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By Yolanda Renee King
People embrace on May 27 at a memorial for the slain students and teachers of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
Yolanda Renee King, the granddaughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., is an activist and eighth-grader.
I never met my grandfather the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. because he was taken from my family by gun violence. But I know the mark that he and my grandmother Coretta Scott King left on American history. I know that the challenges my generation faces resemble those that led my grandparents to march on Washington and other cities to demand change.
I am 14 years old, and once again I am afraid. Two mass shootings in 10 days. In Buffalo, our elders, many of whom share the same complexion as me, were gunned down while simply shopping for groceries. In Uvalde, Tex., 19 children not too much younger than me were murdered in their school.
Most people won’t take a 14-year-old seriously when it comes to addressing gun violence. What do I know, right? Well, I know when it is time for change. I know it is my duty as an American to use the platform given to me by my grandparents’ sacrifices to uplift the voices of my peers. It is my duty to speak up as a child who lost both her grandfather and great-grandmother to gun violence. For too long, voices like mine have gone ignored.
Adults reading this, I urge you to close your eyes and imagine going to school every day wondering whether you and your classmates are next. The fear, anxiety and frustration are overwhelming. We can’t just be kids anymore. Every loud noise in the hallway, every outburst is a reminder. Children who look like me and children who look like your loved ones are all scared. We think about our hopes and dreams being snatched away by a bullet. To people in Washington this might sound cliche, but as kids, that’s what we’re taught. We can do anything we set our minds to, until we suddenly can’t anymore.
A staggering number of children have lost their futures to American gun violence. Just before the shootings in Uvalde, many of those students celebrated their academic achievements. They almost made it to the end of the school year.
Opinion: Do teens really have a Second Amendment right to buy assault rifles?
Maybe it’s hard for politicians in Washington to imagine the impact these shootings have on students because it doesn’t impact them directly. It seems like every month my parents and I talk about a new piece of legislation that gains traction and media coverage but ultimately fails. My generation feels powerless against the special interests and extremists who refuse to acknowledge that something must change. But common sense must prevail. To put it bluntly, “thoughts and prayers” are helpful only after you take action.
Day in and day out, people invoke my grandfather when it’s convenient. Many people fail to remember his words that go against their agendas. My grandfather’s most important message was to wake up and take part in the action and the passion of our times. I talked about this at the national cathedral in January on the celebration of his birthday. But we can’t look only to the past to solve the problems of tomorrow. We can look to his words for inspiration and guidance, but my generation must be willing to stand up.
I do not want to walk into school afraid anymore. I want to be a teenager. I have read a lot of my grandfather’s sermons and speeches, and there is one that comes to mind in the wake of this tragedy: “With this faith, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.” That is our call to action.
Opinion: Even Republicans seem to know that something has to change now
In recent years, I’ve worked to use my grandparents’ legacy to encourage my generation to stand up, especially when it is difficult. It is past time for us to demand change. The voices of the grieving have fallen on the ears of elected officials who do not care. I look around my school, and I see potential for all of us to do great things.
“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that” — words my grandfather lived by. We, too, must strive to drive out hate in this country, and that begins with action in honor of those families who mourn today. | 2022-05-30T19:23:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Martin Luther King Jr.'s granddaughter: My generation has to stand up against gun violence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/30/mlk-granddaughter-my-generation-gun-violence-reform/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/30/mlk-granddaughter-my-generation-gun-violence-reform/ |
Robert McFarlane had his fall, but it’s the pinnacles that mattered
Robert McFarlane in his D.C. offices in 1995. (Keith Jenkins/The Washington Post)
“He stood on pinnacles that dissolved into precipice,” Henry Kissinger said of Richard M. Nixon at the former president’s funeral in 1994. The dark, purpled sky on that stormy day in Yorba Linda, Calif., made all the eulogies more memorable, but it was Kissinger’s line that remains embedded in my mind.
It came again to the fore when news of the death this month of retired Marine Lt. Col. Robert McFarlane, national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan, National Security Council staff member under Presidents Nixon and Gerald Ford, aide to Kissinger, White House fellow, decorated Marine combat veteran of two tours in Vietnam, Annapolis graduate, husband, father, patriot. He was 84.
He told me to call him “Bud,” as everyone did when we first met after I sat in on one of his regular graduate student seminars at the Nixon Library — one devoted to the terrible decisions that drove early, and eventually massive, intervention into Vietnam’s war with itself. As a civilian son-in-law of a Marine Corps colonel, I, of course, always called McFarlane “colonel,” but in these past few years when we met, he was the most gracious of men with his time and expertise. His last years were spent pressing everyone who would listen on the need to compete with the Chinese Communist Party in providing small, reliable and safe nuclear power plants to the developing world in order to combat carbon emissions, assist in global development and counter the grand strategy of Chinese President Xi Jinping. McFarlane had made himself master of this field, as he was of almost everything he ever put his mind to.
Our tenures in the Reagan White House overlapped, but of course, the national security adviser dealt with White House counsel Fred Fielding and deputy counsel Dick Hauser, not the junior briefcase carrier in the then-nine-lawyer office. Later in life, though, I treasured those conversations as colleagues in a common endeavor — conversations because of his character, not his résumé or influence.
Like Nixon, McFarlane achieved “the pinnacle,” for national security adviser is one of the three jobs in any White House — along with chief of staff and counsel — where the holder sees and weighs it all as he advises the most powerful executive in the world. And as with Nixon, McFarlane’s fall, as the Iran-contra scandal came to unfold around him, was far and hard, so hard, in fact, that in 1987 he tried to take his own life. As “one of the capital’s most self-contained of public and powerful men,” the New York Times’s obituary read, McFarlane told the paper that he believed at the time of his suicide attempt it was “the honorable thing to do.”
It wasn’t, of course, as this most permanent of “solutions” to any temporary problem never is, but people of real and deep honor feel all disgrace so deeply, or used to, that the attempt did not shock many of his friends for long. One of those friends, Nixon, appeared unexpectedly in McFarlane’s hospital room, to tell his former aide that he could never give up, that the attempt was merely a setback, that he needed to keep fighting for the causes he believed in.
Which McFarlane proceeded to do for another 35 years. The ground re-formed under McFarlane’s precipice. His longtime friend Jim Cicconi, who was an aide to James Baker in the Reagan White House, related to me how generous McFarlane was in time and guidance to younger staff, how he was unfailingly positive (and how he could do an impersonation of Kissinger that left everyone smiling). Having worked for Nixon and Kissinger, and then Ford and Reagan, advising as one of Washington’s wise old hands became his quiet and influential role. But his time with the grad students discussing platoon-level experiences in Vietnam layered into grand strategy — that is what I recall best. So many pinnacles in one life.
Many of the best and the brightest will fall and hit a bottom, will make not just a mistake but a terrible error of commission or omission. Most will not receive the public pardon that President George H.W. Bush gave to McFarlane. But all can do what McFarlane did: Turn a personal disaster into the floor from which the first step up, almost always via service to others, is made.
McFarlane was quiet and courageous; humble and very, very smart; slow to anger (if he ever got there) and quick to respond to requests for help. For every young striver inside the Beltway, his life — long and well-lived — is worthy of study and reflection. | 2022-05-30T19:23:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Robert McFarlane had his fall, but it’s the pinnacles that mattered - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/30/robert-mcfarlane-death-reagan-iran-contra/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/30/robert-mcfarlane-death-reagan-iran-contra/ |
UEFA commissions independent report on Champions League final chaos
Fans display their tickets as they seek entry to Stade de France before Saturday's Champions League final between Liverpool and Real Madrid. (Christophe Ena/AP)
The Union of European Football Associations commissioned what it says will be an independent report into the chaotic scene in which some Liverpool fans were tear-gassed and prevented from entering the Stade de France before kickoff of UEFA’s Champions League final Saturday near Paris.
UEFA, soccer’s governing body in Europe, said its review, led by Tiago Brandão Rodrigues of Portugal, would be comprehensive and “examine decision-making, responsibility and behaviors of all entities involved in the final.”
Rodrigues is a member of Portugal’s Parliament and is president of the Parliamentary Committee of Environment and Energy. He formerly was minister of education and was in charge of sports and youth. He was a member of the World Antidoping Agency Foundation Board from 2019-2021 and was the Portuguese Olympic attache during the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
On Monday, a French official blamed ticket fraud “on an industrial scale” for Saturday’s scene and another said the situation was made worse by local youths who tried to force their way into the stadium. The start of the championship game between Liverpool and Real Madrid was delayed by more than 30 minutes.
French government officials met on Monday to discuss crowd control, and the situation was becoming a political issue ahead of parliamentary elections next month.
France’s Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said in a news conference after the meeting (via Reuters) that Liverpool provided paper rather than electronic tickets for many of its fans, leading to two-thirds of the tickets shown by roughly 62,000 Liverpool fans being determined to be fake and creating the possibility of “massive fraud on an industrial scale.”
He defended the actions of police and security officials as fans pressed to gain entry in the stadium. Large sections reserved for Liverpool fans were empty just as kickoff was scheduled to take place while Real Madrid fans were in place long before because most of their tickets were electronic.
Darmanin said the situation could have been far worse. “I want to say once again that the decisions taken prevented deaths or serious injury,” he said.
French sports minister Amelie Oudea-Castera also cited fake tickets and fans without tickets — not all of whom were Liverpool boosters — as a source of the problems. What we really have to bear in mind is that what happened first of all was this mass gathering of British supporters of the Liverpool club, without tickets, or with fake tickets,” French sports minister Amelie Oudea-Castera told French radio RTL before the meeting.
“When there are that many people by the entrance to the stadium, there will be people trying to force their way in through the doors of the Stade de France, and a certain number of youths from the nearby area who were present tried to get in by mixing in with the crowd.”
The presence of local youths caught police off guard, Darmanin said, but he attributed some of the disorganization among officials to the fact that France had only three months to prepare for the match, which was moved from St. Petersburg after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
However, a spokesperson for France’s independent police commissioner’s union (SICP), Mathieu Valet, told the BBC’s Newshour that “supporters without tickets or with fake tickets … were not the main problem.”
One unnamed Liverpool fan told the BBC that the treatment of fans was “an absolute disgrace.” Another fan, Tom Whitehurst, said he had to get his disabled son “out of the way” after fans were pepper-sprayed. “[Fans] were indiscriminately pepper-sprayed and there were people with tickets, who arrived 2½ hours early, who were queuing up and they were charged at by riot police with shields,” he added.
Michael Carter, another fan, told the BBC that fans farther back in the crowd “were lifting each other up and over the walls because they were being crushed.”
A spokesman for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Monday, “The footage from the Stade de France this weekend was deeply upsetting and concerning. We know many Liverpool fans traveled to Paris in good time … and we’re hugely disappointed by how they were treated.”
French politicians from both ends of the spectrum seized on the incident, with far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon calling the images “lamentable” and adding that “they are disturbing because we can clearly see that we are not prepared for events such as the Olympic Games.” Far-right leader Marine Le Pen called the incident a “humiliation” for France. And Eric Zemmour, a far-right politician, said the trouble was caused mostly by local youths from the nearby Seine-Saint-Denis district and not Liverpool fans.
In addition to the upcoming elections, the incident became a “crash test,” as Le Monde put it, because France hosts the Rugby World Cup in 2023 and the Olympics and Paralympics in 2024.
According to the news outlet, there were no serious injuries, but 238 people were treated by emergency services and 105 others were arrested — two-thirds in Saint-Denis. Le Monde wrote that, “'disgrace,' ‘unspeakable scandal’ — for European media, in particular for British and Spanish outlets, no word was too harsh to describe the evening.”
Further contributing to the urgency of the meeting Monday was the scene Sunday when Saint-Etienne fans stormed the field and threw flares after the once-powerful team was relegated from France’s Ligue 1.
Oudea-Castera acknowledged that increased security had to be considered at high-risk soccer matches. “We need to take all the necessary steps to make sure this never happens again,” she said at the start of the meeting. | 2022-05-30T19:53:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | UEFA commissions report on Champions League final chaos - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/30/champions-league-chaos-reaction/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/30/champions-league-chaos-reaction/ |
Maryland men’s lacrosse caps perfect season with national championship
Maryland attack Anthony DeMaio (16) scored four first-half goals against Cornell in the national championship game. (Bryan Woolston/AP)
EAST HARTFORD, Conn. — The Maryland men’s lacrosse team finished the job.
The top-seeded and undefeated Terrapins fended off seventh-seeded Cornell, 9-7, on Monday afternoon, securing the program’s fourth NCAA title a year after their perfect season was spoiled in the national title game on the same field.
Maryland (18-0) won its first championship since 2017 and its second in seven title game appearances under Coach John Tillman. The Terps are the first undefeated champion since Virginia in 2006.
In front of 22,184 at Rentschler Field, Logan McNaney made 17 saves to cap a brilliant postseason; he was named the NCAA tournament’s most outstanding player. Anthony DeMaio — the last link on the roster to the Terps’ previous title team — had four goals and an assist.
Attackman Logan Wisnauskas broke one last record in his final game, securing Maryland’s single-season points record. He had two goals and two assists Monday and finished with 103 points for the year, passing Jared Bernhardt’s mark of 99 set last season.
Maryland has won 35 of its past 36 games dating from the 2020 season, with the lone defeat coming in last year’s championship game against Virginia.
CJ Kirst scored twice for the Big Red (14-5). The first of those goals put Cornell up 1-0, making this only the fifth game Maryland trailed in this season. But the Terps soon rectified the situation.
DeMaio recorded a natural hat trick to close the first quarter and put Maryland ahead 4-1, then assisted on long pole Owen Prybylski’s goal off a quick restart two minutes into the second.
The Terps led 7-2 at halftime, and Wisnauskas helped expand the advantage early in the second half, scoring once and assisting on Jonathan Donville’s goal to make it 9-2.
From there, Maryland tried to hold on while tiring after a quick turnaround from Saturday’s 13-8 defeat of Princeton in the semifinals. The Terps wound up with a season-high 22 turnovers and bungled five clears, but the cushion was enough to avoid too much tension in the final minutes.
Cornell’s John Piatelli scored with 35.3 seconds left to cut the Big Red’s deficit to two — matching Maryland’s closest game of the season — but the Terps won the ensuing faceoff and fifth-year senior Bubba Fairman ran out the clock to set off the celebration. | 2022-05-30T19:53:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Maryland men's lacrosse wins national championship - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/30/maryland-lacrosse-wins-national-championship/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/30/maryland-lacrosse-wins-national-championship/ |
Denise Francine Boyd Andrews, drug counselor whose life was chronicled in ‘The Corner,’ dies at 65
Denise Francine Boyd Andrews provided drug counseling, HIV education and other services in Baltimore. (Amy Davis/Baltimore Sun)
Denise Francine Boyd Andrews, a central figure portrayed in the HBO miniseries “The Corner” who emerged from the underworld of drugs and crime depicted in the show to become an addiction counselor in Baltimore and a role model with a story of personal redemption, died May 3 at her home in Parkville, Md. She was 65.
Her brother, Stanley Boyd, confirmed her death and said he did not know the cause.
Mrs. Andrews, known to friends as Fran, devoted years of her life to the rehabilitation of people often cast aside as hopeless “junkies.” David Simon, an executive producer of “The Corner,” which aired on HBO in 2000, once told the New York Times that he did not “have many heroes left” but that Mrs. Andrews was one of them, and that her life was a testament to the truth that “everybody gets to write their endings.”
Simon, a former journalist who is also the creator of the acclaimed HBO drama “The Wire,” met Mrs. Andrews when he was reporting the book “The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood” (1997) with former homicide detective Edward Burns. The book became the basis of the 2000 HBO miniseries.
The “corner” of the show’s title referred to the drug market around the intersection of Fayette and Monroe streets in West Baltimore. When Simon and Mrs. Andrews first encountered each other in that neighborhood, Simon told the New Yorker magazine, she refused to speak him, assuming him to be an undercover police officer.
But over time, Mrs. Andrews opened up about her life and addiction, offering a window into the destruction that drugs had wreaked on her life, her family and the families around them.
By her own account, the Baltimore Sun reported, Mrs. Andrews first tried heroin when she was 23, the night of her sister’s funeral. She descended into a years-long dependence and into a state, she told the Times, in which “all your worst nevers come true.”
Her son De’Andre L. McCullough began selling drugs in his teens, and his father, Gary McCullough, died of an overdose in 1996. Their struggles became the focus of the book by Simon and Burns as well as the HBO miniseries, which won three Emmy Awards, including the prize for outstanding miniseries.
Mrs. Andrews, who was portrayed on-screen by Khandi Alexander, described the show as “good, on target,” even if it “brought back a lot of memories that I really didn’t want to go through again.”
“But then as time went on,” she told the San Jose Mercury News in 2000, “it showed me just how far I had come.”
In the mid-1990s, Mrs. Andrews entered recovery. She credited her turnaround in large part to her future husband, Donnie Andrews, a former heroin user who years earlier had turned himself into Burns after killing a drug dealer and whose early life inspired the character of Omar Little in “The Wire.”
Michael K. Williams, Emmy-nominated actor who brought charming menace to ‘The Wire,’ dies at 54
Profoundly impressed by the way Donnie Andrews had reformed himself in prison, Burns introduced him to Fran, hoping the connection might show her a way forward in her own life.
Their relationship began with daily phone calls during Donnie Andrews’s incarceration and continued after he was paroled in 2005.
“I was often in bad shape when I answered that phone, but no matter what I did or what I said, Donnie never criticized me,” Mrs. Andrews said. “He just kept giving me reasons why I should be doing something else, saying that if he can change, I can change. Through the worst of times, I kept holding on to that.”
Their romance and eventual engagement, leading up to their marriage in 2007, was covered on the front page of the Times.
By that time, Mrs. Andrews had long before established herself as a drug counselor. Hired in 1997 at what was then Bon Secours Hospital in Baltimore — now Grace Medical Center — she shepherded drug users into treatment and promoted HIV prevention. In addition to two sons, she raised two nieces and a nephew and provided for the mother of a grandchild, helping them attend college and graduate school and begin careers.
“No matter with all that was going on, we were always taken good care of,” her son De’Rodd Hearns, a firefighter, told the New Yorker after his mother’s death. “We were different from some of the other kids in the neighborhood, who weren’t taken care of.”
Denise Francine Boyd, the fourth of six children, was born in Baltimore on Oct. 15, 1956. Her father was a construction worker, and her mother was a homemaker.
Mrs. Andrews attended the Community College of Baltimore County and worked for roughly a decade for the Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co.
She had several cameo appearances in “The Wire.” In “The Corner,” she played a rehab center employee who turns away the character of Fran Boyd when she shows up early for treatment, an indictment of the medical system and its failure to heal patients in the throes of addiction.
De’Andre L. McCullough died of an overdose in August 2012 at 35. Donnie Andrews died four months later after suffering a ruptured aorta.
Besides her brother and son De’Rodd Hearns, Mrs. Andrews’s survivors include the nieces and nephew she raised, Kennyetta, Ashley and Byron Bell; her grandson’s mother, Tyreeka Freamon; and numerous grandchildren.
When a reporter for the Irish Independent once asked Mrs. Andrews what lessons she drew from her life, she replied that “it would have to be ‘never say never.' ”
“I strongly believe,” she said, “there’s hope for anybody.” | 2022-05-30T20:19:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Denise Francine Boyd Andrews of HBO's "The Corner" dies at 65 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/05/30/fran-boyd-andrews-the-corner-dead/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/05/30/fran-boyd-andrews-the-corner-dead/ |
Cardinals cornerback Jeff Gladney dies in car crash
Jeff Gladney, who played for the Vikings in 2020, was killed in a car crash early Monday morning. (Jim Mone/AP)
Arizona Cardinals cornerback Jeff Gladney was killed in a car crash early Monday morning in Dallas, the team and his agent announced Monday afternoon. He was 25.
His agent, Brian Overstreet, confirmed Gladney’s death, telling the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, “We are asking [for] prayers for the family and privacy at this most difficult time.”
Police told Dallas’s CBS affiliate that a man and a woman were killed in a two-vehicle crash that occurred just before 2:30 a.m. on the service road of the Woodall Rodgers Freeway. Officials told the TV station that their preliminary investigation suggests one vehicle was speeding and clipped the second from behind. The driver of the speeding vehicle lost control and struck the freeway’s pier beam. Two people in the other vehicle were not seriously injured.
A star at TCU, Gladney was a first-round draft pick by the Minnesota Vikings in 2020.
“Lost my Brother, my best friend, my right hand man … ain’t too much more I can take man damn!” tweeted Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Jalen Reagor, a teammate of Gladney’s at TCU. “R. I. P Jeff Gladney, brother watch over me please.”
The Vikings also issued a statement offering condolences to Gladney’s friends and family. Gladney played 16 games for Minnesota in 2020, starting 15 and recording 81 tackles. He was out of the league in 2021 following an arrest on a felony assault charge involving a former girlfriend but signed a two-year deal with the Cardinals in March after he was found not guilty.
Cardinals defensive end JJ Watt tweeted shortly after learning of Gladney’s death. “Horrifying news to hear this morning,” he wrote. “Just tragic. Rest In Peace Jeff.”
Free agent safety George Iloka, who played with Gladney in Minnesota, tweeted: “This Jeff Gladney news hitting me different. Had the privilege of playing with him during his rookie year in Minnesota. One of the most respectful and intentional rookies I’ve been around so far. Always had a smile and came to work. Sad sad. So young, so precious. RIP Young King.”
L.J. Collier, a Seattle Seahawks defensive end who played at TCU, added: “Man aint no way man RIP jefe man i watched him come from the scout team to a team captain to a first round pick jeff was a good friend and great teammate imma miss you family RIP jeff.”
