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This combination of images shows promotional art for the documentary “A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting,” debuting Oct. 26 on HBO Max, left, “Barbarian,” the low-budget indie horror available on VOD on Oct. 25, center, and “The Good Nurse,” premiering Oct. 28 on Netflix. (HBO Max/20th Century Studios/Netflix via AP) (Uncredited/HBO Max/20th Century Studios/Netflix) | 2022-10-22T00:31:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New this week: Scary movies, Lainey Wilson, 'Call of Duty' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/new-this-week-scary-movies-lainey-wilson-call-of-duty/2022/10/21/b7c106ec-517b-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/new-this-week-scary-movies-lainey-wilson-call-of-duty/2022/10/21/b7c106ec-517b-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
U.S. Forest Service firefighters carry out a prescribed burn on the grounds of the High Desert Museum near Bend, Ore., in May 2021. (Kyle Kosma/AP)
The sheriff’s office in Grant County, Ore., on Wednesday arrested Rick Snodgrass, a 39-year-old Forest Service employee for “reckless burning,” after a prescribed fire in the Malheur National Forest burned onto the Hollidays’ ranch. Temperatures exceeded 70 degrees that afternoon and Sheriff Todd McKinley told Wildfire Today that “everybody knew it was a bad burn, should not be happening.”
Snodgrass, who was taken to Grant County Jail and later conditionally released, was “conducting an approved prescribed fire operation,” a Forest Service spokesman said in a statement, while declining to comment further, citing the pending legal matter. Snodgrass could not be immediately reached for comment.
Grant County District Attorney Jim Carpenter said in a statement that the county dispatch center began receiving 911 calls at about 4:50 p.m. on Wednesday reporting an out of control burn along the Izee Highway in Bear Valley.
Some former Forest Service officials were alarmed by Wednesday’s arrest, particularly in this part of Oregon. The Starr 6 prescribed burn took place outside of the town of Seneca. In 2016, a group of armed right-wing extremists led by Ammon Bundy occupied the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, about 75 miles to the south, as part of a protest against the federal government’s control of public land in the West.
“It was by far the most challenging location through my career and I worked in two forests in Oregon, three in Idaho, one in Montana, and for short spurts in Colorado and Alaska,” said Gochnour, who also served on the city council of nearby John Day, Ore., after he retired. “People were constantly sniping at all the decisions we made.”
“To us it was devastating to have any of your ground burn up,” Tonna Holliday said. | 2022-10-22T00:31:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Arrest of Forest Service employee sparks tension in rural Oregon - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/21/oregon-arrest-forest-service-fire/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/21/oregon-arrest-forest-service-fire/ |
It’s time to admit the Congress’s problem is not, in fact, the Gandhis. If anything, they hold together a party that would otherwise split into multiple factions — as, indeed, the Congress did in the 1990s, after Rahul’s father was assassinated and before his mother picked up the party’s pieces.
• India’s Ukraine Balancing Act Is Getting Trickier: Mihir Sharma
• Wisconsin Is Coming to India and Not in a Good Way: Tim Culpan | 2022-10-22T02:02:57Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Modi Has Little to Fear From New Congress Leader - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/modi-has-little-to-fear-from-new-congress-leader/2022/10/21/f51e357c-51a4-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/modi-has-little-to-fear-from-new-congress-leader/2022/10/21/f51e357c-51a4-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
Bradley Beal celebrates with fans at Capital One Arena after leading the Wizards to a 102-100 win over Chicago in their home opener Friday night. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
There was genuine optimism at Capital One Arena on Friday night, squeezed between fans in the few open seats in the lower bowl. A sizable, excitable crowd had come out to watch the Washington Wizards’ 102-100 victory in their home opener against the Chicago Bulls, and they got their money’s worth.
Bradley Beal made sure of that.
After the game was tied with 1:19 to play, Beal cleared the teammates who had contributed so much all night and took on multiple defenders by himself to score on the final two possessions of the game. When DeMar DeRozan missed his three-point attempt at the buzzer, the crowd exhaled, then exalted.
If Washington’s season-opening win at Indiana felt a bit hollow considering it was against the rebuilding Pacers, this one felt real. The Bulls were without Zach LaVine, their own franchise player, as he recovers from a knee injury, but everyone else was available.
“This was a big step for us tonight,” Kyle Kuzma said. “I think we pooped the bed a little bit in Indiana. We still won, but it was an ugly win. For us, didn’t really get enough stops coming down the stretch but we got the right stops at the right time. Being resilient, Brad made a hell of a shot... and that’s what it is. That’s what it boils down to, getting stops at the right time, timing possessions, and you can win like that.”
Optimism — not just for the game, but for a season that might look different from years past — flickered just after halftime. It took form in Beal, newly relieved from his burden of being the Wizards’ lone reliable scorer, having the energy and wherewithal for a nasty defensive block on Bulls rising star Ayo Dosunmu. It looked like the team’s 2020 first-round draft pick, Deni Avdija, hitting a velvety three-pointer right after to send the crowd into a frenzy. It looked like Kristaps Porzingis giving Nikola Vucevic trouble on defense and Kyle Kuzma hitting four three-pointers and slamming dunks as if Andre Drummond wasn’t planted in his way.
Washington opened its home slate celebrating the 25th anniversary of the franchise’s rebranding from the Bullets to the Wizards in front of an announced sellout of 20,476 in attendance. The team went all in on the vintage look for just about everything except the inseam on the team’s basketball shorts: they played in blue and gold throwback jerseys, unveiled a special matching court and aired a video compilation before tip-off paying homage to past greats.
It was all well and good that the Wizards wanted to celebrate their roots. The team’s roots aren’t the problem — anyone who has so much as glimpsed a game in the past four years knows that Washington’s biggest issue is a more recent one.
The Wizards need better defense. That fact didn’t change in one game. But on Friday, it was good enough.
Although there were some nice defensive moments, Washington’s best defense was its offense at times. Kuzma led four players in double figures with 26 points, six rebounds and two assists. Beal had 19 points and eight assists. Porzingis added 14 points and Rui Hachimura had 12.
It was enough to outdo DeRozan, who dropped 32 points, and Vucevic, who bullied his way to 24 points. The Wizards shot 51.2 percent from the field and more importantly had higher levels of energy and aggression, what Coach Wes Unseld Jr. calls the team’s all-important “care factor.”
That they had 26 assists on 41 buckets is evidence of good chemistry.
“Just looking at the game, it’s one, two, three, four guys in double figures,” Beal said, trailing down the stat sheet. “We’re just doing a good job moving the ball, being aggressive -- whoever’s open, shoot it. That’s our mentality. We trust everybody to make plays.”
The Wizards offered a taste of what their multithreat offense can look like with all systems firing.
Early in a breakneck first quarter, Washington authored a sequence that saw Beal dump a pass to Porzingis at the top of the key for a catch-and-shoot three-pointer on one possession and do the same on the next. Only this time, Porzingis drove before kicking out to point guard Monte Morris waiting in the corner to nail a three. In transition, Avdija poked the ball away from DeRozan and found Kuzma for a one-handed slam.
The end of the half offered positives as well. The Wizards flipped their own usually fatal flaw — easing up at the end of quarters and allowing an opponent back in the game — and blitzed Chicago before intermission, outscoring the Bulls 20-11 in the final six minutes by leaning into their offense. They went into the locker room holding a 56-50 lead after trailing by six, with three players in double figures and Beal having contributed eight points and five assists.
When turnovers had whittled Washington’s lead to just two early in the fourth quarter, the Wizards scrambled and kept things under control thanks to a crucial defensive rebound from Delon Wright. Wright, a backup point guard, had his second straight game in the closing unit as a defensive anchor bolstering Beal’s offense.
“Time and time again, we’re putting the ball in [Beal’s] hands for a reason," Unseld said. “He’s going to make the right play, and he did it tonight.” | 2022-10-22T03:12:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bradley Beal delivers late, lifts Wizards past Bulls in home opener - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/21/bradley-beal-wizards-bulls-home-opener/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/21/bradley-beal-wizards-bulls-home-opener/ |
His mother (my sister) has told me that he has asked to have only immediate family at his college graduation ceremony and dinner this coming spring, which means I would not be included.
Hurt: Your sister should have strongly advocated for you to be included in this graduation ceremony. Why didn’t she?
Dear Amy: I would like to know what can be said to a co-worker who comes to work sick. There must be a polite way to tell this person to go home.
JP: The trauma of the pandemic should have sensitized all of us to the impact our illnesses can have on others.
If you don’t feel able to do this, you could contact your supervisor and ask if your co-worker could be sent home. Managers should make it explicitly clear that any employees who are sick should not come to work.
I have been the sole breadwinner for most of the 50 years of our marriage. Like Disappointed, all of our finances have been unified. One of the best things I have ever done for our relationship is to have my wife establish her own checking account and credit card account funded by money directed from my paycheck into her account.
My name is not on either account, I don’t see the statements, and I can’t access it online. She has complete freedom, without any accountability to me, to spend the money however she wishes. My wife is a frugal person and spends wisely.
Happy: This was a wise choice.
No Hug!: Many people are exiting the pandemic with a new “no hug” stance. It’s important to respect this. | 2022-10-22T04:22:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I paid for my nephew’s tuition but am not invited to graduation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/22/ask-amy-nephew-graduation-invite/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/22/ask-amy-nephew-graduation-invite/ |
Dear Carolyn: We just had a baby a month ago. My husband’s siblings congratulated us with a group text and that’s it. No cards, flowers or gifts for new baby. I am really disappointed. I would have sent them something, and I make quite a bit less money than they do.
I know I just need to get over it. We don’t need a card or flowers. It just makes me feel as if they don’t care. I am sure this is going to bother me at every celebration we have for their future kids from now on. How do I get over this?
Disappointed: They do things their way, you do things your way, and judging Column A from Column B is a path to misery.
You all have lifetimes to grow into and adjust these roles — to learn from experience, to find your strengths, to hone your expectations. Example: I’m terrible with cards and gifts — but I will stroll around with your baby making silly faces for as long as you need me to so you can eat dinner using both hands.
Plus, if this is the first baby among the siblings, they might just be clueless.
So, to “get over this”: Feel bad, shake it off, adjust your expectations, then be open to your in-laws as they are. If they rally, then be grateful to them for that. If they remain aloof, then write them off as a source of support and be grateful for the people who are supportive. If you notice the siblings are warm to each other but dismissive of in-laws or new babies, then be the officially unofficial in-law-and-baby welcomer.
Make mental notes of what lifts you up, and offer these things to others when you’re in a position to do so.
Whatever adaptation works. There’s just no reward in dwelling on what you don’t have.
Congratulations on the baby.
Hi Carolyn: My only sibling and I are both in our early 50s. We were very close into young adulthood, but our lives have diverged over the years, and we have less in common. As we’ve gotten older, I’ve tried to reach out and include my sibling in many things, but he is not appreciative and is often quite rigid. (He has a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder.) He can be difficult to be around.
I’m sad about all of this and at times have been frustrated by his lack of effort. It is always me making the first move to reach out, see how he’s doing, include him, keep the lines of communication open. Is there anything else I could be doing?
— Sad
Sad: Just one more: Let go of the expectation that this will be a typical give-and-take.
Your experience is telling you that if you want your brother in your life, then it’s on you to make the effort. It’s telling you that if you want to feel good about this, then accept his inability or unwillingness to do (what you see as) his part. “Inability” tends to be easier to accept than “unwillingness,” for what it’s worth.
And physics will tell you that, when dealing with the rigid, flexibility is the way to go.
Obviously you’re not required to do anything here. But if you want this relationship to work, then redefine “work” — and be patient with the result. | 2022-10-22T04:22:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: A new baby, and all they got was a texted congratulations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/22/carolyn-hax-new-baby-text/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/22/carolyn-hax-new-baby-text/ |
The story of Biden’s first term so far is a roller coaster — complicated and contradictory, with remarkable achievements and enormous disappointment
President Biden exits the Oval Office for remarks in the Rose Garden last month. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
President Biden gathered his advisers, with mounting frustration, as televised images and classified cables tracked in real time the unraveling of his long-planned withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Even fellow Democrats, friends he had known for years, had begun to criticize the chaotic withdrawal — the frenzied mobs at the airport, the desperate Afghans clinging to planes — and he didn’t understand why they weren’t appearing on television to defend him and his decision.
“Call them. Call their offices,” an exasperated Biden ordered his aides in August 2021, according to someone familiar with the president’s demand. “See why they’re not out there.”
What the president did not understand was that the problem was not a lack of television bookers. The problem instead was that most of his allies were unwilling to publicly defend him against the images from overseas.
Just months earlier, Biden had been riding high, predicting “a summer of freedom, a summer of joy.” His approval ratings hovered in the mid-50s, the coronavirus was in retreat, and the economy booming.
But that was all about to come undone.
Now, with the delta variant spreading, staff were once again wearing masks in the White House. Inflation was proving less transitory than the administration had insisted. The legislative gears were grinding to a halt amid Democratic infighting. Americans in the country’s longest war were dying once again — undermining Biden’s signature promise of strong, steady, stable leadership in contrast to former president Donald Trump. And Biden felt isolated.
“That was when the s--- hit the fan,” recalled a person who was part of the response. “That was the beginning of the darkness.”
The story of Biden’s first term so far is a roller coaster — complicated and contradictory, with remarkable achievements and enormous disappointment. His administration oversaw the most successful vaccine rollout in history, ushering in a post-pandemic sense of normalcy — yet the country is gearing up for new worrisome variants as it heads into winter. And Biden helped mitigate Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — while also strengthening the transatlantic alliance and growing NATO — but he did so against a backdrop in which rising prices, fueled in part by his policies, formed the fabric of Americans’ daily lives.
For the man who had promised to heal the soul of the nation, the presidency proved a test of his own.
Some people closest to the president describe an administration that achieved significant victories while repeatedly running up against the limits of the federal bureaucracy, a tissue-thin majority in Congress and a deeply divided nation. Aides also often failed to anticipate and plan for worst-case scenarios and regularly set expectations above what they could achieve. Biden and his team were elected on the promise of a new era of competent governance, only to find that the most rigorous science and best expert advice could not protect the country from new waves of disease and economic hardship.
Biden — a tactile, retail politician — found himself stuck in a bubble, both of covid beyond his control and insularity of his own making. The president remains surrounded by a coterie of longtime allies, most of whom have worked for him for decades. Even those with senior titles in the White House say there remains a clear stratification between Biden’s trusted inner circle and the rest of the team.
This portrait of Biden’s presidency as it approaches the two-year mark is the result of interviews with 80 senior White House officials, Cabinet secretaries, outside allies and Democratic lawmakers and strategists, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly share private details. Many of the scenes and details have not been previously reported.
Ultimately Biden achieved much of what he promised as a candidate. He appointed the first Black woman to the Supreme Court, amid a record pace of judicial appointees that placed more Black women on appellate courts than all prior presidents combined. With the narrowest control of Congress in decades, he passed laws on covid relief, infrastructure, climate change, manufacturing, gun regulation and prescription drug prices that in most cases had spent years on Democratic wish lists.
A precision strike he ordered killed the long-standing head of al-Qaeda, and he continues to hold together a jittery coalition of nations to support Ukraine against Russian aggression, bolstering his promise to restore American leadership abroad.
But as inflation rose and coronavirus variants battered the country, he also lost the support of the public, with his approval rating plummeting to below 40 percent this summer — landing him among the presidents with the all-time lowest ratings at the same point during their first terms — before rebounding somewhat in September to match the approval ratings of Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton at the same point in their presidencies.
A Washington Post-ABC News poll last month found 56 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents wanted the party to nominate someone other than Biden as its candidate in 2024. At the same time, 75 percent of Democratic leaners said they approved of Biden, and 94 percent of Democratic voters said they would support Biden in a 2024 matchup against Trump.
Just weeks before his first midterm elections, it remains too early to fully assess the accomplishments and defeats of these trying 21 months. Despite Biden’s calls for national healing and warnings about existential threats to the nation’s democratic institutions, the GOP — a party the president recently lamented was underpinned by “semi-fascism” — appears poised to take control of the House and has a coin-flip chance of winning the Senate, which would force a new political reality on his presidency.
But for those closest to Biden, the trials ultimately vindicate the promises he made to the American people. The senior team around him, which has begun preparations for a reelection campaign, remains confident that his first term will be remembered as a historic success.
“It was true in the campaign and it’s true in the White House: Comebacks are always sweeter and more satisfying because of the character they reveal,” said Bruce Reed, Biden’s deputy chief of staff.
“Washington is a fickle town, politics is a fickle business, and it’s easy to move on when the chips are down,” Reed continued. “But during the campaign and as president, Biden has hung in through thick and thin, when it was easy to stop believing, and it paid off in ways that it might not have with someone else.”
The Warnings
The warning signs appeared early in England.
Weeks after Biden had given a June 2, 2021, speech declaring a summer of relief in the fight against the coronavirus, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a delay of “Freedom Day,” a celebration of the easing of restrictions in his country. The delta surge, identified months earlier in India, was spreading rapidly.
But inside the White House, planning for an “independence from the virus” July Fourth celebration barreled inexorably forward. There would be a cookout on the South Lawn, replete with red-white-and-blue crepe lanterns and a fireworks display. Cabinet officials were dispatched to take photos and video of themselves out in the country on the holiday, doing something that conjured a post-covid world — part of a White House strategy to demonstrate that Americans had the tools to live with the virus.
Scientific advisers to the White House were growing increasingly nervous. But there was too much momentum behind the idea of a patriotic celebration of victory over the virus. “If we could have canceled it, we would have canceled it,” said one top covid adviser.
From the start, Biden’s covid response was anchored around two ideas: He would follow the science, and the science would show the way to ending the pandemic. After his first meeting with his covid team, he gave them a pep talk.
“I know this is going to be hard,” the president told his aides. “I know there will be ups and downs. Things will not always go smoothly. But promise me this — you will tell me when there’s a problem. You will put it on the table and together we can solve it.”
For months afterward, he had a catch phrase he would use. “Tell me what to do, docs,” the president would frequently say.
But the reality was more complicated. Pfizer-BioNTech announced after the 2020 elections that their vaccine was more than 90 percent effective at preventing infection. Weeks later, Moderna announced over 94 percent efficacy at preventing infection.
Nearly everything the president and his scientific advisers assumed for the next six months hinged on those numbers, even though it would become clear that summer that the vaccines — though highly effective at stopping death and hospitalization — did a far worse job of blocking infection than originally expected, as potency waned and new, more transmissible variants emerged.
Still, the political imperative remained. As the July Fourth celebration drew closer, Biden flagged to his staff that they needed to add some caveats to his remarks, echoing the warnings he had been issuing about potential variants in the weeks prior. His top advisers worked to scale back the tone — cutting several overly triumphant lines — and added some fine print, with cautions such as “covid-19 has not been vanquished.”
But the event went on as planned, and the message delivered was ultimately one of victory: “We are emerging from the darkness,” Biden declared in remarks titled, in part, “Independence from COVID-19.”
Just three weeks later — spurred, in part, by a delta outbreak among a highly vaccinated population in Provincetown, Mass. — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended that even fully vaccinated people wear masks indoors.
Sixty-two percent of the nation approved of how Biden was handling the coronavirus pandemic in late June, shortly before he gave his speech. But that number fell 10 percentage points, to 52 percent approval, in late August and September and to 47 percent by November, dragging down his overall rating, according to Washington Post-ABC News polling.
“We go with what we know at the time, with the best possible information, with what the experts are telling us, and do our best,” said Mike Donilon, a senior Biden adviser.
Heading into August, Biden advisers were exhausted but optimistic, eager to take a week of summer vacation. “No one,” said one former White House aide, “expected Afghanistan would become a huge political nightmare.”
In a meeting immediately before Biden’s July announcement of an August deadline for withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, one of the president’s senior military advisers had assured him that the drawdown would not be like that of Vietnam, where desperate South Vietnamese refugees had tried to cling to helicopters departing Saigon in 1975.
Just moments later, unplanned and unscripted, Biden repeated that phrase in an exchange with reporters, much to the chagrin of his advisers. “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the — of the United States, from Afghanistan,” he said.
Kabul would fall just over five weeks later, forcing a helicopter airlift to the nearby airport and resulting in a cascade of devastating images and news bulletins: Desperate Afghans rushing Kabul International Airport, clinging to the wings of departing planes. Human remains recovered in the wheel well of a U.S. military C-17 after it landed at a Qatari air base. And several other Afghans — including a teenage soccer player — plummeting to their death as the planes lifted into the sky.
One former senior administration official said that inside the White House there was an immediate realization that the images looked “very bad,” and aides began privately likening the situation to Saigon. Another person familiar with the dynamic recalled a senior official laying out newspaper front pages from the day — which all featured nearly identical photos from Kabul — as aides were stunned into silence, horrified by the loss of life.
And it would only get worse.
The initial reports of the Aug. 26 bombing outside Kabul airport’s gates came around 9 a.m., when Biden was already headed to the Situation Room for a daily meeting on Afghanistan.
Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie, who oversaw the American departure as the head of the U.S. Central Command, broke in every few minutes as he got more news. About 30 minutes into the meeting, McKenzie told the president, “We have KIA,” referring to members of the military killed in action.
The number of U.S. service members who had been killed ticked up throughout the meeting — with McKenzie providing updates every few minutes. Biden told McKenzie and others still in Kabul to let him know what they needed, and he’d get it to them. He also told them to make whatever decisions they needed to keep their troops safe. In the end, the bombing killed more than 170 people, including 13 U.S. service members.
To the rest of his staff, Biden offered an acknowledgment of the tragedy and an admonition to stay the course: The worst thing that can happen has happened, the president said, and now we move forward.
Although Biden never wavered in his decision to bring U.S. troops home, he was livid, advisers said, with the intelligence community for having underestimated how quickly Kabul would fall. A spokesperson for the intelligence community declined to comment.
Several officials recalled much of the White House grinding to a halt as — for the first time since taking office — even Democrats seemed to abandon the administration. Two chiefs of staff at key agencies, both political appointees, independently fretted that they were witnessing the beginning of the end of Biden’s presidency.
Ultimately, the administration took credit for airlifting more than 120,000 people out of Kabul, successfully resettling roughly 80,000 Afghans in the United States. White House officials argue that the withdrawal also likely saved American lives.
But the fear in Biden’s ranks was that the damage had been done.
“ ‘Forget about the midterms,’ ” a Cabinet secretary’s chief of staff said, according to an administration official. “ ‘This is it.’ ”
Although the Afghanistan debacle would soon fade from headlines, the withdrawal undermined Biden’s image as calm and competent — an anti-Trump — and its shock waves lingered.
Meanwhile, a new political danger was emerging, one that had been magnified as the delta surge began to disrupt the global manufacturing supply chain. The prices of necessities such as apartment rents, milk jugs and cartons of eggs began to creep up, while computer-chip shortages sent automobile prices rocketing.
Biden had come to office with a green light from many of the nation’s top economists to spend heavily. During his campaign, both of the former chairs of the Federal Reserve — Ben Bernanke and Janet L. Yellen, his future treasury secretary — had advised him that when it came to pandemic response, there was greater risk in going small than going big. Economists at Wall Street banks were also on board. As late as March 2021, Federal Reserve governors were so confident that they predicted no interest rate increases until 2024 — a date, it would soon turn out, that was off by 21 months.
In retrospect, the risks to kicking off an inflationary spiral were evident all along. Biden’s first legislative success, the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, amounted to an injection of money equal to about 9 percent of the U.S. economy, following two previous injections in 2020 worth 15 percent combined, according to the International Monetary Fund.
American bank accounts grew, leading to historic drops in child poverty, a rebound in the labor market, and a drop in evictions. But when coronavirus variants spiked later in the year, the extra cash ran headlong into new supply chain disruptions — problems that were only exacerbated by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that winter.
Just how much Biden’s legislation contributed to the higher prices remains a debate, with administration officials arguing that inflation is a global phenomenon and a smaller covid relief package would not have fundamentally limited domestic inflation. Still, there is broad agreement it added some fuel to the fire.
Inside the White House, even Jared Bernstein, a longtime Biden economic adviser known for his left-leaning views, had concerns over the summer about what impact the massive infusions of printed money — about $500 billion in 2021 alone — would have on inflation.
“It’s getting pretty hot in the kitchen,” he warned one colleague, according to a person familiar with the statement. (Bernstein said he does not remember making the comment.)
As the inflation rate continued to tick up into the fall, Biden’s frustration mounted. He repeatedly asked aides why no one was out on television defending him and his administration against Republican attacks on the issue.
A debate formed inside his inner circle about how they spoke of inflation. Though many economic experts had initially believed inflation would prove “transitory,” it was an easily mocked phrase. Biden allies both inside and outside the White House had begun pushing for Biden to give a speech addressing head-on the new reality of rising prices.
But officials said White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain resisted, preferring to focus on the good economic indicators like the strong jobs numbers. If the White House didn’t tell its own positive story, he argued in meetings, no one else would. Several senior administration officials — including Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council — said no one, including Klain, ever urged Biden not to directly address inflation.
Later, Biden himself would also come to believe that he personally needed to address inflation more directly. He fixated on a virtual speech that Yellen had delivered to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, regularly reading large chunks of the speech aloud to aides and arguing that he needed to deliver something similar. His aides eventually convinced him that Yellen’s speech — which contrasted what she termed the administration’s “modern supply-side economics” with Keynesian and traditional supply-side approaches — was good for a global economic conference but not for American voters.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg recalled watching as Biden worked to mitigate supply chain disruptions. The president, Buttigieg said, simultaneously requested highly detailed and tactical updates about ports and private delivery companies, while also repeatedly asking about the impact on Americans.
Now, some of that work was finally coming to fruition.
“It was challenging because this was before we could ensure it was going to be a smooth Christmas shopping season,” Buttigieg said. “But he wanted to know what the likelihood of success was, and if I’m ordering a bike for my kid, what’s going to happen.”
The White House shifted into crisis mode, seeking ways to unstick global commerce, as the administration waited for the Federal Reserve to tackle the problem of too much demand with rising interest rates.
By the end of his first year in office, inflation was widely seen inside the White House and among Democratic operatives as the biggest political problem facing the party and the administration as they headed into the 2022 midterm elections.
“If you talk to voters, what they saw was a president who seemed very focused on his own agenda and not things that were affecting them — like inflation, like ‘I’m feeling nervous about the economy,’ ” Cook Political Report’s Amy Walter said.
Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), the linchpin of Biden’s legislative agenda, was even more stark in November: “DC can no longer ignore the economic pain Americans feel every day,” he tweeted in response to the rising inflation numbers. Days later, he pulled his support from the next big piece of Biden’s legislative agenda.
The White House reacted with fury. In a sharply worded, 10-paragraph statement put out under then-White House press secretary Jen Psaki’s name but partially drafted by Klain, the White House excoriated Manchin, describing his turnabout as a “sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.”
The statement infuriated Manchin, and White House advisers later admitted that the blistering attack on a Democrat whose vote was critical was an unforced error.
Meanwhile, more challenges emerged as the delta surge gave way to a new variant: omicron. The new variant was even more contagious, spreading rapidly among the vaccinated, who continued to enjoy protection against hospitalization and death. The White House raced to respond, enacting travel restrictions over Thanksgiving weekend when most of the world had not even heard of the latest mutation.
Yet another problem emerged: As people struggled to protect their families before the holidays, they found store shelves barren of tests. The White House, as one senior administration official put it, had been “caught flat-footed.”
Biden was furious. In meetings in the Oval Office, an exasperated Biden repeatedly asked, “Why didn’t we order enough tests? Why didn’t we order enough of what we needed?”
That summer, as covid had seemed to recede, testing manufacturers had slowed their production of at-home tests. Covid modeling at the time had anticipated that vaccines would lower the rate of new infections, and Abbott Laboratories had even destroyed millions of rapid tests and laid off employees during that stretch.
One former administration official involved in the process, however, said the problem was not one of a failure to plan, but one of capacity: There weren’t enough at-home tests available to order for the winter months ahead, even had the administration wanted to. A second administration official added that there were no at-home tests available to consumers on the market when Biden took office, so the administration was forced to play catch-up — yet still managed to go from zero to at least a dozen brands in his first year, with 19 currently on the market.
Either way, the mistake proved costly.
“Coming in after Trump, regarding covid, we knew we had to lead with competence, and the testing debacle undermined that competence,” said someone involved in the response.
Other unexpected challenges were also bedeviling the administration, including a nationwide shortage of baby formula, which became a full-blown political crisis for Biden by May. Although industry leaders knew of a coming shortage as early as February, there was a breakdown in communication between the Food and Drug Administration and the White House about the issue. Biden did not learn of the crisis until April.
As questions about the baby formula shortage dominated the daily White House news briefing, Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to help ramp up formula production at home and also authorized the airlifting of formula from foreign countries.
White House aides asked Vice President Harris to meet the first shipment of formula from abroad — a symbolic photo opportunity, but one that would inadvertently link her to yet another administration crisis.
The request illustrated the ongoing tension between the West Wing and the vice president’s office, stemming from the inherently ill-defined role of a president’s No. 2.
Biden’s selection of Harris made history, elevating the first Black and Indian American woman to the role of vice president. But her tenure has been marked by concerns about her management style — fueled by an almost complete turnover of her senior staff — a nebulous portfolio leaving her without signature policy accomplishments, and persistent doubts about her ability to lead the Democratic Party into the future.
Ultimately, Harris refused to meet the baby formula shipment, so Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack went instead. A Harris aide said she greeted a later shipment of baby formula.
The vice president’s office disputed the characterization of Harris’s contributions, touting her work in Central America to coordinate the response to a surge in migration, how she shaped an infrastructure law to expand broadband access, and her leadership role on reproductive rights and expanding access to abortion.
In a statement, White House spokesman Andrew Bates said, “The Vice President has been core to our historic successes and the President is grateful for her leadership and full partnership every day.”
By March, the administration began to take steps to regain its legislative footing. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo held a private dinner that month at her Georgetown home, personally preparing a pork roast for Manchin and Klain.
At the meal, decade apologized to Manchin for how the White House had handled the breakdown of legislative negotiations, which included the blistering statement.
“I’m sorry if those statements offended you, or made you feel like we were coming after you,” Klain told Manchin, according to one person familiar with the comments. “We didn’t mean any offense.”
The detente repaired the fractured relationship. And, more important, it laid the groundwork for an eventual 11th hour deal that capped an eight-week stretch of propulsive legislative successes for the administration: The first federal gun safety bill in 28 years. Billions of dollars to spur the development of a domestic semiconductor industry. A significant expansion of health care for veterans. And a sweeping bill that invests billions of dollars to combat climate change and aims to reduce the costs of prescription drugs.
White House aides argue the fixation on Democratic infighting early in Biden’s tenure obscured the delicate political work they were engaged in behind the scenes, managing the sometimes-competing interests of the liberal and moderate wings of the party, with little room for defections.
Biden himself, for instance, spent time whipping votes, calling a list of reluctant liberal House lawmakers and highlighting the projects that would benefit their states and districts ahead of the passage of the infrastructure law, one senior adviser said.
Ultimately, White House advisers argue their success in getting nearly every Democrat to vote for the president’s legislative agenda should be celebrated.
“What I see was a strategy we ran that succeeded in us getting more legislation passed in two years than any administration in modern times, with the narrowest majority in the history in both the House and the Senate,” a senior White House adviser said.
Millions of veterans who were exposed to burn pits are now eligible for expanded health care. Starting next year, senior citizens on Medicare will not have to pay more than $35 a month for insulin. Americans can now purchase hearing aids over the counter at pharmacies. The infrastructure law will spur repairs of 65,000 miles of roads and 1,500 bridges this year and, over time, expand broadband access across the country. The new climate law could save Americans thousands of dollars through rebates and tax credits for using renewable energy, electric vehicles and making other climate-friendly improvements to their homes.
As Biden kept racking up wins, the president’s mood lifted — and White House aides felt the darkness that had clouded much of their first year dissipate. Inside the West Wing, aides obsessively followed the FiveThirtyEight average of national polls, their moods rising with the tiniest shifts upward.
Gone were the headlines of Democratic infighting. Now, Biden touted campaign promises fulfilled. Even casualties of that first year, like former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D), who last fall lost his bid to reclaim his office in a state Biden had won by 10 percentage points, began to see the shift.
“Going through the fall, the Democrats looked like they were just constantly fighting one another, and they couldn’t get bills passed,” McAuliffe said. “And I think the American public looked at — these guys got control of the House, Senate, White House. If they can’t get anything done, why should they have any power?”
In early spring, Biden sat in his private dining room with senior advisers and eviscerated the Republican Party. He expressed his concerns about the party’s continued embrace of election conspiracy theories, and lamented how the extremist and far-right factions had overtaken their party to drown out more-moderate Republicans.
Biden made clear he wanted to distinguish more sharply the different factions of the Republican Party and build on an argument he had been making for years: “This is not your father’s Republican Party.”
Biden and his aides eventually settled on describing the Republicans as pushing an “ultra-MAGA” agenda, a reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan. The ultra-MAGA phrase was the result of a six-month research project led by Anita Dunn, who rejoined the White House as a senior adviser in the spring, and the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal group.
But the most seismic shift for Biden and the Democrats — and arguably the country — came from the third branch of government: the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
At first, Biden and his top aides were slow to act.
White House officials had a two-month head start to plan for the post-Roe landscape, after a draft opinion of the decision was leaked. But as senior aides sat in the president’s office on June 23, two White House officials said they believed they had an extra week to put into action the plan they were hoping to finalize, wrongly believing the court would wait until the end of its session to rule.
Instead, the court ruled the next day, setting off a scramble inside the West Wing. Biden had already approved his remarks for the decision, but all of the executive actions were not ready.
Jen Klein, director of the Gender Policy Council, denies that the White House was caught off guard, saying in a statement, “We were absolutely prepared.” In an interview, she said advisers were unsure whether the draft opinion would be identical to the final ruling, and needed time make sure any executive actions could withstand legal challenges.
“We were just trying to do all of the work we could do to be ready, while holding and waiting for the opportunity to actually read the decision and respond to it adequately,” she said.
Many Democrats were disappointed by Biden’s initial response. And even inside the White House, staffers — including some of the president’s top advisers — thought the speech lacked the forcefulness needed at that moment.
Biden, a devout Catholic, has long been out of step with his party on abortion and has often struggled to lead on the issue. But Donilon, Biden’s longtime adviser — who is also Catholic and who Biden trusts deeply — urged the president to take a more forceful stance. Donilon also counseled aides not to worry about Biden’s initially lackluster response, arguing that the overturning of Roe was a tectonic event, fundamentally altering the political landscape and mobilizing Democrats.
Donilon’s insight proved to be prescient. In August, voters in Kansas, a reliably conservative state, turned out in droves to reject an amendment that would have stripped away the state’s abortion protections.
As the election was getting closer, Biden’s standing continued to slowly rise. Inflation and covid were still present, but fading, and the president found himself again with a clear direction and message.
“Across every measure of how you respond to a pandemic, we’ve seen dramatic improvements to get the virus under control,” said Ashish Jha, the White House covid coordinator, noting that deaths from the virus are down 90 percent and the economy and schools are fully reopened.
White House officials also argue that their success on fighting the pandemic came despite stiff opposition from leading Republicans, who undermined confidence in vaccines and blocked funding for the response.
During the 2020 campaign, Biden would brim with confidence, telling advisers there were only three ways he would lose to Trump: “I screw up, he steals the election, or I get covid.”
By early last month, aides again believed the national environment was tacking back in their direction: The decision to overturn Roe. The public Jan. 6 hearings. The FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and the discovery that the former president took more than 700 pages of classified documents from the White House.
Biden’s vow to restore American leadership on the world stage also came to fruition in the months following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in late February, in what aides attribute to steps that had been taken before the war began.
In the run-up to the invasion, the White House debuted creative intelligence-sharing strategies, unified European allies against Russia, readied military and financial aid for Ukraine, and prepared some of the harshest and most severe sanctions ever levied against Russia.
A pivotal moment came at the end of last October, during a meeting Biden requested with the leaders of Britain, France and Germany during the Group of 20 summit in Rome. In a private room, Biden walked the leaders through new U.S. intelligence, explaining in granular detail what the Russians were planning and contemplating.
“It was eye-opening for his counterparts, and it was really at that meeting that there was agreement to start work immediately to do two things — one was to try to prevent Russia from going forward with their aggression, but at the same time to prepare for what to do if they did so anyway,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said. “We were able to plan and prepare.”
After the invasion, Biden strengthened the transatlantic alliance and united much of the world against Russia. NATO is now set to expand by two countries: Finland and Sweden.
Biden also took executive actions aimed at younger voters: canceling up to $20,000 of student debt — more than 8 million people have already applied — and offering mass pardons for anyone convicted of a federal crime for simply possessing marijuana, while urging governors to do the same.
Many aides privately admit they wish all the recent successes came sooner and easier — without the messy Afghanistan withdrawal, without the Democratic infighting, and without the cascade of coronavirus variants. Biden himself eventually succumbed to the virus, testing positive in July, though he recovered without incident.
“Part of what’s in the DNA of the team is that he’s had to play through some really rough moments, for a long period of time,” Donilon said. “Obviously we went through a long period of time during the campaign when it didn’t look so good. It was true during the campaign and it’s true during the presidency.” | 2022-10-22T04:52:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Inside the successes, missteps and failures of Biden’s early presidency - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/22/joe-biden-presidency/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/22/joe-biden-presidency/ |
SAN FRANCISCO — Nikola Jokic had a triple-double of 26 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists playing with a sore right wrist he had taped, and the Denver Nuggets beat Golden State 128-123 on Friday night in a rematch of the teams’ first-round playoff series won by the Warriors in five games on their way to the title.
Nuggets: G Jamal Murray sat out and won’t play both games of back-to-backs early on as he nurses a left knee injury. “My hope is we can build throughout the year,” coach Michael Malone said. “We want to be smart. ... Hopefully by Christmas, New Year, All-Star break what we’re doing now is not what we’re doing then.” | 2022-10-22T05:06:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nikola Jokic notches triple-double as Nuggets top Warriors - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/nikola-jokic-notches-triple-double-as-nuggets-top-warriors/2022/10/22/662b0ec8-51c5-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/nikola-jokic-notches-triple-double-as-nuggets-top-warriors/2022/10/22/662b0ec8-51c5-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
Ukrainian forces fire mortars at a position near Bakhmut, Ukraine, on Oct. 16. (Wojciech Grzedzinski/for The Washington Post)
BAKHMUT, Ukraine — The crash and roar of artillery rarely stops in this east Ukrainian city. In the cold and broken houses, residents huddle by candlelight and pray that they have safety in numbers. On the battlefield, soldiers on both sides are dying in droves.
While Ukrainian advances have redrawn the battlefield map elsewhere, the front line in Bakhmut, some 10 miles from the border of Donetsk and Luhansk, has barely moved in four months of heavy fighting.
Of all the battles in the east, President Volodymyr Zelensky said last week, the “most difficult” is here. Yet in this fight for control of a shattered city, military experts say the ambitions of a Russian oligarch, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, founder of the Wagner mercenary group, may have eclipsed all strategic logic.
After a disorderly Russian retreat from nearby Izyum, the battle for Bakhmut is no longer part of any coordinated military operation. Instead, Prigozhin is pouring waves of mercenaries from Wagner into battle, appearing to see political advantage in capturing Bakhmut as a military trophy while President Vladimir Putin’s regular forces are on the back foot elsewhere.
Outgunned and outnumbered, exhausted Ukrainian troops are relying on nimbler tactics to withstand the brutal battle, monitoring enemy lines with civilian drones as newly recruited engineers experiment with customized weapons from pop-up laboratories in abandoned buildings nearby.
“To be honest, we have to,” said Vlad, who is overseeing the 93rd Brigade’s effort to refit drones, antitank mines and other weapons so that they are more effective. “The Russians have the soldiers, the guns, everything. We need to be smart,” he said.
The salt-mining city of Bakhmut had a population of 70,000 before Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. Perhaps 15,000 remain, but the streets were almost empty as fighting raged there this week. Weeds smothered the wheat fields. Military vehicles sped down roads gouged by rockets, kicking up clouds of dust as they went.
At the 93rd Brigade’s command post, a drone operator peered at the live feed of Russian positions that it was sending back to him. The soldiers worked fast, slipping mortar rounds down the barrel and loosing them up through the sky. Someone had scrawled “director” on the drone operator’s chair. Squinting down at the screen of his tablet, he waited a second, then he nodded, and a ripple of delight coursed through the men.
They had hit the target.
But these still felt like some of the unit’s worst days, said Dima, their 25-year-old commander. When darkness enveloped their dugout a night earlier, Russian forces fired on them with mortars and cluster munitions. “It’s not the first time we’ve been under fire, but this is different now,” Dima said.
After four years in the Ukrainian army, Dima said the battle for Bakhmut was among the “most dangerous” he had witnessed.
The fighting and its echoes hung heavy through the city on Wednesday. The air throbbed with the sound of shelling. When that fell quiet, clanking metal in the wind was the only sound left.
A 51-year-old entrepreneur, Oleksander, had dried blood on his face from a rocket strike that smashed his home the night before. He did not have clean water to wash up. He said he had invited his neighbors, a young couple and their daughter, to stay with him in the apartment, thinking that they would be safer if they stuck together.
The parents were now in intensive care, he said, and their 9-year-old child Liza had been evacuated, alone, to another city.
“I thought our place was safer,” he said blankly. “We were just sitting there. We were drinking tea.”
In a recent analysis, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, described Prigozhin’s Bakhmut effort as “irrelevant operationally” after Russia’s loss of Izyum, 60 miles north.
“The Russian seizure of Bakhmut, which is unlikely to occur considering Russian forces have impaled themselves on tiny surrounding settlements for weeks, would no longer support any larger effort to accomplish the original objectives of this phase of the campaign,” the report concluded, “since it would not be supported by an advance from Izyum in the north.”
Prigozhin, who is nicknamed Putin’s chef because he grew fabulously wealthy off of government catering contracts, has been a loud critic of the regular Russian military’s performance in Ukraine. His involvement in the Ukraine war is seen by analysts as part of his effort to curry favor and potentially additional state contracts. There is also speculation among the Russian elite that he is angling for a government post.
Wagner played a key role in the capture of Popasna in May but reportedly took heavy losses. According to pro-Kremlin military bloggers, Prigozhin was awarded the nation’s highest honor, a Hero of Russia medal, the following month.
After long denying any link to Wagner, which has sent soldiers-for-hire to Syria, Libya, Mali, Mozambique and the Central African Republic, Prigozhin acknowledged last month that he created the group. In a recent self-published interview he claimed that Wagner was carrying out the assault on Bakhmut alone, and called the situation “difficult.”
For the Ukrainians, surrendering Bakhmut would give the Russians a hugely symbolic victory, and undermine the prevailing narrative that Moscow’s forces are steadily losing ground and Putin’s war is failing. In theory, capturing Bakhmut would put the Russians one step closer to bigger urban centers of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, but there is little evidence that the Russians could make a push for them now.
Across four locations in the Bakhmut area, Ukrainian soldiers described how Wagner troops at times appear to have been used almost as cannon fodder. “They’re treating them like single-use soldiers,” said Volodymyr, 24, the commander of a self-propelled artillery unit, as he waited on spotters to call in a new target. Usually it was infantry, he said.
Another soldier nodded.
“If we are shelling those positions, they keep pushing the men forward again and again,” the second soldier said. “They want to smoke us out, then fire artillery on us.”
From the 93rd Brigade’s position, drone operators have seen the mercenaries stumble over the bodies of fallen comrades as they advance.
A Russian reporter who filmed Wagner’s front-line positions near Bakhmut late last month reported that Prigozhin’s son was fighting there, and interviewed him, without identifying him by name.
“Bakhmut is a road to many directions. It’s a very important point strategically for the Ukrainian forces and for us,” another fighter said in the video. “Their team is ready to fight until the end, no matter what the losses are.”
The scale of the Russian losses are not known, but Ukrainian soldiers interviewed said they estimated them to be significant. “The number is big on their side because they’re not treating them like people,” said Misha, a 25-year-old soldier from the 93rd Brigade.
Ukraine’s casualties are also heavy. Ambulances shuttled back and forth between the Ukrainian firing positions last week, apparently carrying wounded men from the front line.
At a nearby hospital, two soldiers said they had brought four members of their unit to the emergency room after a Russian rocket attack in Bakhmut, and that three were in a critical condition. Their bloodstained jackets were still in the car. In a video taken shortly after the incident, the fourth man was seen howling in pain with his femur snapped at a sickening angle.
The day before, they said, another company had been surrounded by Russian forces, and fired upon. “There weren’t even pieces of them left,” said one of the soldiers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of describing Ukrainian casualties.
For Bakhmut’s residents, there is also little left. Rockets pound the city every day. A civilian doctor tries to patch up the injuries, but the walking wounded often just pull the shrapnel from their bodies on their own.
Standing on the Bakhmutka River’s eastern bank this week, Vitalii Kuzmienko, 52, stared up at a damaged bridge, its deck blown away, leaving a huge gap at mid-span. To stop Russian forces from advancing, the Ukrainians had laid antitank mines on one side, but those mines never detonated.
Kuzmienko said his house had been destroyed in the fighting, and so he was living in the wreckage of an outdoor market. His relatives were buried in Bakhmut, he said, and he didn’t want to leave them.
With alcohol on his breath, Kuzmienko said he feared that shelling might hit the bridge, and detonate the unexploded mines and then damage nearby civilian homes. He said he drank every day now to numb the fear and to help him sleep.
When four rockets slammed into the riverbank moments later, he barely moved.
Serhii Korolchuk and Wojciech Grzedzinski contributed to this report. | 2022-10-22T05:10:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In bloody battle for Bakhmut, Russian mercenaries eye a symbolic prize - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/22/bakhmut-russia-ukraine-wagner-war/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/22/bakhmut-russia-ukraine-wagner-war/ |
FILE - A young couple walks past a Russian soldier guarding an area at the Alley of Glory exploits of the heroes - natives of the Kherson region, who took part in the liberation of the region from the Nazi invaders, in Kherson, Kherson region, south Ukraine, Friday, May 20, 2022, with a replica of the Victory banner marking the 77th anniversary of the end of World War II right in the background. Ukrainian forces pressing an offensive in the south have zeroed in on Kherson, a provincial capital that has been under Russian control since the early days of the invasion. This photo was taken during a trip organized by the Russian Ministry of Defense. (AP Photo, File) (Uncredited/AP) | 2022-10-22T06:37:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EXPLAINER: What would retreat from Kherson mean for Russia? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/explainer-what-would-retreat-from-kherson-mean-for-russia/2022/10/22/46b49dc8-51d1-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/explainer-what-would-retreat-from-kherson-mean-for-russia/2022/10/22/46b49dc8-51d1-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
Britain's former Chancellor of the Exchequer and member of the Conservative party Rishi Sunak poses on the red carpet on arrival to attend the World premiere of the Roald Dahl's Matilda The Musical, during the 2022 BFI London Film Festival in London on Oct. 5. (Daniel Leal/AFP/Getty Images)
LONDON — Rishi Sunak’s campaign had a simple slogan when he ran for prime minister of Britain earlier this year: “Ready for Rishi.”
Sunak competed against Liz Truss to lead Britain’s Conservative Party after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced his scandal-induced resignation in July. Now Sunak will have another chance at winning the top job, with Truss’s own resignation after just six weeks in power.
This time, he’s the favorite — at least, according to bookies. No matter that the front-runner has not yet even formally declared that he will run for party leader.
Early Saturday, Sunak’s supporters say he has already crossed the threshold to secure the backing of 100 Conservative politicians, which would see him through to the next round of the party’s internal leadership race — as his fellow lawmakers continue to strengthen their ranks and plan his potential coronation.
If elected, Sunak, 42, would become the country’s first prime minister of South Asian descent. He was born in Southampton, England, to parents of Indian origin who had emigrated from East Africa.
“It is abundantly clear that Rishi Sunak has what it takes to match the challenges we face — he is the right person to lead our party,” said former cabinet minster Sajid Javid in his support.
“He has the talent, integrity, and humility necessary to provide us with a fresh start and a steady hand,” tweeted another Conservative lawmaker Gavin Williamson as others hailed his “competence,” and “economic foresight.”
Proud to be backing @RishiSunak. His economic judgement, energy and optimism are what our party and our country need to secure a better future. pic.twitter.com/BIVvDCu2RE
Not all are so gushing.
His critics contend that he betrayed Johnson, his old boss, when he resigned as finance minister in early July, leading to the collapse of the cabinet soon afterward, and many lawmakers still blame him for Johnson’s downfall.
His frenemy is closely following Sunak in the polls and flew back to London Saturday after reportedly telling his supporters he was “up for it” as he attempts to pull off a stunning political resurrection.
Like Sunak, Johnson has not yet publicly confirmed another run for high office. Yet, rumors of Johnson’s return to the fray have already sparked intense divides among politicians and much of the weary British public.
A close third in the running is Penny Mordaunt, a middling level cabinet minister seeking to become a household name and the only Conservative lawmaker to have formally stepped into the race, but her numbers remain low. Mordaunt said she was encouraged by colleagues who wanted a “fresh start” but is viewed by some Conservatives as a compromise candidate for politicians in the Sunak and Johnson camps who cannot quite bring themselves to back a rival.
To become the next leader of the beleaguered Conservative Party, a candidate needs to gain more than 100 votes from the party’s members of Parliament to progress to the next round. There are 357 Conservative lawmakers in office at the moment.
Given the high bar, it’s possible that only one individual secures that number, meaning that a new prime minister could be installed at No. 10 Downing Street by Monday, when nominations close.
Sunak has been dubbed “Dishy Rishi” by British tabloids due to his slick social media campaigns and large online following.
Educated at one of Britain’s most prestigious private schools, like Johnson, he has a glittering résumé, with studies at the University of Oxford and Stanford University and a stint at the Goldman Sachs investment bank. One of the wealthiest British politicians he is also married to the Indian tech heiress Akshata Murthy, whose tax affairs caused the former finance minister some political discomfort during his leadership campaign in the summer.
And a video clip from a 2007 BBC documentary in which Sunak suggests he doesn’t have any “working-class friends” is recirculating online, as some Britons frown upon the array of upper-class Conservative contenders.
Nonetheless, he remains popular among politicians of his own party, although he fares less well among the Conservative Party’s national membership after losing out to Truss in September (57.4 percent to 42.6 percent).
After George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis and the Black Lives Matter movement swept much of the world in 2020, Sunak spoke out about the racism he has faced in public life and about the struggles his family overcame as immigrants to Britain. He also has publicly championed his Hindu faith, swearing on the Bhagavad Gita when he took office.
To his supporters, Sunak is a steady hand on economics, as he correctly predicted the market crisis sparked by Truss’s policies when she slashed taxes and sent the British pound plummeting. He called Truss’s proposed economic reforms “fairy tale” economics before she took office, an assessment that is likely to lend credence to his image of fiscal responsibility.
A blot on his record, however, is his link to the “Partygate” scandal that toppled Johnson’s government. Like his boss, Sunak was also fined by police while in office for attending parties at 10 Downing Street while Britons were under severe government-imposed coronavirus lockdown restrictions.
“The truth is [that] just passing around the prime minister job, the chancellor job, like it’s some sort of game of ‘pass the parcel,’ is not going to provide the country with the leadership and the stability that we desperately need,” Sunak’s former opposite number, Labour Party shadow finance minister Rachel Reeves, told the BBC Friday. | 2022-10-22T07:20:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rishi Sunak could be the UK's next prime minister. Here's what to know. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/22/rishi-sunak-uk-pm-conservative-leader/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/22/rishi-sunak-uk-pm-conservative-leader/ |
PHILADELPHIA — Kyle Schwarber led off with his latest scintillating home run, Jean Segura atoned for a run-scoring error with a go-ahead single and the Philadelphia Phillies edged the San Diego Padres 4-2 to take a 2-1 lead in the NL Championship Series.
TORONTO — The Toronto Blue Jays rewarded John Schneider for his strong performance as their interim manager, agreeing to terms with him on a three-year contract to manage the team.
ARLINGTON, Texas — The Texas Rangers have hired Bruce Bochy as their manager, bringing the three-time World Series champion with 2,003 career victories out of a short retirement to take over a team that has had six consecutive losing seasons.
SAN FRANCISCO — Nikola Jokic had a triple-double of 26 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists playing with a sore right wrist he had taped, and the Denver Nuggets beat Golden State 128-123 in a rematch of the teams’ first-round playoff series won by the Warriors in five games on their way to the title.
PORTLAND, Ore. — Damian Lillard scored 41 points and the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Phoenix Suns 113-111 in overtime for their second straight victory to open the season.
RIDGELAND, S.C. — Jon Rahm came within an inch of holing out from 195 yards on the hardest hole at Congaree, one of many highlights in his 9-under 62 that gave him a share of the lead with Kurt Kitayama at the CJ Cup. | 2022-10-22T08:08:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Friday's Sports In Brief - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/fridays-sports-in-brief/2022/10/22/085c1432-51d8-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/fridays-sports-in-brief/2022/10/22/085c1432-51d8-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
Gwak Min-ji identifies as “bihon,” a new Korean term meaning “willingly unmarried.” She lives with her foster dog in central Seoul. (Min Joo Kim/The Washington Post)
SEOUL — Gwak Min-ji had dreaded the prospect of turning 30, the defining threshold for young South Korean women to get married. But at 38, Gwak says her single and child-free life has turned out quite “natural and satisfactory.”
The “Big 30” deadline has been rejected by an increasing number of Koreans who are postponing or eschewing marriage, which they view as a path to domestic drudgery. “How come I had no idea that life as a single woman in late thirties could actually be fun?,” asked Gwak, a screenwriter living solo in her Seoul apartment. Her single’s pad has a dancing pole where she does her favorite workout, a wine cooler to keep drinks at peak freshness and a pillow for her foster dog, Jinga.
She turned to podcasting to talk about the joys as well as pressures of living unattached in South Korea’s still marriage-oriented society. Her conversation about “bihon,” a new Korean term meaning “willingly unmarried,” is part of a larger discussion challenging cultural images in the Asian nation and government policies that promote married life over singlehood.
A record 40 percent of households now consist of just one person, and the country’s marriage and fertility rates have sunk to all-time lows. Official statistics show that some 193,000 marriages were registered in 2021, a nearly 10 percent drop from the previous year and the fewest since record keeping began in 1970. The number of births also declined to 5 per 1,000 people, putting South Korea at the bottom of developed nations tracked by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
The demographic trends — which also are occurring in neighboring countries like Japan and China — have sparked worries about depopulation, a shrinking workforce and a contracting economy. Officials and experts attribute the decline to young people, particularly women, prioritizing personal freedom and career over a traditional family lifestyle.
Ahead of election, South Korea’s feminists battle sexist backlash
These changes are the impetus behind government-organized dating parties that take place across South Korea, especially in the rapidly aging countryside. The central government in Seoul has designated 89 counties and cities as “population decline areas” and allocated 1 trillion won ($700.73 million) annually to support matchmaking efforts and boost marriage and childbearing.
The demographics are even shaping decisions by private businesses that cater to adults in their 30s and 40s. Housing companies now rent individual rooms in shared apartments. Restaurants with mini-grills offer solo Korean barbecue, more typically served as a raucous communal affair. Tech service providers are developing personal safety apps for those living alone, with women their prime target.
Yet young women here, while more educated and employed than ever, continue to face workplace discrimination once they cross the traditional marriage-and-children age line. They suffer unequal pay, harassment and a lack of upward mobility, all reasons the socially conservative country has for years ranked last in The Economist’s annual Glass Ceiling Index.
And domestic and familial duties still fall mostly on women, whose professional ambitions are often sacrificed for their husbands and children. Faced with hard choices, some are forgoing matrimony altogether.
Gwak decided that she wanted to “define what my life is and will be in my own terms.” She remembers hearing that her decision was “selfish” and that she would “end up lonely.”
