons from President George H.W. Bush in 1992.
Scott J. Bloch, former head of the federal agency that protects government whistleblowers during the George W. Bush administration, pleaded guilty in 2010 and was sentenced but was later allowed to withdraw his plea and admit instead to destruction of property. He also served probation.
Bannon is one of two former Trump aides to face criminal charges in connection with rebuffing the committee. Former White House trade adviser Peter K. Navarro’s trial is set for November.
The Justice Department has said it would not charge former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and communications chief Daniel Scavino Jr., who also were referred by Congress for potential criminal prosecution.
Unlike Bannon and Navarro, Meadows and Scavino engaged in months of talks with the committee over the terms and limits of potential testimony and executive privilege claims. Meadows also turned over thousands of text messages and communications with members of Congress and other White House aides before ending negotiations and withdrawing his appearance for a deposition.
And unlike the other three men, Bannon left the Trump White House in 2017 and was a private citizen at the time of the 2020 election and subsequent presidential transition. | 2022-10-17T13:48:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Stephen Bannon faces six months jail for Jan. 6 contempt of Congress - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/17/bannon-jail-contempt-congress-jan6/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/17/bannon-jail-contempt-congress-jan6/ |
Reality has undone Trussonomics in a few short weeks. Incoming Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt has wasted no time putting his predecessor Kwasi Kwarteng’s tax cuts to the sword. While it’s never a good look for your economic policies to be dictated by swings in the financial markets, a full 180-degree switch was required to draw a line under the crisis that sent UK government borrowing costs into orbit. Prime Minister Liz Truss’s authority, though, is in tatters.
The new chancellor is the grown-up in the room. “The most important objective for our country right now is stability,” Hunt said when announcing his bonfire of the tax cuts on Monday. “Governments cannot eliminate volatility in markets, but they can play their part.” Hunt has met already with Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey and, tellingly, with the head of the UK Treasury’s debt management office. He knows where the priorities lie. Whether it will be enough, time will tell, but certainly this is the comprehensive U-turn the markets and global institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, and the credit-rating agencies have been calling for.
Sterling is holding onto the gains it’s made against the dollar since reaching a record low on Sept. 26, the day Kwarteng revealed his tax package. In the gilt market, yields have declined after a wild ride, with benchmark 10-year levels back below 4% after reaching 4.6% last week and 30-year yields also well down from their highs.
Since his surprise appointment on Friday, Hunt has torn up pretty much the entirety of Truss’s economic plans, even abandoning a reduction in the lowest tax rate. “At a time when markets are rightly demanding commitment to sustainable public finances, it is not right to borrow to fund this tax cut,” he said. As flagged extensively last week, corporate tax rates will rise next year to 25% from 19%. More announcements, particularly on government spending plans, will come on Oct. 31. There is still work to do with a hole of around £72 billion ($81 billion) to fill, according to speculation about what the Office for Budgetary Responsibility estimates will be needed to balance the books. The measures announced Monday reduce that gap by about £32 billion annually.
The big change unveiled Monday was a much more cost-effective approach to the most expensive part of Truss’s growth package, the energy price cap. While it largely stays in place this winter, with average household annual energy costs kept to around £2500, from the spring it will be recalibrated to benefit the poorest. With natural gas prices having fallen substantially from the peak, this should reduce the overall cost. This is something of a moving target for the OBR to put a definitive estimate on, but will go a long way to restoring confidence in the government’s approach to its finances, and therefore its borrowing.
The clear-up job always takes longer than expected, and this will certainly be the case as the UK’s reputation has taken a hammering. A significant risk premium has appeared not just in government borrowing costs but all sterling corporate debt. Moreover, the BOE will still need to push ahead with another “significant” rise in official interest rates, in the words of Chief Economist Huw Pill. So more pain for UK consumers and borrowers is still to come.
The economy is headed for recession, if it’s not already in one, and the grim outlook has been exacerbated needlessly by the recent bout of self harm. As Kit Juckes, currency strategist at Societe Generale SA, puts it, “gilt yields should fall, sterling volatility should melt away and all we’ll be left with will be recession, austerity, higher rates and a lingering sense that this sterling crisis, more than its predecessors, was homemade and avoidable.”
Still, as former Labour Chancellor Denis Healey’s “law of holes” dictates, “if you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.” Hunt’s swift measures offer a semblance of hope that excavation work has ceased, even if it will be a long climb back up to the surface. | 2022-10-17T13:52:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hunt and the Markets Take Truss on a Welcome U-Turn - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hunt-and-the-markets-take-truss-on-a-welcome-u-turn/2022/10/17/878ef70a-4e1e-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hunt-and-the-markets-take-truss-on-a-welcome-u-turn/2022/10/17/878ef70a-4e1e-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
US President Joe Biden greets attendees at the VolvoGroup powertrain manufacturing facility after giving remarks in Hagerstown, Maryland, US, on Friday, Oct. 7, 2022. The US labor market stayed strong in September as the unemployment rate unexpectedly returned to an historic low, leaving the Federal Reserve on course to deliver yet another aggressive interest-rate hike. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
The midterms are coming, and with them, the pressure is building on President Joe Biden to let everyone know whether he is running in 2024.
In a normal presidential election cycle, we would be about to hit the two-year mark in the “invisible primary.” That’s the period before voters get involved, in which candidates seek the support of key party players. That process usually begins immediately after the previous presidential election.
By the midterms, presidential campaigns start getting organized as candidates decide whether to run a full-on campaign or to drop out. Formal declarations may wait, but most serious candidates are in full election mode just a few months after the midterms, when the Iowa caucuses are still a full year away.(1)
2024 is different.
On the Democratic side, what’s unusual is that there is an invisible primary at all. Parties with a first-term president normally get a respite from nomination jockeying. Not so for a party that elects a president who will be 82 by the start of his second term. For now, Biden is acting as if he will be running for a second term. The demands of governing make that the smart move whether he intends to seek re-election, plans to retire or just doesn’t yet know.
Amid this uncertainty, potential candidates including those who made a splash in 2020 as well as newcomers likely to run if the nomination is open are doing things to drum up attention. Generally, sitting vice presidents are leading contenders for open nominations, and Kamala Harris surely would be first in line — but no vice presidents have been nominated in the modern era without facing serious competition.
Once upon a time, presidential campaigns didn’t begin this early. But that was when invisible campaigning — winning the support of party actors, often by talking with a small universe of people one-on-one — was the bulk of campaigning. Indeed, the conventional wisdom was once that early campaigning was a sign of weakness.
Beginning in 1972, changes to the nomination process that introduced the modern system of primaries and open caucuses made public campaigning necessary in order to accumulate delegates. When George McGovern captured the 1972 nomination by doing well in early primaries, and then when Jimmy Carter shocked the party by winning in 1976 after spending four years campaigning in Iowa and other early states, candidates learned the lesson that they couldn’t begin too soon.(2)
As president, it is in Biden’s interest to hold off on announcing his intentions, especially if he doesn’t intend to pursue a second term, to avoid governing as a lame-duck chief executive.
But as party leader, Biden has other responsibilities. If he isn’t going to run in 2024, he needs to give Democrats time to sort through the candidates, push for their policy preferences and then coordinate with each other so that they back a candidate the entire party can accept while also making that candidate firmly commit to the party’s agenda and priorities.
Consider, for example, the push for new federal day care programs. That’s a policy issue that has been simmering among Democrats for years. The presidential nomination cycle — if Biden doesn’t run — is a big opportunity for those calling for more federal day-care funding. It isn’t just that they will want to lock up support from all the candidates. They also ideally will want the candidates to agree on as strong a policy that they can get consensus on, while also moving day care up the list of party priorities. In doing so, they will have to compete against advocates for student loan reform, expanding health care and every other spending priority.
It’s also a question of which bills will move forward when the votes might only be there for some of them. Or which ideas will be stuffed into a must-pass omnibus bill and which will have to wait. Advocates want strong commitments from the candidates, and they want to nominate a candidate who leans their way.
But parties also want to reach agreement on a candidate, preferably early on, so that the nomination process resolves quickly and cleanly, and leaves everyone in the party reasonably satisfied even if their first choice doesn’t win. If a party can settle on a candidate early on (as Democrats did with Al Gore in 2000 and Hillary Clinton in 2016) they can send clear signals to primary and caucus voters to support that candidate, which in turn will help that candidate win even if he or she faces a strong challenge for the nomination.(3)
The later that process begins, the harder it will be for the party to come to an agreement and the weaker the signal will be to voters in the primaries. That could lead to a factional candidate who owes nothing to most of the party. Or an unvetted newcomer who could turn out to be ill-equipped for a general election campaign — or for the presidency if elected. Or a media darling who might enjoy a burst of attention but burn out quickly after locking up the nomination. Or some combination of those unfortunate scenarios.
There is no specific date by which Biden will have to make known his decision, but if he is going to retire he risks harming the party if he doesn’t make that clear by early next year or spring at the latest. And although we might not see it in public, some pressure will start to build on him soon after the midterms.
Perhaps Biden really does intend to run in 2024. But if not, it’s getting close to the time for him to let people know.
Republicans May Yet Abandon Herschel Walker: Ramesh Ponnuru
Biden Should Govern With a Second Term in Mind: Jonathan Bernstein
(1) Or whatever the first event with voters will be in 2024; Democrats are considering changes in the calendar, with a real possibility that Iowa will lose its first-in-the-nation slot.
(2) Whether it’s really true that candidates need to start very early isn’t clear - but most politicians and campaign professionals believe that it’s true, which is what drives their behavior.
(3) They send those signals directly through endorsements, and indirectly by providing valuable resources - money, expertise, coverage in party-aligned media - that are valuable in primaries and caucuses. Party actors don’t have a monopoly on those resources, but they have enough to give a candidate a very large advantage. | 2022-10-17T13:52:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Will Biden Run Again? Democrats Need an Answer Soon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/will-biden-run-again-democrats-need-an-answer-soon/2022/10/17/88809882-4e17-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/will-biden-run-again-democrats-need-an-answer-soon/2022/10/17/88809882-4e17-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
By Kimberly Haven
Desmond Meade displays a copy of his voter registration form on Jan. 8, 2019, outside the Orange County Supervisor of Elections office after registering to vote as ex-felons regained their voting rights in the state. (Phelan M. Ebenhack for The Washington Post)
Kimberly Haven is executive director of Reproductive Justice Inside.
The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade will have a devastating impact on millions of Americans. That’s particularly true for women of color. Black women today are nearly four times more likely to have an abortion than White women, and Latina women are twice as likely.
The cruel irony is that the people who will be affected the most by this decision — women of color — have been historically disenfranchised. In other words, they did not have a say in the democratic process that led to this disastrous outcome.
It’s long past time for that to change.
One way that we can reenfranchise women of color is to protect and expand the right to vote for incarcerated people and those with felony convictions. Today, women of color are more likely to be incarcerated than White women. At the same time, the number of incarcerated women was nearly five times higher in 2020 than in 1980. By protecting and expanding the right to vote for justice-impacted individuals, we can ensure that women of color have a say in the policies and rulings that affect them most.
Too many women are denied voting rights because of their contact with the criminal legal system. As of 2020, the Sentencing Project found that approximately 1.2 million women with a felony conviction are disenfranchised, making up more than one-fifth of the disenfranchised population.
These disparities inspired my fight to expand voting rights for incarcerated individuals in Maryland. Though the fight was long, we ultimately accomplished our goal. In 2007, the Maryland House and Senate approved the Voting Rights Protection Act, which reenfranchised 50,000 residents who had completed their sentences. It also ended the lifetime voting ban and eliminated the three-year waiting period for people with past felony convictions.
The public supports these efforts. Recent polling revealed that a majority of voters believe the right to vote should be guaranteed for all, regardless of their history with the criminal legal system. In that same poll, 54 percent of respondents agreed that all citizens, regardless of whether they have a felony conviction in the past, should be eligible to vote.
This isn’t just popular with the public; it’s smart policy. When we give incarcerated people access to the ballot, they feel closer to their community and are less likely to be rearrested. One study among individuals who had been arrested previously found that 27 percent of nonvoters were rearrested, compared with 12 percent of voters. Voting is “part of a package of pro-social behavior that is linked to desistance from crime.”
We’re seeing support for these policies around the country as well. Massachusetts recently passed the Votes Act, legislation that will protect and guarantee the right to vote for thousands of eligible incarcerated voters throughout the state. In Chicago, the Cook County Jail served as a polling place for eligible incarcerated voters, and, as a result, incarcerated voters turned out to vote at rates higher than the city as a whole. Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) restored voting rights to nearly 3,500 people with felony convictions.
However, we still have a long way to go. The right to vote for justice-impacted individuals varies significantly state by state.
The overturn of Roe v. Wade demonstrates why it is so important for everyone — including incarcerated individuals and those with felony convictions — to cast their ballot. I urge lawmakers to expand and protect the right to vote for currently incarcerated individuals.
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Opinion|A planning board meltdown in Montgomery County | 2022-10-17T13:53:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Maryland should give incarcerated people the right to vote - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/17/maryland-should-give-incarcerated-people-access-ballot/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/17/maryland-should-give-incarcerated-people-access-ballot/ |
Six students on what happened after their schools became flashpoints on masks, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, book banning and more
(Photos of, clockwise from top left, Philip Smith by Andi Rice; Pragnya Kaginele by Kaci Merriwether-Hawkins; Rio Colina by Barbara Davidson; Claire Warthen by Jovelle Tamayo; Jaxson Barrett by Sandy Huffaker; Renee Ellis by Raymond W. Holman Jr.)
In communities across the country, schools have become crucibles of contentious social and political issues. Heated exchanges — over mask mandates, the content of books in classrooms and libraries, prayer at athletic events, critical race theory, LGBTQ rights and more — have erupted at school board meetings and played out in the glare of local and national media with images of parents shouting each other down or being dragged from raucous public meetings.
What is it like to be a student at a school that ends up at the center of controversy? Recently, we asked six high school students who attend such schools to share their perspectives on navigating the regular challenges of daily life — academic and social — together with those imposed by the broader culture wars as they come of age in this contentious era. (Interviews have been edited and condensed.)
The backstory of Carroll High School’s arrival in the media spotlight dates to 2018, when a video of White students shouting the n-word went viral, drawing national attention. Initially, the community — affluent Southlake, Tex. — responded with efforts at dialogue and racial reconciliation, including the formation of a diversity council that was tasked with creating a plan to address racism in the schools. When that plan was released in the summer of 2020, during the nation’s own racial reckoning, it met with fierce backlash. After candidates supported by conservative parents won majority control of the school board, the board killed the diversity council’s plan, moved to restrict the books students could access at school and installed donated “In God We Trust” signs prominently in the district’s schools — signs that a recent Texas law had required them to accept.