TCU Athletic Director Jeremiah Donati said in a statement that Gladney had “maintained his close ties to TCU” and “loved everything about his alma mater. He was a frequent visitor to campus and was at our spring practices and spring game this year, proudly joined by his young son. He will be missed by our entire community.” | 2022-05-30T20:41:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jeff Gladney of Arizona Cardinals dies in car crash - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/30/jeff-gladney-dies-car-crash-arizona-cardinals/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/30/jeff-gladney-dies-car-crash-arizona-cardinals/ |
Lane closure kicks off major work on Beltway widening in Virginia
Rush-hour lane to close this week as work intensifies on the expansion of the 495 Express Lanes to the Maryland line
Major construction will begin on the extension of the express lanes in Virginia. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
A rush-hour traffic lane will close permanently this week along a busy stretch of Interstate 495 in Virginia as major construction begins on the extension of the express lanes closer to Maryland.
The northbound left-shoulder lane, which opens to all traffic during the morning and evening commutes, will close as early as Tuesday, the Virginia Department of Transportation said. This marks the first major traffic shift in the corridor as part of the $600 million road project, just south of the American Legion Bridge.
Commuters and residents along the busy section of the Capital Beltway should prepare for an expanded construction zone after Memorial Day. The closure will likely worsen traffic backups during peak travel times. An average of 240,000 motorists travel daily on this section of the highway near the Virginia-Maryland line — one of the region’s biggest chokepoints.
Virginia 95 Express Lanes to Fredericksburg to open in late 2023
The road-widening project will add nearly three miles to Virginia’s system of high-occupancy toll lanes. It will deliver the last leg of a tolling system on Northern Virginia’s portion of the Beltway and eventually link to Maryland’s proposed toll lanes on the Beltway and Interstate 270.
The work will widen the Beltway from the terminus of the 495 Express Lanes near the Dulles Toll Road interchange to the George Washington Memorial Parkway interchange near the American Legion Bridge. The 2½-mile stretch is expected to remain a work zone for more than three years.
When complete, four general-purpose lanes and two new express lanes will run in each direction of the Beltway along that stretch. Australian toll operator Transurban is funding the project and will manage the lanes under an agreement with the state.
VDOT spokeswoman Michelle Holland said the shoulder space is necessary to safely widen the Beltway and to reconstruct some bridges. She said drivers traveling in the work zone should be extra cautious and be prepared to encounter additional delays.
“Add extra travel time,” she said.
Early construction, including soil boring and surveying activities, began in the fall, but construction officially kicked off in March. With the new shift in traffic lanes, the project contractor will create a safe construction zone, ramping up the number of workers and equipment in the corridor after Memorial Day. The toll road expansion is expected to open in late 2025.
The 1½-mile left-shoulder lane, which opened in 2015, carries traffic from where the current 495 Express Lanes end to the George Washington Parkway. The shoulder lane has been open to all traffic from 6 a.m. to 11 a.m. and from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. on weekdays. It was also used to expand road capacity during other periods of heavy congestion, such as after a crash.
Project officials said the shoulder lane closure will allow the contractor to create a safe work zone in the center of the highway. The southbound center shoulder will also close, and crews will begin to put up a temporary barrier to create the center workspace. In coming weeks, they will re-stripe and realign the general-purpose lanes to create additional space in the center of I-495, officials said.
That work will require lane closures, but will take place during off-peak hours to reduce impacts to traffic, project officials said.
“We are asking travelers to anticipate delays,” Transurban spokeswoman Tanya Sheres said. “Especially in the early days as traffic patterns adjust to the new realignment.”
Drivers will see more traffic alerts on message boards as the work intensifies.
MDOT again rejects bid protest on I-270, Beltway toll lanes design
Northern Virginia has more than 60 miles of toll lanes and is building an additional 35 miles. Transurban already operates the Beltway’s 14 miles of express lanes from McLean to Springfield in Virginia, as well as express lanes on Interstates 95 and 395 — an additional 39 miles. The Australia-based company is also building a 10-mile extension of the 95 Express Lanes to Fredericksburg.
Maryland last year selected Transurban to develop high-occupancy toll lanes for the Capital Beltway and I-270. That project, along with a new American Legion Bridge that Maryland and Virginia agreed to build, will connect to the 495 Express Lanes. | 2022-05-30T21:20:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lane closure kicks in major work on Beltway widening in Virginia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/05/30/virginia-beltway-express-lanes-expansion-traffic/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2022/05/30/virginia-beltway-express-lanes-expansion-traffic/ |
Man drowns in Chesapeake Bay after being caught in a current, police say
The incident occurred at Sandy Point State Park when the man jumped into the bay to cool off.
A 43-year-old man drowned in the Chesapeake Bay on Sunday after being caught in a current, police said.
Officers from the Maryland Natural Resources Police responded at around 12:30 p.m. to a call at Sandy Point State Park after the man jumped into the bay to cool off and was swept away, a police spokesperson said.
The victim had launched a boat with his family earlier, but they had returned after the vessel had problems and were fishing from shore when the drowning occurred, police said.
The family waved for help and people in another boat pulled the victim from the water and brought him to the marina where police met them, according to the spokesperson, Laura Moses.
Officers tried to revive the man, but he couldn’t be saved, police said. | 2022-05-30T22:04:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man drowns in Chesapeake Bay after being caught in a current - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/30/man-drowns-chesapeake-bay-sandy-point/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/30/man-drowns-chesapeake-bay-sandy-point/ |
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) speaks during a news conference on May 27. (Chandan Khanna/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images)
America’s exceptionalist gun culture is not the source of our exceptional levels of gun violence and mass shootings, GOP politicians say. Something else must be to blame.
Lately, the more politically convenient explanation is mental illness.
“We as a state, we as a society need to do a better job with mental health,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said after an 18-year-old gunned down 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde using military-grade weapons he had legally acquired. “Anybody who shoots somebody else has a mental health challenge. Period. We as a government need to find a way to target that mental health challenge and to do something about it.”
This argument has been echoed by other Republicans, including Rep. Tony Gonzales (Tex.), Gov. Asa Hutchinson (Ark.) and, in a speech at the National Rifle Association convention, former president Donald Trump.
Never mind, apparently, that mental health advocates have suggested this is a scapegoat. Many people struggle with mental health challenges, in the United States and elsewhere; most do not resort to violence, let alone slaughter fourth-graders. The easy access to firearms in this country enables a would-be mass shooter to carry out their violent ambitions, whether that person has been diagnosed with a mental health issue or not.
But let’s say these politicians genuinely believe that identifying and treating mental health challenges — rather than, say, restricting access to efficient killing machines — is the key to curbing mass shootings. If that’s the case, why haven’t they put their money where their mouths are?
Texas, for instance, ranks last of all 50 states in overall access to mental health care, according to the nonprofit Mental Health America. The ranking is based on available data on measures such as the shares of adults and children with mental health issues who have been unable to receive treatment.
Among the reasons why: Texas is one of a dozen states that still have not expanded Medicaid, the public health insurance program that covers poor and low-income Americans, and which is the country’s single largest payer for mental health services.
Texas officials’ refusal to expand Medicaid does not appear to be rooted in public welfare nor fiscal responsibility concerns. The federal government has offered holdout states billions of dollars in incentives to expand Medicaid, most recently through last year’s American Rescue Plan. These incentives would, on net, cause state revenue to come out ahead, even after accounting for Texas’s new spending obligations if it were to make more residents eligible for public insurance. Expanding Medicaid would also reduce costs for hospitals that currently provide a lot of uncompensated care for uninsured patients.
Instead, Texas chooses to be the state with the highest share of residents who are uninsured.
It gets worse. In April, Abbott transferred $211 million away from the state’s Health and Human Services Commission, which oversees mental health programs, as NBC News has noted. The money was transferred to support Operation Lone Star, the governor’s controversial deployment of National Guard and law enforcement resources to the border.
Texans have heard before about Abbott’s allegedly deep concern for mental health services, at least in the wake of gun massacres.
After previous mass shootings — including one at a Houston-area high school in 2018 and one targeting Hispanics at an El Paso Walmart in 2019 — Abbott blamed “mental health” as the central cause. To his credit, after the high school shooting, he at least signed a series of bills intended to (modestly) improve state mental health initiatives, such as by providing more mental health training for educators.
But such measures were insufficient to improve the state’s horrific record on mental health services, as a recent Houston Chronicle investigative series documented.
Those measures also, clearly, haven’t stopped mass shootings. Nor have the many other bills Abbott has signed in recent years loosening gun restrictions, such as a 2019 measure giving more teachers access to guns in classrooms.
Texas’s political leaders are hardly alone in their paltry attention to mental health issues, except when it’s helpful to deflect from other political vulnerabilities.
The United States overall ranks worse than most other rich countries on a range of metrics related to mental health, including suicide rates and individuals’ ability to get or afford professional help when experiencing emotional distress. Meanwhile, Republicans, including Trump, have worked to roll back the public health programs and subsidies that enable whatever meager access to care that low- and middle-income Americans currently have.
For too many years, GOP politicians have shifted between saying they’ll prevent gun violence by investing in health care (in lieu of firearm restrictions) and later working to cut access to care. Voters rarely seem to register the disconnect. But the more massacres there are, and the more frequently they occur, the harder it becomes to maintain these charades. | 2022-05-30T22:38:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Republicans blame mental health issues for gun violence. So where’s the money for care? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/30/republicans-blame-mental-issues-gun-violence-but-dont-fund-healthcare/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/30/republicans-blame-mental-issues-gun-violence-but-dont-fund-healthcare/ |
Agatha makes landfall along Oaxaca coast
Agatha, the strongest recorded hurricane to make landfall in May in the eastern Pacific, swept ashore Monday on a stretch of tourist beaches and fishing towns in southern Mexico.
Heavy rain and howling winds whipped palm trees and drove tourists and locals into shelters.
Oaxaca state’s civil defense agency showed images of families hustling into a shelter in Pochutla and a rock and mud slide that blocked the highway between that town and the state capital, Oaxaca de Juárez.
Agatha made landfall about five miles west of Puerto Ángel as a strong Category 2 storm, with maximum sustained wings of 105 mph. It was moving northeast at 8 mph.
National emergency officials said they had assembled a task force of more than 9,300 people for the area, and more than 200 shelters were opened as forecasters warned of dangerous storm surge and flooding from heavy rain.
After forming on Sunday, Agatha quickly gained power to become the strongest hurricane on record to make landfall in May in the eastern Pacific, said Jeff Masters, a meteorologist with Yale Climate Connections.
30 Chinese aircraft said to violate zone
Taiwan, which China claims as its own territory, has complained for about two years of repeated missions by China’s air force near the democratically governed island, often in the southwest part of its air defense zone, near the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands.
Taiwan calls China’s repeated nearby military activities “gray zone” warfare, designed to both wear out Taiwan’s forces and test the island’s responses.
The latest Chinese mission included 22 fighters, as well as electronic-warfare, early-warning and antisubmarine aircraft, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said. They flew to the northeast of the Pratas, according to a ministry map, though far from Taiwan itself.
It was the largest incursion since Taiwan reported 39 Chinese aircraft on Jan. 23.
China’s military said last week it had recently conducted an exercise around Taiwan as a “solemn warning” against its “collusion” with the United States. That came after President Biden angered China by appearing to signal a change in policy by saying the United States would get involved militarily if China were to attack the island.
Attacks in Mali leave hundreds dead, U.N. says: Over 500 civilians died in attacks carried out by armed forces and Islamist groups in Mali from January to March this year, the United Nations said in a report that detailed a rapid unraveling of an already desperate security situation. The killings represented a 324 percent increase over the previous quarter and highlighted the failure of Mali's military junta to limit human rights abuses or stop groups linked to al-Qaeda and the Islamic State from carrying out campaigns of violence. The killings come as Mali cuts ties with former colonial power France and as the Wagner Group, a private Russian military contractor, steps in to help fight the militants.
Rescued migrants taken to Sicily after wait: The Ocean Viking rescue ship took 294 migrants rescued over the
past 10 days in the central Mediterranean to a port in Sicily, as the number of migrant arrivals surges by one-third over last year's levels. The SOS Mediterranee charity criticized Italy for the long wait for a port, noting that many of those rescued were showing signs of trauma from the perilous journey and were in need of immediate aid. The migrants were rescued in several operations off Libya starting on May 19; they included 49 children, some as young as 3.
Ancient statues found near Cairo: Archaeologists working near Cairo have uncovered hundreds of ancient Egyptian coffins and bronze statues of deities. The discovery at a cemetery in Saqqara contained statues of the gods Anubis, Amun, Min, Osiris, Isis, Nefertum, Bastet and Hathor, along with a headless statue of the architect Imhotep, who built the Saqqara pyramid, Egypt's Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities said. The 250 coffins, 150 bronze statues and other objects dated to the Late Period, or about 500 B.C.
Killer whale in Seine dies: The ailing killer whale adrift in the River Seine has been found dead, the Sea Shepherd activist group said, after a plan to guide it back to the sea failed and scientists concluded it was in pain and terminally ill. The 13-foot orca, identified as a male, was first spotted at the mouth of the Seine on May 16 between Le Havre and Honfleur in Normandy. | 2022-05-30T22:56:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | World Digest: May 30, 2022 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-may-30-2022/2022/05/30/ba5a9114-e00d-11ec-be47-cbd01021a7bb_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/world-digest-may-30-2022/2022/05/30/ba5a9114-e00d-11ec-be47-cbd01021a7bb_story.html |
What a Netflix Hit Really Reveals About Japanese Risk-Taking
Japan has been a little bemused to find that a long-running family-favorite TV show, known here as Hajimete no Otsukai (My First Errand), has suddenly achieved international fame on Netflix as Old Enough.
The program, which features preschoolers running errands by themselves, has triggered worldwide debate about parenting standards. One article in the UK blasted the reality TV show as “bizarre,” quoting a child psychologist who described it as “exploitative and dangerous.” NPR felt compelled to warn parents not to let their offspring emulate kids on the show lest they run foul of local laws.
The Japanese are tickled that the heavily-scripted show, which has aired here for three decades, is seen as “dangerous.” After all, this is a country where children frequently ride trains solo to get to elementary school, squeezing in among the salarymen at rush hour.
But it’s wrong to conclude that the Japanese are more risk-tolerant than the west’s helicopter parents. Foreigners and the Japanese take away different lessons from Old Enough. The show isn’t really about children innovating their way around tough challenges. It’s more about how to become functioning members of society — through the proverbial school of hard knocks. If anything, Old Enough — which first aired in 1991 — reflects some long-established societal precepts, which are only now beginning to change.
Take career expectations. According to a recent survey, the top choice choice parents and grandparents want for their kids and grandkids is a job in the national civil service. Number two? The local civil service. The country’s largest company, Toyota Motor Corp., was third.
Not that civil service jobs are particularly attractive. They’re tough to get and pay only a little above the national average. National broadcaster NHK reported 30% of civil servants in their 20s were doing 80 hours of overtime or more a month, a level of endurance that contributes to Japan’s cases of death by overwork.
So why is that work so popular with parents? The answer: stability and security. They are jobs for life for those who can stick with the rigors of it.
In Japan, people stay in their jobs for a very long time rather than risk going back into the labor market. In the US, workers are more transient: 23% have been at their jobs for less than a year, according to one survey. In Japan, that figure is 8%. Those with more than 20 years of service made up 22% of workers in Japan, and just 10% in America. That reluctance to change jobs is among the main reasons salaries have been depressed for the past three decades.
College graduates are also less willing to strike out on their own. The administration of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has bemoaned the lack of startups in the country, pointing out that the largest group of listed companies in Japan were formed in the decade after World War II, including Sony Group Corp. and Honda Motor Co.
The same lack of adventure is evident elsewhere: Much less money is invested in higher-risk assets such as corporate equity and mutual funds than is the norm in other countries. Companies are often afraid to commit much spending to innovation, allowing foreign rivals to sneak in and take control of industries like electric vehicles. The risk-off attitude is seen too in the softly-softly post-pandemic approach to letting tourists back in, a conservative process that has broad public support but enrages the business community.
There are some promising developments, however. Kishida is right to note the lack of startups, but the nation’s venture capital scene is growing. Funding raised by Japanese VCs is projected to be a record of nearly $7.7 billion, a figure that stood under $1 billion less than a decade ago. While still relatively rare, more young students are now likely to join or found a startup than a generation ago.
And while sticking to one job is still the ideal, the rate of switching among people in their 40s and 50s surged in 2021 to five times the level of 2013. Increasing competition for talent is likely to propel this trend, especially if companies take advantage of the weak yen to return manufacturing to Japan.
While parents might want their kids to become civil servants, fewer young people desire a job for life. The number who indicated they’d prefer to stay in one job fell eight percentage points in 2018 from five years earlier, according to a government survey. Just 4.4% said they’d stay in the same job even if it was tough, the second-lowest percentage of seven major countries surveyed.
As for that list of top career destinations for the nation’s progeny? After the bureaucracy and Toyota, the most popular options were Alphabet Inc. and Apple Inc. While they’re hardly the riskiest options, the same list a decade ago was dominated by airlines and train operators, with no foreign companies in the top 10 even though they typically pay more for talented workers and have superior benefits.
The Japanese should rewatch Old Enough and learn different lessons. Yes, the show’s about the tough love that lets kids stand on their own two feet. But that strength has to lead to navigating risk, escaping drudgery and innovating to make life more rewarding. Now that the world is watching, Japan should take that to heart.
The Japanese Need to Invest Before It’s Too Late: Gearoid Reidy
No Lying Flat for These Students in Covid-Zero China: Shuli Ren
Netflix, Inflation and the Impact of Reality: John Authers | 2022-05-31T00:27:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What a Netflix Hit Really Reveals About Japanese Risk-Taking - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-a-netflix-hit-really-reveals-about-japanese-risk-taking/2022/05/30/be388c72-e06d-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-a-netflix-hit-really-reveals-about-japanese-risk-taking/2022/05/30/be388c72-e06d-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Fourth-grader recounts asking president to ‘make our schools safer and send more police'
People gather in Uvalde, Tex., on Sunday to see President Biden. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
As mourners in Uvalde, Tex., prepared to bury 19 children and two teachers, elected officials vowed Monday to examine last week’s elementary school massacre and the flawed police response, and drive changes to gun laws.
Jackson Lee said the goal of hearings, which might also take place in Texas, would be to determine “the facts” of what happened and to propose solutions. “We can do multiple things,” she said in an interview, adding that her focus right now is on the families’ “mourning and pain.”
The congresswoman noted that the nation on Monday observed Memorial Day by honoring men and women who fell in battle. “We have children murdered as though they were at battle,” she said. “And that is not fitting of this nation.”
After Uvalde, this longtime gun owner gave up his AR-15
One of the survivors Biden met with on Sunday was 9-year-old Jaydien, who hid under a desk in his classroom. In an interview on Monday, Jaydien, who is being identified by first name only because he is a minor, said he asked the president: “Could you please make our schools safer and send more police, please?”
“I will try,” Biden said, according to Jaydien and his grandmother, Betty Fraire, who last name is different than her grandson’s.
The boy had one more request: Could the president also make sure teenagers are not able to carry rifles because, the child said, “it’s dangerous.” Biden’s reply: “I am working on it.”
Biden recalled for reporters on Monday a visit he made to a trauma hospital in New York, where he was shown X-rays of shooting victims. “A 9mm bullet blows the lung out of the body,” he said. “There’s simply no rational basis for [a high-caliber weapon] in terms of self-protection, hunting.”
He added that the Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms, was “never absolute,” noting: “You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed.”
From Sandy Hook to Buffalo to Uvalde: Ten years of failure on gun control
At the same time, the president acknowledged that much of the power to impose gun safety regulations rests with Congress, where lawmakers have debated the issue for years. “I can’t outlaw a weapon. I can’t change the background checks. I can’t do that,” Biden said.
He added that he thinks “things have gotten so bad that everybody is getting more rational about it. At least that’s my hope and prayer.”
“There are more Republicans interested in talking about finding a path forward this time than I have ever seen since Sandy Hook,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told ABC’s “This Week,” referring to a school shooting in Connecticut a decade ago that killed 20 students and six adults but did not lead to the passage of sweeping legislation on the federal level.
But officers waited more than an hour — through multiple 911 calls from students — to storm the classroom where the gunman and many of his victims were locked in.
Timeline: How police responded to the Uvalde school shooter
State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uvalde, said Monday that he is sending a written request to Steven C. McCraw, director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, for a full ballistics report and demanding to know “exactly what time, what officer and from what agency showed up, and where they were stationed” at the school.
“There were clear, clear violations of protocol here,” he said.
“I want to make sure that we have access to all of the evidence as quickly as possible so we can get a thorough investigation,” he said. “It’s not going to bring these kids back, of course, but we need to make sure that we get the answers so that this never happens again.”
Villegas reported from Uvalde. Seung Min Kim and Monika Mathur in Washington contributed to this report. | 2022-05-31T00:28:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden pledges gun action after Uvalde massacre - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/30/uvalde-biden-gun-laws/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/30/uvalde-biden-gun-laws/ |
Canada vows to ‘freeze’ handgun sales, buy back assault-style weapons
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announces new gun control legislation in Ottawa on Monday. (Patrick Doyle/AP)
TORONTO — Canada on Monday introduced new gun-control legislation that, if passed, would implement a “national freeze” on buying, importing, transferring and selling handguns, effectively capping the number of such weapons already in the country.
The bill, which officials here cast as “the most significant action on gun violence in a generation,” also includes “red flag” laws that would allow judges to temporarily remove firearms from people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others and stiffer penalties for gun smuggling and trafficking.
“We recognize that the vast majority of gun owners in this country are responsible and follow all necessary laws,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa. “We are, however, facing a level of gun violence in our communities that is unacceptable.”