Many men are thinking twice about wedlock as well, some because they’re enjoying the independence of being single, others because of the stress of being a family’s primary, if not sole financial provider. The pressures of male breadwinning still top the reasons a generation is turning away from marriage, according to a government survey last year of more than 10,000 South Koreans.
Such sentiments resonate with Park Jong-young, who participated in a recent matchmaking party hosted by the rural county where he lives in South Gyeongsang Province. The 35-year-old firefighter had met a few women through his friends, but they struck him as “aloof and picky.”
“My parents and relatives are nagging me to find a bride, but it’s harder than expected,” he said. “And I am not even sure if I want [marriage] that much.”
In Japan, abortion is legal — but most women need their husband’s consent
While virtual interactions were pervasive during the pandemic, dating apps have yet to go mainstream in South Korea, in part because of the cultural preference for making connections in person. Park said he signed up for the county’s meet-and-mingle because it felt “secure and less awkward since everyone here knows what to expect.”
Each participant completed a form beforehand that asked for age, address, place of employment and position. Answers were checked by Hamyang County officials, and then a sheet listing the names and job titles of 18 men and 16 women was handed out as the party began.
“It is more trustworthy than online dating, and people feel more relaxed mingling together than in one-on-one settings,” said Kang Suk-soon, the county official in charge of population policy.
In the scenic mountain resort where the dinner event took place, the guests played ice-breaking games and rotated among tables for speed-dating conversations — all arranged and paid for by the county. “No hurries, no worries,” the emcee announced. “We will set up a chance for you all to meet one another over the course of the day.”
Hamyang and dozens of other rural counties are offering multimillion-won cash incentives to encourage local singles to get married, with additional cash awards if they have children. Despite such measures, the number of babies born in Hamyang fell below 100 for the first time last year. Social science experts say one-time events and incentives are not enough to convince young people to tie the knot as long as patriarchy persists so strongly within marriage.
“The government is still preoccupied with marriage as a fundamental institution and resorts to it as a basis to provide social benefits to citizens, which is disrespectful and discriminatory to new generation of Koreans seeking alternatives,” said Lee You-na, a researcher at a Seoul-based institute that focuses on family composition, equality and rights. “They have moved on and will not easily be talked into bringing back what they see as an outdated institution.”
Some officials are calling for systemic changes. Single Koreans are largely marginalized from social services that focus on traditional family units. Cha Hae-young, a councilor for Seoul’s Mapo District and the country’s first openly LGBT elected official, is pushing a “singles’ collective” that would cater to the welfare needs of individuals living outside of traditional family structures.
The 35-year-old Cha has been at the forefront of community-building in the district, where nearly half of the households consist of only one person. It started with a too-big watermelon that she decided to share with other single neighbors. She went on to open up the kitchen in her home as a “restaurant” so singles could congregate, eat together and check in with each other.
“We envision a society where individuals do not have to rely on kinship or marital ties to receive care,” Cha said. “Married or not, we deserve it.” | 2022-10-22T08:09:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Single but not ready to mingle? South Korea’s government wants to talk. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/22/single-dating-south-korea-marriage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/22/single-dating-south-korea-marriage/ |
Former New Zealand player Maia Jackman selects the United States at the World Cup draw in Auckland. (Shane Wenzlick/Reuters)
The pathway for the U.S. women’s national soccer team to win an unprecedented third consecutive World Cup title next year will include a group-stage showdown with the country it defeated in the 2019 final, the Netherlands, and could have a clash with second-ranked Sweden in the round of 16.
In a draw conducted Saturday, the top-ranked Americans were placed atop Group E in a tournament co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand. They will play all first-round matches in New Zealand, opening July 22 against first-time participant Vietnam in Auckland before clashing with the eighth-ranked Netherlands on July 27 in Wellington and the winner of a qualifying playoff Aug. 1 in Auckland.
The possibilities in that last match are No. 23 Portugal, No. 41 Thailand or No. 58 Cameroon.
With a 20-1-3 record in group play, the United States is not expected to have much trouble earning one of the group’s two places in the knockout stage. If rankings hold form, it would face No. 14 Italy, the second-best team in Group G, in the round of 16 in Sydney.
By finishing second in the group, however, the Americans would likely face Group G favorite Sweden, which beat them in the 2021 Olympic group stage. The United States and Sweden met in the group stage of the previous five World Cups, with the Americans winning three, losing one and tying one.
Six stadiums in Australia and four in New Zealand will host the 64 matches, culminating with the Aug. 20 final in Sydney.
All but three participants are set. A 10-nation playoff Feb. 18-23 in Auckland will complete the 32-team field, the largest since FIFA launched a women’s championship in 1991.
The teams vying for the remaining slots are Taiwan, Thailand, Cameroon, Senegal, Haiti, Panama, Chile, Paraguay, Papua New Guinea and Portugal.
Seven teams have participated in every World Cup (United States, Brazil, Germany, Japan, Nigeria, Norway and Sweden), while five will debut next year (Morocco, Philippines, Ireland, Vietnam and Zambia). The number of newcomers could swell after the playoff in February.
Though the Americans will arrive at the World Cup as one of the favorites, they’ve got their work cut out for them. Early this month, they lost consecutive games for the first time in 5½ years, falling at fourth-ranked England, 2-1, and No. 6 Spain, 2-0. They’ll resume preparations with two friendlies against third-ranked Germany, Nov. 10 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and Nov. 13 in Harrison, N.J.
The run-up to the World Cup will include four friendlies: two in the Feb. 13-22 international window and two in the April 3-11 slot. The opponents and venues have not been finalized.
Draw results
FIFA ranking in parentheses
Group A: New Zealand (22), Norway (12), Philippines (53), Switzerland (21).
Group B: Australia (13), Ireland (24), Nigeria (45), Canada (7).
Group C: Spain (6), Costa Rica (37), Zambia (81), Japan (11).
Group D: England (4), playoff winner, Denmark (18), China (15).
Group E: United States (1), Vietnam (34), Netherlands (8), playoff winner.
Group F: France (5), Jamaica (43), Brazil (9), playoff winner.
Group G: Sweden (2), South Africa (54), Italy (14), Argentina (29).
Group H: Germany (3), South Korea (17), Colombia (27), Morocco (76). | 2022-10-22T08:56:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | USWNT schedule set for World Cup - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/uswnt-world-cup-netherlands-australia-new-zealand/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/uswnt-world-cup-netherlands-australia-new-zealand/ |
North Texas's Austin Aune is believed to be the oldest quarterback to start a game in the modern era of Division I and the Football Bowl Subdivision. (Steve Nurenberg/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images)
As Aaron Judge stepped into the batter’s box before hitting his American League-record 62nd home run of the season, North Texas quarterback Austin Aune sat up in anticipation. But if you asked the 29-year-old college junior where he thought he would be during this moment, back when he was selected by the New York Yankees in 2012, Aune would have said right there in the dugout waiting to celebrate with his teammates.
Instead, he took in the historic moment from his couch with his wife and 8-month-old daughter, roughly 45 minutes north of Globe Life Field, where Judge and the Yankees were playing the Texas Rangers.
Aune, who is believed to be the oldest quarterback to start a game in the modern era of Division I and the Football Bowl Subdivision, was on top of the world 10 years ago. He had parlayed his team’s appearance in the uber-competitive Texas 3A state football playoffs into a full scholarship to play football and baseball at TCU. But during his second day on campus, the Yankees selected him with the 89th pick in the MLB draft.
A second-round pick in that slot range usually would garner roughly a $500,000 signing bonus, but the Yankees offered him $1 million.
“With me being on campus at TCU, I kind of had a bit of leverage as far as with the draft,” Aune said. “The only reason I left is because it was a great opportunity. Second-round pick — by the New York Yankees. The 27-time world champs. That was an opportunity I didn’t want to miss, either. To become a professional athlete at the age of 18 was super enticing.”
Expectations were high for the shortstop out of Argyle, Tex., but Aune’s results fell short on the field. After five years in the minor leagues, which saw him accumulate a .285 on-base percentage, 20 home runs, 148 RBI, 575 strikeouts and 14 steals in 387 games, Aune was released.
“It was just consistency at the plate. I struck out way too much. When I did hit the ball, I made great contact and hit for a bit of power,” said Aune, who never advanced beyond the organization’s high Class A minor league affiliate. “I’d say the writing was on the wall toward the end of my last year. I was struggling a lot, was kind of down on myself.”
While Aune’s dream of becoming a professional baseball player was over at 24, he wasn’t ready to stop playing sports just yet.
Drawing inspiration from two former baseball players who returned to college to play quarterback, Chris Weinke and Brandon Weeden (who also had been drafted by the Yankees), Aune turned his attention back to the gridiron.
As his Ford F-150 bounded across the country from the Yankees’ facilities in Tampa back to Argyle, he and his then-girlfriend (now wife) created a list of the college football contacts who had recruited him out of high school and started cold-calling them about a potential return. Surprisingly, schools were receptive to the idea of adding a guy who hadn’t played football in six years.
While Aune’s initial school, TCU, showed interest, he ended up at Arkansas. He joined in the spring of 2018 but realized he needed time to reacquaint himself with the nuances of the game. Aune thought it would be easier to do that in a place where he felt comfortable and close to his family. So he returned home and started working out at his local high school, throwing with the team’s current players under the tutelage of his high school quarterbacks coach.
A chance meeting between his wife’s boss and North Texas Coach Seth Littrell over dinner led to him joining the program, which is roughly a 10-minute drive from his hometown, as a preferred walk-on.
“Coming out of high school, I knew he was a good player,” Littrell said. “A major thing that had moved me was that he was a professional. He knew how to lead and take care of his body, and we just knew that he was going to work hard and do all the right things, which is really important when you’re recruiting a kid. He had all the tools: the arm talent and all the things you want in a quarterback.”
After redshirting his freshman season in 2018, Aune attempted only five passes in 2019 and spent the next year splitting time as the team dealt with a bit of a quarterback carousel.
Aune started the 2021 season second on the depth chart behind Jace Ruder. Following a couple of rough performances by Ruder, Aune was given an opportunity to lead the team, and he didn’t disappoint. Against Missouri, he threw for 305 yards and four touchdowns in a 48-35 loss, earning the starting job.
With Aune under center, North Texas rebounded from a 1-6 start to win its final five games — including a 45-23 victory over 11-0 Texas San Antonio — to become bowl eligible.
He has continued to build on the success.
North Texas (4-3, 3-0) sits atop Conference USA and is on pace to reach bowl eligibility for a second consecutive season. Aune ranks 10th in the nation with 17 touchdown passes and 33rd in yards with 1,692, and his total quarterback rating of 70.7 ranks 41st.
“I love Aune because of the way that he has solidified the starting spot for us and kind of unlocked our winning potential,” said Roderic Burns, North Texas’s leading receiver. “He has a certain edge to him that makes you want to follow him. Like, dude is 29 and still playing college football. Obviously, something is driving him, and as a man, it’s like, how can I not get on board with a dude that’s still out here fighting for his dreams?”
Despite being seven to 10 years older than most of his contemporaries, and having a wife and kid, Aune has had no problem being just one of the guys. Earlier this season, Aune surprised his teammates when he grabbed the aux cord and played “Set it off” by Lil Boosie.
“That song really [hyped] him up,” Burns said. “That man Aune knew the song bar-for-bar and had us all turnt, too. It was just a real good moment for the team.”
Although the redshirt junior has another season of eligibility because of the coronavirus pandemic, he has no intention of being a 30-year-old college quarterback. Instead, he’s going to see if he can make it in the NFL. If that doesn’t work, he has a backup plan: commercial real estate.
“Being a 29-year-old college student is more than enough,” Aune said. “I’m [going to] make the most of this year, go to pro day in the spring and see what happens. If it happens, great. If not, that’s okay, too. I’ve given [sports] everything I have. I’ve been in a professional organization before. Over the years, I’ve learned from my mistakes and overcome so much adversity. So at this point, what more can I ask for?” | 2022-10-22T09:31:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who is college football's oldest QB? Meet North Texas's Austin Aune. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/oldest-college-quarterback-austin-aune/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/oldest-college-quarterback-austin-aune/ |
Why the UK Phone-Hacking Scandal Still Matters
Phone hacking is the scandal the UK just can’t seem to shake.
It’s back in the headlines more than a decade after a wave of public anger led to the closure of the country’s best-selling Sunday newspaper, a yearlong public inquiry and a regulatory overhaul. Prince Harry, Elton John and a group of other notable names are suing Associated Newspapers Ltd., owner of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, over alleged commissioning of unlawful acts including listening to telephone calls and illicitly accessing private information. The company has emphatically denied the accusations, calling them “preposterous smears.”
Phone hacking turned the activities of the UK newspaper industry into a major global story, providing a drip-feed of revelations and live TV drama (including the “most humble day” of Rupert Murdoch’s life) to rival any of the celebrity exclusives that are the stock-in-trade of the popular tabloid press. Those who have followed the saga from other parts of the world may wonder when it will finally be laid to rest, and why Britain seems uniquely bedeviled by a systemic problem of unethical behavior in parts of the news-gathering business.
In reality, the scandal never went away. Lawsuits have continued to be filed since an inquiry led by retired judge Brian Leveson concluded in 2012, and have been working their way through the courts. These generally relate to activities undertaken back in the 1990s and 2000s, the heyday of phone hacking. (Who, after all, uses voicemail anymore, in the age of WhatsApp and other text-based smartphone messaging systems?) Hamlins LLP, which is representing Prince Harry and others, didn’t put a timeline on the allegations in an Oct. 6 statement. In its rebuttal, Associated Newspapers said the articles concerned were up to 30 years old. Paul Dacre, the former Daily Mail editor, has denied repeatedly that phone hacking took place at the group.
It’s a significant development, all the same. Along with a separate lawsuit by former member of parliament Simon Hughes, these are the first such legal claims leveled against Mail titles, threatening to draw the most successful UK newspaper group of recent years into a morass that cost Murdoch’s News Corp. more than $1 billion, by some estimates, and weighed on Mirror Group Newspapers. Indeed, Associated Newspapers — which is controlled by the Harmsworth family — called the action “a pre-planned and orchestrated attempt to drag the Mail titles into the phone-hacking scandal.”
Alongside celebrities such as Liz Hurley and Sadie Frost, the presence of one litigant in particular is potentially damaging for the Mail group: Doreen Lawrence, who like the others alleges the Daily Mail misused her private information. Her teenage son Stephen was murdered in an unprovoked racist attack in 1993, and the Daily Mail campaigned for his killers to be brought to justice. The paper has frequently held up that cause celebre as an example of the power for good of its journalism, which has faced criticism for negative portrayals of migrants and other groups.
There’s a symmetry here. Back in 2011, another murdered teenager was central to the demise of the News of the World. An outpouring of public revulsion followed reports that its journalists had hacked into Milly Dowler’s voicemails. In response, Murdoch shuttered the newspaper, which at the time was the UK’s market-leading Sunday title. That position is now held by the Mail on Sunday.
Besides dealing a blow to the Mail group’s standing, the Lawrence allegations might give renewed public impetus to the cause of regulatory reform. There’s unfinished business left over from the Leveson investigations a decade ago. A second part of the inquiry was scheduled to probe the relationship between the press and police. It was postponed pending the conclusion of court cases (the former editor of the News of the World, Andy Coulson, was among those who went to prison), and later scrapped entirely by the Conservative government.
“There’s more that needs to be investigated,” Nathan Sparkes, chief executive of Hacked Off, a campaign group that is pushing for Leveson 2 to go ahead, said in an interview. The group says the Independent Press Standards Organisation, the self-regulatory body set up after the first inquiry, isn’t fit for purpose. Most national newspapers have signed up to IPSO, though it fell short of the recommendations for independence and effectiveness set out by Leveson. Those that declined to join include broadsheets such as the Financial Times, the Independent and the Guardian – which broke the phone-hacking scandal in the first place.
For all the controversy and upheaval of a decade ago, the industry’s success in establishing another ineffective regulator and heading off a deeper investigation of its practices suggests that the fundamental nexus of power between press and politicians remains essentially undisturbed. This symbiotic structure has enabled mass-market newspapers to ride through periodic scandals over unethical behavior, creating a sense of impunity that arguably allowed abuses to flourish. “They don’t want to be fiercely regulated,” says Paul Lashmar, who spent 40 years as an investigative journalist with news organizations including The Observer and now teaches in the department of journalism at City University in London. “They resisted at every turn.”
Why is the UK like this? The answer lies in the economic and cultural peculiarities of the British newspaper landscape. The country is small and compact enough to have a national newspaper market, and as a result outsize power accrues to those who can dominate. The Daily Mail sells more print copies than any newspaper in the US, a far larger but more fragmented market.
A vivid example of the leverage that the popular press holds over politicians came during the Leveson inquiry from Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor of The Sun, the News Corp. tabloid that for decades was Britain’s best-selling daily newspaper. MacKenzie described how then-Prime Minister John Major called him on the night Britain was forced out of the European Exchange-Rate Mechanism in 1992 to ask how the story would play in the next day’s paper. “Well actually I’ve got a bucket of s*** on my desk, Prime Minister, and I’m going to pour it all over you,” MacKenzie said he told him. (Major said he couldn’t recollect that conversation.) Were the setting transposed to the US, it’s difficult to imagine Joe Biden putting in a similar call to the editor of the New York Post.
Just as importantly, tabloid culture is the UK market’s central driving influence, rather than being a fringe offshoot as in some countries. Unlike the sober and earnest pursuit of serious journalism, tabloid story-chasing is much more of a game. For those who like to play, it is about winning, at all costs. Tabloids are a circulation game, and what sells papers in this fiercely competitive industry are exclusive stories, particularly about prominent public figures. You don’t need a McKinsey briefing note to tell you that people will behave in the way they are incentivized to behave. Games aren’t inherently moral. Players will do what they can to win within the rules. And if the rules aren’t particularly clear, or the referee is constantly looking the other way…
Broadsheets compete on a more complex array of factors, so aren’t subject to the same market pressures. That perhaps is one reason that newspaper industries in other countries haven’t encountered problems with unethical or unlawful conduct on quite such an industrial scale as in Britain.
One final element in the mix needs to be considered: the internet. During the worst excesses of the phone-hacking scandal, newspapers were already losing print sales to online competitors. Advertising spending migrated to Google and other web providers, hollowing out revenues and increasing the pressure for exclusives that will keep readers coming back. In 2020, the Daily Mail said it had overtaken The Sun’s monthly print circulation for the first time in 42 years. But it was a pyrrhic victory. The Mail is No. 1 not because it is growing but because it is shrinking less rapidly. The newspaper sold 840,000 copies a day in August. Two decades earlier it was selling 2.4 million, while The Sun was shifting 3.7 million.
Newspapers have had some success in building up their own online operations — particularly the Mail group, whose MailOnline was the world’s sixth-most -visited news site in September, according to Press Gazette, a trade journal. That growth hasn’t been enough to compensate for the loss of print sales, at least yet. Daily Mail & General Trust Plc, which was taken private earlier this year by the trust of its founding family, said last month that it will bring news gathering in its print and online editions closer together to “free up resources.” For all the political influence that tabloids retain, the financial story of the past decades has been one of structural decline.
If phone hacking remains in the public eye, it’s possible that campaigners may get a second chance to push for a more meaningful model of self-regulation, especially as a change of government starts to look more likely. The blameless ordinary victims of such media abuses deserve more consideration. But there are already bigger things to worry about for those concerned with the health of the media landscape, particularly the increased consumption of news via social media, where misinformation and targeted influence operations can flourish. Young people are getting more of their news from TikTok. The ground is shifting under our feet, and before long phone hacking may start to seem like a historical curiosity. Generals always fight the last war, as the saying goes. It may be so again this time.
• Meghan and Harry Aren’t Much of a Money-Spinner: Alex Webb
• How the Tories Brought Endless Anarchy to the UK: John Authers | 2022-10-22T09:40:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why the UK Phone-Hacking Scandal Still Matters - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-the-uk-phone-hacking-scandal-still-matters/2022/10/22/5995555e-51e0-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-the-uk-phone-hacking-scandal-still-matters/2022/10/22/5995555e-51e0-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
Kevin Nealon has a new comedic outlet: Painting celebrity caricatures
The “Saturday Night Live” veteran’s new book includes likenesses of famous faces like Lauren Bacall and Dave Chapelle
Comedian Kevin Nealon shares his caricatures of celebrities in “I Exaggerate: My Brushes With Fame.” (Abrams/The Art of Books)
Many people know Kevin Nealon best from his “Saturday Night Live” years, when he anchored “Weekend Update,” impersonated such figures as ’90s-era Joe Biden and was half of the Schwarzenegger-spoofing Hans and Franz. Some folks are fans of his more recent shows such as “Still Standing” or “Weeds.” These days, though, when not onstage, he is winning some of his heartiest raves for drawing upon the inspiration of celebrity itself.
The comedian who’s performed so many physical impressions now devotes long hours to his painterly impressions of famous faces. Pop on to Nealon’s Instagram and you’ll see his skewed view of such showbiz friends as Dana Carvey and Dave Chappelle, as well as Hollywood acquaintances like Lauren Bacall and Emma Stone. The performer has long relished rendering people loosely — whether strangers on a plane or castmates at a table read — but in the past several years, the funnyman has become quite serious about learning to master the tools and techniques of caricature.
For decades, art was “was something to please me,” Nealon says by Zoom from Manhattan, shortly before a late-night show appearance. “But the more I did it, the more people responded to it. You sketch somebody and people really appreciate it.”
Now, the 68-year-old Emmy nominee is sharing his art as curated experience. His playful portraits of entertainers present and past will be on display in his first art book, the highly engaging “I Exaggerate: My Brushes With Fame,” due out Tuesday.
Nealon says this collection was largely born of the pandemic: “I started drawing a lot because I couldn’t do comedy. I realized that the caricatures were nonverbal comedy.”
During this time, when not posting seasons of his “Hiking With Kevin” video series online, the Los Angeles area-based Nealon was painting people with whom he had a direct connection or whose professional work he admired, often both. Throughout the book, he blends his predominantly digital works with mostly personal anecdotes about the boldface names in his orbit, whether enduring turbulence with pilot John Travolta, playing star-studded basketball on Garry Shandling’s home court or chilling at the Tennessee spread of Brad Paisley.
The country singer-songwriter got an up-close view of the actor’s passion for his craft after the coronavirus hit, as the Paisley and Nealon families isolated together for several months. Paisley would walk past his kitchen table to find his friend hard at play at his computer screen.
“He really works at capturing the essence of a person,” Paisley says by phone from the Nashville area. So is Nealon’s portrait of Paisley a truthful depiction? “Yeah, unfortunately,” Paisley says with a laugh, noting that his portrait deftly reflects how he smiles in concert when something especially tickles him.
Paisley sees a connection between Nealon’s comedy and art. “He finds humor in some of life’s simplest things,” the singer says. “He’s able to take something that you would think of as a bedrock of reality, and he exposes it as absurd. And he’s done that with all of our faces.” Adds Paisley, “To be inside his head, it’s a funhouse mirrors existence.”
Nealon wryly acknowledges that developing his eye for caricature has affected him: “Whenever I’m walking around, I don’t see people in their regular form. I see them with their exaggerated features.”
The comedian has drawn inspiration from another friend: esteemed caricature artist Jason Seiler. “I can honestly say that I was shocked when I saw Kevin’s work, and to be honest, a little annoyed,” says Seiler, noting that caricature is about more than lampooning a face. It requires capturing a person’s essence, likeness and feeling. That collective gift for rendering? Seiler says, “Kevin has it.”
Nealon has long been fascinated with the humorous line. His family split time between Connecticut and Germany while his father worked in the helicopter industry, and Nealon vividly recalls discovering a back-of-napkin caricature as a kid while on a base in Germany. The goofy cartoon fired his imagination.
So, too, did the exaggerated pastel portraits in his bedroom as a boy. A Paris artist had humorously rendered Nealon’s parents. “Subconsciously, I would lay in bed and stare at them,” says Nealon, who also has a sister who is an artist. “I was studying how to do caricatures. I could see what he did with my father’s forehead or with my mother’s eyes.”
It turns out songwriter Aimee Mann is also really good at painting
Nealon devoured the Mad magazine celebrity caricatures of Mort Drucker and liked Al Hirschfeld’s artwork. By high school, his margin doodles were being praised by teachers. He kept idly sketching on the go. By the ’80s, he also enjoyed talking art with castmate Phil Hartman, who before joining “Saturday Night Live” designed album covers for such bands as Steely Dan, Poco and America.
As Nealon decided to grow his talent in recent years, he took online classes with master caricaturist Paul Moyse, who calls Nealon an “exemplary” student. “His work was already showing potential before he started, but he was determined to improve and worked hard to get even better,” Moyse says, noting that his student has “a great eye for likeness.”
Beyond his sphere of comedy, some of Nealon’s art reflects his appreciation for such musicians as Eddie Vedder, Kurt Cobain, Prince, Tom Petty and his dear friend James Taylor. Vedder, a songwriter and lead singer of the bands Pearl Jam and Earthling, says he’s humbled by the portrait, which impressed him because “this was one of the first times I ever saw one I felt captured me.”
Speaking by phone, Vedder emphasizes Nealon’s attention to detail: “The wool army socks I’m wearing, the Boy Scout shirt, my teeth. I have longer nails on my right hand for guitar picking, and he got that very subtly.” Even the feeling of hitting a note that takes significant effort: “I feel like that is represented there.” The rock singer appreciates the “good humor” of the artwork, too, right down to the ukulele under his arm.
Because of caricature, Nealon has also grown his friendship with another comedic performer turned visual artist: Jim Carrey. “Less than a year ago, I ran into him at a party and we both started talking about our artwork. In 15 minutes, I connected with him more than the previous 38 years,” Nealon says, noting that Carrey has invited him over to his home studio and shared his belief that art and artists, more than actors and singers, can become immortalized. Art, Nealon says, “does bring people together.” | 2022-10-22T09:40:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Kevin Nealon has a new comedic outlet: Painting celebrity caricatures - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/10/22/kevin-nealon-book-caricature-painting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/comics/2022/10/22/kevin-nealon-book-caricature-painting/ |
Former president Donald Trump is seen on a screen as the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol holds a hearing on Capitol Hill on Oct. 13 in Washington. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
The FBI’s unprecedented criminal probe of a former president has unfolded on two tracks in the 11 weeks since agents searched Donald Trump’s Florida residence and club — one mostly public, the other mostly behind closed doors.
In the more public facing part, litigation over the appointment of a special master to sift through thousands of seized documents has reverberated through every level of the federal court system, with the special master — essentially an outside expert — voicing skepticism about Trump’s claims that some of the material should be shielded from the FBI.
In contrast, the bureau’s investigative activity is harder to track, though some details are slowly trickling out. Agents have interviewed multiple witnesses about the handling of government papers at Mar-a-Lago. The Washington Post reported last week that a Trump employee told federal agents that he moved boxes of documents at Mar-a-Lago at the specific direction of the former president, and the FBI has video surveillance to back it up.
Experts say those pieces of evidence — combined with repeated indications in court filings that prosecutors suspect Trump’s team purposefully failed to comply with a subpoena seeking all documents marked classified — suggest the government could be building criminal cases alleging obstruction and destruction of government property.
“You know how just before a storm breaks, there is a time of calm?” said Paul Rosenzweig, a national security consultant. “We are sort of there. This is the calm before the storm.”
At Trump’s request, Brooklyn federal Judge Raymond J. Dearie was appointed to sift through the 13,000 seized documents and set aside any that should be protected from investigators because of attorney-client or executive privileges. An appeals court has ruled that the special master’s review should not include the 103 classified documents seized in that search.
That review is underway. Trump’s attorneys and prosecutors have agreed on a vendor to upload the more than 20,000 pages of seized unclassified materials so both parties can digitally review them. Trump’s team examines the documents first, marking any that they deem potentially privileged. The government then reviews those documents, with Dearie stepping in to settle any disputes.
At a progress hearing Tuesday, Dearie sounded frustrated with both sides. He reproached Trump’s lawyers for claiming privileges in an initial batch of documents without providing any evidence to back up their claim.
“‘Where’s the beef?’ I need some beef,” the 78-year-old judge said.
The Justice Department’s successful appeal of a portion of Cannon’s ruling enabled prosecutors and FBI agents to immediately regain access to the classified materials. Trump’s team filed a petition to the Supreme Court to overturn part of the decision by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, but the justices rejected it.
Anyone can submit court filings to a docket. The Mar-a-Lago probe proves it.
Each legal filing in the case has been closely watched by news reporters and the public, with Trump supporters cheering Cannon’s initial decision to appoint a special master, and critics of the former president heralding the skepticism Dearie has expressed over Trump’s legal claims.
“If the appeals court agrees with the government, then the whole referral to the special master will be over,” said Mary McCord, who served as acting assistant attorney general for national security during President Barack Obama’s administration. “It has the potential to be a very minimal part of the investigation.”
‘National security questions’
The center of any criminal case would most likely be the classified documents found by the FBI, some of which contained extremely sensitive government secrets including about a foreign country’s nuclear capabilities. On Friday, The Post reported that some of the seized documents contained highly restricted information about Iran’s missile systems and about intelligence work aimed at China.
Exclusive: Mar-a-Lago documents held secrets about Iran missiles, China intelligence
The Justice Department “wouldn’t be pushing as hard” to appeal the appointment of a special master “if there weren’t some serious national security questions that remain unanswered,” Walden said. “Those [13,000] documents are very critical.”
Trump’s spokesman, Taylor Budowich, has denounced the investigation and has accused the Biden administration weaponizing law enforcement and fabricating “a Document Hoax in a desperate attempt to retain political power.”
In the meantime, the FBI likely will continue seeking witnesses who can provide information about the handling of documents at Mar-a-Lago, including whether Trump or his representatives deliberately hid documents from the Justice Department or falsely claimed to have turned over all classified materials while restricted material remained on the premises.
House committee sends subpoena to Trump demanding documents, interview
There is also the question — raised by officials at the National Archives and Records Administration — of whether all government records in Trump’s possession after he left office have been returned to government custody, as required by the Presidential Records Act, and whether some documents may have been stashed somewhere other than Mar-a-Lago.
“This is all the working going on behind the scenes that may never be revealed,” said Javed Ali, a senior official at the National Security Council during the Trump administration who now teaches at the University of Michigan. “Who may have had access to those documents? And what information may they have gleaned? And what may have resulted from his having these documents?”
McCord said building a case requires more than just interviewing witnesses and reviewing documents. She suspects that at this stage in the investigation, the government is examining legal precedent and strategizing on how prosecutors would respond to potential defense arguments in court.
For example, the Justice Department already reasoned in a recent court filing that, even if Trump formally claims and provides evidence that he declassified the documents he kept, it wouldn’t undermine a potential obstruction case. That’s because the subpoena asked his team to return all documents “marked as classified” — not those that were classified.
“There’s are other things besides fact gathering that take place at this stage. There’s legal research,” McCord said. “All of that work can just be going on, and that is a substantial amount of work. It’s not just that you go out and gather evidence and then file charges the next day.” | 2022-10-22T12:20:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | While Dearie oversees document review, FBI appears to be building obstruction case, experts say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/22/trump-documents-dearie-fbi/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/10/22/trump-documents-dearie-fbi/ |
Taylor Heinicke dives for a two-point conversion against the Dallas Cowboys at FedEx Field in December 2021. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
The Legend of Taylor Heinicke was almost born in St. Louis. It was February 2020, around the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and merely a week into the inaugural season of the rebooted XFL. Heinicke, a former Old Dominion standout, was the backup quarterback for the St. Louis BattleHawks in their season-opening win over the Dallas Renegades.
Afterward, Heinicke and starting quarterback Nick Fitzgerald celebrated their first victory by crushing cans of Bud Light Seltzer on their forehead and chugging the contents as the locker room erupted.
Had the XFL lasted a full season, the BattleHawks’ locker room party would have been immortalized on T-shirts.
“We actually did a Seltzer-bration shirt that was ready to go to market, but then covid happened and the league shut down,” said Jamie Mottram, the president of the D.C.-based sports apparel company BreakingT. “So the whole thing with Taylor Heinicke actually goes back to the BattleHawks where he was a backup but still, somehow, a fan favorite.”
Nine months later, BreakingT got another shot at making a Heinicke T-shirt. This one featured an image of Heinicke’s pylon dive touchdown in Washington’s wild-card playoff loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, framed around the words “The Legend of Taylor Heinicke” in white lettering.
Thousands sold almost instantly, Mottram said, making it one of the company’s top-selling NFL player shirts. The top shirt featured Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers kneeling under the words “I still own you,” a message he shared last year with Chicago Bears fans.
How an unknown and undersized quarterback from Old Dominion became an overnight star whose popularity spiked close to that of a player he once idolized is truly the stuff of legend, and the next chapter begins Sunday, when Heinicke will start in place of the injured Carson Wentz as the Commanders host none other than Rodgers and the Packers at FedEx Field.
The quarterback change is Washington’s ninth since Ron Rivera took over as coach in 2020. But for many players — and many of their fans — this switch is a breath of familiarity and welcomed jolt.
“The kid is a gamer,” tight end Logan Thomas said of Heinicke. “I think everyone knows that.”
‘Keep the wing warm’
Before the start of the Commanders’ season-opener against the Jaguars, the franchise unveiled its renovated team store at FedEx Field, a 6,200-square-foot room on the club level packed with the franchise’s newly branded Commanders apparel. Standing in the back were four mannequins sporting the jerseys of some of the team’s star players: Wentz, starting defensive tackle Jonathan Allen, veteran cornerback Kendall Fuller — and Heinicke.
How many other teams promote their backup quarterback like that?
And before the start of most games at FedEx, the first row of the south end zone is populated with No. 4 jerseys and fans screaming “Heinick-eeee!” with the hope he will agree to a selfie or two during warmups. He did in Week 5, delighting a group of loyalists before the start of the Commanders’ loss to the Tennessee Titans.
Find someone who loves you the way Washington fans love Taylor Heinicke. pic.twitter.com/JwjGXwYEFY
Though it was clear Wentz was acquired in the offseason to be the starter, the Heinicke fan group made its presence known in training camp. Heinicke was among the regular holdovers after workouts signing footballs and taking selfies with fans, sometimes staying as long as 45 minutes post-practice.
“I always see the Heinicke jerseys,” rookie tight end Cole Turner said. “He’s a guy who’s beat all the odds to get the point he’s at now. Just the way he plays, it earns everyone’s respect around here. I always tell him to keep the wing warm because you never know when we’re going to need you.”
Heinicke’s rise started long after he signed with the Minnesota Vikings as an undrafted free agent in 2015. After two years there, with Scott Turner as his quarterbacks coach, Heinicke bounced to the Patriots, Texans and Panthers. In Carolina, he was reunited with Turner and his offensive system.
In December 2020, Washington signed Heinicke almost literally off the couch. He was staying at his sister’s house and sleeping on her couch while studying for a graduate degree in mathematics when he got the call to be Washington’s emergency quarterback in case of a coronavirus outbreak — a call that ultimately revived his football career.
Heinicke knew the scheme and he knew much of the staff in Washington, but the fans didn’t know him. That changed when he was thrust into the starting role against the Bucs and Tom Brady. Heinicke had more than 300 passing yards, another 46 on the ground, two total touchdowns and, soon, the respect of his teammates for his effort and fearless play in the loss.
His pylon-dive touchdown in the third quarter became his signature moment. His teammates’ reactions to the score served as testimonies to his grit. When Heinicke stood up after the play, teammates encircled him in celebration, and defensive end Chase Young pointed to the back of Heinicke’s jersey as cameras zoomed in and yelled “Heinicke!”
Never heard guys praise a teammate quite like Washington's players praised Taylor Heinicke on Saturday. pic.twitter.com/y1FHbJaZGZ
— Nicki Jhabvala (@NickiJhabvala) January 10, 2021
A visual of Heinicke’s touchdown and of Young’s declaration for the cameras are both imprinted on T-shirts now.
“We just know he’s gonna go hard. He’s a dawg,” Young said this week. “Relentless. The dude, you can’t really break him. And he’s good. S---, he can f---ing play.”
‘The perfect backup’
Shortly after the playoff loss to the Bucs, Washington re-signed Heinicke to a two-year contract. But they also signed Ryan Fitzpatrick to a one-year, $10 million contract that, in cost alone, guaranteed him the starting job.
But Heinicke took over just 16 snaps into the season after Fitzpatrick suffered a hip injury.
In talking with reporters the week after the team’s season-opening loss to the Chargers last year, Heinicke was asked facetiously if he had landed a partnership with Heineken, the beer company with the similar name.
Heinicke smiled and said no, but that he “might have to start calling Bud Light.”
Minutes afterward, Bud Light tweeted “ready and waiting,” and within two days, the “BudLighticke” campaign began on social media.
Heinicke, unknown less than a year earlier, was a local celebrity and marketable sensation. He went 7-8 as a starter last season, creating a highlight reel of pylon dives and mesmerizing throws, all while showing enough charm to win over fans even amid a losing streak.
“He’s the perfect backup quarterback,” Mottram said. “People love backup quarterbacks to begin with, and especially in D.C., where there’s a history of love affairs with backup QBs. But his story is so easy to root for, and the way he plays, while maybe not at an all-pro level, is really fun to watch. He’s just a winning quarterback in terms of having that kind of attitude and perseverance and moxie.”
But he also reminded of Washington’s need at the position. Heinicke had the want and the competitive drive, but not the arm, nor the size, and his play seemed to have a ceiling. The Commanders made it clear they would search for another starter in the offseason, and Heinicke didn’t question it.
“Yeah, I understood it and I get it,” Heinicke said. “You’re always looking for the next best guy in this league, and that’s the only way you get better. So, I understood it, I accepted it, and I just kept working hard, and that’s the only thing I could do. That’s the only thing I could control.”
Wentz, in many ways, is the antithesis of Heinicke. He’s tall; he can throw rockets; he was a No. 2 overall draft pick with starting experience. And after two trades in as many seasons, his character and personality fit were questioned when he arrived.
As Washington’s offense lagged, frustration mounted and inevitably was directed at the quarterback who has been rendered to mostly a pocket passer because of previous injuries. The only reprieve was an ugly win in Chicago in Week 6. Wentz played through the pain of a fractured finger and underwent surgery in Los Angeles four days later.
“I remember Carson telling me right after the game that he felt like he had a cracked finger, and I told him I was going to pretend like he didn’t say that to me,” Heinicke said. “I had some plans to go play some golf down in Norfolk.”
‘A very likable dude’
Anywhere else, with any other player perhaps, another quarterback switch might seem a burden to a team that endures multiple swaps annually.
But in Heinicke, Washington’s pass-catchers are returning to familiarity. No Washington quarterback has played as much as he has in the past three seasons. And few players, especially backups, have the respect he has within the locker room — with the offense, defense and special teams.
“Whether he’s making plays down the field, extending the plays with his legs, diving for pylons, he’s a guy who’s always just going to leave it out on the field,” receiver Terry McLaurin said. “And I think anybody who’s on this team is going to respect that. Just his ability just to leave every ounce of what he’s got on the field, I think we all respect that and we want to do whatever we can to support him.”
Added rookie wideout Jahan Dotson: “I always say he’s the coolest quarterback in the room with the most swag. … I’m big on sneakers. His sneaker game, day to day he’s bringing in some cool dunks and stuff like that.”
And punter Tress Way: “I would say top-tier in terms of golf pairings. And then ultimately, his consistency as a dude and as a friend. He’s never too high, never too low. Just very reliable with friendship, on the field. A very likable dude.”
Familiar, but better
Rivera has said Heinicke’s presence is a bit like having another coach because of his experience in and knowledge of the offense. His return adds swagger to the position, a dose of confidence and toughness, and certainly some mobility that could benefit the offense.
Heinicke spent part of his offseason in California working with Adam Dedeaux, a former baseball player who is now a private quarterbacks coach to many in the NFL, including Wentz.
After nearly a full season as a starter, Heinicke set out to improve the weaknesses others cited in his game, including the velocity on his throws.
“I was really just kind of using my arm last year,” he said. “Wasn’t really getting my hips into it at times. I think that’s where you get all your power from. I’ve tried to use my hips a lot more. It’s kind of like a golf swing — it’s pretty much the same exact thing as a golf swing. Golfed a lot and tried to work on those mechanics. That was my offseason.”
Heinicke said he also poured over his game tape from last season to pick apart the mistakes and develop consistency. Teammates have said they see an even greater confidence in him, but they’ve also cited familiar traits that could be valuable again.
“The way he’s driving the ball down the field is definitely a lot better for us receivers,” McLaurin said. “It gives us a chance to track the ball down the field and give us a chance to make plays. … I think just his ability to extend plays will possibly help us in that area as well.”
Heinicke’s knowledge of the system also could make the game plan more flexible.
“When he gets out there and you know he has command, he’s going to see something,” Rivera said. “There’s a chance that because of his experience in it, he could change something. He and I talked, and I said, ‘If you see something and you want to do something, do it.’ Because he has that feel.”
Heinicke said his 15 games as a starter last season and his six on the sideline to start this season have helped him see the “bigger picture” on the field.
He, and others, also know the power of just one game to turn around a season and grow a legend.
“All it takes is one,” Mottram said. “If they win just one game, everyone is going to be whipped into a frenzy. And if they go on a run, you can expect that you’re going to be getting some new Taylor Heinicke shirts.” | 2022-10-22T12:21:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Who roots for the backup? When it’s Taylor Heinicke, just about everyone. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/who-roots-backup-when-its-taylor-heinicke-just-about-everyone/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/who-roots-backup-when-its-taylor-heinicke-just-about-everyone/ |
Florence Pugh as Lib Wright in “The Wonder,” an adaptation of Emma Donoghue's 2016 novel. (Aidan Monaghan/Netflix )
This year, a slew of popular books have found their way to big and small screens, including “Pachinko,” “Where the Crawdads Sing,” “Heartstopper” and “Blonde.” Although readers know the book is always better, it can still be satisfying to see scenes from the page unfold with a sprinkle of Hollywood magic. And the bounty of page-to-screen adaptations doesn’t appear to be ending anytime soon. From a cannibal romance to a Judy Blume classic, here are nine upcoming releases to watch for. But don’t worry, there’s still time to read the books.
‘The Wonder’
In select theaters Nov. 2, streaming on Netflix Nov. 16
Cast: Florence Pugh, Niamh Algar, Kila Lord Cassidy, Elaine Cassidy, Tom Burke
An 11-year-old girl named Anna (Kila Lord Cassidy) has been starving herself for months in the Irish Midlands, requiring only “manna from heaven” — or so her family says. She attracts tourists and even a reporter from the Daily Telegraph to her small village. In this adaptation of Emma Donoghue’s 2016 novel, Florence Pugh stars as Lib, an English nurse in the mid-1800s sent to observe Anna and determine if she is a fraud. But when the girl’s health begins to decline, Lib discovers that something more disturbing may be behind the miracle. Donoghue, who wrote the screenplay for her first book-to-film adaptation, “Room,” also took part in reimagining this psychological thriller for the screen.
In theaters Nov. 18
“She Said” follows New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) and Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) as they uncover the sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein. In a captivating tale of investigative journalism, the journalists speak to countless women and persuade them to share their experiences, in addition to collecting other proof. And slowly, they begin to piece together the story that would eventually spark the #MeToo movement. The film is based on Kantor and Twohey’s 2019 book, which details how they broke the story as well as the gray areas and questions they wrestled with along the way.
In select theaters Nov. 18, everywhere Nov. 23
Cast: Taylor Russell, Timothée Chalamet, Mark Rylance, Michael Stuhlbarg
“Call Me by Your Name” director Luca Guadagnino reunites with Timothée Chalamet in another coming-of-age love story, this time set in 1980s America — and with cannibalism. Maren (Taylor Russell) is a young woman learning how to survive on her own while managing her desire to eat human flesh. After a confrontation at a convenience store, she finds a companion in Lee (Chalamet), a fellow cannibal, and the two embark on a road trip across the country. A fusion of romance and horror, the movie is based on Camille DeAngelis’s 2015 young adult book.
Cast: Adam Driver, Greta Gerwig, Raffey Cassidy, André Benjamin
In select theaters Nov. 25, streaming on Netflix Dec. 30
Adam Driver plays Hitler studies professor Jack Gladney, and Greta Gerwig is his wife, Babette, in this dark comedy about an American family after a rail car accident releases chemical waste over their town. The couple and their four children grapple with “the mundane conflicts of everyday life,” along with larger questions of death and happiness, in this adaptation from Noah Baumbach, who also wrote and directed “Marriage Story.” The apocalyptic movie is based on Don DeLillo’s 1985 breakout novel, which won the National Book Award for fiction.
‘A Man Called Otto’
In theaters Dec. 14
Cast: Tom Hanks, Mariana Treviño, Rachel Keller, Manuel Garcia-Rulfo
An American take on Fredrik Backman’s best-selling Swedish novel “A Man Called Ove” (2012) stars Tom Hanks in the titular role of the grumpy yet wholly endearing Otto, who finds joy in judging his neighbors. (A Swedish-language adaptation was nominated for a foreign language Oscar in 2017.) But after his wife dies, the 60-year-old becomes depressed and decides to commit suicide. However, his attempts are repeatedly thwarted by the young and boisterous family that moves in next door. An unexpected friendship blossoms between them in this heartwarming story that’s set to arrive just in time for the holiday season.
‘Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret’
In theaters April 28
Cast: Abby Ryder Fortson, Rachel McAdams
The 1970 Judy Blume classic is finally coming to the big screen. Sixth-grader Margaret Simon’s (Abby Ryder Fortson) family moves to the New Jersey suburbs from New York City in this tender coming-of-age story. Margaret’s mother is Christian, and her father is Jewish, but she wasn’t raised to be one or the other. Still, she often prays, starting with the phrase: “Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret.” Along the way, she also navigates the typical complications of early adolescence such as periods, friendships and bras.
As a kid, I loved Judy Blume’s books. As an adult, I wonder: How do they read today?
‘Oppenheimer’
In theaters July 21
Cast: Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh
Written and co-produced by Christopher Nolan, the biographical film follows the life of American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, best known for his work developing the atomic bomb during World War II. The movie is adapted from the critically acclaimed “American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer” (2005), by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, which won the Pulitzer Prize for biography in 2006, among other awards. The star-studded cast features Cillian Murphy as Oppenheimer and Emily Blunt as his wife, Kitty.
‘Killers of the Flower Moon’
Rumored for a May 2023 premiere at the Cannes Film Festival; no official release date yet
Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, Lily Gladstone, Brendan Fraser
At least 20 members of the Osage tribe are murdered in northeastern Oklahoma after big oil deposits are found on their land in the early 1920s. This sparks an FBI investigation into mysterious circumstances surrounding their deaths, eventually uncovering a scheme to eliminate the wealthy tribe members. The movie, directed by Martin Scorsese, is based on the 2017 nonfiction book of the same name from journalist David Grann.
‘Daisy Jones & The Six’
No release date yet
Cast: Riley Keough, Sam Claflin, Suki Waterhouse, Camila Morrone
With gorgeous blue eyes and a captivating voice, Daisy Jones (Riley Keough) knows she’s destined for stardom. Then a producer pairs her with an up-and-coming band called The Six, whose leader (Sam Claflin) seems to fight with her on every song. Yet there is an undeniable connection between them, and the music they create is pure magic. The tale of fame, drugs and rockstars is set in glamorous 1970s Los Angeles. The TV series is based on the best-selling novel from Taylor Jenkins Reid, author of “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo,” and is being produced by Reese Witherspoon’s company and Amazon Studios. Although filming wrapped in May, there’s no release date yet. (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.) | 2022-10-22T12:42:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Bones and All' and other upcoming adaptations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/22/book-movie-television-adaptations/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/10/22/book-movie-television-adaptations/ |
In Q&A, Wendy Euler — model, writer, podcaster, blogger, influencer — discusses her “pro-age” advocacy
“I believe I have a responsibility to give younger women something to look forward to instead of something to dread,” says Wendy Euler, a “pro-age” advocate. (Amir Hamja for The Washington Post)
When she hit her 40s, Wendy Euler — model, writer, podcaster, blogger, influencer — had her fill of all those societal messages women get about aging. “You’re invisible.” “You’re past your prime.” “You’ve expired.”
And so she created the “Goodbye Crop Top” website (later expanding to a podcast and to her popular @goodbyecroptop Instagram) to encourage older women to feel good about themselves.
“There was a profound absence of material regarding positive aging,” she says. “No one seemed to grasp the fact that not all of us were ready for sensible shoes, baggy clothes and average hair styles. We don’t lose our sense of style after 40. As a matter of fact, I think it’s the best time to tap into it, once we really — and finally — know ourselves.”
Now 54 and the mother of three daughters, she calls herself a “pro-age” advocate who got tired of the derogatory message about aging women and decided to offer a positive and empowering alternative for women of all ages.
“I believe I have a responsibility to give younger women something to look forward to instead of something to dread,” she says. “If you’re going to be here on this planet, embrace it.” As she declares in one of her podcasts: “Fifty is not the new 40. Fifty is the new 50, and this is the point.”
The Washington Post spoke to Euler recently about women and aging. Her responses have been edited for space and clarity.
Q: So, how did all this start?
A: I was seeing women in their 40s and 50s thinking “I don’t want to look my age” and trying to look like they were in their 30s. That’s toxic. It’s not humanly possible, and it’s psychologically damaging. At the same time, they were dealing with all the things that happen when you age: menopause, death and illness, losing friends and family, empty nest, divorce. I felt like there was this huge chasm in the middle where no one was saying: “This is the greatest time of my life,” which is what I was feeling.
Q: You never experienced any midlife crises?
A: I did. I had to make some hard choices. I got out of a bad marriage. I ended some toxic relationships. But then I started hanging out with people I felt good being around, who I learned from, and who were mostly my age. They validated who I was, and I validated them. I was with women who were comfortable with themselves at this stage of their lives. I felt like I was finally shedding the insecurities I was feeling in my 20s and 30s.
Q: But, still, the negative media messages directed at aging women continued to annoy you?
A: The patriarchy preys on women, selling them things to prevent aging, like anti-aging creams, anti-aging supplements. I hate those words “anti-aging.” I am anti anti-aging. The only alternative to aging is to be in a box or an urn. There is a psychological manipulation going on with big business. It’s all about moneymaking. What they sell is never going to make you look younger — and you shouldn’t care.
Q: So, these feelings prompted you to start your website?
A: Yes. One day I went on a trail hike in the mountains with a friend my age and we were talking about this stuff. She said: “Wendy you need to talk about this [publicly]. Not every middle-aged woman feels as good as you do about aging. I’ve been starving for this content, and I’ve looked everywhere.” So, I decided to combine writing and style and put some content out that would resonate with other women. And by “style,” I don’t mean fashion. Fashion is a business. Style is something that comes from within.
Q: Describe some of the messages that you think can help women feel better about themselves as they age.
A: One thing I tell them is go back to basics. A woman who reaches the boiling point where she feels terrible and thinks “I’m going to buy that $500 face cream, or $1,000 sweater because it will make me feel better” needs to realize that nothing in a bottle or clothing will make you feel better. Instead, ask yourself: Are you drinking water? Moving your body? Practicing something spiritual? Are you eating well? First, get back to basics. Then, if the cream feels good, put it on.
Also, the company you keep is everything. It’s not about looks, it’s about a feeling. What’s important is not what you put on your face, but what goes into your ears and eyes, and how you nourish yourself with everything that goes in: what you are reading, hearing, eating — everything that goes in.
A: I really believe it is important to laugh and to have fun. I often ask women: What is the most fun you have had recently? When is the last time you laughed until you hurt? And they are stumped. I’ve recently rediscovered laughter. I’m never again letting it go. I believe, for most things, it’s a cure-all.
Q: What kind of responses do you get from women who read your blog or listen to your podcast?
A: You should read them. I cry every day. I got a direct message on Instagram from a woman who said she’d been feeling so bad about getting older — she’s 52 — that she stayed in bed for eight weeks. She never got out of bed. But then she wrote: “Today I got out of bed and got dressed. You’re the reason I got out of bed.” That’s the reason I do what I do.
Q: You look great, but probably not everyone who follows you looks as good. Some women might feel it’s easy for you to give advice considering your appearance — do you ever get that? How do you respond?
A: I used to get that a lot more, but now those comments are few and far between. I think I’ve now gained peoples’ trust. I’m a model. I work hard to stay fit. But there’s no guarantee I’m going to look this way in 20 years. I’m not going to stop feeling good about myself, no matter how I look at 75. I’m still going to try to be the best version of me that I can. I’m a real person. I’m not a famous person. I don’t have a team of people around me to make me look good. I am who I am.
She was ambushed by searing leg pain that struck without warning
Q: So do you dye your hair? And what about cosmetic surgery? Have you had any?
A: I’m a unicorn here. I do not have one gray hair. I think one should always understand the why around cosmetic fixes. If the goal is to look 30 (at 50), that’s never going to happen and the outcome might be frightening (not to mention psychologically damaging, I hear). If the goal is to look bright and rested and let’s just say “good for one’s age.” I say go for it … and keep your secrets to yourself. I’ve definitely tried Botox … but I like the lines in my forehead. My 8-year-old has them, so it seems unnatural I wouldn’t have them at 54. | 2022-10-22T12:42:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why women need to ignore societal messages about growing older - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/22/pro-age-influencer-wendy-euler/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/22/pro-age-influencer-wendy-euler/ |
A college wrestler fought a bear to save his teammate — and won
Wrestlers from Northwest College in Wyoming are being taken by helicopter on their way to hospital from the scene of a bear attack in Shoshone National Forest on Oct. 15. (Park County Sheriff's Office)
Kendell Cummings did not think he would fight a bear on a weekend and live to tell the story. But when a grizzly bear attacked his wrestling teammate Brady Lowry, Cummings leaped in to save him.
On the afternoon of Oct. 15, the two sophomores at Northwest College in Powell, Wyo., were wrapping up a day of hunting for antlers with wrestling teammates, August Harrison and Orrin Jackson, in Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming.
Cummings heard the attack before he saw it. There was a loud crash, and then he saw the bear on top of Lowry in between the thick trees, he told The Washington Post.
When he saw the bear mauling his friend, Cummings first tried shouting to scare it away. Then he threw stones and rocks in the grizzly’s direction. The scare tactics were not enough.
That is when the young wrestler acted on instinct. He leaped in and grabbed the bear, distracting it enough to free Lowry, Cummings said.
Then the bear charged Cummings, twice, the Powell Tribune reported.
Cummings had previously read about what to do in a bear attack, but none of that information had been about grizzly bears. “In any case, there wasn’t time to think,” he said.
Cummings played dead.
“I remember curling up,” he said.
According to the National Park Service, it’s best to play dead during a grizzly bear attack, covering your head and neck with your hands and arms, remaining quiet, and lying flat on your stomach.
What felt like moments later, Cummings watched the bear walk away. All he wanted to do was get off the mountain.
After the grizzly left, Cummings got up and moved down the mountain. By then, one of his other friends had already called 911, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department said in a statement.
Cummings was flown by helicopter to a hospital and an ambulance took Lowry to a hospital, the department said.
Cummings and Lowry have had surgeries and are expected to make a full recovery, according to a statement put out by the Northwest College Foundation and Alumni.
Cummings says he should be ready to wrestle alongside his team again by the end of the year.
The entire grizzly bear attack lasted less than five minutes, Cummings said. But it has brought the wrestling team closer.
“Not just the four of us, but the whole team,” he said.
Cummings has known Lowry and Jackson for less than two months; he has been friends with Harrison for about two years.
Still, Cummings said, “if we all didn’t have these friendships and each other, we would not have come off that mountain alive.”
Recent grizzly bear attacks in the United States include a hunting guide who was killed in the wilderness east of Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming and a camper in Montana who had scared away a grizzly only for it to return an hour later and maul her to death.
The four friends from Northwest College were west of the Bobcat Houlihan trailhead in Cody when the attack occurred, the Game and Fish Department said.
The statement said reports from landowners and hunters indicate there may be six to 10 different bears moving between agricultural fields and low-elevation slopes in the vicinity of the attack.