Pragnya Kaginele, 15
10th grade, Carroll High School, Southlake, Tex.
Before, when people would hear that I went to Southlake, it was kind of like, “Wow, you go to one of the best public schools in the nation.” Or, “You’re from this great area.” And there’s this whole “protecting the tradition” of being a Dragon, because a dragon is our mascot. So I was just always very proud to be a Dragon, proud to be someone from Southlake. And now it’s almost stigmatized to be from here. They have this idea of Southlake being a racist community and just being this kind of nut-job area.
I think there’s always been a hidden issue of racism and stuff like that; a few years back there was this thing of a few girls posting videos of themselves chanting the n-word. But it’s kind of been coming to light a lot now because there’s this conservative political action committee that’s been electing far-right people to our school boards, and that’s led to a lot of policies and a lot of open racism.
College students have become fearful of expressing their views. A new civil dialogue movement may restore healthy debate.
Why so many teachers are thinking of quitting
Mostly it’s rejecting Southlake Anti-Racism, SARC, and there’s another organization called DATS, which is Dignity for All Texas Students, and organizations such as that. They’ve been rejecting attempts to try and get more anti-racism training for teachers, more non-Eurocentric education, more well-rounded education, and mental health [support]. Because people in this community, they’re afraid to learn things that don’t align with their worldview, and they just don’t want anything that can make them, directly or indirectly, look bad to be taught to children. There’s a fear of: They’re teaching White people to be guilty. Or, They’re teaching minorities to have victim complexes. It definitely was surprising to me when all this stuff was coming to light, and kind of disappointing.
The latest thing has been the whole “In God We Trust”-signs-in-the-schools thing. This conservative cellphone carrier, Patriot Mobile, donated the signs because now schools are mandated to put them up whenever they’re donated. So then a dad took signs to the next school board meeting that had “In God We Trust” but with LGBTQ symbolism and that said it in Arabic and other languages, and he tried to get those signs donated and hung up on school walls. It didn’t work out, but just seeing that kind of brought a smile to my face that there are people out there in this community who are trying to help us grow and progress. I think one of my favorite things he said, while the school board was shooting him down, was, “Why is more God not good?”
I honestly haven’t had too much of an issue with my friends because most of my friends have always been very open-minded. But my teachers will sometimes make little passing comments and stuff that’s like, Whoa, where did that come from? And I can’t remember exactly the event because there’s a lot of things that happened in Southlake that are newsworthy, but me and one of my friends were talking about something that happened, and I said, “I feel like White people in this district really have to start learning or else it’s going to be a really unsafe place.” And some guy who was walking behind me — I didn’t notice him before — he shoved into my shoulder, and he was like, “Hey, racist.” I just kind of ignored it because what am I going to do? Start a fight with a football player? I don’t know if he was a football player, but he’s some kind of athletic person.
I don’t feel like I’m ever going to be hate-crimed or anything like that. That’s not really a concern for me. There are people I feel are unsafe in this community, though. People in the LGBTQ community are much more likely to be bullied in our community. Racism mostly comes from either ignorance or misunderstanding or just systemic racism. But the anti-gay harassment is often just straight-up calling people slurs and stuff like that.
“Now it’s almost stigmatized to be from here. They have this idea of Southlake being a racist community.”
It’s stressful because, first of all, just being in high school, there’s academic pressure. And, I don’t know, the stress isn’t directly on me, but I think this racism and stuff like that just adds to the daily stress. It kind of makes me want to pursue, not exactly for a job, but pursue activism just in general because I can educate myself as much as I want to, as much as I can, but I want to be able to make change in more ways than just on my own individual level. I want to help educate my community, make change in my community.
I would want to tell them: When you break these barriers down, these walls that barricade you from learning so much and from understanding so much and from having so much empathy because you don’t want to feel bad or you don’t want to recognize somebody’s privilege, and if you have an open mind and stop being so defensive, you’ll just learn so much about yourself and your community — and just in general the world around you and what you could be doing to make it better.
In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020, a diversity committee in Pennsylvania’s Central York School District created a list of resources — books, articles, videos — to help students and teachers grapple with issues around race and inclusion. In November 2020, the district’s school board voted unanimously to freeze the use in schools of all the resources on the list, many of which are told from the perspective of Black, Latino or gay children. In September 2021, students at Central York High School learned of the ban and began protests, sparking social media campaigns that were amplified by some of the authors whose books were on the banned list. The school board eventually relented. The students’ victory was covered by both The Post and the New York Times.
Renee Ellis, 17
12th grade, Central York High School, York, Pa.
We found out about the book ban through a local newspaper. It was after school hours, and my sister came running downstairs. She ran to my grandparents’ room, and she was like, “You wouldn’t believe what’s happening.” I heard her sounding really upset, so I asked what happened. She was like, “Your school placed a book ban.” And she showed me the article. Our initial reaction was, of course, shock and disbelief. Because we were just going through school — this was like the first couple of weeks of school — and we weren’t aware that any of this was happening.
The article had a link [to] an entire spreadsheet of resources. I didn’t know every resource because it was 200-plus, 300-plus resources. But I do remember seeing authors and books that I read when I was in middle school. Part of the reason why I fell in love with reading so much is because teachers offered books that showed characters like me in them. So two of my favorite authors are Jason Reynolds and Angie Thomas. And they write books like “The Hate U Give” and “Long Way Down,” “On the Come Up.” It meant so much to me as a middle-schooler to see characters like me and especially written in ways that don’t focus around trauma. I feel like a lot of times when people create literature about African Americans, it’s a lot of trauma, a lot of history, and it doesn’t really capture the beauty of our culture. And those authors, they talk about the realities that many African Americans face and the history — can’t deny that — but they also focus on our strengths, our culture, things that are important to us, ways that African Americans talk or certain things within our community that make sense to us. And being able to see that in books, I was like, I love this. But when I saw them on the list, it hurt.
“The Hate U Give” was on the list. I believe “On the Come Up” was on the list as well. So it was like, Wait, this is completely wrong.
Word got around on social media, so that weekend we created custom posters, and then that Monday we came to school and protested in front of our school building. At first, it was a little nerve-racking because you didn’t know how the community felt. You could sense a divide. I think all of America was divided, to be honest. Either Republican or Democrat, and it was a stiff divide. So we didn’t know if we were going to have counterprotesters. We didn’t know how people that lived around the school would feel. But there were no counterprotesters and no disturbances. We made sure that we were respectful and got all the permission that we needed, made sure that we did everything the best we knew to avoid any conflict. At first, it was 10 to 20 kids, but then, by the last day, we got to about 70 or 80 additional students and staff. We protested in the morning, but once school started, it was school time.
Because this was in the news and we were making headlines, parents and people at the community wanted to speak out on it. A lot of people supported us and said, “You should not have banned these books, and these students are stepping up and they’re trying to speak out. You should really listen to them and pay attention.” But you have some people who said we were anarchists, said that we were disrespecting good old American values and all that. That these books need to be banned and that it’s a safety thing. It got big enough where the community held their own protests.
Thankfully, adults realized that it’s probably bad if you attack children. So for us, personally, they didn’t do a lot of damage. They really went after our advisers. Yeah, it wasn’t pretty. When I found out, I felt almost a little guilty because it’s like, We’re speaking out and because we’re doing this, you guys are receiving the backlash, you guys are being hurt. But Mr. Hodge and Ms. Jackson, they did a really good job of trying not to put that burden on us. They handled it with so much grace.
“We might not be able to change who’s getting voted into the school board, but we can talk to the adults that are around us and advocate for ourselves and advocate for others.”
When our school board released a statement basically doubling down on their decision, saying that they won’t reverse it, we had to gather after school and say, “Okay, what do we do now? Do we still keep going?” They basically said that they don’t care and that they’re going to keep their decision the way that it is. So what do we do? And we decided to keep going. And because we kept going, it eventually got reversed.
The dynamics have shifted a little bit since the school board did reverse the ban. Now I see a lot more of the ignorant comments. But staying positive is really important. There are really good kids in our school, Black, White, Indian, Asian — it doesn’t matter who they are or what their race is. You do have a couple bad apples, and they seem to be a little louder than usual, but it just shows that we got to keep going. This is not one fixed issue. You can’t put a Band-Aid on racism. It just further shows me that we need better education and we really need those resources.
There’s a lot of people who want what they want in the schools, but trying to tune out all of the negativity, all the excessive pressure, is the best way, I feel, to handle it and to just do what I can because I am a minor. I can’t vote. I don’t pay taxes. Well, I pay taxes now because of my job. But my parents are the ones really putting money into the local governments. And so I just do what I can as a student. Talking to teachers and to administrators is huge — having a good relationship with the people who are teaching you and educating you. ’Cause we might not be able to change who’s getting voted into the school board, but we can talk to the adults that are around us and advocate for ourselves and advocate for others.
Obviously, the idea of having a book ban is not a good thing. You don’t want that, but I wouldn’t change anything. It exposed a lot of issues that we have in our community. It opened up a lot of great conversations, and it created this really beautiful way that we can speak out as students, and that our teachers are able to reach other educators and talk about something that’s hidden under the rug, things that people don’t really want to talk about.
One of the first of its kind in the nation, Magic City Acceptance Academy is a public charter school that aims to support all students in an LGBTQ-affirming environment. Denied a charter by the city of Birmingham, Ala., the school eventually opened its doors in the suburb of Homewood for the 2021 fall semester. Soon, it became a talking point in the Alabama gubernatorial campaign, when Republican candidate Tim James seized on photos of a drag show at MCAA and called the school “vile” and “evil.” Heckling and intimidation from the broader community followed, leading to greater security at the school.
Philip Smith, 18
12th grade, Magic City Acceptance Academy, Homewood, Ala.
I spent a lot of my schooling at religious private schools, and I was bullied fairly often for being different. I didn’t quite know who I was back then, but it was really crushing to hear the religious interpretation of why gay marriage is not accepted within the faith. I had my books stolen and taken from me by other students. It impacted me so much that I ended up not going to my own junior high graduation.
I remember the night my parents called me into their bedroom and talked about Magic City Acceptance Academy. They said, “There’s going to be a drawing. We’re not sure if you’re going to make it in because there’s probably a high demand for this sort of thing.” There ended up being enough space, and I have been [there] for a little over a year. I’m starting my senior year there. And I think Magic City Acceptance Academy has saved my life. It’s just been an amazing experience to be loved and accepted at a school like that. I think I’m lucky; a lot of people just don’t get opportunities like that.
When the school started out — on the tail end of the 2020 elections — we were always worried that something would happen. But we didn’t think it was going to be provoked by somebody like Tim James, who released a [campaign] ad with a picture of our drag show we put on with the words “Your tax dollars” printed underneath it. That was really scary because my classmates were in that photo. We had people drive up to our school and start yelling at students. It looked organized. It looked just very scary. It was to the point where my mother didn’t want me to drive to school; she wanted to see me get out and walk up to the doors. I think we were all very scared for at least a couple weeks after that happened.
There are a lot of targeted political ads and people just trying to do whatever they can to get elected. And, unfortunately, one of those things is cracking down on the LGBTQ community. Tim James said our school was a trans school, which is just an untruth. Our school is a safe space for everyone, even people who don’t identify with the LGBTQ spectrum. I think there’s a lot of conspiracy theories and just hate going around. They think that LGBTQ people have an agenda that they want to push on everybody else. That’s just not true. We’re just here trying to be ourselves. We want to be accepted.
“We had people drive up to our school and start yelling at students. It looked organized. It looked just very scary.”
My two best friends are trans men, and it was really difficult to hear about the trans legislation passing here in Alabama. I don’t think these lawmakers understand that there are a lot of trans youth that don’t make it to adulthood because they are denied the medication that they need. I think they don’t understand that being gay or being trans is something that’s just a part of you. It’s just who you are. They treat it like it’s not real. I would ask them to think about what it would be like if their son or daughter were trans or were a part of the LGBTQ community. I would want them to understand what it’s like to have somebody directly related to you attacked. I would want them to care about that child, just like they would any other kid. I think anyone, even if they have not been a parent, can relate to that and understand it.
I feel like when I first went to the school, there was a big feeling of hopelessness because we find ourselves in a red state. But I remember the day the political ad came out and scrolling through Twitter. I saw an overwhelming majority of people coming out and saying that we were loved and that Tim James was just another one of those people trying to attack our community. That gave me a lot of hope. The only way we can get out there and do something is by educating ourselves on these lawmakers who have made these anti-trans laws and anti-LGBTQ laws. By going to this school, over time, that feeling in the hallways of hopelessness sort of turned into a mission.
On Jan. 12, students staged a walkout at Redondo Union High School in the Los Angeles area to protest what they claimed were the school’s limited practices to mitigate the spread of covid-19 amid surging cases on campus. Students had used social media to quickly mobilize for the walkout, which was covered by the Los Angeles Times and Fox News, among other media. Like many schools at the time, in California and around the country, the community was deeply divided on the issue of wearing face masks.
Rio Colina, 16
11th grade, Redondo Union High School, Redondo Beach, Calif.
Winter of last year is when people really started to get, I guess, sick of the masks. I remember in my chemistry class one day, these two girls at my table were arguing over them, because one was wearing it under her nose and one was wearing an N95 and double-masking. I think they were kind of friendly before, but that really got them heated. After winter break, a bunch of kids at our school planned this walkout, trying to have school be closed again, because everyone had covid and a lot of people were worried about it. So then our school and the school board got involved. It was a big deal, and there were helicopters and news reporting about it.
Later, California schools lifted their mask mandate. So masks became optional. And then you’d have some kids wearing two-, three-layer masks and some kids not wearing them at all. It just felt so divided. And everyone just talked about it: “Why are you wearing your mask?” “You know you don’t have to anymore.” “It’s weird.” “Why aren’t you wearing a mask?” Everyone was super riled up. I mean, it definitely caused some issues in my friend group, because some kids would wear masks and some wouldn’t. We still all stayed together, but I know a bunch of groups did split up.