“Unfortunately, the reality is in our country [gun violence] is getting worse and has been getting worse over the past years,” Trudeau said. “We need only look south of the border to know that if we do not take action, firmly and rapidly, it gets worse and worse and more difficult to counter.”
The “freeze” envisioned by the proposed legislation is not a ban because people who already own them could continue to possess and use them. But they could only transfer them to businesses, and chief firearms officers would be barred from approving the transfer of handguns to individuals.
“Today’s announcement fails to focus on the root cause of gun violence in our cities: illegal guns smuggled into Canada by criminal gangs,” Raquel Dancho, the Conservative public safety critic, said in a tweet. “The PM has had 7 years to fix this serious issue yet he continues to chase headlines and bury his head in the sand.”
The measures unveiled Monday come after the government banned 1,500 makes and models of “military-style assault weapons” in 2020, after a gunman posing as a police officer charged across rural Nova Scotia, killing 22 people, including a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer, in the country’s deadliest mass shooting.
“It’s going to be hard,” said Marco Mendicino, Canada’s public safety minister. “But we’re going to get it done.”
Trudeau promises gun-control legislation after deadliest shooting in Canadian history
Some measures announced Monday would not require parliamentary approval, but a change to regulations.
While mass shootings are relatively rare here compared to the United States, the rate of firearm-related homicides has increased since 2013, according to data from Statistics Canada. It said that the percentage of homicides involving a firearm jumped from 26 percent in 2013 to 37 percent in 2020.
Nearly 60 percent of firearm-related violent crimes involve handguns, according to the national statistics agency. But it said that there are “many gaps” in the data, including on the “source of firearms used in crime” and “whether a gun used in a crime was stolen, illegally purchased or smuggled into the country.”
During hearings in a public inquiry this year on the “causes, context and circumstances” of the mass shooting in Nova Scotia, evidence was presented on the provenance of the large cache of weapons that the attacker, Gabriel Wortman, had on hand during the hours-long assault.
Wortman, a denturist, did not possess a firearms license and obtained his weapons illegally. The commission heard that there were “two, and potentially three,” instances when police received information about his access to firearms. Little, if anything, was done, according to testimony.
Several of the guns were traced and sourced to gun stores in nearby Maine. A friend there told police that Wortman took one or more of the guns without his knowledge or permission, while he gave the shooter a Ruger P89 “as a sign of gratitude” for his help with “tree removals and other odd jobs at his residence.”
An AR-15 came from a gun shop in California, but Wortman first saw it at a gun show in Maine and someone else bought it for him. Witnesses told the RCMP after the shooting that Wortman would disassemble the firearms and roll them up in his truck’s tonneau cover to smuggle them across the border. | 2022-05-31T03:17:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Canada proposes law to 'freeze' handgun sales, buy back assault-style weapons - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/30/canada-gun-control-handguns-assault-weapons/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/30/canada-gun-control-handguns-assault-weapons/ |
Man dies after jumping off boat into Potomac
A man died after jumping off a boat anchored in the Potomac on Monday evening, according to Maryland Natural Resources Police.
Officers responded to reports of a person overboard near Fort Washington, south of the Woodrow Wilson Memorial Bridge, at about 6 p.m., according to Lauren Moses, a department spokeswoman.
A 37-year-old man jumped from an anchored boat and then called for help, police said. Someone on the boat threw him a life jacket, but he was unable to put it on and then lost consciousness.
Another boater nearby was able to pull the man out of the water and attempt CPR. Emergency responders continued lifesaving efforts when they arrived soon afterward, according to police, but the man died.
It was not yet known why the man had jumped from the boat. | 2022-05-31T03:30:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Man dies after accident in Potomac River near Fort Washington - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/30/fort-washington-accident-potomac-river/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/30/fort-washington-accident-potomac-river/ |
Ask Amy: My 3-year-old son is asking where his absent grandpa is
Dear Amy: My partner “Michael’s” father, “Ned,” walked out on their family when Michael was a teenager.
It was a nasty divorce, leaving behind many emotional and financial scars. In the years following the divorce, Ned made little and then no effort to keep in touch with his children.
Estranged: You should talk to your partner about this and ask him if the two of you can come up with simple and truthful explanations for your precocious son: “Daddy’s father’s name is ‘Steven.’ Daddy hasn’t seen him in a long time because Steven chose to move away and hasn’t been in touch.”
The advice I’ve been given is to pray about it, to find a hobby or to get a divorce.
My wife is my best friend and I love her dearly, but when it comes to love and affection, she is not interested. We have slept in separate bedrooms for most of our marriage. There is never any hand holding, cuddling or intimacy.
I can’t bear to think that I will live out the rest of my life being lonesome and wanting a woman’s affection. I’ve been faithful through all of this, but worry about giving in to temptation someday.
Suffering: I don’t know about praying this loneliness away, but I’d add an idea to your basket of solicited advice: If you are unwilling to leave your marriage in order to pursue the possibility of other relationships, you could approach your wife to see if she is willing to “open” your marriage so that you could both step out, possibly for a trial period of a few months.
Upset: Young children understand that babies come from parents. Their folks will explain the rest. | 2022-05-31T05:01:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ask Amy: My 3-year-old son is asking where his absent grandpa is - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/05/31/ask-amy-son-absent-grandpa/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/05/31/ask-amy-son-absent-grandpa/ |
Carolyn Hax: Brother has limited involvement with family. Can they make him change?
Carolyn Hax is away. The following is from Feb. 15, 2008.
Dear Carolyn: From late high school on, my younger brother has chosen to distance himself from family. My parents are Cuban, and we’re a pretty close family, with its share of Hispanic-mom guilt trips, manipulations, etc. My brother is supersmart, high school valedictorian, etc., so I think he felt marginalized at school. In college he really seemed to come out of his shell, and after graduating, he moved to Utah with his girlfriend. My mom was devastated that he moved so far from home (Texas). A couple of years later, they got married and moved to San Diego — more devastation for Mom.
I vacation with my parents at least every other year; my brother hasn't been on vacation with us in 12-plus years. He spends Christmas at his in-laws' house, Thanksgiving in San Diego and comes home maybe five days a year. He buys us expensive gifts, sends flowers for all the funerals, etc., but doesn't attend. My mom talks to him every Sunday. This is pretty much his level of involvement with the family. My mom lies to her friends because she doesn't want them to think badly of my bro.
After all that one-sided history, here’s the problem. My brother and his wife are having a baby soon. My mom, being one who has trouble holding in her opinions, already has expressed dismay that they’re having a natural birth with a midwife/doula, using cloth diapers, etc. I’ve calmed her worries, and expressed this to my brother, BUT he won’t let my mom come see the new baby for a month. This is killing my mom (she was at the hospital for both of my kids). Should there be a point where my brother just once allows the level of “family togetherness” that the rest of us expect?
— V.
V.: Should there be a point where his family just once accepts and respects who he is?
Your “one-sided history” reads like his side. He felt alien in high school, came into his own in college and blazed a new trail from there — for which he got grief. Then, he found love and settled in a place that apparently fits — for which he got grief.
Now, this intelligent, generous, self-reliant man is about to have a child. For which he's getting grief.
At least his mother is so ashamed of him that she created a fictional son!
I'm no stranger to cultural expectations. They're emotional, too. However, for whatever reason, your brother struggled at home and blossomed when he got away.
Has he ever heard “Good for you"? Even “I miss you, but I’m proud you’ve made a happy life for yourself"? This couple’s birth choices may differ from yours, but they’re rooted in conscience — did anyone applaud that, or was it all about Grandma’s dismay (and your damage control)?
If his family chose to support the man he is, instead of grieve the man he isn't, do you think he'd visit more?
Negativity isn't cultural, and isn't necessary.
There’s love between him and his family, clearly. Just as clearly, he needs miles between him and his family — and while there’s room to bring him closer emotionally, you won’t accomplish that by acting as Mom’s spokes-enforcer. Know your own mind, and speak it accordingly. Or, even better, be the one who just stops judging the guy. | 2022-05-31T05:01:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Carolyn Hax: Brother rarely visits family. Can they make him change? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/05/31/carolyn-hax-boyfriend-family-involvement-change/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/advice/2022/05/31/carolyn-hax-boyfriend-family-involvement-change/ |
Egypt unearths trove of artifacts, 250 mummies in ancient necropolis
Mostafa Waziri, the secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, said May 30 that the find includes 250 painted sarcophagi with well-preserved mummies inside. (Video: Reuters)
Archaeologists in Egypt announced Monday that they had uncovered a trove of ancient artifacts at the necropolis of Saqqara near Cairo, including mummies and bronze statues dating back 2,500 years.
Among the treasures were 250 sarcophagi — or painted coffins — with well-preserved mummies inside, unearthed during recent excavations at a burial ground outside Cairo, said Mostafa Waziri, the secretary general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities.
“In one of the wooden sarcophagi, we found, for the first time, a complete and sealed papyrus,” he told reporters at a makeshift exhibit Monday. The document was immediately moved to a museum for further study. Waziri said he believed it was similar to those found 100 years ago that discuss the Book of the Gates and the Book of the Dead. Both are ancient Egyptian funerary texts.
The dig also uncovered 150 bronze statues of Egyptian deities and instruments used for rituals dating back to the Late Period of ancient Egypt, about 500 B.C., said Waziri, who led the archaeological mission.
The Egyptian government is hoping a spate of recent archaeological discoveries will help revive the country’s tourism industry, bringing much-needed foreign currency and creating new jobs.
Egypt’s tourism-dependent economy has suffered in the past decade from the political chaos that developed after the 2011 Arab Spring. Lately, it has been hit by the coronavirus pandemic, which curbed global travel, and the war in Ukraine; Russia and Ukraine are usually big sources of tourists for the country.
In the tombs of Saqqara, new discoveries are rewriting ancient Egypt’s history
Ancient finds have been made across the country in recent years, bringing fresh understanding of the dynasties that ruled ancient Egypt.
In February last year, archaeologists found 16 human burial chambers at the site of an ancient temple on the outskirts of the northern city of Alexandria. Two of the mummies had golden tongues, which Egyptian Antiquities Ministry officials said were to allow them to “speak in the afterlife.”
That same month, a massive 5,000-year-old brewery — believed to be the world’s oldest — was discovered in the southern city of Sohag. The beer, researchers hypothesized, was used in burial rituals for Egypt’s earliest kings.
In April last year, archaeologists announced they had unearthed a 3,000-year-old “lost golden city” in the southern city of Luxor, a discovery they said could be the biggest since the tomb of the boy king Tutankhamen.
The Saqqara necropolis, where the latest discoveries were made, was part of the burial grounds for the ancient capital, Memphis. Its ruins are now a UNESCO World Heritage site.
The sarcophagi will be transferred to the new Grand Egyptian Museum, due to open near the famed Giza Pyramids outside Cairo in November, for display. | 2022-05-31T05:03:00Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Egypt unearths 250 mummies in sarcophogi at Saqqara necropolis - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/31/egypt-mummies-saqqara-coffins-bronze-antiquities/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/31/egypt-mummies-saqqara-coffins-bronze-antiquities/ |
What to watch on Tuesday: ‘Tom Swift’ premieres on the CW
Tuesday, May 31, 2022 I The PBS “Frontline” series produced a new documentary, “Police on Trial,” which examines the Minneapolis Police Department following the murder of George Floyd by an officer.
30 for 30 (ESPN at 8) “The Greatest Mixtape Ever” explores the ’90s culture of basketball played on street courts and playgrounds (also known as street ball) as encapsulated in the popular And1 Mixtape series.
Holey Moley (ABC at 8) Eight competitors do battle at King Parthur’s Court.
Superman & Lois (CW at 8) Jordan and Jonathan suspect Lois and Clark are hiding something from them.
The Real Housewives of Miami (Bravo at 9) Julia wakes up and needs medical attention; Adriana and Lisa’s beef may spoil Larsa’s jewelry launch; Nicole and Marysol squabble.
Frontline (PBS at 10) “Police on Trial” examines the Minneapolis Police Department following the murder of George Floyd by officer Derek Chauvin and the city’s quest for accountability.
Mayans M.C. (FX at 10) The Mayans throw down the gauntlet at SOA.
Tom Swift (CW at 9) The “Nancy Drew” character Tom Swift (played by Tian Richards, pictured) gets his own series and tries to solve the mysterious disappearance of his father.
Bobby Brown: Every Little Step (A&E at 10:01) The singer’s new reality series finds him navigating sobriety, and the premiere involves walking his first daughter down the aisle.
Dancing With Myself (NBC at 10:01) Twelve contestants from across the country work with celebrities Shakira, Nick Jonas and Liza Koshy to compete in six dance challenges performed in their own individual pods.
Biography: Bobby Brown (A&E at 8) The final two parts of the series shine a light on Brown’s ill-fated marriage with Whitney Houston and the evolution of his life until the present day.
Theodore Roosevelt (History at 8) The final part focuses on Roosevelt’s ascension to the presidency following President William McKinley’s assassination.
Black Patriots: Buffalo Soldiers (History at 10:33) A profile of the regiment of Black soldiers who patrolled the Western frontier following the Civil War.
Pistol (Hulu) A six-part miniseries, directed by Danny Boyle (“Sunshine”), takes a look at the hard and fast life of the legendary punk band the Sex Pistols — based on the 2017 memoir “Lonely Boy” by guitarist Steve Jones.
America’s Got Talent (NBC at 8) Season 17.
Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC at 11:35) Bill Burr, Moses Ingram, Trixie Mattel, Shakey Graves. | 2022-05-31T05:41:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What to watch on Tuesday: ‘Tom Swift’ premieres on the CW - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/05/31/what-watch-tuesday-tom-swift-premieres-cw/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/tv/2022/05/31/what-watch-tuesday-tom-swift-premieres-cw/ |
FILE - A worker operates a machine for knitting socks in a factory in Funan county in central China’s Anhui province, on March 1, 2022. Chinese manufacturing activity started to rebound in May after the government eased anti-virus restrictions that shut down Shanghai and other industrial centers, an official survey showed Tuesday, May 31, 2022. (Chinatopix via AP, File) (Uncredited/CHINATOPIX) | 2022-05-31T06:33:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | China manufacturing improves as virus curbs eased - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/china-manufacturing-improves-as-virus-curbs-eased/2022/05/31/e12f92aa-e0a1-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/china-manufacturing-improves-as-virus-curbs-eased/2022/05/31/e12f92aa-e0a1-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Psychology Has a Label for Putin’s KGB-Made Mind
One way to think yourself into the warped mind of a despot like Russian President Vladimir Putin is to first probe into the dark recesses of your own psyche, then figure out what’s different in his. The list is long, but one cognitive snafu that’s both common and relevant is called deformation professionelle.
We use the French term not only because that language often captures things better, but also because the phrase has an embedded pun that doesn’t translate into the English “professional deformation.” Formation professionelle means vocational training. Deformation professionelle therefore refers to the tunnel vision, biases and distortions we imbibe as we become expert at whatever we do.
Many prosecutors, for example, will walk down a random street and, looking left and right, see people who are guilty of something, just not yet caught. Defense attorneys strolling on the same sidewalk will look around and behold human beings who are unjustly accused of something or other, and probably harassed by an overbearing inquisition.
Usually, deformation professionelle is all around us, but no more than a nuisance. It applies to the professor who comes home at night and annoyingly stays in lecture mode with the spouse and kids. Or the tech guy at your company who — left to his own devices and in the name of cybersecurity — would make logging on to your computer so difficult that you’ll never do a jot of work again.
In the context of geopolitics generally, and the Russian attack on Ukraine specifically, the stakes are, of course, immeasurably higher. Putin suffered his deformation professionelle in the KGB, the spy agency of the former Soviet Union. He worked there from 1975, when he was in his twenties, until just before the USSR collapsed. To this day, he likes to emphasize that there’s no such thing as a “former” KGB agent — people may have left the agency, but it never left them.
Long before becoming leader of a nuclear power, therefore, he built an identity and personality as a spook. Ponder this. He didn’t rise to power after running for office, shaking hands and kissing babies; nor after managing a business, curing patients, researching mRNA or selling widgets. Putin got into pole position to be the Kremlin’s alpha male by spying on human beings, as well as tracking, manipulating and often discarding them.
What did that do to Putin’s mind as we encounter it today? Ruediger von Fritsch, a former German ambassador to Russia, describes the psychological consequences as he observed them. Putin sorts everything in life — private or public, Russian or global — into categories of actual or potential hostilities, conspiracies or threats.
Ivan Krastev, a Bulgarian political scientist, concurs, saying, “He is constantly speaking of betrayal and deceit.” As Putin sees history and current events, Krastev says, “Things never happen spontaneously. If people demonstrate, he doesn’t ask: Why are they out on the streets? He asks: Who sent them?”
Viewed thus, many of Putin’s hallucinations become fathomable. The Soviet Union didn’t fall; it was pushed (by a hostile West). The “color revolutions” in former Soviet Republics weren’t primal yells for freedom by people who felt oppressed; those protesters were hired or manipulated by the CIA and other Western secret services. Ukrainians don’t want to join the European Union for its promise of prosperity, progress and liberty; they’re doing it because they’re run by Nazis whose real objective is to encircle and betray Russia and Putin.
Another aspect of this particular deformation professionelle concerns truth — or rather, the complete absence and irrelevance of the very notion. For years, people like Peter Pomerantsev, a Soviet-born British author, have pointed out that Putin flaunts his power by defining “reality” as arbitrarily as he pleases.
The once-and-always KGB agent knows that “if nothing is true, then anything is possible,” Pomerantsev reckons. “We are left with the sense that we don’t know what Putin will do next — that he’s unpredictable and thus dangerous. We’re rendered stunned, spun, and flummoxed by the Kremlin’s weaponization of absurdity and unreality.”
While he was German ambassador to the Kremlin, von Fritsch experienced first-hand the cognitive whiplash this produces in others. “In some conversations in Moscow after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, I had the feeling that we invaded the peninsula rather than Russia.” If there is no truth, it no longer matters whether you distort reality or invert it, as long as you can. In Putin’s system, lying isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
So what makes Putin different from the rest of us? A lot. First, while we may all suffer from some deformation professionelle (journalists are hardly immune), most of us aren’t spies.
Second, biased as our worldviews may be, most of us still have to occasionally encounter and interact with other people, who have different perspectives. Putin, by contrast, appears to be completely isolated in his alternate reality.
And third, even when we go off the deep end, most of us don’t have enough power to hurt millions of innocent bystanders (although the grieving people of Uvalde, Texas, know that a person acting alone can still destroy the lives of many). Putin does have that ultimate power, which comes with the codes to launch nukes.
His formative years in the KGB caused a deformation professionelle in Vladimir Putin that has left him cynical, paranoid, vengeful, unscrupulous and ruthless. And above all, mendacious. Ukraine, the West and the world must keep that in mind in calibrating a strategy against him. | 2022-05-31T06:33:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Psychology Has a Label for Putin’s KGB-Made Mind - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/psychology-has-a-label-for-putins-kgb-made-mind/2022/05/31/560cb7ae-e09f-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/psychology-has-a-label-for-putins-kgb-made-mind/2022/05/31/560cb7ae-e09f-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
‘Irreplaceable’ $2 million gold tabernacle stolen from Brooklyn church
The tabernacle at St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church was the “central focus of our church outside of worship,” Father Frank Tumino said. (DeSales Media Group)
A tabernacle worth $2 million was stolen from a Catholic church in Brooklyn, New York City police said Monday, in what church officials described as a “brazen crime of disrespect and hate.”
The bejeweled tabernacle — a container that houses the Eucharist used in the rite of Communion — is “irreplaceable due to its historical and artistic value,” the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn said in a statement.
The heist at St. Augustine Roman Catholic Church in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood was discovered on Saturday by Father Frank Tumino, a pastor there, who said in the statement that the tabernacle was the “central focus of our church outside of worship.”
Tumino had been on his way to hear confessions at a parish up the street when he passed by St. Augustine and noticed that one of the doors was ajar, according to the Tablet, a publication by the diocese.
When he entered the church, he came across the destruction, finding the Eucharist — commonly unleavened bread or wafers — strewn about the altar. The sight made him feel ill, he said, adding in the statement that the Eucharist in the tabernacle had been used in Communion for the sick and homebound.
Church officials said the burglary happened Friday, while police gave a wider window, saying it occurred between 6:30 p.m. Thursday and 4 p.m. Saturday. There were no witnesses, and surveillance footage was not available, New York City police said in an email. Tumino said that while the church has security cameras in its interior and exterior, parts of the surveillance system were also taken during the burglary.
A metal casing on the altar was “forcefully cut open” with a power saw, police said, allowing the tabernacle to be snatched. Statues of angels on either side of the tabernacle were “decapitated and destroyed,” as well, the diocese said. An empty safe was also cut open.
Police had no leads on potential suspects as of Monday evening and asked anyone with information about the burglary to contact the department’s crime unit. Tumino speculated that multiple people were involved in the heist, considering the immense weight of the tabernacle.
Although police said the tabernacle was solid gold, Father Robert Whelan said in a 2013 program about the church that it was solid silver coated in 18-karat gold.
The tabernacle was finished in 1895, Whelan said, a few years after the opening of the church, which the New York Times described in 1892 as “Brooklyn’s finest.” St. Augustine — and inside, the tabernacle — narrowly avoided being hit by a plane that crashed in Park Slope in 1960, killing dozens. “The jet plummeted to the earth, missing by only a few feet the towering steeple” of the church, an article in the Catholic Standard and Times said at the time.
The jewels affixed to the tabernacle were donated by parishioners, Whelan said, who were asked at the time to bring their jewelry for its use. Diamonds and other jewels from engagement and wedding rings were used to adorn the structure.
Whelan said in the program that it was “probably the most elaborate tabernacle in the country.”