The attack keeps coming back to the young wrestler. He can still remember the bear’s teeth, its head, the color of its fur, he said.
“Before this attack, I had thought that I could take on a bear easily,” Cummings said. “Now I know that a bear is pretty legit. They are tougher, stronger and bigger than I thought. It’s not so easy.” | 2022-10-22T12:43:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A college wrestler fought a bear to save his teammate — and won - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/22/wyoming-wrestlers-bear-attack/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/22/wyoming-wrestlers-bear-attack/ |
Audubon’s writings on ocean voyages and seabirds complicate his legacy
An illustration engraved by Robert Havell Jr. It was published in “The Birds of America” by John James Audubon in the early 19th century. (VCG Wilson/Corbis/Getty Images)
John James Audubon is known as many things: a tenacious birder, a compelling painter, an enslaver who might himself have been a man of color. But when you think about the founder of American ornithology and wildlife art, the words “writer” and “seafarer” don’t necessarily come to mind.
A look at “Audubon at Sea: The Coastal and Transatlantic Adventures of John James Audubon,” published by the University of Chicago Press, will change that. Edited by Christoph Irmscher and Richard J. King, the book further complicates the story of Audubon’s life by highlighting the man’s writings about his sea voyages and water birds.
The book draws on Audubon’s journals and published books, framing him as a figure who, despite being a ship captain’s son who made extensive sea voyages, was challenged, sometimes even flummoxed, by the unpredictability of sea life.
Audubon painted indelible images of sea birds soaring, swooping and frolicking in the open sky. Birders will delight in his descriptions of albatrosses, petrels and curlews.
But he also documented the cruelty of human incursion into these once untouched landscapes — and his own participation in their destruction. Audubon not only shot and killed countless birds for his drawings but also witnessed poachers whose “great object is to plunder every nest, wherever they can find it, no matter where, and whatever risk,” he wrote.
Although Audubon referred to these egg-seekers as “destructive pirates” and was shocked by their violence, he also described how his own group gathered thousands of common murre eggs, killed seabirds and startled them with gunfire.
Irmscher and King make sure Audubon’s often horrific legacy is on full display, even though he also helped preserve a now-destroyed world. Many sights described in his vivid prose can no longer be seen, like the great auk, which the naturalist mistakenly called a penguin.
The naturalist, who often loathed sea voyages, at one point wrote about himself as “not unlike a newly hatched bird, tottering on feeble legs.” “Audubon at Sea” reveals a brilliant man whose legacy is no longer so bright and uses the ornithologist’s own words to force us to see him in a new light. | 2022-10-22T12:43:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Audubon’s writings on ocean voyages and seabirds complicate his legacy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/10/22/audubon-conflicted-legacy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/10/22/audubon-conflicted-legacy/ |
In the latest news from the labor wars, workers at a Starbucks in Portland, Maine, just voted to unionize, while those at an Amazon warehouse in upstate New York voted not to. Opinions on the value of unions obviously differ, and passions run high. As an economist, I try to assess these kinds of issues rationally. Here is my attempt to explain how I think about unions.
The brief for unions starts with the possibility of higher wages: Union workers enjoy a wage premium of 10% to 20% (although many of these estimates are dated, and globalization may have made the premium much lower, in some cases close to zero). Unions may also give workers a more effective medium for airing their workplace grievances, and may help them coordinate better services with their employers.
The more skeptical view of unions accepts the logic of these arguments, but questions the size of the associated benefits. The union wage premium is good for the workers that receive it, of course, but it also leads to higher prices. Other workers in turn pay those higher prices. So the net return to all workers is smaller than the wage premium would suggest.
It’s not that labor costs and retail prices move exactly in tandem. If labor costs rise by 12% but labor is a small part of the marginal cost of the product, prices may rise by much less than 12%. But if labor is only a small part of the cost, then unions are less likely to be involved. The more important the role of workers, the more likely that union wage hikes will be translated into retail price hikes.
Workers as a whole still may benefit from unions if the burden of the higher prices falls largely on the wealthy. That may be the case for fancy diamonds or expensive restaurants, but historically unions have been more common in industries that provide goods and services for the middle class, for instance automobiles.
Another issue is whether higher wages for workers lead to greater automation and thus lower demand for labor in general. US manufacturing has automated considerably over the last few decades, and it accounts for an ever-diminishing share of US employment. Automation is coming to Amazon warehouses as well. Furthermore, many formerly unionized jobs have gone overseas rather than to robots.
It is difficult to trace the causal impact of unions in this matter, since there are so many other factors at play. Nonetheless it is plausible that higher union wages do harm some non-union workers, by lowering demand in the long run for labor in unionized sectors. It’s also worth noting that management tends to be hostile to unions, and part of the reason may be that unionization will lead to lower profits. And lower profits will eventually mean lower investment.
Even taking all these factors into account, it is still possible that unions benefit workers overall. But only by a modest degree. It would not be a reason to make unionization a top priority, or to put unions at the center of a theory of what makes workers better off.
Furthermore, the union wage premium — as opposed to a union wage increase, which is subject to negotiation every several years — is a permanent change to an industry or sector. In the longer run, improvements in productivity (or lack thereof) are more important than the wage premium.
What about working conditions? Here union bargaining can again prove useful, whether it is adversarial or cooperative. Again, however, the benefits are likely to be modest. Better working conditions are another form of a higher wage, and come with the associated costs of higher wages I mentioned earlier.
There is also the question of how important unions are to improving working conditions. US working conditions have improved steadily over the years, at the same time when the US has seen radically falling rates of unionization. So unions are not likely the main factor behind a lot of improvements for workers.
Unions serve useful functions in a market economy, and no one should demonize them. At the same time, at least to this economist, it is a mistake to view unions as the savior of the working class.
• Unions Haven’t Kept Up With the New Economy: Allison Schrager
• Why Companies Might Learn to Love Unions: Conor Sen
• Workers of the World Are Uniting Again: Chris Bryant | 2022-10-22T14:14:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amazon and Starbucks Votes Show Workers Are Ambivalent About Unions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/amazon-and-starbucks-votes-show-workers-are-ambivalent-about-unions/2022/10/22/4064d1de-520a-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/amazon-and-starbucks-votes-show-workers-are-ambivalent-about-unions/2022/10/22/4064d1de-520a-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
Rule-follower. (Photographer: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
The “Freedom to Walk Act” adopted this month by California warms my libertarian heart. Contrary to some reports, the state hasn’t legalized jaywalking. But by protecting the rights of pedestrians who cross the street illegally but safely, the legislation challenges a century of thinking about roads.
The idea that jaywalking is bad is the result of decades of indoctrination by the victors in a century-long struggle over control of the street. As the journalist Tom Vanderbilt puts it, “the word jaywalking is often used as a sort of blanket justification for the dominating presence of cars on city streets” and “reflects a social bias against those people not in cars.”
It’s a bias with a history; and a history that involves bias.
Nowadays, we tend to take it for granted that pedestrians should be kept out of traffic, but matters were not always thus. In 1915, the New York Times editorialized that requiring that walkers cross only at corners would be “silly and intolerable” and inappropriate for “this complicated town.”
It was hardly an extreme view. At the time, streets were still contested territory. Most urbanites considered them public spaces, where anyone should be free to stroll. Ranged against this notion stood a coalition of interest groups – car dealers and auto clubs, among others – who insisted that safety required that pedestrians stay off the roads. In his excellent book on the battle, the historian Peter D. Norton summarizes the campaign this way: “motordom defended motorists as a persecuted minority suffering under a majority tyranny.”
These pro-regulation forces were determined to change public opinion. “Because jaywalker bore the right connotation of rural backwardness, it was just the tool for the reeducation effort,” Norton notes. But the main argument involved public safety. If drivers were maiming and killing pedestrians, the fault obviously lay with the victims.
The elites were soon on board. Civil engineers began designing streets with automobile traffic in mind. Governments in turn adopted new safety rules. By the late 1920s, jaywalking had been outlawed across the country. But the laws were rarely enforced.
After World War II, the popularity of the automobile — and the rise in traffic fatalities — led cities across the country to either adopt new regulations or revive the ones they had. When New York City’s ban took effect in August 1958, the Times reported with evident glee that city police issued 479 summonses on the first day.
In the end, the streets-are-for-cars forces prevailed. But, as so often, the nation took the benefits for granted without considering the costs. Now we know a lot more.
We know, for example, that although laws against jaywalking are generally defended on safety grounds, the data are more complex than we tend to think. (That’s a fascinating topic, but one for another day.) We also know that the sparkling new jaywalking laws often provided the legal excuse for arresting peaceful civil-rights demonstrators; and for exercising ordinary racial prejudice.
In 1962, a Black student at Ohio State University was locked up for jaywalking while two White friends who crossed the street alongside her were unaccosted. In similar vein, a 1957 letter to an Indianapolis newspaper complained about the enforcement of jaywalking laws by police officers watching Black pedestrians “from the shadows.”
The problem hasn’t gone away. Many cash-strapped municipalities have used jaywalking laws to raise revenue, a practice that tends disproportionately to burden the marginalized.
Finally, let’s not forget a fundamental libertarian caution: Every law, no matter how innocuous, carries the potential for violent enforcement, because enforcement entails an interaction between the citizen and the armed representative of state authority. In fact, in 1966, the Boston Globe reported that one George H. Calustian, the first person arrested under the city’s new jaywalking law, had been fined $20 for jaywalking ... and $100 for assaulting a police officer.
It’s fantasy to imagine that we can perfect these interactions so that they never turn sour.
That’s why, on the first day of law school, I always warn my students to support only laws for which they are, in principle, willing to kill. This isn’t an argument that we shouldn’t have laws; it’s an argument that we should be realistic in our expectations.
If that sounds extreme, consider: The softening of California’s law was sparked in large part by a 2020 incident where police in San Clemente shot and killed a Black homeless man who’d been stopped for jaywalking. The episode was hardly unique. In 2018, Sacramento agreed to pay $550,000 to settle a claim that one of its officers savagely beat a Black suspect who’d been arrested for the same offense. Atlanta faces a lawsuit by a Black man who was tasered during a jaywalking stop. During a 2014 anti-jaywalking campaign on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, an 84-year-old Asian-American restaurateur was knocked unconscious by police and woke up handcuffed to a hospital bed.
Anecdotes aren’t the same as data, but one needn’t be anti-police — I’m certainly not — to recognize that the fewer laws we have, the less chance for an interaction between police and public that could end in tragedy.
California’s reform of its jaywalking laws to favor walkers is … well … a step in the right direction.
• A Black Family Won Back Its Beach. The Law Remains Broken: Stephen L. Carter
• Police Training Is Expensive and It’s Still Not Enough: Stephen L. Carter | 2022-10-22T14:14:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jaywalking Shouldn’t Be a Crime, and Now It Isn’t — in California - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/jaywalking-shouldnt-be-a-crime-and-now-it-isnt-in-california/2022/10/22/40be43a4-520a-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/jaywalking-shouldnt-be-a-crime-and-now-it-isnt-in-california/2022/10/22/40be43a4-520a-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
ARLINGTON, Ga. — Nine years after the hospital closed in the southwest Georgia town of Arlington, the worry about health care lurks. Health insurance premiums are high, many residents report poor health and there’s no guarantee Calhoun County’s sole ambulance will arrive promptly if it’s taking a patient to a distant hospital. | 2022-10-22T14:15:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Dems push Medicaid expansion for left-behind rural Georgia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/dems-push-medicaid-expansion-for-left-behind-rural-georgia/2022/10/22/5442af9c-5209-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/dems-push-medicaid-expansion-for-left-behind-rural-georgia/2022/10/22/5442af9c-5209-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
China's former President Hu Jintao is led out by a steward as President Xi Jinping (R) and Premier Li Keqiang (L) look on during the closing ceremony of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, Saturday. (Mark R Cristino/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
A meeting of top Chinese officials concluded on Saturday with leader Xi Jinping’s power undisputed, as his “core” status was enshrined in the Communist Party charter, his former political rival retired and his predecessor was escorted off the stage in a surprising departure from protocol.
Chinese state media has not explained — or even mentioned — the early departure. China considers the health and personal lives of top party leaders a state secret. But the unusual scene, which took place mid-ceremony, has led observers to question what could have required the deviation from script. At the last congress in 2017, former leader Jiang Zemin remained in attendance until the end of the ceremony.
Vic Chiang and Pei-Lin Wu contributed to this report. | 2022-10-22T14:15:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hu Jintao escorted from China Communist Party congress - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/22/china-hu-jintao-communist-party-congress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/22/china-hu-jintao-communist-party-congress/ |
Feinstein says she will not be president pro tem of the Senate if Democrats keep control of the chamber, but Grassley has made no such promise
Sens. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), shown in 2018, will both turn 90 in 2023. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
If Democrats thread the needle just right next month, Sen. Dianne Feinstein would be in line for a prominent prize.
The Californian, as the most senior Democrat in her caucus come January, could assume the position of Senate president pro tempore. The post comes with a security detail from the U.S. Capitol Police and a budget for staffers that rose from a little more than $100,000 in 2011 to almost $720,000 in 2019.
Feinstein, 89, also would be third in the line of presidential succession, behind the vice president and the speaker of the House. But she has decided that the pro tem position is not for her.
“I’ve never thought about being the president pro tempore and I have no interest in it at this time,” Feinstein said Friday in a statement provided to The Washington Post.
Her Republican counterpart, Sen. Charles E. Grassley, also 89, has made the opposite call. Should Iowans hand him an eighth six-year term, as is expected next month, Grassley would accept the position of president pro tem, his office confirmed to The Washington Post, and he would leave decisions about the line of succession up to others.
But historians are expressing concern, particularly as political violence is on a dramatic rise, about a line of succession that runs to a senator who is particularly old and might be a less-than-optimal choice during a national crisis.
“Whether it is a Strom Thurmond, a Dianne Feinstein, a Chuck Grassley or any other octogenarian who might occupy the position, this is no way to run a succession process,” said Norman Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has studied continuity of government for decades.
Octogenarians at the top
Also concerning to the experts is that to an unprecedented extent, the federal government is being overseen by octogenarians.
President Biden, the oldest ever to occupy the Oval Office, turns 80 next month. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is 82, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is 80. The current Senate president pro tem, Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), this summer suffered a fall that left him with a broken hip and he recently spent a night in the hospital after not feeling well. Leahy, 82, is retiring at the end of this term, leaving the position open for Feinstein or Grassley.
“We need a new generation,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) said recently on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” focusing mostly on her party. “We need new blood, period, across the Democratic Party, in the House, the Senate and the White House.”
Thurmond (R-S.C.) was president pro tem of the Senate from 1995 into 2001, into his late 90s, which was roughly the last time any serious thought was given to changing the rules of presidential succession. Even with Feinstein saying no, Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) is in line to become president pro tem if Democrats hold the majority.
Murray, 72 and well respected, has been in Democratic leadership for more than a decade, but the self-proclaimed “Mom in tennis shoes” has never aspired to a role much bigger than her current job of chairing the Senate health committee.
The Senate’s president pro tem was never meant to be an elder in the twilight of her or his career. In the 19th century and up through World War II, the post often went to younger senators who were viewed as real leaders, according to Steven S. Smith, a political science professor at Washington University who is co-writing a book on the history of Senate leadership.
Since the late 1940s, the position has been largely ceremonial, with duties such as opening daily debate in the Senate and, as the titular head of the chamber, signing legislation that is to be sent to the president.
On Sept. 11, 2001, the day of the terrorist attacks, then-Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.), 83, who had succeeded Thurmond as president pro tem, wandered around the East Front of the Capitol grounds with no police detail, telling reporters that he had no idea what was happening and planned to go home to Virginia.
The president pro tem has had a security detail ever since, and on Jan. 6, 2021, just a couple minutes after then-Vice President Pence was taken from the Senate chamber to safety, Grassley — who held the pro tem position from 2019 into early 2021 — was rushed out of the chamber. The other Senate leaders, Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), remained behind because Grassley was in the line of succession.
Feinstein, Grassley differ
Feinstein agreed two years ago to step aside as the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee after questions about her ability to run such an important panel. Her decision to forgo pro tem, if Democrats win the majority, follows on that.
But Grassley fully intends to take the position if Republicans win back the majority.
“Senator Grassley has indeed considered the gravity of the line of succession, since he previously served as president pro tempore. Nobody relishes the idea of a country losing its top three elected leaders, but Senator Grassley was and continues to be clear-eyed about the duties of the [position],” Grassley spokesman Taylor Foy said.
Grassley has been sensitive to age questions for several years, and at the start of a campaign asking voters to give him a term that would end when he was 95, one of his first ads showed him on his morning run and doing push-ups. He does not consider age an issue for the line of succession.
“If the objective is to restrict who can be in the line of succession simply based on age, what age would be an appropriate cap? At what point,” Foy said, “do you age out of being the speaker of the House, or a Cabinet head, or VP, or president for that matter?”
Ornstein finds that line of rhetorical questioning ludicrous. He is working with a group of continuity-of-government experts that plans to recommend revisions to the 1947 law, the most recent governing the succession, to eliminate the House speaker and Senate president pro tem from the line and just have the vice president and other Cabinet officials.
Short of that overhaul, he said, “they definitely need to change the [president pro tem] custom.”
Smith, who is writing a Senate leadership history, views the issue through the lens of almost historical accident — the president pro tem was never intended to be such an aged member of the Senate just performing perfunctory duties.
For the first 50 years, the president pro tem was a powerful force who oversaw debate when the vice president, the actual president of the Senate, was not on hand. He often appointed chairmen and members to Senate committees, actually serving as next in line after the vice president until an 1886 update. When vice presidents were elevated to the presidency, the Senate president pro tem collected his Senate salary and that of the vice president, according to Donald Ritchie, a former historian of the Senate.
By 1845, Smith said, party caucuses became more formalized, and, decade after decade, the chairs of those caucuses grew more powerful, eventually taking majority and minority leader as their titles. In 1947, a new line of succession law placed speaker and Senate president pro tem after the vice president. That coincided with the adoption of the custom by which the most tenured senator in the majority takes the post.
Ritchie recalled that after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Sen. Carl Hayden (D-Ariz.) was well into his 80s and made a promise that he would never get near the Oval Office.
“If the presidency came his way,” Ritchie said, “he would immediately resign and let the Senate choose someone else.”
Smith would prefer to change the succession law now rather than, in such a crisis, see an elderly senator actually decide to take on the job.
“Then it’s too late if you find that your president pro tempore is not up to the job of president,” he said. | 2022-10-22T14:44:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A 90-something in line of presidential succession? Experts say it’s time for a change. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/22/grassley-feinstein-senate-pro-tempore/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/22/grassley-feinstein-senate-pro-tempore/ |
The storm could be at or near Category 3 strength when it makes landfall
The National Hurricane Center's forecast for Roslyn. (NOAA/NHC) (NOAA/NHC)
Major Hurricane Roslyn is heading for the west coast of Mexico, set to roar ashore at or near Category 3 strength somewhere in the states of Jalisco or Nayarit very late Saturday night or Sunday morning. The National Hurricane Center warns that “preparations … should be rushed to completion” for those within Roslyn’s path, the agency sounding the alarm for expected “damaging winds, a dangerous storm surge … [and] heavy rainfall [that] could lead to flash flooding and mudslides.”
Hurricane warnings are in effect from Playa Perula to El Roblito, including Puerto Vallarta, a popular vacation destination. Las Islas Marias, a spattering of islands off the coast, are also in the warning zone. To the north of the warning, a hurricane watch stretches all the way to Mazatlan, while tropical storm watches cover both that area and the zone south of the hurricane warning to Manzanillo.
There are increasing odds that the storm could come ashore as the strongest to impact that region since Kenna in 2002, which made landfall at the mouth of the Rio Grande de Santiago near Boca de Asadero as a Category 4 storm with 140 mph winds. It had been a Category 5 storm just 10 hours before landfall.
Roslyn’s rapid intensification
Roslyn came about after a group of thunderstorms off the west coast of Mexico congealed into a tropical depression and eventually a named storm on Thursday. It wasn’t until 11 p.m. Eastern time Friday that Rosslyn became a hurricane, but it rapidly intensified into a major hurricane, defined as Category 3 or higher, just six hours later Saturday morning.
Rapid intensification, defined as a spike of 35 mph or more in a storm’s maximum sustained winds in 24 hours or fewer, is made more likely by warmer waters and calm upper-level winds. There are emerging links between human-induced climate change and the frequency and severity of rapid intensification.
By midmorning Eastern time Saturday, Roslyn had winds of 120 mph, and was located a little more than 150 miles southwest of Manzanillo, Mexico. At the time it was moving northwest at 7 mph, but it was beginning a curve to the north-northeast. It will be steered into the western coastline of Mexico as it begins to feel the effects of an approaching shortwave trough, or pocket of cold air, low pressure and spin aloft, near the Baja Peninsula.
Roslyn’s expected impact
On its present course, Roslyn looks to make landfall in the same area that Kenna did. That would place rural areas in coastal Narayit in line to experience the eyewall, or ring of furious winds surrounding the calm eye. While Roslyn will be in the midst of a gradual weakening trend, winds gusting near 120 mph are still possible at the immediate shoreline. Communities like San Blás, Matenchén and Aticama may experience the strongest winds. Winds will drop off exponentially outside of the eyewall, though tropical storm force buffets are still possible as far south as Puerto Vallarta.
The greatest surge will occur just south of where Roslyn’s center makes landfall. That’s because the storm, like all large-scale low pressure systems in the northern hemisphere, is spinning counterclockwise; that means winds south of the eye will be aimed onshore. That will efficiently push water toward the coastline.
The National Hurricane Center writes that “a dangerous storm surge is expected to produce significant coastal flooding near and to the east of where the center makes landfall.”
They also warn of “large, destructive waves” near the coast, which computer models indicate could approach 25 feet in height.
Storm surge risk is generally lesser on Mexico’s west coast than its Gulf Coast because the slope of the continental shelf is more abrupt. That makes it tougher to scoop large volumes water toward the coastline on the Pacific side.
The storm is also forecast to produce 4 to 6 inches of rain, with maximum totals of around 8 inches, along the upper coast of Colima, Jalisco, southeastern Sinaloa and western Nayarit, including Islas Marias.
“This rainfall could lead to flash flooding and landslides in areas of rugged terrain,” the Hurricane Center wrote. | 2022-10-22T15:02:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Major Hurricane Roslyn to hit Mexico Sunday after rapidly intensifying - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/22/hurricane-roslyn-mexico-puerto-vallarta/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/22/hurricane-roslyn-mexico-puerto-vallarta/ |
The Spy Museum gives autistic adults a night of their own
The D.C.-based museum is a place that explores the secret history of espionage, but it took openness and candor to make the night happen
A room inside the International Spy Museum. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
On the day Aaron Bretzfelder went to the International Spy Museum with the Cool Aspies, a club for neurodiverse young adults in Northern Virginia, he felt anxious and found it hard to concentrate on the exhibits.
“It was loud and crowded inside,” recalled the 33-year-old, who is autistic. He couldn’t talk to his friends over the noise or even see where they were at times. He also felt rushed as he stood in front of the screens that offer interactive experiences. “On a normal day, they only give you two or three minutes.”
Some of Bretzfelder’s fellow club members had decided not to attend that day, predicting the museum would feel too overwhelming. A few others decided to go, but then felt too uncomfortable to stay.
Bretzfelder was among the members who made it through the exhibits and then met with museum staff members to offer suggestions on how they could improve the experience for autistic adults.
“I appreciated that,” Bretzfelder said of how the staff asked for feedback and then listened.
On Sunday night, the Spy Museum will hold its first sensory-friendly program for adults. That night, Bretzfelder and others will get to walk through the building without encountering loud noises, large crowds or extreme lighting. They also won’t have to share the space with children.
So often when places offer sensory-friendly events, they are designed with families and kids in mind. But what makes Sunday’s event unique is that it recognizes autistic children grow up and have their own needs and wants as adults. That night, they will get to eat and drink during a social hour, meet a former spy and participate in an adult-appropriate scavenger hunt. The museum will also make a quiet room available for anyone who needs it.
“What might be a mission impossible visit during normal operating hours is now mission possible!” reads a description of the event on the museum’s website.
The Spy Museum is a place that explores the history of espionage and showcases top-secret gadgets, but to make that Sunday event happen took openness. It took the museum listening to autistic adults.
Meet Patrice, the Spy Museum robot who is opening a secret world to hospitalized kids
Lucy Stirn, the director of youth education for the museum, said the staff has held sensory-friendly events for children and families since 2016, and started talking about also holding one for adults before the pandemic.
“We were getting a ton of emails saying, ‘Why aren’t you doing an adult-exclusive one? We’re part of the community, too,’ ” she said. “And I completely agreed with them.”
Stirn said finding a sponsor to fund the event, which requires the museum to stay open after hours and be fully staffed, didn’t happen within the time frame they were aiming for. But the museum felt so strongly about making it happen, she said, that the staff decided to move forward with holding focus groups and planning the night.
“We decided let’s just do this, let’s try this,” she said. “We saw that the need was there.”
A testament to the demand, she said, is what happened when the museum opened registration for the free event. Every ticket was quickly claimed. A total of 450 people registered.
Stirn doesn’t expect all 450 people to show. She understands that some people may not feel up to attending at the last minute or they may step inside the door and decide to step back out. But the staff has tried to reduce the number of potential triggers a person might encounter that night and they created a guide to let attendees know what to expect.
In working with autistic children, Stirn has seen how some parts of the museum can delight one person and upset another. In the lobby sits an Aston Martin DB5 from the James Bond movie “Goldfinger.” The tires spin, the license plate flips and other movements bring the sound of shooting. The elevators can also prove challenging for some people. The lights turn off, and red and blue lights flash. A recorded voice then relays a message that includes the phrase, “We’ll be watching you.”
Before planning the event the museum gathered advice from several groups, and after it the staff plans to offer surveys to learn what worked and what they could do differently.
“I’m just hoping we can do more of these, and that other places think of this community and offer similar stuff in the future,” Stirn said.
At the Smithsonian, a small team takes on a big question: how to keep coronavirus concerns from taking away accessibility?
Deborah Hammer, who runs Cool Aspies and works for Arlington County Public Schools, said about 22 members of the club visited the museum earlier in the year to serve as a focus group. During their time there, she saw two members leave and others put their hands over their ears. She also received text messages from members who were in the same room as her but grew nervous when they couldn’t see her through the crowd.
Afterward, she said, the group spent about an hour and a half talking to the museum staff. One of their suggestions was that the night should offer attendees a chance to talk and meet new people. The social hour will provide the space and time for them to do that.
“I think it’s really important to provide spaces for adults who are neurodivergent to have differentiated experiences because they still want to enjoy events in the community,” Hammer said. “Just because they are 18 and older doesn’t mean they want to stop experiencing all we have to offer in the D.C. area.”
Members who felt uncomfortable during the first visit will be coming back Sunday, because they know it will be a different experience, she said.
“People are very excited about it,” she said. “There aren’t a lot of opportunities like this.”
One of the people from the group who will attend is Bretzfelder. He said he is excited about the social hour and already knows what he will ask the spy who attends: What country did he gather information on?
Another Cool Aspies member who plans on going is Aaron Lagunoff. The 27-year-old spends his weekdays doing custodial work at the FBI building, which places him near people who have done intelligence and law enforcement work. At the museum, he gets to take on that role himself: Guests are given a spy persona and a mission.
Lagunoff said he is looking forward to entering that world again — this time, in an environment that makes his friends more comfortable.
“I think it’s going to be a really fun experience,” he said. “I actually think it’s important because many neurodiverse people don’t really get the opportunity to experience nighttime events, especially at a museum.”
He also pointed to how the museum’s actions offer a lesson for other places that want to be more inclusive.
“I think listening to people and hearing people speak and give feedback or advice is actually a very good strategy,” he said. “Not just at the spy museum.” | 2022-10-22T15:15:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The International Spy Museum gives autistic adults a night of their own - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/22/spy-museum-night-for-autistic-adults/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/22/spy-museum-night-for-autistic-adults/ |
Since arriving in Washington in 2020, J.D. McKissic has been one of the team's most important offensive weapons. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
With the Washington Commanders trailing late in the fourth quarter of their Week 1 game against the Jacksonville Jaguars, quarterback Carson Wentz uncorked a game-winning touchdown pass to rookie wide receiver Jahan Dotson. What may have gone unnoticed on the play was a vital blitz pickup by running back J.D. McKissic, which gave Wentz an extra second to set his feet and fire the scoring strike.
The moment, while subtle, was a prime example of McKissic’s comfort in his role with the Commanders.
“He’s an awesome guy, not just on the field but in the locker room as well. Probably one of the most liked guys on the team,” Washington quarterback Taylor Heinicke said of McKissic. “Sometimes I’ll start saying the play and he’ll try to finish the play before I can finish it. He knows this offense. If he could throw the ball, he’d probably play quarterback.”
Since the start of the 2020 season, seven different quarterbacks have started a game for the Washington franchise. During this stretch, one of the lone constants has been McKissic, who signed with the team that year and has since been one of the most utilized pass-catching backs in the NFL.
McKissic played in all 16 games in his first season in Washington, racking up 110 targets, 80 receptions, 589 yards and two touchdowns. Only Alvin Kamara of the New Orleans Saints had more catches among running backs that season, and McKissic’s 110 targets remain the most for a running back since Christian McCaffrey was targeted 116 times for the Carolina Panthers in 2019.
McKissic has prided himself on his receiving ability ever since he started playing the position in high school.
“Running back is second nature. Just try to run between the tackles, just make guys miss. There’s a lot more to it, but it was easy for me to become a runner,” McKissic said of his versatility. “Just being a receiver, knowing that I can catch the football, knowing that I can run routes. Once you [go] from running comebacks, running posts, running 18-yard deep ins and they say ‘well now run an arrow, run a flat, check downs.’ That’s easy money.”
Injuries held McKissic to 11 games last season, but he was still targeted 53 times and managed 43 receptions and a career-best 9.2 yards per catch along with a pair of touchdowns. So far this season, he’s been targeted 33 times through the Commanders’ first six games and is second on the team in receptions with 24.
“I’ve been a receiver so I’m automatically looking at their routes. I’m looking like okay, I could do this so now I’m learning the whole concept,” McKissic said. “I’m listening when the offensive coordinator calls out the play, I’m listening to it in the quarterback’s helmet and I’m calling it out in my head at the same time. Just trying to do everything I can to get on the field.”
McKissic’s grasp of the offense, paired with his versatility, helps to create more opportunities for his teammates. Because of his receiving ability out of the backfield, opposing defenses have to prepare for a variety of looks and be aware of his presence. McKissic often uses his understanding of route combinations and coverages to create leverage for the Commanders’ other pass catchers.
“Having J.D. is really big for our offense. I think his ability to run routes outside of the backfield is really big and I think it gives a lot of comfortability for quarterbacks,” star wideout Terry McLaurin said. “I think that’s tough to really game plan for.”
Off the field, McKissic’s veteran poise is felt throughout the locker room. His teammates highlight his ability to lighten up a room with jokes and contagious energy, specifically among his fellow running backs. For second-year back Jaret Patterson, McKissic’s leadership goes beyond his lighthearted nature. Patterson observes the work McKissic puts in, his preparation for games, his long hours at the facility and the way takes care of his body.
“He’s a key part of not just the offense but the whole team. He’s a pro,” said Patterson. “I’m a young guy in the group that kind of leans on him. He’s a vet in our room.”
While his energy is apparent, Commanders Coach Ron Rivera wants him to evolve into a more vocal leader. McKissic understands that responsibility and tries to find balance.
“As far as talking in front of the team, I haven't learned those skills yet,” said McKissic. “I think energy is very important. How I carry myself when things aren't going my way, and how I can still have fun through the storm. As far as being in being in the locker room and making guys laugh and those types of things, that's how I lead.”
With the trio of McKissic, Brian Robinson, and Antonio Gibson, running back has developed into a strength for the Commanders. McKissic’s stability and consistency play a role in that, especially among a young running position group.
“For those young guys, he’s the perfect example of hard work ethic. Doing the little things and understanding how you fit in, what your role is,” Rivera said. “He’s a guy that keeps everything lighthearted. He’s a good fit for what we want, what we’re trying to do, and I really appreciate who he is for us.” | 2022-10-22T15:41:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Commanders' J.D. McKissic a versatile and valuable leader - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/jd-mckissic-commanders-versatile-leader/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/jd-mckissic-commanders-versatile-leader/ |
Fairfax school board member apologizes for using slur in meeting
A member of the Fairfax County School Board apologized Friday for using a derogatory term for people with intellectual disabilities during a meeting the previous evening.
Karen Keys-Gamarra, a child advocate and lawyer who has been an at-large member of the school board since 2017, made the comment in an aside to another board member, but it was was picked up on a microphone. “We can’t be this,” she started, and used the disparaging word.
“I deeply apologize for my words because that’s not what is in my heart,” Keys-Gamarra said in her statement. She said she “did not intend an offensive word to refer to any particular person or the parent community” and said she was “frustrated” because the board did not “allow a parent to finish her point.”
But, she added, “I know that word has historically been used to ridicule and demean others.”
A community member had been reading a statement against anti-racist efforts in the school system on behalf of someone who could not attend because of a family emergency. Fairfax board rules bar participants from speaking on behalf of others. Keys-Gamarra and three others voted to suspend that rule, but the motion failed and the woman could not complete her statement.
Keys-Gamarra is a supporter of anti-racism in education and earlier in the meeting backed a proposed resolution in which the board promised to protect educators who “fear that implementing these necessary curricular improvements could lead to personal or professional harm.”
As a candidate and now as Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin (R) has attacked efforts to teach students about racism; one of his first acts was to ban teaching “divisive concepts.” Schools and school board members, Fairfax included, have been threatened by opponents of racial equity initiatives.
The resolution ultimately was softened to exclude specific references to anti-racism and the political climate while saying the board would “support educators … who respect the diverse perspectives, cultures, religions, ethnicities, abilities, sexual orientation, and gender identity of our community.”
Two candidates for the school board dropped out of the race last month after being caught on video laughing at a student with autism for his performance of the national anthem. | 2022-10-22T15:45:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fairfax School Board member apologizes after using slur - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/22/fairfax-school-board-slur/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/22/fairfax-school-board-slur/ |
Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers have had rocky starts to their seasons. (Don Wright/AP and John Fisher/Getty) (AP and Getty)
It tends to get messy at the end with old quarterbacks. Finding, or rediscovering, the perfect symmetry of scheme and personnel to fit with an aging first ballot Hall of Famer is difficult, to say nothing of managing a beat-up body through a long season with fewer practice reps and the need for more rest.
For Aaron Rodgers, nearing his 39th birthday, and Tom Brady, 45, such late-career challenges are nothing new, nor are drama and palace intrigue. Brady in 2020 extricated himself from Bill Belichick in New England after a simmering cold war, and Rodgers contemplated his potential exodus from Green Bay on multiple occasions before finally agreeing to take another $101.5 million fully guaranteed from Green Bay — even if it appeared he accepted it somewhat begrudgingly.
Now, both men find themselves around the one-third mark of a season they at various points considered not playing. They are firmly in Super Bowl or bust mode — and on teams that appear less than ready to meet that challenge. They are the leaders of offenses that seem to be going nowhere, for teams that are faring worse than almost anyone would have expected. They both enter Week 7 trying to shake off ugly upsets; for Rodgers, it’s now two weeks running. They are very much the center of leaguewide attention right now, for their uncharacteristic performances, their occasional outbursts (Brady publicly eviscerated his offensive line on Sunday), and their propensity for mind games and passive aggressive wordplay. (Rodgers opined after Green Bay’s loss to the Jets that “it will be interesting to look at all the comments from all of our guys and coaches, and hopefully we stick together.”)
Gulp. Sounds a little ominous.
The soap operas surrounding these two GOATs is captivating theater, and there are plenty of coaches and executives on other teams who believe this season has the potential to go off the rails in both Tampa Bay (3-3) and Green Bay (3-3). We have seen awkward final acts for even the best of the best: Ben Roethlisberger’s final contract restructure, Drew Brees sharing a backfield with Taysom Hill, a hobbled Peyton Manning losing his spot to Brock Osweiler for a spell, an ineffective Eli Manning losing his to Geno Smith, briefly.
“It’s always tricky with quarterbacks like this,” said one high-ranking NFL front office official whose franchise has endured a situation like this, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he is not permitted to discuss other team’s personnel issues. “You almost always end up holding on to them a year or two too long. We did …. You’re dealing with a lot of ego and emotion. It gets complicated when they’re not what they used to be.”
Neither of these quarterbacks looks poised to flirt with an MVP award this year. And the situation in Green Bay, in particular, could explode. Scouts and executives who have watched the Packers maintain that Rodgers’s body language is worse than ever. and he seems disinterested with even trying to push the ball down the field. (“They can’t get anything going on offense and it almost looks like he doesn’t want to be there,” one evaluator, who isn’t allowed to speak freely about other NFL personnel, told me. “It’s like he’s almost too willing to give up on a play.”) Rodgers’s 7.19 air yards per attempt is among the lowest of his career — more than a yard below his career average, per TruMedia. He is completing just 26.7 percent of his passes of 20 yards or longer, and Green Bay is averaging just 17.8 points per game, the lowest-scoring six-game stretch of his career.
Trust in his young core of receivers seems in short supply. The offense looks lost without superstar wide receiver Davante Adams, dealt to the Raiders in the offseason. Rodgers has a pedestrian-by-his-standards quarterback rating of 94.2, he’s been sacked 15 times already, and fissures may be growing.
Rodgers, who wanted more sway in personnel among his list demands to return to Green Bay before an eventual detente, is more empowered than ever to say whatever he feels, whenever he feels like it. His postgame remarks Sunday, echoing a repeated refrain to “simplify” the offense, were met around the league as a rebuff of head coach Matt LaFleur, who is dealing with real football tumult for the first time in his fourth season on the job. LaFleur seemed puzzled by the request — “I don’t know what that means,” he told reporters — but it’s likely not the last of his quarterback‘s cryptic comments.
“They created a monster,” said one general manager, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be able to frankly discuss another team. “He’s got a voice in personnel now, or at least he thinks he does. The knives are about to come out there. That could get really ugly. They should have traded him when they had the chance, and they’re stuck with him now, whether he really wants to be there or not. [And this is] after everything they’ve gone through since they took Jordan Love, and that was when they were winning 13 games a year and he was playing like an MVP. They are in serious s--- now.”
At least Brady, who said this week retirement is not on his mind, still has a competent defense to fall back on in what will undoubtedly be his final NFL season. However, with a gutted offensive line, the Bucs can’t move the ball on the ground (averaging 3.1 yards per carry, last in the NFL) and nothing has come easy in the passing game, either. Brady hasn’t been playing poorly, but the infrastructure is sagging.
Brady’s familial issues have become an international story, which has to play on his mind, and like Rodgers, he doesn’t seem to be having much fun playing football these days. And, as some salary cap execs pointed out, the Bucs’ cap and contract situation has them staring at a bleak 2023 offseason, with this their last hurrah (“They’re all in to win now,” one cap specialist said, “and then it’s a total reboot next year.”)
“He’s still super smart, and he processes the game at an elite level,” said one personnel executive whose team has faced Brady this season. “He’s still a very good quarterback, but he’s starting to look old. I don’t think this is what he came back for. The scheme is off, too. [Offensive coordinator] Byron Leftwich has some work to do. I don’t think he’s putting him in position to succeed.”
With the Steelers really banged up at linebacker and throughout the secondary, some in that organization were shocked there were not more downfield passes in Tampa Bay’s game plan last week. (Brady’s 40 attempts produced an average gain of barely six yards, and he tossed just two passes that went even 20 yards in the air.) The images of Brady berating his linemen — during a week in which he missed some football work to attend the wedding of Patriots owner Robert Kraft — struck many as out of touch, as well.
Tampa Bay has been held to 21 points or less in five of its six games, and Brady’s on pace for his fewest TD passes since 2003, despite the 17-game schedule. We’ve become accustomed to Brady’s Bucs getting better deep in the season and peaking around the playoffs. But this is already a very different season than Brady has ever experienced, and you have to wonder if he’s second-guessing ending his retirement before it really started.
“Football is hard,” Brady posted in a social media message this week. “We’re not playing like we are capable. We’re in it together. We’ll turn it around.”
If nothing else, the salvo implied at least some confidence that better days are ahead. That may be more than Rodgers seems capable of right now. | 2022-10-22T16:20:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady have Super Bowl dreams, messy realities - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/aaron-rodgers-tom-brady/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/aaron-rodgers-tom-brady/ |
Robert Gordon, singer who helped revive rockabilly music, dies at 75
His 1977 single “Red Hot,” with Link Wray, reached a respectable 83 on the Billboard Hot 100
Robert Gordon performing at the Park West in Chicago in 1979. (Paul Natkin/Getty Images)
Robert Gordon, a pompadoured singer who played a central role in the rockabilly revival of the 1970s and collaborated with influential guitarists Link Wray, Danny Gatton and Chris Spedding, died Oct. 18 in Manhattan. He was 75.
The cause was acute myeloid leukemia, said a sister, Melissa Gordon Uram.
While growing up in suburban Washington in the 1950s and early ’60s, Mr. Gordon listened obsessively to rockers such as Elvis Presley, Gene Vincent and Jack Scott, country singers Johnny Cash and Don Gibson, and the rhythm-and-blues balladry of Chuck Jackson and Sam Cooke.
In his stage persona, Mr. Gordon seemed to revel in capturing that era in musical amber — cultivating a retrograde sartorial style and image, performing in vintage sport coats or tank tops, and always sporting a tower of jet-black hair.
He excelled at Presley-esque balladry and was gifted with a mellifluous baritone that could make an over-the-top, teen-oriented lyric such as Conway Twitty’s “It’s Only Make Believe,” convincing without even the slightest trace of contemporary irony or cynicism. In a 1977 Unicorn Times article, critic Joe Sasfy said Mr. Gordon established his “credentials with the grand, Southern vocal tradition of romantic melodrama.”
Sasfy added, “The style is clear — male passion and pain made real by exaggerated timing, breathless gasps, resounding basso profundo, swooping falsettos and nervous yelps.”
Though filled with a passion for the musical past, Mr. Gordon also recorded material from contemporary songwriters including Bruce Springsteen (“Fire”), T-Bone Burnett (“Driving Wheel”) and Marshall Crenshaw (“Somewhere, Someday”).
Guitarist Link Wray Dies; Influenced Punk, Grunge
In 1977, Mr. Gordon teamed up with Link Wray, the veteran rockabilly guitarist often credited with pioneering the loud, clanging power chords that dominated much of later rock music. Their single “Red Hot,” which had its lyrical roots in schoolyard taunts and dozens games (“my gal is red hot/your gal ain’t doodly squat”), was infectious enough to reach a respectable 83 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was a cover of a cover: There were earlier versions by Billy Lee Riley and the song’s composer, Billy “The Kid” Emerson, both for Sun records, in the 1950s.
The death of Presley in 1977 hastened a renewed interest in rockabilly and ’50s-style balladry, and Mr. Gordon and Wray collaborated on two timely albums. Their second, “Fresh Fish Special” (1978), with a tank-topped Mr. Gordon combing his pompadour on the cover, was named after a movie character’s description of Elvis’s prison haircut in the 1958 film “Jailhouse Rock.”
Mr. Gordon’s later albums “Rock Billy Boogie” (1979), “Bad Boy” (1980) and “Are You Gonna Be the One” (1981) graced the Billboard charts. The last one included Mr. Gordon’s final chart single, the bouncy “Someday, Someway,” by songwriter Marshall Crenshaw.
In addition to Wray, Mr. Gordon recorded with several high-energy guitarists, including Spedding and Gatton. Their combined virtuosity, in the view of several critics, gave Mr. Gordon’s recordings a slick veneer that other rockabilly revivalists lacked.
A live 1980s recording of Gatton accompanying Mr. Gordon, “The Humbler,” was released in 1996, two years after Gatton had died by suicide. The album, so named because other guitarists found Gatton’s string work both awe-inspiring and somewhat intimidating, featured one of Gatton’s first shows as Mr. Gordon’s accompanist. Bootleg tapes of the concert had already been quietly circulating among guitarists and fans for more than a decade.
Robert Ira Gordon was born in Washington on March 29, 1947, and grew up in Chevy Chase, Md. His father was an administrative law judge with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. His mother, a homemaker, also painted.
Mr. Gordon began performing as a teenager in the early 1960s with the D.C.-based rock-and-roll bands the Confidentials and the Newports. As the decade went on, Mr. Gordon said he joined the D.C. National Guard to avoid the Vietnam War draft. When once asked how he related to the 1960s, the singer tartly replied, “I didn’t!”
By the mid-70s, he had relocated to New York City, opening a leather shop and singing in a folk trio, Reunion. However, punk rock was in ascendance, and he soon joined Tuff Darts, a band that shared stages with Patti Smith, the Ramones, Talking Heads and Blondie at the nightclub CBGB.
Mr. Gordon fronted Tuff Darts on the 1976 Atlantic Records compilation “Live at CBGB’s” and appeared with them in “Unmade Beds” (1976), an early feature by experimental director Amos Poe. Mr. Gordon and Tuff Darts parted company before the band released a full album.
Mr. Gordon also acted in and produced the soundtrack for “The Loveless” (1981), a noirish film starring Willem Dafoe and co-directed by Kathryn Bigelow and Monty Montgomery. With some echoes of 1953’s “The Wild One,” the film explored the carnage that ensues as a motorcycle club enters an unwelcoming town during the 1950s.
His marriage to Karen Ellis ended in divorce. Survivors include his wife of 27 years, Marylee Paquin Gordon of Manhattan; a son from his first marriage, Jesse Gordon of Bethesda, Md.; two sisters; and two granddaughters. A son from his first marriage, Anthony Gordon, died about 25 years ago.
Mr. Gordon, who grew up with the music of the first generation rockers, said his legacy was introducing rockabilly to younger generations.
“Most of the people that picked up my idea initially were turned on to this kind of music by hearing my stuff,” he once said. “I think that I was instrumental in bringing a lot of these people to the attention of the public for the first time.” | 2022-10-22T21:20:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Robert Gordon, singer who helped revive rockabilly music, dies at 75 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/22/robert-gordon-rockabilly-singer-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/10/22/robert-gordon-rockabilly-singer-dead/ |
Cougars 38, Midshipmen 20
Houston tight end Matt Byrnes caught two passes on Saturday and one was for this touchdown to extend the Cougars' lead over Navy. (Julio Cortez/AP)
An explosion of sound erupted from the stands midway through the first quarter Saturday as a Navy Midshipman proposed to his girlfriend with a ring and a bouquet of bright red flowers. The announced crowd of 32,443 roared under a cloudless sky inside Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium.
That was one of the few moments to truly celebrate as Navy trailed by 14 points less than 10 minutes into the game against the Houston Cougars and never led in a 38-20 loss.
“We ran into a buzz saw today,” Navy Coach Ken Niumatalolo said. “And got our butts whipped in all phases. … Our kids are hurting right now in the locker room. We got whipped today.
“Got punched in the mouth today. Wipe the blood off our face and come back and keep swinging.”
The Navy offense reverted to its dismal ways after consecutive strong efforts against SMU and Tulsa, as it accounted for just seven points before a late touchdown. Quarterback Tai Lavatai threw for 125 yards with one touchdown and two interceptions and rushed for 30 yards on 16 carries. The passing stats are a bit deceiving as he threw a 41-yard touchdown to Jayden Umbarger with the game out of reach. All of that came a week after he rushed for a career-high 120 yards, threw for 138 and accounted for four touchdowns. Fullback Daba Fofana rushed for 89 yards and a score. Eavan Gibbons led the defense with 12 tackles and Rayuan Lane added 10.
“I don’t think I played a good game at all,” Lavatai said. “I think those self-inflicted wounds are mainly on me today. I think those two picks were on me. There wasn’t anything that they did. Just two bad decisions.”
On the opposite sideline, Houston Quarterback Clayton Tune threw a career-high five touchdowns and tied the stadium record set by Virginia’s Bobby Goodman in 1992. He finished with 261 yards without an interception and used his legs to fluster the Navy defense to the tune of 43 yards on the ground. Nathaniel Dell caught eight passes for 93 yards and two touchdowns while Samuel Brown had five for 33 yards and a pair of scores. Stacy Sneed rushed for 100 yards on 20 attempts.
The Midshipmen (2-5, 2-3 AAC) found themselves in trouble immediately as Tune hit Dell for a 23-yard connection on the first snap of the afternoon. Dell entered the game ranked 13th in touchdown catches (6) and would add two more scores before halftime.
Big plays doomed Navy in a 40-34 loss to SMU last week and the defense was rocked on its heels out the gate again Saturday. Tune converted a third down with a 28-yard pass to tight end Christian Trahan on the fourth snap of the game. The Cougars (4-3, 2-1) took a 7-0 lead after Tune threw a 6-yard touchdown to Dell with 12:06 left in the first quarter.
Slow starts have been a major issue for the Midshipmen as they began the day 0-4 in games in which they gave up a score on the opening drive. Lavatai was intercepted by Jayce Rogers to end the first Navy possession after the ball fluttered out of his hand. Houston took over at the Navy 35-yard line and needed seven plays to go up 14-0 after Tune and Dell connected on their second touchdown of the day from 11 yards out. The Midshipmen have now been outscored 61-17 in first quarters this season.
“That was my only message this week: fast start, fast start, fast start,” Niumatalolo said. “And we keep putting ourselves in holes. It’s frustrating.”
Even when things were going well, Navy had soul-crushing mistakes that killed opportunities to rally. After cutting the lead to 14-7 following a fumble recovery and a Fofana 25-yard touchdown run, Houston drove to the Navy 3-yard line before being settling for a field goal. The Midshipmen, however, were called for an illegal formation for lining up over the snapper, which gave Houston a first down. Tune threw his third touchdown on the next snap to go up 21-7 with 5:18 left before halftime.
“We practiced starting fast. We talked about it,” Houston Coach Dana Holgorsen said. “It’s something that hadn’t worked and got to a point where our kids talked about it all week. We started fast in the hotel this morning, which was step one. We were alert, we had good meetings, good walk-throughs and then started fast in the football game as well.”
Still, there was optimism when Navy responded with its best drive of the first half and moved to the Houston 21-yard line. But the drive stalled and a Daniel Davies 41-yard field goal was blocked and the Cougars led 21-7 at halftime.
Things got sloppy for both teams after the break.
Navy went three-and-out on the opening possession of third quarter, then Dell fumbled the ball back on the first snap of the ensuing drive. The Midshipmen took over at the Houston 32-yard line, but went three-and-out and missed a 47-yard field goal. Houston got the ball back, was called for a hold, a false start and then Tune was strip sacked by Jacob Busic. Jianni Woodson-Brooks scooped and scored to cut the Houston lead to 21-14 with 10:16 left in the third quarter.
Houston settled for a 24-yard field goal to go up 24-14 with 6:25 left in the third quarter. Then it was Navy’s turn for a stomach-turning mistake. Lavatai threw his second interception of the day as he stared down the intended receiver and cornerback Art Green made the easy catch and retuned it 28 yards. Tune threw his fourth touchdown five snaps later, this one to Brown, to extend the lead to 31-14 with 1:36 remaining in the third quarter. Navy turned the ball over on downs on the next possession and that essentially ended any serious comeback hopes.
“I never questioned our effort,” Busic said. “We’re going to play hard every game. When we let up 38 points like that … that’s just missed assignments. That’s not really a testament to our effort.
“We’re going to go back in the film room and get it corrected, but I’m sure we’re going to be kicking ourselves when we see the mistakes I made and the team made.” | 2022-10-22T22:39:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Slow start dooms Navy football in loss to Houston - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/houston-beats-navy-football/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/houston-beats-navy-football/ |
Clemson quarterback Cade Klubnik came in in the third quarter to help lead the Tigers past Syracuse. (Jacob Kupferman/AP)
Baylor (winner)
Ohio State (winner)
Miami (loser)
Clemson went back to one of its greatest hits to maintain a perfect record Saturday.
The No. 5 Tigers trailed by a double-digit margin in the fourth quarter, then turned to backup quarterback Cade Klubnik and rallied past the Orange for a 27-21 victory to improve to 8-0 and close in on an ACC Atlantic Division title.
Maybe this turns into a pivot point for Clemson, possibly opening the door for Klubnik to claim the starting job from DJ Uiagalelei. Perhaps Uiagalelei’s three-turnover day is an aberration and coach Dabo Swinney goes back to him after a conveniently timed bye week.
Either way, the echoes of a tumultuous week four years ago are hard to miss.
Clemson hasn’t faced a credible quarterback controversy since then — in part because no one was dislodging Trevor Lawrence once he took over until he left for the NFL, in part because there wasn’t a serious alternative to Uiagalelei last season. But back in 2018, there was a brief stretch of tumult on the way to a national title.
Kelly Bryant started the first four games, lost his job to Lawrence and transferred in advance of the Tigers’ home game against Syracuse. Then Lawrence got hurt and the Orange held a multi-possession lead in the fourth quarter before Chase Brice (who has since bounced to Duke and Appalachian State) engineered a comeback for a 27-23 victory. Lawrence returned the next week, and Clemson was never seriously threatened again.
These Tigers aren’t quite as loaded, and Uiagalelei has an extra month of largely solid play to his credit compared to Bryant. Plus, Klubnik (2 of 4 for 19 yards, six carries for 15 yards) didn’t personally light up the stat sheet Saturday, though he did provide stability.
But the fourth quarter against the Orange (6-1, 3-1) made it plenty clear how this Clemson team can navigate its way to the playoff. Will Shipley rushed for 172 yards and two touchdowns, including a go-ahead 50-yard jaunt with 11:26 to go. Reserve Phil Mafah had 94 yards and a score on 18 carries.
Uiagalelei might not be Lawrence-esque, but he is good enough to keep the Tigers on track if he can limit his miscues. If he can’t, Swinney’s hook might just come a little earlier later in the season. On Saturday, the Tigers’ quarterback change and subsequent rally came just in time.
Fortunes shift rapidly in the Big 12, where the absence of both invulnerable titans and complete doormats makes it an entertaining league to watch on a week-to-week (and even game-to-game) basis.
The downside of the parity is when a team goes almost a month between victories — as Baylor did before Saturday — it can feel like an eternity.
The Bears’ 35-23 victory over Kansas stopped a two-game slide that probably felt worse. They had lost to Oklahoma State, had their open date and then lost at West Virginia thanks largely to self-inflicted mistakes. And things were on the verge of getting worse when Kansas cut a 25-point deficit to five with 6:29 to go.
Only Baylor (4-3, 2-2 Big 12) got a check-all-the-boxes drive. It kept the clock running for nearly four minutes. It avoided third-and-long situations. And Richard Reese capped a 186-yard day with a 2-yard plunge to seal the victory.
Things will not get easier for the defending Big 12 champions, but they still look a lot better after winning for the first time since Sept. 24.
Another week, another comer swatted away by the No. 2 Buckeyes, who pounded Iowa, 54-10, while forcing six turnovers against the offensively limited Hawkeyes.
Ohio State (7-0, 4-0 Big Ten) has scored at least 45 points in each of its last six games. It has won its four conference games by an average of 35.8 points.
The Buckeyes may or may not be the best team in the country. Time will tell on that one. But they’re unquestionably the team that has most effectively steamrolled its competition so far.
The Hurricanes were a special brand of unwatchable in a 45-21 loss to Duke.
It was not because they lost to the improved Blue Devils, or even that they gave up the last 28 points.
Those were not good developments for Miami (3-4, 1-2 ACC), but the primary issue was the turnovers.
As in eight of them.
The Hurricanes’ giveaways led to 24 Duke points, which in a way means things could have been much worse if Duke had been more efficient.
Nonetheless, it was an abysmal showing for the Hurricanes, who according to College Football Reference became the first Football Bowl Subdivision team to commit eight turnovers since Central Michigan in the 2017 Potato Bowl. The last power conference team with an eight-turnover day? Nebraska in 2009 against Iowa State. And the last ACC team with one? North Carolina against Miami (Ohio) in 2002.