One of my classes had five kids one day because everyone had covid. And those five kids weren’t wearing their masks. It was so much different stuff happening. It was so overwhelming, I felt, because a lot of teachers started to get super open about their own beliefs about the masks, about a lot of issues that they hadn’t before. I had this teacher who got suspended earlier in the year; she doesn’t believe in covid, and she was anti-vaccine and telling girls all these crazy things that the vaccine makes your period blah, blah, blah. She wore these mesh masks, like holes, and American flags on them. Some teachers were super, super into masks, and some were like, “Covid is a scam.” It was pretty crazy. Redondo was wild last year.
“It was so overwhelming, I felt, because a lot of teachers started to get super open about their own beliefs about the masks, about a lot of issues that they hadn’t before.”
I honestly felt kind of desensitized to it after a little bit, because I haven’t had a normal high school experience. I mean, I started high school right in the pandemic. We didn’t even have a welcome orientation. We just, like, went onto a new Zoom, and it was just a bunch of different kids and different teachers in a different school. And so much had happened with the Black Lives Matter protests already, it just felt like another thing. The walkout was right after the Capitol riots, I remember, and there were a lot of political issues in our school — conservative vs. Democrat. So it just felt like: Another crazy thing is happening.
I feel, slowly, we’re getting back to having a normal high school experience. The other night I got to go to a football game without anything super crazy happening. I think everyone’s kind of chilled out. It’s nice to not constantly feel these pressures from your teachers sharing their beliefs. Or your friends. And obviously the walkout was super stressful because of the news. So it does feel like a big relief. But I think it all opened my eyes to see so many different people have so many different beliefs. And even if I don’t agree with them, not to think of them negatively or try to hurt them.
One morning in mid-February 2022, with a statewide mask mandate still in place for California’s public schools, Carlsbad High School junior Jaxson Barrett refused to wear his mask and was told to leave the building. He began sitting outside his school each day in protest; other students soon joined him. Barrett’s protest, which received local news coverage, ended on March 11, when California’s mask mandate expired. Barrett returned to class, unmasked, the next school day.
Jaxson Barrett, 17
12th grade, Carlsbad High School, Carlsbad, Calif.
Obviously, I didn’t like [having to wear a mask] the whole year, but it probably got till, I’d say, February where I was kind of just over it and started thinking, “I don’t see a point of it anymore.” We could go everywhere else, no matter where it is, without having to wear a mask. So why do we have to wear one in school? Until Gavin Newsom says otherwise. And it was only for public schools. I know the private school that I went to sophomore year was not wearing masks last year at all.
A lot of students were over it and wanted something to change, but most of them just either were — I don’t want to say scared to do something about it, but just didn’t feel comfortable doing something about it. Or they didn’t want to sacrifice their grades and missing class. I just was like, “All right, I’m going to try and do something about it.” Because they’ve been saying stuff’s going to change; nothing’s changed. So one morning, I went into my first-period class and I said, “Hey, I’m going to exercise my First Amendment right: I’m not going to wear a mask in class today.” The teacher did seem kind of shocked. It wasn’t like a big scene or anything. I went up to him privately before class started. He didn’t really know what to say. He was like, “Okay, well you can’t be in the classroom without a mask, so you can go up to the office and try to deal with it up there.”
I went to the office; I told them what I was doing. They kind of seemed shocked at first and were pretty much like, “Okay. Well, sit outside for now and we’ll figure it out.” Apparently, they had to talk to the school superintendent and the district office about it, whether or not I’m allowed to be on campus then. So that whole day I sat outside by myself.
People would come by and, like, say stuff under their breath, but like loud enough where I could hear it. Nothing too crazy, where it’s personal or I’m going to get offended, just like, “Oh, this kid’s dumb,” and stuff like that. It was kind of awkward because everyone’s kind of looking.
The next day I came back, just immediately went outside. I didn’t even try to go to my classes because I knew that my teacher would send me to the office again. One of my assistant principals came out and told me that either I can go back to class or I can leave school. I was like, “Well, I want to be at school. I’m not trying to be truant or anything.” They said that if I didn’t go to class or leave school they were going to try and have me arrested for trespassing on school grounds. I think that was just kind of a threat to scare me because nothing ended up happening with that.
It was like 30 days. Yeah, it was a long time. I was just thinking, When is this going to end? How long do I have to do it? I definitely did think about just stopping and going back to class. It got to the point where, Yeah, I can stop, but I made it this far, and I didn’t want to just give up on it. I did have a lot of support, so that definitely helped. My parents, at first, they were kind of surprised and had questions, but after that, they were fully supportive. And I can’t think of any of my friends that didn’t support me. Or even if we do have disagreements, we don’t let it get in the way of our friendship. I had a lot of people saying they’re proud of me and stuff like that, some of my old coaches, pretty much all my family members, and then people that I didn’t know, parents from the area. And my dad’s a fireman, so I had a lot of fireman support, that community.
“I shouldn’t have had to do it in the first place, I don’t think. But it made me realize that if you want something to change, you stand up for it.”
I started having other kids out there with me. At one point I think there was up to 20 people sitting out with me. I know that the middle schools had up to 40. A lot of the other high schools in the following weeks, after my story got out, had a lot of school kids doing it. I think without that, I don’t think anything would’ve happened. As soon as we didn’t have to wear a mask in the classroom, I went back to class. I had some weird looks, but besides that, everything kind of just went back to normal.
I obviously wish the whole situation would never have had to happen. The main thing, looking back on it now, is how much it affected my grades, because a lot of the teachers didn’t let me make up the work that I missed. So I ended up failing four of my classes, which I made up in summer school.
I shouldn’t have had to do it in the first place, I don’t think. But it made me realize that if you want something to change, you stand up for it. And even if people are going to treat you differently or not like you as much, it doesn’t matter in the end. Especially in high school. Most of these people, you’ll probably only talk to five of them after you graduate anyways.
In 2008, Joseph Kennedy, a popular assistant football coach at Bremerton High School in Washington state, began taking a knee and praying at the 50-yard line after games. The practice grew to include members of his team and then other coaches, players from the opposing team and community members. Bremerton football games started to see protesters — some arguing for the separation of church and state, others for religious freedom. The school district repeatedly asked Kennedy to stop. He refused and was put on administrative leave in 2015; his contract was not renewed the following year. Kennedy filed suit, and his case eventually reached the Supreme Court — which held in his favor in June. Though the district was required to offer him his job back, Kennedy has not yet returned to campus. His lawyers have indicated that he might return in 2023.
Claire Warthen, 18
12th grade, Bremerton High School, Bremerton, Wash.
When the [Supreme Court] decision came out, I think I saw one news van trying to interview students, but most kids were like, “Whatever.” I think you had some kids posting on their Instagram, a “support” or a “I don’t agree with.” A little repost from Fox News or a repost from the New York Times. And then you could tell people’s personal political ideologies. That was about it. In all honesty, we’re just kind of like, “Why does it have to keep getting brought up?” We’re continually in the news about something that happened years ago, that gets shut down at every different court at the state level, and then finally the Supreme Court [rules] for Coach Kennedy. We have no connection to the coach. In 2015, I was a fourth- or fifth-grader. Doesn’t impact me. And all the people that it did impact are in college or have grown up and have jobs.
We’re more concerned with: Is the coach even coming back? Is he going to try and shift our football system again? That was on the top of our minds vs. who supports what, yada, yada, yada.
I remember hearing from people who were there in 2015, when the coach was protesting, that there were a lot of people — support groups and protest groups — that would come to the football games. You had your atheist group and you had your ultra-Christian group, and they would impact where the fans could cheer and whatnot. As [Associated Student Body] president now, I have to be concerned with: Is he going to try and come to our homecoming game? Because we’re having to think of possible things that could go wrong if a bunch of protesters decide to show up. I didn’t think I would have to think about that when I’m planning for a fun homecoming game, but here we are.
This issue for me is frustrating because this conservative court’s ideology paints our district in, some people might say, a bad light. Even if you support what he’s arguing for, for the most part, people in the community are just frustrated that our district continues to have to spend money for lawyers, money for court cases, for all of that. Instead of that money going back towards the students and the school.
“We’re having to think of possible things that could go wrong if a bunch of protesters decide to show up. I didn’t think I would have to think about that when I’m planning for a fun homecoming game.”
Most kids, we also tend to remain super neutral on a lot of political issues because it’s kind of hard to want to talk about broader issues when you can’t even feel connected at the school or are having a hard time just wanting to be at school or wanting to learn. And that’s something that covid kind of took away from us — not being in-person, you lose connections. And so we’re really focusing on how we bring up the sense of belonging and the traditions that we used to have.
My parents are like, “It’s your senior year, you should be loving it.” And I’m absolutely loving it but also just feeling a little bit of grief for the year that I lost. I’m trying to approach this year with a “I’m super excited,” but I’m leaving this community that I love and the school that I love and the people I love. And, maybe it’s just me as a senior, but it’s like you finally formed the connections, and then you’re leaving them.
KK Ottesen, whose most recent book is “Activists: Portraits of Courage,” is a regular contributor to the magazine | 2022-10-17T14:14:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | When the national culture wars come to your school - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/17/students-masks-incident-racism-gay-book-banning/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/10/17/students-masks-incident-racism-gay-book-banning/ |
By John Flesher | AP
Yet the river remains on a U.S.-Canada list of degraded “hot spots" in the Great Lakes region; it’s plagued by erosion, historic contamination, storm water runoff and sewage overflows. Toxic algae blooms appear on Lake Erie in summer, caused primarily by farm fertilizer and manure. | 2022-10-17T15:24:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Clean Water Act at 50: environmental gains, challenges unmet - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/clean-water-act-at-50-environmental-gains-challenges-unmet/2022/10/17/795c37b0-4e2d-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/clean-water-act-at-50-environmental-gains-challenges-unmet/2022/10/17/795c37b0-4e2d-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
The balloons are a nice touch. (Photographer: Bloomberg)
It’s the time of year when US public health officials are practically begging people to go out and get a flu vaccine. This year, their message is particularly urgent: Protect yourself now because the country might be in for a bad flu season that coincides with a resurgence in Covid cases.
Last week, I took their advice and got my shot (and my Covid booster at the same time). But I’m likely to be in the minority. A recent survey by the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases gauging flu vaccine attitudes in the US found that just 49% of Americans planned to get immunized this year. When people were asked why they were skipping out on the shot, 41% said they didn’t think flu vaccines worked very well.
The current vaccines still have merit. Even in a year where effectiveness of the shot is low, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention credits flu vaccines with avoiding millions of illnesses and doctor’s visits, averting tens of thousands of hospitalizations, and saving thousands of lives.
Still, the flu vaccine’s effectiveness is notoriously uneven from year to year. (Effectiveness measures how well the shots can prevent a doctor’s visit, hospitalization, or death.) Because of the lengthy manufacturing process, public health authorities have to make a call on the composition of the vaccine months before people start rolling up their sleeves. The Food and Drug Administration, for example, picked the strains included in this year’s vaccine back in early March. That means some years the predictions of which viruses will circulate are better than others. The range of protection spans anywhere from over 60% to below 20%.
If that effectiveness were more reliably high, maybe more people would be motivated to get their shots. The good news is that after a decades-long struggle to improve the flu vaccine, followed by delays in clinical trials during the pandemic, the next few years could bring more options.
Both are also already pursuing next-generation mRNA flu vaccines that might improve upon this first round. Moderna, for example, is working on shots that include the recipe for two flu proteins. And Pfizer has said that it is exploring the potential of a self-copying mRNA technology that, as I’ve explained in the past, could allow for much smaller doses and is easier to store and distribute.
If any of these new generations of flu vaccines turns out to work, hopefully people let go of their excuses and line up for one. For now, with CDC data showing flu cases in the US are already ticking upward, everyone should consider getting the shots we already have. They might not be perfect, but they work well enough to save many lives. | 2022-10-17T15:24:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | We Need to Build a Better Flu Shot - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/we-need-to-build-a-better-flu-shot/2022/10/17/d0256336-4e24-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/we-need-to-build-a-better-flu-shot/2022/10/17/d0256336-4e24-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
E.U. diplomat Josep Borrell warned the Russian army will be ‘annihilated’ if it launches a nuclear attack. These words suggest a more assertive European Union.
Analysis by Kathleen R. McNamara
A Lada displaying the Russian 'Z' military symbol is pictured on Oct. 13, 2022 in Kupiansk, Kharkiv oblast, Ukraine. (Carl Court/Getty Images)
Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top diplomat, has been in the news lately. In response to Putin’s increasingly belligerent rhetoric, Borrell announced that a Russian nuclear strike against Ukraine would provoke “such a powerful answer” from the West that the Russian army would be “annihilated.” Borrell’s off-the-cuff remarks do not constitute official E.U. policy, but his words may reflect an important transformation underway within the E.U.
Once, the E.U. sought to rise above the fray of great power struggles, claiming it offered a peaceful alternative to violence and coercion. Now, key European leaders seem to be trying to remake the DNA of the European Union. Despite some searing criticism of Borrell’s choice of words and skepticism amongst pundits about the entire idea, the E.U. looks as if it is refashioning its identity into something that looks much more like a traditional power player —albeit one that is not a country itself.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is remaking Europe
Many tend to see the E.U. as a weakling
For decades, many in the U.S. depicted the European Union as a weak, passive observer of the high politics of international relations. Observers like Robert Kagan said that the E.U. limited itself to diplomacy and commerce not because of its ideals but simply because it lacked real power. Kagan characterized the E.U. as existing in “a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation.” His claim that the E.U. was “entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity,” a version of the philosopher Immanuel Kant’s proposal for “perpetual peace,” was not a compliment, but rather an epic put-down.
Kagan himself had more in common with the wisdom of another philosopher, Thomas Hobbes, who believed that governments are always hostile and suspicious of each other, and that war is the ultimate decider. Using gendered assumptions about power and weakness, Kagan summed up the differences between the U.S. and E.U. in a phrase that became famous: “Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus.”
Many did push back on this characterization, pointing out the E.U. represented an innovative way to secure peace and liberal values for its citizens, with others noting that the E.U. itself ruthlessly used more subtle methods to get its way than the crude military power that Kagan emphasized. My own research documented the “under the radar” use of power, but it also noted that the E.U. steered clear of the traditional symbols of power.
Borrell’s formal title, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign and Security Policy, is a perfect example of how the E.U. carefully navigated the fraught waters of geopolitics. It’s a deliberate choice to avoid calling him the “European Foreign Secretary” and thus not upstage the national prerogatives of the E.U. member states.
Now, Venus seems to be in retrograde. In an official address to the E.U.’s own ambassadors, Borrell himself stated, “We are too much Kantians and not enough Hobbesians … Let’s try to understand the world the way it is and bring the voice of Europe.” The reference to Thomas Hobbes was a striking and direct call back to Kagan’s dismissive view of the E.U. as a cosmopolitan weakling.