Jaclyn Peiser contributed to this report. | 2022-05-31T08:04:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | $2M gold tabernacle stolen from Brooklyn church - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/31/tabernacle-stolen-brooklyn-church-nyc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/31/tabernacle-stolen-brooklyn-church-nyc/ |
In this photo released by the Taiwan Presidential Office, U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., left, meets with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen at the Presidential Office in Taipei, Taiwan, Tuesday, May 31, 2022. On a visit to Taiwan, reiterated support for the island amid rising Chinese threats. (Taiwan Presidential Office via AP) (Uncredited/Taiwan Presidential Office) | 2022-05-31T08:05:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | US senator visits Taiwan as China ups military threat - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-senator-visits-taiwan-as-china-ups-military-threat/2022/05/31/39affbba-e0af-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/us-senator-visits-taiwan-as-china-ups-military-threat/2022/05/31/39affbba-e0af-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
A doctor claimed he had a ‘miracle cure’ for covid. He’s going to prison.
Hydroxychloroquine tablets. (David J. Phillip/AP)
In mass-marketing emails from his business, Skinny Beach Med Spa, Jennings Ryan Staley said the drug was included in his coronavirus “treatment kits,” despite the medication becoming increasingly scarce. But Staley had a way of getting it, he later told an undercover federal agent. He planned to smuggle in a barrel of hydroxychloroquine powder with the help of a Chinese supplier, prosecutors said.
“At the height of the pandemic, before vaccines were available, this doctor sought to profit from patients’ fears,” U.S. Attorney Randy Grossman said in a news release. “He abused his position of trust and undermined the integrity of the entire medical profession.”
How false hope spread about hydroxychloroquine to treat covid-19 — and the consequences that followed
Hydroxychloroquine is often prescribed to people with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis and is used to treat malaria. The drug was repeatedly touted by President Donald Trump, starting in the early days of the pandemic, as a “game changer.” Trump’s endorsement caused demand for the drug to spike, leading to shortages and ultimately affecting those who needed it for non-covid health problems. Studies later found that hydroxychloroquine is not an effective treatment for covid and did not prevent people from becoming sick.
According to prosecutors, federal agents began looking into Staley after concerned customers alerted the FBI to the marketing emails from Skinny Beach Med Spa. The business advertised “world-class beauty innovations at affordable prices,” court documents show, and offered services including Botox, fat transfer, hair removal and tattoo removal.
The covid treatment kit came with a 30-day “concierge medical experience,” intravenous drips, and access to medical hyperbaric oxygen (at an extra fee) and prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine, azithromycin and anti-anxiety medications, records show.
In late March 2020, an undercover agent responded to one of the emails and inquired about the treatment kit, investigators said. When Staley and the agent spoke on the phone soon after, the doctor falsely claimed that hydroxychloroquine was a “magic bullet” and an “amazing cure” that would keep someone immune from covid for at least six weeks, according to court records.
“It’s preventive and curative,” Staley said to the undercover agent, court documents show. “It’s hard to believe, it’s almost too good to be true. But it’s a remarkable clinical phenomenon.”
He added that the virus “literally disappears in hours” after a person takes the drug.
When asked by the agent whether the medication was a “guaranteed” cure for covid, Staley said yes but qualified that “there’s always exceptions” and “there are no guarantees in life,” court records show.
During the call, Staley also told the agent how he was sourcing the hydroxychloroquine. He said that he “got the last tank of hydroxychloroquine smuggled out of China,” records show, and that he “tricked customs” by labeling the barrel as “sweet potato extract.” He added that the powder was enough to make 8,000 doses in gelatin capsules.
Staley later offered the agent prescriptions for generic versions of Viagra and Xanax, a federally controlled substance, despite never asking him “any medical questions,” prosecutors said. The agent ordered six kits — enough for himself and five family members — for $4,000, according to court documents.
A Florida man received millions in coronavirus aid. He used it to buy a Lamborghini, prosecutors say.
Staley was charged in mid-April 2020 and pleaded guilty in July 2021. As part of his plea agreement, Staley also admitted to posing as one of his employees to fill a prescription for hydroxychloroquine to then use it in his kits, prosecutors said. And he agreed to accusations that he lied to federal agents during the investigation.
“Dr. Staley offered a ‘magic bullet’ — a guaranteed cure for COVID-19 to people gripped in fear during a global pandemic,” FBI Special Agent in Charge Suzanne Turner said in a news release when Staley pleaded guilty. “Today, Dr. Staley admitted it was all a lie as part of a scam to make a quick buck.”
As part of his sentencing on Friday, Staley was ordered to pay a $10,000 fine and to give back the $4,000 the federal agent paid for his family’s kit. He also had to hand over “more than 4,500 tablets of various pharmaceutical drugs, multiple bags of empty pill capsules, and a manual capsule-filling machine,” prosecutors said.
According to records from the medical board of California, Staley’s license has been temporarily suspended by a court order. | 2022-05-31T09:36:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | San Diego doctor Jennings Staley sentenced in hydroxychloroquine scheme - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/31/covid-cure-doctor-jennings-staley/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/31/covid-cure-doctor-jennings-staley/ |
Wikipedia acts as a check on Putin’s false view of history
Hitler myths are a particular source of vigilance for the editors of the Internet’s research library
Perspective by Noam Cohen
Noam Cohen, author of “The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball,” writes about how digital technologies are changing society.
Russian President Vladimir Putin Putin at the Kremlin in Moscow on May 25. (Sergei Guneyev/AP)
If you had looked up Adolf Hitler on Wikipedia in early May, you’d have seen a peculiar description near the top of the article. Hitler, the introduction concludes, is “almost universally regarded as gravely immoral.” This oddly couched phrase periodically shows up on Wikipedia as a description of Hitler until an editor hops in to delete it and instead highlight a more biting assessment, like the one from the historian Ian Kershaw calling Hitler “the embodiment of modern political evil.”
Whether to call Hitler gravely immoral or evil is one of literally hundreds of discussions about this article, which is among the most viewed ever on the site — more than 125 million times over the last 15 years, twice as many as Jesus’s total and in the neighborhood of the number for the soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo. The Hitler discussions on Wikipedia take place most days and flit between the trivial (whether Hitler’s infamy has doomed the Hitler moustache, also known as the toothbrush), the peculiar (how to describe Hitler’s painting skills) and the profound (whether there even is such a thing as “evil”).
Setting the record straight matters because historical misinformation walks hand in hand with current disinformation. Just look at the rhetoric around Russian’s invasion of Ukraine, which Vladimir Putin has described as a battle to “de-Nazify” the leadership of Ukraine.
Collectively, the debates speak to Wikipedia editors’ awareness of the seriousness of the task. Wikipedia is the de facto research library for platforms like the Google search engine. Just as we rely on Google and the like to explain the current world to us, Google relies on Wikipedia to provide users with a kind of Cliffs Notes version of world history.
VIPs expect special treatment. At Wikipedia, don’t even ask.
Last fall, I wrote about an impassioned Wikipedia editor, Ksenia Coffman, who said she was de-Nazifying Wikipedia. When she used the term, she meant the process of rewriting or deleting articles that relied on myths about the supposed courage and honor of Nazi Germany’s fighting forces, the Wehrmacht. She showed that accounts of so-called “aces” — fighters said to have heroically held off much more powerful enemies with a single tank or plane — were based on propaganda. She also found sources to expose the lies of Nazi generals and field marshals who insisted, after the fact, that they had opposed Nazism in their hearts and had no idea about the war crimes being carried out by their own troops.
In making these repairs, Coffman faced resistance from a group of editors who were mainly military buffs and wanted to write about battlefield valor without too much scrutiny. She, however, kept coming back to facts and sources — how do we know what we think we know? — and an insistence that Wikipedia not be swept up in mythology. At the time, her cause seemed removed from today’s problems — about capital T truth in the abstract — until, that is, Putin and his advisers started talking about why history was on Russia’s side.
In a speech last year, Putin strolled through 1,000 years of battles and alliances to justify his claim of the “historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” He tells the story of the ancient Rus people who made Kiev their capital and Vladimir the Great their leader after he rejected Islam and Judaism and embraced Eastern Orthodoxy, as the story goes. Putin has two claims he says are backed by the historical record: that there has never been a separate Ukrainian nation, and that people who claim there is a separate nation must have another motive, whether personal gain or an ideological cause like Nazism. When Putin describes the brotherly fighting between Russians and Ukrainians, he speaks in a tone of sadness that a family has been divided; when he identifies the figures he says are responsible for those divisions — for encouraging a separate Ukrainian identity — his tone turns to rage, comparing its consequences “to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us.”
Since the Russian invasion, the English Wikipedia articles about the historical figures and topics Putin invoked have been racking up pop-star numbers. The article about Stepan Bandera, a far-right leader of Ukrainian nationalists before and during World War II — whom Putin sees as an evil force guiding Ukraine even today — has been viewed a million times since the invasion. The one about the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, an obscure entity within the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that Putin sees as having enabled Ukraine’s current separate political identity, has had more than a half-million views since the invasion. Also with Bandera-type numbers is the article about Kievan Rus’ (just under a million views), the ancient kingdom led by Vladimir the Great (225,000).
When it comes to allegations about Nazi collaboration by prominent Ukrainian nationalists like Bandera, Wikipedia has pulled no punches. Even as Putin has emphasized these Nazi ties as a reason for his invasion, Wikipedia has resisted attempts to water down this history. In April, one editor posted to say, “Stepan Bandera wasn’t nazi-collaborator and theorist,” adding, “You must check information and after that publish.” The response from another editor, which carried the day, was swift, “He was, this has been checked, and references are in the article. If Ukrainians do not accept historical facts it is their problem.” The section on Bandera’s anti-Semitic views has only grown since Putin put him on the international stage.
Conspiracy videos? Fake news? Enter Wikipedia, the ‘good cop’ of the Internet
In the big picture, however, Wikipedia offers a compelling counternarrative to Putin: To start, the very existence of a separate Ukraine article is a refutation of Putin’s core theory of Russian-Ukrainian joint history. Digging down, there is the article on the history of Ukraine, which describes how the idea of Ukrainian nationhood crystallized in the 17th and 18th centuries as part of a national cultural revival. Putin glossed over this period in his speech, with a brief pause to ask, “How can this heritage be divided between Russia and Ukraine? And why do it?”
The much-debated article about Hitler has been a bulwark, too. When Putin’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, was asked how Ukraine could be in need of de-Nazification if its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is Jewish, Lavrov replied: “I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood. [That Zelensky is Jewish] means absolutely nothing. Wise Jewish people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews.” It was an appalling answer that, according to the Israeli government, Putin apologized for.
The day after Lavrov’s claim, more people visited the Hitler article than had done so on any single day over the last year — nearly 70,000 views, compared to a daily average of 28,000. In an unusual step, the English Wikipedia article brings up this particular falsehood to explicitly refute it. The claim has appeared regularly in discussions since 2005, the records show, most recently in 2021, when various editors mentioned a new article on the subject. That last appeal was shut down: “We’ve been through this and it’s been debunked. It’s all speculation, conjecture and bootstrapping surmise.”
The Wikipedia project comes with a stubborn confidence that facts can guide us through the darkness. In Wikipedia’s 20-year history, this belief has never been asked to do more. | 2022-05-31T09:36:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Wikipedia acts as a check on Putin’s false view of history - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/05/31/wikipedia-hitler-putin-lavrov/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/05/31/wikipedia-hitler-putin-lavrov/ |
James Biden — presidential brother, family helper, political wild card
President Biden’s brother James is known in the family as the one who’s always ready to help. But he also has a history of business dealings that resulted in recriminations and lawsuits.
Joe and James Biden at the Democratic National Convention in Denver in 2008. (Rick Friedman/Corbis/Getty Images)
James Biden took out his iPhone early one morning in September 2017 and tapped a quick message to his nephew Hunter. It was, as usual, filled with typos. It was also, as usual, filled with exclamation points meant to convey his exuberance.
The exchange comes from a copy of a hard drive that Hunter Biden purportedly dropped off at a repair shop and never retrieved. A copy was provided to The Washington Post, and the emails cited in this article were authenticated by two forensic analysts.
James and Hunter Biden were in the midst of a lucrative deal with Chinese executives at the time, while Joe Biden was out of public service for the first time in nearly a half-century, having left the vice presidency a few months earlier. Hunter Biden was also wrestling with drug addiction, financial problems and a relationship with his late brother Beau’s widow that had become public. Amid all that, Hunter Biden turned to his uncle, at least as much as to his famous father, for emotional support.
Hunter also relied upon James Biden, who goes by Jim and is known as Jimmy within the family, on matters of dollars and cents. Within days of that exchange, Hunter received another email from his uncle urging him to take advantage of a financial opportunity related to Joe Biden. The urgency is clear, even if the precise subject is not.
“You need to call me now,” James Biden wrote on Oct. 1, 2017. “Just got off the phone with your father...We have the two biggest days of our business life in front of us!!!!!! We must be smart, or everything goes up in smoke! Please call me. You MUST remain calm. Timing could not be worse. Calm and measured!!!! Paybacks can come later.”
James Biden has in many ways always been the protector in the Biden family, the one who made sure the machinery ran while his brother soared; President Biden as recently as late last year referred to him as “my brother Jimmy, who fixes everything.” He has been there for the bad times, comforting family members in distress, visiting the bedside of loved ones, getting them into rehab when needed. He was by his brother’s side at his first wedding, was at the hospital when Beau died, found a neurosurgeon when Joe had a brain aneurysm.
In a rare phone interview, James Biden said he tries to keep a low profile, and he used more than a few expletives to describe unwelcome attention from Republicans and the media. “I’m the guy who assists in everything. When it comes to my family I try to be as supportive as I can,” he said. “But this notion of ‘the fixer,’ or any reference that has a negative connotation, is offensive.”
He added, “The notion I am some underworld figure and I am a fixer or the cleaner or I’m this or that — I’m a very concerned family member who tries to protect my family in every way I can, in what is a very ethical way.”
Several times during the interview, James Biden mused aloud that he should not be speaking to a reporter, then resumed talking. Eventually his wife, Sara, entered the room and advised him to cut off the conversation. “Talk to a real person who knows me,” James Biden said, then offered, “Guess what? There’s not many who do.”
James Biden has included Hunter in a number of financial deals, his expressions of undying empathy for his nephew alternating with excited business pitches. Yet a number of those deals have turned sour, as onetime business partners have alleged in court documents that James Biden has said he would bring in business using the Biden name and connections, then failed to deliver — allegations he denies.
The Post spoke to associates of James Biden at his request. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive legal matters and declined to provide specifics. Hunter Biden did not respond to several requests for comment sent through his attorney, and the White House declined to comment.
The intricate mesh of relationships — between the president, his son Hunter, his brother James — illustrates how the president’s relatives have struggled to make a life in his political shadow.
The president and his family are certain to face any number of investigations if Republicans retake at least one chamber of Congress in November’s midterm elections. Republicans have recently drawn more attention to James Biden, in addition to Hunter, an indication that they would put him under a spotlight.
James and Hunter Biden are far from the first presidential relatives to face scrutiny. From Billy Carter to Roger Clinton, presidential siblings have caused political problems, while former president Donald Trump’s family members regularly sought business opportunities related to his presidency and even took positions in his administration.
It is clear that James Biden both soothed his troubled nephew in moments of genuine despair and worked to cultivate business opportunities with him. “My Uncle Jimmy is my best friend in the world,” Hunter said last year during a podcast interview.
The two men share the light banter of close family members, emailing on subjects like the sporting events of Hunter Biden’s children. In the emails, James Biden at one point asked Hunter for advice on getting his boat painted at his marina (“They are thieves down in Fla!!!!!”) and at another advised him on attire for an upcoming dinner (“Jeans very casual!!”).
James Biden also frequently encouraged Hunter to take time to relax, to try yoga and meditation. “It’s worked for you in the past,” he wrote on Oct. 4, 2017. “Force yourself. Im hitting the gym big time. Let’s take some stress off, any way we can! I’m with you pal.”
A few weeks after that message, James Biden was enthusiastically outlining ways for the two of them to leverage political connections in pursuit of infrastructure projects. They knew officials in California, James reminded Hunter, including Gov. Jerry Brown, so they could go after rail projects in the state. There were massive projects shaping up in Minnesota, he added, where they could tap the Democratic delegation for help. In New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo would meet with them whenever they were ready.
“We are very driven people,” James Biden exhorted. “We are rifle shot rather than shot gun people.”
‘You never have to ask Jimmy’
Growing up, the Bidens were a tightknit family, and James Biden’s role of sticking up for others was clear from an early age. Their mother, Joe Biden wrote in his book “Promises to Keep,” “once shipped my brother Jim off with instructions to bloody the nose of a kid who was picking on smaller kids, and she gave him a dollar when he’d done it.”
When Joe Biden ran for Senate in 1972, it was a family affair. The candidate’s sister, Valerie, was the campaign manager. His youngest brother, Frank, rallied student volunteers. And it was 23-year-old James’s job to raise money. From the beginning, James was willing to tiptoe up to ethical lines in a way that Joe Biden, by his own account, was not.
In the heat of the campaign, James reported to Joe that Bill Holayter, president of the International Association of Machinists, was willing to make a $5,000 donation — but wanted to meet the candidate first. When they sat down, the cigar-smoking Holayter asked Joe Biden if he would support the union on an upcoming issue.
“If you’re asking me how I’m gonna vote on a particular issue, you can take that check and stick it,” Joe Biden told him, according to “Promises to Keep.” Joe Biden stormed off, so James Biden chased his brother to the elevator and asked him to reconsider. When Joe still refused to accept the check, James took it himself, according to the book.
James Biden rejects the idea that he was willing to engage in anything that his brother would not. “To get a meeting with that guy, I had to wait in his lobby for probably six months,” he recalled in the interview. “Finally he says, ‘Hey, I want to talk to your brother.’ I said fine, I brought him down.” When his brother stormed out of the room, James Biden said, he persuaded Holayter to apologize.
“The way that it was portrayed or suggested that I did something inappropriate or shady or that I crossed the line, or that I was the one that took the check and he refused?” he said. “Total, absolute bullshit.” He added, “This notion I did something that he wouldn’t do? Give me a break.”
Some of James Biden’s support for his brother was more personal — deeply so. When Biden’s first wife Neilia and their infant daughter died in a car crash, it was James who identified the bodies, who delivered the horrific news to Neilia’s parents, who broke the news to his brother that they were gone.
“Jimmy is among the most generous people in the world, and he would — the expression that we use in the family, ‘If you have to ask, it’s too late’ — and you never have to ask Jimmy,” their sister Valerie, called Val by the family, said during a recent Washington Post Live event. “He’s always a step ahead of trying to help. He’s fierce. It’s not a pushover by any means. He is genuine. You always know where you stand with Jimmy.”
Over the years and especially now, critics have often asked why the president has tolerated the dubious behavior of his family members, especially Hunter. That question may never be answered. But it’s clear that the Bidens have bonded through the kind of tragedy few other families can imagine.
After Joe’s wife and baby daughter died, James converted a garage outside Joe’s house into an apartment so he could be a constant presence as Joe tried to raise two young boys while learning the ways of the Senate. In those early days, James often tagged along on congressional trips — including a side jaunt to Europe with his brother, at the advice of Sen. Hubert Humphrey (D-Minn.). “I became basically a Senate wife for the first year,” James Biden later recalled.
To Hunter and Beau, he was the fun-loving uncle. The one who brought the toys and candy, or tossed them into the air at the swimming pool. The one who dragged an artificial tree into their hospital room when they were recovering from the accident that killed their mother and sister as the family shopped for a Christmas tree.
Joe Biden has recounted moving Hunter into a New Haven apartment when his son was in law school, and realizing the entire place needed a new coat of paint. “My brother Jimmy, who fixes everything — my brother Jimmy was with us, and we went down and bought about 28 gallons of paint,” the president said last year during a talk in Connecticut. “For real. It was hot as hell.”
Business pursuits and litigation
As vital as James Biden has been in his brother’s personal life, he has also been a potential liability in his political one. His repeated efforts at business deals — sometimes using the family name or enlisting Hunter — have not infrequently ended in recrimination, bankruptcy or lawsuits. In several cases, as noted by ProPublica and in Ben Schreckinger’s book “The Bidens,” associates claimed that James promised to use his status as a Biden to drum up business but didn’t, which he denies.
Shortly after Joe Biden became a senator, James Biden opened a nightclub in Wilmington, Del., with bank loans from lenders who may have been eager to please the new young senator on the Banking Committee. Joe Biden was in touch with the banks that were lending money to his brother but did not directly influence the loans, according to news accounts at the time.
On one occasion in 1975, Joe Biden called Edwards Danforth, chairman of the Farmers’ Bank of Delaware, to complain about his brother’s treatment. Biden’s justification, the News Journal reported at the time, was that he’d only called because the bank was threatening that a default would be embarrassing for Joe. “They were trying to use me as a bludgeon,” he said. Eventually, the nightclub folded.
Years later, in 2000, James took out a $353,000 loan from Leonard Barrack, a prominent Biden donor, according to registry of deeds documents. Barrack simultaneously hired James’s wife, Sara, and paid nearly $250,000 for the couple to travel internationally to work generating business for his firm.
But the relationship fell apart and resulted in competing lawsuits between Barrack and the Bidens over Sara Biden’s contract and compensation. Barrack’s firm claimed that, in hiring Sara Biden, James Biden had promised to help land clients in part “through his family name and his resemblance to his brother, United States Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware,” but they generated business for themselves rather than the firm.
Sara Biden, who was represented in part by her nephew, Beau Biden, filed a countersuit. The parties settled in 2004, and Barrack did not respond to a request for comment.