Miami often finds inventive ways to fall short of its excessive preseason hype. Admittedly, this is one that will be pretty hard to forget. | 2022-10-22T23:22:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | College football winners and losers for Week 8 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/college-football-winners-losers-week-8/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/college-football-winners-losers-week-8/ |
For students at southeast D.C. school, an adventure on the Anacostia
Partnership pairs D.C. police officers with children who attend schools in communities that experience gun violence
C.J. O’Brien and his mother Diedre spent Saturday morning with a group of DC kids and MPD officers on the Anacostia River. (Kyle Swenson/The Washington Post)
On Saturday morning, as a 25-foot canoe bobbed down the Anacostia River in Washington, four elementary-schoolers on board intently eyed the water.
“I saw a fish!” one eight-year-old girl shouted. “It looked like a shark. Kinda.”
“That’s a dead rat!” a boy in the seat ahead countered, not to be outdone.
“Dead rats don’t swim,” a third child teased. “Sharks would eat them!”
Both imaginations and excitement ran loose as about 40 area elementary kids clustered in a half-dozen canoes for a 90-minute jaunt along the river. For many of the children — participants in a Saturday school program at J.C. Nalle Elementary School in Southeast D.C. — the excursion was their first time in a canoe.
“Is that a dead sea lion?” the girl said, spying a blob in the water (It was a log).
The trip was held by the National Park Trust in partnership with Code 3, a D.C.-based nonprofit that hosts community events between schoolchildren and local law enforcement. The events are aimed specifically at children who attend schools in low-income areas of the District, including many who have witnessed or experienced violence.
Six D.C. police officers were spread out among canoes. Along with guides from Wilderness Inquiry, the officers did most the paddling as the children inspected the unfamiliar landscape slipping by.
“A sea turtle!” a boy cried. (Another log.)
If one of inequality’s deepest marks is how the everyday opportunities of some are not afforded to others, Saturday’s trip was an attempt at a corrective double-whammy: deepen the kids’ experience of their own city, and provide an interaction with police that doesn’t involve trauma.
“If you ask this group of kids, ‘Who here has heard a gunshot?’ I am sure all of them would raise their hand,” said Joseph Abdalla, Code 3′s executive director and a former MPD cop for 3o years. “That’s usually the only time they see an officer.”
Code 3, Abdalla explained, hopes events like a canoe trip will bridge that gap between cops and communities — an effort that was not the standard during his own early years in policing. “Those were the hardheaded days.”
Since the May 2020 death of George Floyd fixed a spotlight on police violence and historic racism, that relationship has come under considerable strain and reevaluation.
As debate raged in the canoe over sea lions and sharks, Abdalla paddled in the bow, gliding the canoe past a marina where yachts were parked.
“You got a boat, Joe?” one little boy asked the retired officer.
“Not that big,” Abdalla laughed.
“I want to use the big boat,” the 8-year-old girl called.
“You don’t want to be the motor?” Diedre O’Brien chided from a nearby seat.
“No,” the girl said. “I’m not a motor.”
O’Brien is Code 3′s head of women’s outreach. She is also a believer in providing her son, C.J., 9, with opportunities beyond what could be readily found in the family’s neighborhood, Kenilworth, a Ward 7 community that has struggled with poverty and violence. Originally from Prince George’s County, she moved her son and a daughter, now 12, to the District four years ago. In the backyard she likes to photograph the deer, groundhogs and foxes that pass through.
“The front yard is directly facing the projects,” she explained. “The first day we were there after moving in someone was shot across the street.”
O’Brien said her work with Code 3 has shifted her own perceptions about police as a Black woman who has been racially profiled in the past. Now she sees law enforcement less as a faceless entity than members of her own community. And events like the canoe trip have also kicked open new perspectives for C.J.
“Opportunity is everything,” O’Brien said. “I want him exposed to different things, as many as he can and see different places, even if they are things that aren’t always affordable to someone from our community.”
“A dolphin,” one of the boys shouted. (Log.)
“You can swim with dolphins,” the girl knowingly said.
“People pay big money for that,” O’Brien said.
“Yeah, Joe got that money!” C.J. said, before exploding in a giggle.
“Joe you hear that?” O’Brien called. “Apparently you’re rich!”
As the adults laughed, C.J. and the other three kids in the canoe momentarily fixed their eyes on the shore line, where heavy earth-moving equipment and barges sat in the water.
“Do you guys see that over there,” the guide, a young woman, called from the stern of the canoe. “Those all belong to the Army Corp. of Engineers.”
“The Army!”
“Do you guys know what they are for?” the guide asked.
“It’s for a fight!”
“They’re about to drop a bomb!”
“There’s a crane there, see,” the guide continued.
“Ukraine?” C.J. said.
The other three kids began debating whether a dolphin would bite off one’s hand if it was in the water too long. But O’Brien’s son had more to share.
“Russia is in Europe, and Russian and Ukraine are fighting,” he said. “Like in Kenilworth.” | 2022-10-22T23:22:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. students deepened their experience of the city on Saturday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/22/dc-kids-canoe-with-cops/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/22/dc-kids-canoe-with-cops/ |
In matchup of WCAC powers, DeMatha shuts down St. John’s
Stags 17, Cadets 14
St. John’s wide receiver Jason Woods is tackled by a host of DeMatha defenders during the first half Saturday in Washington. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
On its opening drive against DeMatha on Saturday afternoon, the St. John’s football team made dissecting arguably the D.C. area’s best defense appear uncomplicated. The Cadets drove 45 yards with short runs and passes to become the first local team to score a touchdown on DeMatha’s defense.
“It was just like, ‘Okay, we got some competition,’ ” DeMatha defensive end Jason Moore said. “We’ve faced other competition, but it was definitely new.”
If No. 2 DeMatha was going to find stiff competition in the area, No. 3 St. John’s, the reigning Washington Catholic Athletic Conference champion, was a prime candidate. But after the Cadets’ opening touchdown, DeMatha’s defense reinforced its dominance. The Stags didn’t surrender another point until the final seconds of their 17-14 win in Northwest Washington and stopped the Cadets near the goal line on the final play.
While DeMatha (7-1) has won a WCAC-record 24 championships, St. John’s (5-3) is attempting to become the league’s new powerhouse. Since the Stags last won the WCAC title in 2016, the Cadets have secured two league crowns. While St. John’s went winless against DeMatha between 1994 and 2017, Saturday was the Stags’ second win over the Cadets since 2017.
DeMatha has ascended to the top of the WCAC standings (and a tie with No. 1 Good Counsel) behind its defense. The opening score Saturday by St. John’s was the first defensive touchdown the Stags permitted since their season-opening 11-6 loss to Florida powerhouse Cardinal Gibbons.
When DeMatha allowed that touchdown Aug. 26, players pointed fingers on the sideline.
“Some team’s going to score; some team’s going to make a play,” assistant coach Deno Campbell told his players afterward. “Every team comes out and practices hard every week just like us. When they score, we just can't let up.”
After St. John’s scored Saturday, DeMatha defenders encouraged each other on the sideline. Then in the opening seconds of the second quarter, DeMatha quarterback Denzel Gardner rushed for a touchdown. With 53 seconds remaining in the half, Gardner connected with wide receiver Cody Williams for a 55-yard touchdown that provided the Stags a 14-7 edge.
“When we start playing complementary football with the offense,” linebacker Luke Hackett said, “there's nothing that can stop us.”
In the third quarter, DeMatha safety Tawfiq Byard intercepted two passes, and Hackett, on his 18th birthday, nabbed his first interception. With 4:44 remaining, DeMatha kicker Jackson Peterson converted a 16-yard field goal that ultimately won the Stags the game.
With 21 seconds remaining, St. John’s quarterback Da’Jaun Riggs connected with wide receiver Jason Woods for a 35-yard touchdown. The Cadets recovered the onside kick near midfield. As the game clock expired, Riggs ran 40 yards down the right sideline to the 5-yard line.
There, as usual, DeMatha’s defense stopped him.
“Times like this in the fourth quarter, when it’s hot and it’s hard,” Byard said, “we just strap up and play defense.” | 2022-10-22T23:23:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In matchup of WCAC powers, DeMatha shuts down St. John’s - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/matchup-wcac-powers-dematha-shuts-down-st-johns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/matchup-wcac-powers-dematha-shuts-down-st-johns/ |
COLUMBUS, Ohio —C.J. Stroud overcame a slow start to throw four second-half touchdown passes and Ohio State’s defense took advantage of six Iowa turnovers to key the rout.
DALLAS — Ryan Coe kicked a school-record five field goals, including a season-long 52-yarder and Cincinnati broke up a two-point play in the closing minutes to hold on. | 2022-10-22T23:24:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Klubnik leads No. 5 Clemson to 27-21 win over No. 14 'Cuse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/klubnik-leads-no-5-clemson-to-27-21-win-over-no-14-cuse/2022/10/22/ca32fe70-5252-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/colleges/klubnik-leads-no-5-clemson-to-27-21-win-over-no-14-cuse/2022/10/22/ca32fe70-5252-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
Federal judge’s run-in renews squeegee debate
A federal judge overseeing Baltimore Police’s reform efforts called officers last Sunday and reported that a pair of squeegee workers gave him the middle finger, spat on his car and wrote “racist” in suds on the windows.
No property was damaged, no one was injured, and neither squeegee worker was charged in the incident, according to a police report. But U.S. District Court Judge James K. Bredar’s run-in with squeegee workers, and the ensuing police response, has renewed focus on squeegeeing and raised questions about the necessity of having law enforcement respond to certain situations.
Bredar and his wife were stopped last Sunday afternoon at the intersection of North Avenue and Mount Royal Terrace when two squeegee workers approached their SUV and offered to clean the windshields, according to a police report. Bredar and his wife refused them, and the pair became hostile, with one of them giving the middle finger to Bredar’s wife, the report said.
After the couple drove off, Bredar called Baltimore Police, asking the department to send officers to the intersection. Once there, the worker who apparently gave the middle finger spoke with officers, who gave him a warning and told him to stop squeegeeing at that intersection.
After this summer’s fatal shooting at an intersection in the Inner Harbor reignited the debate about whether squeegeeing should be allowed, Baltimore State’s Attorney-to-be Ivan Bates said he would have police get the workers off the intersections and into court-ordered diversionary programs meant to connect them with social services and vocational training. Activists feared Bates’s plan marked the possible return to a “clear the corners” style of enforcement that plagued Baltimore for years, culminating in the police department’s having to reach a consent decree with the U.S. Department of Justice because of its unconstitutional policing of poor, Black neighborhoods.
While Bredar didn’t weigh in directly on what he thought the city should be doing about squeegee workers, his decision to call police Sunday indicates that he thinks law enforcement should play a role, activists said.
A mainstay of major city intersections for decades, Baltimore’s squeegee workers are typically young, Black people experiencing severe poverty. Many see it as the best way to provide for their basic needs.
Many drivers and downtown business owners consider the workers a nuisance, and a handful have described fearful interactions resulting in vehicle damage or being tricked out of thousands of dollars. But such negative interactions are the minority, with thousands of drivers passing each day without incident.
“People understandably feel hostage when caught at the light and swarmed by squeegee kids,” he said. “They’d probably feel less threatened if these kids were dressed in their blue blazers and striped ties.” | 2022-10-23T00:23:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Federal judge’s run-in renews squeegee debate - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/federal-judges-run-in-renews-squeegee-debate/2022/10/22/e8d4bc86-50f1-11ed-9b9f-2f3e226d3a8a_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/federal-judges-run-in-renews-squeegee-debate/2022/10/22/e8d4bc86-50f1-11ed-9b9f-2f3e226d3a8a_story.html |
Yankees simply run out of answers for the Astros, who seize control of ALCS
Jeremy Pena, left. and José Altuve celebrate after the final out of Game 3 in Yankee Stadium, where the Astros won, 5-0, to take a commanding 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven ALCS. (Elsa/Getty Images)
NEW YORK — This, the sound of a few electronics buzzing and the chatter of reporters clamoring for space, is what it sounds like when a baseball team realizes it simply isn’t good enough. This, a near-empty postgame clubhouse with no one sitting at their lockers and chatting, with stars coming in briefly to pull on their hoodies and sneakers and grab their bags, is what it looks like when a team that is supposed to win every October without fail, is faced with the reality that it is simply not built to do so this time.
This, the shaking of heads and recital of cliches is all the New York Yankees can offer now, after a 5-0 loss to the Houston Astros in Game 3 of an American League Championship Series they now trail three games to none. Only one team in baseball history, the Boston Red Sox, has recovered from a deficit like that — and they don’t really use that comeback as a rallying cry around these parts.
“We got to find a way right now,” Yankees Manager Aaron Boone said. “We know what we’re up against.”
What they’re up against is an Astros team that is 6-0 in this postseason, a team so good that when one of their aces took a champagne bottle to the elbow during a celebration after the AL Division Series they swapped him with a guy that nearly no-hit the Yankees this summer, young righty Cristian Javier, as a consolation prize. They have allowed two runs or fewer in five consecutive games, and were so good during the regular season that even that number isn’t surprising: The Astros owned the lowest ERA in the American League, struck out more batters per nine innings than any other AL staff, and allowed fewer homers per nine than all but one other team.
“I don’t know,” Boone said, when asked about whether the Yankees’ offensive struggles were more about them hitting poorly than Houston pitching well. “However you want to analyze it, we got to find a way right now.”
Because while the Astros have only outscored the Yankees by a 12-4 margin over the first three games, the series seems far more lopsided than even that number would suggest. The Yankees have 41 strikeouts in this series and just 12 hits. The Astros have 19 hits and 19 strikeouts. They are holding the Yankees to a .128 batting average.
The Yankees have not led a single inning in this series, and the broader picture is even worse: In what are now four regular season games and three playoff matchups, the Yankees have not led the Astros in any inning that wasn’t the last one. Put another way, other than two walk-off hits, the Yankees have never led them for any in-game stretch in seven games. And for that reason, this series may be over after Sunday’s Game 4.
“I’m not perplexed about it, it’s just the nature of the game at times,” Yankees outfielder Harrison Bader said. “Regardless of it being a seven-game series, it’s still a small sample size. It’s just about continuing to prepare and put your best foot forward.”
Boone did his best to jolt the lineup to life Saturday. He tried something new, moving left-handed Anthony Rizzo to the leadoff spot in part because Javier is a little less tough on lefties than he is right-handers. Rizzo hasn’t led off since before the all-star break.
The Yankees won both games Gerrit Cole started in the division series, meaning he entered Saturday responsible for two of New York’s three postseason wins. But Cole could not control what happened in the top of the second inning, when rangy center fielder Bader and right fielder Aaron Judge converged on a flyball. Bader was calling for the ball. So was Judge. Outfield traffic laws state that the center fielder has the right of way.
But by the time Judge ceded it, his massive frame was in Bader’s way, such that the much shorter center fielder ended up dropping the ball as it hit his glove. Had the ball been caught — and Judge said later it was his fault it wasn’t — the inning would have been over. Instead, Chas McCormick came to bat with a man on. He homered to right field to give the Astros a 2-0 lead.
“We made two-and-a-half mistakes,” said Cole, a former Astro, shaking his head at the Astros’ ability to hit his own pitches.
Meanwhile, the depth of the Yankees offensive struggles could best be explained by what happened in the bottom of that inning, when Javier seemed to lose control of his fastball.
After he walked Gleyber Torres, he struck out fifth-hole hitter Matt Carpenter on three pitches, the ninth time Carpenter has fanned in this series. Javier then fell behind Bader 2-0, his fastballs sailing as they had all inning. When he threw another fastball up and out of the zone, Bader chased it and popped it up in the infield, as if he were trying to make up for all those runs at once.
This is who the Yankees are right now, a team with a lineup peppered with undeniable holes lacking any healthy options capable of filling them. By the bottom of the fourth inning, Javier had thrown 10 innings at Yankee Stadium in 2022 without allowing a single hit. Not until Giancarlo Stanton drove a double to the gap in right center did the Yankees manage to put a man on against him Saturday. They couldn’t move him 90 feet, let alone the 180 they needed.
Part of the trouble is that the Yankees relied so heavily on Judge all year, but Judge went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts Saturday. He is hitting .156 in the series. But the Yankees did not win the AL with Judge alone. No one is hitting now.
“Uh, I mean, I think they attack the zone,” said Josh Donaldson, who has struck out seven times in three games, trying to explain what the Astros were doing to baffle the Yankees so completely. “Uh … they have good stuff. They have good arms over there.”
By the end of the fifth, Yankees fans who had begun the evening booing José Altuve as a symbol of the Astros’ cheating scandal were booing their own players instead, chasing them off the field with an audible discontent that was not disproportionate to the silence of their bats. Asked later if they noticed fans leaving, each Yankee that marched in front of the cameras shook his head and said he hadn’t. Asked what they had to do next, one after the other said some variation of “we need to find a way.”
“We need to get hits and score runs and hopefully score more than they do,” said Rizzo, voice quiet, when asked what needs to change. “That’s really it. That’s as simple as we can put it.”
Then Rizzo left the near-silent clubhouse like all the rest, the absence of answers as loud as any of the cliches he and his teammates could offer. | 2022-10-23T02:34:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Yankees simply run out of answers for the Astros, who seize control of ALCS - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/astros-yankees-alcs-cole-judge/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/astros-yankees-alcs-cole-judge/ |
Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo is fouled by Houston Rockets’ Tari Eason during the second half of an NBA basketball game Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022, in Milwaukee. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
“It’s a part of my game that I’ve always tried to get better, always tried to improve,” Antetokounmpo said. “Just being up there ... it’s a great feeling.”
Bucks: Budenholzer didn’t have the walking boot that he was wearing in Philadelphia. Budenholzer has been recuperating after having replacement surgery on his right ankle during the offseason. ... Rookie first-round pick MarJon Beauchamp made his NBA debut, entering the game with just over two minutes left. Beauchamp, the 24th overall pick in the draft, hadn’t played against the 76ers. ... Lopez had five of the Bucks’ 10 blocks. | 2022-10-23T03:58:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Antetokounmpo scores 44 points, Bucks rout Rockets 125-105 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/antetokounmpo-scores-44-points-bucks-rout-rockets-125-105/2022/10/22/5bf7aa18-527b-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/nba/antetokounmpo-scores-44-points-bucks-rout-rockets-125-105/2022/10/22/5bf7aa18-527b-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
Pedestrian killed in Prince George’s
Incident occurred at Sheriff Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Highway, police say
A pedestrian was struck and killed Saturday night in Prince George’s County, police said.
The incident occurred about 8:10 p.m. at Sheriff Road and Martin Luther King Jr. Highway, according to police.
No name was immediately available for the pedestrian, who was described only as a man. Police said the driver of the vehicle that struck him remained at the scene and was cooperating with investigators. | 2022-10-23T04:49:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pedestrian killed in Prince George's - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/22/pedestrian-struck-killed-prince-george/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/22/pedestrian-struck-killed-prince-george/ |
Carolyn Hax is away. The following first appeared Sept. 3 and 7, 2008.
Dear Carolyn: My daughter is getting married next summer. Her father had an affair and then left me when she was 3. He is still married to the woman he had the affair with. I also remarried, when my daughter was 5. My husband and daughter get along great. She also has had a continuous relationship with her father, enthusiastically encouraged by me.
My husband has been very successful, and we are well off financially. My ex has always paid the required child support, but no more, and stopped paying the day she turned 18. He does give her a small allowance while she is in college. He isn’t as well off; at least when he was married to me, he always spent just a little more than his income. He is way better than those deadbeat dads, but he also doesn’t qualify for Dad of the Year.
I don’t have significant issues with his attending the wedding. However, I think he should either help financially with it or let my husband walk her down the aisle and do the first dance. My ex is all about how things look. I just don’t think I could take him acting like her father while my husband pays all the bills. (My daughter and her fiance aren’t making any significant contribution.)
This wedding will be just as my daughter wishes. I couldn’t talk her into something small, and we will probably spend about $20,000. I’m not expecting my ex to pay half, just more than a token — $3,000 or so.
I’m torn between forgetting about the whole thing for my daughter’s peace of mind and letting him know how I feel. What do you think?
— P.
P.: I think a wedding is a supremely awful venue for settling ancient scores.
Your ex cheated on you, check. He made a loud-and-clear statement by giving you not a nickel more than the mandated child support. Check. You set these legitimate grievances aside so your daughter could love her father, check. You’ve made a great case for owning the high ground.
Which is why it comes across as particularly petty and vindictive for you to seek your due by charging the man 3,000 bucks for the right to walk his child down the aisle.
If you know you’ve done right by your ex, by your daughter and by yourself — apparently you’ve flourished in your second marriage — then who gives a marzipan dove whether your lawnful of wedding guests knows it? You might want to be careful about whom you accuse of being “all about” appearances.
Your daughter’s escorts are your daughter’s decision regardless.
Speaking of: Even if the bride weren’t inflating the tab, I would suggest inviting your ex-husband to contribute something toward the wedding. She’s his daughter, too.
However, since the size apparently matters, please note that you’re contemplating a shakedown of the one player not responsible for the expenses.
You’re the one who “couldn’t talk” your daughter into a smaller wedding; apparently, you either don’t have the words “we,” “won’t,” “pay,” “twenty,” “thousand” and “dollars” in your vocabulary (which must make for some strange conversations at the bank) or you won’t say no to your kid.
Either way, that’s on you. Don’t take it out on your ex.
Dear Carolyn: A work acquaintance whose house burned down was in need of clothing for two young grandsons. I went through clothing I had saved in case I had another baby, and selected a few outfits. I sent them through another co-worker who knew her better.
I later heard she was upset that “some people” hadn’t bought new outfits but had sent “rags.” Was I wrong to send used things? I would like to know if I did something tacky.
J.: The clothes were good enough for your own children, so they were good enough to share. You did nothing tacky.
I would say the recipient was extremely tacky, since publicly critiquing people’s generosity is about as ill as manners can get.
However, you didn’t hear her complain; you heard rumors. That means you don’t know for sure what your colleague said, or what triggered it, or in what context she spoke.
You do know for sure, however, that someone chose to tell others that she was upset. And that is tacky. Maybe this acquaintance had legitimate gripes, maybe she didn’t, but people who witnessed them owed it to all involved to keep those gripes to themselves. Even if doing so served only to save an ingrate from herself. | 2022-10-23T04:49:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Give ex a role in their daughter's wedding? For free? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/23/carolyn-hax-wedding-ex-daughter/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/23/carolyn-hax-wedding-ex-daughter/ |
Analysis by Max Hastings | Bloomberg
Not merely for the past few decades, but for the past several centuries, Western leaders have grappled with an intractable problem: How to understand what Russia, the growling bear, thinks it is doing?
Most conspicuously, on the morning of Oct. 16, 1962, President John F. Kennedy and his advisers racked their brains at the Cabinet Room table over the motivation for the Soviet Union’s deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. “Well, it’s a goddam mystery to me,” said Kennedy. “I don’t know enough about the Soviet Union, but if anybody can tell me any other time since the [1948-49] Berlin Blockade where the Russians have given us so clear a provocation, I don’t know when it’s been.”
A large part of the story of the 12 days that followed, which are at the heart of my new book on the Cuban Missile Crisis, is that of some of the smartest people in the US were struggling to figure out the Russian game plan, and mostly getting it wrong. Many guessed, for instance, that it might be a diversionary ploy before Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev made his big move against West Berlin.
When a Soviet anti-aircraft missile downed an American U-2 reconnaissance aircraft over Cuba on Oct. 14, the White House assumed it represented a deliberate escalation by the Kremlin, instead of what it really was: a rogue initiative by a local commander. Even two weeks later, as Khrushchev announced his humiliating retreat — withdrawal of the ballistic missiles from Cuba — the chiefs of staff insisted that this was a Soviet trick ahead of “diplomatic blackmail.” They renewed their demands for an immediate invasion of the island.
Which brings us to the here and now. On the publicity round for the book, I am constantly asked to compare the threat in 1962 to what the world faces 60 years on, in the wake of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The proper response is, of course, that nothing is quite the same twice. There is today no direct confrontation between Russia and the US. Nobody believes that President Joe Biden will launch a nuclear strike against Russia unless the continental US faces such an attack, which remains mercifully unlikely, as did not seem the case to Westerners in 1962.
In some respects, the 2022 situation is more intractable. In the missile crisis, there were few casualties: the U-2 pilot, Rudolf Anderson, along with the accidental deaths of several aircrew. Today, by contrast, tens of thousands have already perished due to Putin’s aggression in Ukraine.
Next, while Khrushchev’s missile deployment in Cuba was seen by the US as an outrageous provocation, there was no more valid legal objection to the Cubans choosing to host Soviet missiles than to the Turks, British and Italians accepting American ones.
In 2022, however, Putin has not a shred of legal or moral justification for his unprovoked attack on Ukraine. Whereas Kennedy was able to offer Khrushchev a deal for removing his missiles, it is much harder to see what President Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine or Biden can today concede to Putin without rewarding his atrocities (except possibly Russian retention of Crimea, which it annexed after the 2014 invasion).
Whereas none of the players in the missile crisis suffered significant material loss, Russia has inflicted upon Ukraine hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of infrastructure damage, not to mention economic havoc. It is unrealistic to suppose that even a successor Kremlin regime, should Putin fall, will pay cash reparations. It is also tough to see how the West, never mind Ukraine, can return to business as usual, even if Russia’s surviving tanks go home.
Yet I see one important common theme between 1962 and 2022: the mindset that causes Russia to launch reckless overseas adventures that destroy trust in its word and rationality, in its prestige and the interests of its own people.
Remember Kennedy’s expression of bafflement on the first morning of the missile crisis. Just as it was then hard to imagine how Khrushchev expected to get away with his Cuban deployment, who in 2021 imagined that Putin would launch an assault in which Russia was certain to become a principal economic and political victim, if not a military one? Not me, for one.
Western intelligence chiefs point with pride to the fact that they flagged in advance not only the Russian capability to invade Ukraine, but also Putin’s intention — and yet no Western leader did much about it until it was too late to stop him. In the same fashion, in 1962, Central Intelligence Agency boss John McCone insisted from August onward, with repeated warnings to the White House, that the Russians were installing nuclear weapons in Cuba.
Yet those intelligence successes must be measured against the background that the CIA and the UK Secret Intelligence Service get much wrong — recall the historic catastrophe of their 2002 belief in Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Plenty of wolves get cried by spooks on both sides of the Atlantic, and our political leaders deserve sympathy for treating all intelligence briefs with caution, if not skepticism. McCone, in the months before the missile crisis, had urged the White House to launch a faked Cuban assault on the US base at Guantanamo Bay, to justify taking out the Castro regime.
I am among those who believe that it was right and honorable for Kennedy to seek détente with the Soviet Union before Khrushchev double-crossed him, and honorable likewise for Western leaders since the end of the Cold War to have attempted to treat both China and Russia as fellow members of the civilized international community — even if such efforts are now seen to have failed. Our statesmen, instead of being denounced as useful idiots, should be respected for having been seen to try.
Rapprochement with Moscow has foundered upon the reef of Russian grievance, victimhood and brutish cruelty — which since the 17th century have impeded the nation’s foreign relationships, especially with Europe.
It was knowledge of his own nation’s weakness, and rage against Western success, that underpinned Khrushchev’s desperate gamble in Cuba. The same forces influence Putin’s conduct today. Both men sought a status for their nation on the world stage that its economic and social achievements could not earn. In the absence of affection, trust or respect, they have striven to generate fear through extreme violence.
The British writer Orlando Figes, author of a succession of brilliant works on Russian history, recently published a new book, The Story of Russia, which explores the manner in which the nation has for centuries sought to invent and revise the narrative of its own past. The first tsar, Ivan the Terrible, who assumed power in 1547, professed to trace his descent from the Roman emperor Augustus.
Russia has no natural frontiers of land or sea, which causes each of its successive leaders to make an arbitrary selection about where the nation’s border should stand, heedless of the wishes of local peoples. Peter the Great, who became tsar in 1682, conceived that Russia had a “civilizing mission” in Asia.
Catherine the Great, who was born in Germany, decreed in 1767: “Russia is a European state,” and expected to exercise hegemony over swathes of its near neighborhood. Long before the Bolshevik revolution, successive regimes dealt harshly with dissidents and historians who questioned the Kremlin’s version of either its national narrative or declared entitlements.
Geography is unsurprisingly influential in influencing Russia’s ability to dominate its own periphery, and in limiting the ability of those localities’ nationalist movements and the Western powers to contain its ambitions. For long periods, Moscow or St. Petersburg — each has served as the nation’s capital — claimed Poland, Finland and the Baltic States as integral parts of the nation, just as today Putin claims Ukraine.
Last week, I chanced upon a letter the young Winston Churchill wrote to a friend in 1896, discussing the Irish nationalist movement. He asserted cheerily that Britain was no more likely to surrender hegemony over Ireland than was Germany to yield Alsace-Lorraine, Austria to give up Hungary — or Russia to relinquish Poland. Today, of course, none of those four possessions he cited still belongs to its then-owner. Frontiers are not immutable.
None of the above is intended for a moment to justify Putin’s monstrous conduct, merely to set it in context. An astonishing number even of Russian liberals believe that Ukraine rightfully belongs within their polity. This helps to explain why Putin’s war still commands substantial domestic support, even if that is faltering since he ordered the mobilization of 300,000 reservists. Many Russians hate and resent the West for its perceived condescension.
Likewise, in November 1962, when we saw Kennedy as having secured victory by forcing withdrawal of the Soviet missiles, a 28-year-old Moscow diarist named Romen Nazirov wrote defiantly: “Khrushchev has saved the world from the threat of a nuclear war. American newspapers reported his decision to withdraw the bases with headlines like ‘Reds are Retreating from Cuba,’ etc. They are even mocking us. But Khrushchev’s moral victory is obvious. As for prestige … well let them laugh.” Then he quoted the French phrase for, “He who laughs last laughs best.”
The West is nonetheless in little doubt that Kennedy was the big winner in 1962, for reasons of which we should remind ourselves. First, he knew that the Kremlin knew that the US possessed overwhelming nuclear superiority in the event of a showdown. Next, Khrushchev launched his huge gamble on an island just 90 miles from the North American continent, in a region where the US possessed almost absolute sea, air and potential land dominance.
Kennedy, unlike his almost insanely bellicose military commanders, was willing to strike a bargain with Moscow to get the missiles out. He gave a public assurance, which holds to this day, that the US would never again launch military action against Cuba. He also gave a private assurance that if the Soviet weapons went home, America’s Jupiter missiles in Turkey would likewise be repatriated.
The Kennedy administration went to immense lengths to preserve the secrecy of the latter, which would have enraged conservative America. Kennedy even lied to his presidential predecessor, assuring Dwight D. Eisenhower that he had made no undisclosed concessions to Moscow to secure Soviet surrender.
Finally, nobody in the Kremlin doubted that the US possessed both the means and the will to go to war unless the missiles were removed. This confronted Khrushchev with the starkest possible choice. On the morning of Sunday, Oct. 28, he told an emergency meeting of the Soviet Presidium at a dacha outside Moscow: “We find ourselves face to face with the threat of war and nuclear catastrophe, as a result of which human civilization may perish. To save humanity, we should retreat.”
The Presidium endorsed Khrushchev’s public declaration of surrender, though the comrades never forgave him. When they ousted him from power two years later, a procession of speakers at the decisive meeting cited the humiliation he had forced on the Soviet Union by his actions in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Today, Putin appears to wield greater untrammeled power than Khrushchev in 1962, and also to be a less stable and rational personality. I doubt that any national leader or intelligence chief in the West feels confident of what the Kremlin’s tenant, with his back to the wall, will or will not initiate.
An informed military friend offers me only one prediction: that if Putin falls — which is certainly plausible, if not yet probable — we should not assume that his successor will prove a more congenial negotiating partner, or make Russia a less threatening neighbor to Zelenskiy and his people.
It is a strategic difficulty for the West that whereas Cuba lay next to America, Ukraine lies beside Russia. While the Soviet Union in 1962 was vastly outgunned by the US in the weapons that mattered most, today Russia owns the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. We all live daily with the fear that, the more humiliating Putin’s predicament becomes, the greater the risk that he will continue to escalate.
None of us can predict the outcome of this murderous clash, which is likely to be much further protracted before it reaches any sort of outcome. The only certainty is that Putin’s monstrous act of aggression has banished, perhaps for decades, any prospect that Russia can resume normal relations with the West.
Putin, in the latest of many Russian attempts catalogued by Figes to fantasize the country’s past, now embraces as its founding father the figure of Grand Prince Vladimir, the 10th-century ruler of Kievan Rus. He has caused hundreds of statues of this hitherto obscure figure to be erected and revered. It is questionable whether Putin himself believes this tale. He finds it serviceable, however, and thus it is promoted as part of the national narrative adopted in every Russian school.
Figes wrote, even before the invasion of Ukraine: “Russia appears to be trapped in a repeating cycle of its history. Slowly, [it] is retreating from Europe. An outcast from the European world it sought to join for much of its past, it must now find a new role as a large but fossil-fuel-dependent regional power between Europe and China.”
Mankind has a duty to be optimistic, and thus we should cheer ourselves by recalling that three decades after the Cuban Missile Crisis took the world to the brink of catastrophe, the Soviet Union collapsed and Russia enjoyed a brief, albeit chaotic, period of democracy and relative freedom. Perhaps our children will look back on the Ukraine war as marking the beginning of the end of Putinist tyranny.
I, however, am not so ardent a believer in fairy tales that I can foresee Russia living in comfortable community with the West any time soon. Our success and its relative failure will continue to dog the relationship. Moscow’s nuclear arsenal will continue to represent its only poisonous claim on parity with or even superiority over us.
• Sixty Years Later, the Bay of Pigs Remains a Cautionary Tale: Max Hastings
• The West Is Ceding Africa’s Promise to China’s Exploitation: Max Hastings
• Russia’s Beauty and Brutality Remain an Enigma to the West: Max Hastings
Max Hastings is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. A former editor in chief of the Daily Telegraph and the London Evening Standard, he is author, most recently, of “Operation Pedestal: The Fleet That Battled to Malta, 1942.” | 2022-10-23T05:28:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ukraine Has Become Putin’s Cuban Missile Crisis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ukraine-has-becomeputins-cuban-missile-crisis/2022/10/23/59d5ecf8-5290-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ukraine-has-becomeputins-cuban-missile-crisis/2022/10/23/59d5ecf8-5290-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
A Wizz Air plane flies over a beach at Larnaca, Cyprus, in Aug. (Roy Issa/AFP/Getty Images)
LARNACA, Cyprus — On the wide and shallow Larnaca beach, a group of young, pale men huddled over their phones disrupted the otherwise idyllic scene of blissful, tanned British and German tourists lying on the neatly arranged beige loungers.
“Yes! He crossed into Kazakhstan,” Ruslan shouted in Russian, taking a triumphant sip of Keo, an inexpensive locally brewed lager. His friend had just texted that he escaped Russia after an agonizing three-day wait at the border, where he feared a notice from an enlistment office might derail his plan to avoid the trenches in Ukraine.
Since late September, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s order to enlist at least 300,000 men to help his flagging invasion of Ukraine has been at the heart of discussions among Russians in the increasing number of emigre communities around the world, many of which have experienced a steep increase in new arrivals, including in Larnaca.
Putin’s mobilization prompted hundreds of thousands of fighting-age men to flee Russia, many abandoning their families to cross land borders with Georgia, Kazakhstan and, in rare cases, Finland and Norway, if they held a coveted Schengen visa. Those visas, granting entry to 26 countries, most in the European Union, are now extremely difficult to get as Moscow faces international isolation over the war.
Since then, Finland has followed the Baltic countries — Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia — in denying entry to Russians with visitor visas, essentially sealing shut Russia’s borders with the European Union. In Georgia, officials said they are considering terminating an existing visa-free regime with Russia. Turkey, another major hub for Russians, is tightening requirements for immigrants hoping to open a bank account.
Cyprus, a small, sunny island in the Mediterranean divided by its own historical territorial dispute between Turks and Greeks, remains one of the last few havens for Russians running away from the uncertainty and doom Putin’s war in Ukraine has created back home.
As the E.U.’s most easterly member, Cyprus has long been a go-to destination for Russian companies and wealthy individuals due to its relatively easy immigration process, low taxes, and openness to attracting as much foreign business as possible. Its beaches are also a plus.
So after the tanks rolled into Ukraine, a significant part of Russia’s highly educated, middle- to upper-class workforce — mostly IT workers — flocked to Cyprus, triggering a new migration wave.
“We haven’t seen any signs of reversal in Cyprus’ policy,” said Oleg Reshetnikov, who moved to the island in 2014 and created CypRus_IT, a networking community for the thousands of Russian-speaking specialists. “Cyprus remains one of the best places for immigrants from Russia, Ukraine or Belarus in the entire European Union.”
According to Reshetnikov’s estimates, up to 50,000 people have moved to Cyprus since February, mostly Russians and Ukrainians looking to start a new life away from the war.
Most Russians try to settle in Limassol, sometimes dubbed “Moscow on the Med” or “Limassolgrad,” where Russian speech can be heard everywhere due to the sheer size of the existing community, which is catered to by a well-oiled network of anyone from lawyers and realtors to nannies and manicure technicians.
The sudden influx in the spring saw the real estate market booming, rental car companies scrambling to meet demand and newly arrived parents fighting over spots in English-speaking schools. Those who came in the summer, or as part of the second wave triggered by the Sept. 21 mobilization announcement, typically have been forced to settle in Larnaca or Nicosia, which are relatively less popular.
“There were already serious problems with housing when I moved here: prices doubled, rentals advertised on the websites got scooped up within just a few hours,” said Yevgenia Korneeva, a 28-year-old art manager at a gaming company, who moved from to Cyprus from Moscow in April. “In Limassol, the most expensive city in Cyprus, finding a two-bedroom apartment for less than 2,000 euros is considered lucky.”
Korneeva said that her company, which is based in Cyprus, supported her decision to leave Russia after the war broke out, and handled most of the paperwork. But being suddenly disconnected from friends and family and trying to settle into a new life without her partner, who couldn’t leave Russia right away, has taken a toll on her mental health, she said.
“I’ve had all these routine immigrant problems pile up on top of constantly monitoring of news about the war and feeling ashamed for worrying about things like a broken air conditioner while there are such horrors going on,” Korneeva said.
The Russian government has tried to fight the high-tech brain drain with various sweeteners including lower mortgage rates and, more recently, exemptions from military service. But those tactics have mostly failed as few trusted that their lives would be untouched by the war.
That mistrust proved justified Friday when a lawyer who tried to stop the mobilization of a 33-year-old IT worker reported that his client had died last week in Ukraine.
The IT worker, Timur Ismailov, qualified for exemption as he held a key role in one of the biggest Russian banks. But the lists filed by his employer did not reach the military’s general staff in time, and Ismailov, who received a summons for duty on Sept. 23, soon ended up in the trenches only to be killed a few weeks later in a mortar attack, his lawyer Konstantin Yerokhin said.
“We have filed more than 7 complaints, a lawsuit, submitted requests to all available hotlines, went to the media but this is the result,” Yerokhin said.
Russians living in other E.U. countries, especially the Baltics, have reported hostility from local residents who consider all Russians at least partly responsible for Putin’s war in Ukraine. Cyprus, however, has long a long history of welcoming Russians, their businesses, and their money.
This open-arms approach caused a backlash when E.U. officials voiced unease over the so-called golden passport program by which Cyprus offered rich investors a path to citizenship, while also making it easier for dirty money to flow into Europe.
In 2020 Cyprus suspended the program, but it is still relatively easy to set up a company in Cyprus and obtain residency permits for highly skilled workers who meet the 2,500 euro a month salary threshold, about five times Russia’s median wage.
Russians aren’t the only ones seeking shelter in Cyprus. The island also has a growing Ukrainian community, with at least 16,000 refugees arriving since Feb. 24, according to the Cypriot Interior Ministry.
Before Putin’s invasion, the Russian and Ukrainian diasporas mostly coexisted without issue. But war has brought uncharacteristic social tension to the island, with local media reporting verbal altercations erupting between Ukrainian and Russian children in schools.
The capital, Nicosia, has also experienced a rare mix of pro-Russian demonstrations slamming Cyprus for supporting E.U. sanctions and larger antiwar rallies organized by Russians and Ukrainians.
Russia’s invasion has forced Cypriot leaders to counterpose political support for the E.U. and Ukraine and the island’s economic dependency on Russian money. Russia accounts for about a quarter of foreign investment in Cyprus, and before the war, Russians generated about 20 percent of tourism revenue.
“Where will Cyprus get its Russian tourists from?” Russian Ambassador Stanislav Osadchiy taunted Cypriot officials during a March interview with a local broadcaster.
But after a brief hesitation, Cyprus threw its weight behind Ukraine and the E.U. sanctions to punish Moscow, while also signaling that it would not close the door to individual Russians.
Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades has cited his country’s own history of invasion and occupation as a reason for standing with Ukraine, but has also said Cyprus “has nothing against” Russian citizens. The Cyprus Foreign Ministry opposed a blanket visa ban on Russian tourists floated by some E.U. capitals.
Some Russian immigrants say they are ready to stay in Cyprus, while others view the island as a temporary base before moving elsewhere in Europe or to the United States. Few, however, expect to bring their skills back to Russia.
“I would really like to come back and live there,” Korneeva said. “But even if I brush aside the issues regarding my views and overall prospects of living in Russia in general, there is now no practical way to do that: all game development left Russia and that amazing industry it had before Feb. 24 no longer exists.” | 2022-10-23T05:29:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Cyprus, a haven for Russian expats, welcomes techies fleeing Ukraine war - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/23/cyprus-russian-expat-tech-workers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/23/cyprus-russian-expat-tech-workers/ |
China's President Xi Jinping, having just received a historic third term as the nation's paramount leader, speaks in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Sunday. (Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images)
And with that one short, stiff walk, Xi was anointed Sunday as China’s uncontested leader for five, if not many more years, as he concentrates power to a degree not seen since the days of Mao Zedong and positions his country defiantly against the West.
At a party plenum that followed the close of the twice-a-decade Communist Party congress, Xi introduced the men at his side — the newly chosen members of the seven-member standing committee, the party’s apex of power. Xi is at the top.
The Chinese people, led by the party, have put in “sweat and toil” to “open a Chinese path to modernization," Xi said in a speech. "This is a great yet enormous undertaking. The enormity of the task is what makes it great and infinitely glorious.”
A week earlier, he had opened the 20th National Party Congress with a triumphalist report delivered to more than 2,000 delegates that emphasized the party’s mission of transforming China into a socialist superpower and a “new choice” for humanity.
By not stepping down after a decade as general secretary and head of the Central Military Commission, the party’s two most important positions, Xi has overturned norms that previous leaders had hoped would institutionalize peaceful transitions of power and prevent a return to one-man rule. The 69-year-old Xi — who in 2018 abolished presidential term limits, a sign that he would not follow the unspoken principle — has not designated a potential successor.
“There is no bottom line. There are no rules. All the rules have been broken,” said Cai Xia, a former professor at the Central Party School who was expelled from the party in 2020 for criticizing Xi. “Before there was still resistance, but this time you can see from his report that the future of China’s is entirely driven by his will.”
As paramount leader who demands absolute loyalty, Xi undermined a system of collective rule as well as power sharing among factions within the party — conventions honed by the party since the 1980s to ward off personality cults. He declared a “no limits” partnership with Russian president Vladimir Putin just before the Kremlin invaded Ukraine in February.
Under a banner of nationalism promoted by Xi, an army of “wolf warriors” appears increasingly willing to flout diplomatic norms to appear more patriotic at home. On the standing committee unveiled Sunday, those seven members are his closest allies.
By stacking the standing committee, Xi is undoing an age norm that mostly had held since the 1990s. Then-party leader Jiang Zemin used the informal cutoff of 68 to force out older leaders and promote replacements. For the next three decades, that trigger drove turnover at the top of the party. No more.
Xi is expected to ramp up his ambitions in his third term, focusing especially on national security, upgrading the country’s technology sector and seeking to establish China at the top of the global order.
Still, his hold on power is not unlimited. He must navigate through a severe zero-covid policy that has hamstrung the economy and left large swaths of the population vulnerable to more transmissible omicron variants of the coronavirus.
China’s increasingly combative relationship with the United States and a slowdown in the Chinese economy, exacerbated by rising unemployment and a worsening property market, will pose further challenges. During his speech at the opening of last week’s congress, Xi warned that the party must gird itself against efforts to “blackmail, contain and exert pressure” China and be ready to weather “dangerous storms.”
With the departure from top leadership of economic czar Liu He and the former party secretary of Guangdong province, Wang Yang — who were seen as helping smooth relations with the United States — Xi will likely adopt a more hardline approach toward Washington. China also is expected to turn increasingly inward as Beijing renegotiates its relationship with the West.
“When all the power is one person’s hands, all of the responsibility must be borne by that person,” former professor Cai said. “If he make disastrous mistakes, it is not just 1.4 billion people bearing this consequences of this disaster. This person himself will also have to pay a price.”
Pei-Lin Wu in Taipei contributed to this report. | 2022-10-23T05:29:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Xi lands historic third term as China's most powerful leader - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/23/xi-jinping-leader-china-congress/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/23/xi-jinping-leader-china-congress/ |
By Jack Jeffrey | AP
FILE - In this photo provided by the Sudan Transitional Sovereign Council, Sudan’s top general Abdel Fattah Al-Burhan, center, and Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok hold documents attended by Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, second left, during a ceremony to reinstate Hamdok, who was deposed in a coup last month, in Khartoum, Sudan, Nov. 21, 2021. A year after a military takeover upended Sudan’s transition to democracy on Oct. 25, 2021, growing divisions between the two powerful branches of the armed forces are further endangering Sudan’s future. (Sudan Transitional Sovereign Council via AP, File) (Uncredited/Sudan Transitional Sovereign Council)
CAIRO — On his return home from the U.N. General Assembly this year, Sudan’s top general descended an airplane stairway in the country’s capital to a flurry of cameras. | 2022-10-23T08:31:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Analysis: Year post-coup, cracks in Sudan's military junta - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/analysis-year-post-coup-cracks-in-sudans-military-junta/2022/10/23/251449f4-52a6-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/analysis-year-post-coup-cracks-in-sudans-military-junta/2022/10/23/251449f4-52a6-11ed-ada8-04e6e6bf8b19_story.html |
Nationals shortstop CJ Abrams flashed potential amid growing pains in the final two months of the season. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
When the Washington Nationals and San Diego Padres swapped players at this year’s trade deadline, both teams believed the blockbuster deal that sent Juan Soto and Josh Bell to the West Coast would help the organizations achieve their goal to win a World Series.
But Washington traded to compete well into the future. San Diego traded to win now. And with Soto and Bell added to a deep and talented roster, the Padres find themselves one series away from the Fall Classic.
The Nationals didn’t have the luxury of seeing the players they acquired produce immediate results; they didn’t expect to. Three of the players (James Wood, Jarlin Susana and Robert Hassell III) were far away in the low minors. MacKenzie Gore attempted to return from an elbow injury to pitch in the majors but was shut down after four rehab starts, leaving only two players acquired from San Diego — CJ Abrams and Luke Voit — who actually played for Washington this year.
Voit is an established veteran, but Abrams is a developing player the Nationals hope will be their shortstop for years to come. His debut for Washington was a welcome sight during a lost season. He played in 44 games for the Nationals, flashing potential amid some mistakes, and stabilized the middle infield with second baseman Luis García.
“Everything happens for a reason,” said Abrams, who turned 22 this month. “I think I did good, learned something new every day that I can apply to my game, both the offense and defense.”
Before he made his Nationals debut Aug. 15, Abrams had 160 professional games under his belt, including 46 in the major leagues, after being drafted by the Padres with the sixth pick in the 2019 draft. He made his major league debut sooner than expected this spring after Padres star Fernando Tatis Jr. suffered an injury during the offseason. Abrams and Ha-Seong Kim split time at short, and Abrams was sent down to Class AAA for about six weeks from early May to late June before returning and raising his batting average from .182 to .232 before he was traded to Washington.
The Nationals knew when they acquired him that his defense was ahead of his offense. Manager Dave Martinez placed him at the bottom of the lineup when he was first called up to relieve some pressure, though Martinez did hint that he hoped Abrams would hit higher in the batting order by season’s end.
Abrams looked a bit lost at the plate in his first games with the Nationals — he batted .160 over 53 plate appearances in August. He was hitting flyballs 43.2 percent of the time and didn’t generate much hard contact. So his coaches stressed staying on top of the baseball and shrinking his strike zone.
Abrams also had a tendency to lean toward the plate when he swung instead of toward the pitcher, which he said contributed to his early struggles.
“Diving in — that inside strike looks like a ball, or if I swing I’m going to end up breaking my bat. So, yeah, you can definitely feel it,” Abrams said.
He worked with hitting coach Darnell Coles on correcting his swing. The result? A .303 batting average in September and October and a move up to second in the batting order for his final nine games.
Abrams’s flyball rate dropped to 22.7 percent, while his groundball percentage jumped from 40.5 percent in August to 56.7 percent in September and October. He also increased his hard-hit percentage from 21.6 to 30.3.
“I knew I was going to get comfortable,” Abrams said. “It took a bit longer than I thought, but you can see it out there. I’m getting more comfortable every day, so just [have to] keep it going.”
Abrams still has room for growth. He didn’t hit a home run as a National, and while he probably won’t become a feared power hitter, he can improve upon this season’s .324 slugging percentage. He also needs to cut down his chase percentage, a problem that plagued a handful of young Nationals hitters this year. He chased 41.2 percent of pitches he saw that were out of the strike zone, well above the MLB average of 28.4 percent.
In the field, Abrams said he wants to work on his footwork this offseason to come back a better defender. Abrams displayed a ton of range, repeatedly making spectacular diving stops to help Nationals pitchers this year. He also made routine plays look easy by season’s end.
But he did commit 11 errors in 43 games in the field for the Nationals because he often didn’t get his feet under him, which led to errant throws. Martinez also harped on the need for Abrams to get in position earlier before the pitch.
“We don’t want to nitpick things. We want him to have fun,” Martinez said in September. “But these are the things we’re looking at to make him better. To make him that guy that, when the ball is hit to you, he’s prepared and he’s ready every time that ball is hit.”
The games Abrams played in were insignificant for the Nationals, who were well outside the playoff race. But the Nationals hope those games were opportunities for their young players to grow. If all goes according to plan, a few Octobers from now Abrams will be helping inch the Nationals closer to their championship aspirations instead of watching the postseason from home. | 2022-10-23T09:27:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | CJ Abrams gave the Nationals something to look forward to - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/cj-abrams-nationals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/22/cj-abrams-nationals/ |
Wizards forward Kyle Kuzma drives to the basket during Friday's 102-100 win over Chicago in the home opener, moving Washington to 2-0. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
The way DeMar DeRozan dribbled down the clock in the closing seconds of Friday’s game, then pulled back to launch a three — it gave Washington Wizards forward Kyle Kuzma flashbacks.
Back to a time when a glossy start only masked deeper problems such as roster chemistry that produced six months of uninspiring basketball. Back to the bad, ol’ days of the 2021-22 Wizards.
“Last year,” Kuzma declared when asked what was he thinking when the Chicago Bulls all-star attempted a game-winning three-pointer that would’ve spoiled Washington’s home opener at Capital One Arena.
If we’ve learned anything from the extremely small sample size of the Wizards’ 2-0 start, it’s that this isn’t last year.
It’s too early to paint Washington as a reformed contender for the Eastern Conference play-in tournament or even a playoff spot; everyone’s optimistic in October, and a pair of wins over the Victor Wembanyama-or-bust Pacers and the Zach LaVine- and Lonzo Ball-less Bulls reveal only how the Wizards can do what’s necessary to survive the teams they should beat.
Over the past 20 seasons, the Wizards have started 2-0 only six times (including this season). Of those previous five seasons, they advanced to the postseason three times. Missing from that list would be the 2021-22 campaign when the Wizards not only won their first pair but opened the season 10-3 — then finished two spots out of the play-in tournament.
Still, it’s not too early for the Wizards themselves to recognize the major difference between this team and last season’s.
There has been an attitude adjustment for the players in red, white and blue — or the throwback blue and bronze they wore Friday night. Coach Wes Unseld Jr. subtly hinted at it before the season.
“The biggest thing for me is the fit. The talent is one thing, and I think just — there’s a better fit,” Unseld said last month. “That does help that competitive spirit, that connectivity we talk about. When it fits and guys get [the] big picture. What’s the most important thing? That’s winning. That mind-set seems to be more a collective within the group than we’ve seen in the past.”
On the NBA: John Wall's basketball exile ends with a genuine second chance
Where Unseld chose delicacy in dancing around the problems that plagued last year, Kuzma showed no filter. After the Wizards’ 102-100 win over the Bulls, Kuzma offered three times — unprompted, mind you — that guys in the locker room can tolerate one another this year.
“I mean, we’re all just playing the right way. We have a veteran team, we have a team where we all like each other, and I mean that’s the biggest thing. We can tell we all like each other,” Kuzma said, taking an opportunity to drop this eyebrow-raising quote when the actual question was just about the team’s 26 assists against the Bulls.
Of course, Kuzma, of all the players from last season, can say that. He’s now starting alongside Monte Morris, his childhood friend from Flint, Mich. And he also has reunited with Delon Wright, his former college teammate at Utah. So maybe Kuzma is just happier because he’s around his buddies. Still, I wanted to see if other teammates felt the same. Looking around Washington’s locker room filled with new faces, I found center Daniel Gafford, one of the few holdovers from years past.
Gafford told me how the chemistry, even among a reshaped roster, has helped the Wizards through wins against Indiana and Chicago. Each game, the Wizards built a sizable lead only to watch it dwindle before timely stops and clutch baskets beat back the threats. And just like Kuzma’s, Gafford’s response went to an unexpected place: the comparison between this season and last.
“We kind of hold our composure at the end of games now,” Gafford said. “Any other time we would have been in that position, we kind of folded. But this year we’re just something different.”
Naturally, all this talk about fit, connectivity, we all like each other (!) and we’re … something different makes one wonder what kind of real housewives drama was happening behind the scenes a year ago.
Spencer Dinwiddie, the Wizards’ big free agent signing from the summer of ’21, never quite meshed alongside Beal. In December, he gave long answers that never got around to explaining why it wasn’t working. By the next month, Dinwiddie confessed how his input as a leader “wasn’t necessarily welcomed” in the locker room. Then in February, the Wizards traded Dinwiddie to Dallas for Kristaps Porzingis.
Since then, Dinwiddie has pushed back on any narrative that he was the reason the Wizards sunk. Lest we forget the dust-up between Montrezl Harrell and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope during a game in January. Still, it’s telling that at the trade deadline the Wizards moved two players — Dinwiddie and Harrell — who created the perception of locker room dissent.
So back to the conversation with Gafford. After Friday’s feel-good win, we’re talking about guys liking each other, and as I start my question, Gafford takes over.
“Last year, on the outside, we would have thought the team —” I said.
“— has issues, for sure,” he finished.
“But all in all, yeah, I would say that is true,” Gafford continued. “The key point is the relationships and stuff are wanted more. Everybody’s not seeking individual goals; it’s a full-out team goal. We all want to win. We all want to play in the postseason, and that takes being together and playing as a unit. Being there for each other and taking constructive criticism. If somebody gets on your tail, you take that and use it to be able to progress in the game.”
Beal, for his part, didn’t agree that last year’s Wizards had a locker room full of cliques.
“That’s a little extra. … We liked each other last year, too,” Beal said when asked about Kuzma’s comments.
Even so, Beal mentioned a similar buy-in Gafford has noticed. He believes there’s less friction, more harmony.
“It was just, we have guys who all buy in to what Wes wants. It’s not a lot of … pushback on what we want. It’s getting what he wants done first, and then if we need to make adjustments, make adjustments later. We’re not questioning his, I guess, methods in a way,” Beal said. “We’re all accepting, we’re all accepting the criticism, one through 15. That’s the biggest thing about it, man. It’s just pure joy when we’re out there. … Everybody’s bought in to that, that’s been the beauty of it.”