The E.U. is changing how it talks and acts in the world
Although Borrell’s statements last week mark a striking change of rhetoric, scholars have been tracing the E.U.’s changing approach for some time. They’ve looked at many different areas in which the E.U. has become more assertive.
Some examine how the E.U. has come to embrace what political scientists Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman have termed “weaponized interdependence,” the ways in which governments increasingly use global economic networks as tools of power politics. Others have documented the E.U.’s newly aggressive approach to trade and investment, driven by an emerging emphasis on what it calls “strategic autonomy.” Surprisingly, the E.U. has recently developed its own European Industrial Strategy, which includes digital sovereignty, supply chain resilience, innovating toward a green economy, and autonomy in world markets. This new approach strongly resembles the recently unveiled U.S. National Security Strategy putting industrial and innovation strategy front and center under “Investing in Our National Power to Maintain a Competitive Edge.”
These moves reflect the E.U.’s new willingness to be explicit about the politics inherent in its work, rather than hide behind technocratic jargon. E.U. officials are eagerly and publicly embracing political strategizing, building on the 2015 statement of incoming European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that his would be a “political commission.” Current Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, a former German defense minister, stated that she was seeking a “geopolitical” E.U. as her key goal. Borrell’s words last week only reinforce this goal.
It’s not clear how deep the change goes
The E.U. still hasn’t figured out how to balance its lack of military clout and traditional commitment to peace and cooperation with its newfound geopolitical interests. The old familiar world of the postwar era is changing, and the E.U. still hasn’t fully found its place. Economic power, wielded according to the logic of weaponized interdependence, may help, but there is no hard military capacity behind Borrell’s threat that the Russian army will be annihilated.
Big questions remain. How effectively will the E.U.’s formidable market powers counteract threats from Russia or China? Will the E.U. enhance its collective security efforts, something long supported in polls across Europe, and finally upgrade its military might — as German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s speech after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine suggested? What kind of collective European response will there be to the energy crisis created by Putin’s war on Ukraine?
Some of these questions may divide the E.U. and keep it from cementing its new geopolitical stance through major policy changes. Still, the new rhetoric and new policies suggest that something important is changing in the European Union.
Kathleen R. McNamara (@ProfKMcNamara) is professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University, where she co-directs the Global Political Economy Project. | 2022-10-17T15:24:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is the European Union becoming more of a traditional power player? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/eu-annihilate-russia-putin-borrell/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/eu-annihilate-russia-putin-borrell/ |
New England Patriots quarterback Bailey Zappe directs his players during the second half of the game Cleveland Browns, a Patriots win. (David Richard/AP)
CLEVELAND — After throwing a touchdown pass to tight end Hunter Henry midway through the third quarter Sunday afternoon, New England Patriots quarterback Bailey Zappe turned toward the visitors’ sideline and shrugged.
With the score, his team took a 24-6 lead, and Zappe was making it look easy to tear apart the Cleveland Browns defense. In the Patriots’ 38-15 win at FirstEnergy Stadium, he completed 24 of his 34 passes for 309 yards and two touchdowns, and he became the first rookie since 1967 to win and record a quarterback rating of at least 100 in each of his first two starts.
When the season began, just seeing the field appeared improbable for Zappe. The 23-year-old rookie was New England’s third-string quarterback, but after Mac Jones and Brian Hoyer suffered injuries, Zappe ascended the depth chart to lead the Patriots (3-3) to blowout wins over the Lions and Browns in successive weeks, snapping the team’s sluggish opening.
“He’s making a ton of improvements,” Patriots tight end Jonnu Smith said. “Back there, he looks comfortable; he looks like he’s really settling in. He’s come in the past couple of weeks and has done a hell of a job. He’s been playing his [butt] off.”
Since Tom Brady’s free agent departure to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in March 2020, New England has been seeking consistency — and a playoff win. Jones took over at quarterback in 2021 after Cam Newton started 15 games for the Patriots in 2020, and while Jones has recovered from an ankle sprain, Zappe has made a case to become the team’s signal-caller. Jones, 24, threw on the field before Sunday’s game but was ruled out about 90 minutes before kickoff.
Zappe had envisioned an NFL opportunity since he was a child. Houston Christian University coach Vic Shealy said most quarterbacks smirk when they share their NFL dreams with him. But when Zappe told Shealy his junior year of high school that he’d play in the NFL, Zappe’s face remained deadpan.
“I really felt like he would be a guy that could handle all that’s put on a quarterback in the league mentally,” Shealy said.
At HCU, Zappe earned the starting job as a freshman in 2017. In his first game, against Texas State, Zappe completed all six passes on his opening touchdown drive. The following year, the team expanded its playbook, which Zappe mastered. The Victoria, Tex., native soon began calling plays.
After completing classes, Zappe devoted the remainder of his days to training and studying film at HCU’s football facility. The team didn’t practice Mondays, and Zappe was the lone player who’d spend those days at the facility.
“At his very core,” Shealy said, “he just cannot conceive how there’s ever an option other than winning the game.”
After playing four years at HCU, Zappe emerged on the national radar as a graduate student at Western Kentucky last year. He set single-season FBS records with 5,967 passing yards and 62 touchdowns, and the Patriots selected him in the fourth round of April’s NFL Draft.
New England was 1-1 when Jones sprained his ankle against the Ravens Sept. 25, and it went on to lose that game. The next week, Hoyer suffered a concussion on the second drive of the game against the Green Bay Packers. Zappe entered one of the NFL’s most hostile environments, Lambeau Field, and threw his first career touchdown pass to wide receiver DeVante Parker late in the third quarter. Still, the Patriots lost, 27-24, in overtime.
In his first start Oct. 9, Zappe completed 17 of 21 passes for 188 yards in New England’s 29-0 win over the Detroit Lions — its most dominant yet. He continued to progress Sunday.
Zappe’s major blemish against the Browns (2-4) came in the first quarter, when defensive end Myles Garrett strip-sacked him. Shealy said Zappe often revamped his performance for second halves in college. Playing at South Dakota in September 2019, Zappe rebounded from an inconsistent start by scoring a touchdown on every second-half drive in a win.
Zappe made a similar adjustment Sunday, as the Patriots began the half by marching down the field before Zappe’s two-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Tyquan Thornton provided the Patriots a 17-6 lead. The connection marked the franchise’s first touchdown pass between rookies since 1993.
“We always talk when we’re on the field,” Zappe said. “We’re just playing football out there. It’s what we’ve been playing since we were five years old. It’s fun to play with those guys.”
Zappe threw his 31-yard touchdown pass to Henry about six minutes later in front of 67,431 spectators. Four Patriots recorded at least 60 receiving yards for the first time since 2017. Meanwhile, Browns quarterback Jacoby Brissett completed 21 of his 45 passes and threw two interceptions.
In the final minutes, Bill Belichick, whose 324th victory tied him with George Halas for the second-most among NFL coaches, instructed Zappe on the sideline toward his second victory.
“He’s still a rookie, so we aren’t going to sit here and be like, ‘Zappe’s the GOAT,’” Smith said. “He definitely has impressed, man. He looks real comfortable.”
Smith paused before asking reporters, “Is he going to watch this interview?”
“He isn’t good enough,” Smith continued with a smile. “He has to be better.”
Zappe, who has long been one of his biggest critics, acknowledges that.
“We’ve definitely made some strides,” he said. “Of course there are some things we can fix on offense. Personally, there’s some things that I need to clean up. But that’s the great thing about football: You always get next week, and you always get practice to clean those things up.”
Whether Zappe will receive another chance to prove himself next Monday against the Chicago Bears remains uncertain. When Jones returns, the Patriots could face another difficult decision as they work to form their refurbished identity. | 2022-10-17T15:25:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bailey Zappe is making a case to hold onto his job as Patriots QB - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/17/bailey-zappe-patriots-qb/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/17/bailey-zappe-patriots-qb/ |
Tennessee fans tore down the goal posts after the Volunteers beat Alabama on Saturday. (Wade Payne/AP)
The scene was chaotic Saturday evening in Knoxville, Tenn., as the crowd swelled onto the Neyland Stadium field and did what one might expect to celebrate Tennessee’s win over Alabama.
Fans ripped down the goal posts and paraded them through the streets of Knoxville, with some of the pipes ending up in the Tennessee River. Such was the euphoria of the Volunteers’ first victory over the Crimson Tide in 16 years.
On Sunday, there was the sobering reality that another home game looms Saturday against Tennessee-Martin. So the Twitter account of Tennessee Football turned to fans, alumni and perhaps Tide haters for a fundraising drive it said would go toward the purchase of new goalposts.
“Y’all remember how we tore the goal posts down, hauled em out of Neyland and dumped em in the Tennessee River? Yeah that was awesome. Anywho, turns out that in order to play next week’s game, we need goalposts on our field. Could y’all help us out?”
To do so, supporters were invited to contribute to an online fund that supports the school’s “My All” initiative, a campaign launched last year that “aims to impact each of Tennessee’s 20 varsity athletic programs by providing championship resources to support student-athletes’ academic and competitive pursuits.” As of Monday morning, the “New Goalposts Fund” had raised nearly $80,000, more than half the goal. There are options for a $16 donation representing the number of years since the Vols had beaten their SEC rival, a $52.49 donation that represents Saturday’s final score, and a $1,019.15 donation that represents the sellout crowd of 101,915 at Neyland Stadium.
“We thought this was a fun way to invite Vol Nation to continue in the celebration,” Danny White, the school’s athletic director, told ESPN. “We had heard before and during the game that the fans would support a celebration, no matter the cost, so we leaned into that enthusiasm.”
Not everyone was leaning in so enthusiastically to the university leveraging a historic win for donations, with some tweeting about tuition (just over $13,000 for in-state students) and one suggesting “we could just go for two every time.”
The Tennessee athletics department operated at a six-figure surplus during the 2021 fiscal year, the Knoxville News reported in January, and withstood the impact of the coronavirus pandemic “because of a $23 million leaguewide supplemental bailout from the SEC.” The department paid $5.4 million (4 percent of total operating expenses) in severance to coaches and administrators, including former athletic director Phillip Fulmer and assistants on former football coach Jeremy Pruitt’s staff, the outlet noted. Coach Josh Heupel earns $5 million annually.
Lost goal posts aren’t the only expense to arise from the celebration Saturday. The scene that instantly erupted when Chase McGrath’s game-winning 40-yard field goal sailed through the uprights and enveloped coaches and players drew a $100,000 fine from the SEC. Because it was Tennessee’s second offense under the league’s field access policy (the first occurred after a basketball game against Florida in 2006), the penalty was increased. And should a third incident for the 6-0 Volunteers result in a fine, it would rise to $250,000 — all of which goes to the SEC’s Post-Graduate Scholarship Fund. | 2022-10-17T15:25:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tennessee raises money after fans tear down goal posts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/17/tennessee-fundraiser-goalposts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/17/tennessee-fundraiser-goalposts/ |
Pope Francis leads the traditional Sunday Angelus prayer from his window overlooking Saint Peter's Square on Sunday. (Angelo Carconi/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
VATICAN CITY — Three years ago, Pope Francis said the Catholic Church was committed to eradicating the “evil” of abuse. The pope and other church leaders drew up new guidelines to handle accusations. They pledged transparency. They said victims’ needs would come first.
“A change of mentality,” Francis called it.
While the cases are markedly different — one involves a Canadian cardinal accused of inappropriately touching an intern; the other involves a Nobel-winning bishop from East Timor accused of abusing impoverished children — anti-abuse advocates say both instances reflect a pattern of secrecy and defensiveness. They say the church is still closing ranks to protect the reputations of powerful prelates.
In the case of the cardinal, Marc Ouellet, the Vatican did look into the accusations — but it delegated the investigation to a priest who knows him well, a fellow member of a small religious association. The priest determined there were no grounds to move forward — a conclusion the lawyer for the accuser says is dubious, given the possible conflict of interests.
“If the Vatican is handling cases like that, it means that if you’re powerful, nothing will happen,” Wee said. “No one should be above the rules.”
In the case of the bishop, Carlos Ximenes Belo, the Vatican disciplined him in 2020, one year after Holy See officials said they had became aware of accusations. But those restrictions — which included barring Belo from contact with minors — were kept secret by the church until a recently published Dutch news investigation that described abuse of multiple boys dating back to the 1980s.
Belo had attained stardom in the church by winning the 1996 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in seeking a peaceful resolution in East Timor’s long struggle for independence. But six years later, the Vatican announced he was stepping down — two decades before the usual retirement age — citing a canon law that refers to health or other “grave” reasons. The Vatican did not respond to a question about whether officials knew about abuse allegations at the time of Belo’s early retirement. He eventually wound up as an assistant parish priest in Mozambique. He said in a 2005 interview that his duties there included teaching children and leading youth retreats.
“Both cases are further indications that the whole accountability initiative is sputtering, is proving to be superficial and ineffective,” said Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of BishopAccountability.org, an abuse clearinghouse. “It makes you wonder: What has changed?”
Vatican establishes new rule for sexual abuse complaints and coverups involving bishops and other church leaders
The Vatican launched a drive to regain credibility against abuse after a wave of accusations not just against parish priests, but against bishops and cardinals — the power brokers of the church. Francis in 2018 called bishops to Rome for an unprecedented summit on abuse, which took place months later. And afterward, the church set out new rules and guidelines for how to handle cases, including instances when bishops are accused of coverup or abuse.
“It’s very frustrating, to be honest,” said one individual who has consulted with the Vatican on its handling of abuse, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak frankly. “When big names come out — the Vatican and the curia — the shield comes down. It’s incredible.”
Belo could not be reached for comment. The investigation by Denmark’s De Groene Amsterdammer included interviews with two adults who described abuse by Belo when they were teenagers, after which, they said, the bishop had given them money. The publication said the allegations against Belo had been known to NGO workers and officials in the church. The Salesians of Don Bosco, a religious order to which Belo belonged, said in a statement it had learned about the accusations with “deep sadness and perplexity.”
The statement did not offer any timeline and referred further questions to those with “competence and knowledge.”
Ouellet, 78, has denied the accusations of inappropriate touching. He is widely regarded as one of the most important figures within the Roman Curia, the Vatican’s bureaucracy, as head of the department that oversees and vets bishops. Francis has allowed him to stay in the role well beyond the normal five-year term. He has a reputation as a moderate — a rarity in the ideologically divided church — and has served under several popes, including Francis, with whom he has near-weekly meetings.