There is no record that James directly responded to the assertion in legal papers, but in the phone interview he suggested that the various lawsuits against him were meritless. “It’s not that I haven’t made mistakes in my life,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is, here I sit, anybody can sue anybody for anything. But it would never be cast in the light that 'they can sue me just because they can sue me.’ ”
James Biden declined to respond in detail to the legal claims he’s faced over the years and referred questions to legal associates, who declined to address specifics.
A few years after the Barrack dispute, James and Hunter jointly purchased a controlling interest in a hedge fund called Paradigm Global Advisors, along with a partner named Anthony Lotito. But that relationship, too, soured, as the Bidens and Lotito sued each other for fraud, each side claiming the other had misled them. The case was ultimately settled.
In a discussion with Marc Maron on his “WTF” podcast last year, Hunter was asked about getting involved in a hedge fund with his uncle. “I tried. It didn’t work out. I was sober. I was sober then,” he said. “It just, it just didn’t work out, you know. I mean, one thing is that you think that, you know, D.C. is bad. Go to Wall Street. I mean, it’s just like, oh, my God.”
He defended James Biden’s role. “Look, my uncle is the most amazing man, one of the most amazing people I know,” Hunter Biden said. “Yeah. He is literally there for everyone. He’s my, he’s my best friend in the world, my Uncle Jim. I mean, he’s an incredible human being in his own right.”
In another case, after teaming up with Americore Health, a Florida-based health-care company, James Biden was accused of stealing blueprints for a rural health-care business and failing to generate the international investments he’d promised.
In June 2019, two medical service firms who were involved in that arrangement — Azzam Medical Services and Diverse Medical Management — sued James Biden and his business partners. Among other things, they alleged James had cited his family connections and promised that Joe Biden would promote the firms’ health-care model in his 2020 campaign.
They also alleged that James touted Joe Biden’s connections to the labor movement and the Department of Veterans Affairs, promising the plaintiffs he’d help them win federal contracts and expand their model nationwide. James Biden’s attorneys disputed many of the allegations in the lawsuit, which was settled in 2020.
And in a case that didn’t end up in litigation but has drawn recent attention, James and Hunter Biden signed a lucrative deal in 2017 with officials from the Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC. As The Post previously reported, the company and its executives paid $4.8 million to entities controlled by the two Bidens over the course of 14 months — even though the energy projects Hunter Biden discussed with CEFC never materialized.
The arrangement provided Hunter Biden with a monthly stipend of $100,000 while his uncle received $65,000, according to records on the copy of Hunter Biden’s hard drive, as well as bank documents obtained by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). James and Hunter Biden have declined to respond to questions about this arrangement.
A source close to Biden, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, declined to comment on several specific questions about his legal issues, saying only that “Jim Biden has always maintained that he conducted himself ethically and honorably in all his business dealings.”
Inside Hunter Biden's deals with a Chinese energy company
‘He sent in the cavalry: my uncle Jim’
Congressional Republicans are increasingly making it clear that James Biden as well as Hunter will be a target of their probes. “Hunter Biden wasn’t the only Biden family member who had connections to the [Chinese] communist regime,” Grassley said in a recent floor speech. “James Biden did as well.”
But James Biden’s bond with his nephew goes far beyond business deals, a fact that has played into the president’s own relationship with his son. When Hunter was in the depths of a drug relapse, he often would stop answering his father’s anxious calls, and Joe Biden knew the best way to reach him was to go through James.
“He sent in the cavalry: my uncle Jim,” Hunter Biden wrote in his memoir. “Uncle Jimmy is my best friend in the world and Dad knew that if his younger brother asked me to do something, I’d do it. Uncle Jim has his own superpower: he gets things done.”
At one point in 2018, James Biden flew out to Los Angeles, pulled Hunter out of a hotel room and checked him into rehab. Hunter wrote about the encounter in his memoir, and there is further evidence on the copy of his hard drive, which includes increasingly urgent messages from his uncle.
On Sept. 17, 2017, James wrote Hunter an email with the subject line, “Our relationship ‘Rock Solid’ ” and apologized for not providing even more comfort.
“You are a fine and (yes) noble man. I will do better from my end, and start acting like a real friend and partner,” James Biden wrote. “I am on your side/team period. Forgive me for being so insensitive to all that you are going thru. If you will permit me, I would like to start being part of the solution, rather than another problem to deal with. We will get thru this. I really believe that there are good times ahead.”
He added, “I love you pal, U Jim.”
About two weeks later, James Biden took out his phone to type the “corney” message to Hunter. He added other words of encouragement, and even indirectly suggested that he might appreciate Hunter in a way his own father did not.
“Stop beating yourself up, and realize that there is a least one person in this world, who truly appreciates what a quality person you are,” he wrote. “Your grandparents, your mother, sister, and brother are looking down on you, and want their Hunter to be happy. I Couldn’t sleep last night, but all good. As the great philosopher Happy Gilmore would say, ‘put yourself in your happy place.’ ”
Alice Crites, Tom Hamburger, and Craig Timberg contributed to this report. | 2022-05-31T09:36:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | James Biden — presidential brother, family helper, political wild card - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/jimmy-biden-president-brother/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/jimmy-biden-president-brother/ |
Commanders rookie Jahan Dotson is a calm, steady and fast presence
Commanders Coach Ron Rivera talks to Jahan Dotson during rookie minicamp. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
In February, on the shaded sideline of a turf field in Phoenix, Jahan Dotson may have heard something he didn’t like. A tour guide was showing a visitor around the campus of Exos, a high-end athletic performance center where many NFL prospects train for the combine.
“There’s Garrett Wilson,” the guide said, pointing at the Ohio State wideout stretching across the field. “He’s going to be the number one receiver in the draft.”
Nearby, a group of wide receivers groused. “Man, I’m not trying to hear that,” one grumbled. Another waved his hand, dismissing the comment. Dotson, if he heard, didn’t react — except to walk away and toward the next drill. Told this story later, trainer Nic Hill thought it was classic Dotson, whom he nicknamed “the silent assassin.”
In the 12 weeks Dotson was at Exos, Hill learned the calm, steady, dragonfly-fast receiver didn’t need to be praised or challenged or cajoled. During 40-yard dash practice — a big, raucous spectacle with thunderous beats and staccato shouting — Dotson was often subdued and at the back of the line. Hill noticed Dotson was at his best when he appeared withdrawn.
“You see him get focused and kind of glass over the eyes,” Hill said. “It’s like: ‘Okay, that’s what I want to see. That’s what I need to see.’ That calm confidence — you know he’s about to go off.”
In Dotson, 22, the Washington Commanders seem to have a mature, polished wideout who’s ready to produce. He was the 16th draft pick — and, as it turned out, the fifth wide receiver taken. While analysts have concerns about his size (5-foot-11, 182 pounds) and strength, they also gush about his hands (“Best in the draft,” said NFL Network’s Daniel Jeremiah) and catch radius (“Maybe the largest . . . of any sub-5-foot-11 receiver I have ever scouted,” wrote Dane Brugler of the Athletic).
In the Commanders’ offense, Dotson’s skill set figures to be valuable with a big-armed, imprecise quarterback in Carson Wentz. Offensive coordinator Scott Turner could move him around the formation with other versatile weapons such as Curtis Samuel, Terry McLaurin and Antonio Gibson.
“We have really big expectations for [Dotson],” General Manager Martin Mayhew said. “He’s going to fit right in to what we’re doing offensively.”
In a way, Dotson has been preparing for this his whole life. When he was 3 or 4, he said, he went to the park with his older cousins to play catch — and one of them forced him to do 10 push-ups for each drop.
“I got tired of that real quick,” Dotson deadpanned.
In the late 2000s, Dotson’s parents, Al and Robin, moved from East Orange, N.J., to the small town of Nazareth, Pa., to raise Jahan and his brother Al in a safer environment. They commuted to New Jersey every day for work — more than an hour each way — as Jahan became a standout athlete, including in track and basketball. But every day, from bed to school to field, he always seemed to be carrying a football.
“It was always football,” Robin said, smiling.
Early in his senior year, Dotson committed to UCLA. But Josh Gattis, then the passing game coordinator at Penn State, said he heard Dotson might be interested in staying closer to home. Even though Dotson was “kind of frail,” Gattis said, he was a complete receiver. Not only was he an elite athlete — jumping, body control, ball skills — he was smart. He had a game plan to beat the defense and executed it with crisp routes. Dotson’s stats were gaudy, too.
“The buzz that he was creating through the eastern part of [Pennsylvania] was tremendous,” Gattis said.
That fall, Penn State finished 11-2 and won the Big Ten and the Fiesta Bowl behind running back Saquon Barkley, who once starred at a high school not far from Dotson’s in the Lehigh Valley. Those factors — the program’s renaissance and a local hero’s rise, as well as the departure of three top receivers — made it easy for Dotson to flip his commitment to Penn State after UCLA fired coach Jim Mora.
In State College, Dotson ascended each season despite having three receivers coaches in four years. After his junior year, when he had 52 catches for 884 yards and eight touchdowns in nine games of the pandemic-shortened season, he could’ve left for the NFL. But he said he was too young, he wasn’t ready and it “wasn’t a very hard decision” to stay in school.
In 2021, Dotson worked with the same position coach in consecutive seasons for the first time in at least seven years. Taylor Stubblefield, that receivers coach, believed Dotson could make another leap because of his competitive streak. Once, while hosting a dinner at his house, Stubblefield saw it distilled as Dotson and Stubblefield’s son, Jagger, invented a game in which they threw balls at the family dog bed in the distance. (Jagger won two of three, Stubblefield said.)
Barry Svrluga: The options for a Commanders stadium site: Bad, worse and nonexistent
In the team facility, Dotson asked for hard coaching. In Dotson’s senior year, Stubblefield focused on his footwork, his ability to disguise routes and showcasing his versatility. The coach delved into the nuances of looking for clues to the defense’s plan through the “DED” of a defensive back — depth, eyes, demeanor — and reminded Dotson of what it meant to be a professional by repeating the expression, “Don’t leave your paycheck on the table.”
“If you have an opportunity to make a play, that’s your opportunity to get paid,” he said. “Whether it’s working to an area that the defense isn’t there, or whether it’s that hard, dirty, grinding route where the [defensive back] plays it perfectly and you got to make a great play — no matter what the situation is, be able to get paid.”
By the end of the year, Dotson had compiled one of the best seasons in Penn State history with 91 catches for 1,182 yards and 12 touchdowns. The Nittany Lions also used him out of the backfield and on passing trick plays, where he completed both attempts for a total of 43 yards.
Before the draft, Dotson focused on honing his speed and adding strength. Hill, the Exos trainer, said the company’s analysis recommended he play at about 183 pounds. And when Dotson arrived at the Commanders’ facility for the first time in late April, he arrived holding a football.
In his few Washington news conferences so far, Dotson has seemed businesslike. He compared learning the playbook — familiar concepts with new verbiage — to English and Spanish, that it’ll just take a little time. But one of the few subjects to prompt a more emotional response is his family.
“Having my parents there by my side, that was big to me,” he said during his introductory news conference in front of Al and Robin. “Reflecting on my young childhood days, there was a lot of sacrifice that led to this moment and a lot of hard work — just thinking about all those times where things weren’t always so pretty. But at the end of the day, we made it happen, and we got to this moment.”
And now, Dotson said, he’s intent on making the most of it. | 2022-05-31T09:37:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jahan Dotson, the Commanders' rookie wide receiver, has valuable skill set - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/31/jahan-dotson-washington-commanders/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/31/jahan-dotson-washington-commanders/ |
Little by little, Nats want prospect Cole Henry to pitch for full season
Cole Henry has been dominant in short spurts for the Class AA Harrisbrg Senators. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post)
One could imagine that, after retiring all 12 batters he faced last Saturday, Cole Henry wanted to see a 13th, then a 14th, then a 15th. Or that when the 22-year-old struck out five batters in three innings on April 10 — and again on April 22 — he may have wanted to push for double digits. Or that pitching four dominant innings at a time is making him antsy, even if the Washington Nationals explained this plan at the beginning of spring training.
The goal, put simply, is to have Henry pitch first full minor league season. After he was drafted in the second round in 2020, there were no minor league games to pitch in because of the coronavirus pandemic. Last year, elbow soreness limited him to 47 innings across 11 appearances. So now Washington is spoon-feeding him innings, feeling that’s better than giving him five- or six-inning starts only to shut him down in August.
Henry recently rested for 15 days between outings with the Class AA Harrisburg Senators. Widely ranked as the second-best pitching prospect in the Nationals’ system, Henry has a 0.76 ERA through 23 2/3 innings (seven starts). He has struck out 28 batters and walked nine, mixing a four-seam fastball, sinker, curve and change-up. And if you ask around the organization about Henry and Cade Cavalli — the Nationals’ top prospect and first-round pick in 2020 — many believe that, at the moment, Henry is the more polished pitcher.
Cavalli was a two-way player until he dropped his bat as a junior at the University of Oklahoma. Henry, by contrast, started 11 games as a freshman at LSU before elbow issues kept him to four starts as a sophomore. He’s solely focused on pitching for longer than Cavalli, intriguing members of Washington’s front office and evaluators from other teams. Yet a key difference is that while Cavalli’s with the Class AAA Rochester Red Wings, knocking for a chance, Henry’s being inched along. Cavalli, 23, is a year older and pushed ahead by throwing 123 1/3 innings in 2021.
“We’ve had guys who have been on innings limits in the past, and it’s crazy that when you put a number on a guy it really comes up faster than you would think just through the normal starts," minor league pitching coordinator Sam Narron said. " So we want Cole to be able to finish the year and make all of his starts. It’s going to be a gradual progression, building him through the end of the year where he can continue to pitch finish the year as opposed to maybe having to stop him at a certain point because he has run out of innings.
"So we want to be judicious early so that he can be strong late.”
After last summer, Henry went to the Arizona Fall League and impressed against top prospects from around the league. But because of the plan to measure out his innings, the Nationals chose to not put Henry in major league camp for a second straight spring. Meanwhile, Cavalli and Jackson Rutledge, another young righty, had lockers near catchers Keibert Ruiz and Riley Adams. Without proper context, it seemed as if Henry had fallen behind.
That was far from the case, though. The decision was rooted more in the Nationals’ interest in Henry than some loose pecking order. Rutledge, 23 and slowed by injuries again, is trying to find his rhythm with the low-Class A Fredericksburg Nationals. Cavalli threw seven scoreless innings against the Syracuse Chiefs on Saturday, further burying a blowup on May 17. And Henry sits between them, staying patient with his carefully plotted workload.
None of Henry’s seven starts have exceeded four innings. On May 5, he walked five batters, his worth showing of the year, and was hooked after 2 2/3. But it is still worth noting that, until his command slipped, he had pitched 13 innings and not allowed a run. Henry’s 15-day layoff included some throwing and a good bit of rest. The Nationals are considering a similar break for 25-year-old righty Jake Irvin, who is coming off Tommy John surgery and has a 1.73 ERA in 26 innings for Harrisburg.
“You’re up front with the kid because they want to make it to the major leagues and make an impact,” Narron said. “When those competitive juices get going, of course Cole wants to pitch. We want that. But back in spring we told him, ‘Look, there are going to be starts that are shorter than you want. Trust us. This is for your benefit in the long run.’ ”
Sammy Infante: The 20-year-old infielder leads the low-A Carolina League with 12 homers through 35 games. And while his 6-foot-1, 185-pound frame doesn’t scream power, his peripheral statistics suggest this pop isn’t a total mirage. Infante has also found a defensive home in the early going, playing third while top prospect Brady House fills shortstop for Fredericksburg. Infante was drafted as a shortstop in the second round of the 2020 draft. But Washington likes to select middle infielder and then moved them around the diamond, which always seemed possible for Infante.
Jackson Cluff: After shining defensively at the Arizona Fall League in November, Cluff is struggling at the plate for Harrisburg, entering Tuesday with a batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage slash line of .142/.208/.225. Batting lefty, Cluff is just 2 for 23 with 11 strikeouts against left-handed pitchers. The Nationals invited the 25-year-old to major league camp this spring, liking his glove and strong arm up the middle. But he has to have a sharp turnaround at the plate to get in their rebuild plans.
Left-handed relievers: Ike Schlabach and Jose Ferrer each earned promotions at the end of last week. Schlabach, 25, went from the high-A Wilmington Blue Rocks to Harrisburg, replacing lefty reliever Matt Cronin after he was bumped to Rochester. Ferrer moved from Fredericksburg to Wilmington, filling Schlabach’s spot. Schlabach, originally drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates, yielded two earned runs and had a solid strikeout rate in 16 2/3 innings with Wilmington. Ferrer, signed by Washington out of the Dominican Republic in 2017, struck out 11.25 batters per nine innings with Fredericksburg (logging 20 innings, only one walk and home run allowed). His fastball is sitting in the mid-90s and has jumped to 98/99. | 2022-05-31T10:45:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Little by little, Nats want prospect Cole Henry to pitch for full season - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/31/little-by-little-nats-want-prospect-cole-henry-pitch-full-season/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/31/little-by-little-nats-want-prospect-cole-henry-pitch-full-season/ |
'The world is watching’: Depp-Heard jury faces a difficult task
There are complicated questions for jurors to consider when they resume deliberating on Tuesday morning. The trick, legal experts say, is to leave emotions out of it.
Amber Heard leaves after closing arguments in the defamation trial in Fairfax, Va., on May 27. ( Michael Reynolds/EPA-EE/Shutterstock)
After Johnny Depp left the Fairfax County Courthouse Friday afternoon, he went to England, where he was seen this weekend trading guitar licks with Jeff Beck. The jury in the trial between Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard deliberated for a couple of hours and then sent word that they would return Tuesday to continue trying to reach a verdict in the complicated, often unseemly dispute between the two movie stars.
Though the identities of the jurors will remain sealed for a year, given the high-profile nature of the case, several media outlets have reported the jury’s demographic makeup from inside the courtroom. It is not clear how the outlets have determined the jurors’ races or other details, other than simple observation. According to Court TV, the jury is composed of five men and two women, with another woman and man serving as alternates; they appear to range in age from their 20s to one who could be older than 60.
They arguably didn’t know much about the case before being selected — during jury selection, only about a dozen potential jurors claimed to have any knowledge of the contentious relationship between Depp and Heard — and the task before them is not a particularly easy one.
“One challenge that they are likely facing is staying focused on the case at hand without allowing all of their own lived experiences and biases to lead them to a snap judgment that is not supported by the testimony. The jury instructions are very concrete in helping jurors do that focusing as a legal matter, but this is a real challenge on a human level,” said Jamie R. Abrams, a University of Louisville law professor. “The gendered distribution of the jury makes that even more interesting.”
FAQ: What to know as the jury deliberates a verdict in the Depp-Heard trial
The jury will attempt to rule on two claims. Depp filed a $50 million defamation suit against Heard for publishing a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post, in which she referred to herself as a public figure representing domestic abuse. Though he isn’t named in the piece, he says it damaged his career.
The jury is also deciding on Heard’s $100 million counterclaim: That three statements made in the media by an attorney working for Depp, Adam Waldman, hurt her reputation and career by dismissing her allegations as false. For this, the jury has to decide six questions, including whether Waldman, while acting on Depp’s behalf, made the statements, and if they were false and/or made with actual malice.
“The jurors will decide this case on more than just the law,” said Jill Huntley Taylor, a legal analyst who owns Taylor Trial Consulting. “No matter how complicated the case is, jurors are going to simplify it to the point that they understand it.”
While Taylor believes the jurors will focus on the actual legal claims, they will probably (consciously or not) also partially make their ruling on whom they find both credible and likable. That’s even more probable considering that Heard’s team “turned a case about defamation into a case about abuse,” which might muddy the waters for the jury.
“The heart of this case could have been the op-ed, but it’s not,” Taylor said. It’s “whether there was abuse or no abuse.”
And, as Abrams noted, while they aren’t supposed to read about the case or be influenced in any way, they’re only human — and they probably know how much media attention the case has garnered, which might increase the pressure they feel to get it right. “While they’ve been prohibited from accessing social media and media coverage, the frenzy at the courthouse alone is enough for them to understand that the world is watching,” she said.
Complicating things further is how to determine actual damages, if the jury decides anyone is owed them. “In a libel case based on public speech like here, where the chief damages are emotional-distress damages and damages to professional reputation — which could lead to loss of unknown future movie roles, for instance — the damages are obviously hard to determine, and largely within the jury’s discretion.” said UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh.
Abrams also wonders if Friday’s closing arguments — in which both sides seemed “to be tapping into strands of ‘what’s at stake’ beyond this trial specifically” — may have confused the jury.
“While I am keenly focused on the harm that this case is doing in our legal and social systems as a scholar and professor, it doesn’t strike me as relevant or helpful for the lawyers to tap into that big-picture narrative with the jury after six weeks of tedious and exhausting testimony,” she said. “From those threads, I think we can see that these lawyers are speaking to the jury, but also to the public.”
She pointed to the plaintiff’s suggestion to the jury that Heard is “either a victim of truly horrific abuse or she is a woman who is willing to say absolutely anything.” What might make for a catchy media sound bite, she said, doesn’t necessarily sell a jury.
Many have argued the verdict itself doesn’t actually matter — that Depp never cared about winning the lawsuit, only about publicly telling his story.
Depp “pursued the lawsuit in part because, ‘It was the only time that I [Depp] was able to speak and use my own voice.’ His desire was ‘total global humiliation,’ and in that he’s already succeeded,” journalist Kenzie Bryant wrote in a Vanity Fair article about the trial.
The decision, Bryant wrote, will be “almost perfunctory. If they rule that Heard did not defame her ex-husband, she loses, because she had to be here, forced to endure untold abuse online as well as relive what was, by both accounts, a toxic marriage for many more years than the relationship lasted. If they rule that Heard did defame Depp with actual malice and caused the damages he claims, then Depp would get money on top of satisfaction.”