On Friday night, when DeRozan gave Kuzma those bad vibes — on New Year’s Day 2022, he hit the game-winning three-pointer from the corner that beat the buzzer and broke the Wizards’ hearts — the memories of a lost season came rushing back.
“I was just, like: ‘This is going to happen again. This is going to happen again,’ ” Kuzma recalled. “But it rimmed out though. It was close. And thank God.”
Further proof this isn’t last year. | 2022-10-23T09:40:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | These Wizards really seem to like each other. Last season, not so much. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/wizards-kuzma-beal-dissent/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/wizards-kuzma-beal-dissent/ |
Many said they would not vote for Vance. In a tight contest, such sentiments could have far-reaching implications.
By Cara McGoogan
A worker at State Meats in Parma, Ohio, prepares kielbasa, a Ukrainian sausage, on Oct. 6. (Megan Jelinger for The Washington Post)
PARMA, Ohio — Irena Stolar has voted Republican for over half a century, from Richard M. Nixon to Donald Trump. But in the midterms, Stolar, 73, said she will cast her first vote for a Democrat. Originally from Ukraine, Stolar refuses to support J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Ohio, who has said he wants to cut off aid to the war-torn country.
Vance later recalibrated, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin “is the bad guy” and “we want the Ukrainians to be successful.” But for Stolar, the damage was done. “If he said one thing, then backs down on it, you can’t trust someone like that,” she said. “I’d like our senators to continue supporting Ukraine, sending arms as much as they can.”
While the war in Ukraine has not been the central focus of the race — a recent candidate debate focused on other topics, such as the economy, immigration, and moderation vs. extremism — it is one that has stirred impassioned responses that loom large over the final weeks of the contest and future showdowns in Congress over funding for Ukraine.
The clashes here come as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) recently signaled that if Republicans win the House in November, the GOP is likely to oppose more aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia. In recent years, a growing number of Republican lawmakers and candidates have embraced a more nationalist and isolationist foreign policy, a Trump-era shift from decades of more consistently hawkish and interventionist leanings in the party.
Vance and his allies are wagering that a sharp focus on improving life in Ohio and a critique of investments abroad will resonate in a state Trump carried twice. The author of “Hillbilly Elegy” and a Trump critic turned supporter, Vance has embraced some of the “America First” leanings that have become cornerstones of the pro-Trump movement. He has said he believes the United States has spent enough helping Ukraine and should instead channel funds toward blocking the flow of fentanyl across the Mexican border.
“We’ve got to stop the money spigot to Ukraine eventually,” Vance said in an interview with an ABC News affiliate in September. “We cannot fund a long-term military conflict that I think ultimately has diminishing returns for our own country.”
Vance’s campaign did not make him available for an interview for this report. It suggested The Post speak to Republican state Rep. Jay Edwards, who was critical of the federal government for sending aid abroad at a time when many Ohio residents are experiencing economic struggles.
Ryan has positioned himself as a moderate Democrat who is willing to criticize President Biden, but he has been supportive of sending more arms and economic assistance to Ukraine, as well as applying further sanctions against Russia.
Speaking in a phone interview from his campaign bus, Ryan said he felt that attitudes about the war and the candidates’ positions “could swing the election.” He pointed to other Eastern European communities in the state and added, “It’s going to be much broader than just the Ukrainian vote.”
Parma, near where Stolar lives, is home to Ohio’s Ukrainian Village, where the fire hydrants are painted blue and yellow and every storefront contains a display of solidarity for the home country. Ukrainian flags are flown from the butchers to the funeral parlor.
State Road in Parma has four Ukrainian churches, two cultural schools and many regional stores where residents can buy fresh kielbasa, homemade pierogi, deruny potato pancakes and Ukrainian ketchup. Behind St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral, there’s a wooden road sign pointing to Kyiv — 4,896 miles away.
These days, many of Parma’s residents wake every morning to updates from family members in Ukraine. Some are sheltering in bunkers; others are preparing to fight.
When Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, Orest Liscynesky closed the Cleveland Selfreliance Credit Union in the Ukrainian Village after he found his employees crying at their desks.
“Their mother, their brother, their sister and cousins are back there,” said Liscynesky, manager of the credit union. “These people can’t work. All they’re thinking about is bombs and people being killed, what’s happening to their families.”
One of Liscynesky’s employees used to text their best friend in Kyiv every day. Last month, he said, the replies stopped.
“She was killed,” he said. “You’re always thinking, back there, what’s happening?”
Liscynesky’s family had to flee their homes twice after bombings, he said. Most recently they were seeking refuge in Ternopil, the sister city of Parma, which was recently hit in Putin’s bombardment of at least 14 regions.
“My father’s 97, and he’s on a computer trying to find out where all these cousins are,” Liscynesky said. “He goes, ‘This is like World War II.’”
Liscynesky has shelved his political alliances in light of the war. “I’m a Republican, but I’m backing Biden’s efforts in Ukraine,” he said, withholding his voting plans for this election.
The Ukrainian population of Ohio has traditionally leaned Republican because of the party’s forceful criticism of communism. But that could change this year.
Anna Barrett, president of the credit union, said she will vote for a Democratic candidate for the first time in her life. “I certainly could not support Mr. Vance based on what he has said,” she said. Like others, Barrett has been working around-the-clock to fundraise and send supplies to Europe.
Michael Dobronos, a second-generation Ukrainian American, has brought the war home to Parma, taking in 10 relatives who arrived as refugees in recent months. Dobronos, 56 and a lawyer, met his extended family last year when he spent a month traveling in Ukraine with his two children. Now, five women and five children are living in his house in Cleveland.
“They’re traumatized,” Dobronos said at Rudy’s Strudel, an Eastern European bakery next to the Ukrainian Village. “They remember hearing bombs dropped, artillery, the difficulties when they lived in camps with pallets and air mattresses.”
A staunch conservative, Dobronos said he is troubled about the upcoming elections. “I voted for Trump twice, but I cannot believe the Republican Party has abandoned Ukraine and its fight for freedom,” he said. “I’ve always voted for conservative candidates. However, I will break that tradition in this midterm. I cannot support J.D. Vance because of his anti-Ukrainian views.”
At the Lviv International Food Store around the corner, Veronika Pagsanjan, 50, was buying supplies for her growing household: Her mother and brother moved from Ukraine earlier this year.
“I’m not happy that [J.D. Vance] says he doesn’t care about Ukraine much,” said Pagsanjan, who emigrated to the United States when she was 30. “But I don’t think his opinion about Ukraine will affect the whole of America, so I’m okay with him to be in the Senate. I’m a conservative. I will vote for him. Maybe he’ll soften his stance on Ukraine.”
Vance and Ryan are competing to replace retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman, who visited the war-torn country earlier this year. Portman has met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky numerous times and has visited Bucha and Irpin, sites of Russian atrocities.
Portman, who has endorsed Vance, is co-chair of the bipartisan Senate Ukraine Caucus. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) co-chairs the U.S. House equivalent and is up for reelection against Republican J.R. Majewski, who is also against sending more arms to Ukraine.
“We’re all very supportive of Ukraine and our efforts to oppose the Russians,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). “Everybody I know is, except J.D. Vance. For whatever reason, Vance is on the wrong side, and I expect it to cost him votes.”
Parma residents repeatedly mention the Ukrainian Independence Day Parade on Aug. 27, which was attended by Portman, Ryan and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine.
“J.D. Vance has not come out,” Roman Fedkiw, chairman of the Ukrainian Village, said at a local tavern. “The Ukrainian community’s going to look at that and take it into consideration when they’re voting.”
Stolar, a retired cardiologist, moved to the United States at age 9 with her parents following the Soviet Union’s violent suppression of the Hungarian Uprising. Her family members in Ukraine are among the 14 million people internally displaced by the war.
“My cousin and her husband were driving when a rocket went right past them,” Stolar said. “Tim Ryan says Ukraine matters — and it does. We’re the country that is saving Europe from Russian aggression.”
A different perspective was evident at a clambake in Strongsville, Ohio, about 10 miles southwest of Parma, where a couple hundred Vance supporters pulled clams from their shells under a marquee. They clapped as Vance told them that the fighting spirit he wants to take to Washington came from his grandmother, who he said had 19 loaded handguns around her house. In a speech, he said he wanted to crack down on crime and Mexican cartels. He slammed Ryan and sought to link him to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
While many in Parma took issue with Vance’s stance, at the rally, there were clear signs of agreement with his position on Ukraine. “We’re putting a lot of money that we don’t have out there,” said Doug Cooper, 65. “We’re spending way too much money and being way too far in debt.”
Afterward, supporters lined up to take photographs with Vance. Numerous requests for an interview with The Post were declined, with his team saying he was too busy with voters. Asked if he had a comment for Parma’s Ukrainian voters, his team did not respond. But his campaign noted that Vance won Parma in the Republican primary.
Edwards, the state lawmaker whom the Vance campaign suggested The Post speak with, lives on the other side of Ohio, in Athens. A moderate Republican, Edwards said it’s “disgusting” how his part of Ohio has been forgotten by the federal government.
“People don’t have food to eat and we’re sending billions of dollars to someone else,” Edwards said. He is supportive of Ukraine and appreciates that the United States wants to be a leader, he said, but first he wants to see safe drinking water, affordable gas prices and stocked shelves in the Appalachian area of Ohio.
But for Manus McCaffery, funding the Ukrainian effort is a moral obligation. The 21-year-old lost his sight in one eye in a strike by a Russian precision-guided missile in southern Ukraine.
Having grown up in Parma with Ukrainian friends, McCaffery said he couldn’t sit back and watch the war unfold without helping. In March, he traveled to Ukraine and joined a troop of American and Georgian Legion fighters. With four years experience in the military, including time in Afghanistan last year, McCaffery said, he took up the responsibility of manning an antitank missile system in Ukraine.
In May, his battalion was hit and McCaffery was temporarily blinded by shrapnel. Since returning home, he has regained sight in one eye, but the emotional wounds run deep.
“I wish I could be there,” McCaffery said, breaking into tears.
One of his sharpest memories is Bucha after Russian troops withdrew. “Women were raped; there’s a lot of women missing and a lot of dead children,” he said, tears falling onto his shirt. “[The Russians] were only there hours before and they left behind some horrific stuff. It was extremely gruesome.”
Although he has leaned Republican in the past, he said he will vote for the party that will supply ammunition and funds to Ukraine.
“It’s obvious who I would vote for at the moment: Tim Ryan,” he said. McCaffery will split his ticket and vote for DeWine.
He has co-founded a nonprofit called The Victory Team, which is raising money for his battalion.
“Our hero,” Seven Hills Mayor Anthony Biasiotta said of McCaffery as soon as he walked into a tavern in the Ukrainian Village the next day. “I find him very inspiring,” added Biasiotta, who identifies as a Republican.
Thinking about the midterms, Biasiotta said he is on the fence because of how disappointed he has been with Vance’s position on Ukraine. “I’m undecided,” he said. “You’ve got to evaluate a candidate on many issues, but I absolutely would disagree with [Vance’s] position on Ukraine.” Later in the month, he said he planned to vote for Vance, despite his disagreement with him on Ukraine.
Earlier in October, after Americans woke to news of Russian airstrikes across Ukraine, Vance and Ryan squared off in their first debate. They both denounced Putin’s violence and celebrated the resilience of the Ukrainian people. But they fought over the role of the United States.
“We’ve got to have a strong military and make sure we can push back people like Vladimir Putin if they try to invade a freedom-loving country,” said Ryan.
Vance reiterated that he wants to put the United States first. “The Biden administration seems to be sleepwalking into a nuclear war,” he said. “I would put my money at the southern border, instead of launching tons of money into Ukraine.”
“J.D. is going to have to prove himself to the Ukrainians,” said Strongsville Mayor Thomas Perciak, a Republican, at the clambake after Vance left. “I stand by the Ukrainian community, and they know it.” | 2022-10-23T10:02:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In Ohio, Vance faces backlash in Ukrainian community over war stance - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/23/vance-ukraine-war-ohio-senate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/23/vance-ukraine-war-ohio-senate/ |
Rishi Sunak seen leaving his home in London on Sunday. (Maja Smiejkowska/Reuters)
LONDON — Former British finance minister Rishi Sunak announced his bid to replace Liz Truss as the next leader of the Conservative Party, putting him on track to make it to the final round of candidates in the race for prime minister.
Sunday’s announcement makes Sunak the first — and, so far, the only — formally declared candidate to have collected the 100 nominations from fellow lawmakers required by 2 p.m. Monday to appear on the party’s ballot, according to public tallies. If more than one candidate passes the threshold, members of Parliament will select two to be put to an online vote by party members, with the results expected Oct. 28.
As of Sunday, Sunak’s strongest challenger appeared to be Johnson, the former prime minister whose forced resignation this July kicked off Britain’s current bout of political chaos. In his resignation from Johnson’s cabinet, which prompted a wave of others to quit and ultimately forced Johnson to resign, Sunak said the public deserved a government that conducted itself “properly, competently, and seriously.”
On Saturday, reports in British media said the two men — who once worked side by side — were holding late-night talks, prompting speculation that the two could strike a deal to put their rivalry aside and join forces once again on a joint ticket.
Adela Suliman and Karla Adam contributed to this report. | 2022-10-23T10:02:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rishi Sunak announces formal bid to become U.K. prime minister - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/23/uk-rishi-sunak-race-prime-minister/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/23/uk-rishi-sunak-race-prime-minister/ |
In Montgomery County, Md., debate over Thrive 2050 has centered on where and how much the Washington suburb should develop
Opponents of making it easier to build duplexes, triplexes and other “missing middle” housing in Montgomery County neighborhoods zoned for single-family homes protest outside the Montgomery planning board’s offices in Wheaton. (Katherine Shaver /The Washington Post)
When Montgomery County last wrote a long-range growth plan, the Washington suburb was a predominantly White bedroom community with ample open land, single-family homes full of couples with children and wide roads designed for auto-centric lifestyles.
More than 50 years later, the county has its own job centers, a shortage of smaller and more affordable homes, and little land left to build on, planners say. Meanwhile, its residents, who have become more racially and economically diverse, are stuck in traffic congestion, facing climate change and more likely to live alone.
A new growth plan, expected to be approved Tuesday by the Montgomery County Council, grapples with how a mostly built-out suburb of 1.1 million residents should absorb another 200,000 newcomers expected over the next 30 years. The plan acknowledges massive demographic shifts in a county struggling with how to better compete for businesses and jobs while becoming more walkable, transit-friendly and environmentally sustainable.
The 126-page plan, known as Thrive 2050, would guide decisions around land use, transportation and public infrastructure in Maryland’s most populous county for years to come. Planners say it codifies the county’s long-standing practice to use land and infrastructure most efficiently by focusing more compact development around transit lines, major roads and activity centers.
A proposal to diversify homes to end de facto segregation divides neighborhoods
The plan also encourages construction of smaller and less expensive homes — including duplexes, cottages and small apartment buildings — that planners say are badly needed throughout the county. More of such housing in wealthier and highly desirable neighborhoods zoned solely for single-family homes would make the county and its schools less segregated by race and income, planners say.
“This is not the Montgomery County from the 1960s,” said Tanya Stern, the county’s acting planning director. “Even without Thrive, this county will continue to change. The opportunity with Thrive is to articulate a vision and a set of priorities and policies that can influence and direct those changes … We don’t have the option of doing nothing.”
The plan has ignited fierce debate over where denser development should occur and whether more of it would improve or diminish the suburban lifestyle many residents cherish. Critics say the county’s clogged roads and crowded schools show its poor record of ensuring that public infrastructure keeps pace with private growth.
Higher-density development, opponents say, would increase traffic and school enrollment, require that more trees be cut down and cause environmentally damaging storm water to run off more pavement. While planners have emphasized that Thrive itself would not change zoning, opponents say it would open the door to relaxing single-family home zoning by calling for more housing types countywide.
“This sets the foundation for densification in different parts of the county,” said Silver Spring resident Alan Bowser, president of the Montgomery County Civic Federation, a coalition of homeowner and civic associations.
Bowser and other critics say the plan doesn’t ensure that developers who take advantage of higher densities would build more truly affordable housing.
“That should be a priority,” he said.
Cities turn to 'missing middle' housing to keep older millennials from leaving
Thrive has been debated for more than three years, but drew attention in recent weeks as the council finalized the details amid scandals that led to the resignations of the county’s entire five-member planning board. The board had unanimously approved the draft of Thrive sent to the council in April 2021.
Some opponents, including Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D), have called on the council to postpone its vote on Thrive until investigations conclude into allegations concerning some board members’ ethics. However, council President Gabe Albornoz (D-At Large) has said the plan has had ample public vetting and needs to be approved without delay.
Planners say Thrive is the first comprehensive rewrite of the county’s original “Wedges and Corridors” plan of 1964, which focused higher-density growth along major roads while preserving land in between for open space, farming and neighborhoods. The plan was updated in 1969 and refined in 1993.
Planners say Thrive would be the county’s first long-term plan to prioritize racial equity and social justice, including by encouraging less expensive housing in upscale areas. Doing so, planners say, would help reverse the de facto segregation that remains in many areas because of previous discriminatory policies, such as redlining and restrictive racial covenants.
“Communities where wealthy White residents are the norm also have to achieve integration and inclusivity,” the plan says.
How George Floyd's death fueled a push for more affordable housing in mostly White parts of D.C.
Thrive also would correct a mistake made among the changes in 1993, planners say, when local officials asked that the Route 29 corridor be left as mostly residential. That directed growth to the Interstate 270 corridor and areas around the Capital Beltway, such as Bethesda and Silver Spring, while discouraging investment in the lower-income eastern county, including along Metro’s Red Line and Georgia Avenue.
The eastern county, planners wrote, “became relatively less attractive for employers and residents, feeding a cycle of stagnation.” The new plan would encourage more development there.
Most of the tension has centered on how and where to build more housing.
Montgomery planners, and council members who have supported Thrive, say it would encourage building more homes of all types, from subsidized housing for the poor to starter homes for millennials and smaller options for downsizing baby boomers. It also recommends expanding county programs and regulatory incentives to encourage construction of market rate and below-market rate housing at all income levels, especially near transit lines.
“We take an ‘everything and all-of-the-above’ approach,” Stern said.
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Opponents say planners and council members have dismissed their concerns that too much dense development would strain schools, road capacity, fire and police protection and storm water management systems. Some say residents haven’t been able to focus on the potential problems while the plan has been hashed out during the pandemic.
“I think there’s a rush to approve this plan to push the idea that the county is open for business,” Bowser said.
Montgomery council member Hans Riemer (D-At Large), who chaired the committee that scrutinized the plan, said he disagrees, saying Thrive has had “robust public participation.”
The kind of growth that Thrive promotes, he said, is the same compact, walkable, transit-oriented development that planners and public officials have advocated for years. He noted the popularity of Pike & Rose, a mix of shops, restaurants, high-rise apartments and offices that opened in 2014 on the site of a former strip mall and large parking lot in North Bethesda.
“What’s their solution?” Riemer said of the plan’s critics. “They want people to stop having children or put up a wall around the county? Thrive doesn’t cause growth to happen. It seeks to manage the growth that’s coming.”
Some critics say county officials haven’t paid enough attention to other potential consequences of denser development, such as how it can price out some residents by driving up land values and property taxes. Others have said home buyers will be left bidding against investors with a financial incentive to tear down single homes to build more units.
Some opponents, including Elrich, say Thrive also won’t do enough to solve the county’s biggest problem: a shortage of homes for its poorest residents. Developers won’t build more housing for lower-wage workers, he said, unless they are required to.
He said the county’s current zoning allows for enough new housing to accommodate future residents. But developers won’t build new apartments, townhouses and other homes until they can command higher prices — something that won’t happen until surrounding areas have more workers with higher-paying jobs, Elrich said.
Higher-density zoning, he said, won’t provide more affordable housing while the county works to attract more employers.
“If people want to build in areas zoned for high-rise buildings, and it costs them $500 or $600 per square foot to build a unit, you’re not going to get a solution to affordable housing that way,” Elrich said. “Fixing this is more complex than just saying it’s a zoning problem.”
Stern, the acting planning chief, said Thrive makes more deeply affordable housing “very much a priority” and recommends “a wide variety of strategies” to encourage more of it. She said Montgomery suffers more from its concentrations of poverty than from lower-income residents being displaced by new development.
“The reality is that housing is a fundamental part of economic development,” Stern said. “It’s very difficult to attract more jobs if you don’t have housing available for those new workers to be able to afford to live in.” | 2022-10-23T10:28:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Montgomery County Council poised to pass 'Thrive' 30-year growth plan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/23/montgomery-council-thrive-growth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/10/23/montgomery-council-thrive-growth/ |
Purdue University races to expand semiconductor education to fill yawning workforce gap that threatens reshoring effort
Joon Hyeong Park, an instructor at Purdue University, is reflected Oct. 4 in a set of chips manufactured at the Birck Nanotechnology Center. (AJ Mast for The Washington Post)
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — On a recent afternoon, an unusual group of visitors peered through a window at Purdue University students tinkering in a lab. The onlookers were two dozen executives from the world’s biggest semiconductor companies.
“Okay, done. We can do that,” Intel manufacturing chief Keyvan Esfarjani quickly replied. Just weeks before, his company broke ground on two massive chip factories in Ohio that aim to employ 3,000 people.
By some estimates, the United States needs at least 50,000 new semiconductor engineers over the next five years to staff all of the new factories and research labs that companies have said they plan to build with subsidies from the Chips and Science Act, a number far exceeding current graduation rates nationwide, according to Purdue. Additionally, legions of engineers in other specialties will be needed to deliver on other White House priorities, including the retooling of auto manufacturing for electric vehicles and the production of technology aimed at reducing U.S. dependence on fossil fuels.
“This is recurrently one of the top, if not the number one, long-term concerns that [chip companies] have,” Mung Chiang, Purdue’s president-elect and former engineering dean, said in an interview. As they embark on their expansion, “they care about the economics. They care about building it. They care about customer demand and competition. But recurrently, medium-to-long term, this is their number one concern … how can we build a much bigger pipeline right now of talent?”
Chip companies aren’t alone in worrying about the problem — or in looking to Purdue, one of the country’s biggest engineering schools, for answers. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, who is overseeing the chip subsidies program, visited campus last month to hear about the courses and labs Purdue is adding to rapidly expand semiconductor education. Several Defense Department officials also have traveled lately to Purdue, located halfway between Chicago and Indianapolis, to discuss workforce training.
Sanjay Tripathi, a top IBM executive, called Purdue’s plans impressive but cautioned that the university can’t fill the gap alone. “The question is, how do you take this model and scale it to other universities?” he said to The Washington Post at the end of the tour.
“Secretary Raimondo recognizes the significant need to expand the training pipeline to meet the Administration’s goals for CHIPS, EV production and other high-tech manufacturing investments,” the Commerce Department said in a statement. “She is committed to working with the private sector and research institutions to come up with training programs—from GEDs to PhDs—that will benefit workers and strengthen our global competitiveness.”
Engineer shortages have long plagued the U.S. tech sector, with Google, Apple and others complaining that immigration restrictions made it difficult to find employees. They’ve spent years pushing for an expansion of the H1B visa program for highly skilled foreign workers, to little avail.
“Last time I was at a football game there were ads all over the place for Rolls-Royce. They are looking for engineers,” Mark Lundstrom, Purdue’s interim engineering dean, said in an interview at Neil Armstrong Hall, named for the most famous of Purdue’s 27 astronaut graduates. “Our engineering enrollments and our computer science enrollments have grown … but there is such a demand for these students.”
After peeling off layers of hoods, goggles, gloves, hairnets, jumpsuits and booties, the students talked about their plans. All three are from overseas — India and South Korea — and would like to pursue careers in semiconductors, most likely in the United States, if they can get work visas.
“I never imagined I would fabricate a Moscap and Mosfet in my life,” said Thota, waxing lyrical about different types of chips. “But this work is giving me enough opportunities to fabricate all my thoughts.” Pandit said his older sister, also an engineer, inspired him to join the field. | 2022-10-23T11:07:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Engineering shortage in the U.S. frustrates chip industry - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/23/engineer-shortage-us-chips/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/23/engineer-shortage-us-chips/ |
Polls in both the House and Senate show improvements for Republicans amid economic and crime concerns
Republican Joe Kent, left, and Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez wait before taking the stage for a debate in the race for the 3rd Congressional District, in Vancouver, Wash., on Sept. 27. (Rachel La Corte/AP)
Perez is a symbol of the Democratic struggles, fighting in a margin-of-error race against exactly the kind of “ultra-MAGA” candidate Democrats have elevated this year — Republican Joe Kent, who denies the outcome of the 2020 election, argues U.S. Capitol rioters have been mistreated and wants a moratorium on all legal immigration. But Democrats in Washington have not yet been able to invest directly in her race, as they play defense elsewhere on far less favorable issues.
“It is way better than it was. It is no harder than we thought it would be,” said Tim Persico, the executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, who has said he wish there was more money to fund Perez. “We are in a midterm in a tough economic climate against an extremely well-resourced opponent. It is supposed to be hard. It is not supposed to be a straight line.”
President Biden also tried to tamp down any sense of Democratic panic Friday, when he predicted fortunes would again improve before the Nov. 8 elections.
Unlike the Senate, where a handful of high-profile races will decide control, the next House majority will be slotted together like a jigsaw puzzle on Election Day, with the pieces chosen by retirements, redistricting, recruiting failures, national mood and regional concerns. The GOP is all but certain to pick up at least a few of the five seats they need to take control through new district lines and a few more from flagship races where Democrats have all but stopped spending. But Democrats also find themselves in a position to topple some Republican incumbents.
The real open questions are the dozens of races where polling offers no clear signal. Far more Democratic seats sit on a knife edge than Republican ones, subject to unknown factors like turnout and voter whims over the coming weeks. Predicting the exact outcome has been made even more difficult because polling in 2020 largely failed to see the strong night Republican House candidates had. On the other hand, recent special elections this cycle have shown Democrats outperform expectations.
For the moment, Republicans have the momentum, with Democratic margins in senate races across the country eroding over the last month and alarming polls coming out of Democratic strongholds like Washington and New York that show statewide Democrats with only single-digit advantages. Generic polling averages, which test whether voters prefer an unnamed Republican or Democrat for Congress, have also begun to move toward Republicans, currently standing 8 to 10 points more favorable for the GOP than at this point in 2020.
“The issues that heavily favor Republicans, like the economy and crime, keep gaining importance with voters the closer we get to Election Day,” said Michael McAdams, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee. “That has created a dire situation for Democrats.”
The shift has happened even as Democrats have devoted enormous amounts of money to advertising on the issue of abortion and the Supreme Court’s June decision overruling abortion rights in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
The reality of gas prices has become an obsession of sorts for the Democratic leaders, who have seen their fortunes rise and fall with the numbers posted daily at roadside stations. Prices peaked nationally in mid-June at over $5 a gallon, on the backs of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, before falling to $3.65 in mid-September and then ticking back up to $3.91 in mid-October, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Democratic strategists continue to argue that their focus on abortion rights in advertising is a good strategy, despite the criticism of some in their party. They say internal party research finds there are still many voters who have not fully digested the implications of the new legal reality. Democrats are holding out hope that the issue can raise turnout, overcoming a slight voting enthusiasm advantage that Republicans have held in national polls all year.
“If I told you we were going into a midterm with Democrats having full control and there being disapproval of the economy and high inflation, this midterm should have been over already,” said Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategists working in multiple races. “The reality of the abortion issue, the flawed Republican candidates, and Democrat’s progress on some of the agenda are the reasons we are still having the conversation.”
In recent weeks, Democrats have canceled television reservations in Arizona, Texas and Wisconsin, all but conceding pickups for Republicans in three districts where Democratic incumbents opted not to seek reelection. The party has also been alarmed by polling that shows Republican Allan Fung, the former mayor of Cranston, R.I., leading Democratic state treasurer Seth Magaziner in the heart of New England, in a state that has not elected a Republican to Congress since the 1990s.
Republicans, meanwhile, have been testing Democratic boundaries with their additional spending. The Congressional Leadership Fund announced a $4 million investment in the district of Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), the head of the DCCC, fulfilling a long-standing GOP plan to complicate life for Democratic strategists, who now have to worry that the man leading the effort might lose his seat.
In places like Washington’s 3rd district, which hugs the northern border of Oregon, Perez has been outspending Kent in television on the basis of her own fundraising.
But she has not yet received direct help for ads from the DCCC or the House Majority PAC, the outside super PAC supporting House Democrats, even as Kent’s ads include a disclaimer that credits part of the spending to the NRCC. She also not been named to the Democratic Party’s Red-to-Blue program, which helps candidates flip seats. Persico, the head of the DCCC, has described her district as a winnable race that he would invest in if he “had more money.”
“This is one of the golden opportunities,” Perez said Saturday. “And we are really passing it by right now. ”
Isaac Arnsdorf contributed to this report. | 2022-10-23T11:25:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Democrats fear the midterm map is slipping away - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/23/democrats-midterms/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/23/democrats-midterms/ |
Home-grown campaign has Democrats feeling resurgent against Sen. Grassley
Mike Franken is within striking distance in his Senate race against Charles Grassley, according to a recent poll. But can he topple an Iowa icon?
Iowa Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mike Franken at his debate with Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) in Des Moines on Oct. 6. (Charlie Neibergall/AP)
COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa — Iowa Democrats took a beating in 2020: Republicans won up and down the ballot, handily carrying the presidential race, retaining a U.S. Senate seat and expanding their majority in the state House. Two Democratic U.S. congresswomen — including one Joe Biden had called the “future of the party” — also lost their seats. And the delayed caucus results that year probably will result in Iowa Democrats’ being stripped of their first-in-the-nation status after this year’s midterm elections.
National Democrats have, in turn, largely walked away from the state. With Iowa’s Republican elder statesman Sen. Charles E. Grassley on the ballot for his eighth term, his Democratic challenger, Michael Franken, has not received money or support from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Grassley’s seat is considered so safe that national Republicans also have largely left the race alone.
“I really feel like the national Democratic Party has taken a hands-off approach with Iowa this year, to the point that I think some of us might feel a little neglected or even kind of left out of their conversations,” said Candella Foley-Finchem, a Franken supporter from Glenwood who attended a campaign event in Council Bluffs on Wednesday.
That lack of investment from above might be a blessing in disguise for Franken.
A recent Des Moines Register Iowa Poll from legendary pollster J. Ann Selzer raised eyebrows in Iowa and beyond with results showing Grassley leading Franken among likely voters 46 percent to 43 percent — within the margin of error. The same poll in July had Grassley up by eight points.
Some Iowa Democrats point to Franken’s freedom to run the race he wants, untethered to expectations and directives from the national party and outside consultants, as being key to his success so far. In interviews with The Washington Post, Democrats described an environment in previous elections in which local knowledge was eschewed in favor of money and campaign staffers associated with the national party.
“I’m the first candidate not chosen by Washington, D.C., going back four or five races or more in the Senate race,” Franken said.
In 2020, for example, the Democratic Senate Majority PAC spent more than $41 million supporting Theresa Greenfield, only for her to lose to incumbent Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) by more than six points.
“I think national Democrats kind of got burned on their spending and engagement in Iowa the last few years, and they’ve lost pretty big, I think by making poor choices and getting involved in primary races,” Lindsay Mouw, a former Republican from Sioux Center who worked as Franken’s deputy campaign manager in 2020, said after the Franken event in Council Bluffs.
Republicans, however, say they aren’t worried.
“I laugh at that [poll] because Senator Grassley is well-known across Iowa. He is very well-respected across Iowa,” Ernst told The Post while campaigning for Republican Senate hopeful Joe O’Dea in Colorado. “I know there’s a lot of chatter out there. But Chuck Grassley, he’s gonna take that race.”
Republicans have sought to tie Franken to Biden and portray the retired Navy vice admiral as too extreme for the state, with ads showing him praising Biden for doing a “fabulous job.” Although some voters see Grassley’s age as a liability — he recently turned 89, and Franken is 64 — Republicans stress his experience and seniority in the Senate, with one campaign ad arguing, “It’s easier to fight the rising cost of living when you have clout.”
“We had a lot of Republicans vote for [former Democratic Sen.] Tom Harkin, and believe me, there wasn’t a whole lot of similarities between Tom Harkin and Republicans,” Republican Party of Iowa Chairman Jeff Kaufmann said in an interview. “But a lot of Republicans voted for Harkin because they realized it was good for our state in terms of seniority. You’re gonna see the same thing play out here with Chuck Grassley.”
Who is Franken courting?
On the trail and in interviews, Franken insists that his campaign is about the future of the country, but he also harks back to progressive moments in Iowa’s history — such as the state’s trailblazing effort desegregating public schools. He speaks of a time when “introducing yourself as an Iowan immediately typecast you as this forward-thinking, broad-minded, educated, healthy individual,” suggesting Iowa no longer holds such an identity.
The recent Des Moines Register poll showed independent voters, who make up roughly one-third of Iowa’s registered voters, possibly breaking late for Franken. In July, Franken led Grassley by just one percentage point with independents. He leads by eight in the latest poll.
Wayne County resident Mary Ellen Miller is the kind of voter Franken needs if he is to topple Grassley. A former Republican, she says she split from the party in 2016 because of Donald Trump. She said she officially became a Democrat in 2020 to caucus for Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) during the party’s presidential contest. And Millers predicts that Franken will be the “exception” to her new party’s losing streak in the state.
“He’s not running as a Democrat; I think that’s the biggest thing,” she said. “He’s running as an Iowan.”
Lisa Lima, the chair of the Pottawattamie County Democrats, said that as a result of Franken’s posture “there’s a much more homegrown feel to how things are progressing.”
Democrats nationally have routinely cited access to abortion as a top issue for November, and Franken calls it one of the top three issues in the race — alongside education and creating a new, comprehensive immigration plan. He has tied Grassley’s senior position on the Senate Judiciary Committee to the makeup of the current Supreme Court and the resulting decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.
But even if the Democratic Senate campaign arm invested in the race now, three weeks before Election Day, Democrats acknowledge that the race still would be an uphill battle.
Grassley is an Iowa institution, and midterm years historically favor the party not in the White House. Grassley’s closest race was his first, in 1980, which he still won by eight points. Six years ago, he won reelection by more than 20 points.
Grassley has not had to spend much time or money attacking Franken, but Republicans have criticized the Democrat as wanting to make the state more progressive. They have also tried to raise awareness of an allegation by a former staffer who accused Franken of kissing her without her consent. Franken has denied the accusation, and the Des Moines police determined the claim to be “unfounded.”
Above all, Republicans want to paint Franken as a prospective rubber stamp for Biden. Franken told The Post that he would be happy to have Biden campaign for him, and the Republican Party chair couldn’t agree more.
“I think I would even pay for his hotel room if he would come. I would even wear one of those chauffeur hats and drive him around. I want Joe Biden here so badly,” Kaufmann joked. The recent Des Moines Register poll found Biden’s disapproval rating in the state at 61 percent.
Republicans also are quick to point out that a mid-September poll by Selzer in 2020 had Greenfield leading Ernst. And a poll of the Iowa gubernatorial race this month found Democratic challenger Deidre DeJear trailing incumbent Gov. Kim Reynolds by 17 points, indicating that Franken’s standing in polls is not reflective of a larger blue shift in the state.
“We aren’t changing a thing,” Kaufmann said. “From my perspective, from a tactical viewpoint, I guess I just kind of shrug my shoulders.”
“The proof is in the pudding in terms of what we’re doing, and do you see a scramble? Do you see anything different? I’m just not,” he added.
The seniority-longevity battle
Kaufmann also framed Grassley’s seniority as an asset for GOP voters.
“More people ride the New York City subway than live in this state, and we have the opportunity — if the Republicans take control [of the Senate] — we have the opportunity to have the most powerful senator in the entire United States representing our state,” he said. If Republicans win the majority, Grassley will become Senate president pro tempore again, putting him in line for the presidency behind the vice president and the speaker of the House.
Voters who spoke to The Post agreed that much of the decision on whom to support comes down to Grassley’s long service — which makes him an Iowa legend but also means he has a long record with which swing voters can take issue.
Kitty Olsen, a Republican turned Democrat who was a longtime aide to Republican Robert Ray when he was governor, cited the senator’s long service and alignment with Trump as a basis for her decision to stop supporting support Grassley, for whom she said she has previously voted.
“I think he’s a really nice person. I just don’t think he’s effective anymore,” said Olsen, 71.
Bob Mitchell, a human resources consultant in West Des Moines, traced his break with Grassley to his leadership on the Judiciary Committee, calling Grassley’s opposition to considering the Supreme Court vacancy under former president Barack Obama in 2016 “pure politics.”
“I lost all respect for him at that moment,” Mitchell said. Still, he says, he voted for Grassley that November.
This year, Mitchell plans to vote for Franken and even appeared in one of his campaign ads. He said Grassley’s age disturbs him, and he worries that Grassley would not be able to complete the term and that his replacement would be chosen by appointment. (Grassley has said he intends to serve the entire term).
Grassley this year also faced his first primary challenge since his election to the Senate in 1980. State Sen. Jim Carlin, who ran to the right of Grassley, received more than 25 percent of the vote. A Des Moines Register poll conducted last June found 64 percent of respondents said it was time for someone new to hold the office.
Grassley was questioned about the recent Iowa Poll in an interview on Fox News last week, and appeared to nod to at least a small amount of concern about how close the race is.
“I don’t know what’s going on, but I know this: In order to get reelected in Iowa, you got to work hard, you got to convince the people they should vote for you,” Grassley said.
“I’ve gotta have some help to get reelected, and I’d appreciate the help,” he said.
Liz Goodwin contributed to this report. | 2022-10-23T11:25:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Can Mike Franken unseat Chuck Grassley in the Iowa Senate race? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/23/grassley-franken-poll-iowa-senate/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/23/grassley-franken-poll-iowa-senate/ |
Rep. Anthony G. Brown (D-Md.), who is running for Maryland attorney general, stands for the presentation of the colors at a breakfast earlier this month in Greenbelt, Md. (Robb Hill for The Washington Post)
As a little kid who began playing organized football when he was 8, Anthony G. Brown was only ever interested in one position:
It meant being in a key role. And making key decisions. And, ultimately, it meant having your fate in your own hands.
“You touch the ball on every play, and so you’ve got the ability to make a big impact and influence the direction of the team,” Brown, the Democratic candidate to be Maryland’s attorney general, said in an interview in his campaign office, eight blocks from the U.S. Capitol.
That ambition has driven his career as an elected official, Brown said, from his time as a delegate in the Maryland Assembly, to two terms serving as lieutenant governor in Martin O’Malley’s administration to his three terms representing Maryland’s 4th District in the U.S. Congress.
It is an impressive political résumé, but after a failed bid for governor in 2014, it does not yet include a quarterback role. So when Maryland Attorney General Brian E. Frosh (D) announced he would not seek reelection, Brown said he saw the opening to become the state’s chief law enforcement official as “an opportunity to make a bigger impact and draw on leading 550 lawyers on all the issues that I’ve worked on my entire life.”
A Harvard Law School graduate, military lawyer and U.S. Army veteran who served in Iraq, Brown, 60, describes himself as a “mainstream” politician. In his bid for attorney general, a race he is heavily favored to win, Brown has pledged to preserve a woman’s right to choose an abortion, expand voting and civil rights, crack down on gun and drug trafficking, work to decriminalize marijuana and protect the environment.
At the top of his agenda is addressing violent crime, which is an overriding issue for many Marylanders this election cycle. It is often the first issue voters mention to him when he’s out campaigning, Brown said. A Washington Post poll last month showed crime as the most important issue for Maryland voters behind the economy and threats to democracy.
Brown said he wants to double the size of the attorney general’s organized crime unit and improve partnerships with local states attorneys across Maryland to combat the rise in crime and successfully prosecute criminals.
But he is not relying on a law-and-order approach alone. At a breakfast with Prince George’s County Democrats earlier this month, Brown, who would be Maryland’s first Black attorney general, detailed plans to address inequities and root causes of lawlessness.
“Sure, we’re going to investigate, we’re going to prosecute, we’re going to focus on violent crime,” he said. “But if we don’t reform this criminal justice system and the juvenile justice system, we are not going to make our way to not only a safer community, but a more equitable community.”
Brown, who would take office as Maryland continues working to implement sweeping law enforcement accountability legislation passed in 2021, wants more diversionary programs and mental health and support services, particularly for young offenders. And he said he wants to identify biases in Maryland’s criminal justice system that have led, he said, to an overincarceration of young Black men.
Brown also said it is worth investigating whether the state can hold gun manufacturers liable in cases involving gun violence. Earlier this year, Baltimore sued a ghost gun manufacturer for the injuries and trauma those guns caused.
“Certainly, as the attorney general, I’m going to be looking at what opportunities are there in Maryland, either with existing Maryland law or new laws that need to be established, that allow us to … go after gun manufacturers,” he said.
If he wants to pursue all of his objectives, Brown will need some changes in Annapolis. If elected, he said he will request additional powers for the attorney general’s office from the Maryland legislature, including increased authority to go after and prosecute price gougers.
And he said the state’s chief legal officer should have authority, as in other states, to enforce federal and state civil rights laws in Maryland. Currently the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Maryland Commission on Civil Rights investigate and enforce civil rights laws.
Brown said he does not want to undermine or circumvent those agencies but believes the attorney general “should be able to step into the shoes of Marylanders whose civil rights have been violated and bring actions, whether civil or criminal, to protect Marylanders.”
“Now is the moment,” he said, for the legislature to act to give that power to the office, and Brown believes he will have support for that from the legislature and from Wes Moore (D) if Moore is elected governor.
Brown would also create a chief counsel for equity and ethics in the attorney general’s office who would not only look at equity and diversity in the organization, but also ask if the legal representation and advice it provides to state agencies is leading to equitable outcomes.
Brown is heavily favored in his race against the Republican nominee, Michael Anthony Peroutka, a retired lawyer and one-term Anne Arundel County Council member. Peroutka has campaigned on a platform of prosecuting former state officials, including Gov. Larry Hogan (R), for the health restrictions they put in place during the pandemic to stop the spread of covid-19.
But Brown is careful to say that while he is confident he will win, he is not taking victory for granted. It is a lesson that has stuck with him since losing to outgoing Gov. Larry Hogan (R) in 2014 in a race he was expected to win.
Almost no one thinks an upset is in the works this year.
Peroutka has said that abortion and same-sex marriage should not be legal, and he has questioned the legitimacy of election results. And he has refused to disavow his association with the League of the South, which has been categorized as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. At a League of the South conference in 2012, he sang “Dixie,” calling it “the national anthem.”
“What Peroutka believes is out of step with the average Maryland voter,” said Mileah Kromer, a political scientist at Goucher College who has been studying Maryland elections for a decade. “And is a fundamentally better candidate than he was in 2014. And he is undeniably qualified for this job.”
Peroutka’s positions and past associations are unlikely to be popular with any registered Democratic voters, who outnumber registered Republican voters 2-1 in Maryland. And while he has been endorsed by Republican gubernatorial candidate Dan Cox, some prominent Maryland Republicans have expressed disapproval of his candidacy.
Hogan blasted Peroutka for spreading conspiracy theories about the 9/11 attacks. And David R. Brinkley, secretary of budget and management in the Hogan administration and a longtime Republican state legislator, said of Peroutka, “He’s not running a campaign, he’s running a crusade.”
Jim Shalleck, a prosecutor and former president of the Montgomery County Board of Elections who ran against Peroutka in the Republican primary, said he will vote for Brown in November.
“Peroutka’s positions are just abhorrent to me,” Shalleck said in an interview.
Asked about Shalleck’s decision, Peroutka said he was not surprised.
“Jim Shalleck is a nice fellow and has a right to his opinion, and that’s okay with me,” he said. “We were in completely different lanes, maybe on completely different highways and going completely different directions. Just like Anthony Brown and myself. Other than the fact that both of our mothers named us Anthony I don’t think there’s anything similar.”
A Goucher College poll in September showed Brown leading Peroutka 53 percent to 31 percent, with 15 percent undecided and 1 percent choosing someone else.
Brown enjoys a funding advantage as well. At the end of August, the Peroutka campaign reported having spent $35,046 on the campaign to date with $36,169 on hand. The Brown campaign, which faced a difficult primary contest against retired judge Katie O’Malley, had spent $530,546 with $80,094 on hand. And Brown also has history on his side. No Republican has been elected attorney general in Maryland since 1919.
Despite the polling numbers, funding differences and history, Peroutka said he expects to win the race. He said whether he would accept the result of the election “all depends on whether the affect of the details of the conducting of the election are worthy of support.”
“If the results are fair then of course I’ll accept them,” he said.
Brown said he is often asked why he would give up the safety of a congressional seat in an overwhelmingly Democratic district to run for attorney general. U.S. House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D), who represents Maryland’s 5th Congressional District, said he was disappointed to lose Brown from the state’s delegation.
“I tried to convince him to stay in Congress. And the reason being, because he’s done such an extraordinarily good job, a positive, rational, informed voice on national security,” Hoyer said. “But he’s also a Harvard trained lawyer, a very bright guy who has been a lieutenant government. Is a leader in the House. So he brings a really good breadth of experience to the job of attorney general.”
The appeal of the attorney general job, Brown said at the breakfast, is the opportunity “to fight for the changes that protect every person and empower every community.”
And, he might have added, the opportunity to play quarterback. | 2022-10-23T11:33:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Anthony Brown wants to be Maryland's chief law enforcement official - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/23/anthony-brown-attorney-general-maryland/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/23/anthony-brown-attorney-general-maryland/ |
Sentenced to 40 years, Biden’s marijuana pardons left him behind
A protest is set to advocate for the estimated 2,800 people who are in federal prison for cannabis-related convictions
A marijuana-legalization protest outside the White House in 2016. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
Edwin Rubis heard about President Biden’s announcement of mass marijuana pardons earlier this month and realized he would be left out.
Rubis — who has spent more than two decades in federal prison for his involvement in a cannabis distribution conspiracy — and others in prison for marijuana-related convictions, would not be covered by the pardons. In fact, no one will be released from prison due to this announcement because, White House officials said, there is no one currently in federal prison solely for simple possession of cannabis.
Rubis’s projected release date is not for almost another decade: Aug. 6, 2032.
“I don’t belong in prison any longer,” said Rubis, 54, in a phone interview from a medium-security federal prison in Talladega, Ala. “I might have belonged in person when I first came in, the first 2, 3, 4 years, but I have done so many things that the system has asked me to do. I believe I’m truly rehabilitated.”
Protesters are expected to gather outside the White House on Monday to advocate for people like Rubis, incarcerated for what they would consider nonviolent offenses that involve marijuana, especially as public perception of the substance has shifted. Cannabis is now legal for recreational adult use in Washington, D.C., two territories and 19 states. It is on the ballot in five more states next month.
For those hoping to see marijuana law and policy reforms untangle the legacy of the country’s war on drugs, Biden’s announcement this month that he’d pardon people convicted of federal simple possession did not go far enough. And meaningful post-conviction reform still remains largely elusive in an America that echoed with promises to scrutinize criminal justice following the murder of George Floyd.
The Last Prisoner Project, a nonprofit working on cannabis criminal justice reform that lobbied the White House on this issue, has estimated that there are roughly 2,800 people in federal prison due to marijuana-related convictions, a statistic the organization said stems from a 2021 report from Recidiviz, a nonprofit that uses technology and data to build tools for criminal justice reform
Instead of remaining bitter that he received a long sentence — 40 years — as a young man, Rubis has been hopeful, dedicating himself to education and helping fellow people who are incarcerated. He has earned three degrees, including a master’s in Christian counseling and is working on his doctorate, mentored others who are incarcerated, worked as a law library clerk and as a dental assistant, and led Christian Bible studies.
And he has gained the support of prison staffers, including a unit manager, the staff chaplain and a library supervisor, who wrote letters submitted in a court motion to reduce Rubis’s sentence, describing how Rubis is kind and patient, has a positive attitude and is dedicated to bettering his life and others.
“It almost feels like this was a test to see if the cannabis community was naive or stupid enough to mistake an announcement like this for what we were promised,” said Steve DeAngelo, the founder of the Last Prisoner Project. “It was more of a self-serving political fig leaf than any real action for change.
Biden’s pardon announcement would apply to the about 6,500 people nationwide who have had federal convictions for simple possession of marijuana on their records since 1992, the White House estimated. The announcement would also apply to people convicted before 1992, but the government does not have data before then. Biden urged governors to issue the same pardons as he did, as most marijuana convictions historically have come at the state level.
“Criminal records for marijuana possession have led to needless barriers to employment, to housing, and educational opportunities,” Biden said earlier this month when announcing the pardons. “And that’s before you address the racial disparities around who suffers the consequences.”
Protest organizers cite a gap between what they viewed as Biden’s promise and this recent proclamation, pointing to a debate clip where Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) pressed Biden on his stance on marijuana legalization: “I think we should decriminalize marijuana, period,” Biden said onstage. “And I think everyone, anyone who has a record should be let out of jail, their records expunged, and be completely zeroed out. … Everybody gets out, record expunged.”
The White House has insisted the pardons are a fulfillment of a 2020 campaign promise. In response to a request for comment, a spokesperson pointed to previous commitments from Biden, including from his website in 2020, which included Biden’s belief that “no one should be imprisoned for the use of illegal drugs alone.”
The organizers of Monday’s protest, including DC Marijuana Justice, which worked to legalize the drug in the city, sent a letter to the president requesting he use his executive authority to release at least 100 people incarcerated on federal cannabis charges. They argue that there are thousands of people serving long-term prison sentences for activities involving amounts of marijuana “that are far less than what dispensaries routinely handle on a daily basis,” the letter reads.
It has been only a decade since Colorado and Washington became the first U.S. states to legalize the possession and sale of marijuana for recreational use. Thirty-seven states, three territories and the District allow the medical use of marijuana, as of Feb. 3. And voters in Arkansas, Maryland, Missouri, North Dakota and South Dakota will soon decide whether recreational marijuana can be used legally in their state.
Still, Black people have been arrested at 3.64 times the rate of White people for having marijuana, despite using the substance at similar rates, according to an American Civil Liberties Union review of arrests between 2010 and 2018.
The first step in ending the war on drugs — which has disproportionally affected Black and Brown communities — is releasing people who have been incarcerated for nonviolent marijuana offenses, said Jason Ortiz, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy.
Offenses like cultivation, distribution and conspiracy, Ortiz said, are the same actions major companies are able to commercialize and profit from today.
“There are multibillion dollar companies that sell thousands and thousands of pounds of cannabis a year and operate in multiple states. So if we’re going to allow for that type of commerce to happen, everyone in prison who did anything even remotely close to that should be immediately let out.”
Rubis said he understands there are punishments for his choices in the 1990s, but decades without his freedom? He doesn’t think it’s fair.
When he was incarcerated, he said, his then-wife was three months pregnant. His eldest son was 5 years old and the other was 3 years old. He hasn’t been able to watch his kids grow up, and dreams of rebuilding relationships lost to time.
Rubis who was born in El Salvador, and as a child moved with his family to Houston, has remained close with his sister, brother and his parents. But he’s worried that by the time he is released, his mother and father will no longer be alive.
He tries to stay positive by packing his cell with books, about 100 of them, he says, filling up shelves, a table, and stacked in a corner. On his pillow, he places his Bible — his main source of motivation and inspiration as he meditates every morning.
“I declare that my day is going to be a beautiful day, that my day is going to be peaceful,” he said. “That I’m going to find joy in it no matter what.” | 2022-10-23T11:33:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Protesters to rally in DC for people left out of Biden’s pot pardons - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/23/dc-protest-marijuana-incarceration-biden/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/23/dc-protest-marijuana-incarceration-biden/ |
By Steven Petrow
A person holds an umbrella in the rainbow flag colors in the annual Gay Pride Parade, part of the Durban Pride Festival, on June 29, 2019, in Durban, South Africa. (Rajesh Jantilal/AFP/Getty Images)
Who would bring you chicken soup if you were sick? For most people of a certain age, that’s easy — a spouse or an adult child would step up.
For many LGBTQ people, however, it’s not a simple question at all.
“Many [would] have to think really hard about this,” said Imani Woody, an academic and community advocate who retired from AARP to start an organization serving LGBTQ seniors. She said chicken soup is a stand-in for having a social support system, which many of us need.
“Build your village right now,” Woody said.
A few years ago, I would have said that my then-husband would be my primary caregiver if I became ill or disabled. I’d have done the same for him. Now I’m 65 and divorced, and this issue — who can I call on? — is top of mind for me.
It’s also a serious concern for many LGBTQ people I know, whether single or partnered. Take one friend of mine, for example, who is 60 and a single gay man. He took care of his dying father last year (as I’d done four years earlier with my parents). During his dad’s lengthy illness, we talked about two questions that terrify us (and I don’t use that word lightly): “Who will take care of us when we need help?” “Where will we go when we can no longer take care of ourselves?”
Of course, aging is an equal opportunity challenge for straight and queer people alike. But in interviews with more than four dozen LGBTQ people, singled and partnered, I heard repeatedly about the anxieties faced by queer elders.
4 ways that older people can bolster or improve their mental health
SAGE/Advocacy & Services for LGBT Elders, the National Resource Center on LGBTQ+ Aging, and Healthypeople.gov document the health challenges LGBTQ people face. We’re twice as likely as our straight counterparts to be single and live alone, which means more likely to be isolated and lonely. We’re four times less likely to have children. We’re more likely to face poverty and homelessness, and to have poor physical and mental health. Many of us report delaying or avoiding necessary medical care because we face discrimination or mistreatment by health-care providers. If you’re queer and trans or a person of color, these disparities are heightened further. (There are about 3 million LGBTQ people 50 and older.)
“It’s a very serious challenge for many LGBTQ older people,” said Michael Adams, chief executive of SAGE. “The harsh reality is that there just aren’t as many opportunities for older LGBTQ folks when it comes to creating, building and maintaining social connections. … We’re lacking the personal connections that often come with traditional family structures.”
In part, that’s because LGBTQ people have often found themselves rejected by family, friends and community in their younger years because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. To boot, we could not legally marry until 2015, when the Supreme Court ruled in favor of marriage equality. But even married queer folks can end up alone after a divorce or death, which often brings different challenges than those faced by straight people facing the same life-changing events.
An 80-year-old lesbian put it to me this way: For straight people, “If you were to go into a nursing home, you would not have to worry that people taking care of you did not approve of your orientation, or that the facility would not take you because they were a ‘religious’ community. These are real issues for the queer community.”
Another friend tells me he has no plans for the future except a guest room and a second bathroom. And another said he hopes by the time he needs care, there will be an LGBTQ senior community in his city. “Otherwise, I have nothing,” he said.
A former colleague of mine, a lesbian, told me she worries about the cost of senior living: “I dread it all. I won’t have any dough then, so it’s really up to fate.”
Even in midlife, it’s smart to start thinking about where you’ll live when you’re old
Senior living communities, which provide support for the aging, can be less than welcoming to those who are LGBTQ. Staff, some of whom have traditional views on sexuality, gender identity and marriage, also pose challenges to LGBTQ elders since many facilities lack the training and policies to discourage discrimination, which can lead to harassment, Adams said.
Patrick Mizelle, who lived in Georgia with his husband, told Kaiser Health News several years ago that he worried about how “churchy” or faith-based their local options seemed, and feared they would not be accepted as a couple. “Have I come this far only to go back in the closet and pretend we are brothers?” he asked.
Rather than take that risk, they moved across the country to a queer-friendly senior living complex in Portland, Ore. They are among the lucky ones in that they could afford both the move and the cost of this domestic situation.
How do you find a welcoming LGBTQ senior living arrangement? SAGE publishes a comprehensive list of long-term care facilities (organized by state and city, along with level of care) that it has found to be welcoming.
“We also have resources about the kinds of questions that a consumer can ask to figure out if a provider is paying attention to the steps that need to be taken to become more welcoming to LGBTQ older adults,” Adams said.