The accusations date back to Ouellet’s time as archbishop of Quebec. A woman identified in the legal documents only as “F.” says that in the fall of 2008, when she was a 23-year-old intern, working as a pastoral agent at a diocese in Quebec, he forcefully massaged her shoulders at a dinner. When she turned around, the lawsuit alleges, she saw that it was Ouellet, who smiled and caressed her back before leaving.
In 2010, at the ordination of a colleague, F. alleges that Ouellet told her that he might as well hug her because there’s no harm “in treating oneself a bit.” He hugged her and slid his hand down her back to above her buttocks, according to the lawsuit. She says that she felt “chased” and that when she spoke to other people about her experiences, she was told that she wasn’t the only one to have that “problem” with him.
F. ended up trying to bring the case to light through official church channels, first to an independent advisory committee designed to receive church cases, and then — at the committee’s advice — in a letter to Francis himself. A month after her January 2021 letter to the pope, she was informed that Father Jacques Servais would investigate. She alleges that he appeared to have “little information and training” about sexual assault.
Wee, the alleged victim’s lawyer, said there was no follow-up from Servais or anyone else at the Vatican after the Zoom call in March 2021.
Wee, who declined to make F. available for an interview, said she learned that the Vatican had determined there wasn’t enough evidence for a canonical investigation based on a Vatican press release after the allegations against Ouellet became public in August. He said she was not told privately beforehand.
“I don’t understand how that choice was made,” Nadeau said of Francis’s decision to appoint Servais to conduct the investigation. “I really don’t understand how such a choice could ever happen.”
“Having clergy handle the investigation is a real problem. It’s a real issue,” he said, “As long as that happens, it’s going to be very difficult to have both accountability and public confidence in the process.”
Stefano Pitrelli contributed to this report. | 2022-10-17T16:20:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Vatican’s mishandling of high-profile abuse cases extends its foremost crisis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/17/vatican-abuse-ouellet-belo-pope/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/17/vatican-abuse-ouellet-belo-pope/ |
Biden just pulled off a big diplomatic victory — and almost no one noticed
An Israeli soldier stands near the Israeli border with Lebanon in Rosh Hanikra on Friday. (Tsafrir Abayov/AP Photo)
International diplomacy is inherently difficult, usually unglamorous and often unsuccessful — but nevertheless essential. The Biden administration has seen for itself how hard it can be to achieve results: It has failed to entice Iran back into the nuclear deal or to convince Saudi Arabia to increase oil production. But last week the administration’s diplomacy hit pay dirt — and almost no one noticed.
On Oct. 11, Israel and Lebanon announced an agreement that would demarcate their maritime boundary. This sounds narrow and technical but is a major achievement given that the two countries have been formally at war since 1948. (And that has sometimes led to actual military conflict — most recently in 2006.) The two countries don’t have an internationally recognized land border, and they have not had a maritime border, either. That has been an invitation to conflict and an impediment to the exploitation of the large natural gas fields off their coasts.
Israel has been producing offshore natural gas for years, but its latest field — known as Karish — lies perilously close to the disputed maritime boundary with Lebanon. Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, threatened to attack Israel’s oil rig in the area. Lebanon, for its part, has not been able to extract any natural gas at all because oil companies don’t want to drill in disputed areas. That natural gas is desperately needed by a country in economic meltdown whose citizens receive only an hour or two of power every day from the electrical grid.
U.S. administrations have been trying for a decade to broker an agreement — with no luck. It was hard to make progress, given that officials of these warring states refuse to be in the same room with each other. Lebanon does not even recognize Israel’s right to exist.
Enter Amos J. Hochstein, a former Senate staffer, energy industry executive and veteran of the Obama State Department who is the presidential coordinator for energy security. He launched a fresh round of shuttle diplomacy at the beginning of the year, commuting from Tel Aviv to Beirut — a trip that usually required stopovers in a third country because there are no direct air or road links between Israel and Lebanon. “I’ve worked a lot of hard problems,” he told me. “This is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
He noted that “suspicion is really extreme on both sides” and the timing hardly appeared propitious: Israel is led by a weak caretaker government as one election after another fails to produce a durable majority. Lebanon is perpetually divided among different religious groups and in recent years has been on the brink of economic and political collapse.
Hochstein told me, in a telephone interview, that he changed the dynamics by going from asking who would win and who would lose under any agreement to asking how both countries could safeguard their vital interests. Israel’s government, led by centrist Prime Minister Yair Lapid, made concessions on the boundary line. Lebanon’s government, led by President Michel Aoun, recognized Israel’s control of a three-mile stretch of water close to shore and agreed to pay Israel its share of the proceeds from gas taken from the Israeli side the Qana Field, which lies in both countries’ exclusive economic zones. (The payments will go through an intermediary, the French energy company Total.)
The resulting deal was hailed as “historic” by both sides. Former Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is trying to return to power in the Nov. 1 election, predictably denounced it as a “disgraceful surrender.” It was also attacked by the former U.S. negotiator who tried and failed to get a deal in the Trump administration.
But this looks very much like a case of “sour grapes,” as my Council on Foreign Relations colleague Martin Indyk noted. Trump and Netanyahu couldn’t get a deal done; Biden and Lapid did. Israel’s security establishment is firmly in favor of the deal not only because it will help safeguard Israel’s natural gas fields but also because it will help bolster the Lebanese government and economy. Israel does not want a failed state next door.
This agreement is not as dramatic as the Abraham Accords struck under the Trump administration in which three Arab states (the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco) recognized Israel. But it is, in some ways, even more surprising.
The UAE, Morocco and Bahrain weren’t at war with Israel. Hezbollah, the Iran-allied Lebanese militant group, by contrast, has long been, and remains, one of Israel’s main security threats. It is also the most powerful political entity in Lebanon with a de facto veto over government decisions. So, it’s pretty extraordinary that Hezbollah is allowing the Lebanese government to sign a deal that could turn Israel and Lebanon into business partners. “Lebanon has, for the first time, entered a kind of de facto recognition of Israel and its borders,” writes Daniel B. Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel.
That’s something for which the Biden administration deserves a lot of credit — just as the Trump administration deserved credit for the Abraham Accords. It just goes to show that diplomacy does pay off sometimes — even if we don’t always give it the attention it deserves. | 2022-10-17T16:46:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden just pulled off a big diplomatic victory — and almost no one noticed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/17/biden-lebanon-israel-diplomatic-victory/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/17/biden-lebanon-israel-diplomatic-victory/ |
The world continues to ignore the radicalization of India
By Rana Ayyub
Global Opinions contributing writer
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi speaks during a function at a hospital in Ahmedabad on Oct. 11. (Ajit Solanki/AP)
Last week, India’s Supreme Court took on an issue that has turned into a major political controversy: the hijab. In February, the southern state of Karnataka had banned women from wearing the hijab in classrooms — enraging Indian Muslims and delighting Hindu nationalists, who saw the state’s move as another triumph in their continuing campaign against Muslims in India.
The court’s decision ended up showing just how polarized India’s religious landscape has become. One of the judges on the panel declared wearing headscarves a matter of personal choice; the other essentially dismissed the problem, saying that the hijab was not “essential” to Islam.
But India’s Muslims can’t simply act as if the issue doesn’t exist. Muslim girls in India are fighting — just like their counterparts in Iran — for their fundamental right to dress and live on their own terms. Many Muslim girls were barred from entering school premises or sitting for exams when they insisted on wearing the hijab, which they believe is a fundamental right. These women believe that the general attack on the hijab is merely a pretext — part of the wider assault on every aspect of the Muslim identity.
That such an assault is well underway can no longer be denied, even if some people in the international community persist in ignoring it. On the streets of India today, Hindu nationalists have been seen brandishing swords and chanting provocative slogans outside mosques. Videos shared on social media of mob attacks on Muslims are far too common. And Muslim students and activists have seen their houses demolished by state officials without due process, clearly as retribution for speaking up against atrocities. The news organization Scroll recently reported that many Muslims are leaving India due to “rising majoritarianism.”
Just this month, India has witnessed a spate of incidents involving targeted attacks on the Muslim community.
In the first week of October, a mob barged into a heritage mosque in the city of Bidar, performed a Hindu ceremony and chanted the slogan “Jai Shri Ram” (Glory to Lord Rama). Then a disturbing video went viral showing several Muslim men being tied to a lamppost in Gujarat, after they were accused of trespassing and disturbing a Hindu festival. As the men were flogged, allegedly by police officers in civilian clothes, the crowds chanted nationalist slogans and danced. A similar incident took place last month, when people associated with an ultra-right-wing group called the Bajrang Dal reportedly assaulted Muslim boys for participating in the Hindu festival of Navratri, accusing them of enticing Hindu girls.
Extremists clearly feel empowered, and it is not hard to guess why. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is at the peak of his power. His crackdown on independent media and his Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) increasing dominance across all of India’s institutions are limiting society’s capacity to push back against such radicalism.
Members of his party, meanwhile, have added fuel to the fire: A sitting BJP member of Parliament, Pragya Thakur, recently stated that Muslims should not be allowed in Hindu festivals. Thakur is on trial for allegedly taking part in a bombing that killed six people near a mosque; she was elected while out on bail, after spending eight years in jail. Another BJP lawmaker appeared to call for a “total boycott” of Muslim businesses recently, with crowds cheering and clapping in response.
Modi, who has one of the biggest followings on social media of any Indian, has not called for inclusion or for an end to the violence against Muslims. Nor has he publicly reprimanded his lawmakers for speech that has further encouraged communal hate in India.
At the same time, the outside world doesn’t seem willing to stand up for India’s Muslims and other minorities. World leaders apparently prioritize maintaining strategic relations with India to counter China and Russia, not understanding that this willful and convenient ignorance is amplifying state-sanctioned violence against the 220 million Muslims in India.
Britain has recently offered a glaring example of the long reach of sectarian hatred allegedly emanating from India. Last month, the city of Leicester experienced an outpouring of communal violence between Hindu and Muslim communities. A BBC investigation has shown that the disinformation that led to the violence was inflamed by social media accounts from India. These fault lines are also present in the United States: An Indian independence day celebration in New Jersey in August controversially featured a piece of construction equipment similar to bulldozers used in India to demolish Muslim homes.
It was another reminder that the hate and division growing in India will not stop at its borders. A statement by Human Rights Watch released this month warned of a surge in crimes against Muslims in India. Yet the Modi government has mocked all criticism by human rights groups and international media as attempts to discredit his government.
As the world remains silent in the face of increasing injustice in India, I am reminded of an old Egyptian proverb: “Oh Pharaoh, who turned you into a tyrant?” “No one stopped me,” he replied. | 2022-10-17T16:46:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The world continues to ignore the radicalization of India - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/17/india-hindu-nationalist-extremism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/17/india-hindu-nationalist-extremism/ |
2022 politics come to Chuck Grassley’s now-shaky reelection bid
Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
In an era of deep skepticism about polling and pollsters, one firm’s reputation defies the rampant skepticism. When a new Selzer & Co. poll drops, particularly one detailing the state of play in the pollsters’ home state of Iowa, it’s worth paying attention to.
And when a Selzer poll conducted for the Des Moines Register shows that the state’s senior senator — in office for more than four decades — is suddenly at risk of ouster, it’s worth understanding that some significant change is afoot in the state.
In the poll, released on Saturday, Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R) has a 3-point lead over his Democratic challenger, Navy admiral Mike Franken — a margin safely described as a toss-up. This is for an incumbent senator who has won reelection six times by an average margin of 35 percentage points. His closest Senate race to date was in 1980, when he was first elected; then he won by 8 points.
Since then, he’s enjoyed the benefits of incumbency in a state that’s seemingly culturally committed to the idea. In 2014, I wrote about the weird pattern in Iowa from 1980 through 2010: voters in the state would go to the polls and vote overwhelmingly to send Grassley to the Senate and then, four years later, send Democrat Tom Harkin there as well. Sometimes Grassley’s reelection aligned with the presidential contest; sometimes Harkin’s did. Didn’t matter.
Then Harkin announced his retirement at the age of 74. In 2014, his seat was won by Joni Ernst (R), who held it in 2020. At about the same time, Iowa shifted more forcefully to the right in presidential voting.
But notice what happened with the margins in the presidential and Senate races since 2014, with the exception of Grassley’s. In 2014, Ernst won by about 8 points. In 2020, she won reelection slightly more narrowly. Donald Trump won the state in 2016 and 2020 by 9 points and 8 points respectively. In other words, statewide federal elections in Iowa since 2014 have been consistently in the range of an 8-point GOP advantage.
Again, Grassley’s reelection in 2016 was an exception to the trend. But his last two reelection bids have been trending downward:! n 2010 (a big Republican year) he won by 31 points, down from 42 points six years before. Then in 2016 he won by 24 points. If that trend were to continue, you’d expect him to win with a margin in the double digits this year, too.
But not only have Iowa politics become less bipartisan since 2014, Grassley himself has changed. To wit: he’s gotten older.
This is not an earth-shattering revelation, of course, noticing that time progresses in one consistent direction. But it seems clear that in a moment where the age of elected leaders is under particular scrutiny, seeking reelection at the age of 89 years old is not necessarily an asset.
That Grassley sought reelection is its own commentary on the aging of America. The oldest baby boomers are 76 years old, and there are a lot of them. But the arrival of the millennial generation in the voting pool means that there’s as much pressure from below for new leadership as there is support for members of Grassley’s generation.
Census Bureau data show that, in 2010, 21 percent of the national electorate was 10 years younger than Grassley or older. In 2020 — a presidential year with record turnout, admittedly — only 8 percent of the electorate was 10 years younger than Grassley or older. Seven percent of the 2010 electorate was 50 or more years younger than Grassley. In 2020, 29 percent of the electorate was.
This concern is reflected in the Selzer poll. Six in 10 Iowans see Grassley’s age as a concern; only a third see it as an asset. Among independents, twice as many Iowans view it as a concern as an asset.
Franken, Grassley’s opponent, is playing up the issue. An ad released by his campaign last month has older voters (or, at least, actors meant to represent such voters) complaining about Grassley’s votes centered on senior issues like health care costs. But the point about Grassley’s age is unsubtle: It ends with a timeline of his time in the Senate and a rapid slideshow of Grassley’s appearance in each contest. A young Iowan becoming an elderly Washington institution.