Emily Yahr contributed to this report. | 2022-05-31T11:07:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Depp-Heard jurors face a difficult task in reaching verdicts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/05/31/the-world-is-watching-depp-heard-jury-faces-difficult-task/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/05/31/the-world-is-watching-depp-heard-jury-faces-difficult-task/ |
More homes coming on the market for sale, report finds
New home listings are on the rise. (David Zalubowski/AP)
Some good news for home buyers: More houses are coming on the market, according to a recent report from Realtor.com.
Active listings, which refer to all homes on the market during any given period, rose 5 percent during the week that ended May 14 compared with that same week in 2021, the biggest jump since March 2019. New listings, which refer to homes first placed on the market during a given period, rose by 6 percent that week compared with that same week in 2021.
Typically, May is the month with the highest number of new listings, according to Realtor.com. However, even with the uptick in inventory, buyers have just two homes to consider for every five homes that were available before the pandemic, according to Realtor.com’s analysis.
Homes spent fewer six days on the market during the week ending May 14 compared with a year ago. In addition, homes sold faster in April 2022 than at any other time on record, according to Realtor.com. Homes usually sell fastest in the summer months.
Still, the trend appears to be in place for continued increases in houses for sale, which could ease the competition for buyers.
Buyers in many markets face competition from institutional investors who buy homes for single-family home rentals or to improve and sell. The National Association of Realtors recently investigated the impact of these investors on the housing market. According to NAR’s report, institutional buyers — defined as entities identified in deeds data as corporations, companies or limited liability companies — accounted for 13.2 percent of residential purchases in 2021. This is higher than the 11.8 percent in 2020, but below the peak share of 15.7 percent in 2014.
The study found that on average, 42 percent of single-family properties purchased by institutional buyers were converted to single-family rentals. The rest were sold directly to buyers or were part of a rent-to-own or shared equity arrangement with future owners.
Homeowners who sold to institutional investors rather than traditional buyers in 2021 did so because investors offer cash (29 percent), are willing to purchase the home as is (27 percent) and offer a guaranteed purchase date (18 percent).
The impact of institutional investors is greater in some locations than others. NAR’s researchers found that the top 10 states with the highest share of purchases by investors include Texas (28 percent), Georgia (19 percent), Oklahoma (18 percent), Alabama (18 percent), Mississippi (17 percent), Florida (16 percent), Missouri (16 percent), North Carolina (16 percent), Ohio (16 percent) and Utah (16 percent).
For the full report from Realtor.com, visit www.realtor.com/research/weekly-housing-trends-view-data-week-may-14-2022.
For the full report on institutional buyers from NAR, visit cdn.nar.realtor/sites/default/files/documents/2022-impact-of-institutional-buyers-on-home-sales-and-single-family-rentals-05-12-2022.pdf. | 2022-05-31T11:07:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | More homes coming on the market for sale, report finds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/31/more-homes-coming-market-sale-report-finds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/31/more-homes-coming-market-sale-report-finds/ |
Spending a lot on storage fees? Build your own shed.
You could buy a prefab shed like this one. Or you could build your own. (Tim Carter/TNS)
It seems like every week I get at least one email or a question on my live-stream sessions about inflation. I’m by no means an economist, but I’ve seen enough full moons to know that inflation is raging, and it’s going to get much worse.
I do the grocery shopping in my household, and I’d estimate food prices are up at least 35 percent. Gasoline is now up 85 percent where I live. Building material prices are rising faster than a bottle rocket on the Fourth of July. I’m bewildered how the reported inflation rate I see in the news is so much lower than what I’m experiencing.
Years ago, I built a large 16-by-24-foot, two-story shed that could be easily converted into a small house if I wanted to. It’s loaded with all sorts of accumulated stuff from 50 years of family life. Before I built the shed, much of this was in an off-site storage facility with sky-high monthly rent.
I was recently at an agriculture supply store. In the parking lot, a few pre-assembled sheds stood ready to be delivered to homes. They came in a multitude of designs. You may see these at your local big box stores, too. I’ve inspected these sheds, and the construction quality is minimal, in my opinion. The floors are flimsy and the wall studs are spaced at 24-inch centers, whereas I’d build at 16 inches on center.
More Builder: How to build a stone structure like a pro
My eye was drawn to the signs showing what these sheds cost. The prices took my breath away. A plain vanilla shed was $7,783, and one with a little more pizazz was $8,763. Both measured 10 by 20 feet. Prices vary from region to region, and the same sheds could cost even more near you.
Those prices, frankly, are insane. For comparison purposes, I decided to find out what off-site storage costs in my town. It’s a good thing I was sitting down when I found out. The current price is $193 per month for a 10-by-20-foot storage space. That’s $2,316 per year — and you know that next year the price will jump 10 percent, if not more.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to build a 10-by-20-foot shed for the equivalent of what you’d spend on two years of rent? I’m sure most of you, my readers, could build a simple shed after watching all my videos on the topic at my website. And you could build it to last for 40 years.
To save lots of money and to get all or some of the money you need to build your own shed, you might want to do what I’ve been doing for the past two years: selling or donating all the items I no longer use or need. This year, I intend to take it to the next level. My goal is to sell hundreds of things in the next four months. Whatever I can’t sell, I will take to a charity so others can benefit.
I’ve transformed countless dust-covered items I had forgotten about into thousands of dollars by selling them using social media groups for garage and yard sales. I’ve discovered you get top dollar if you take lots of great photographs showing the actual condition of the object and provide all the needed dimensions.
More Builder: How to build a brick foundation for a house
Purging things you no longer need or want serves another important purpose. You then don’t have to have such a large shed to store your belongings.
If you decide to build a shed, the first step is to determine the size you need. People almost always build a shed that’s too small.
It’s easy to determine the right size. Here's how: Take all the things you plan to put in the shed and place them out on your lawn just as you plan to store them in the shed. You can use empty cardboard boxes to simulate things. If you’re skilled and can think in three dimensions, you can draw this out to scale on graph paper.
Once you place the items on the lawn, then surround them with string to make the outline of the shed. Try to create a shed size that’s a multiple of two feet in both footprint dimensions. This will minimize material waste. It’s not happenstance that the sizes of prebuilt sheds or shed kits conform to this standard.
The next two steps are mission-critical. First, you need to check with your city or town to see what the zoning regulations will allow you to build. These regulations can be strict or lax. It varies widely, trust me. The next step is to create a complete material list and price it out as soon as possible. Inflation is causing prices to go up monthly.
I’ve prepared a complete material list for a simple 10-by-20-foot shed to save you the time and trouble of trying to figure out what you need. I also included links to the top products I like to use and links to how you can get access to over 100 videos I shot showing how to build a shed. You can get all this for just $7.95 at GO.askthebuilder.com/1452. | 2022-05-31T11:07:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Spending a lot on storage fees? Build your own shed. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/31/spending-lot-storage-fees-build-your-own-shed/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/31/spending-lot-storage-fees-build-your-own-shed/ |
Active Managers Are on a Winning Streak. That Won’t Last.
Nearly 70% of the roughly 2,850 actively managed US stock mutual funds with the stated goal of beating the S&P 500 Index have done so this year through last week. That’s a vast improvement from last year, when just 15% of US large-cap stock pickers beat the market, according to S&P’s latest SPIVA report tracking the performance of active managers. It’s also much higher than normal. On average, roughly 35% of managers have outpaced the S&P 500 in any calendar year, based on annual results back to 2007.
Even so, the results this year aren’t entirely surprising. Most stock pickers invest in a broad cross section of the market, from fast-growing technology companies to boring banks and manufacturers. Until recently, tech stocks were the best performers for many years, which ballooned their market value relative to other stocks and gave them an ever-larger slice of indexes like the S&P 500 that weight stocks by size. While tech was hot, it was impossible for a broadly diversified portfolio to keep up. Now it’s just the opposite — with tech stocks leading the declines, well-rounded portfolios have the edge.
It’s a mistake, however, to assume that active managers’ recent success will persist. The evidence is overwhelming that the longer they play the game, the more likely they are to lose. The latest SPIVA report is typical: Just 17% of US large-cap stock pickers beat the S&P 500 over the past 10 years through 2021, and that number drops to 6% over 20 years.
Time makes a fool of most stock pickers. Institutional investors once called hedge fund manager Gabe Plotkin a “wunderkind” after he racked up gains of 30% a year over a half-decade. Billionaire Ken Griffin, who backed Plotkin’s fund, called him “an iconic investor” who “did an incredible job for his investors” in a recent interview with Bloomberg Intelligence.
Now Plotkin is closing his fund after declines of 39% last year and 23% this year through April. Griffin’s reaction: “The average hedge fund lives for about three years. So several hundred shut down a year and the world goes on.” So much for skill.
Even more revered is Chase Coleman, founder of hedge fund Tiger Global Management. His two-decade-old fund reportedly generated returns of more than 20% a year through 2020, aided by big bets on technology. Now those bets are souring. After a down year in 2021, Coleman’s main hedge fund is down 44% this year through April, and his long-only fund has tumbled 52%. What happened? “Markets have not been cooperative,” Tiger Global wrote to investors. They rarely are to stock pickers.
Not even the most admired track records are necessarily a show of skill. Perhaps the most revered belongs to Peter Lynch, who racked up a return of 29% a year at the helm of Fidelity’s Magellan Fund from 1977 to 1990, including dividends. He outpaced the S&P 500, the fund’s benchmark, by more than 13% a year during that time.
And as it happened, the combination of the two strategies beat the market by a huge margin while Lynch led Magellan. A blend of the most profitable and cheapest 20% of US stocks, weighted equally, returned 28% a year during that time, according to numbers compiled by Dartmouth professor Ken French, nearly matching Lynch’s performance. Both Magellan and the profitability/value blend are also comparably volatile and about a third more volatile than the S&P 500, another indication that the profitability/value blend more closely captures Lynch’s investing style than the S&P 500.
So there doesn’t appear to be any magic in Lynch’s stock picking. He was merely fortunate that his investing style was in favor during his 13 years at Magellan. That’s not always the case. If he had plied his style during the preceding 13 years, he would have likely generated a return closer to 6% a year, or 1 percentage point better than the S&P 500. In fact, back to 1963, there is no other period outside of the late 1970s and 1980s in which Lynch would have done nearly as well. And if his record fades under scrutiny, imagine how dull other managers look.
Keep all that in mind when you hear about stock pickers beating the market this year. There may be a handful of them with long, successful track records that can’t be fully explained by their investing style. Warren Buffett, David Tepper and Chris Hohn come to mind. But they are vast exceptions. Everyone else probably got lucky. | 2022-05-31T11:07:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Active Managers Are on a Winning Streak. That Won’t Last. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/active-managers-are-on-a-winning-streak-that-wont-last/2022/05/31/42672214-e0c9-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/active-managers-are-on-a-winning-streak-that-wont-last/2022/05/31/42672214-e0c9-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
‘Our budget situation is such that we’re at real risk of years-long delays,’ one official warns
Michal Freedhoff, assistant administrator for the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention at the Environmental Protection Agency. (Louie Palu/Agence VU for The Washington Post)
They were locked out. Experts tasked with assessing how hundreds of new chemicals may harm human health couldn’t access the data they needed to do their work.
The issue wasn’t chemical manufacturers holding back information. Instead, part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s computer system used to store sensitive data provided by companies went down — and the agency didn’t have the IT support to fix it quickly.
“No one could get into it for just about two weeks in October,” said Michal Freedhoff, head of the EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, in a recent phone interview. “That happens fairly regularly.”
After years of neglect, President Biden promised to reinvigorate the EPA as part of his push to tackle climate change and ease the pollution burden placed on poor and minority communities. But the agency’s budgetary woes are preventing the nation’s top pollution regulator from doing its job, in ways large and small.
That means the EPA actually has less spending power since Democrats took full control of the executive and legislative branches, even as its responsibilities grow.
“It’s not a good idea to starve the agency when it comes to trying to protect the public health,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said at one of the congressional budget hearings this month. “We have to rebuild the agency.”
One area where the EPA is scaling back — rather than rebuilding — is monitoring air pollution. This month, the agency suspended monitoring for ammonia, sulfur and other pollutants at more than two dozen places across the country, citing budget constraints.
The locations include forests in New Hampshire, New York and North Carolina, as well as areas around the college towns of Ann Arbor, Mich., and State College, Penn.
The closures will make it harder to spot violations of public health standards. Monitoring for smog-forming ozone will continue at some of the stations.
“It means you’re flying blind,” said Eric Schaeffer, who used to direct the EPA’s Office of Civil Enforcement and who now runs the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group. “Already we have a shortage of monitoring stations.”
Even climate change, a top priority for Biden, is getting short shrift.
For instance, a pot of science and technology money targeted at getting carmakers to cut autos’ carbon pollution inched up from $7.9 million to $8 million, far below inflation, even as the administration enacts sweeping new tailpipe regulations.
Another pool of funding that supports recording the greenhouse gas emissions from every sector of the economy, maintaining the Energy Star program for energy-efficient appliances and writing regulations received a modest $1 million boost, from $97 million to $98 million.
Another cash-strapped bureau is the Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. During the presidential campaign, Biden promised to crack down on polluters, reversing two decades of declines in inspections, criminal investigations and charges against polluting factories, power plants and other facilities.
But lawmakers denied the agency an additional $59.7 million for the office to beef up its policing of polluters for the current fiscal year. And the Senate has yet to confirm Biden’s choice for chief of enforcement, David Uhlmann, a University of Michigan Law School professor.
As a result, the EPA opened only 1,562 new civil cases against potential violators last year, tied with 2020 for the lowest level in at least a decade. By comparison, the EPA started more than double the number of cases in 2011.
“All the indicators are down,” Schaeffer said. “If you look at all of that together, it’s pretty compelling evidence that there’s a problem.”
The coronavirus pandemic hasn’t helped. Justin Chen, a Dallas-based enforcement officer who inspects facilities for toxic air pollution, said he still feels the burden of taking on the caseload of a colleague who retired around the end of 2020.
“That was incredibly challenging and still poses a challenge to this day, honestly,” said Chen, who also heads the local chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees that represents EPA workers in Texas and neighboring states. “You still have an expectation on yourself to try to do as best of a job.”
As covid restrictions ease, EPA officials said they expect to deploy inspectors more often.
“Coming out of the pandemic, we anticipate an increase in the results from our enforcement actions as we increase field activities over the next several months,” spokesman Nick Conger said.
Still, this month, the agency canceled an in-person meeting of senior enforcement managers to save money on travel. And it still doesn’t have the budget to bring on more inspectors.
Tracking Biden's environmental record
Under Biden, the EPA hired about 1,400 new employees to help replace the hundreds who left the agency under Donald Trump as covid raged and as his administration rolled back dozens of regulations. With nearly half of the EPA’s remaining workers eligible for retirement within the next five years, officials are bracing for another wave of departures.
The EPA is still capped by Congress at about 14,600 employees — 700 fewer than the workforce Biden requested last year and 3,500 fewer than the high set at the end of the Clinton administration.
Other cost-cutting measures are straining staff that stuck around. In Houston, the EPA is set to close a regional laboratory and relocate it to Ada, Okla., to save money on office space. Workers there warn of an exodus if they are forced to uproot their lives to keep their jobs.
“It takes many years for a new employee to be fully trained,” said one staff scientist at the Houston lab who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal. “All of that institutional knowledge would be completely lost.”
Under pressure from union officials, the EPA has delayed the move for five years.
Instead of approving Biden’s budget request, Congress passed stopgap measures to fund the government as Democrats put most of their energy toward passing an infrastructure package and negotiating a broad domestic policy package. The infrastructure bill became law in November while the measure to address climate change and expand the social safety net has languished due to opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Republicans.
“I was disappointed that the fiscal year 2022 budget deal did not allow us to accommodate the full scale of need” at EPA, Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), chair of the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on the Interior Department, environment and related agencies, said at a hearing this month.
Many conservatives have long called for cuts to the EPA’s funding, accusing the agency of regulatory overreach.
“I’m happy to see the EPA budget shrink in real terms,” said Myron Ebell, the director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, who oversaw the EPA transition under Trump. “I hope that if the Republicans are in the majority in the 118th Congress, they will pass much bigger cuts.”
Now some Republicans are reluctant to fulfill the White House’s latest EPA budget request for $11.9 billion in 2023, after Congress funneled billions through the agency as part of the infrastructure law.
“I’ve got serious concerns about EPA being able to manage all of this,” Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-Ga.) told Regan during a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing.
But much of that infrastructure money is only being managed by agency staff and will ultimately go to states, cities and companies to tear out lead pipes, clean up industrial waste and buy electric school buses.
“You have all this money going through EPA because of the infrastructure law, and no real authorization to hire up to staff the infrastructure programs,” said David Coursen, a former EPA attorney and a member of the nonprofit Environmental Protection Network.
In EPA Supreme Court case, the agency’s power to combat climate change hangs in the balance
As billions in taxpayer dollars flow to the states, divisions like the EPA’s chemical safety office remain cash-strapped.
In 2016, lawmakers updated a statute regulating dangerous chemicals called the Toxic Substances Control Act that was long regarded as ineffective. Yet six years after its passage with overwhelming bipartisan support, the office is running on nearly the same budget it had in 2016.
“The new law gave the agency a lot more work to do,” said Freedhoff, who helped amend the law as a congressional staffer.
The agency now expects to miss every deadline set under the law for writing rules for 10 chemicals and completing risk evaluations for an additional 20 compounds. Freedhoff said she needs an additional 200 toxicologists, economic analysts and other employees to do the work.
Among the toxic substances awaiting new regulations are asbestos, a building material that increases the risk of lung cancer, as well as methylene chloride, a paint stripper linked to at least a dozen deaths between 2000 and 2011 among bathtub refinishers.
“Our budget situation is such that we’re at real risk of years-long delays,” she said. | 2022-05-31T11:07:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden wants to ‘rebuild’ the EPA. He doesn’t have the money to do it. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/05/31/epa-biden-climate-chemical-safety/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/05/31/epa-biden-climate-chemical-safety/ |
Hear from four TJ freshmen admitted under controversial circumstances
Clockwise, from top left: Freshmen students Sarah Castillo, Ershad Sulaiman, Julie Marco and Kai Bilal pose at Thomas Jefferson High School on May 19 in Alexandria. (Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Sarah Castillo, 15, grew up never considering the possibility of Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.
Then two years ago, Thomas Jefferson — known as TJ and frequently ranked the best public high school in America — radically altered its admissions process, eliminating a much-feared test and a $100 application fee, in the hope of admitting more students of color and low-income students.
The changes at the magnet school in Northern Virginia sent parents and alumni into a frenzy. Some were thrilled that the first class admitted under the new system boasted more Black and Hispanic students (7 and 11 percent) than any other in recent memory. But others lamented a 20 percent decrease in Asian American representation, and a group of disgruntled parents eventually filed a lawsuit alleging the admissions system is racially discriminatory. That suit, which recently drew the attention of the Supreme Court, is ongoing.
But, as the adults did battle in courtrooms, students such as Sarah Castillo were reconsidering their options. Hundreds of students who had neither thought of applying to TJ, nor felt they had a chance of acceptance under the old admissions system, now took the plunge — and some of them, including Sarah, got in.
These students spent the past year finding their way inside the school, adjusting to its notoriously heavy workload and trying to make good grades alongside good friends. Constantly sounding in the background, even for those who tried to ignore it, were the voices of adults — and sometimes fellow students — who insisted the admissions process that accepted them was illegitimate, that they didn’t belong at TJ.
The Washington Post followed four TJ freshmen — Sarah Castillo, Ershad Sulaiman, Kaiwan Bilal and Julie Marco — through a difficult, unusual and absorbing academic year. Here, in their own words, is what it was like.
Sarah Castillo, 15
Sometimes, when kids talk at school, they say the old TJ admissions system was better. They say the new one, the one I went through, is too easy.
They say more Black and Hispanic kids are getting in now. They say those kids aren’t ready for TJ. They say there’s a reason those kids weren’t getting in before.
Kids like me, they mean.
After admissions changes, Thomas Jefferson High will welcome most diverse class in recent history, officials say
My mother is from Bolivia. She’s a preschool teacher. She never heard of TJ until I showed her the application.
I grew up knowing almost nothing about TJ. Nobody I knew talked about it. When I got older, and learned more, I pictured TJ as a big white building with supercomputers and high-tech science labs, full of really, really smart kids.
But I never thought it was someplace I would go. I hadn’t taken any TJ test prep classes. I wasn’t the best in my class at math.
Then I heard they got rid of the really difficult TJ test that asked you to solve math problems. I figured I’d apply. It couldn’t hurt. And maybe it could help: Maybe graduating TJ would help me find a job as a pilot.
I’ve wanted to be a pilot since fourth grade, when I learned about Amelia Earhart. I love planes. I love flying. The feeling when a plane takes off — that’s a feeling you don’t get anywhere else.
So I hit “Submit." I couldn’t believe it when I got in.
The workload at TJ was actually less than I expected. It never got obscenely difficult; I just had to keep track of my assignments. I feel sorry for the kids I see who spend all their time on school. You need balance to be happy.
I joined the lacrosse team. I also joined a club called Project Caelus. We’re building a liquid-fueled rocket and sending it into space. I still think I want to be a pilot, but now I’m considering rocket science, too.
I’ve become really close with the few Hispanic kids in my class. I was recently named vice president of the Hispanic Community Club.
We talk to each other about the little things other kids sometimes say: like how Spanish is “a gangster language.” Or the times people have told my friends things like, “You’re only here because of the new admissions system.” No one has said that to me, but sometimes I feel like they’re thinking it.
I don’t believe other kids mean to be malicious. I just think they don’t know any better. That’s why I want to see more Hispanic students at TJ.
I know that adults outside the school are really upset about the new admissions system. I heard they got the Supreme Court involved. I heard that a judge said the system that admitted me is illegal and unfair.