SAGE also offers training to staff members at facilities that provide elder care, and has partnered with the Human Rights Campaign, the national LGBTQ lobbying and advocacy organization, in launching the Long-Term Care Equality Index, which sets out best practices to help make these facilities welcoming to the LGBTQ community. More than 75 facilities have made pledges to abide by these best practices. AARP also provides a list of affordable LGBTQ-welcoming senior housing.
What else can LGBTQ people do to find connection, to find a tribe? Many suggest the importance of developing intergenerational friendships early on in life, even as early as your 30s and 40s. Elders can impart wisdom and experience to younger LGBTQ people, who can provide help in return; as decades pass, the young ones become the elders.
Recently, the Modern Elder Academy, which refers to itself as a “midlife wisdom school,” and the founders of Death Over Dinner, launched a program called “Generations Over Dinner” expressly to connect people of all ages.
The Harvard Study of Adult Development, which began tracking more than 238 men (regardless of sexual orientation) in 1938 and continues to this day, has reported consistently that relationships are the critical ingredient in well-being, particularly as we age.
Put simply, the more connected we are, the more likely we are to be healthy and happy. To paraphrase Imani Woody: Start building those bridges. | 2022-10-23T11:34:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The anxieties of growing old when you’re LGBTQ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/23/lgbtq-aging-worries/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/10/23/lgbtq-aging-worries/ |
Forgotten U-2 pilots helped end the Cuban Missile Crisis 60 years ago
The debris of an American U-2 airplane shot down by the Cubans during the 1962 missile crisis is scattered over the ground on Oct. 27, 1962. The airplane, piloted by Maj. Rudolph Anderson, was making a reconnaissance flight above the island. (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)
Gerald McIlmoyle had an incredible view of the world and no time to enjoy it. Some 13 miles below him, the green island of Cuba stood out against the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea, but he was focused on his perilous mission.
It was Oct. 25, 1962, and the U.S. Air Force captain was piloting a U-2 spy plane on the edge of Earth’s atmosphere, taking high-resolution images of nuclear missile sites on the island nation about 100 miles from Florida. The world teetered toward total destruction as tensions escalated between the United States and Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis 60 years ago this week.
As McIlmoyle snapped photos, a flash of light caught his eye. The Soviet and Cuban militaries had launched a pair of surface-to-air missiles. Thankfully, a course correction he’d made moments earlier caused the missiles to miss his plane.
The Cold War had suddenly heated up, and America’s U-2 pilots were on the front lines of a dangerous game of brinkmanship between two heavily armed superpowers. Their bravery gave U.S. President John F. Kennedy the proof he needed to confront Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and find a way to avoid a nuclear nightmare.
How Pearl Harbor forced the world’s first around-the-world commercial flight
“These men risked their lives in an effort to save mankind, and I’m not being hyperbolic when I say that,” said Casey Sherman, co-author of the 2018 book “Above & Beyond: John F. Kennedy and America’s Most Dangerous Cold War Spy Mission.” “During those 13 days in October 1962, we came the closest in history to thermonuclear war.”
The Cuban missile crisis began on Oct. 14, when Maj. Steve Heyser snapped the first shots of the missile sites, triggering a series of missions by 11 U-2 pilots to learn exactly what was happening on the ground in Cuba. Largely forgotten today, their actions probably prevented nuclear war. One of those spy-plane pilots would make the ultimate sacrifice for his country, while another barely escaped being shot down by Soviet jets.
“These pilots were completely unarmed,” Sherman said. “They were flying in defenseless aircraft. Even though they were 13 miles high, they were still susceptible to airstrikes from the ground, which ultimately led to the death of one of the pilots. Nobody remembers there was a KIA [killed in action] during the Cuban missile crisis.”
The lone casualty by enemy fire during that tumultuous two-week period was Maj. Rudy Anderson. The Air Force pilot, who jumped at every chance to fly U-2 missions over Cuba, was not scheduled to be in the air on Oct. 27, 1962. In fact, no one was. However, military planners changed their minds at the last minute, and Anderson volunteered.
The veteran pilot was used to dangerous missions. Anderson had earned two Distinguished Flying Crosses for reconnaissance flights over North Korea in 1953. He joined the 4080th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing in 1957 and soon became the top U-2 pilot, with more than 1,000 hours of flying time.
73 years after winning first ‘Top Gun’ competition, Black pilots are honored
On that fateful day, Anderson climbed into his spy plane and took off for Cuba. The Lockheed U-2, still in use today, first entered service in 1955. Though equipped with sophisticated technology, the plane itself is simply constructed — mostly an airframe and engine. Its main purpose is taking photographs of objects on Earth from the edge of space. It features no armor or weapons.
“You can’t even fight back in a U-2,” said Mike Tougias, who co-wrote “Above & Beyond” with Sherman. “You’re basically a sitting duck.”
Flying the U-2 at such high altitudes required a pressurized suit and helmet similar to those donned by astronauts in the Mercury space program. They protected pilots from the thin air and cold temperatures 72,000 feet above the earth — but not from weapons fired at them.
As Anderson soared through the stratosphere, Soviet and Cuban troops launched two surface-to-air missiles. Both exploded too far away to cause serious damage to the aircraft. However, a tiny piece of shrapnel pierced the jet’s fuselage and penetrated Anderson’s suit, causing it to depressurize. He probably lost consciousness almost immediately and died in seconds. His pilotless plane then spun out of control and fell 13 miles to Earth, crashing near the Cuban village of Veguitas.
“It didn’t take much to bring a U-2 down,” Tougias said. “There are photos of the fuselage on the ground with cockpit intact. I remember McIlmoyle telling me, ‘All it takes is one little piece of shrapnel and the U-2 will come spiraling down like a leaf from a tree.’ ”
Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union further escalated during another U-2 mission that occurred about the time Anderson was shot down. Thousands of miles away, Capt. Chuck Maultsby was flying a spy plane over Alaska toward the North Pole to take radiation readings of Soviet nuclear tests on an island off Siberia.
Unknowingly, the Air Force pilot had drifted of course, his compass rendered useless by the magnetic north pole and interference from an active aurora borealis display. By the time he discovered his error, he was being chased by six Soviet MiG interceptor jets.
He flew as high he could — higher than the Soviet jets could reach — but he was low on fuel, so he attempted to glide back to safety. Meanwhile, the U.S. Strategic Air Command launched F-102 fighter jets armed with tactical nuclear missiles. If those American pilots fired on the enemy planes, it could trigger the war both superpowers were trying to avoid in the Caribbean.
Fortunately, Maultsby was able to avoid the Soviets and land safely on a remote airstrip in Alaska.
The harrowing, forgotten journey of the first transatlantic flight
Soon after these events, the world stepped back from the precipice of nuclear war. Kennedy and Khrushchev — concerned that an event like the downing of a spy plane could escalate into a conflagration — negotiated a deal to end the crisis. The Soviets agreed to remove the nuclear missiles from Cuba; the Americans later dismantled similar sites in Turkey.
About a week after the crisis cooled, McIlmoyle shook hands with Kennedy when the president met with the U-2 pilots to acknowledge their heroic efforts. “I’ll never be able to thank you men enough for bringing back those pictures which allowed me to peacefully end this crisis,” he told McIlmoyle, who died last year.
Anderson was posthumously presented with the Air Force Cross — the first airman to receive this award for heroism in military operations against an armed enemy.
Today, Anderson is remembered with a small plaque at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas. There are no other memorials or statues honoring the men who flew U-2 missions with the future of humanity on their wings.
“The heroism of the U-2 pilots has been lost to history,” Sherman said. “They should be recognized and honored for what they did. These men were heroes. Rudy Anderson’s name should be on the tip of everyone’s tongue, but people don’t remember him.”
The ugly reason ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ didn’t become our national anthem for a century
A century ago, Mississippi’s Senate voted to send all the state’s Black people to Africa | 2022-10-23T11:34:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Forgotten U-2 pilots helped end Cuban Missile Crisis 60 years ago - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/10/23/cuban-missile-crisis-u2-pilots/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/10/23/cuban-missile-crisis-u2-pilots/ |
Blue tarps cover houses in a Cape Coral neighborhood affected by Hurricane Ian. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
FORT MYERS, Fla. — The last time Antonio followed a hurricane to Florida, authorities detained him at a day-labor stand and sent the construction worker back to his native Mexico. After nearly 20 years in this country, he accepted the order to leave. He wanted to see his aging parents.
But he returned to the state days after Hurricane Ian, sleeping in his pickup truck in a discount store parking lot. Glancing at the street, waiting for someone to roll up and offer him work, he said he was anxious because Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has declared that undocumented immigrants are unwelcome in Florida.
“We’re not here to steal; we’re here to work,” said Antonio, 48, standing beside his truck in a hard-hit city in Southwest Florida. “This is helping.”
Florida’s governor upended the national debate over the record number of arrests on the southern border by flying newly arrived migrants last month to liberal-leaning Massachusetts, ostensibly to prevent them from burdening his state with the cost of their education and health care. But after Hurricane Ian inflicted billions of dollars in damage, undocumented workers came to the Sunshine State to rebuild, joining tens of thousands of others who were already here — and who construction managers say are sorely needed.
DeSantis’s office did not respond to questions about the undocumented workers arriving to clean up, but he has promised that more migrant flights will come despite a Treasury Department inspector general investigation into the government money that paid for them.
Federal watchdog probes whether covid aid enabled Florida’s migrant flights
Construction is one of the biggest employers of undocumented immigrants, with 1.4 million workers across the country filling more than 1 in 10 jobs, researchers say. Nationwide, undocumented immigrants account for 23 percent of construction laborers, 38 percent of drywallers and 32 percent of roofers, according to a report by the nonprofit Center for American Progress last year.
Texas, where Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is paying to bus recent border crossers to predominantly Democratic states and the District of Columbia, has the highest number, some 311,000 construction workers, according to the most recent available data from the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. Florida had more than 100,000 undocumented construction workers before Ian hit.
Undocumented immigrants also dominate a nomadic new workforce that is chasing violent storms fueled by climate change, accounting for the vast majority of the day laborers who cleaned up after Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and Hurricane Ida last year, according to the National Day Laborer Organizing Network.
“What has emerged is a transient workforce like farmworkers of yesteryear,” said Saket Soni, executive director of Resilience Force, a nonprofit that has helped hundreds of undocumented workers on the ground since Ian. “They follow storm after storm, city after city.”
‘I have to take care of my family’
Around Southwest Florida, drivers in pickup trucks and big white vans arrive before dawn to collect workers from sidewalks and parking lots. They offer work demolishing storm-damaged buildings on wealthy Sanibel Island and tarping roofs in Fort Myers. Other laborers are hired to rip up soggy floors in places like Bonita Springs. Some pay $7 an hour. Others $200 a day.
Immigrant workers interviewed in hurricane-ravaged communities said their phones lit up with offers after Ian demolished restaurants, damaged resorts and flooded bungalows up and down the sugar-sand coastline of western Florida. Recruiters even showed up in New York, advocates said, to hire Venezuelans who had been bused there by Republican governors.
But even with ample work, frustration is mounting. Across the parking lot, a dejected group of Hondurans said a man named “Carlos” had called them promising crew chief Fernando Jimenez $600 and his workers $400 each for two days of construction work. After they drove in from Austin, he offered them $100 each. They quit.
“You’re risking your life for $100 without security,” said Jimenez, 45, who has a green card. His friends are undocumented.
The scenes of exasperation echoed along the coast, spurring complaints that the Biden administration is acting too slowly to expand protections for immigrant workers. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas issued a memo a year ago allowing undocumented workers, in any industry, to apply for work permits and protection from being deported if they file complaints about labor violations with government agencies or are caught up in worksite investigations.
Just over two dozen permits have been approved, and more are pending, according to DHS, out of a nationwide workforce of approximately 7 million.
Federal law prohibits knowingly employing workers in the country illegally, but historically the federal government has been far more likely to deport immigrants than to punish the companies that hire them.
Resilience Force is one of the few visible supporters on the ground for immigrants. Team members visit day-labor stands to register workers, offer them membership cards, and negotiate with federal and local officials to improve their working conditions. And sometimes staff members confront construction bosses who allegedly put immigrants to work and then refuse to pay them.
Pedro Carias, 37, an immigrant from Honduras, told the group that his former boss pointed to a handgun and threatened to shoot him and his 5-year-old daughter after he demanded more than $6,000 in back pay after Ian. He said his boss also threatened to report him to immigration officials so he’d be deported.
“I need my money,” Carias told Soni and his co-workers one morning last week, saying he had a sick son in Honduras and needed to send money home. “I have to take care of my family.”
‘Without them Florida is nothing’
In the darkened parking lot where the day laborers stood on a recent morning in Fort Myers, the cash economy was going full throttle after Ian.
One driver who arrived said he couldn’t find workers elsewhere. “Without them Florida is nothing,” the driver said of undocumented workers, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid getting into trouble with authorities. “No work can be done.”
Some workers scrambled to the trucks steadily filling the impromptu job site, but others hung back, frustrated with how chaotic things seemed. Some had been to the aftermath of as many as 12 hurricanes, but the system always felt the same. There was no place safe to sleep. They slept in trucks in parking lots where police could shoo them away. They bathed with buckets and bottled water or at truck stops. Wages varied dramatically. And they worried about risk: Disasters expose workers to toxic chemicals, unstable buildings, injuries, and even death.
“Maybe they could ask the police not to bother us,” said Antonio, the graying construction worker from Mexico, worried about facing deportation again. Associated General Contractors of America, a commercial trade organization, says more than 90 percent of contractors report that they are struggling to hire workers nationwide.
But it remained unclear if local Republican leaders would aid the workers, or even acknowledge that they are here.
‘They check their papers’
One night days after the hurricane, residents and political leaders gathered glumly at the Collier County commissioners headquarters in Naples — where half the city’s residents are elderly, according to census figures — to hear about federal recovery aid.
Many were still stunned by the powerful storm. Normally the area is a haven of balmy 85-degree temperatures, seaside sunsets and thriving gardens of cypress and rubber trees.
Now countless homes and restaurants are ruined and reeking of mold. Heaps of soggy mattresses, overstuffed sofas and moldy bookcases stood several feet high on sidewalks last week, waiting to be taken away. Ian plucked shingles off roofs, sliced open drywall, and flung boats onto median strips.
State Rep. Bob Rommel, a Naples Republican whose bistro was badly damaged in the storm, said he thought the state did not need to rely on undocumented immigrants. He worried that such workers might be exploited or lack proper skills.
“There’s plenty of documented workers in America that come here, and they can make tons of money,” Rommel said. “And there’s plenty of workers that are willing to come here and do the job.”
State Sen. Kathleen Passidomo (R), the incoming Senate president, said that the area was suffering a shortage of construction workers before the storm and that she expects out-of-state workers to flock to the area as they did after Hurricane Michael in 2018.
Told many were undocumented, she said, “That I have not heard.”
“I don’t hear from my constituents that that’s been an issue,” she said. “They check their papers.”
Antonio, a stocky man who never married and devotes his life to chasing storms, joined the workers in Florida after Hurricane Michael battered the Panhandle, several hundred miles from Naples. He worked for months, including a week spent demolishing three apartments for which he says he was never paid, until local police arrested him for trespassing in a parking lot, court records show.
He recounted returning home to Guanajuato, where the money he’d earned in the United States had rebuilt his parents’ house, to see his family. But he said he paid a smuggler more than $7,500 to return last year. He lives mostly in Texas but said he prefers to travel all over to places where people need help.
He watched residents sob in the streets after floods surged through Kentucky in July, and shook hands with residents in Florida still shocked by Ian’s destruction.
“I know they are broken, even on the inside,” he said.
Critics say hiring undocumented workers puts everyone at risk. Laborers working off the books in risky conditions are on their own if they get injured or fall ill. They sometimes handle heavy, dangerous equipment — which can be a liability to themselves or others if they have not been properly trained.
Officials keen on keeping out undocumented immigrants point to incidents like one on Sept. 22, days before Ian, in Pinellas County, near Tampa.
Juan Molina, an undocumented immigrant from Honduras working on a road construction project, was arrested on charges of fatally striking Sheriff’s Office Deputy Mike Hartwick with a front loader and allegedly fleeing the scene, court records show. The contractor, Archer Western-de Moya Joint Venture II, said it vetted Molina and another worker arrested in the case through E-Verify, a federal database that checks a person’s eligibility to work, and are investigating how they cleared that system. Molina has pleaded not guilty. His lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.
Sheriff Bob Gualtieri expressed frustration that they had been hired, saying at a news conference that they “shouldn’t be here and they shouldn’t be working and they shouldn’t be out there doing this.”
But others say the 11 million undocumented immigrants are deeply embedded in the U.S. economy, paying taxes and taking jobs that Americans won’t do. President Donald Trump (R) — who won easily in the counties hit hardest by the hurricane — railed against undocumented immigrants, although the Trump Organization hired them to work on projects such as its golf courses, from New York to Florida.
Walter A. Pavon Jr., an immigrant from Ecuador and construction company owner in Orlando who voted for Trump, said it will be “impossible” for Florida to rebuild without undocumented laborers. He said he is joining the American Business Immigration Coalition, which is fighting for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
“That’s just the reality,” Pavon said. “Our labor force is already stretched super thin. It’s hard to find good people.”
Some homeowners in Southwest Florida understood the governor’s decision to fly migrants to Massachusetts to compel liberal jurisdictions that defend undocumented immigrants to experience what it is like on the border.
But they do not necessarily check on whether everyone working on their homes is here legally.
Douglas Lowe, 67, who normally resides in Utah, broke a sweat shoveling piles of garbage away from a yellow bungalow in Naples that he plans to renovate and raise 10 feet higher, too late for Ian’s floodwaters.
He said he has chosen licensed contractors, wants workers to be in the United States legally, and understands DeSantis’ frustration with the influx at the southern border.
Lowe also recognizes that contractors were struggling to keep workers before the hurricane hit — but said it was the contractors’ responsibility to check all their papers, not his.
“I can’t run their business,” he said. | 2022-10-23T11:34:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Florida needs workers to rebuild after Ian. Undocumented migrants are stepping in. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2022/10/23/florida-hurricane-ian-migrant-workers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2022/10/23/florida-hurricane-ian-migrant-workers/ |
‘House of the Dragon’ succession drama is rooted in actual history
Questions of legitimacy, female rule and queenship are the stuff of both history and fiction
Perspective by Emilie M. Brinkman
Emilie M. Brinkman is a 2018 Ph.D. graduate in history from Purdue University, specializing in the political culture of early modern England.
The season finale of HBO’s “House of the Dragon” airs this evening. Situated in the fantasy world of Westeros, this series serves as a prequel to G.R.R. Martin’s “Game of Thrones,” taking place approximately 200 years before the events of the previous TV show. The rulers of the Seven Kingdoms are House Targaryen — the silver haired, dragon-riding royal family notorious for their incestuous behavior and general madness. In the new series, the Targaryens are faced with multiple political crises, most notably from within their own family.
The crux of the entire series revolves around the issue of succession, a theme that pervades almost every episode and drives the storyline throughout the first season. From the outset, the old and good king Jaehaerys, who has no surviving children, is tasked with naming a successor from among his grandchildren. He faces a dilemma: should the throne go to his oldest living grandchild (a woman) or to her younger, but male, cousin? Would the lords of the kingdom accept a queen as their ruler? Or would choosing a man avoid political chaos and bloodshed? Such questions ultimately lead to a nasty civil war between the Targaryen family known canonically as the “Dance of the Dragons.”
“House of the Dragon” is an interesting and thoughtful study in royal succession, and the problems that can arise when there are too many heirs with potential claims and legal ambiguity regarding who should inherit. And the show captures a historical reality: that the issue of succession was complex and often did lead to war and revolution.
In both European history and the fictional world of Westeros, royal succession (as well as inheritance in general) has been guided by primogeniture, a system which, at its core, favors legitimate firstborn children. In Western tradition, the practice dates back to the medieval period and feudalism. Lords held massive estates which included land, castles and other physical property, as well as contracts with tenants or vassals. It would have been extremely detrimental to feudal estates if they were divided among multiple heirs since these estates functioned best as a cohesive unit. Thus, it became tradition to will entire estates (and the noble titles that were inherently tied to them) to only one inheritor. In so doing, primogeniture maintained the wealth and power of noble families, and ensured the social stability of medieval Europe.
There are several different forms of primogeniture that have been practiced throughout European history. In England (and later Britain), the monarchy traditionally followed what is referred to as male-preference primogeniture, which bestows the throne unto the firstborn male child. The firstborn son would be first in line to inherit, and then the second and so on. For example, when King Richard I of England (popularly known as “Richard the Lionheart”) died without any legitimate children in 1199, his younger brother Prince John became king.
However, male-preference primogeniture did not exclude women entirely from succession. The throne could go to a female member of a dynasty if there were no other male claimants (including potential brothers, nephews or sons). This explains why numerous queens were able to rule in their own right throughout British history, beginning with the first undisputed queen regnant Mary I (reigned 1553-58).
Such guidelines aimed to ensure a seamless transition of power and avoid conflict, which frequently happened when different people claimed rights to the throne (as also seen in “House of the Dragon”). For example, King Edward III of England (reigned 1327-77) had eight sons, five of whom lived to adulthood: Edward, Lionel, John, Edmund and Thomas. After the death of his oldest son and heir in 1376, the king named his grandson Richard as his heir, the only child of his recently departed son Edward. He also indicated that second in line to the throne would be his third son, John, since the elder Lionel was already dead.
However, this move broke from a precedent set years earlier by one of Edward III’s predecessors that legally acknowledged the right of royal women to inherit the throne: by this statute, Lionel’s daughter Philippa should be next in line, as the children of the second son (regardless of gender) would outrank John (the third son). The crown passed to Henry IV, John’s son, after Richard was deposed.
For nearly a century, political tension festered between the descendants of John (the Duke of Lancaster) and Philippa over this issue of succession, culminating in a series of brutal and bloody civil wars known as the Wars of the Roses (1455-1487), which pitted the House of Lancaster against the House of York (Philippa’s line).
By the 17th century, instead of gender, religion became the paramount concern as tensions between Protestants and Catholics grew to an all-time high. King James II, a Catholic, had two Protestant daughters by his first marriage, Mary and Anne. When he married an Italian princess Mary of Modena (also a Catholic) in 1673, fears exploded among the English populace that his new wife would give birth to a son, who, by the rules of male-preference primogeniture, would inherit the throne over Mary and Anne.
These fears were realized in 1688 when the royal couple’s son James Francis Edward Stuart was born. With the birth of this new heir, the line of succession would be firmly in the hands of papists. As a result, several Protestant noblemen helped orchestrate a political coup, deposing King James and placing his oldest daughter Mary on the throne with her husband William in what has been referred to as the Glorious Revolution. In this moment, a Protestant queen was far more preferable than a Catholic king.
Time and time again, royal succession has shaped the course of European and world history, bringing about the rise and fall of political dynasties as well as major social, cultural and religious developments.
Current rules regarding primogeniture and succession also reflect more recent social changes. The Succession to the Crown Act of 2013 declared that the eldest child, regardless of gender, is first to inherit. This historic change provides more gender equality for the great-grandchildren of the late Queen Elizabeth II (1952-2022) in terms of the royal succession. For example, Princess Charlotte, the second child and only daughter of William and Katherine, Prince and Princess of Wales, is now situated ahead of her younger brother Prince Louis in the line of succession.
In “House of the Dragon,” the issue of succession similarly impacts the course of world events, revealing how questions of legitimacy, female rule and queenship transcend history and fiction. | 2022-10-23T11:34:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'House of the Dragon' is a study in royal succession - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/23/house-dragons-succession-drama-is-rooted-actual-history/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2022/10/23/house-dragons-succession-drama-is-rooted-actual-history/ |
Test kits distributed to a middle school in San Antonio last month. ( and The Washington Post)
Members of the U.S. armed forces are fingerprinted, their DNA is collected, and the information is kept on file and in storage. It is a precaution for those terrible situations in which a body needs to be identified and an acknowledgement of the danger inherent in serving in the military. That Texas officials think schoolchildren should take the same precautions as troops who go into battle speaks volumes about the twisted priorities that have protected gun rights at the expense of children.
“A gift of safety, from our family to yours” reads the message printed on fingerprint and DNA kits that are being handed out to parents of Texas public school students to help them identify their children “in case of an emergency.” Parents who opt in — the program is free and voluntary — will be able to keep their child’s DNA and fingerprint information at home, and can later provide it to law enforcement agencies in emergency situations if needed. The 2021 law establishing a “child identification program” doesn’t explicitly say it’s for identifying victims of school shootings, and text on the kits only references missing children. But five months after a gunman killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., it is hard not to make the connection.
“I worry every single day when I send my kid to school. Now we’re giving parents DNA kits so that when their child is killed with the same weapon of war I had when I was in Afghanistan, parents can use them to identify them?” said the mother of a Texas second-grader. “Yeah! Awesome! Let’s identify kids after they’ve been murdered instead of fixing issues that could ultimately prevent them from being murdered,” Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son, Uziyah Garcia, was killed in the Uvalde shooting, posted on Twitter. Among the gut-wrenching things we learned about Uvalde was that authorities had to ask for DNA samples from parents because it was hard to identify the bodies due to the devastating damage caused by the high-powered rifle the gunman used. A pediatrician who treated Uvalde victims told Congress what he witnessed: “Two children whose bodies had been so pulverized by the bullets fired at them, decapitated, whose flesh had been so ripped apart that the only clue as to their identities was the blood-spattered cartoon clothes still clinging to them.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), who is running for reelection this year, has refused to even entertain the idea of trying to do something about the availability of weapons of war that did such unspeakable damage. Such as banning them or, at the very least, changing the law so that someone such as the Uvalde shooter wouldn’t be able to legally buy an assault rifle just after they turned 18. Instead, the state hands out kits that make it easier for parents to identify their slaughtered children and has the gall to do it in the name of safety.
Opinion|In Uvalde, there were failures on all fronts | 2022-10-23T11:34:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | DNA kits in Texas public schools show the state's twisted priorities - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/23/dna-tests-texas-public-schools/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/23/dna-tests-texas-public-schools/ |
America’s religious divide isn’t really about religion
Abortion rights advocates demonstrate on Sept. 29 in Doylestown, Pa. (Angela Weiss/AFP/Getty Images)
When politics itself becomes religion, it’s easy to lose track of what an authentically religious voice in public life sounds like.
But after being defeated on key issues, the culture warriors have had to plow new ground. The attack on trans people and drag queens reflects a retreat from the battle against same-sex marriage, which is now endorsed by 71 percent of Americans, according to Gallup, including a majority of Republicans.
In 2004, Gallup found that 30 percent of those who called themselves pro-life would vote only for a candidate who shared their views on abortion; only 11 percent of pro-choice voters made that commitment. President George W. Bush won 90 percent of these single-issue abortion opponents.
This year, it’s Democrats who are voting on abortion, in reaction to the high court. The Pew Research Center found 75 percent of Democratic voters rating abortion as a “very important” issue, compared with 39 percent of Republicans. As a result, Republican candidates might still describe themselves as “pro-life,” but they are increasingly reluctant to say exactly what this means. Severe restrictions were largely theoretical when Roe protected abortion rights.
The most arresting evidence that identity, not faith, is driving politics is the behavior of two of the most devoutly Christian groups in the nation: White evangelicals and Black Protestants. According to Oct. 10-16 data provided to me by Pew, White evangelicals were backing Republican candidates for Congress over Democrats by 75 percent to 13 percent. Black Protestants were voting 70 percent to 4 percent for Democrats.
One of the country’s most prominent Black Protestants is on the ballot next month. Sen. Raphael G. Warnock (D-Ga.) is also a pastor and the author of “The Divided Mind of the Black Church: Theology, Piety, and Public Witness,” a reflection on the interaction between piety and activism. | 2022-10-23T11:34:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The religious divide in the midterms isn't really about religion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/23/midterms-republican-evangelicals-black-protestants-religion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/23/midterms-republican-evangelicals-black-protestants-religion/ |
Quarterback Dak Prescott has been practicing and will start for the Cowboys Sunday for the first time since Week 1. (LM Otero/AP)
Dak Prescott and Tua Tagovailoa will play on the Sunday of Week 7 of the NFL season.
It remains to be seen whether the same can be said of Christian McCaffrey.
Russell Wilson, meanwhile, will be reduced to spectator status.
Prescott, the two-time Pro Bowl quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys, makes his return to the lineup when they host the Detroit Lions in an early-afternoon game in Arlington, Tex. Prescott missed five games after suffering a fractured right thumb during a season-opening loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He underwent surgery the following day.
The Cowboys went 4-1 in his absence, winning the first four games started by Cooper Rush before losing last Sunday night at Philadelphia. Rush avoided mistakes until his three-interception performance against the Eagles and the Cowboys relied on their defense. If Prescott gets the offense revved up, the Cowboys perhaps can challenge the front-running Eagles and the second-place New York Giants for NFC East and conference supremacy.
The other significant quarterback return comes Sunday night in Miami Gardens, Fla. Tagovailoa is set to play for the Miami Dolphins against the Pittsburgh Steelers after missing two games due to a concussion suffered during a Sept. 29 game at Cincinnati. He was taken from the field on a stretcher that night and transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital.
Tagovailoa’s case led the NFL and the NFL Players Association to conduct a joint review of the level of compliance with the concussion protocols in his evaluation and, ultimately, to enact a change based on their finding that the protocols technically were followed but the outcome was not what was intended.
On the field, the Dolphins have struggled lately. They lost both games missed by Tagovailoa and are 0-3 since starting the season 3-0. They will try to get back to resembling the formidable team they were in the season’s early stages, when Tagovailoa was effective in utilizing the talents of wide receivers Jaylen Waddle and Tyreek Hill. Waddle is listed as questionable on the Dolphins’ injury report for this game because of a shoulder injury.
The Denver Broncos will be without Wilson, who has a hamstring injury, when they attempt to halt their downward spiral by hosting the surprisingly competent New York Jets in a late-afternoon game. Even after trading for Wilson in the offseason and signing him last month to a five-year, $245 million contract extension, the Broncos are on a three-game losing streak and are off to a 2-4 start.
Brewer: Russell Wilson wanted more. Now he has to salvage whatever he can.
Wilson and the offense have had their issues, most recently in an overtime defeat Monday night to the Los Angeles Chargers in Inglewood, Calif. The Broncos on Saturday ruled out Wilson for this game after originally listing him as questionable on the injury report and calling his playing status a game-time decision.
Backup Brett Rypien is set to make his second NFL start. Rypien is the nephew of Mark Rypien, Washington’s former Super Bowl-winning quarterback.
The San Francisco 49ers have not specified whether McCaffrey will make his debut when they host the Kansas City Chiefs in a late-afternoon game in Santa Clara., Calif.
The 49ers traded four draft choices Thursday to the Carolina Panthers for McCaffrey, a former all-pro running back.
McCaffrey joined the Niners in time to be on the practice field Friday. He is back in the Bay Area after playing in college at Stanford. The trade represents a Super Bowl push for the 49ers, as McCaffrey joins wide receiver Deebo Samuel, tight end George Kittle and left tackle Trent Williams on a star-laden offense around quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo.
But while the Niners have the NFL’s top-ranked defense, they have been mediocre on offense thus far during a 3-3 start to the season. | 2022-10-23T11:35:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NFL Sunday primer: Dak Prescott, Tua Tagovailoa return - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/nfl-sunday-takeaways/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/nfl-sunday-takeaways/ |
Distinguished person of the week: This judge is holding Trump accountable
U.S. District Judge David Carter is escorted by U.S. Marshals Service officers after holding a court hearing in Los Angeles on Feb. 4. (Damian Dovarganes/AP)
If you’re looking for a road map to hold former president Donald Trump accountable for his role in the attempted coup, turn to U.S. District Court Judge David Carter.
Carter, in a ruling back in March, wrote that Trump and his lawyer John Eastman “more likely than not” committed crimes in their scheme to reject certified electors and replace them with an alternate, phony slate. The potential crimes, he stated, included obstruction of an official proceeding and conspiracy to defraud the United States. As a result, he found that more than 100 emails from Eastman were not shielded by attorney-client privilege and must be released to the House Jan. 6 select committee.
Former federal prosecutor Joyce White Vance writes in a Substack post, “This is a civil case and the issue before Judge Carter is whether to enforce the subpoena the [Jan. 6 committee] sent to Eastman. . . . It doesn’t mean an indictment of Trump will automatically follow.” Still, Vance explains, Carter’s ruling amounts to a federal court judge arguing that there is sufficient evidence “from the mouth of his own attorney, that [Trump] knew the Big Lie was a Big Lie.”
Between this ruling and the voluminous evidence presented in the Jan. 6 committee hearings, the Justice Department would have a difficult time explaining a decision not to indict Trump. As Norman Eisen, who served as co-counsel for the House impeachment managers during Trump’s first impeachment, put it on Twitter, “The new documents that Eastman was trying to hide and [Carter] just released are so important. They prove that Trump knowingly lied under oath about his 2020 election claims.” Eisen adds, “That bolsters the already strong criminal case” that Trump attempted to defraud the United States in challenging Georgia’s results.
And remember, there is also audio of Trump’s phone calls with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, in which Trump tried strong-arming the election official to “find” just enough votes to flip the state’s election results.
The case against Trump also goes beyond Georgia. The Jan. 6 committee presented evidence about similar machinations in other states. Oh, and don’t forget the evidence of seditious conspiracy presented in the committee’s most recent hearing (i.e., that Trump had planned far in advance to disrupt a peaceful transfer of power, and that there were abundant indications that the mob on Jan. 6 would be violent).
Carter’s ruling comes just in time for Bloomberg to report that federal prosecutors in the case regarding Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago think there is enough evidence to charge Trump with obstruction. That may explain the latest reports that Trump wants to let the Justice Department come back for a further search. Alas, this kind of stunt will not obviate earlier alleged lies to federal investigators and apparent attempts to move documents after receiving a search warrant.
In other words, it seems there is ample ground ahead for prosecutors to hold Trump accountable for his actions. Evidence of potential crimes, and plenty of legal theories supporting state and federal prosecution, are piling up. For doing his part to uncover the truth, we can say, well done, Judge Carter.
Opinion|Where the Jan. 6 committee failed
Opinion|The Jan. 6 committee has done its job — maybe too well | 2022-10-23T12:17:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Judge David Carter is laying out a road map to prosecute Donald Trump - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/23/trump-prosecution-jan-6-judge-carter/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/23/trump-prosecution-jan-6-judge-carter/ |
I thought at least 50 percent credit for no work was okay. I was wrong.
D.C. teacher reveals chaos unleashed by trying not to be too hard on kids
Failed test (tupungato/iStock)
A teacher I know was working at a D.C. public high school when the district installed a rule during the pandemic that no grade on any assignment could be lower than 50 percent.
Many schools around the country, including some in Washington area suburbs, have had such a rule for years. I haven’t seen much harm from it. Giving a zero for an F, I think, is too devastating a blow. The 50-percent rule gives students in trouble a chance to build back a decent grade-point average.
That D.C. teacher told me I was missing something. The 50-percent rule might not have hurt some schools but the effect on his was disastrous. He saw this during the 2021-2022 school year when teachers and students returned to their building after pandemic measures were lifted.
“It only took a few weeks before our students knew the score,” he said, “and it was an insult to their intelligence to believe that our bright, savvy kids wouldn’t soon learn how to work the system. Essentially, with the 50-percent grading rule, if our students completed one or two assignments, they would pass — and they knew it.”
Opinion D.C. school test results are coming. Here’s what we should do with them.
The 50-percent rule, he said, created “an environment where students can come to school to pop their heads into the classroom to tell the teacher to mark them present, which the teacher is required to do, then proceed to socialize, wander the halls, flirt, fight, walk to the corner store for some food and come back, play games in the gym or atrium, vandalize school property, pop in on the few friends who chose to go to their class, disrupting everyone, and generally live a free and happy life without consequences.”
Not everyone was that out of control that year, he said. “A majority of the students … came to school a couple days a week, usually an hour or two late, maybe turned in an assignment or two,” he said. “I think most students still liked the structure of school, a safe-ish place where there’s rules, rules they can choose to break without serious consequences.”
He said teachers at his school objected to the 50-percent grading policy as soon as it was announced. They said the rule was harmful and limiting. Administrators told them “we had to carry on the best we could,” the teacher told me. “We’re essentially throwing babies into the deep end of the pool and saying, ‘Hope you learn how to swim.’”
When I asked about this, a D.C. schools spokesperson said: “The DCPS grading policy has evolved over the years, and all changes are a result of extensive shareholder engagement and feedback, based on our philosophy and values.” Apparently the negative reaction from this teacher and his colleagues didn’t reach the district’s policymakers.
The teacher can’t report on what’s happening this year because he left the school to take a job at the charter school where he previously worked as a novice teacher. The charter doesn’t have a 50-percent rule. It focuses on preparing students for the GED high school equivalency exam, which also doesn’t have a 50-percent rule. He had moved from the charter to the D.C. district school because it had better pay and benefits. He changed his mind when he saw the terrible effect of being too nice to kids.
He is just one teacher. I would love to hear from other D.C. educators on what they are seeing. My email address is jay.mathews@washpost.com. If you don’t want me to use your name when I report what you tell me, just say so.
Other experts I know confirm what that teacher described. Frazier O’Leary was a star Advanced Placement English teacher at Cardozo High School. He now serves as an elected member of the D.C. state board of education. “DCPS has removed consequences from the equation of learning,” he told me. “Our students are not ready for the options that a 50-percent rule provides.”
As everyone knows, the D.C. schools had many problems before the pandemic, but I have reported good results in some high schools, particularly those committed to giving students the time and encouragement they need to perform well in challenging Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate classes and tests.
Educators in growing debate scold me for defending grading of homework
I have written several columns about disputes among teachers in suburban schools related to the 50-percent rule and to new rules dropping penalties for late homework and basing report card grades only on tests and not on other assignments. The changes are part of the standard-based education movement that is growing despite little control-group evidence that it improves learning.
The proponents of the movement say they want to bring more equity to schools so that students who don’t have much support at home are still judged by how much they have learned and not written off just because they failed to turn in some homework or did poorly on some assignments.
This is one of the most divisive issues in public schools today, yet it gets much less publicity than the political battles over what schools teach about race and gender. What to do about students who fail tests and don’t do their homework does not appear to interest the political consultants who write campaign fliers and organize school board campaigns.
The teacher who described the D.C. school he recently left said when he asked administrators to remove students who were not supposed to be in his class, he was told: “Sorry, once they’re in here, I can’t kick them out.” He said he received similar reactions when he asked hard-working parents to help improve their children’s behavior. The parents told him they couldn’t control their kids.
The return of students and teachers to school buildings has appeared to aggravate debates over how much emphasis educators should put on good behavior as part of the learning process. Perhaps it is better this is not part of our political debates, since we will have to cooperate with each other if we are ever going to come up with solutions. | 2022-10-23T13:05:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What happens when loosening the rules on school grading goes wrong - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/23/dc-schools-grading-policy-50-percent-rule/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/23/dc-schools-grading-policy-50-percent-rule/ |
According to Niemann’s lawsuit, the accusations of cheating have cost him income and opportunities. (The other defendants are the companies Magnus Chess and Chess.com, and Chess.com executive Daniel Rensch.) Like many defamation suits, Niemann’s action also claims antitrust violations and tortious interference with contract, but it’s hard to win on those claims unless one first makes out the case for defamation.
And historically, lawsuits by individuals accused of cheating at games have had a mixed but mostly rocky history.
Consider one of the most famous slander cases of the 19th-century, Sir William Gordon-Cumming’s 1891 lawsuit against several people who accused him of cheating at baccarat. Witnesses for the defense included his old friend, the Prince of Wales, who was playing in the same game. In his closing argument, Gordon-Cumming’s solicitor contended not that the witnesses had lied, but they had only “thought” the plaintiff cheated — a belief in which they were mistaken. Despite what one historian has labeled “serious irregularities in the evidence,” the jury gave a verdict for the defense.
A more pertinent precedent might be a 2004 decision by the US Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in a lawsuit brought by a professional bridge player who was suspended after allegations of cheating. The panel upheld the trial judge’s determination that the federal courts should not second-guess either the findings of the American Contract Bridge League or the judgment of an appropriate punishment. Although the suit did not allege defamation, the plaintiff did allege what the court described as “a vast conspiracy against him among the leadership” of the league. But in the absence of strong and closely pleaded evidence, courts almost never accept such contentions.
Then there’s the 2010 Indiana case in which a golf teaching pro sued after a colleague accused him of being “a cheat” because he claimed a different classification than the one to which he was entitled. The Professional Golf Association investigated the colleague’s allegations and agreed. When the pro subsequently sued the person who’d leveled the original accusation, the court dismissed the defamation claim because the “statements were true.”
But let’s notice what happened. The court didn’t undertake its own investigation; it deferred to the PGA. Why does this matter? Because the organization’s own judgment was sufficient to shield the defendant from liability.
That’s not to say that those accused of cheating at games can never win. In the 1930s, when the champion bridge player William S. Karn was accused of cheating, he sued for slander. But first, he stepped back from competition (“as any gentleman would,” huffed the New York Times). In 1941, Karn won his lawsuit, but he received no damages.
Want a more recent example? Last year, a California appellate court ruled that the defamation lawsuit by the gamer Billy Mitchell against Twin Galaxies could go forward to trial. Mitchell had once been recognized as the world record holder at the company’s popular arcade game Donkey Kong, but after questions were raised, Twin Galaxies investigated and cancelled his scores, on the ground that they were not earned on “an original unmodified” version of the game — asserting, in effect, that Mitchell had cheated. The key claim was that Twin Galaxies had acted with “actual malice” by allegedly refusing to look at evidence of the plaintiff’s innocence.
I suspect that the court will require a colorable showing of malice from Niemann as well, for, like Mitchell, he’s at least what’s known as a “limited public figure” — that is, prior to the events in question, he was well known in the chess world.
And that’s where the problem arises. Was Carlsen really acting — as the courts like to say — with reckless disregard for truth or falsity? The case lies in a murky middle ground. Niemann has confessed to having cheated at online chess when he was younger. An investigation by Chess.com concluded that he did so more frequently and more recently than he let on.(1) On the other hand, Niemann has denied ever cheating over the board (as real-world games are described), and a computer-aided analysis by Ken Regan, the leading expert on cheating in chess, found “no reason” to suspect him of cheating based on the Carlsen game and other recent results.
Yet that’s not the end of the matter. Cheating over the board is of course much harder than cheating online. Still, the stain of one’s past conduct can be difficult to avoid. As one chess blogger recently put it, “Niemann has cheated more often and more recently than he admitted, and at least for the moment his protestations of innocence aren’t going to find many sympathetic ears.”
There lies the difficulty. If, as seems likely, the court finds Niemann to be a limited public figure, he’ll have to show not just that Carlsen and the other defendants said something that wasn’t true, but that they did so out of malice, often defined to include a reckless disregard for truth or falsity. That’s a tough demand, given Niemann’s own admitted previous conduct. “He cheated before, so he must be cheating now” lacks the iron inevitability of the logical syllogism, but it’s very much the way people think.
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(1) Another defendant in the lawsuit is accused of leaking this report to the Wall Street Journal. | 2022-10-23T14:36:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hans Niemann’s $100 Million Chess Lawsuit Will Be Tough to Win - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hans-niemanns100-million-chess-lawsuit-will-betough-to-win/2022/10/23/b66e5940-52d2-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/hans-niemanns100-million-chess-lawsuit-will-betough-to-win/2022/10/23/b66e5940-52d2-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
Analysis by Romesh Ratnesar | Bloomberg
Upskilling is hard work. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
This is one of a series of interviews by Bloomberg Opinion columnists on how to solve the world’s most pressing policy challenges. It has been edited for length and clarity. Romesh Ratnesar: Even with a recession looming, the US labor market remains extremely strong, with unemployment at a five-decade low. At the same time, the rate of working-age Americans participating in the labor force is below pre-pandemic levels, despite a high number of job openings. One reason is that many low-income workers lack pathways to obtain the skills needed to move into good-paying jobs. You’re the co-authors of “Growing Fairly: How to Build Opportunity and Equity in Workforce Development.” Steve was mayor of Indianapolis and deputy mayor of New York City; Kate is a former executive vice president of the YMCA. How did each of you decide this was a policy area you wanted to spend time looking into?
RR: You began working on this book before the onset of the pandemic. A lot has changed since then. Are the problems related to skills shortages that you identified still as salient in today’s economy?
KC: When we started the book, there were more open positions than people available to fill those positions. At the same time, there were tens of millions of people looking for work or out of the workforce. To some extent, we’re in that situation on steroids today. Once again there are more open positions than people to fill those positions. And yet you have employers still saying, “We can’t find the right people.”
Stephen Goldsmith: Our joint conclusion is both that our underlying concerns about the labor market have been aggravated [by the pandemic] and the solutions made more important. How do you increase the skill levels of workers? How do you increase the productivity of workers? How do you provide the surrounding services, the wraparound services, to help people gain new skills? Covid exaggerated the problems we talk about but also helped us focus more on the solutions.
RR: For years, business leaders have lamented the gap between the skills employers say they’re looking for and the ones workers actually have. Why haven’t we made more progress in closing that gap?
SG: We set out to find solutions in this book. In many places, we found excellent programs that have been rigorously evaluated. That’s not the problem. The problem is that we’re responding in a highly fragmented way. There’s no true workforce development system in this country. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of federal programs. There’s $18 billion [in federal money] being spent every year. Local workforce investment boards have much of that money, but have very little actual authority. In local and state governments, economic development and workforce development are often separated. Non-profit organizations are often providing overlapping services. So we have problems in the way regional economies work. And those problems prevent us from getting to scale.
Another problem has to do with the currency of skills. We lecture employers on the need to hire by skills and not degrees. But we don’t have a common taxonomy of what those skills should be. If you’re an employer trying to hire someone, how do you recognize that the individual has that skill? We don’t have individualized, personal learning records; we don’t have certifications that measure skills. So while we can identify solutions, that’s not always enough to produce actual progress at a system level.
KC: Also, our definition of skills is insufficiently expansive to encompass the millions of people who are at the margin of the workforce. And as a result, workforce development policies often don’t involve some of the key players in the system.
RR: How so?
KC: For a lot of people, occupational skilling is not the starting point of entering the system. It’s the end point. It might be a homeless shelter, or a drug-counseling organization that helps stabilize someone sufficiently before they can even become a candidate for a pre-apprenticeship program or for a job training program. That’s what we mean when we say that thinking expansively about skills means thinking expansively about who participates in the system.
SG: There’s an interesting example in Indianapolis. One of Indiana’s leading medical device companies, Cook Medical, has opened up a plant in one of the most difficult neighborhoods in Indianapolis and they’re recruiting individuals from that neighborhood. But because the employer has little experience with actually recruiting and managing employees without sufficient first-level training, Goodwill is recruiting, training and employing the individuals in that neighborhood and placing them in Cook Medical. It’s a wonderful example of how a progressive employer can collaborate with a non-profit. They’re each doing what they’re good at and producing value that wasn’t there before.
RR: Let’s say you’re a worker who wants to gain new skills. Where do you go to find the information about the available jobs in your area and how to go about getting the skills you need to qualify for them?
SG: It’s a big problem. In many cities today, maybe with a couple exceptions, you can’t determine whether this training course, which costs you this amount of money, will get you that job, and what your salary will be. Even if you’re a smart and connected consumer, there is no market information that provides the clarity of specific steps you need to take. As a result, we’ve come to rely on two- and four-year colleges [to prepare workers], which are helpful to some, but not all, and aren’t available to everyone. They’re proxies, but they’re not good proxies. The system provides very little transparency, very little good information, and no user experience that helps people to understand their choices.
RR: You put a lot of emphasis on the critical role that local leaders, particularly mayors, can play in improving this system. Can you explain why?
SG: I often use a slide from my time as mayor of Indianapolis. On one side of the slide are all the cool things happening in the city: you know, it’s one of the top 10 places to start a business, a great place to be if you’re a young professional, high livability ratings. Then there’s the not-so-good side: economic segregation, manufacturing bases gone, mediocre-to-bad workforce participation, big increases in poverty. This is what we mean by a two-sided economy. And so what does leadership look like in this context? If we have unfilled jobs, then we have unfilled human potential. I think the role of the mayor or county executive is to call people together and say, This is the opportunity of multiple lifetimes. When else have we had so many open jobs, and so many people who need better jobs and the low workforce participation rate? This is a moment in time to call people together to make your communities a better place — one that’s fairer, more equitable and more economically prosperous.
RR: Given our political divides, are you optimistic that can happen?
SG: I’m generally optimistic about our ability to make changes, in part because we’ve identified many things that do work. The one thing that makes me not perfectly optimistic is that this requires governance changes. There is no natural leader of this cause. Each one of the players already has strong institutional support, from community colleges and four-year colleges to training programs, workforce investment boards, and the local chamber of commerce. The solutions are there and the need is there, but I’m a little bit cautious because there’s no natural organizational leader in the effort.
KC: The market conditions are favorable for these kinds of changes, namely the mismatch in the marketplace between job openings and people to fill those openings. We know that things need to be organized regionally and delivered collaboratively, based on a foundation of skills and transparency. But this stuff is hard work. Collaboration is hard work, because it causes people to have to give up part of what they have heretofore owned.
RR: The end of your book tracks the story of a woman named Iris, who you met while she was living in a homeless shelter outside Houston. Her experience underscores how, for people who are struggling, just having a little bit of an opportunity can really make transformative change. What does her story say about the challenges many Americans face in moving into stable, good-paying jobs and what’s needed to help them get there?
SG: It’s a perfect example. She’s living in a homeless shelter, but that’s just the beginning point of her journey. You can see her frustration when she walks out the door and sees her child being picked up by the school bus in front of the homeless shelter. She’s embarrassed, right? And she wants a better future. But she can’t get there from that homeless shelter. Then when she gets to the Wesley Community Center, she becomes surrounded by a support organization that helps teach her the skills she needs, helps her overcome the barriers in her life, helps her find a job and get training. Then in the end, you see this wonderful moment where she has a car and drops her child off at school.
This is almost a virtuous circle. She needed to get stabilized with housing; she needed to get the right skills; she needed help to overcome the barriers in her life. She got to the place where she wanted to be, but she couldn’t have gotten there without all of the above. The story shows that everyone presents themselves with a unique set of these challenges, and they need a whole set of responses and a coach to overcome them. And if we don’t appreciate the context in which folks, particularly those with less developed skills, present themselves, we’re not going to solve the problem.
Romesh Ratnesar is a member of the editorial board covering national security, education and immigration. A former senior State Department official in public diplomacy, he is author of “Tear Down This Wall: A City, a President, and the Speech That Ended the Cold War.” | 2022-10-23T14:36:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Can’t Workers Get the Skills They Need? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-cantworkers-get-the-skills-they-need/2022/10/23/6a81ac0c-52d3-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/why-cantworkers-get-the-skills-they-need/2022/10/23/6a81ac0c-52d3-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
Total time:55 minutes, plus optional marinating time
When I hear people talk about the possibility of adopting a plant-based diet, whether they mean vegetarian, vegan or something more flexible, they often focus on the negative. Could I give up cheese? Won’t I miss meatloaf?
It reminds me of the original name of a magazine that showcases gluten-free and other allergen-free recipes. It was called “Living Without,” and every time I saw it on the newsstand, I wanted to find a marker and cross out the title in favor of something without so much emphasis on what the eaters were losing.
In a phone interview about his new book, “Plant-Based India,” Sheil Shukla talked about his own journey in exactly the opposite terms, and I wanted to cheer. Shukla, an internal medicine physician in the Chicago area, was born and raised in Wisconsin, the son of parents from the Gujarat region of India. His mother and grandmother were both vegetarian, and they were the primary cooks when he was growing up. He ate meat and seafood when they went to restaurants, but transitioned to a vegan diet during college, starting in 2013, just as he was getting into cooking for himself.
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“I found it was a great way to diversify the foods I was eating,” he told me. “By limiting dairy, I was adding more fruits and vegetables, experimenting with things I hadn’t tried before, and just letting the creativity come on. When I went to the grocery store there were always new fruits and vegetables I wanted to try.” One door closed, and the world opened.
His favorite example of such variety isn’t technically a fruit or a vegetable but is at the center of so much Indian cooking: legumes, an ingredient near and dear to my own heart and the star of dals, dosa, rajma and more.
When you cook beans from dried, you get liquid gold. Put it to great use in this recipe.
Shukla brings his perspective about eating more (and more diverse) produce to his patients. He recently started working in a new practice, so he’s mostly seeing patients for the first time at their annual physicals and checkups. “I always ask what they’re eating, and when we get their bloodwork back, we correlate,” he said. “If things are significantly out of whack, we adjust the diet. My message is generally to increase the vegetables, increase the fruits, increase the whole grains, because we know that all these are protective against heart disease.”
Shukla’s book, accompanied by his own vibrant, color-saturated photographs, is a beautiful guide to all the ways Indian cuisine can help anyone follow his advice. The recipe I picked from it, tofu tikka, shows how the versatile bean curd, when coated in enough flavor, can provide so much satisfaction. My second-favorite part of the recipe is Shukla’s instruction to balance the skewers of tofu, onion and bell pepper on the rims of a deep baking dish so air can circulate around the food — and better approximate the effect of a hot tandoor.
9 of our best recipes for frying, roasting, smoking and savoring tofu
The marinade is my favorite part. After multiple experiments, Shukla came up with a potent combination of flavors — anchored in tomato, garlic, ginger, lime and spices — that turns the mild tofu into something spectacular. The spice that stands out is a mere 1/2 teaspoon of black salt, an ingredient with a sulfurous aroma and flavor that has gotten trendy in recent years as a way to make vegan takes on eggs taste, well, eggy. But it also has a long tradition in Indian cooking that has nothing to do with eggs or their absence.
In that way, black salt is the perfect metaphor for Shukla’s cooking. In his hands, it’s about more, not less.
Cilantro Mint Chutney, for serving (optional)
Gently stir the tofu and vegetables to re-coat them with the marinade, then skewer onto bamboo or metal skewers, alternating the tofu, bell pepper and onion. Reserve any remaining marinade.
Remove from the oven, and sprinkle with chaat masala and chopped cilantro or mint. Serve hot, with lemon wedges and raita and/or chutney, if you’d like.
Per serving (1 skewer)
Adapted from “Plant-Based India” by Dr. Sheil Shukla (The Experiment, 2022). | 2022-10-23T14:37:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | This tofu tikka recipe is a plant-based take on an Indian classic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/10/23/tofu-tikka-recipe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/10/23/tofu-tikka-recipe/ |
My ancestor was accused of witchcraft. Here’s why her story haunts me.
Rebecca Nurse, historians agree, was one of the most surprising victims of the 1692 Salem witch trials
Perspective by Susannah Hainley
“Witch, witch, you’re a bitch!” This is the accusatory chant leveled at the sister protagonists of “Practical Magic,” one of my favorite movies to watch at Halloween. In a flashback, we see their ancestor — a real, live witch — use her magic to escape the gallows in 17th century Salem.
My ancestor was not so lucky.
Her name was Rebecca Nurse, and she was hanged in 1693 after being wrongfully accused of witchcraft in the Salem witch trials. Like the city, I’ve capitalized on the mystique that the trials evoke, playing up my link to their dark history. Three hundred years seems like a long time, until you realize that the last Salem victim was exonerated just this year, or that some European countries — post #MeToo — are only now reckoning with their even older histories of witchcraft-fueled femicide.
In reading more about what Nurse and women like her faced, I think of the many reasons I could have been accused. I am considered “other” (queer, married to a woman, no children at 35). I own a cat. I’m sure I’ve had an argument with someone who, in a completely unrelated way, got sick or experienced misfortune afterward. Natural disasters, poverty, and a global pandemic have increased fear and anxiety in the community around me.
My ancestor, historians agree, was one of the most surprising victims of the 1692 Salem witch trials. She was a respected wife, mother, community elder and covenant church member — the highest station a Puritan woman could hold. But as Gary Foxcroft, executive director of the Witchcraft and Human Rights Information Network (yes, people are still being accused of witchcraft) has pointed out, when “people look for someone to blame … it is almost exclusively the most vulnerable members of the community who are accused.”