Even if Grassley weren’t the age he is, it seems likely that he wouldn’t coast to reelection by a 30-point margin. But he is as old as he is, and Selzer’s data suggests that’s a liability.
And Selzer’s data are worth heeding. | 2022-10-17T16:56:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 2022 politics come to Chuck Grassley’s now-shaky reelection bid - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/grassley-iowa-elections-age/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/grassley-iowa-elections-age/ |
Welcome to The Daily 202! Tell your friends to sign up here. If you haven’t already been watching, now is a great time to tune into “Election ‘22: What Matters,” a weekly political show from The Washington Post and Newsy. It airs at 8:30 p.m. Fridays on Newsy. Catch up on the latest episode here.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stated goal of mobilizing — a better word might be conscripting — hundreds of thousands more troops for war in Ukraine has gone horribly for him, for the men pressed into service and for the war effort. So he now says it’ll end soon.
But measuring how badly it has hurt him is hard. Observers outside Russia are scouring the political landscape for evidence the deeply unpopular effort to field another 300,000 soldiers has loosened Putin’s hold on power. Russian opinion polls and elections won’t do. Neither is reliable.
On the surface, it’s fairly easy to see how badly it has gone:
Thousands upon thousands of military-age men have fled Russia for places like Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, or Kazakhstan. At least two decamped for Alaska. Some made a break for South Korea (where they reportedly applied for tourist visas.)
Thousands of Russians have taken to the streets to protest, notably among ethnic minorities that are, along with rural inhabitants, reportedly being drafted at higher rates than ethnic Russians and urban residents.
There are many reports — and many grievances aired on social media — about the haphazard training and lack of equipment for the newly uniformed. Bring your own supplies (including tampons to stop bleeding if shot, according to at least one video on social media) seems to be the strategy.
Some of the first mobilized Russians have already died, some in the war, some by suicide.
On Sunday, my colleagues Robyn Dixon and Natalia Abbakumova chronicled a conscription effort that will not, to put it mildly, reverse the diagnosis of Russia’s security apparatus as logistically inept and frequently dysfunctional.
“Police and military officers swooped down on a Moscow business center this past week unannounced. They were looking for men to fight in Ukraine — and they seized nearly every one they saw. Some musicians, rehearsing. A courier there to deliver a parcel. A man from a Moscow service agency, very drunk, in his mid-50s, with a walking disability,” they reported.
(That bit about the pundits gave me pause. While they appear to have fallen back in line, there were hopes in Western capitals last month that Russia’s significant battlefield setbacks would lead to more of them publicly criticizing the war effort, making Putin’s life a little harder.)
Quantity isn’t quality
It would be one thing if Putin’s Sept. 21 mobilization announcement and the resulting draft were turning around Russia’s fortunes on the battlefield, where they have been pushed back with surprising speed in recent weeks by Ukrainian forces equipped by America and its allies.
But my colleague Liz Sly reported over the weekend that the so-called mobilization and the flurry of Russian missile strikes on Ukrainian cities aren’t likely to reverse the tide of battle, according to military experts and Western intelligence assessments.
One interesting point from one of Liz’s sources: It’s not purely manpower, but quality officers, that Russia needs. “But its existing leadership ranks have already suffered heavy casualties and are worn down from months of fighting.”
Liz quoted Yuriy Saks, an adviser at Ukraine’s defense ministry, injecting a note of caution: “‘We don’t want to underestimate our enemy, and we understand that if 200,000 arrive on the battlefield things could change.”
One Western official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Liz of skepticism Russia can adequately train and equip the 222,000 Putin said Friday have already been conscripted.
“The ones that have shown up so far ‘have been fielded with very, very limited training and very, very poor equipment," he said. “It’s really unlikely they will have any positive impact in the near term.”
Maybe the best evidence that this has all gone poorly for Putin is that he said Friday the mobilization would be complete in two weeks. Whether that’s true or not, the announcement suggests he’s feeling enough heat for the unpopular policy to promise its end.
But maybe not that much heat. At the Associated Press, Sabra Ayres noted Putin promised to look into reports of bad training and acknowledged circumstances that were “unpleasant, to put it mildly.”
Still, he said, “my actions are correct and timely.”
“Federal prosecutors urged a judge Monday to make former president Donald Trump’s political confidant Stephen K. Bannon the first person to be incarcerated for contempt of Congress in more than half a century, recommending he serve six months in prison for refusing to cooperate with a House committee probing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack,” Spencer S. Hsu reports.
“Republicans enter the final weeks of the contest for control of Congress with a narrow but distinctive advantage as the economy and inflation have surged as the dominant concerns, giving the party momentum to take back power from Democrats in next month’s midterm elections, a New York Times/Siena College poll has found,” the New York Times' Shane Goldmacher reports.
“Military research groups at the leading edge of China’s hypersonics and missile programs — many on a U.S. export blacklist — are purchasing a range of specialized American technology, including products developed by firms that have received millions of dollars in grants and contracts from the Pentagon, a Washington Post investigation has found,” Cate Cadell and Ellen Nakashima report.
How it happens: “The advanced software products are acquired by these military organizations through private Chinese firms that sell them on despite U.S. export controls designed to prevent sales or resales to foreign entities deemed a threat to U.S. national security, the investigation shows.”
“When Kari Lake walks into a room, there will be a small lavalier microphone clipped to the collar of her dress or the lapel of her shirt,” Ruby Cramer reports.
“In Texas, about one-third of election administrators have left their jobs in the past two years, according to surveys conducted this year by the secretary of state’s office. State officials said data prior to 2020 is less reliable, making it difficult to compare the rates over time,” ProPublica's Jeremy Schwartz reports.
“The levels of distrust that have come to dominate the political landscape in Texas, a state that Trump carried with relative ease, should be cause for concern, says David Becker, the founder and executive director of The Center for Election Innovation & Research, a nonprofit focused on ensuring accessible and secure elections for all eligible voters.”
“In September 2022, a remarkable thing happened: War on the Rocks published an open letter about American civil-military relations signed by almost every living former secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The letter was important not just for what it said, but what it did not — and, crucially, what it could not — say. It revealed how little we know about civilians in civil-military relations and how much practitioners’ retreat from politics has harmed our ability to protect the military profession from partisanship,” War on the Rocks' Alice Hunt Friend writes.
“Five current administration officials who work with CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus portrayed him as unengaged in his job, saying he often doesn’t attend White House meetings on the situation on the border, badmouths other agencies to colleagues and superiors, and has not built relationships within CBP and across other agencies to address the influx of migrants at the border. They complain he is unfamiliar with some of the operations of CBP and instead is focused primarily on reforming the culture of the Border Patrol, addressing its long list of allegations of racism and violence,” Politico's Daniel Lippman reports.
Biden to visit South Florida one week before Election Day to raise money for Crist
“In what would be his first political event in the state since taking office, President Joe Biden will stump for Charlie Crist in South Florida one week before Election Day as Crist vies to unseat Gov. Ron DeSantis. Crist’s campaign told the Miami Herald the two will headline a private fundraiser on Nov. 1, after Crist’s fundraising ‘took a dip due to Hurricane Ian,’” the Miami Herald's Bianca Padró Ocasio reports.
Democrats in tight races turn to Jill Biden on the campaign trail
“With President Biden’s job approval hovering at about 40 percent at a moment when Democrats are struggling to hold on to the House and Senate, Dr. Biden has become a lifeline for candidates trying to draw attention and money but not the baggage that an appearance with her husband would bring. According to a senior White House official, she is the most requested surrogate in the administration,” the NYT's Katie Rogers reports.
Rising credit card debt, visualized
“After a coronavirus-era reprieve, Americans are borrowing heavily again to keep up with decades-high inflation on essentials such as food, gas and housing. Credit card debt is rising at its fastest clip in more than 20 years, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Overall, Americans owe $887 billion on their credit cards, a 13 percent increase from a year ago,” Abha Bhattarai reports.
“Pennsylvania’s most widely circulated newspaper showed up, without fanfare or explanation, in the mailboxes of about 1 in every 5 households in the state this April. A 12-page tabloid with a circulation of 953,000, it has arrived every month since … But nowhere in its pages does it disclose its true mission,” Michael Scherer reports.
“The final weeks of this year’s intensely competitive midterm elections suggest that the former vice president’s fortunes have shifted as he lays the groundwork for his own potential 2024 White House campaign. The man who was booed last year at a conservative conference is now an in-demand draw for Republican candidates, including some who spent their primaries obsessively courting Trump’s endorsement, in part by parroting his election lies,” the Associated Press' Jill Colvin reports.
Biden will return to the White House from New Castle, Del., at 12:20 p.m. He has no public events on his afternoon schedule.
“Some of the most galvanizing early #MeToo cases suggested that a thorough and eternal discrediting would be the fate of every accused man, such as the now-imprisoned producer Harvey Weinstein or former “Today” show host Matt Lauer, who has barely been seen in public since his 2017 firing. But others have reclaimed some of their careers and public esteem. And outside of a bad news cycle, others haven’t really been affected at all,” Ashley Fetters Maloy and Paul Farhi write.
On our radar: Biden wants to let gig workers be employees. Here’s why it matters. | 2022-10-17T16:56:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Putin’s Ukraine conscription has gone badly. How badly? He says it’s ending. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/putins-ukraine-conscription-has-gone-badly-how-badly-he-says-its-ending/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/putins-ukraine-conscription-has-gone-badly-how-badly-he-says-its-ending/ |
Supreme Court won’t take case raising past rulings denounced as racist
The Biden administration had said a citizenship case from American Samoa was not a good vehicle for reexamining a series of rulings called the Insular Cases
An American flag flutters outside the Supreme Court building in Washington. (Elizabeth Frantz/Reuters)
The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a case about citizenship rights for residents of American Samoa that advocates said should be used to overturn a series of century-old precedents widely deemed racist.
Supporters of those in U.S. territories and civil rights groups urged the court to take up Fitisemanu v. U.S., in part to reexamine a series of rulings called the Insular Cases.
Justice Department advises Supreme Court to pass on citizenship case
Last term, justices at both ends of the court’s ideological spectrum — Sonia Sotomayor on the left and Neil M. Gorsuch on the right — said the rulings were an embarrassment because of the racist language and imperialist sentiment employed to find that residents of some U.S. territories are not entitled to full constitutional protection.
“The Insular Cases have no foundation in the Constitution and rest instead on racial stereotypes,” Gorsuch wrote in April in a concurring opinion. He added that “the time has come to recognize that the Insular Cases rest on a rotten foundation. And I hope the day comes soon when the Court squarely overrules them.”
Gorsuch seemed to have in mind Fitisemanu. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit upheld a federal law that those born in American Samoa are U.S. nationals but not U.S. citizens. It came in a challenge from three people born in the archipelago but now living in Utah.
There was no indication from the court’s routine rejection of the petition that Gorsuch or Sotomayor objected to the decision.
“The Supreme Court’s refusal to reconsider the Insular Cases today continues to reflect that ‘Equal Justice Under Law’ does not mean the same thing for the 3.6 million residents of U.S. territories as it does for everyone else,” Neil Weare, president and founder of Equally American, the group pressing the case, said in a statement.
The Biden administration told the Supreme Court in a brief that the appeals court had been right to find that Congress should make citizenship decisions about those born in territories, and the Samoa case was not the proper one to question the Insular Cases.
For one thing, there is not consensus on citizenship among the territory’s approximately 50,000 residents.
Its political leadership and delegate to Congress filed a brief saying the issue should be negotiated through the political process.
“For three thousand years, on an archipelago seven thousand miles from this Court, the American Samoan people have preserved fa’a Samoa — the traditional Samoan way of life, weaving together countless traditional cultural, historical, and religious practices into a vibrant pattern found nowhere else in the world,” their brief to the court said. “The American Samoan people have kept fa’a Samoa alive in part by preserving their unique political status.”
The challengers and a group that has worked for birthright citizenship for those born in territories said in their request to the court that those born in American Samoa are labeled “second-class by the U.S. government.”
Those who move to the states, “despite being taxpayers who contribute to their communities, are unable to vote,” serve on juries or run for state and federal office, the petition says.
Despite a high percentage of residents serving in the military, it continues, “In effect, they are citizens of nowhere.”
Supreme Court says Congress can restrict Puerto Ricans from aid program
The American Samoan challengers noted they were seeking to overturn rulings that began in 1901 with one justice saying there should be different rules for “alien races, differing from us,” and expressing concern over “savages” becoming “citizens of the United States.”
“It’s a punch in the gut for the Justices to leave in place a ruling that says I am not equal to other Americans simply because I was born in a U.S. territory,” the lead plaintiff, John Fitisemanu, said in a statement. “I was born on U.S. soil, have a U.S. passport, and pay my taxes like everyone else. But because of a discriminatory federal law, I am not recognized as a U.S. citizen.”
At issue was how to interpret the Constitution’s 14th Amendment guarantee that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
There is no split among appellate courts that overseas territories are not “in the United States,” the Biden administration said, and it is up to Congress to award birthright citizenship, as it has done in Puerto Rico, Guam and elsewhere.
“The government in no way relies on the indefensible and discredited aspects of the Insular Cases’ reasoning and rhetoric,” Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar wrote, so “this case would be an unsuitable vehicle for reexamining those cases.” | 2022-10-17T16:56:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Supreme Court won’t take American Samoa citizenship case - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/supreme-court-american-samoa-citizenship/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/supreme-court-american-samoa-citizenship/ |
Then-President Donald Trump waves as he leaves the stage after speaking at the Republican Jewish Coalition's annual leadership meeting in April 2019. (Jacquelyn Martin/AP)
Donald Trump was apparently envious of the attention Kanye West got for his recent antisemitic comments, judging by his own social media post Sunday.
On Truth Social, the former president attacked American Jews for being insufficiently supportive of him. “Wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of [Trump’s record on Israel] than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.,” Trump said.
Trump wagered that he was so popular in Israel that he could be elected prime minister, and added: “U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel — Before it is too late!”
While less direct than West’s recent statements, Trump’s comments lean on the familiar antisemitic trope that American Jews have a dual loyalty to Israel. But while this stereotype is a favorite of Trump’s — and one he has deployed increasingly since leaving office — it’s hardly the only one he has offered during his political career.
Here’s a rundown of the various tropes Trump has trafficked in.
“Your country,” “your prime minister” and “your ambassador”
Trump has regularly spoken about American Jews as if Israel is their country, rather than the United States.
At a White House Hanukkah party in 2018, Trump said Vice President Mike Pence and second lady Karen Pence go to Israel “and they love your country. They love your country. And they love this country” — the implication being that “this country” is distinct from “your country.”