That wasn’t fun to hear. But I’m not going to waste my time paying attention to that stuff.
I think TJ needs motivated, passionate kids who care about what they’re learning at school. And I think kids who want to learn come from everywhere.
I don’t care if someone says I don’t belong at TJ. I take it as motivation. Every day at school, I feel the same thing: I need to rock and roll, because there are not a lot of Hispanics here.
Anytime I get tired, or doubt what I can do, I tell myself the same thing: I deserve to sit here as long as I’m willing to put in the effort to stay here.
Ershad Sulaiman, 15
My favorite class at TJ is our lab science class, where my classmates and I just finished building a robot that rolls around on little wheels and can find its way through a maze.
It’s great, because the teacher lets me be really creative with my designs. I have a lot of ideas, probably because I have a lot of practice playing with electronics. I have a little lab of my own, down in my basement at home, where I fix computers. I also build things — whatever I dream. I go down there almost every night.
It’s also my favorite class, because I get to help my classmates. They come to me with questions, and I show them how to do things — like how to attach wheels to a gear train. Some of the kids treat me like I’m an expert or a coach.
I’ve been into computers for about three years. I got interested early in the pandemic when my father’s old laptop broke. I spent months fixing it. I learned so much.
Computers led me to TJ. I was browsing online when I came across a list of the top 10 schools in America — and there it was. Reading more, I realized the school specialized in STEM.
Early in eighth grade, like everyone, I got an email saying I could apply to TJ if I was eligible. My GPA was high enough, so I filled out the application. There was no test; I had heard that, before my year, you had to take a very difficult test. I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, that they removed the test.
On my application essay, I wrote about communication, which I think is the most important skill in the world. If people don’t communicate, on school projects or in life, everyone will be lost in their own way, alone.
My first day at TJ, I couldn’t believe all the fancy tech. I saw a 3D printer and a laser cutter and a big machine that dispenses certain kinds of gases to make chemical reactions.
My first few weeks at TJ, I was panicking. I had heard a lot about how TJ gives too much homework. And that was true: I had at least two hours every night. But I told myself: This is going to teach you time management. This is going to prepare you for the rest of your life.
Things still aren’t easy, but I love what I’m doing and learning. In one class, I’m studying how copper nitrate affects muscles. In another, we built a rocket simulator. I’ve found best friends in these classes, people who care about communication as much as I do. We talk all the time, at school and on Facebook messenger.
I know there are adults who have a lot of opinions about TJ admissions, but I don’t know much about it. I haven’t been paying attention; I try to focus on school and doing whatever I can to learn new things.
I just hope the adults find a way to communicate, too.
Julie Marco, 14
I’ve known I wanted to be a doctor since seventh grade.
That year, my science teacher taught me that sometimes, once you understand just one part of something, it causes a whole system to make sense. And then suddenly, you know how the whole human body works. That’s biology, and that’s beautiful.
So when I got an email in eighth grade inviting me to apply to TJ, I decided to go for it. I knew TJ was heavily focused on STEM, and I was excited by the idea of a more science-based education.
I had also heard there were a lot more underrepresented minorities at TJ. My parents are from Egypt, and I live in a very White part of Arlington. Maybe, I thought, I would fit in better at TJ.
For my application essay, I wrote about Michelle Obama. I wrote that I aspire to be like her: someone who is able to express themselves in such a way that they do not make themselves look higher or lower than anyone around them.
I did not expect to get in. My older sister had applied three years before, and she didn’t get in. I knew I had good grades, but I was intimidated — I had read online that TJ was the No. 1 school in the country.
When I got my acceptance, I had to read it over three times, because the first two times I didn’t believe it.
The first day at TJ, I remember feeling really welcomed by the upperclassmen. I didn’t feel like I was less than anyone else. A bunch of teachers and staff lined up with bells and balloons to say hello, too. It felt like they were saying, “We really want you here.”
Adjusting to TJ hasn’t been too hard. The workload is heavier than in middle school, but it’s not unmanageable. My hardest class is definitely computer science. If you mess up even one tiny letter in the code, the whole thing stops working. My favorite class is — of course — biology.
We’re learning about genetics. I love that you can take just one trait, like brown hair, and trace it back to see when it appeared in a family bloodline and when it disappeared, things like that.
The other students all seem like they really want to learn, just like me. That’s one of the best parts about TJ.
My friends and I don’t talk much about the admissions system. I don’t read any of the news about it. And I haven’t looked into it enough to know whether the admissions system actually worsened the quality of students accepted to TJ, like people say.
But I do know that the new admissions process was much less stressful for me. If they had kept the super difficult test they had before, I probably wouldn’t have applied.
Kaiwan Bilal, 14
When one of my friends showed me a four-year planner for TJ back in eighth grade, I got obsessed.
I started plotted out which courses I would take each year. My junior year, for example, I was going to enroll in AP Calculus, AP Physics and AP Chemistry.
Of course, since applying and getting in, and making it most of the way through my freshman year, I’ve wound up altering my plans. I’m going to space out some of those AP courses, because I don’t want to burn out.
I’m someone who likes to plan ahead, but I can be 100 percent adaptable, too. I can change my mind.
Still, I do know a couple things for sure. One is, I want to become a chemical engineer. I’ve always liked the idea of combining chemicals. When I was a little kid, I would mix together random substances just to see what would happen.
Another is that I love TJ. It’s even better than I expected — better than my parents told me it would be, when they urged me to apply, even though the school is an hour away from where we live.
TJ students are so accepting. I can express myself in a way that I couldn’t in middle school. Everyone says “Hi” in the hallway. It’s normal for people to just walk up and compliment your outfit or something, if they like it.
The student body is also so diverse. It seems like we have celebrations for everything. I’ve enjoyed learning about Lunar New Year and about Eid. It’s also nice to see Hispanic students and students who are Black, like me; my Prince William neighborhood is very White.
TJ’s campus is very clean, and there are tons of windows. So much sunlight filters in during the day, it’s amazing. I get to school about an hour before class starts — to avoid traffic on I-66 — and I love just sitting in the bright, big common spaces.
When I started at TJ, I went from having basically no homework to having hours every night. But I use a Google Tasks app to track the workload, and that helps a lot. Biology and English are probably the most demanding classes. Orchestra is my favorite. I play the viola.
I love how the TJ orchestra plays really challenging pieces. Right now, we’re working on the second and third and fourth movement of Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2.
I have to balance schoolwork with my extracurriculars: orchestra and urban dance and Black Student Union and the private viola lessons I take — as well as serving as president of a public-speaking club and mentoring younger kids through The Future Brighter, a nonprofit organization that helps middle-schoolers gain an interest in STEM.
It’s a lot, and I’m very busy. When I can, I like to relax by doing coding challenges.
I haven’t had much free time to follow the debate over TJ’s admissions system.
I heard that a judge ruled that everyone in my class was admitted to the school on an illegal basis. It doesn’t affect us now, but it affects what TJ will become.
I think TJ was right to get rid of the admissions test, because it makes it more fair for everyone. Now, people who can afford to spend thousands of dollars on test-prep programs won’t have an advantage over people who can’t. I think a lot of students agree with me.
But the debate seems to be really political now, and driven mostly by parents. I don’t think students have been heard very much. | 2022-05-31T11:07:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Thomas Jefferson High School freshmen discuss their first year - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/31/thomas-jefferson-high-school-freshmen-admissions/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/31/thomas-jefferson-high-school-freshmen-admissions/ |
An esophagram or barium swallow test image shows an esophageal stent placement for a patient. The test may be used to look for problems in the esophagus. (iStock)
About 20,640 U.S. adults will be diagnosed with esophageal cancer this year, according to estimates from the American Cancer Society (ACS). This type of cancer, which affects the esophagus — the tube that carries swallowed food from your throat to your stomach — has been found most often in people 65 and older, especially men.
Twenty years ago, a cancer reprieve for my husband on one of the country’s most terrible days
In addition, the prevalence of Barrett’s esophagus, a precancerous condition, rose about 50 percent in that age group in those years. Barrett’s esophagus, which usually develops when the lining of the swallowing tube is damaged by chronic acid reflux, is considered a common precursor of esophageal cancer.
For heartburn problems, lifestyle changes make a difference, research finds | 2022-05-31T11:08:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Esophageal cancer may be rising among the middle-aged - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/05/31/esophageal-cancer-rising-middle-age/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/05/31/esophageal-cancer-rising-middle-age/ |
National Rifle Association Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre speaks at the group's annual meeting in Houston on Friday. (Michael Wyke/AP)
Fed up, Jason Selvig grabbed a microphone at the National Rifle Association’s annual meeting this weekend and — just days after a shooter massacred 21 people at a Texas elementary school — applauded the gun lobby’s longtime leader for his efforts to stop mass shootings.
Selvig told fellow convention attendees that he was “sick and tired” of critics blaming NRA Chief Executive Wayne LaPierre for not doing enough to stop the decades-long scourge in the United States. He has done plenty, Selvig told them — namely, by offering his thoughts and prayers after each tragedy.
Except it was a prank. Selvig, half of a two-comedian act that often targets conservative politicians, was merely posing as a LaPierre supporter to implicitly criticize him to his face and in front of NRA attendees at the gun lobby’s largest meeting of the year. A video capturing Selvig’s speech posted on Twitter had been viewed 8 million times as of early Tuesday.
Organizers carried on with the four-day event in Houston, even though it was in the state where two days earlier a gunman killed 21 people, including 19 schoolchildren. That mass shooting happened as the country was reeling from another 1½ weeks earlier, when a shooter killed 10 people in a racist attack at a grocery store in Buffalo.
The NRA’s decision to forge ahead with its annual meeting echoed a similar call 23 years ago when it held a shortened version of its 1999 convention in Denver about a week after the deadly shooting at Columbine High School, a suburb of the Mile High City.
LaPierre, who was reelected Monday as the group’s chief executive, started the convention by addressing the shooting in Uvalde, lamenting the “21 beautiful lives ruthlessly and indiscriminately extinguished by a criminal monster,” but he said “restricting the fundamental human rights of law-abiding Americans to defend themselves is not the answer. It never has been,” the Associated Press reported.
Against the backdrop of being at a convention for the country’s most prominent gun rights group in the wake of two mass shootings, Selvig approached the microphone and declared that he was “sick and tired of the left-wing media,” and even some convention attendees, claiming that LaPierre “isn’t doing enough to stop these mass shootings and even implying [he] has played a part in making it easier for these shooters to get guns.”
“You heard [the criticism] after Las Vegas, you heard it after Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, you heard it after Columbine, you heard it after Parkland, you heard it after Virginia Tech, you heard it after Sandy Hook, you heard it after El Paso, you heard it after Buffalo. You kept hearing that Wayne LaPierre isn’t doing enough.”
But that’s not true, Selvig said. The NRA, under LaPierre’s leadership, had given victims’ family members thoughts and prayers, “and maybe these mass shootings would stop happening if we all thought a little bit more and we prayed a little bit more.”
“I want to thank you … for all your thoughts and all your prayers — thank you.” | 2022-05-31T11:08:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In video, prankster at NRA convention thanks Wayne LaPierre for 'thoughts and prayers' after shootings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/31/nra-lapierre-thoughts-prayers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/05/31/nra-lapierre-thoughts-prayers/ |
HBO’s ‘We Own This City’ exposes police brutality in Baltimore
But the city’s Black community has been targeted by the police a lot longer than the miniseries contends
Perspective by Mary Rizzo
Mary Rizzo is associate professor of history at Rutgers University-Newark. She is the author of "Come and Be Shocked: Baltimore Beyond John Waters and The Wire."
A man is put into an ambulance in West Baltimore. (Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post)
In the fifth episode of “We Own This City,” David Simon’s television return to Baltimore after the much acclaimed “The Wire,” Nicole Steele, a Justice Department attorney assigned to investigate improper policing in Baltimore, meets with Brian Grabler, a former police officer who is now a teacher at the police academy. By this point in the series, viewers have watched Baltimore police rob, beat, harass and intimidate citizens. Grabler sums up the cause. “Everything changed when they came up with that phrase, ‘the war on drugs.’” With these words, Grabler also summarizes the thesis of the six-episode miniseries, whose last installment aired on Monday on HBO: Since the 1970s, the war on drugs fundamentally changed policing for the worse.
“We Own This City” makes the case through the true story of the downfall of the Gun Trace Task Force (GTTF), an elite unit created in 2007 to reduce the homicide rate. Instead of investigative work, the unit applies tactics learned in fighting the drug war. In the 1990s and early 2000s, to prove they were tough on crime, politicians wanted high arrest numbers. The easiest way to accomplish this was through street sweeps focused on low-level offenders and harassing Black men in known drug areas. Between 2003 to 2006, 100,000 people were arrested annually, nearly one-sixth of Baltimore’s population. The GTTF transferred these tactics to getting guns off the street — both those used in the drug trade and those that were not.
Simon has presented this argument before, both in the fictional series “The Wire” and in his nonfiction book, “The Corner: A Year in the Life of an Inner-City Neighborhood,” in which he blamed the war on drugs for “slowly undermining the nature of police work itself.”
But there is a problem with Simon’s argument: Black people in Baltimore complained about and fought back against harassment and violence by the police decades before the start of the drug war. While it helped cause the massive growth in the incarceration of Black and Latino men since the 1970s, it cannot explain this longer history of racist policing in Baltimore and cities like it.
While the United States fought World War II against fascism abroad, Black Baltimoreans contended with police brutality at home. On Feb. 1, 1942, Thomas Broadus, an African American soldier, and some friends were going to see Louis Armstrong perform in a West Baltimore club. A White police officer, Edward Bender, intervened as they tried to hail an unlicensed cab. Bender assaulted Broadus, who may have retaliated. Nevertheless, as a gubernatorial commission found, Broadus was fleeing when Bender shot and killed him. While Bender was charged by a grand jury with murder, the charges were later dropped. Broadus was the second Black person killed by Bender and the ninth killed under the administration of police commissioner Robert Stanton.
The NAACP, the Black press and other leading civil rights groups in Baltimore rallied against an injustice that especially stung because Black soldiers like Broadus were risking their lives to fight for a government that refused to protect them against police brutality. Two thousand Black people joined a caravan to Annapolis to confront Gov. Herbert R. O’Conor. (The Baltimore Police Department was controlled by the governor at this time.) They demanded the hiring of more Black police officers, which they thought would end such indiscriminate brutality — a belief that history has proved false. At the time of Freddie Gray’s death in 2015 after suffering a severe neck injury in police custody, the Baltimore Police Department was 40 percent Black.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, the civil rights movement brought police and Black Baltimoreans into repeated public conflict, as police arrested protesters who were putting their bodies on the line against segregation. While there were no confrontations as dramatic as those in Birmingham, Ala., where police turned fire hoses on peaceful protesters in 1963, these arrests made clear that the police represented a racist state that supported segregation.
Beyond these public interactions, the kind of police harassment that precipitated Broadus’s death remained commonplace. We know this thanks to a 1960s poetry magazine called Chicory in which Black Baltimoreans documented such incidents.
In “Going Home,” published in the first issue in 1966, a young Black man, Horace “Turk” Hazelton, describes a random stop by Baltimore police long before stop-and-frisk. Turk writes, “See had me a thing/ with a cop/ after walking my girl/ home they picked me/ on the street where you going/ this hour of the night.”
When he questions why he’s being harassed for simply being out on the street at night, the police officer shows his control over Turk’s body by frisking him. “He kicked me pushed me with his gun,” Turk writes. When the officer holsters his gun, Turk runs for his life, frantically “bumping into dark gates.” This poem and others, in which regular people described how officers intimidated them, ignored those who needed help and inappropriately used force, offered a record of police harassment of Black Baltimoreans.
Not all policing happened on the street. The police also used surveillance technology to track those suspected of being involved in illegal activities — or, as the history of Baltimore shows, completely legal activities like political protest and assembly. From 1966 to 1982, Baltimore Police Commissioner Donald Pomerleau created an elite task force within the Inspectional Services Division (ISD) that monitored the supposedly subversive activities of 125 different groups, from the American Civil Liberties Union to the Black Panther Party. Using wiretaps, photography, infiltration of groups and telephone records, ISD officers were so excessive that one warned his relatives to never stop at a political rally out of curiosity because they would be added to the division’s extensive data-gathering operation.
ISD heavily targeted Black people and organizations; 150 police officers raided the small Baltimore Black Panther Party headquarters in 1970. Pomerleau even briefly got a judge to ban the distribution of the group’s newspaper in the city. Black radicals were not the only victims. Police also monitored liberal civil rights activists and even political leaders like Rep. Parren Mitchell (D-Md.) and state Sen. Clarence Mitchell III.
Like the Gun Trace Task Force depicted in “We Own This City,” victims of the ISD complained to authorities about overreach. But even after a state senate committee issued a report confirming the victims’ accusations, Baltimore Mayor William Donald Schaefer (D) and Maryland Gov. Marvin Mandel (D) downplayed the findings, instead heaping praise on Pomerleau, who stayed commissioner until 1982. Then and now, politicians courted the support of the police, standing by them even in the face of egregious impropriety.
This history makes clear that anti-Black policing in Baltimore long predates the war on drugs. But though Simon’s work has missed — and in “We Own This City” again misses — this historical backstory, the show’s critique of policing is still crucially important. Simon is more than a journalist or TV writer and producer. Given his huge platform on HBO and on Twitter, where he has more than 332,000 followers, he may be one of the most powerful liberal voices about urban issues today.
“The Wire” has been the subject of college classes and scholarly books that see it as a trenchant critique of contemporary urban institutions. Simon himself has written that he hoped “The Wire” could lead “to redress and reconsideration of certain policies and priorities” by those in power. From “The Corner” to “The Wire” to “We Own This City,” no policy issue has been more in need of reconsideration for him than the war on drugs. And Simon is absolutely correct. The war on drugs has been a disaster — especially for communities of color.
But if we ended the war on drugs tomorrow, Baltimore’s history shows us that it would not necessarily make policing better for Baltimoreans of color. To make real change, we need to understand the historical role of the police as forces focused on controlling and monitoring Black communities, who are always seen as potentially criminal. | 2022-05-31T11:08:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | HBO’s ‘We Own This City’ exposes police brutality in Baltimore - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/05/31/hbos-we-own-this-city-exposes-police-brutality-baltimore/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/05/31/hbos-we-own-this-city-exposes-police-brutality-baltimore/ |
The homegrown version of ‘replacement theory’ adopted by the GOP
Warnings about ‘replacement’ from the right build on political tropes dating back to the 19th century
Perspective by Joseph Lowndes
Joseph Lowndes is professor of political science at the University of Oregon and co-author of "Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity."
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) speaks during a news conference about the shortage of baby formula in Washington on May 12. (Ting Shen/Bloomberg News)
In the wake of the mass shooting in a supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood of Buffalo, public attention has turned to “The Great Replacement,” French writer Renaud Camus’s theory of White racial “genocide by substitution,” and its lethal impact in the United States. In just the last five years, this theory of racial apocalypse has apparently inspired three mass shootings.
But scholars and journalists have noted that in recent years, right-wing pundits and Republican politicians have also begun using the term “replacement” to assert without evidence that there is a liberal plot to outnumber Republicans with Democrats by opening the borders to migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. This political version of replacement is neither an exotic import from European white nationalists, nor is it novel. Rather, its logic has deep roots in American democratic beliefs and practices.
Throughout U.S. political history, the fear of racial threats to democracy has emerged repeatedly, albeit in different forms. The principal author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, believed the nation would only survive the abolition of slavery through the wholesale deportation of formerly enslaved and free Black people. In the decades before the Civil War, White people without property who fought for political equality also fought to make sure it would not extend to African Americans.
In the last quarter of the 19th century, White people in the South reversed the move toward multiracial democracy during the post-Civil War Reconstruction by violently stripping voting rights from Black men, whom they claimed unfit for franchise. In the same period, Congress enacted new laws barring Chinese immigrants from U.S. citizenship and therefore voting, with proponents arguing that people of Chinese descent had racial characteristics that made them incapable of republican self-rule. And at the turn of the 20th century, voter registration laws aimed at immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe (who were not yet considered White) radically reduced voter turnout among poor and working-class people. In all cases, White voters across classes saw non-Whites as threatening their hold on political power.
The contemporary notion of political replacement draws on this longer history of perceived threats posed by non-White populations to White democracy, but it is more immediately rooted in the history of the modern Republican Party.
Beginning in the mid-1960s, the GOP began defining itself in opposition to the civil rights movement, over time assembling a cross-class alliance of Whites. Presidential candidate Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) campaigned against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and opposed federal interference in southern affairs. Goldwater’s crushing defeat provided a valuable lesson to Republicans — there was limited appeal to his open extremism, on this and other issues.
That led the GOP to adopt more coded language in an effort to appeal to White backlash voters in the South and urban blue-collar Whites in the rest of the country, without offending suburban White voters who recoiled at open white supremacy. In 1968, for example, Richard M. Nixon promised to oppose “forced busing” to achieve school integration. In 1980, Ronald Reagan derided “welfare queens” and “young bucks” who allegedly gamed the system to live lavish lifestyles. And in 1988, George H.W. Bush castigated his opponent Michael Dukakis for being weak on crime — getting a boost from the infamous racist “Willie Horton” ad run by a third-party group. This rhetoric, along with opposition to anti-discrimination law and policy, helped Republicans capture a majority of White voters in every presidential election between 1968 and 2020.
But by the mid-1990s, studies showing changing racial-ethnic demographics in the United States began to raise long-term questions about the viability the GOP’s predominantly White coalition. When Reagan had run for president in 1980, Whites constituted almost 80 percent of the national population. When George W. Bush ran in 2000, they accounted for only 69 percent.