“Very rarely is it men.” | 2022-10-23T14:37:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | My ancestor was hanged in the Salem with trials. Here's why it haunts me. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/23/my-ancestor-was-accused-witchcraft-heres-why-her-story-haunts-me/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/10/23/my-ancestor-was-accused-witchcraft-heres-why-her-story-haunts-me/ |
In this file photo dated Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2020, then Prime Minister Boris Johnson waves at the media as he leaves 10 Downing Street in London. (Matt Dunham/AP)
LONDON — Boris Johnson may run again for U.K. prime minister after Liz Truss’s resignation last week, despite being under investigation over claims he intentionally misled the British parliament — an inquiry that could see him suspended or even ousted from politics entirely.
While Johnson has not yet publicly declared whether he is running again for Conservative Party leader and U.K. prime minister, some of his backers have already called for his return. And some critics have raised the question: How could Johnson serve as leader again when lawmakers are still investigating him?
Johnson was forced to resign as prime minister in July following an avalanche of resignations by members of his cabinet, who said they could no longer support a leader so entrenched in scandals — most notably “Partygate,” a series of gatherings held at Downing Street and other government buildings as Johnson’s government asked Britons not to socialize amid stringent coronavirus lockdowns.
After reports emerged of the gatherings, Johnson repeatedly told Parliament that his office had followed the coronavirus lockdown guidance, saying in December 2021: “The guidance was followed and the rules were followed at all times.” In January, Johnson apologized in Parliament, admitting he had attended one “bring your own booze” event in Downing Street.
Two major government investigations were opened into the gatherings and Johnson’s remarks: One from the senior civil servant Sue Gray, and another from the House of Commons Privileges Committee. Gray concluded that there was “a serious failure” of leadership in Johnson’s government, while the parliamentary committee is expected to hear evidence and compile a report in late autumn or winter this year.
The London Metropolitan Police also opened an investigation, announcing in April that Johnson, his wife Carrie, and former U.K. finance minister Rishi Sunak had broken lockdown rules and had to pay a $65 fine. (Sunak on Sunday announced he was running for U.K. leader.)
Boris Johnson, wife and chancellor among those fined for Downing Street lockdown parties
The mandate of the committee’s members — made up of four lawmakers from the Conservative Party, two from the opposition Labour Party and one from the Scottish National Party — is to investigate allegations that a lawmaker has committed contempt of parliament.
After an investigation, they are expected to recommend sanctions on the lawmaker to members of Parliament, who will decide whether to enact them.
Those sanctions could include suspending Johnson or removing him entirely from Parliament entirely — which could mean he will once again be forced to resign as prime minister should he run and be reinstalled.
Ministers who knowingly mislead the House of Commons are usually expected to resign, according to government documentation.
It remains uncertain if Johnson will get the backing he needs to make the ballot for U.K. leader: Candidates must collect 100 nominations from fellow lawmakers by 2 p.m Monday to stand a chance. If more than one contender reaches the requirement, members of Parliament will select two to be put to an online vote by party members, with the results expected Oct. 28.
Dominic Raab, who served as deputy prime minister and foreign secretary under Johnson, told BBC radio Saturday that while he respected Johnson, he was hesitant about the timing of the former leader’s return, given that the committee is set to hear evidence for its investigation next month.
“There’s going to be oral testimony from people from Number 10,” Raab said. “I just can’t see in practice how the new prime minister, in office latest next Friday, could give the country the attention, the focus that it needs and at the same time be giving testimony and be answering all of those questions.”
Meanwhile, Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, slammed the prospect of Johnson’s return.
“To go from the kamikaze budget under Liz Truss back to a man that his own party has declared is unfit for office, is the most powerful argument you could possibly have for a general election,” he said Friday. | 2022-10-23T14:38:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Boris Johnson may run for prime minister slot despite investigation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/23/boris-johnson-investigation-uk-prime-minister/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/23/boris-johnson-investigation-uk-prime-minister/ |
Ukraine live briefing: Russian fighter jet crashes into apartment block; co...
Firefighters work at the site of a military plane crash in the city of Irkutsk, Russia, on Sunday. (Reuters)
Two people were killed when a Russian military plane crashed into a two-story residential building in the Siberian city of Irkutsk, according to the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry. It was the second deadly instance of a military plane hitting a Russian apartment block in less than a week.
The Sukhoi Su-30, a Russian two-seat fighter jet, crashed Sunday about 5:30 p.m. local time in the Novo-Lenino district of Irkutsk. A video shared by Russian state news outlets appeared to show the plane nosediving toward the ground, creating a fireball and thick clouds of dark smoke. The aircraft’s two pilots were reported to have died in the crash. The regional governor of Irkutsk, Igor Kobzev, said no residents were harmed.
A Russian warplane slammed into a residential building in the Siberian city of Irkutsk on Oct 23, killing two crewmembers, authorities said. (Video: Igor Kobzev via Storyful)
It is the second such incidents in a week. On Monday, a Sukhoi Su-34 plane crashed into a nine-story apartment block in the southern Russian town of Yeysk. That crash killed at least 15 people, according to a Reuters report. At the time, authorities said the cause was probably “technical failure.” The pilots in the crash managed to eject and survived.
In both incidents, authorities said the planes were on training flights. underscoring the Russian Air Force losses in its war against Ukraine.
Russian fighter jet crashes into apartments in town near Ukraine
Russian authorities did not provide information as to what could have caused the crash. The country’s Investigative Committee said it had launched a criminal investigation into possible violations of transportation safety rules, and it dispatched forensic investigators to the scene.
The United Aircraft Corporation, Russian state-owned aerospace conglomerate, said Sunday in a statement that the investigation into the crash would involve experts from the aviation industry. On Sunday evening in Irkutsk, authorities declared a municipal state of emergency in the district where the incident took place, Russian media reported.
Ukraine improvises with air defenses to counter Russian missiles
The back-to-back crashes are problematic for a Russian military struggling against a Ukrainian counteroffensive in the southern Kherson region and public perception at home. Moscow is facing criticism from military analysts who say it’s not winning quickly enough in Ukraine, and from the Russian population, who fled en masse to avoid the military mobilization ordered by President Vladimir Putin.
Elsewhere in the region last month, a man shot and wounded an official at a military enlistment station in a small town north of Irkutsk. The gunman was apparently distraught that his close friend had been called for to fight in Ukraine despite having no prior military service.
Mary Ilyushina contributed to this report. | 2022-10-23T15:37:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russian military jet crashes into Siberian building with pilots killed - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/23/russian-plane-crash-irkutsk-siberia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/23/russian-plane-crash-irkutsk-siberia/ |
Nick Saban “was scared” during the postgame mayhem following Tennessee's Oct. 15 victory over Alabama, he said, leading to his decision not to suspend receiver Jermaine Burton after video appeared to show Burton striking a Tennessee fan. (Wade Payne/Associated Press)
Like his Alabama teammates and Coach Nick Saban, wide receiver Jermaine Burton was instantly engulfed in a sea of orange after the Crimson Tide’s loss last week to Tennessee in Knoxville.
It was a wild scene after the Vols’ 52-49 win as players fought their way toward the locker room, and video later surfaced that appeared to show Burton striking a woman he encountered.
On Saturday, Burton played in the Crimson Tide’s 30-6 victory over Mississippi State, with Saban telling reporters after the win that he “didn’t think it was necessary to suspend the guy. If you knew the whole story, maybe you wouldn’t either. But I’m not going to divulge that.”
Burton caught two passes for No. 6 Alabama and afterward, Saban offered no further details into the Tennessee incident.
“Look,” Saban said. “I don’t know how many of you have ever been in a situation like that, but I talked to him. He was scared. I was scared. Some of our other players were scared.”
Shortly after Tennessee’s victory ended a 15-year losing streak to Alabama, a Tennessee fan named Emily Isaacs shared a video on TikTok with the caption, “Jermaine Burton smacking me in the head while walking past him after their loss Saturday.” She added a thumbs-up emoji and an #ouch hashtag, then later took the account private.
Saban said he stressed that “it’s about having the proper respect for people” no matter what.
“I think you learn to respect other people because we have a responsibility to do that, regardless of the circumstance we’re in. I talked to the guy, we have him in a counseling program,” Saban said. “It’s not an anger management program, as people announced today [and ESPN reported mid-game]. Nobody ever said that. That’s not the problem, that’s not the issue.”
The Volunteers were fined $100,000 by the SEC, which has an escalating scale for violations of its field-access policy. Tennessee was previously fined for a violation that occurred after a basketball game against Florida in 2006.
“I think it’s a difficult situation for the league,” Saban said of the fine last week. “It’s a difficult situation for all of us that are in this situation. We certainly don’t condone any mistreatment of anybody whether they should or shouldn’t be there. I think you have to have respect for other people, but at the same time it’s a difficult situation for all of us.” | 2022-10-23T15:42:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Nick Saban explains why he didn’t suspend player who appeared to strike fan - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/nick-saban-explains-didnt-suspend-player/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/nick-saban-explains-didnt-suspend-player/ |
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California’s Republican candidate for governor will get his first — and only — chance to confront Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom face to face Sunday when the two meet in a debate that will be broadcast live on the radio while competing with the NFL for voters’ attention. | 2022-10-23T16:08:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Newsom, Dahle to meet in only debate before Election Day - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/newsom-dahle-to-meet-in-only-debate-before-election-day/2022/10/23/70c42092-52e0-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/newsom-dahle-to-meet-in-only-debate-before-election-day/2022/10/23/70c42092-52e0-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
Flooding at New Hampshire Avenue and Sligo Creek Parkway in Takoma Park, Md., in September 2020. (Courtesy Takoma Stormwater Solutions)
Byrne Kelly, a landscape architect, lives in a suburban Maryland neighborhood called Hell’s Bottom.
To the casual visitor, there’s not much hellish about it. Kelly lives near $1 million homes in shady Takoma Park, a Maryland city on the D.C. border that is less known for its demons than for its grocery co-ops, bluegrass aficionados and Little Free Libraries.
Elevation-wise, however, the land on which Kelly’s studio sits can’t get much lower. Hell’s Bottom is at the convergence of three Sligo Creek tributaries, making it prone to heavy flooding. Since he moved into the neighborhood in 1987, Kelly said, he’s had to bail out his basement three times and has suffered more than $40,000 of losses.
Now, as a member of the neighborhood group Takoma Stormwater Solutions, Kelly is persuading neighbors to plant rain gardens and koi ponds — even as authorities, in his view, shirk their responsibility to stop the waters.
“I don’t have a choice,” he said. “I care about my city and my neighbors.”
As communities around the world shore up their defenses against worsening floods, Takoma Park planned to spend more than a million dollars last fiscal year on storm water management. Yet, Kelly and fellow activists say their city is blowing cash on expensive plans that won’t prevent untold volumes of filthy runoff from pouring into their yards and homes.
Takoma Park public works director Daryl Braithwaite said the city regularly inspects its drainage system and is doing all it can to protect residents’ property. But, she said, the city can do only so much.
“I absolutely agree that climate change is going to wreak havoc on cities like ours that are fully developed,” Braithwaite said. “We’re really limited in terms of areas where we can provide additional storm water management.”
Although it is not on the coast, the D.C. area is being forced to confront climate change. The region can be inundated with water coming up from Chesapeake Bay in tidal flooding, by river water coming down the Potomac, and by storm water generated by rain.
Storm water can be a major problem for low-lying parts of the city that may not even be near major bodies of water. Gerald E. Galloway, an emeritus professor of engineering at the University of Maryland, calls them “pockmarks” — depressions in the landscape waiting to be filled up by a warming planet’s angry rain clouds.
“There’s nowhere for the water to go,” Galloway said. “What used to be bad is now worse.”
What lurks beneath: A new answer to more intense storms
As cities including Miami — population 460,000 — spend millions fighting climate change, smaller places are digging into their treasuries as well. With a population of about 18,000, Takoma Park budgeted $1.3 million for storm water management in the past fiscal year alone.
It is how this money is being spent that troubles Kelly. On a windy circumambulation of Hell’s Bottom, he runs through the arcane vocabulary of storm water management.
Takoma Park is building boxed culverts (concrete storage tanks) to hold inflow (of storm water) that becomes outfall (outgoing storm water), meant to flow through 24-inch pipes over riprap (rocky outcroppings) and, eventually, back into the watershed (an area that includes the Anacostia River and Chesapeake Bay). This complicated system is meant to prevent scour (erosion) of the landscape and flooding that can endanger homes.
The problem: As amazing as this storm water collection system might sound, it’s all uphill from Hell’s Bottom. And, when the system fails — as it inevitably will, according to Kelly — gravity will do its work, turning Hell’s Bottom into a watery underworld where soggy basements and ruined carpets abound.
Kelly has technical gripes with the system. But what he mostly wants is more.
More storage such as bioretention ponds to hold more floodwater. More money for putting in native plants that will suck water out of the ground. A more comprehensive plan that envisages bolder infrastructure improvements. And for officials to collaborate more with owners of private property to prevent an inevitable, climate change-fueled catastrophe.
“You gotta put a cork in the end of the pipe,” Kelly said.
A green solution to an aging stormwater system
In a report this year, Takoma Stormwater Solutions, the community activist group, of which Kelly is a part, faulted the city on its response to the storm water problem and for diverting water downhill without protecting low-lying homes.
In an interview, Braithwaite, Takoma Park’s public works director, defended the city, which she said maintains a nearly 19-mile underground drainage system with less than one full-time employee.
Takoma Park inspects one-fifth of this extensive system every year, Braithwaite said, ensuring that it is fully reviewed on a five-year cycle. She said the city responded swiftly after severe flooding in 2020 to protect property owners from future rainstorms. And, among the improvements undertaken, the city recently completed a $7 million project to turn Flower Avenue into a “green street,” with tree plantings and storm water retention.
As storm water threatens to run higher, so do tempers. In an uncensored Zoom moment during a public meeting last month, Braithwaite called Kelly a “wackadoodle.”
In genteel Takoma Park, these are fighting words.
“While at home watching the meeting, I inadvertently unmuted myself while having a private conversation with my husband,” Braithwaite wrote in an email. “I have offered my sincere apology to Mr. Kelly.” (Kelly said of the insult: “I don’t want her apology. I want to work with her on solving these problems.”)
Despite this barbed exchange, Braithwaite said the city and Takoma Stormwater Solutions were “working toward the same end.”
“I applaud their thoughtfulness and vision,” she said. “We also have more basic things that we need to do.”
David Reed, another member of Takoma Stormwater Solutions, said the city is refusing to draw on the expertise of its “informed, talented citizens” to make more-aggressive preparations for floods. As what he identified as a typical mistake, he pointed to the renovation of the city’s library, which is built in a flood-prone area with steep hills on three sides.
Reed said he would understand what he described as the city’s failure to act if Takoma Stormwater Solutions were just complaining; but the group has made workable proposals that the city is ignoring for no reason, he said.
“We are coming forth with a series of scientifically and practically grounded solutions,” he said. “They simply are not listening.” | 2022-10-23T17:09:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Takoma Park’s flood plan won’t stop storm-water damage, critics say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/23/takoma-park-floods-storm-water/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/10/23/takoma-park-floods-storm-water/ |
If Boris Johnson becomes prime minister again, he’ll be a wounded one
Former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson walks, at Gatwick Airport, near London, Britain Oct. 22, 2022. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls (Henry Nicholls/Reuters)
LONDON — Boris Johnson flew home this weekend from his Caribbean getaway to campaign for prime minister again, hopeful for a coronation. But the problem for the mop-headed former leader is this: a lot of his fellow Conservative Party lawmakers, alongside so-called Tory grandees, big-money donors and once-friendly tabloid hacks, think his return to power would spell “disaster.”
Their word, not ours. Even some of Johnson’s once closest allies are wary. “Go back to the beach,” his former Brexit sidekick David Davis says. This isn’t your time, his former ministers say.
If Johnson does prevail, if he returns to office next week, a stunning and remarkable achievement, then one other thing would be true: a formerly wounded, disgraced, deposed Johnson will return as a wounded prime minister.
Johnson just has too much baggage to make a clean start. People have seen the movie. The sequel — or Johnson 2.0 as the British press have taken to calling it — will not escape the plot points of the original.
For starters, he is still facing a perilous investigation in Parliament over whether he lied to lawmakers about covid lockdown parties at 10 Downing Street. This is a serious charge — which could see him censured or worse — and would likely make headlines for months, a constant reminder of his ouster as party leader and prime minister in July.
Boris Johnson blames ‘the herd,’ resigns to make way for new U.K. leader
Liz Truss resigned as prime minister on Oct. 20 after six chaotic weeks in office. As Tory lawmakers ready themselves for a vote on Monday, over who runs their party and therefore who runs Britain, the surrogates for Johnson and his chief rival, the former finance minister Rishi Sunak, were duking it out on the morning talk shows, the gossipy Westminster WhatsAp groups and rounds of phone-calling and arm-twisting.
It is entirely possible that Johnson could top the hurdle and get 100 Conservative Party members of parliament to nominate him on Monday — and that later in the week, he could win a majority of the 170,000 or so dues-paying members of his party, who will vote online if there are two candidates still standing.
The members — older, wealthier, 97 percent white — tend to veer to the right of the party, and polling shows that they do favor Johnson over Sunak. But that may not be a given. In the last race between Truss and Sunak, the grass roots chose Truss but by less of a margin than many were expecting.
Once their hero, many say Johnson has let his members down. They might miss him — what pollsters saw as “Boris nostalgia” — but do they want to watch the next episode?
According to the BBC’s tally of public declarations, 145 lawmakers have backed Sunak; 57 are for Johnson and 23 for Penny Mordaunt. There are 357 Conservative members of Parliament, meaning that 132 have yet to declare.
While Johnson is clearly behind, there’s still a way for him to stay in the race past Monday.
But does he even want it? Johnson is the only one of three candidates not to publicly declare. Analysts say he may never formally announce, so that he isn’t on the record saying that he tried, especially if the risk of failure is high, which it is. He could just claim it was his supporters who wanted him to run.
Johnson has been “awfully quiet” this weekend, noted Robert Ford, a professor of politics at Manchester University.
Ford noted that Johnson didn’t run for leader after the 2016 Brexit vote, despite being the favorite to replace David Cameron because Johnson "thought it would be a hard slog to get the job and to do the job. He did run in 2019 when it wasn’t going to be a hard slog,” he said. “And now? It’s a hard slog … he may not get on the ballot and if he does, he may not win enough members, although he is probably the narrow favorite. And if he does get it, it’s a two-year horror show followed by an election that the Conservatives will probably lose. I’m not sure that’s going to be an offer that’s attractive to him.”
Johnson was once hugely popular. Today he is hugely divisive, even in his own party. Outside the party? The general public can’t stand him, according to the polls. His popularity has plummeted.
William Hague, a Tory grandee who was once a party leader himself, said that Johnson’s return to power was the “the worst idea I’ve heard of in the 46 years I’ve been a member of the Conservative Party” and would send the party into a “death spiral.”
Steve Baker, the Northern Ireland minister and influential figure among those on the right of the party, said that Johnson would be a “guaranteed disaster” that was “bound to implode.”
Baker said that Johnson isn’t one for “tedious rules” and that now “isn't the time for Boris and his style.”
The former home secretary Suella Braverman, who is also on the right of the party, came out for Sunak. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, she said that while she has previously backed Johnson “we are in dire straits now. We need unity, stability and efficiency. Rishi is the only candidate that fits the bill.
When endorsing Sunak, lawmakers use words and phrases like “stability” and “competence,” the right man for the economic challenges ahead.
Those endorsing Johnson say “he got the big calls right” and “he’s learned from his mistakes” and “is contrite.”
The majority of Brits say they want a general election, even though one is not required until January 2025. An election can be called early but it would require the support of Conservative lawmakers, which seems unlikely given that the party faces a near wipeout if an election was held today. A petition calling for a general election “to end the chaos of the current government” has quickly amassed over 850,000 signatures.
The race remains unpredictable and complicated by endless speculation and anonymous briefings.
On Saturday, the BBC alerted that Johnson had “more than 100 backers” and could be on the ballot, according to “campaign sources.”
An hour later, the outlet alerted that Suank’s supporters were demanding that Johnson “prove claims he has backing of more than 100 MPs.”
But while momentum seems for the day to be shifting to Sunak, Johnson was pulling a few big-name supporters himself.
Nadhim Zahawi, a former top minister in Johnson’s government, said he was backing his old boss again as he “got the big calls right” and argued “Britain needs him back.”
He tweeted: “When I was Chancellor, I saw a preview of what Boris 2.0 would look like. He was contrite & honest about his mistakes. He’d learned from those mistakes how he could run No10 & the country better.
Zahawi is the same man who, just three months ago when he was the second most powerful person in government, called on Johnson, to “go now.” | 2022-10-23T17:22:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.K. leadership contest gossip, drama behind the scenes - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/23/uk-prime-minister-contest-drama/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/23/uk-prime-minister-contest-drama/ |
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Dwayne Johnson in a scene from “Black Adam.” (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP) (Uncredited/Warner Bros. Pictures)
As more acclaimed awards contenders land in theaters, Searchlight Pictures’ “The Banshees of Inisherin” started its run with one of the best per-theater averages of the year. The Martin McDonagh drama, starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, opened with $181,000 in four theaters for a per-theater average of $45,250. For A24, Charlotte Wells' “Aftersun,” starring Paul Mescal and Frankie Corio as a father and daughter on vacation, also debuted solidly in four theaters, with a $16,589 per-theater average. | 2022-10-23T17:39:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Black Adam,' with Dwayne Johnson, debuts with $67M - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/black-adam-with-dwayne-johnson-debuts-with-67m/2022/10/23/a8c2ef38-52f8-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/black-adam-with-dwayne-johnson-debuts-with-67m/2022/10/23/a8c2ef38-52f8-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
Washington Capitals defenseman Dmitry Orlov in the final year of his six-year deal. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
In any discussion regarding the Washington Capitals’ aging championship core, the names most commonly mentioned are Alex Ovechkin, Nicklas Backstrom and John Carlson. One name often left out of the conversation is Dmitry Orlov.
His strong on-ice skills have often gone unheralded alongside the flashier play of those other stars who have highlighted Washington’s lineup for the past decade. Individual recognition or not, Orlov has grown into a reliable player for the Capitals over his 11-year NHL tenure — and he isn’t showing any signs of slowing down.
Orlov, 31, is in the final year of the six-year, $30.6 million deal he signed in 2017. He and Capitals management want to see the Russian end his career in Washington.
“He’s been a good pick and has had a real good, solid career,” said Capitals General Manager Brian MacLellan of the 2009 second-round draft choice. “He’s gone under the radar in my mind. People probably underrate how good a player he is and take for granted that we count on him that much every night. He’s had a great career so far.”
In a recent conversation with The Washington Post, MacLellan said he didn’t want to disclose whether contract talks were ongoing with Orlov’s agent, but said the team wants Orlov signed for the foreseeable future. If there is not a deal done before free agency opens in July, Orlov will become an unrestricted free agent.
“We like him,” MacLellan said. “He has got a good role here. He has been a big part of our organization for a long time. We would like to keep him. He does the right things off the ice, too. Good person, mature person. Checks a lot of boxes. We would love to have him here the rest of his career.”
Orlov is the fourth-longest tenured player on the team behind Ovechkin, Backstrom and Carlson, and has anchored the team’s top defensive pairing for the last five-plus seasons, including 2018 when Washington won the Stanley Cup.
This season, he leads the team in ice time during five-on-five play and is six games shy of passing Sergei Gonchar (654) for the fifth-most games played by a defenseman in franchise history. Orlov has four assists in six games this season, three of which came in the third period of Saturday’s 4-3 win over Los Angeles. Last season, Orlov had a career-high 12 goals and recorded 23 assists while playing on a shutdown pairing with Nick Jensen.
Washington’s next game is Monday in New Jersey.
Orlov said he tries to not think about what will come ahead, but it’s hard to ignore. Six of the Capitals’ seven blue-liners on the active roster are playing on expiring contracts this season. Carlson is the lone defenseman signed for longer, with a deal that runs through 2026-27.
“I think everybody thinks about that because you know where you want to be in the future,” Orlov said. “Especially when you have family, you [have to] think about more than yourself. In our world you still have to play and play good. Also still have to enjoy having time on the ice after so many years.”
Orlov sees Washington as his home with his wife, Varvara, his three-year-old son Kirill, and their cat, Joy. The family also has an apartment outside Moscow, where they’ve spent time in the offseason the last four years.
They’ve liked their home in Russia, but have felt comfort each time they come back to Washington. It’s here where they’ve raised Kirill, now in kindergarten, and where his parents hope that sometime this winter he’ll will learn how to skate — if he wants.
“We want to put him to a perfect timing,” Orlov said. “When he is ready it will be exciting. We don’t want to push him. We have to be smart with him. We want him to still have the toys and he is still a kid. We don’t want to put him in an adult’s life right away.”
Forward Evgeny Kuznetsov, who has known Orlov since the two were young up-and-comers in the Capitals’ organization, credits Orlov’s success to his training with old school Russian coaches and his work ethic. In Kuznetsov’s mind, not a lot has changed since they both entered the league, save for a few notable exceptions.
“He definitely speak English better,” Kuznetsov said laughing. “More mature and older and he gets much more serious but there is a few days when the real ‘Dima’ is around us and he is funny. When he is trying to be professional and all that s—- and gets too serious, I don’t like that ‘Dima.’ I like the ‘Dima’ I know.”
T.J. Oshie called Orlov an “undercover beauty,” even if he doesn’t understand what he says half the time.
“I’m pretty sure he’s chirping at the other Russians sometimes,” Oshie said. “I can’t understand, I don’t speak Russian, but sometimes you hear it going.”
Matt Irwin praised Orlov’s offensive play and his physicality. Irwin said “pound for pound he might throw some of the hardest checks off the rush” he’s ever seen.
“He’s got such good timing with it … low center of gravity, powerful,” Irwin said. “A lot of the time it isn’t guys coming across the middle. He just stands them up as they come across the blue line, head on. Initial stop up and drive right through and that is a hard hit to make.”
For now, Orlov will look to continue his consistent play on both sides of the ice, with the hope that his career in Washington will continue as well.
“To be in the same spot for so long it is home,” Orlov said of D.C. “ … we feel good as a family here. We will see what will happen.” | 2022-10-23T19:02:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Capitals’ Dmitry Orlov continues steady play amid uncertain future - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/capitals-dmitry-orlov-uncertain-future/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/capitals-dmitry-orlov-uncertain-future/ |
The economy has done better under Democrats for the past 40 years
The Treasury Building in Washington. (Al Drago/Bloomberg News)
Regarding Catherine Rampell’s Oct. 19 op-ed, “A global financial crisis is the GOP’s secret agenda”:
Why do voters assume that Republicans have done better than Democrats on economic issues? The past five recessions started under Republican administrations: July 1981, July 1990, March 2001, December 2007 and February 2020. One has to go back more than 40 years to President Jimmy Carter to find a recession that began under a Democratic administration, according to the official record of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Three of the past five recessions began toward the end of Republican administrations, leaving presidents — Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden — to deal with the economic damage. I trust Democrats more than Republicans to bring about an economic soft landing next year without a recession. Since 1981, Republicans have truly become the “recession party” and Democrats the “recovery party.”
Second, the national debt (adjusted for inflation) increased more rapidly under the past four Republican administrations — at an average annual rate of 10.2 percent during the Reagan administration, 8.2 percent and 5.9 percent during the two Bush administrations, and 6.8 percent during the Trump administration — compared with only 1.6 percent and 4.6 percent during the Clinton and Obama administrations, respectively.
If those four Republican administrations had been as fiscally responsible as their Democratic counterparts, the national debt would be about 70 percent lower than it is, increasing from 31 percent of gross national product in 1981 to 37 percent today — rather than the actual 123 percent for fiscal 2021. For Republicans to oppose raising the debt ceiling, and to frame this hostage-taking as a commitment to fiscal restraint, is the height of hypocrisy when their administrations have been in charge during most of the debt increase of the past 40 years.
Chris Gerrard, Rockville
The writer is a retired economist.
Inflation in the United States was 8.2 percent in September. Many people believe that the Democrats are responsible because they’re the party in power. It must be the Democrats’ liberal policies that caused high inflation. And if the Democrats are voted out and Republicans take power, the GOP’s conservative policies will solve the problem.
But consider Britain. Britain has had a conservative government for the past 12 years. Inflation in Britain was 10.1 percent in September, even higher than in the United States. Or Poland. Poland has had a conservative government for the past seven years. Inflation in Poland was 17.2 percent in September. Hungary has had a conservative government for the past 12 years. Inflation in Hungary was 20.1 percent in September. Lithuania has had a conservative government for the past six years. Inflation in Lithuania was 24.1 percent in September. Turkey has had a conservative government for the past 20 years. Inflation in Turkey was 83.5 percent in September.
The causes of inflation are much more complex than liberal ideas vs. conservative policies.
Stuart A. Leven, Silver Spring | 2022-10-23T19:11:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The economy has done better under Democrats for the past 40 years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/23/economy-has-done-better-under-democrats-past-40-years/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/23/economy-has-done-better-under-democrats-past-40-years/ |
By Bob Woodward
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In more than 50 years of reporting, I have never disclosed the raw interviews or full transcripts of my work. But after listening again to the 20 interviews I conducted with President Donald Trump during his last year as chief executive, I have decided to take the unusual step of releasing them. I was struck by how Trump pounded in my ears in a way the printed page cannot capture.
This essay was adapted from “The Trump Tapes: Bob Woodward's Twenty Interviews with President Donald Trump,” by Bob Woodward. It will be published Oct. 25 by Simon & Schuster Audio. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schuster Audio. All rights reserved.
Much has been written about that period, including by me. But “The Trump Tapes,” my forthcoming audiobook of our interviews, is central to understanding Trump as he is poised to seek the presidency again. We spoke in person in the Oval Office and at Mar-a-Lago, as well as on the phone at varying hours of the day. You cannot separate Trump from his voice.
In the summer of 2020, for example, when the pandemic had killed 140,000 people in the United States, Trump told me: “The virus came along. That’s not my fault. That’s China’s fault.” I asked him:
Was there a moment in all of this, last two months, where you said to yourself, “Ah, this is the leadership test of a lifetime”?
On the printed page his “no” reads flat, a simple declaration. Now listen to the audio of that exchange. This “no” is confident, dismissive, full of self-assurance. It leaves no doubt about the finality of his judgment. This “no” distances him from bearing responsibility.
Sound has an extraordinary emotional power, an immediacy and authenticity. A listener is brought into the room. It is a completely different experience from reading Trump’s words or listening to snatches of his interviews on television or the internet.
Trump’s voice magnifies his presence.
Consider this from my 14th interview with Trump, on May 22, 2020.
You’re probably going to screw me. Because, you know, that’s the way it goes. Look, [George W.] Bush sat with you for hours and you screwed him. But the difference was, I ain’t no Bush.
The mockery in Trump’s voice does not come through as powerfully or as memorably on the printed page.
In the “The Trump Tapes,” I share my personal reporting journey through the eight hours of interviews. I provide commentary at more than 200 points in the audiobook, explicitly offering my own reactions, hesitations, conclusions, and explanations of my method of gathering and confirming information.
When Trump came on the political scene in 2015, he was immediately a big presence, regularly making outrageous statements. He seized the attention of the media and gave regular interviews before and after he was elected president. But for someone who talked so much, he insulated himself from long and sustained questioning.
In our extended conversations, I was able to press him for prolonged periods and with dozens of follow-up questions. Trump agreed that all of our interviews were on the record and could be recorded.
“When did it become yes?” I asked about his decision to run for president. On his handling of the coronavirus, “What grade would you give yourself?” And about the presidency, “What have you learned about yourself?” In all, I asked him more than 600 questions.
I am also releasing “The Trump Tapes” for the historical archive. The content of the interviews was comprehensively quoted in my 2020 book, “Rage,” and some of the audio of the most dramatic news released. But the full exchange amplifies an understanding of Trump and the unique concentration of power in the presidency.
In these interviews, you hear Trump relishing the authority of the presidency and relying on his personal instincts as the basis for major decisions. It’s a self-focus that gets in the way of his ability to do the job. “I’m the Lone Ranger,” he said during our interview in March 2016.
(Washington Post staff illustration based on a photo by Getty Images)
At one point in early 2020, for example, I asked Trump about his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
The CIA says about Kim Jong Un that he’s “cunning, crafty but ultimately stupid.”
I disagree. He’s cunning. He’s crafty. And he’s very smart. You know.
Why does the CIA say that?
Because they don’t know. Okay? Because they don’t know. They have no idea. I’m the only one that knows. I’m the only one he deals with. He won’t deal with anybody else …
And is this all designed to drive Kim to the negotiating table?
No. No. It was designed for whatever reason, it was designed. Who knows? Instinctively. Let’s talk instinct.
This single-handed and impulsive approach — one that deeply worried and even traumatized his national security team — became a hallmark of Trump’s foreign relations.
Do you get a sense he’s wooing you?
No, I get —
Or building a relationship of trust?
— a sense — I get a sense he likes me. I think he likes me. Okay, so, you know he’s got a great piece of land. He’s in between Russia, China and South Korea. In the real estate business we’d say, “Great location.” You understand?
I do. ... It is chilling to report on North Korea. I’ve looked in-depth at this. The secretary of defense sleeps in his gym clothes because he has an — do you know this? — an alarm and a light in his bathroom in case he is called to an emergency conference.
In response, Trump repeated disparaging remarks about his former defense secretary, Jim Mattis.
Mattis was the world’s most overrated general.
I know, you’ve said that.
Oh, just terrible.
Trump did not understand the value of involving the CIA or the State Department in devising a coherent strategy for a new initiative with North Korea. He was going it alone.
I tried to take Trump as seriously as he took himself. I asked questions directly and did not adopt a hostile posture. While I pushed him and did not necessarily agree with his categorical declarations or self-praise, I let him have his say.
Trump’s voice is a concussive instrument. Fast and loud. He hits hard and will lower his volume to underscore for effect. He is staggeringly incautious and repetitive, as if saying something often and loud enough will make it true.
There’s nobody that’s tougher than me. Nobody’s tougher than me. You asked me about impeachment. I’m under impeachment, and you said, You know, you just act like you just won the fucking race. Nixon was in a corner with his thumb in his mouth. Bill Clinton took it very, very hard. I just do things, okay?
Though he shows his anger and grievances, his tone can shift quickly to engaging and entertaining. He laughs, ever the host.
These interviews also took place during Trump’s first impeachment. In late 2019, the House Democrats impeached Trump for a telephone call he had with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that July. In the rough transcript of the call, which Trump later released, he asked Zelensky to speak to the U.S. attorney general about investigating his political opponent, Joe Biden, and Biden’s son Hunter. In more than 50 years of reporting, I had never heard of such a request from a sitting president. The transcript caused a political storm.
In an interview at Mar-a-Lago on Dec. 30, 2019, I pressed Trump in long exchanges on his defense.
Do you want the policy of the United States to be that the president of the United States can talk to foreign leaders and say, “Investigate. I want you to talk to the attorney general about investigating somebody who’s a political opponent”?
No. No. No. I want them to investigate corruption.
Going back and forth for 30 minutes, he insisted it was just a request for a corruption investigation though the transcript clearly showed he wanted an investigation of Biden and his son. A listener will get a chance to decide.
I believe the tapes show that Trump’s greatest failure was his handling of the coronavirus, which as of October 2022 has killed more than 1 million Americans. In a 34-minute interview on April 5, 2020, three weeks after the country shut down, I presented Trump with a list of about a dozen executive actions his own top medical and scientific experts had told me were critical to mobilize the country against the virus. They had been unable to convey this information to Trump because he wouldn’t listen or wasn’t paying attention.
The list included improving the medical supply chain, coordinating with other countries, clearly defining an essential worker, establishing airline travel rules and coordinating with intelligence agencies.
In preparation, I had talked at length to Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious-disease expert, and Robert Redfield, then director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as many others in Trump’s administration. Multiple officials had told me that the president was not listening to these experts.
Since Trump was willing to answer questions from me on any subject, I used the opportunity to press aggressively. Overall, I wanted to see if he had any plan.
I’m telling you as a reporter, I’ll emphasize this again. They want a sense of World War II mobilization — President Trump up there saying, these are the 12 areas — this is the person who is going to come before you and tell you —
All right, I got you. I understand. I got you. I think we’re doing a very good job, but I’ve got exactly what you’re saying...
Later during the same interview
This is a question about your leadership. And I just want to know how you feel about it. Second thing is the medical —
I feel good. I think we’re doing a great job. I think we’ll never get credit from the fake news media no matter how good a job we do. No matter how good a job I do, I will never get credit from the media, and I’ll never get credit from Democrats who want to beat me desperately in seven months.
During the Nixon case —
Nixon did not understand the goodwill that people feel toward a president. You know that is a problem now in this country, the polarization, no question. But —
Yeah, but the ones that like me like me a lot, okay?
But, but people know this is a survival issue. People are talking about their kids, and they’re saying, “What kind of world are we going to give to our kids?” And —
They’re right. But Bob, when you talk about that — Nixon was an unpopular guy. I have great support out there, Bob. You don’t see it …
Give me the list of the things you said. Did you write them down, or not?
Yes, I wrote them all down.
Read ’em out. Go ahead, read ’em.
Okay, the first is testing.
In this April 5 interview, I listed all the recommendations and then repeated them at his request. But I hung up the phone feeling distressed. He didn’t see the virus as his responsibility and pushed a lot of the problems off onto the states. There was no management theory for how to organize an enterprise to deal with one of the most complex emergencies the United States had ever faced. The absence of leadership at the top was contributing to the nation’s inability to respond.
After the phone call, I turned to my wife, Elsa Walsh, who had worked for many years as a reporter for The Post and then as a staff writer for the New Yorker. She had been in the room during the interview. She spoke to Trump a number of times when he called me at home and was in the room during this call.
Woodward: What do you think?
Walsh: You were really shouting at him.
Woodward: I was. To get in a word edgewise.
Walsh: Your shouting, though, was really loud.
Woodward: It’s okay. It’s okay.
Walsh: You want to get more information from him, not–
Woodward: I know. Like this. I agree.
Walsh: — telling him what he needs to do.
Walsh: You kind of sounded like you were telling him what to do.
Woodward: Yeah. Well —
Walsh: You don’t want to do that.
Woodward: Okay. But we’re in a different world now, sweetie.
In the audiobook I also include excerpts of my interviews with Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien, and his deputy, Matt Pottinger. Trump had told them to speak to me, even urged them to do so, making them his agents. I believe they would not have spoken to me about a sensitive, top-secret intelligence briefing without his authorization.
My discussions with them became a turning point in my reporting on Trump’s handling of the coronavirus.
During an interview with O’Brien and Pottinger on May 1, 2020, I learned that they had personally warned Trump about the magnitude of the threat of the coronavirus during a President’s Daily Brief on Jan. 28, 2020. O’Brien had told Trump that “this will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency.”
I was stunned. I had never heard of such a direct warning to a president.
This was an earthquake in my reporting. I was 7½ weeks away from my publishing deadline for “Rage,” which up until that point dwelled extensively on foreign policy and North Korea. The new information from O’Brien and Pottinger about the top-secret, Jan. 28 warning shifted my focus to Trump’s handling of the virus.
I continued to conduct multiple interviews with O’Brien, Pottinger and others and was able to cross-check with firsthand witnesses. I was trying to piece together the chronology to establish the important decision-making points. The new reporting was evidence of Trump’s abdication of presidential responsibility. His self-focus was crippling.
A key interview occurred July 21, 2020, six months into the pandemic, when I again pressed Trump for his plan. To my astonishment, he said:
It’s flaring up all over the world, Bob. By the way, all over the world. That was one thing I noticed last week. You know they talk about this country. All over the world, it’s flaring up. But we have it under control.
The virus had been out of control in the United States for months. You hear Trump editing his own narrative. It reminded me of President Richard Nixon releasing edited transcripts of his secret White House tapes. They had extensive deletions. When Nixon personally edited the conversations, he directed his lawyers to insert “Materials unrelated to presidential actions deleted,” or, when there was profanity, “expletive deleted.”
It was Nixon’s way of saying he would tell only the parts of the story that he wanted told. Nothing more. This is exactly what Trump was trying to do.
He acknowledged that he did not have a plan and told me in that July 21 interview:
Bob, you’ll see the plan over the next four weeks.
This is what —
You will see the plan, Bob. I’ve got 106 days. That’s a long time. You know, if I put out a plan now, people won’t even remember it in a hundred — I won the last election in the last week.
No, no. But it’s not just put out the plan. It’s execute it, isn’t it?
No, I, I am executing it. You’ll see it starting.
I wondered how you execute a plan that doesn’t exist.
People want their president to succeed. Now, you’re right. There’s some people who don’t.
No, no, no. I think you’re wrong. No, people don’t want me to succeed.
No, no, but if you succeed, they succeed.
I have opposition like nobody has. And, and that’s okay. I’ve had that all my life. I’ve always had it. And this has been — my whole life has been like this. In the meantime, right now, I’m looking at the White House. Okay? I’m staring right at the walls of the White House.
I understood this to be his way of reminding me he was president.
I was unlucky with the virus, because it came in and whether it was me or anybody else —
But you got it. You got it. The country’s got it. And the world’s got it. But you’re in charge of this country. And, you know —
We’ve done better than any other country. Just about, done better than any other country, in handling it. And it’s a bigger, more diverse, more difficult country. And we’ve done better than any — other than with the press. Other than with the press, I’ve done a great job. But with the press, I can’t do a good job because it’s fake. It’s fake news. It’s a fake group of people and you know it, and you won’t write it.
On listening to the tapes this year, I realized I had become entangled in the disorder of Trump’s presidency. An informal practice evolved. Knowing that he could and would call me at any time, I started leaving recorders around my house. Knowing that I could call him and inquire about anything — including the events of that day — was an unprecedented reporting opportunity. It was also unnerving. Trump became the primary focus of my life for nine months.
When “Rage” was published in September 2020, Trump said publicly that it was a “political hit job.” He also said:
White House press briefing
I said really good things in that book.
From the vantage of October 2022, it is, of course, impossible to know Trump’s political future. The midterm elections loom. The House committee on Jan. 6 is still investigating Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election and has subpoenaed him to testify. And many criminal and civil investigations into Trump’s conduct are ongoing, including into sensitive documents Trump took with him from the White House.
After Trump’s four years as president, there is no turning back for American politics. Trump was and still is a huge force and indelible presence, with the most powerful political machine in the country. He has the largest group of followers, loyalists and fundraisers, exceeding that of even President Biden.
In 2020, I ended “Rage” with the following sentence: “When his performance as president is taken in its entirety, I can only reach one conclusion: Trump is the wrong man for the job.”
At one point in June 2020, I asked Trump if he had assistance with a speech he had given about law and order.
The voice, almost whispering and intimate, is so revealing. I believe that is Trump’s view of the presidency. Everything is mine. The presidency is mine. It is still mine. The only view that matters is mine.
Researcher Claire McMullen contributed to this essay. Top image: Washington Post staff illustration based on a photo by Jabin Botsford of The Washington Post.
Bob Woodward is an associate editor of The Washington Post, where he has worked since 1971. He has shared in two Pulitzer Prizes. Twitter Twitter | 2022-10-23T19:11:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Bob Woodward: 20 Trump interviews show why he is a danger - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2022/trump-tapes-bob-woodward-interviews-audiobook/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2022/trump-tapes-bob-woodward-interviews-audiobook/ |
Poolesville boys, Wootton girls win first MoCo cross-country titles
The Poolesville boys became first-time Montgomery County cross-country champions. Before this season, the team had never placed higher than seventh. (Prasad Gerard)
Before Saturday afternoon, 13 boys’ teams had a Montgomery County cross-country title to their name. Poolesville had never finished better than seventh. And yet, as the smallest school in the county stretched on the Gaithersburg course, a once-lofty goal became the sole objective.
“[Freshman year] they were just young guys, kind of goofy, not necessarily taking their talents seriously,” Poolesville Coach Prasad Gerard said of his senior class. “They didn’t know what they were capable of — which you wouldn’t expect of a 14- or 15-year old — but when they kept working at it, they saw what the possibility was.”
Unfazed by history or the buzz and bedlam of the meet — which brings one of the best collections of talent of any D.C.-area county — Poolesville became the 14th team to enter the winner’s circle. Gerard, a veteran coach, said there is a level of maturity and sportsmanship that begets a successful team. This group has it.
“We won the [Class 2A] sportsmanship award last year, and that was almost as important as winning the state title,” said senior Aaron Longbrake, who placed ninth Saturday and set a personal record (16 minutes 38 seconds).
Senior Caleb Dastrup, who is also a force in the science bowl and chess club, as well as on the piano, delivered Poolesville’s best time (16:16) and finished second overall. Saturday’s meet was a family-wide triumph; his sister Daisy placed third in the girls’ varsity race and brother Jonathan, a freshman, won the boys’ junior varsity race.
Churchill (97 points) and Walter Johnson (133) joined Poolesville (84) on the podium after placing first and third last year. Richard Montgomery senior Noah Fisher (16:06) was the fastest individual runner, outpacing Dastrup and Whitman senior Sean Cunniff (16:25).
Wootton girls prevail; B-CC’s Higgins repeats
Like Poolesville, the Wootton girls entered the meet without a county title. Unlike Poolesville, they walked in with a reputation, earning victories at two of the area’s largest regular season events, the Bull Run Invitational and Oatlands Invitational, albeit by a combined margin of four points.
It was about time one came easy.
After five straight seasons in the top-four of the championship meet, Wootton (53 points) captured the elusive trophy with Whitman (101) and Richard Montgomery (119) following behind. Walter Johnson (123), last year’s champion, finished fourth.
“There was sort of this good pressure our coach put on us,” said Wootton freshman Charlotte Chang, who finished sixth (19:17). “Yeah, this was smaller than some of the invitationals … but we had never gotten first in this race.”
Bethesda-Chevy Chase junior Varri Higgins (18:39) repeated as the girls’ county champion with Whitman sophomore Katie Greenwald (18:48) in second and Daisy Dastrup (18:50) in third. Higgins, a relative newcomer to the sport, attributed her success to a “me versus me” mind-set.
“Running just brings me so much joy. I love this sport, so there’s no point in bringing other people into the atmosphere,” Higgins said of the approach. “I’ve always embraced those things, but I think the older I get the more I take them seriously.” | 2022-10-23T19:12:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Poolesville boys, Wootton girls win first MoCo cross-country titles - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/poolesville-boys-wootton-girls-win-first-moco-cross-country-titles/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/poolesville-boys-wootton-girls-win-first-moco-cross-country-titles/ |
PM Update: Scattered showers this evening. Warm and dry on Monday.
Blue skies and lovely colors on the National Mall. (Jeannie in D.C./Flickr)
A pesky weak and slow-moving coastal low-pressure system will spin some light rain showers our way this evening. But it’s not a washout by any means, and most of the overnight period should be dry. That same low-pressure system will keep the clouds hanging around for the start of Monday, but we should see skies begin to brighten as we move into the afternoon.
Through Tonight: Scattered light rain showers will develop in and around D.C. later this evening and into the first part of the overnight period. Precipitation coverage will become more isolated in nature after midnight. Lows will be on the mild side, ranging from the upper 40s to low 50s, with a light northwest wind at 5 mph.
Tomorrow (Monday): Overcast skies will be hard to break in the morning hours, but some gradual clearing should lead to partly sunny skies by the afternoon. Once the sun comes out, temperatures should jump into the low 70s. Mostly cloudy and mild tomorrow night, with lows in the mid-50s and some isolated pockets of drizzle. | 2022-10-23T20:11:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | PM Update: Scattered showers this evening. Warm and dry on Monday. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/10/23/pm-update-scattered-showers-this-evening-warm-dry-monday/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/10/23/pm-update-scattered-showers-this-evening-warm-dry-monday/ |
Right-wing road show promotes Christian nationalism before midterms
Attendees are baptized at the ReAwaken America Tour held at the Spooky Nook Sports complex on Oct. 21 in Manheim, Pa. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
MANHEIM, Pa. — At the end, after former president Trump called in to energize the troops, more than 100 people lined up to be baptized.
Some had driven hours for the two-day ReAwaken America Tour in the leafy Pennsylvania countryside. Some had paid up to $500 for VIP tickets. They were 5,000 strong, celebratory but angry about where the country is headed. They said they believed the 2020 election was stolen, that vaccines kill people and that America — both its moral and civic foundation — is headed for complete collapse.
Now they were waiting to be baptized in a black plastic animal trough, leaving the water soaked and shivering — newly cleansed soldiers in their war for America.
Since April of last year, the ReAwaken America Tour has brought hardline-election deniers, anti-vaccine doctors, self-proclaimed prophets and conspiracy theorists to enthusiastic crowds across the country. The central message is that America’s white, evangelical Christian way of life is under threat from the globalist cabal on the “woke” left.
The traveling carnival of misinformation merges entertainment, politics and theology and makes the existential argument to those attending: The debate is no longer about Republican vs. Democrat, they say, it’s about good vs. evil. And it’s time to pick a side.
Since its inception, the tour has been denounced by mainstream religious leaders because of its extremist views. Its organizers have been forced to move venues twice — in New York and Washington state — due to community concerns. The Anti-Defamation League has targeted it in a report.
“We face a battle in our country,” retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser turned election denier, told the crowd. “I mean, Christianity is under attack. Honestly, it feels like everything is under attack.”
For Johanna Grassia, an artist from Philadelphia, her baptism Friday was the culmination of a two-year journey that began during the pandemic when she fell into a deep depression, began following the ReAwaken tour online and left both the Catholic Church and the Democratic Party. She became a Republican the day that Doug Mastriano — the conservative state senator who is Pennsylvania’s GOP nominee for governor — declared his candidacy in January.
“I feel more confident now,” Grassia said as she emerged dripping from the ice-cold water. “My eyes have been opened.”
In this world, as Lindell put it, elections are now “selections,” fact-checkers are now “fake checkers,” coronavirus is still the “China virus” and Trump is still the rightful president.
“Does anybody in this room not think that we won Pennsylvania?” Eric Trump asked the crowd, eliciting a roar. “It was the biggest fraud.”
No substantive fraud was found in Pennsylvania or any other state in the 2020 election, despite dozens of claims and court suits; Joe Biden won 7 million more votes than Trump. Nonetheless, the younger Trump brought down the house when he dialed up his dad on speaker phone.
“We love you,” the former president told the crowd, his voice echoing through the hall. “We’re going to bring this country back because I think our country has never been in such bad shape as it is now.”
The chant went up: “Trump-Trump-Trump!”
After Trump’s remarks, two women — a hairstylist, Nancy, 74, and Sandy, 72, a retired saleswoman — said they came to the event out of a desire for community with like-minded people as well as a shared sense of despair over the direction of American society. Both women asked that their last names not be used due to the sensitive subject matter.
Nancy dismissed the state of the nation with an expletive, adding: “And we have a ridiculous president. Because the liberals are in charge right now, and with the courts? Everything is corrupt.”
Both have battled their mainline Protestant churches over church support of the Black Lives Matter movement and LGBTQ clergy, which they say has had a profound impact on their lives, worsening their feelings of alienation and doom. Sandy left her church all together and now watches services of a small Methodist church on Facebook led by two men who teach the Bible without any of that “new culture garbage,” as she put it.
“The whole fabric of society is being taken down,” Sandy said.
Several former Catholics who waited in line for the baptism also described quitting their longtime churches over covid restrictions. “God doesn’t close,” said Linda Lindsey, 50, of Freeland, Pa.
A growing number of Republicans are embracing the ideology of Christian nationalism, which advocates the fusion of American civic life with a particular kind of white, conservative Christianity, according to Samuel Perry, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Oklahoma and the co-author of the book “The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) sells T-shirts that proclaim “Proud Christian nationalist.” Trump-endorsed Mastriano — who was seen at the Capitol on Jan. 6 although he says he left before the riot began — has made Christian nationalist ideology a centerpiece of his campaign, although he has rejected the term. At a recent campaign stop for Mastriano in Pittsburgh, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) urged the crowd to “put on the full armor of God” and “take a stand against the left’s schemes.”
The midterm contests, Perry said, are a testing ground of “whether this Christian nationalist rhetoric will work in competitive elections.”
ReAwaken America is the creation of Clay Clark, 41, an energetic Tulsa-area businessman who previously ran a DJ business and a men’s grooming lounge. He rose to prominence in right-wing circles during the early months of the pandemic, when he and others sued Tulsa to revoke the city’s mask mandate. In 2021, he and Flynn partnered to launch their first conference.
Clark was “pretty much a nobody, this small-time entrepreneur in Oklahoma,” who had made a name for himself protesting against covid mandates, said Katie McCarthy, a researcher at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, which issued a report on the movement last year. The first conference was such a success — attracting a “Who’s Who of the far right” — that the founders rebranded it as ReAwaken America and took to the road, she said.
The tour has now gone to 16 cities, been attended by thousands, draws up to 1 million viewers online and has baptized more than 4,000 “patriots for Christ,” Clark said.
Tickets are pay-what-you can. Most spend between $65-$70, Clark says, meaning organizers just “break even” on the event. But he sells books and T-shirts and has his own legal fees to worry about — he was sued for defamation by a former Dominion Voting Systems executive over Clark’s unfounded claims that the 2020 election was rigged.
“My number one goal is to lead people to Jesus,” Clark said. “When you start paying attention you realize: ‘Wow, there is a God and there is Satan, I should probably pick a side. It’s bigger than Republican or Democrat.”
Mainstream faith leaders have banded together to speak out against ReAwaken America, saying its message contradicts the core teachings of Jesus and of the Christian faith. When community uproar recently forced Clark to move a tour stop from Rochester to Batavia N.Y., the Faithful America coalition of religious groups denounced it as a “toxic, two-day parade of right-wing preachers, MAGA celebrities and QAnon conspiracy theorists” spreading misinformation to thousands “in Jesus’s name.”
“They’re stirring up hatred and paranoia by promoting this idea that America has been corrupted by nefarious entities — the left, LGBTQ, science,” McCarthy said. “Then they tell people to stand up and reclaim what has been lost to fight back against these perceived enemies.”
Many speakers in Manheim, including Flynn, called for spiritual warfare, even as they avoided calling directly for physical violence.
“Are you ready to go to war for the Lord Jesus Christ?” Pastor Mark Burns, a South Carolina minister who was a member of Trump’s faith advisory council, thundered from the stage at one point. “It’s time to take our country back.”
“I’m not trying to talk about physical war, physical attacks,” Burns clarified. “Unless you’re trying to take our guns, that’s something I can’t promise.” Then, he added, “I’m joking.”
Clark said that anyone who advocated physical violence would be immediately removed from the stage. But misinformation flowed unimpeded. There were Doomsday prophets, anti-vaccine agitators casting doubt on all childhood vaccines, and a currency expert who predicted that the American monetary system could collapse by Thanksgiving and that Trump would be reinstalled as president by the end of the year.
“I always tell people that come to the event is that I allow the speakers to speak,” Clark said. “I encourage [the listeners] to ask themselves: ‘Is it fact based?’ ‘Is it biblical?’” He takes little responsibility for the river of untruths, saying that some speakers are not for everyone.
For all the trumpet-sounding and talk of spiritual warfare, when Flynn — known as “America’s General” here — took the stage, his marching orders were more prosaic. He asked the crowd to get involved in local elections and predicted a “red wave” of victory for Republican candidates like Mastriano, who was on the bill but was a no-show.
Flynn and his wife, Lori, recently took poll watcher training, he said, part of his “local action” plan to take over the country for Republicans from the ground up. Flynn was also recently elected to Florida’s Sarasota County Republican Executive Committee, along with a member of the extremist group the Proud Boys.
“Right now, we are at a crucible moment in our country,” Flynn said. “The destiny of this country will be decided … in the next couple of days.”
Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report. | 2022-10-23T20:42:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Right-wing road show recruits 'patriot warriors' to take America back - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/23/right-wing-election-turnout/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/23/right-wing-election-turnout/ |
A news broadcast of North Korean military parade, held Monday in Pyongyang, on a TV screen at Seoul Station in Seoul, South Korea, on Tuesday, April 26, 2022. North Korea staged its first military parade in seven months, with leader Kim Jong Un pledging to strengthen his states atomic arsenal as he presided over an event showcasing nuclear-capable weapons that threaten the U.S. and its allies. (Bloomberg)
Decades of pursuing the “denuclearization” of the Korean peninsula has failed. After North Korea last month declared itself a nuclear weapons state, it’s time for the US and its allies to accept this reality — and learn to live with it. That’s the first step to reducing the risk of accidental confrontation that could lead to all-out nuclear war.
A rethink is needed. For one thing, the US administration has already shown an admirable willingness to abandon the failed policies of previous administrations. From ending the war in Afghanistan, casting off decades of naive Democratic party China policy or de-escalating the War on Drugs with a reform of cannabis policy, President Joe Biden has discarded ideas he previously promoted.
Indeed, far from the stereotype of the crazy North Korean leader, Kim is being perfectly logical in seeking to keep his regime in one piece. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has put that in stark relief. Ukraine famously agreed to give up the nuclear weapons on its territory (though they were not under its control) after the fall of the Soviet Union, in exchange for security guarantees from the US, UK and Russia. Time has shown how valuable those assurances were. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Moammar Al Qaddafi are other examples of leaders who abandoned their nuclear pursuits, only to meet gruesome ends.
Kim could not be sure of any guarantee that Washington might give in return for denuclearization — especially when it’s US policy that has been most inconsistent. Flipping between dovish Democratic and hawkish Republican positions on Pyongyang (or in the case of Donald Trump’s administration, between “fire and fury” and love letters in the space of a few years) has resulted in head-snappingly inconsistent carrot-and-stick approaches.
But doggedly pursuing a failed policy that has only become more unrealistic over the years isn’t getting the US and its allies anywhere — and the risk of accidental confrontation is only running higher.
• The Race for Missiles in Asia’s Danger Zone: Gearoid Reidy
• Putin Is Making Nuclear Warfare the New Normal: Andreas Kluth | 2022-10-23T22:13:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The West Has Failed: North Korea Is a Nuclear State - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-west-has-failed-north-korea-is-a-nuclear-state/2022/10/23/e1511926-531e-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-west-has-failed-north-korea-is-a-nuclear-state/2022/10/23/e1511926-531e-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
U.K. Conservatives are in trouble if they can’t choose a leader quickly
Conservative members of Parliament don’t want the ‘mad swivel-eyed loons’ deciding who replaces Liz Truss as party leader
Analysis by Georgia Kernell
British Conservative Rishi Sunak leaves his campaign headquarters in London on Sunday. (Henry Nicholls/Reuters)
British Prime Minister Liz Truss announced her resignation in London last week, ending the shortest-lived prime ministership (45 days) in British history. Truss’s tenure appeared to be doomed shortly after she announced her tax plan, leading to an uproar and a rapid fall in Conservative support in public opinion polls. In her resignation speech, Truss promised the public a new prime minister in one week’s time. If this actually happens, it will be an astonishingly fast turnaround, unprecedented in modern history. But the Tories need to move fast if they want to avoid a general election.
Whoever is selected will be the Conservatives’ fifth prime minister in under seven years. Does this mean that the party is in an existential crisis? Alternatively, is the party just brutally efficient at responding when a leader loses public confidence?
Members can play an important role in choosing party leaders
In Britain, each party sets its own rules for how it selects a leader. With both the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, dues-paying party members choose among a list of candidates through a rank-order ballot. The candidate receiving the fewest votes is eliminated, and their votes are reallocated to their voters’ second choices. The process, also called single transferrable vote, is repeated until a single candidate wins a majority. This means that ordinary party members (members of the public who pay the party membership fee) are the key deciders.
The Conservatives do things differently. Instead of immediately handing power over to members, they run a series of ballots (held at different times, typically over the period of a week), which are open only to the party’s members of Parliament (MPs). MPs vote for their leader using a secret ballot. In each round the candidate with the lowest vote share is knocked out.
It is only after the field is narrowed to two candidates that party members get a say. Typically, over approximately two months, the two candidates debate and hold local meetings. This is followed by a mail-in vote open to all Conservative members. The winner becomes the party leader. If the Conservatives control the government, as they do currently, the victor is immediately sworn in as prime minister.
There will be at most three candidates
Conservative backbenchers — MPs who don’t hold any government office — play a key role in deciding the rules and procedures for the leadership election, through the 1922 Committee. The committee formally calls and sets the timeline for the next leadership election and decides the minimum number of nominations a candidate must receive to make it on the ballot in the first place. It also sets a minimum threshold of votes to advance to the next round, after the first ballot is sent to MPs. This is especially important when there are many candidates running to become leader.
In the election to replace Boris Johnson, the 1922 Committee set a high bar. It required each contender to secure the support of least 20 MPs to compete. In previous elections, the committee set the number as low as two. On Thursday, Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee, announced that candidates needed the exclusive support of 100 MPs to run.
This has big consequences. There are 357 Tory MPs serving in Parliament. That means that at most three candidates could run for the leadership. Even getting three candidates over the threshold would prove difficult. The party is divided, but it isn’t split across three equally-sized cohesive groups.
Economic moderates have started to coalesce around Rishi Sunak, the runner-up in the last leadership election and former chancellor of the exchequer who played a key role in ousting Johnson. As of Sunday afternoon, 147 MPs had gone public supporting his candidacy — closing in on limiting the field to two candidates at most. Tories are also considering Penny Mordaunt, the lesser-known Conservative leader in the House of Commons. Others wanted Johnson, the controversial former prime minister who resigned in July. He claimed he had the support of over 102 MPs but dropped out of the race Sunday.
Only candidates with the required signatures by Monday afternoon can run. If only a single candidate obtains the minimum 100 signatures, they will automatically be elected party leader and hence prime minister. The race is on.
If more than one candidate receives 100 signatures, ordinary party members will perhaps have a chance to vote on the two leading candidates. The tight timeline means that the 1922 Committee has opted for a first-ever online election among members, promising to do its best to reach all members, many of whom are elderly.
The committee has also floated the idea, however, that the candidate with the least support among MPs should stand down, avoiding a leadership election among members. This is a risky move — the less popular candidate may refuse to stand down, and there isn’t much time to put pressure on them.
MPs don’t want to give ordinary members a say
Tories are promising a swift decision, claiming they want the government to keep running smoothly. But they also need to avoid a protracted leadership race that would show how divided the party is. If they fail to act quickly and unite behind the next leader, Labour’s call for general elections may prevail. Conservatives desperately want to avoid this. They are seriously behind in the polls.
There is another reason. Many Conservative MPs want to avoid giving their members a say. Ordinary members chose Truss, but MPs would almost certainly have preferred Sunak. Members tend to be more extreme in their opinions than their party’s representatives — especially in parties that give them a say. An anonymous ally of former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron made headlines years ago by describing Tory members as “mad, swivel-eyed loons.” That’s why most Conservative MPs hope the 1922 Committee can use the rules to circumvent party members and win the next election.
Georgia Kernell (@Georgia_Kernell) is an assistant professor of communication and political science at the University of California at Los Angeles. | 2022-10-23T22:14:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | U.K. Conservative MPs use the 1922 Committee to skew the leadership race - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/23/uk-conservatives-are-trouble-if-they-cant-choose-leader-quickly/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/23/uk-conservatives-are-trouble-if-they-cant-choose-leader-quickly/ |
This handout photo provided by Costa Rica’s Public Security Ministry shows flight passengers’ personal belongings recovered from Caribbean waters along with pieces of a twin-engine turboprop aircraft, in Limon, Costa Rica, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2022. Six people, apparently including a German business magnate, were feared dead Saturday after the small plane crashed into the Caribbean just off the Costa Rican coast. (Costa Rica Public Security Ministry Photo via AP) (Uncredited/Costa Rica Public Security Ministry)
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica — Authorities in Costa Rica have found two bodies in the search for six people, apparently including the German businessman behind Gold’s Gym, who went missing when their small plane disappeared from radar just off the country’s Caribbean coast. | 2022-10-23T22:15:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Costa Rica finds 2 bodies in crash of plane carrying Germans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/costa-rica-finds-2-bodies-in-crash-of-plane-carrying-germans/2022/10/23/9e1ecdc0-531d-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/costa-rica-finds-2-bodies-in-crash-of-plane-carrying-germans/2022/10/23/9e1ecdc0-531d-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
The Phillies celebrate near the mound after finishing off the Padres in five games Sunday. (Michael Reaves/Getty Images)
PHILADELPHIA — Into the cold and drizzle of a deep autumn Philadelphia evening there suddenly came a warm, heavenly glow that passed through Citizens Bank Park and its 45,485 ecstatic witnesses. Flying through that mist, barely airborne long enough to get wet, was a rocket-launched baseball bound for the bleachers in left-center field. On the earth below, Bryce Harper stood briefly to admire it, then ducked his head and began the most satisfying 360-foot jog of his life.
It was a two-run homer in the eighth inning of Game 5 of the National League Championship Series, and it sent the Philadelphia Phillies to a 4-3 victory over the San Diego Padres and a berth in the World Series, this franchise’s first since 2009. The Houston Astros or New York Yankees await.
Much of the game was played in a light rain and a steady wind, cloaking the downtown skyline in the distance in a spooky blanket of haze. Beyond straightaway center, between the Stars and Stripes and a giant LED Liberty Bell that lights up after Phillies homers and wins, there were a pair of red flags flapping in the blustery wind — representing the only World Series titles in franchise history, from 1980 and 2008.
But the rain picked up and the conditions deteriorated in the top of the seventh, when the Padres scored a pair of runs to seize a 3-2 lead, the second of them scoring on the third wild pitch of the inning by Phillies reliever Seranthony Domínguez — equaling the number of wild pitches he threw in the entire regular season, spanning 51 innings.
The tying run, charged to Wheeler, scored on an RBI by Padres designated hitter Josh Bell, who laced a double to right off Domínguez. Pinch runner José Azocar took third and then home on the second and third of Domínguez’s wild pitches. Suddenly, the Padres led by a run.
Major League Baseball rolled the dice by even attempting to play Sunday, with the weather forecast calling for light rain and a narrow window in which to cram a game. Because the postseason schedule was condensed — fallout from the owners’ lockout, which delayed the start of the season — the traditional travel day between Games 5 and 6 of the NLCS was wiped out. Had the Padres won Sunday, the teams would have reconvened in San Diego on Monday night. | 2022-10-23T23:01:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Phillies advance to World Series, beat Padres in NLCS Game 5 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/phillies-world-series-padres-game-5/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/phillies-world-series-padres-game-5/ |
In yet another torturous fourth quarter, finally the Ravens came out on top
Cleveland Browns defensive end Isaiah Thomas (58) recovers Baltimore Ravens running back Justice Hill's (43) fumble in the fourth quarter of Sunday's game. (Nick Wass/AP)
BALTIMORE — On Sunday afternoon at M&T Bank Stadium, it was almost deja vu all over again, as Yogi Berra used to say.
Fortunately for the Baltimore Ravens, the key word was “almost.” After blowing leads of 10 points or more three times in their first six games, the Ravens almost did it again against the woeful Cleveland Browns before hanging on for dear life and a 23-20 victory.
Once again, the Ravens had a 10-point fourth-quarter lead. Once again, they turned it into torture for most of their 70,463 purple-clad fans. First, they let the Browns drive 75 yards for their first touchdown since the opening drive of the game. Then, driving for what would have been a game-clinching touchdown with the clock melting away, Baltimore running back Justice Hill fumbled on the Browns’ 16-yard line. There was still 3:12 left, and you could feel the fear on the Ravens’ sideline.
“We just needed to finish,” Coach John Harbaugh said. “Once you do that, it gives you a lot more confidence for the next time.”
At that moment, though, the Ravens needed to finish this game. Sure enough, Browns quarterback Jacoby Brissett found Donovan Peoples-Jones open for 37 yards to the Baltimore 42, and the Ravens were in trouble again. Or so it seemed.
But bad teams — the Browns are now 2-5 — find ways to lose, the same way good teams find ways to win. Brissett found Amari Cooper down the right sideline for what would have been a go-ahead touchdown. But Cooper pushed cornerback Marcus Peters a split second before he caught the ball, and the officials called it. Peters had shoved Cooper a moment earlier, but this time, the call went on the offense.
“For a split — split — second I thought it might go the other way,” Harbaugh said. “But then I heard on my [headset]: ‘It’s on the offense. [Cooper] pushed off.’”
The Browns then lined up for a potential game-tying field goal and made yet another mistake — moving up front before Cade York could attempt a 56-yarder. The ball moved back five yards, and York attempted the kick from 60 yards, moving a yard closer than normal. Whether it was the shorter snap or the lower trajectory on a long kick, Ravens linebacker Malik Harrison got a hand on the ball, and it rolled away harmlessly.
“I went like this,” Lamar Jackson said, dropping his shoulders and taking a deep breath to show relief. “I think we all did that. I don’t want the games to be this close, but everybody made the plays when we had to make plays.”
They did, but there wasn’t much euphoria to be found on a day when the Ravens held a 10-year reunion for the Super Bowl team that won the championship in February 2013. Once the last of the celebrants had cleared the field, the Browns came out as if they were the team with two Super Bowl victories — not the zero appearances for the two different franchises that have carried the Browns name.
Two years ago, the Browns were a team on the rise, winning 11 games and a first-round playoff game. Baker Mayfield was a star, on the field and in commercials. Last year, Cleveland slipped to 8-9, shipped Mayfield out of town and brought in Deshaun Watson, signing him to a five-year, $230 million contract — all of it guaranteed — despite his legal problems.
Watson can return to the Browns Dec. 4, for a game against his former team, the Houston Texans. By then, it will almost certainly be too late for this season, even if Watson can be more than a shadow of himself after not playing for almost two years.
Brissett has filled in for quarterbacks in New England, Indianapolis and Miami and always played respectably. Sunday was no different. The Browns led 10-3 early in the second quarter when Coach Kevin Stefanski made a classic NFL over-coaching mistake. Facing third and 17, Jackson was nearly sacked near the line of scrimmage but managed to scramble for a seven-yard gain.
It was fourth and 10, and Jordan Stout got off about a 40-yard punt. But Stefanski had thrown a challenge flag just before the snap, claiming Jackson had been tackled at the 18-yard line. Replay upheld the call and, given a second chance, Stout got off a 69-yard punt, pinning the Browns inside the 10-yard line. The Ravens defense got its first stop of the day, and Devin Duvernay ran 59 yards with the ensuing punt, which led to a Justin Tucker field goal. The Ravens went on to score the game’s next 17 points before doing their fourth quarter (almost) swan dive.
One of the game balls undoubtedly went to running back Gus Edwards, who came back from a torn ACL and played for the first time in 645 days. Edwards is bigger and stronger than any of the other Baltimore running backs, and his 66 yards on 16 carries certainly gave his team a boost.
As usual, Tucker played a key role in the victory, kicking three field goals, including a 55-yarder in the fourth quarter (yawn) that put the Ravens up, 23-13. After that, they hung on for dear life.
Ravens say they won’t reach deal with Lamar Jackson before the season
Kareem Hunt’s two-yard run made it 23-20 with nine minutes left, but then the Ravens put together a superb clock-killing drive that included 10 runs and two short Jackson passes. The Browns had already used two of their timeouts when Hill spun out of a tackle before being stripped. Isaiah Thomas recovered the fumble for the Browns, and the Ravens were on the precipice of another blown lead.
This time, with a little help from their opponents, they hung on.
“I’d rather blow leads early in the season than later in the season,” defensive tackle Justin Madubuike said. “Better to get them out of the way now.”
Whether they are out of the way is hard to know. The Ravens are 4-3 and tied with the Cincinnati Bengals for first place in the AFC North. Their next two games are on the road — a quick turnaround in Tampa Bay on Thursday and then at New Orleans. They will travel to Cincinnati for the regular-season finale in January.
It is a long way from here to there. For now, the Ravens could head to their homes Sunday night knowing that sometimes it is better to be lucky than good. The most articulate postgame moment of this day was Jackson’s sigh of relief. | 2022-10-23T23:01:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ravens, known for torturous fourth quarters, finally came out on top - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/ravens-blown-leads-browns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/ravens-blown-leads-browns/ |
Changyong Rhee, governor of the Bank of Korea, during a panel at the Peterson Institute For International Economics in Washington, DC, US, on Saturday, Oct. 15, 2022. The International Monetary Fund this week warned of a worsening outlook for the global economy, highlighting that efforts to manage the highest inflation in decades may add to the damage from the war in Ukraine and China’s slowdown. (Bloomberg)
It’s been a steep learning curve for Rhee Chang-yong. The central bank he leads, in one of the world’s bellwether economies, was miles ahead of the Federal Reserve in beginning to tackle inflation. And still the job keeps getting harder. In the six months since he became Bank of Korea governor, Rhee has wrestled with rapid price increases, executed the only two half-point interest-rate hikes in the agency’s history and strived to be more open about the bank’s plans. The latter is tricky at the best of times, and a herculean task during periods of great strain in world markets. On paper, he came to the gig superbly prepared: For eight years, he ran the Asia-Pacific department of the International Monetary Fund and was chief economist at the Asian Development Bank. The challenges Rhee faces encapsulate the trials of most central bankers in 2022. He’s been forced to contend with an epic rally in the dollar that’s pounded the Korean won, pushed the bank to intervene in markets and given Rhee pause about how much guidance to provide to investors. Who could blame him for expecting a plague of locusts next? “I have to confess that it’s much harder than just writing a paper,” he told the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington this month. Despite his recent appointment, Rhee is no neophyte when it comes to the trade-offs officials typically confront. There is the perennial question of how fast you tighten policy lest you choke the expansion. To that add currency-market ructions, which ambushed Rhee’s laudable efforts to inject some candor into the bank’s historically opaque workings. The won tumbled 9% in the third quarter alone and is down about 17% this year, a decline in Asia second only to the battered Japanese yen. Rhee has little choice but to plow ahead. Like many officials in emerging markets, and quite a few in advanced economies, Rhee isn’t master of his own destiny. The common thread is the dominance of the greenback, a product of the Fed’s clout and how America’s response to skyrocketing inflation is driving choices in places popularly thought to be more under the sway of Chinese leader Xi Jinping than Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
To hear it from Rhee, the intent isn’t to reverse the slide in the local currency against the dollar or even about holding a line on trading screens. It’s about cushioning the won’s decline and preventing the tumble from worsening inflation. That’s a distinction often hard to manage in practice: Koreans have bitter memories of the hardships encountered during the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s when the currency’s implosion led to a deep recession and the nation required a humiliating rescue from the IMF.
The Fed’s course has upended plans, pushing even early movers against inflation into more reactive positions and driving some embarrassing about-faces in forward guidance. In the case of Korea, Powell & Co. led Rhee to suspend intentions to move in quarter-point increments after a 50-basis-point increase in July.
Rhee was unusually candid after the big July hike and indicated smaller steps were now likely. He told the Peterson audience he had several points to get across: People shouldn’t overreact to the norm-busting, half-point step, and he wanted a sense of how previous increases were flowing through the broader economy. In addition, inflation and wage increases weren’t approaching levels in the US or Europe.
But global market gyrations tripped him up, specifically the acceleration in the dollar’s ascent after the Federal Open Market Committee’s September meeting, which projected higher rates ahead than anticipated. That shock exacerbated a slump in the yen that forced Japan to intervene to support the currency for the first time in a generation and made UK markets vulnerable to the reckless fiscal package that drew the Bank of England into the bond market to protect pension funds. “The Bank of Korea is now independent from our government, but not from the Fed,” Rhee said. He was criticized for returning to 50 basis points. Scrutiny — and often tougher treatment than that — comes with the job. Rhee stresses that guidance isn’t a promise, a caveat that’s commonplace in the monetary arena. Fair enough. But people tend to hear a number or a date and then zero in on that. They are wired to tune out the qualifiers. Reserve Bank of Australia Governor Philip Lowe would be sympathetic. Lowe has been chastised for suggesting late last year rates might not rise until 2024. It was never a guarantee, but nuances can be missed when interest rates and price increases move from the back pages to leading the evening news bulletins. Chastened, the RBA is conducting an internal review of forward guidance. It’s also subject to an external evaluation commissioned by the government. Communications is part of the probe. The difficulty lies in trying to adapt signaling the direction of monetary policy — a tool that came of age during the years of too-low inflation after the 2008 crackup — to an era of high inflation. Markets became hooked on the handholding. The risk is that Korea is trying to be more transparent about its path at precisely the time when circumstances make it hardest. Perhaps a bit of Alan Greenspan’s studied vagueness wouldn’t go astray. The education of this central banker has been brutal and isn’t over. When the current drama subsides, both fundamentally in terms of inflation being put under control and some stability returning to markets, I would love to hear or read Rhee’s autopsy. Let’s hope he doesn’t retreat into opacity, as tempting as that may be. Anyone with an interest in the success of Korea’s economy, a vital exporter, should wish him well.
• Singapore Warning on Global Growth Is Must-Read: Daniel Moss | 2022-10-23T23:45:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Rough and Tumble Education of a Central Banker - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-rough-and-tumble-education-of-a-central-banker/2022/10/23/3a29f6a0-5327-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/the-rough-and-tumble-education-of-a-central-banker/2022/10/23/3a29f6a0-5327-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
Bryce Harper's eighth inning home run propelled the Philadelphia Phillies into the World Series. (Tracie Van Auken/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
PHILADELPHIA — On the first hit of Bryce Harper’s major league career, a ball he absolutely scorched to the base of the center field wall at Dodger Stadium, his helmet flew off his head as he headed for second, freeing his flowing 19-year-old locks. Dang if it didn’t seem like he did it on purpose, grabbing the Hollywood spotlight and turning it directly and intentionally on himself.
Because his eighth-inning home run turned a deficit into a lead in the Phillies’ 4-3 victory over the San Diego Padres at sloppy and euphoric Citizens Bank Park, Harper will play in his first World Series. He propelled them to a dominant performance in the National League Championship Series, in which he collected eight hits in five games. He is a complete hitter who is in the process of owning October. Watching his prowess is mesmerizing.
He’s no kid, not anymore. But in a strange way — after the rookie of the year award in 2012, after two MVP seasons, after a 13-year, $330-million contract — Harper is less a sensation now than he was back then, in his first days as a Washington National. | 2022-10-24T00:41:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bryce Harper's home run propels Phillies to World Series - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/bryce-harper-phillies-world-series/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/bryce-harper-phillies-world-series/ |
Commanders quarterback Taylor Heinicke hands off to running back Brian Robinson Jr. during the game against the Green Bay Packers Sunday. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
Late in the fourth quarter Sunday, when the Washington Commanders needed a clock-killing drive to keep an opposing Hall of Fame quarterback off the field and secure the victory, several coaches and players said they felt a sort of deja vu.
Last year, Washington sparked a four-game winning streak with quarterback Taylor Heinicke by leaning into a run-heavy approach that controlled the clock and limited snaps for Tampa Bay’s Tom Brady. This year, with Heinicke back under center because of Carson Wentz’s finger injury, the Commanders essentially remade the movie against Green Bay’s Aaron Rodgers — down to a dramatic final drive that featured plenty of physical runs and multiple tough catches by star wideout Terry McLaurin.
“It seems to be a pretty good formula,” Coach Ron Rivera said after the 23-21 win Sunday.
But can Washington rely on it moving forward?
There’s reason to be skeptical. The approach only worked last year when Washington was able to keep the games within a score or two, and when Dallas put them in a deeper hole, Heinicke couldn’t throw them back into it.
But the Commanders overcame an 11-point deficit Sunday and only need the approach to work as a bridge. Heinicke is set to start for at least the next three weeks — at Indianapolis, vs. Minnesota and at Philadelphia — and Washington, at 3-4, is poised to be competitive in the NFC. Other than the East division, which has three teams at 5-2 or better, only a few teams in the conference are above .500. There’s an opening, and though the approach leaves the Commanders with a thin margin for error, the defense is also trending upward.
What does Heinicke think of the formula?
“I don’t know,” he said. “I kind of just go to the huddle when the play is called and kind of go back to the meetings.” He narrated his mind-set: “They’re in this coverage — what do I do? They’re in that coverage — what do I do? Where’s my hot [read]? Go from there; play ball.”
“Again, I play best when I don’t think too much,” he added. “I just go out there and kind of react.”
Early on Sunday, offensive coordinator Scott Turner turned back the clock to an older era of the NFL. He called lots of early-down runs and lots of quick throws out of play action. During last year’s winning streak, Washington ran the ball 54.7 percent of the time on early downs in games within one score, the eighth-highest rate in the NFL.
Historically, given the inefficiency of rushing, the run-first style hasn’t led to many explosive plays. But Washington popped a few runs in the first half — Antonio Gibson for 20 yards, Brian Robinson Jr. for 24 — and they keyed a 12-play, 83-yard drive that ultimately led to a touchdown.
That drive, which followed Heinicke’s pick-6, pulled Washington back to 14-10. The run-heavy style is better to drain the clock when ahead than to chase from behind, and it may be unsustainable, but it worked Sunday, and left tackle Charles Leno Jr. said he enjoyed the run-blocking.
“It really did feel like [the offense] of last year,” he said, adding, “You keep the ball, and you control the game, and that was big this week.”
Early in the third quarter, the running seemed to help create an effective play action, when Heinicke pulled the ball back and fired a 37-yard strike down the right sideline to McLaurin, who was in single coverage against Packers cornerback Jaire Alexander.
“Taylor couldn’t have done a better job putting the ball where it needed to be; it’s almost like it just came to me out of the sky,” McLaurin said. “I told him that’s probably our best rep that we’ve had since we’ve been together.”
Late in the fourth quarter, after Green Bay scored on a long pass by Rodgers, Washington clung to a two-point lead with only 3:26 remaining. Green Bay had all three timeouts. It seemed as if Rodgers might be able to work the late-game magic that’s defined much of his career.
But Washington marched out under Heinicke in a familiar spot. Robinson ran behind the left guard for four. Heinicke threw to McLaurin, who scampered for 14. The Commanders burned through all three of the Packers’ timeouts, and when they finally punted from the Green Bay 37, there were only 23 seconds left.
In the final seconds, Green Bay resorted to a lateral drill, and when the ball finally skittered harmlessly out of bounds, it was, in a way, Washington’s past connecting to its present. The Commanders had again won a game by razor-thin margins over a favored opponent using an approach that seemed tailored to its quarterback — and if the team is lucky, the formula and the result could be a window into its future. | 2022-10-24T00:41:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Commanders deny the Packers with a ‘pretty good formula’ on offense - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/taylor-heinicke-commanders-offense/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/taylor-heinicke-commanders-offense/ |
In this handout photo provided by the Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines, a damaged portion of the Korean Air Lines Co. plane lies after it overshot the runway at the Mactan Cebu International Airport in Cebu, central Philippines, on Monday, Oct. 24, 2022. A Korean Air Lines Co. plane carrying 173 passengers and crew members overshot a runway while landing in bad weather in the central Philippines late Sunday and authorities said all those on board were safe. The airport is temporarily closed due to the stalled aircraft. (Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines via AP) (Uncredited/Civil Aviation Authority of the Philippines) | 2022-10-24T01:16:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Korean Air plane overruns Philippine runway, 173 people safe - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/korean-air-plane-overruns-philippine-runway-173-people-safe/2022/10/23/4a76ab4e-5335-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/korean-air-plane-overruns-philippine-runway-173-people-safe/2022/10/23/4a76ab4e-5335-11ed-ac8b-08bbfab1c5a5_story.html |
Salman Rushdie lost partial vision, use of hand after attack, rep says
Author Salman Rushdie appears at the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson in 2018. Rushdie was stabbed at an August event in Chautauqua, N.Y. (Rogelio V. Solis/AP)
After an attacker rushed the stage at an August event in Chautauqua, N.Y., and stabbed novelist Salman Rushdie, Rushdie’s agent said at the time that the 75-year-old author’s road to recovery would be long.
Now, the extent of Rushdie’s injuries have come into sharper focus, with his agent, Andrew Wylie, telling the Spanish newspaper El País on Saturday that one of Rushdie’s hands is incapacitated and that the author has lost vision in one eye. Wylie added that Rushdie sustained “three serious wounds in his neck” and had 15 more wounds to his chest and torso.
“So, it was a brutal attack,” Wylie said in the interview, adding that the injuries were “profound.”
Wylie declined to say whether Rushdie remains in the hospital, explaining that he could not give any information about the author’s whereabouts.
“He’s going to live,” Wylie told the paper, adding, “That’s the more important thing.”
Wylie’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post on Sunday.
Around 11 a.m. on Aug. 12, Rushdie had just taken his seat onstage for an interview at the Chautauqua Institution when a man ran onto the stage and attacked Rushdie and his interviewer, Henry Reese, who suffered a facial injury that required a short hospitalization. Rushdie, who police said had been stabbed in the neck and abdomen, was airlifted to a hospital and put on a ventilator.
In the following days, after Rushdie had been taken off the ventilator, Wylie told The Post that Rushdie’s injuries were severe. He told the Associated Press that Rushdie suffered damage to his liver and to nerves in one arm, adding that the author might lose an eye.
Hadi Matar, a 24-year-old New Jersey man, was arrested in the attack and charged with attempted murder and assault. He has pleaded not guilty.
After the 1988 publication of Rushdie’s fourth novel, “The Satanic Verses,” Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini denounced the novel’s treatment of Islam as blasphemous and issued a fatwa, or religious decree, calling for Rushdie’s assassination. A $1 million bounty was put on his head — an amount that would grow to more than $3 million over the years.
Rushdie went into hiding for years. Bookstores that sold the novel were attacked. Two translators of the book — one Italian and one Japanese — were the victims of separate stabbings in 1991. The Japanese translator, Hitoshi Igarashi, died. Even after Khomeini died and Iran’s leaders later distanced themselves from the fatwa, it remained a threat to Rushdie. He told The Post in 1992 that he wasn’t sure he’d ever be safe, though in recent years Rushdie made public appearances without visible guards.
In 1992, Salman Rushdie wasn’t sure he’d ever be safe
Iran denied involvement in the August attack. In an interview with the New York Post, Matar would not say whether he was inspired by the fatwa, but he praised Khomeini and told the paper that he was surprised Rushdie survived.
In the interview published Saturday, Wylie told El País that, in the past, he and Rushdie had spoken about how the fatwa continued to pose a danger, especially from “a random person coming out of nowhere and attacking” him.
“So, you can’t protect against that,” Wylie told the paper, “because it’s totally unexpected and illogical.” | 2022-10-24T01:16:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Salman Rushdie lost partial vision, use of hand after attack, rep says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/23/salman-rushdie-injuries-eye-hand/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/10/23/salman-rushdie-injuries-eye-hand/ |
Aaron Rodgers throws the ball as Daron Payne (94) Jonathan Allen (93) pressure him during the Commanders' defeat of the Packers Sunday. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
For years, Aaron Rodgers has made a living off his ability to make something out of nothing. Plays like a 61-yard touchdown pass to Richard Rodgers II, which released the Packers from the jaws of defeat as time expired in Detroit in 2015 or any number of dazzling performances versus the Chicago Bears have earned him that reputation.
But as Rodgers lay facedown on the FedEx Field turf after his failed lateral pass careened through the legs of offensive lineman Jon Runyan and out of bounds, one thing became clear: The Packers offense is not what it was. With Sunday’s 23-21 loss to the Washington Commanders, Green Bay dropped below .500 for just the second time under Coach Matt LaFleur. (The first time was last season, when the Packers lost their opener to the Saints and then went on to win seven straight.)
“I talked about simplification last week, but I don’t really know where to go when it comes to that,” Rodgers said. “It has to be something inside, accountability for performance. … It’s just not winning football.”
In years past, the team could put its trust in Rodgers and players like Davante Adams, Randall Cobb and Jordy Nelson to right the ship. But with Adams in Las Vegas with the Raiders, Cobb injured and in the twilight years of his career and Nelson enjoying retirement, the cure for the Packers’ stagnant offense is tough to identify.
Veterans like Sammy Watkins and Allen Lazard, who were supposed to lessen the impact of Adams’s departure, have been riddled with injuries. Second-round pick Christian Watson has struggled to learn the playbook, and fourth-round pick Romeo Doubs, who exceeded preseason expectations to become the Packers’ third-leading receiver with 234 yards, has struggled with drops. Against Washington, Doubs dropped all four of his targets, including a critical drop on third and two late in the game.
“We’ve been really beating ourselves up,” Doubs said. “This game is more mental than it is physical, so we just got to get out of our heads and play better. But we got to stop beating ourselves up because eventually, the snowball will end. The snowball will melt, and things will get going.”
With Rodgers on pace to throw for fewer than 4,000 yards for the first time since 2017, a season in which injuries limited him to just seven games, opposing defenses have started putting eight men in the box. As a result, the Packers’ talented backfield of A.J. Dillon and Aaron Jones has struggled to produce.
Against Washington, the duo combined for just 38 yards on 12 carries.
“I said this earlier to the group, but this situation feels eerie, like, weird,” tight end Marcedes Lewis said. “When have you ever seen dudes loading up the box vs. [Rodgers]? I really don’t know how to put this in words. We have talent, but we just haven’t found that right groove yet.”
When asked about the offense’s failure to launch thus far, Rodgers pointed to a lack of focus and execution, but Lewis, who knows what it’s like to learn the Packers’ scheme on the fly, says that learning LaFleur’s system and also understanding how to adjust and play like Rodgers desires is easier said than done.
“This team is particularly different from any other team, because there’s Matt LaFleur’s offense, and then there’s [Rodgers’s] offense,” Lewis said. “Sometimes they fuse, but sometimes they don’t. Regardless, you got to be on your p’s and q’s all the way around. There’s no real timeline to learning this stuff; you just have to keep evolving and working until you get comfortable.”
The Packers trail the 5-1 Vikings in the NFC North, and they have a Sunday-night meeting with the AFC-leading Buffalo Bills waiting in the wings. Green Bay must figure things out in a hurry.
“It really doesn’t need to be a whole lot of talking,” Lewis said. “The quickest way to bounce back from a loss is to just lean on your work. Constant repetition creates conviction, and that’s how you win in this league.” | 2022-10-24T01:16:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Packers’ struggles on offense persist in loss to Commanders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/aaron-rodgers-packers-struggles-offense/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/23/aaron-rodgers-packers-struggles-offense/ |
‘House of the Dragon,’ ‘Rings of Power’ and pop culture’s pessimism
If pop culture is supposed to be escapist, the current crop of science fiction and fantasy suggests that the real world must be truly unbearable.
Movies and television have converged on an obsession with societal decline and elite self-destruction. That stylish, expensive grimness may well match a public sense that everything from democracy to nature is under profound threat and that pessimism is savvier than protest. The question is: Is this the art we truly want and need?
The idea of decline shows up most strongly in two hit fantasy prequels: HBO’s “House of the Dragon,” set before the events of its fantasy behemoth “Game of Thrones,” and Amazon Prime’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” which takes place centuries before “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings.”
“House of the Dragon” chronicles the lead-up to a nasty civil war rooted in family dysfunction.
The Targaryens, once legendary conquerors of Westeros, are in decline. When a king more interested in studying history than ruling in the present dies, his second wife and her family move to usurp his chosen heir. Readers of the George R.R. Martin material from which “House of the Dragon” is adapted know what’s coming: a bloody, destructive conflict that does little but hasten the extinction of dragons and the Targaryen dynasty.
Alyssa Rosenberg: Princesses in sexual and reproductive peril? They’re just like us.
“The Rings of Power” is also about the end of an age. As the title suggests, the show is an origin story for the pesky pieces of jewelry that cause so much trouble in “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. But the fatal misjudgments that lead to the forging of the rings are embedded in an even more sweeping arc about the dwindling power of elves in Middle-earth, and the events that will eventually see most of them abandon those shores.
The inclination toward downfall is, in some respects, inherent to prequels. A story intended to explain the mess other heroes had to tackle — be it the Galactic Empire from “Star Wars,” the end of the Targaryen dynasty or the scourge of some troublesome bling — will inevitably be a bit of a bummer.
But this tendency is popping up elsewhere in pop culture, too. The two most recent science fiction epics to get glossy adaptations have the same gloomy air.
Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation,” recently adapted as an Apple TV Plus series, is about a mathematician who tries to preserve the collective knowledge of civilization in anticipation of the collapse of the empire in which he lives. In Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” interpreted by director Denis Villeneuve, calamity visits first the noble Atreides family, then the empire that targeted them; even the rise of a new regime is presented as a tragedy.
Elsewhere, Netflix has finished shooting an adaptation of Liu Cixin’s “The Three-Body Problem” novels, a story kicked off when a scientist convinced by China’s Cultural Revolution that humanity doesn’t deserve to survive invites a hostile alien race to destroy the species. Even the Marvel Cinematic Universe has an anxious tinge: Its superheroes have discovered the multiverse, but those branching timelines are a threat, not an opportunity.
True, new offshoots of the utopian “Star Trek” are in production, but they’re airing on minor streaming services; optimism is now a niche product, rather than a culture-wide phenomenon. Even the new “Star Wars” movies succumbed to stagnation. In the interests of giving fans something familiar, the most recent trilogy resurrected the Empire and Emperor and set its heroes to fight the same old battles, rather than explore how a victorious Republic might govern as it sought to reunite the galaxy.
These shows and movies don’t have direct political analogues in the most obvious sense. A family civil war isn’t a useful proxy for contemporary political polarization. Peter Thiel may have named his data analysis company Palantir, after the magic crystal balls in J.R.R. Tolkien’s fictional universe, but the titular “Rings of Power” are an elite technology rather than a useful metaphor for social media’s corrosive influence. Unless I’m missing something, a secret society of hyper-powerful women is not secretly shaping world history, a la “Dune.”
And yet, the pervasive pop culture sense that things are getting worse is in sync with widespread real-world glumness. Residents of 15 large, wealthy countries told the Pew Research Center earlier this year that they thought the next generation would be worse off financially. People overwhelmingly believe that climate change will “harm them personally,” but are less than confident that their governments will act effectively to mitigate it, a Pew survey found last year. Millions of people died in the covid-19 pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has renewed the specter of nuclear calamity, and the United States’ brief turn as a hegemon and guarantor of global stability is already coming to a close.
But there’s more to fiction, and to life, than the defeatism of a dwarf king in “The Rings of Power,” who tells his son: “The rock that lives within us hungers for the eternal, resisting the pull of time. But the fire embraces the truth: that all things must one day be consumed and fade away to ash.”
Alyssa Rosenberg: ‘House of the Dragon’ offers Americans a new shot at a common culture
It’s well and good to deconstruct old ideas and pernicious tropes. But there’s a difference between self-examination and an embrace of annihilation. Rather than lapsing into decadence and despair, pop culture should reclaim its power to show audiences what’s possible.
In worlds real and fictional, something remains after the old order has been worn away. Especially at a moment when real-world politics and governance feel at a particularly low ebb, fiction has a useful role to play in firing the creative imagination, too. That’s particularly true in science fiction and fantasy, genres that at their core assume that progress is possible and that human nobility can shape the world.
Take the example of “For All Mankind,” Ronald D. Moore’s alternate history of the space program. In his telling, the United States suffers a crushing defeat when the Soviet Union wins the race to put a man on the moon. But rather than giving up, Americans bring a new competitive fervor to space exploration, tapping the talents of previously overlooked people. What first seemed like disaster becomes fuel for dynamism.
And true epics can help give audiences perspective. Young adult author Tamora Pierce’s Tortall novels, which have been optioned by Lionsgate, tell a several-hundred-year story about social progress, backlash and renewed forward momentum. U.S. activists concerned about erosions of women’s and LGBTQ rights could use an affirmation that even when the moral arc of the universe seems impossibly long, it can be made to bend toward justice with persistence and organization.
Maybe we’re at a point where the idea of optimism without corniness is more fantastical than dragons or elves and progress seems farther off than the moon. But fiction doesn’t have to play by the rules that burden reality. And it can remind viewers that, should we choose, it’s still possible for us to be the heroes of our own stories.
Opinion|Traumatized? Horror like ‘Halloween Ends’ shows how to fight back. | 2022-10-24T02:48:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | ‘House of the Dragon,’ ‘Rings of Power’ show pop culture’s pessimism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/23/house-dragon-rings-power-pop-cultures-pessimism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/10/23/house-dragon-rings-power-pop-cultures-pessimism/ |
Russia deepens its influence in West Africa
At the end of September, Burkina Faso experienced its second coup of the year. A military putsch in the West African nation brought down the prevailing junta and made 34-year-old Capt. Ibrahim Traoré the youngest national leader in all of Africa. The coup, largely bloodless, was denounced by the African Union, and E.U. and U.S. officials. But cheers came from a conspicuous corner of the world.
In a message posted via the Telegram app, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, a Russian oligarch close to President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle and head of the Wagner Group, a shadowy mercenary company that Western experts view as a Kremlin proxy, said Traoré’s power grab “was necessary.” He described the previously little-known captain as “a truly worthy and courageous son of his motherland” and cast the grave security troubles wracking the West African nation as part of France’s imperial legacy.
“The people of Burkina Faso were under the yoke of the colonialists, who robbed the people as well as played their vile games, trained, supported gangs of bandits and caused much grief to the local population,” Prigozhin said. Scenes of jubilant pro-coup supporters in the capital Ouagadougou showed some waving Russian flags, a reflection both of the reach of Russian propaganda networks as well as popular frustration with a status quo some link to Western policy. That includes a decade-long French counterterrorism campaign in the nations of the central Sahel, the vast sweep of semiarid land south of the Sahara desert.
Burkina Faso is in the grips of a harrowing security crisis. Islamist militants control swaths of the country. Thousands of civilians have been killed this year alone, while some 2 million people — a fifth of the Burkinabe population — have been displaced by the fighting. Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Sandaogo Damiba, the previous coup leader who Traoré supplanted, himself seized power in January on grounds that the government was failing the military in its battles against insurgents.
“Faced with the deteriorating situation, we tried several times to get Damiba to refocus the transition on the security question,” Traoré said in a signed statement read out by another officer on state television after the latest coup.
With Wagner Group’s presence in #Mali, #Russia has continued to make inroads across the Sahel, particularly in Mali’s southwestern neighbor Burkina Faso. The Wagner Group has been accused of indiscriminate killings in Mali. 👇More on Russia’s interventions https://t.co/YCQDYUNxKD
— CEP (@FightExtremism) October 7, 2022
Experts now see Russia exploiting the vacuum. Since at least 2018, the Wagner Group has been enlisted to help fragile African regimes crack down on Islamist extremist insurgencies. In the Central African Republic, Mozambique, Libya and now Mali, Russian military contractors have operated on the ground alongside local forces. In some instances, they’ve been linked to reports of human rights abuses and possible war crimes.
Since the Sept. 30 coup in Burkina Faso, there have been growing suggestions that the new junta will consider forging a new “strategic partnership” with Moscow and pivot away from earlier understandings with Western powers. Prigozhin’s rhetoric may be self-serving, but also could indicate a growing Russian influence.
“Rather than being a transparent partner and improving security, Wagner exploits client states who pay for their heavy-handed security services in gold, diamonds, timber and other natural resources — this is part of Wagner Group’s business model,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, told a Security Council briefing earlier this month. “We know these ill-gotten gains are used to fund Moscow’s war machine in Africa, the Middle East and Ukraine.”
“In previous coups Russia has tried to position itself as an accidental beneficiary of regime changes,” Samuel Ramani, an analyst at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, told the BBC. “This time around Russia is a lot more proactive in support for the coup, and that has led to speculation that Russia has played a co-ordinating role.”
Though it’s unclear what actual presence Russia does or will have in Burkina Faso, the coup sets the stage for a new chapter in a broader geopolitical contest. Some African nations, including a handful of states in West Africa, have conspicuously backed Russia at the United Nations and in other forums as Moscow ducks international censure for its invasion and ongoing war in Ukraine.
Civilian killings soar as Russian mercenaries join fight in West Africa
The story of "Touriste," a Russian propaganda movie that glorifies the deeds of the Wagner Group, the real-world private military organization whose mercenaries have fought in Ukraine, the Middle East and especially Africa. Great journalism by @neilMunshihttps://t.co/Kxvf4kunAR
— Africa Is a Country (@africasacountry) January 30, 2022
“What we see is that the Sahel is becoming a battlefield for the rivalry between Russia and the West,” said Jean-Hervé Jezequel, Sahel director for the International Crisis Group, in a podcast episode recently released by the think tank. “This is an additional layer in an already complex crisis,” he added, suggesting that great power competition in this part of the world would only make things more difficult for local actors struggling to forge peace.
The struggle is already acute in cyberspace, with Kremlin-linked online accounts animating the discourse across the region. “Pro-Russian networks today are especially targeting West and Central African nations grappling with conflict,” my colleague Danielle Paquette reported earlier this year. “Among them are Burkina Faso and Mali, which both face fast-growing insurgencies and have endured a combined three” — now, four — “coups d'état since 2020. They’re also home to deep reserves of gold and other precious minerals that analysts say Moscow covets.”
Mali, Burkina Faso’s larger neighbor, provides the sharpest illustration of the dynamics. For close to a decade, it was the main staging ground for a French military mission aimed at beating back the advances of extremist militant factions, including al-Qaeda, Islamic State-linked groups and ethnic Tuareg separatists. But after initial successes, the operation bogged down and anti-French sentiment grew.
The last French detachments left Mali for neighboring Niger earlier this year, with the prevailing regime in Bamako — also installed after a military coup — cheering their departure. Mali has more publicly turned toward Russia in years. In September at the U.N. General Assembly, Malian Prime Minister Abdoulaye Maiga celebrated the “exemplary and fruitful cooperation between Mali and Russia” and said it spoke of a larger transition in a region long dominated by France, the former colonial power. “Move on from the colonial past and hear the anger, the frustration, the rejection that is coming up from the African cities and countryside, and understand that this movement is inexorable,” Maiga said.
Wagner forces are active in the country, operating alongside Malian soldiers. They have been linked to a string of civilian massacres, including the extrajudicial execution of some 300 people in a village in central Mali in March.
“What we observe is that elsewhere in Africa today there are worrying deployments of the Wagner militias, and we have been able to see on the ground that the effects of these militias lead to abuses of the population — we saw crimes that unfolded in Mali, in the Central African Republic, in Mozambique — also the pillaging of natural resources, and most of all, zero effectiveness in the fight against terrorism,” said Anne-Claire Legendre, French Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, to the Associated Press last week.
Critics, of course, can also point to France’s limited efficacy. “In the eyes of the Malian government … the French-led system of stabilization has not prevented the expansion of the jihadists in the Sahel,” Jezequel said. “In 10 years, the presence of the jihadists has expanded dramatically.” | 2022-10-24T04:19:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Russia deepens its influence in West Africa - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/24/russia-west-africa-influence-wagner/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/10/24/russia-west-africa-influence-wagner/ |
Dear Amy: After nearly 40 years, I recently caught up with an old college friend. It’s been nice to reconnect, but I’m finding the friendship exhausting.
Not A Therapist: For you, the important issue of “self-care” requires that you learn how to set and maintain boundaries regarding people or situations that can affect your mental health. If you see a therapist regularly to treat your depression (I hope you do), your therapist could coach you through this process.
Because of my own workload and other time commitments, I've had success with “scheduled calls” with friends and family members. This process is just like making an appointment: If you want to talk to someone, you can text or email them and say, “Are you free to catch-up this Friday at around three?”
Just as he is trying to have his needs met — you should do the same. Part of your boundary-setting will involve you understanding that you will not always be there for him in the moment, and that’s going to have to be okay — with both of you.
Dear Amy: I have severe social anxiety, especially since the pandemic. I am extremely uncomfortable around anyone except my family. My husband is very outgoing and enjoys meeting people.
Anxious: Because you’ve asked, I’ll say that first — I think it’s great that you want to acknowledge and welcome these neighbors, even though the thought of it is triggering some rumination and worry for you.
Second — the way you've phrased your note is slightly weird (as you put it).
Dear Amy: “Eager Dad” wanted to contact the adult child he had fathered out of wedlock when both he and the child’s mother were cheating on their spouses. You stated that everyone has a “right to their DNA heritage.” I disagree!
Upset: DNA holds a key to a person’s very biological identity. Yes — DNA disclosures can often create immense challenges, but no one has the right to withhold this information. So yes, I do believe it is a basic human right to know the truth about their own DNA. | 2022-10-24T04:19:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: I reconnected with an old friend who is lonely but exhausting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/24/ask-amy-old-friend-draining/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/10/24/ask-amy-old-friend-draining/ |
The results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which tests math and reading in 4th and 8th grade, showed major declines. (Seth Wenig/AP)
Declines were seen among high- and lower-performing students alike, for both fourth and eighth graders in math and reading. Overall, scores fell to levels not seen in two decades.
The results, released Monday, provide the “clearest picture yet” of the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on learning, said Peggy G. Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, sometimes called “the nation’s report card.” She described the declines in math, in particular, as stark and troubling, and she said she hopes educators will use the data to plot a course toward recovery.
Math scores for eighth grade fell by eight points, from 282 in 2019 to 274 this year, on a 500-point scale, and in fourth grade, by five points — the steepest declines recorded in more than a half century of testing.
“This is a very clear indicator of the real impact on learning on our kids for the last two years,” said Eric Gordon, the chief executive of the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, where scores fell sharply.
Gordon said Cleveland’s poor results are partly explained by the fact that tests were administered there soon after the area was hit by the surging omicron variant of the coronavirus.
He said Cleveland schools are working to mitigate the losses through more time with students: extended hours, after-school homework help, tutoring and an extensive summer enrichment program. “We have to find time to add time back for learning,” he said. “Time is what impacted us, and time is what it’s going to take to get us back.”
“The pandemic simply made it worse,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona told reporters Friday.
He called the new report “an urgent call to action” for schools to work toward recovery. Congress has allocated some $190 billion in coronavirus relief funding for schools, and a share of that must be used to address learning losses.
“We must treat the task of catching our children up with the urgency this moment demands,” Cardona said. “If this doesn’t have you fired up to raise the bar in education, you’re in the wrong profession.”
“We put billions of dollars, literally, into learning recovery,” she said. She said she hopes the report will signal to leaders that more of the same is needed. “What would be tragic is if people treat this as the pandemic is over and we don’t have to worry about investing in children’s learning and mental health anymore.”
In 2019, 19 percent of fourth-graders’ scores were considered “below NAEP basic,” the bottom bucket, a figure that had fallen significantly over many years. This year, that rose to 25 percent of the total. Similarly, the bottom 10 percent of fourth-graders lost seven points on average; the top 10 percent declined by two points.
In eighth grade, every state in the country saw declines in average math scores, and all but Utah were statistically significant drops compared with 2019. The declines were spread across racial and ethnic groups and among high- and lower-achievers alike.
More than half of the states, plus the District of Columbia, held steady on reading for fourth and/or eighth grade. Most of the 26 large city school districts that participated in the tests saw no change — meaning there was no improvement but also no decline, which qualifies as a bright spot given the overall results. One of them — the Los Angeles Unified School District — actually saw eighth-grade reading scores jump by nine points.
“Math is simply more sensitive to good schooling,” Carr said. “You need math teachers to teach math.”
In the District, reading scores dropped by eight points for fourth grade but were steady in eighth. Lewis D. Ferebee, the chancellor of D.C.’s public school system, took credit for the positive results for older students, saying they reflect “our investments in literacy and the supports that we provided even prior to the pandemic.”
Christina Grant, the state superintendent of education, expressed optimism that the numbers can improve. D.C. officials plan to spend nearly $1 billion in federal aid for initiatives such as summer programming, tutoring and curriculum changes, and the city plans to hire more math and reading specialists. “We know what works, and we know that our recovery efforts will turn these outcomes around,” she said. | 2022-10-24T04:20:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NAEP math and reading scores fall across country amid covid pandemic - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/24/pandemic-learning-loss-naep-tests/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/10/24/pandemic-learning-loss-naep-tests/ |
Jeremy Peña celebrates his three-run homer in the third inning Sunday. (Sarah Stier/Getty Images)
NEW YORK — Maybe the Houston Astros are just this much better than everyone else. Maybe the rest of the American League was not as competitive as it appeared at times this season — or last season or two years before that.
Maybe the once-formidable New York Yankees fell apart at their feet. Maybe, given the way the Yankees surrendered one of the few leads they had this AL Championship Series by being unable to catch and throw reliably in the seventh inning of their 6-5 loss in Sunday night’s Game 4 at Yankee Stadium, that point is beyond dispute.
But whatever the ratios of talent to happenstance, good baseball bones to good baseball fortune, the Astros are AL champions again, the third time in four years and the fourth time in six years they have gone at least that far. They are as undeniable as they are inconvenient for the rest of the baseball world, which remains reluctant to forgive them after a sign-stealing scheme helped them to the 2017 title. But they are in the World Series again anyway — and they have yet to lose a postseason game this year.
But what they have ceded more willingly is the ability to surprise anyone anymore. A few hours before Nestor Cortes Jr. threw his first pitch to open Game 4, the Philadelphia Phillies had sent their city into revelry with a stunning, pennant-clinching win over the San Diego Padres. That National League frivolity, and the fact that four different teams have represented that league in the World Series in the past four years, demonstrates just how difficult it is to do what the Astros have done.
The Yankees scored four runs total in the first three games of this series. They looked offensively challenged, defensively unstable and emotionally disconnected. They arrived on a rainy Sunday in the Bronx all but beaten, then were forced to wait through an hour and a half of rain delays before taking the field before a lighter crowd than might have been in attendance under different circumstances. They were alive but barely — in line for the ferry to Hades, just waiting for their ticket to print.
Then Harrison Bader greeted Lance McCullers Jr. with a single in the bottom of the first. One out later, Anthony Rizzo got hit with a pitch. Giancarlo Stanton hit a line drive to right center, and Gleyber Torres blooped one behind the infield. Suddenly, the Yankees had two runs after five batters. And for the first time in 10 games against the Astros between the regular season and postseason — a span of 91 innings — they led an inning that wasn’t the last one.
An inning later, Isiah Kiner-Falefa sent a groundball double up the first base line and scored when Rizzo sent one of his own up the third base line. The Yankees had done in two innings what they had not done in this series in nine: They scored three runs. Perhaps they could make this competitive.
Cortes didn’t look sharp early, but he worked through the first two innings unscathed. When he started the third, his low-90s fastball dropped into the high 80s. He walked two batters, leading a trainer and his pitching coach to come check on him. Cortes appeared to tell them he was fine. Five pitches later, rookie shortstop Jeremy Peña, who would be named ALCS MVP, hit a high flyball to deep left, a no-doubter. Not a minute later, Cortes was walking off the mound with a trainer, the score tied, his season seemingly over. Yordan Alvarez greeted his replacement, Wandy Peralta, with a double. Kyle Tucker hit a 107-mph line drive off Peralta’s hand. Yuli Guerriel singled to bring home Alvarez and give Houston the lead.
“Chemistry. You can’t match it. We show up,” Peña said.
“The ending, as I’ve said before, it’s cruel,” Yankees Manager Aaron Boone said. “You’re trying to climb to the top of the mountain. Unfortunately we haven’t been able to get there yet. The end is terrible.”
Alvarez, the Astros’ vaunted slugger, entered the game 1 for 10 in the series — the kind of neutralization any Astros opponent would be proud to have achieved. But when he had the chance to deliver the blow that would make the Yankees pay for their mistakes, he did it. So did Bregman. These are the Astros — beneficiaries of circumstances, makers of history, the best team in the American League, again and again and again. | 2022-10-24T04:49:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Astros beat Yankees in ALCS, will meet Phillies in World Series - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/24/astros-world-series-yankees-alcs/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/10/24/astros-world-series-yankees-alcs/ |
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