Over the years, President Trump’s rhetoric about Jewish Americans has resembled the Jewish American rhetoric he has decried from other politicians. (Video: JM Rieger/The Washington Post, Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
In a September 2020 call after Rosh Hashanah, Trump told American Jewish leaders, “We really appreciate you; we love your country also.”
In 2019, he referred to Benjamin Netanyahu as “your prime minister” at a Republican Jewish Coalition event.
Trump also regularly referred to his ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, as “your ambassador” while in the company of American Jews. While that could perhaps be understood as him referring to Americans’ ambassador rather than Jews’, Friedman is the only ambassador Trump has used this construction for, according to Factba.se’s compilation of Trump’s public comments.
Dual loyalty
Relatedly, Trump has cast American Jews as insufficiently appreciative of his record on Israel, often stating or implying — as he did Sunday — that his lack of support among them is inexplicable.
“You have people that are Jewish people, that are great people — they don’t love Israel enough,” he said in 2019.
He added the same year, “Any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty.” When that blew up, Trump doubled down.
In another interview in December 2021, Trump offered the same comparison between American Jews and evangelicals that he did Sunday. He told an Israeli journalist that “the Jewish people in the United States either don’t like Israel or don’t care about Israel.” He added: “People in this country that are Jewish no longer love Israel.”
Jews as powerful/controlling things with money
The most popular antisemitic trope in politics is that Jews control things behind the scenes — often by virtue of their money and cunning. And Trump has also leaned into this.
During another RJC event in 2015 — at a time when some in the party weren’t behind his candidacy — he repeatedly told those assembled that he didn’t want their money. He did so no fewer than five times.
“Again, I don’t want your money, therefore you’re probably not going to support me, because stupidly you want to give money,” he said.
Later in the campaign, Trump tweeted an image of Hillary Clinton surrounded by money with the words “Most Corrupt Candidate Ever!” inside a six-pointed star, the shape of the Star of David. Trump also ran an ad featuring several prominent Jews — George Soros, Janet L. Yellen and Lloyd Blankfein — while warning of “global special interests.”
And in the December 2021 interview, Trump offered perhaps his most suggestive comments on this front.
“It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress, and today I think it’s the exact opposite,” he said.
Jews as “brutal” “negotiators”
Trump has often spoken about Jewish people in extremely broad strokes, pitching them as people who stick to their own — or at least, should — and who are successful because of their business acumen.
During his 2015 speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition, he suggested that those assembled were “negotiators” without parallel.
“Look, I’m a negotiator like you, folks; we’re negotiators,” he said, adding: “This room negotiates perhaps more than any room I’ve spoken to — maybe more.”
During a 2019 speech to the Israeli American Council, Trump told those assembled: “A lot of you are in the real estate business because I know you very well. You’re brutal killers. Not nice people at all. But you have to vote for me; you have no choice.”
He summarized his point by saying these people would have to support him out of financial self-interest.
“Even if you don’t like me — some of you don’t, some of you I don’t like at all, actually — and you’re going to be my biggest supporters because you’ll be out of business in about 15 minutes” if Democrats win the election, he said.
In 2020, The Washington Post’s Greg Miller reported that Trump has said after speaking to Jewish leaders on the phone that they “are only in it for themselves” and “stick together” in ethnic allegiance. And he’s often suggested that ethnic allegiance should extend to him, because of Jewish members of his family.
“You just like me because my daughter happens to be Jewish,” he joked to the RJC in 2015.
He added in 2019: “I saw a poll that in the last election, I got 25 percent of the Jewish vote, and I said here I have a son-in-law and a daughter who are Jewish, I have beautiful grandchildren that are Jewish, I have all of these incredible achievements. I’m amazed that it seems to be almost automatically a Democrat vote.” | 2022-10-17T16:56:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump's long history with antisemitic tropes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/trump-history-antisemitic-tropes/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/17/trump-history-antisemitic-tropes/ |
Manchester United’s Mason Greenwood to remain in custody on assault charges
Manchester United's Mason Greenwood has been remanded in custody. (Paul Ellis/AFP/Getty Images)
Manchester United forward Mason Greenwood, charged with attempted rape, assault and “repeatedly engaging” in controlling and coercive behavior, was remanded in custody during a court appearance Monday in Manchester, England.
The 21-year-old player, accused of incidents that occurred in October 2021, had been out on bail since January but was arrested Saturday in Trafford for allegedly breaching the conditions of his release. Flanked by two officers Monday, Greenwood spoke only to confirm his name, birth date and address at Manchester and Salford Magistrates’ Court. After the proceedings, District Judge Mark Hadfield made the decision to keep Greenwood in custody at least until his next appearance, Nov. 21 in Manchester Crown Court.
Greenwood, who is from Bowdon, Greater Manchester, was arrested in January when images and videos emerged online. Prosecutor Rebecca Macaulay-Addison told the court Monday (via the Guardian) that the complainant alleged the attempted rape occurred on Oct. 22, 2021. Greenwood is also accused of monitoring the woman’s social media accounts and “making threats and derogatory comments towards her, amounting to a serious effect upon her,” Macaulay-Addison said. The controlling and coercive behavior allegedly occurred between November 2018 and October 2022, according to the BBC. He also faces a count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm in December 2021.
In accordance with bail conditions, he had surrendered his passport and agreed not to contact the complainant, her parents or her friends.
Greenwood was suspended from playing or training with Man U shortly after the allegations surfaced online in January. In February, he lost his endorsement deal with Nike. | 2022-10-17T16:56:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Mason Greenwood of Manchester United remanded in custody - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/17/mason-greenwood-remain-custody/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/17/mason-greenwood-remain-custody/ |
Even if weed is legal where you are, airlines might deny you boarding
Disruptive and intoxicated passengers have been an ongoing, sometimes violent scourge on planes in recent years. Air travelers have been fined for drinking alcohol they brought on board. Some have been arrested after attacking flight attendants while allegedly under the influence of drugs. But what travelers might not know is that they could be prohibited from boarding at all if they are drunk or high — even on legal substances.
Airlines’ contracts of carriage — the legal agreement a passenger accepts when they buy a ticket — say that passengers may not be allowed to fly if they appear “intoxicated or under the influence of drugs.” That means they could be kept from boarding or removed from a plane once on board.
6 questions about traveling with pot, answered
It’s not just airline policy: Federal aviation regulations say that no airline may allow anyone to board a plane if the passenger appears to be intoxicated. That can include intoxication from drugs such as marijuana, even in cities or states where they’re legal or decriminalized.
“If you plan to consume alcohol before your flight, remember that the airline’s gate agent may not let you board the aircraft if you appear to have had too much,” the Federal Aviation Administration wrote in a post on Medium last year. “So, if you have one too many in the airport and the flight crew won’t allow you to board, remember they are just obeying federal regulations and keeping the rest of the passengers safe.”
The problem with BYOB on flights
This month, a Florida man was arrested after allegedly attacking flight attendants and breaking a piece off a bathroom door during a United flight from Miami to the D.C. area. He told authorities he had consumed psilocybin mushrooms in the airport before boarding, according to federal court documents.
And in September, a Delta passenger was taken into custody for interfering with a flight crew after ignoring instructions and climbing over seats in the first-class cabin during a flight from Portland, Ore., to Atlanta. He was restrained and the flight diverted to Salt Lake City because of his behavior. The man told officers he had used meth in recent days and often had bad reactions to the drug, according to a federal complaint.
The U.S. Attorney General last year told federal prosecutors to give high priority to investigations into crimes committed on planes amid a record number of unruly-passenger incidents.
Jim Brauchle, an aviation attorney with the Motley Rice law firm, said travelers who are under the influence and cause a disturbance could face arrest at the airport for public intoxication; federal criminal charges for interfering with a flight crew; reimbursement costs if a plane has to make an unexpected diversion; and fines from the FAA.
“That’s a pretty expensive beer,” he said.
Even in states where a traveler can consume marijuana legally, he said, an airline can still prohibit them from boarding if they appear to be under the influence — just like someone could be denied the right to fly if they’ve consumed alcohol legally. Despite loosening local or state laws, travelers still can’t fly with marijuana because the substance is illegal under federal law and plane travel falls under federal jurisdiction.
Brauchle said that if a traveler has a few drinks before boarding and mixes in some sleeping pills, they could face a “dangerous combination” with the added effect of being at a higher altitude.
Bad behavior on a flight can come with a giant fine
He said major airlines provide training for employees on identifying whether someone is actually drunk or high rather than experiencing a physical condition or disability that could be mistaken for being under the influence.
“I think that’s probably why if you’re not, what I would say, acting a fool as you’re trying to board the plane, there’s probably a good chance you’re going to get on board,” Brauchle said.
United’s contract specifies that passengers could be prohibited from boarding if they are intoxicated or under the influence of drugs — unless they are a “qualified individual whose appearance or involuntary behavior may make them appear to be intoxicated or under the influence of drugs.”
Morgan Durrant, a spokesman for Delta, said the airline has given great attention in the past several years to educate and train staff about conditions that can be seen or might be less obvious. He said passengers with conditions or disabilities are able to let the airline know in advance in case they need any accommodations or assistance during their travels.
No, unruly passenger: You can’t physically open a plane door midflight
The biggest concern, experts say, is safety.
“If the customer does not appear to be a danger to themselves or to anyone around them, chances are pretty good they’re not going to get stopped,” Durrant said.
Ultimately, he said, the goal is to avoid dangerous situations in the air.
“If there’s anything that looks like it can have the potential to grow into a contentious situation while the aircraft is at altitude, you always want to solve for that on the ground,” he said. | 2022-10-17T16:57:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why you can't fly drunk or high, even on weed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/10/17/flying-drunk-high-weed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/10/17/flying-drunk-high-weed/ |
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf joins Washington Post Live on Monday, Oct. 17. (Video: The Washington Post)
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf was a star NBA player who was suspended by the league for refusing to stand for the national anthem before games. On Monday, Oct. 17 at 1:00 p.m. ET, join Washington Post sports columnist Jerry Brewer for a conversation with Abdul-Rauf about his new autobiography recounting his career, his commitment to his Islamic faith and the evolution of athlete activism.
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf
Athlete, Activist & Author | 2022-10-17T16:57:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former NBA player Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf on new autobiography and athlete activism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/10/17/former-nba-player-mahmoud-abdul-rauf-new-autobiography-athlete-activism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/10/17/former-nba-player-mahmoud-abdul-rauf-new-autobiography-athlete-activism/ |
A story of China’s cashless economy – with lessons for the U.S.
Martin Chorzempa’s ‘The Cashless Revolution’ shows why and how China came to be at the forefront of financial technology
Review by David Wessel
The Alipay logo. (Dado Ruvic/Reuters)
When Martin Chorzempa, then a couple of years out of college, moved to Beijing in 2013 as a young researcher, he witnessed an antiquated and very low-tech financial system. Interest rates on savings were capped below the rate of inflation. Credit cards issued by a state monopoly were used by only a few. Most people paid cash for nearly everything. Online shopping was clunky. But soon after, China’s fintech revolution hit, moving so swiftly that by the time Chorzempa returned to the United States in 2015, it felt like going back in time. Cash in China had largely disappeared. Smartphones had replaced wallets. And the model was spreading. By the time Chorzempa went to Thailand on his honeymoon in 2017, he discovered that convenience stores wouldn’t take his Visa card; it was either Thai baht or China’s Alipay, a mobile payment app with more than 1 billion users in China and beyond.
Today, China is ahead of the United States on almost every aspect of digital finance — including the creation of central bank digital currency — and it is eager for its super-apps to expand globally. In “The Cashless Revolution: China’s Reinvention of Money and the End of America’s Domination of Finance and Technology,” Chorzempa, now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, explains how China’s fintech entrepreneurs grew so large so fast — and what happened when they became a threat to the Chinese state. Despite the hyperbolic subtitle, the book is an authoritative, comprehensive and thoughtful account of a remarkable episode in technology and finance that offers lessons for the United States as it seeks to encourage innovation in finance without putting consumer or financial stability at risk. It is written clearly enough for readers who are expert in neither finance nor Chinese politics. (Full disclosure: In reading the acknowledgments, I discovered that Chorzempa and I share an agent and an editor. I have not discussed this book with either.)
The first and last chapters of this book capture the essence of the story and may be sufficient for readers less interested in the blow-by-blow (and occasionally repetitive) account of the rise and fall of Alibaba’s Jack Ma and Tencent’s Pony Ma (who share a last name common in China and are not related). In short, big state-owned banks were run not for the benefit of savers or small borrowers but for the benefit of state-owned enterprises, which enjoyed low-interest loans. The banks had essentially no competitors until Alibaba (which launched Alipay) and Tencent (which owns WeChat), encouraged by the Communist Party leadership, built, as Chorzempa explains it, “a new financial model around super-apps that started with e-commerce, social media, and games and expanded into financial empires spanning payments, investments, and loans.” It was as potent an economic force as a merger of Facebook and Vanguard would be. The apps are so embedded in Chinese daily life that in 2020, a Guangdong court decreed that instead of prison, labor camps or fines, the convicted would remain free but face a five-year ban on using digital payments. That was deemed a sufficiently harsh punishment.
Chorzempa highlights several elements of the success of Alibaba (and its spinoff, Ant Group) and Tencent that are not widely appreciated in the United States. One is the important role of foreign investors (including Yahoo and U.S. venture capital firms). In the early days, foreign expertise also played a role, helping, for example, to introduce the QR codes originally developed by Japanese automakers for supply-chain tracking that are now so ubiquitous in China that beggars use them. A second factor is the opening created for the upstarts when China barred Visa and Mastercard to protect UnionPay, the stodgy Chinese credit card monopoly. This meant that, unlike Americans, the Chinese didn’t enjoy the usefulness of credit cards and thus were more open to another alternative to cash. Third, China’s economy has not been propelled exclusively through state subsidies and five-year plans but by law-bending entrepreneurs. “China,” Chorzempa writes, “is extremely messy, with rampant lawbreaking and a government with massive blind spots about what is going on in its economy and financial system, with tacit permission often given to blatantly illegal activities.”
Finally, there is the crucial role of Zhou Xiaochuan, a pro-market reformer who led the People’s Bank of China, the Chinese analog to the Federal Reserve, from 2002 to 2018. Zhou, as Chorzempa puts it, “invited big tech into finance to compete with state-owned banks and force them to shape up, realizing that simply ordering banks to become more innovative was bound to fail.” He made sure that incumbent financial institutions couldn’t use their political clout to block fintech’s disruptions to their monopolies.
This is not a happily-ever-after story, though. Peer-to-peer lending, largely unregulated, turned into a bubble that cost Chinese savers billions. Then, the Communist Party and financial regulators — Zhou among them — decided their efforts to bust up the banks’ monopoly had produced an even bigger one in the super-apps. In 2020, the government forced Jack Ma to cancel the initial public offering of his Ant Group. He resigned his post and has largely disappeared from public view. Regulation of the fintech giants was significantly tightened. And when the coronavirus pandemic hit, the government used the super apps to monitor the health and control the movements of Chinese citizens, illustrating just how much personal information the companies had made available to the government. (Chorzempa does, however, write that Chinese consumers have more control over how their data is used for credit scoring than Americans do).
What does all this mean for the United States? China illustrates how fostering competition can yield innovation and reduce costs to consumers and merchants. But it also shows the dangers of a siloed regulatory system that isn’t equipped to ensure fintech isn’t ripping off consumers, offloading risks on taxpayers, compromising citizens’ privacy or hiding egregious conflicts of interest. China, Chorzempa says, is a laboratory for the rapidly evolving world of fintech and how governments deal with it — and it has ambitions to dominate the global fintech market. We should learn from China as it once learned from us.
David Wessel is director of the Hutchins Center on Fiscal and Monetary Policy at the Brookings Institution. His most recent book is “Only the Rich Can Play: How Washington Works in the New Gilded Age,” the story of opportunity zones.
The Cashless Revolution
China’s Reinvention of Money and the End of America’s Domination of Finance and Technology
By Martin Chorzempa
PublicAffairs. 320 pp. $29 | 2022-10-17T18:00:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Book review of "The Cashless Revolution" by Martin Chorzempa - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/17/cashless-revolution-martin-chorzempa-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/17/cashless-revolution-martin-chorzempa-review/ |
The social media kingpins in 2018. (Bloomberg)
Henry Ford, for instance, owned the notorious Dearborn Independent weekly newspaper from 1919 to 1927, which he used to promote shockingly antisemitic views, with articles claiming that a vast Jewish conspiracy was infecting the US and that Jews were bent on corrupting the world through wars and the stock market. The paper had a circulation of about 500,000 and was distributed throughout the US via Ford’s network of car dealerships.
In the UK, aristocratic brothers Alfred and Harold Harmsworth started the Daily Mail newspaper in 1896, to publicly cheer for British imperialism, as well as the rise of fascism in Europe and in Germany in the 1930’s.
Though today’s social media proprietors are focusing on free speech, they may eventually come to echo their predecessors by pushing an agenda with their platforms. It won’t be as simple as printing a punchy editorial in a newspaper, but there are still levers these owners can pull to amplify a message directly from their profiles or from their supporters.
Musk’s Twitter Will Reel From Culture Shock: Parmy Olson
Kanye Has Given Adidas a Yeezy Off-Ramp: Andrea Felsted | 2022-10-17T18:26:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kanye Buys His Own Little Piece of Free Speech - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/kanye-buys-his-own-little-piece-of-free-speech/2022/10/17/8d76c4c2-4e3c-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/kanye-buys-his-own-little-piece-of-free-speech/2022/10/17/8d76c4c2-4e3c-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
What Are the Iranian Drones Russia Is Using in Ukraine?
Analysis by Marc Champion | Bloomberg
A member of the Ukrainian police force stands guard next to smoke as Kyiv is rocked by explosions during a drone attack in the early morning on October 17, 2022 in Kyiv, Ukraine. The explosions, which authorities reported were caused by “kamikaze drones”, came a week after Russian missile strikes hit across Ukraine. (Photo by Paula Bronstein /Getty Images) (Photographer: Paula Bronstein/Getty Images)
In response to military setbacks in other parts of Ukraine, Russia used single-use drones to attack central Kyiv Oct. 17. The drones, according to Ukraine and the US, are supplied by Iran.
1. What are the drones?
Named the Shahed-136, they’re sometimes called “kamikaze” drones because they aren’t designed to survive their mission. But they are really more guided missiles than airplanes, and all missiles are kamikazes. Because the Shahed-136s are fitted with swept wings and a propeller motor, they can loiter for hours before locking onto a target and striking. While new to the war in Ukraine, the Shahed comes from a family of slow, low-flying projectiles that have been around since the 1980s, upgraded primarily by the inclusion of commercial GPS systems available on Alibaba. The name can mean martyr in Persian.
2. Is this the first use of Iranian drones in Ukraine?
No. According to the US, Russia took delivery of 1,000 drones from Iran at the end of August. The next month, the Russians started using them to attack the southern port city of Odesa. For months before that, the Ukrainians had been hammering Russian forces with the much smaller Switchblade 300, a portable, single-use, loitering drone made by the Virginia-based company AeroVironment Inc. Ukrainian forces have also used the reusable, armed Turkish Bayraktar drone, as well as commercially available drones improvised to drop explosives over a target.
3. What’s Iran’s role?
Iran says it’s not a party to Russia’s war in Ukraine and denies exporting any weapons for use there. Ukraine hasn’t bought it, and has ejected Iran’s ambassador from the country. Remnants of the drones -- renamed Geran-2 (Germanium-2) by Russia -- have been found after being shot down.
4. What’s the advantage of using the Shahed drones?
As Russia runs down its stockpile of precision-guided missiles and struggles to buy or make replacements while under sanctions, Iran’s drones offer an accurate, mid-range alternative. Several drones may be necessary to achieve a hit equivalent to a cruise missile, but because they are inexpensive they can be deployed cheaply in so-called swarms. Although they move relatively slowly, they fly low and can be hard for some air defense systems to locate and shoot down, especially when used in numbers. The air defense missiles often used to shoot them down cost far more. The launch systems for the drones can be mounted onto trucks and are therefore relatively mobile and hard to destroy on the ground.
5. How are the Russians using them?
When deployed against cities such as Kyiv and Odesa, the Shahed has a psychological impact on residents, spreading fear and disrupting daily activity. They’ve also been used at the front, with some Russian military bloggers publishing images of Ukrainian armored personnel carriers and artillery pieces they said were destroyed by the Shaheds, a scenario supported in a report by the Wall Street Journal. On pro-Russia online sites, there’s been speculation that the drones could be used in swarms to destroy Ukrainian anti-aircraft batteries, giving Russia the air superiority it has lacked throughout the war. Those hopes aren’t so far being realized.
6. What’s the defense against the drones?
They can be shot down using old-fashioned anti-aircraft cannons, as well as more sophisticated missile defenses, and the Ukrainians have brought down some of them. The difficulty, in a country larger than France, comes in deciding where to place limited stocks of air defenses. The Shahed can fly hundreds of kilometers. (Iran’s claim of a range in excess of 2,000 km, or 1,243 miles, is likely an exaggeration). Ukrainian officials have expressed interest in buying air defense systems from Israel, which has a near perfect record shooting down even more sophisticated Iranian drones. Israel’s provision of such equipment would risk upending relations with Russia. Russia, which continues to maintain a military presence in Syria, has turned a blind eye to Israeli attacks there. Those strikes target Iranian arms supplies to Hezbollah, the militant, anti-Israel Lebanese group. | 2022-10-17T18:27:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What Are the Iranian Drones Russia Is Using in Ukraine? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-are-the-iranian-drones-russia-is-using-in-ukraine/2022/10/17/4bdf8c2e-4e46-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-are-the-iranian-drones-russia-is-using-in-ukraine/2022/10/17/4bdf8c2e-4e46-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
Vertical copper accents adorn the new Embassy of Australia at 16th Street and Massachusetts Avenue NW, one of several recent buildings to feature the building material. It is the work of the Australian firm Bates Smart, with associate architect KCCT of Washington. (John Kelly/The Washington Post)
People use all sorts of metaphors to describe buildings. Le Corbusier said a house was a machine for living in. Some wag once joked that the Kennedy Center was the box the Lincoln Memorial came in. After seeing two new downtown office buildings, I’ve started thinking of one as the grown-up version of the other.
The baby building is the new Australian Embassy at 16th Street and Massachusetts Avenue NW. I imagine that when it grows up, it will look like Midtown Center, which was completed in 2018 three blocks away at 15th and L streets NW.
What strikes me about both of these buildings are the vertical copper accents. On the Australian Embassy, the vertical ribs are the russet color of new copper, just aborning. On Midtown Center, the multiple panels are green, like copper that’s aged after exposure to the elements.
You may not care for their modern design, but I think you’ll agree they’re similar. That’s not unusual. Like musicians who grow up listening to the same popular songs or become excited by a new instrument — the synthesizer! Auto-Tune! — and incorporate those styles and tools into their own music, so architects dip into similar pools of inspiration.
That’s especially true with Classical buildings, of which Washington has plenty.
“There are a great deal of rules,” said Eric Jenkins, an architect and visiting lecturer at the University of Maryland and the Maryland Institute College of Art.
“It’s almost a grammar,” Jenkins said. “You have to follow the grammar. If you don’t follow the grammar you can tell. Most architects in Washington, D.C. — most Classical architects — follow the rules very clearly. They know how to adapt them to different situations.”
Over the decades, architects in Washington have paid homage to some of the world’s best-known buildings, adding a few tweaks of their own.
“Apparently, the portico of the National Portrait Gallery is a lift of the Parthenon of Athens,” Jenkins said. “The front of the Supreme Court building is the Maison carrée in Nîmes, France, enlarged.”
Seriously, Google it. The resemblance is amazing.
A Classical building telegraphs its intentions pretty clearly: Here is a serious place, a place of refined culture or sober jurisprudence.
“There is an idea that it goes back to something that unites us all,” Jenkins said. “It’s not just a style. It’s about maintaining a cultural heritage.”
Of course, these two new buildings are pretty far from the Supreme Court or National Gallery in their designs. And that’s where advances in construction techniques and materials come in. The modern office building can have something both Midtown Center and the Australian Embassy share: thin, taut glass exterior walls that are hung like curtains. This allows architects to create as much floor space as possible — thick walls eat up space — and in a height-restricted city like D.C., space is at a premium.
Then there’s the copper.
“We’re seeing more copper these days,” said architect Mike Hickok of D.C. firm Hickok Cole.
He should know. His firm did 1701 Rhode Island Ave. NW, which features shiny copper horizontal and vertical accents that remind me of lizard skin.
While copper has long been used for roofs — the Library of Congress Jefferson Building has a wonderful copper dome — it isn’t the easiest material to work with for facades. It can corrode when in contact with other metals. And over time, copper develops a patina, that verdigris color you may or may not like.
The copper on Midtown Center has been pre-patinated. The 14-story building was designed by ShoP architects. The copper facade, ShoP partner Gregg Pasquarelli told the Arch20 website, is “a subtle, 21st century interpretation of a material associated with the great architectural heritage of D.C.”
It’s certainly the same color as Washington’s many statues.
Hickok said architects are always thinking symbolically, even if that isn’t always apparent to the people who see their buildings. His firm designed the NPR headquarters on North Capitol Street. That building also has vertical accents: fins made of colored glass spaced at different intervals. Hickok said they represent a diagram of a sound wave, the way it compresses and expands.
The Australian Embassy was designed by Aussie firm Bates Smart, with associate architect KCCT of Washington. Bates Smart director Kristen Whittle wrote on the company’s website that those copper ribs — which have been treated to stay that color — help to evoke the light and desert landscape of Australia.
All good architecture has a thoughtful reason behind it, said Hickok.
“It may not always be evident, but it doesn’t have to be,” he said. “It’s like a work of modern art. You like it or you don’t like it without necessarily knowing what the artist thought.”
I like these two buildings. | 2022-10-17T18:27:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Copper stands out in two new downtown D.C. office buildings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/17/copper-buildings-washington-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/17/copper-buildings-washington-dc/ |
BERLIN — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz ordered ministers Monday to prepare to keep all of the country’s three remaining nuclear plants running until mid-April, putting his foot down on an issue that had threatened to split his three-party government.
But the war in Ukraine, which has resulted in a sharp cut in natural gas supplies from Russia to Europe, prompted Germany to reactivate old coal and oil-fired power plants. Climate activists such as Sweden's Greta Thunberg, and others, have argued that it’s a mistake for Germany to switch off existing nuclear plants if that means burning more coal. | 2022-10-17T18:29:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Scholz orders 3 German nuclear plants to run until mid-April - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/scholz-orders-3-german-nuclear-plants-to-run-until-mid-april/2022/10/17/cdf39bd0-4e3f-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/scholz-orders-3-german-nuclear-plants-to-run-until-mid-april/2022/10/17/cdf39bd0-4e3f-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
D.C. voters fill out ballots at the Goodwill Baptist Church in Adams Morgan in 2018. (Astrid Riecken for The Washington Post)
The U.S. Constitution does not explicitly prohibit what the D.C. bill seeks to do, but a law signed in 1996 by President Bill Clinton bans noncitizens from voting in federal contests. Unlike other municipalities that have been experimenting with letting noncitizens vote, such as Takoma Park in Maryland, federal and local elections take place in the District on the same day and on the same ballot.The proposed law presents logistical nightmares that will require the Board of Elections to print separate ballots so that noncitizens don’t vote in federal races. The city estimates this will cost at least $3 million to implement.
Sponsors of the bill are rushing to get it enacted so the 30-day review period for Congress to overturn the law will expire before Republicans likely take over the House in January. This is a dangerous calculation. Democratic leaders might be handing a political gift to the GOP just three weeks before the midterms.
Ballot initiatives passed in 2020 to ban noncitizens from voting in Florida, Colorado and Alabama. A similar measure is expected to pass next month in Ohio. Arizona already bans noncitizens from voting in local or state elections. Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced legislation this year to prohibit the disbursement of federal funds to any governments that allow noncitizens to vote in any election. It’s easy to see House Republicans advancing such a bill next year.
The council’s unwise move will likely set back the cause of statehood. Allowing noncitizens to vote in the capital city will also make passage of bipartisan immigration reform on Capitol Hill less likely. Many Republicans will point to this as validation of their claims that Democrats want open borders so they can win more elections.
We support increasing legal immigration and accelerating the process for the frustrating backlog of citizenship applications. Giving more people the right to vote is a vital endeavor, but it should be done the right way. | 2022-10-17T19:40:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The D.C. Council should not let noncitizens vote in local elections - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/17/dc-voting-noncitizens-legislation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/17/dc-voting-noncitizens-legislation/ |
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