Combined with the contested presidential election of 2000 — which exposed how much every vote mattered — these demographic changes resurrected the racially marked question of who was worthy of exercising the franchise for the GOP. Republicans began to charge, without evidence, that voter fraud posed a serious problem to U.S. elections and began pursuing ever more restrictive voting laws, claiming that such barriers were necessary to safeguard elections.
These efforts bore fruit in the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby v. Holder, which eliminated key portions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and opened the door for Republicans to enact new obstacles that would have disproportionate impact on Black and Latino voters.
That same year, immigration became a front-burner issue for the second time in a decade, setting up debates within the GOP about the future of the party. Some Republicans, like Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), saw an opportunity to expand their base into Latino communities. An autopsy after the 2012 presidential election by the Republican National Committee urged this course of action. Others, however, like right-wing media king Rush Limbaugh, said millions of new immigrant voters would be “suicide” for the party.
Together, the rhetoric around voter fraud and these claims about the threats posed by immigrants to the GOP laid the basis for Donald Trump’s false assertion in 2016 that there were 3 million fraudulent votes cast largely by undocumented immigrants, and his 2020 challenge to presidential election results in six states, largely in majority-minority districts.
As did different White coalitions in the 19th century, the GOP openly sees an increase in non-White voters as perilous for its predominantly White base’s political fortunes. Nevertheless, the shift from a literal notion of racial replacement to a more abstract appeal to party identity is dangerous precisely because it avoids discussion of race while indirectly invoking a long-standing racial logic of political exclusion. As Rep Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) tweeted, “The Left/Media think of replacement solely on race/ethnicity terms. I don’t at all. Democrats failed the voters who relied on them to run their states/cities. Now they are importing new voters.”
This might help explain the results of the recent AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll showing that while two-thirds of Americans believe the country’s diverse population makes it stronger, more than a third still “agree that a group of people is trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains.”
The Republican replacement theory uses racial demonization to pursue more anti-democratic imperatives more generally — authorizing laws and policies meant to ensure Republican electoral success by shrinking the electorate along both race and class lines, or by subverting election integrity altogether. As Fox News host Tucker Carlson revealingly put it, “White replacement theory? No, no, this is a voting rights question.” | 2022-05-31T11:08:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The homegrown version of ‘replacement theory’ adopted by the GOP - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/05/31/homegrown-version-replacement-theory-adopted-by-gop/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/05/31/homegrown-version-replacement-theory-adopted-by-gop/ |
Tuesday briefing: Memorial Day weekend mass shootings; E.U.’s Russian oil ban; contaminated strawberries; mummy discovery; and more
There were at least 12 mass shootings over Memorial Day weekend.
Where? Across the U.S., from California to Michigan to Tennessee. Several took place at parties, and one at a Memorial Day event. At least eight people were killed and 55 injured.
What counts as a mass shooting? According to a nonprofit group that tracks them, when “four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter.”
In Texas: The first funerals are taking place for the victims of last week’s school shooting in Uvalde, which left 19 children and two teachers dead.
Canada is planning a “national freeze” on handgun sales.
The details: The legislation, introduced yesterday, would stop both imports and sales, and allow judges to temporarily remove firearms from people who are considered dangerous.
What’s next? The bill is likely to pass. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the recent gun violence in the U.S. shows that, without action, things get “worse and worse.”
European Union countries will ban most Russian oil.
The details: It’s the E.U.’s biggest effort yet to hit Russia’s economy over the war in Ukraine. About 90% of oil imports will be phased out this year, with an exception for pipeline deliveries.
In Ukraine: Russia continues to capture more territory around Severodonetsk, a key Ukrainian-controlled city in the east. A French photojournalist was killed there yesterday.
The U.S. is changing the way it screens migrants seeking asylum.
A new system begins phasing in today: It relies more on asylum officers at immigration detention centers instead of judges to decide who can stay in the U.S. because of danger or persecution.
Why this matters: The U.S. has a huge backlog of asylum cases — nearly 400,000. Officials said the changes will speed things up without sacrificing fairness.
Not everyone is happy: The policy is being challenged in court, with Texas arguing it will increase illegal immigration.
Hurricane Agatha slammed into Mexico yesterday.
It was record-setting: The Category 2 hurricane was the strongest the country has seen on its Pacific coast in May, powered by warmer-than-normal waters.
What to watch: The storm is expected to bring potentially life-threatening flash floods and heavy rains today. It also could help bring storms to Florida this weekend.
Contaminated strawberries probably caused a hepatitis A outbreak.
What to know: If you saved fresh organic FreshKampo or HEB strawberries purchased between March 5 and April 25 in your freezer, you should throw them out, the FDA said.
There have been at least 17 U.S. cases of the highly contagious virus, with at least 15 in California. Symptoms include fever, nausea, stomach pain and fatigue.
Hundreds of mummies were discovered in an ancient Egyptian necropolis.
The find: 250 sarcophagi — or painted coffins — with well-preserved mummies inside, as well as bronze statues dating back 2,500 years.
Where were they? Near Cairo, in part of the burial grounds of the ancient capital, Memphis. They’ll be moved to a new museum.
And now … summer is unofficially underway: Here’s what our pop culture team will be watching over the next few months. | 2022-05-31T11:09:20Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Tuesday, May 31 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/05/31/what-to-know-for-may-31/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/05/31/what-to-know-for-may-31/ |
The injustices endured by Native American youths continue to this day
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland speaks during a signing ceremony for the Navajo Utah Water Rights Settlement Act at the Navajo Welcome Center in Oljato-Monument Valley, Utah, on May 27. (Mengshin Lin/The Deseret News via AP)
When Joe Wheeler was sent to a boarding school for Native American youths in Oklahoma, he would later tell his grandson, his teachers taught him his first lesson by cutting his hair. Then, when he spoke Wichita instead of English, they made him eat soap. And when he kept speaking Wichita, they beat him — or as they’d say, “civilized” him.
The torment Wheeler endured decades ago is typical of what thousands of children experienced from 1819 to 1969 at the more than 400 Native American boarding schools recently identified in an unprecedented report by the Interior Department released May 11. These schools, like their counterparts in Canada, were government-funded centers of abuse in the name of “assimilation.” The report identifies 53 burial sites associated with the schools — where at least 500 children who may have died within their walls were buried in often unmarked graves.
It’s tempting to believe that this horrific history is ensconced firmly in the past. But still today, countless Native American young people are being robbed of their chance to live safe and fulfilling lives. Currently, Native American youths are confined in the juvenile justice system at three times the rate of their White peers.
What has funneled them there? First, poverty. More than 40 percent of Native children live in poverty — a legacy of the federal government’s impoverishing Native Americans as a matter of policy for centuries. Second, inadequate education. While the regime of brutal assimilation may have ended, it has been succeeded by an institutional indifference that has failed young Native Americans all the same. Underfunding, scant accountability and a lack of Native teachers have resulted in Native public school students graduating at the lowest rate of any racial group. In turn, dropping out of high school increases the chances of incarceration.
Those odds are further compounded by disparities in health care for Native American youths. Combining a population overexposed to violence and trauma with the highest uninsured percentage of any demographic, plus a shortage of therapists and doctors, is a formula for tragedy. Indeed, Native teenagers die by suicide at a rate three times higher than that of White teenagers. Many more are left to self-medicate, often leading to arrests for nonviolent drug offenses.
In short: The legacy of denying Native young people basic — let alone quality — education, health care and opportunities continues to this day. To end this injustice, our country has an obligation to support Native American youths even more fervently now after oppressing them for centuries.
That can start with rooting out racism from the juvenile justice system. Deb Haaland, the first Native American interior secretary, has shown tremendous leadership in investigating Native boarding schools. But conditions in current-day juvenile justice facilities deserve their own inquiry.
And by heeding the Indian Law and Order Commission’s recommendation that tribes receive full jurisdiction over cases involving Native children, we’d avoid sending Native youths to federal facilities lacking rehabilitative infrastructure. More fundamentally, we would restore tribal sovereignty stolen by the United States.
When it comes to improving educational outcomes, the National Indian Education Association has advocated for an array of reforms. These include centering educational programs on Native American history and language, establishing common standards for measuring student progress, ending federal mismanagement of Native schooling, and granting tribes rightful oversight of their own classrooms. Of course, as a prerequisite for any reforms, Native schools also need drastic increases in funding.
Native American health-care systems do too. The Indian Health Service provides health care to 2.2 million Native Americans, but the National Congress of American Indians estimates the IHS would need to double its funding to provide even the base level of care that federal prisoners receive. And since the IHS doesn’t necessarily cover specialized care unavailable on remote reservations, the National Council of Urban Indian Health stresses the importance of expanding Medicaid to help bridge the gap.
Beyond these reforms, dismantling the poverty-to-prison pipeline requires an even grander paradigm shift in how we relate to each other and the criminal justice system.
In a 2017 piece in the Nation (I am its publisher), journalist Rebecca Clarren wrote about Native peacemaking courts. These courts focus not on retributive punishment but on dialogue, rehabilitation and restorative justice. For example, Chief Justice Abby Abinanti of the Yurok Tribal Court will ask defendants to suggest their own ideas for how to atone for past crimes. One federal assessment found that her court was “extremely fair and balanced in its rulings.”
This approach could not only change our justice system but also reshape how we relate to our own past. As Timothy Connors, a judge leading an effort to create more courts that use this peacemaking approach, describes, “It’s the idea of cleansing and healing versus judging. They are designed not to get even, but to get well.” The debt to the generations of abused Native American children can never be fully repaid. But we can begin to heal — by investing in solutions that free the next generation of Native youths from this painful past. | 2022-05-31T12:25:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The injustices endured by Native American youths continue to this day - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/injustices-native-american-youth/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/injustices-native-american-youth/ |
Garland’s mushy speech to Harvard grads does not inspire confidence
Attorney General Merrick Garland speaks during commencement exercises for Harvard's classes of 2020 and 2021, which were originally not held in person because of the coronavirus pandemic, in Cambridge, Mass., on May 29. (Brian Snyder/Reuters)
Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose slow-motion investigation of the plot to overthrow the 2020 election has frustrated defenders of democracy, spoke at a Harvard commencement ceremony on Sunday. He delivered a sincere, high-minded ode to democratic ideals and public service. But the address illustrated two fundamental complaints about his leadership of the Justice Department.
First, in an effort to appear nonpartisan, he inoculated the party responsible for the assault on American democracy. On Jan. 6, “as the United States Congress was meeting to certify the vote count of the electoral college, a large crowd violently forced entry into the Capitol,” Garland said. “We all watched as police officers were punched, dragged, tased and beaten. We saw journalists targeted, assaulted, tackled and harassed.” He added: “Members of Congress had to be evacuated. And proceedings were disrupted for hours — interfering with a fundamental element of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next.”
Opinion: Jan. 6 was worse than you remember. It must define our politics.
It is apparently a mystery who motivated the insurrectionists — and which party set the stage for the insurrection and now perpetuates the “big lie” of a stolen election. Garland intoned that “the preservation of democracy requires our willingness to tell the truth” and declared that “we must ensure that the magnitude of an event like January 6th is not downplayed or understated.”
Is there not one party “downplaying” or “understating” the events of that day? Can we not identify who has called this sort of domestic terrorism “legitimate political discourse”?
“At the same time that we are witnessing efforts to undermine the right to vote,” Garland said, “we are also witnessing violence and threats of violence that undermine the rule of law upon which our democracy is based.” He lamented the “dramatic increase in legislative efforts that make it harder for millions of eligible voters to vote and to elect representatives of their own choice.”
We are “witnessing efforts” by whom? Garland’s fuzzy talk disguises the culprits behind the intense campaign, well underway, to suppress and subvert American elections. One would never know listening to him that there is one party to blame — the Republicans — or that there has yet to be a single instance in which a Democratic legislature or Democratic governor has pursued such tactics.
The attorney general’s excessive use of the passive voice and refusal to clarify who did what and who is lying about what provide rhetorical cover for a party that has gone all in on the “big lie” and runs candidates who rationalize the Jan. 6 insurrection.
How GOP-backed voting measures could create hurdles for tens of millions of voters
Garland would not prejudice his investigation were he to say something like this:
On that day, as the United States Congress was meeting to certify the vote count of the electoral college, the defeated president, Donald Trump, assembled a large crowd. He called for them to march on the Capitol. They followed his directive and violently forced their way into the building. The mob inspired by the lie that the election was stolen proceeded to punch, drag, tase and beat police officers. The mob acting in support of Trump forced members of Congress to evacuate. Just as Trump intended, the mob disrupted the proceedings for hours, interfering with a fundamental element of American democracy: the peaceful transfer of power from one administration to the next.
How hard would it be to provide that minimum level of candor?
Second, Garland limited his remarks, as he habitually does, to the violence of Jan. 6 — leaving out the fact that to properly account for what happened that day, officials have a duty to investigate the overall conspiracy to install the 2020 loser as president.
The coup attempt began long before Jan. 6, even before the 2020 election. An entire universe of conduct should be under scrutiny, from Donald Trump’s lies about absentee ballots, to his lawyers’ frivolous lawsuits to overturn the election, to Trump’s attempts to strong-arm the Georgia secretary of state to “find” votes, and to compel the Justice Department to somehow invalidate the election.
Garland may very well believe such conduct is illegal. But we are left wondering. If he does not, this will set a dismaying precedent under which losing presidential candidates will feel empowered to solicit a phony slate of electors, or to scheme to force the vice president to short-circuit the electoral-vote proceedings.
Granted, Garland does not want to publicly list the particulars of an ongoing investigation. But surely, he could confirm that the Jan. 6 violence was just one aspect of the coup attempt. Surely, he could reiterate that the Justice Department is tasked with investigating attempts to invalidate the election by both peaceful and non-peaceful means.
Supporters of democracy should not root for the sort of blatant partisanship from the attorney general that we saw from his predecessor. But Garland has an obligation not to obfuscate. If he aims to restore the credibility of the Justice Department, he can at the very least acknowledge that the threat to democracy is not bipartisan. It emanates from a right-wing political movement led by a former defeated president and his enablers.
And if Garland is “following the facts” as they relate only to armed insurrection, he should know that this is dangerous, too — that he would be giving a pass to dozens of executive officials, including the president (and perhaps members of Congress), who plotted to wreck our democratic election process.
We can only hope his vision is more comprehensive than his public remarks. | 2022-05-31T12:25:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Merrick Garland's Harvard commencement speech was full of obfuscation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/merrick-garland-harvard-commencement-democracy-insurrection-investigation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/merrick-garland-harvard-commencement-democracy-insurrection-investigation/ |
A recession won’t just hurt at the bank. It’ll make us more divided.
Pedestrians pass in front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). (Michael Nagle/Bloomberg)
Think we’re a divided nation now? A recession would make it much worse.
Wall Street is increasingly worried about the possibility of a recession. Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, says a recession is entirely possible. Deutsche Bank predicts a “major” economic turndown by the end of 2023. A number of prominent investors share these sentiments. Elon Musk, for one, thinks we are already in one.
Here’s hoping they’re all wrong, and not simply because no one wants to go through an economic downturn. American life is beset by flashing red warning lights, but two in particular — an increase in social isolation and a lack of trust — signal that a recession is likely to make our already fractious politics deteriorate further.
Let’s start with loneliness, something so common in the United States it was described as an epidemic even before covid-19 intensified our social isolation. A recession will exacerbate it, because financial shocks do that. And loneliness is not just bad for our health, our social life and our mental well-being. It’s also terrible for our politics and civic life.
There’s a link between social isolation and an attraction to extremist ideology — so much so that Hannah Arendt flagged it when she wrote about totalitarianism. Decades later, in 2017, a paper published in the journal Research in Psychology and Behavioral Sciences found that lonelier individuals were more likely to embrace right-wing authoritarian politics.
If you know that, it should come as no surprise that people who supported Donald Trump for president were more likely to show signs of being socially cut off and adrift than those supporting other candidates. In 2016, one survey found that Trump supporters were significantly less engaged in community activities than those who backed his primary opponent Ted Cruz. In 2020, polling by the website FiveThirtyEight discovered that Biden voters had larger social networks, while those who said they lacked “close social contacts” favored the now-former president.
For obvious reasons, economic downturns have long been associated with political volatility and change at the ballot box — just look at President Biden’s falling poll numbers amid pandemic-era inflation. But American society is plagued by something else that makes such swings more likely, which brings us to our second warning sign: lack of trust.
At the end of the baby boom, three out of four Americans said they trusted the government most or all of the time, according to the Pew Research Center. Now it’s roughly one in four. In the late 1990s, 64 percent said they had confidence in the public’s political wisdom, and only one-third said they did not; by 2019, those numbers had essentially reversed.
With a lack of trust comes instability. A working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in 2018 (and updated in 2021) found that in democracies, the less faith people have in their government and social structures, the more likely it is that an economic crisis will lead to a change in political leadership.
Less-trustful societies are angrier ones. Instead of giving the political leadership the benefit of the doubt and expressing faith in their ability to steer us through crisis, many people blame the party in power for whatever ills befall our society. They throw the bums out — which, if it happens this November, means the political party controlling Congress will be the one populated by many officials who say they believe the 2020 election was stolen.
Finally, recessions strain society and bring out the worst in many of us. Some people might like to imagine the Great Depression as a time of “Waltons”-esque family solidarity, but it was also a time of religious and ethnic hatred, with millions falling under the thrall of authoritarian governments in places including Germany and the Soviet Union. The Great Recession gave us the tea party, a movement fueled, in part, by racial animus. That, too, increases during economic downturns.
The truth is, hard times do not make people more generous and politically engaged — and they don’t bring us together, they pull us apart. People become so intent on protecting themselves, it doesn’t occur to them that engaging politically to protect our society and economy is another way to take care of our own interests, too.
If a recession is upon us, our bank accounts won’t be the only things in jeopardy. | 2022-05-31T12:25:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | A recession would strike at our pocketbooks — and our politics - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/recession-will-increase-american-political-divide/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/recession-will-increase-american-political-divide/ |
10 noteworthy books for June
June is the perfect time to look for titles that capture the joy of the summer reading season. Standouts include playful satire, stories of weddings and romance, a dash of mystery and fantasy, and a look at America’s summer pastime, baseball.
“Nora Goes Off Script,” by Annabel Monaghan (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, June 7)
Nora Hamilton’s 100-year-old-home is the filming location for a script she wrote based on her marriage’s failure. Getting her kids to school and soccer games while the star, former Sexiest Man Alive Leo Vance, is living in a trailer on the front lawn is one thing, but when Leo offers her $1,000 per day to stay for a week after the shoot ends, it’s hard to say no. Monaghan’s witty adult debut novel perfectly captures the apprehension and excitement of infatuation blended with life’s complications.
“The Mutual Friend,” by Carter Bays (Dutton, June 7)
Alice is trying to fill out her application to take the MCAT exam, but distractions are constant. There is her job as a nanny, her search for a new roommate and her tech millionaire brother’s newfound Buddhist enlightenment. Plus all those diverting links to be clicked, like the picture quiz “Blueberry Muffins or Chihuahuas?” Everyone is searching for something — love, success, entertainment, spirituality — but nobody looks up from their screen long enough to find anything. Bays, the co-creator of “How I Met Your Mother,” delivers a whip-smart comedy of manners for the era of buzzing gadgets.
“The Midcoast,” by Adam White (Hogarth, June 7)
Edward Thatch’s future working in his family’s lobster fishery once seemed certain, but now he owns multiple properties in tourist haven Damariscotta, where his wife, Stephanie, is basically the mayor. While former classmate Andrew attends a party at Ed and Steph’s showpiece house on Maine’s shoreline, his curiosity about the Thatches’ ascent turns to concern when he happens across police photos of charred human remains in a burned-out car. As he delves deeper into the mystery surrounding their sudden wealth, he uncovers secrets that someone may kill to keep hidden. Reminiscent of Netflix’s “Ozark” but with more lobsters, White’s intriguing debut novel considers how far parents will go to protect their families.
“So Happy for You,” by Celia Laskey (Hanover Square Press, June 7)
Part dystopia, part satire, Laskey’s sophomore novel imagines a world where marriage rates have plummeted and the government’s National Organization for Marriage holds blind date events. Robin reluctantly agrees to be maid of honor for her childhood best friend, Ellie, even though they haven’t spoken since falling out in college. As the wedding draws closer, Ellie engages the bridal party in increasingly bizarre rituals encouraged by the wedding-industrial complex, escalating into a wedding weekend that tests the boundaries of friendship and obsession.
“Ordinary Monsters,” by J.M. Miro (Flatiron, June 7)
Children with extraordinary abilities — to heal, to become invisible — are tracked by a man made of smoke, and also sought by a Victorian-era Scottish institute guarding a portal between the living and the dead. Charles Dickens meets Joss Whedon in Miro’s otherworldly Netflix-binge-like novel, the first in a planned trilogy.
“By Her Own Design,” by Piper Huguley (William Morrow, June 7)
The dress Jacqueline Bouvier wore for her wedding to then-Sen. John F. Kennedy was sewn from 50 yards of silk taffeta, twice. Although the designer, Ann Lowe, created, then re-created the gown with extraordinary speed after a pipe burst over the original confection 10 days before the wedding, she was never credited as anything other than “a colored dressmaker.” Huguley’s fictional account, peppered with careful historical detail, draws attention to this unjustly forgotten designer. Lowe’s life story emerges, showing a tenacious and talented artist who overcame countless obstacles on the way to achieving her dreams.
Jackie Kennedy’s fairy-tale wedding was a nightmare for her African American dress designer
“Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original,” by Howard Bryant (Mariner, June 7)
Baseball Hall of Famer Rickey Henderson’s record speaks for itself, but that didn’t stop him from having a lot to say. He was known for his competitiveness as much as his colorful “Rickey style,” but there is more to his story than his superlative talent. His outsize personality, backed up by indisputable athleticism, enabled him to climb to the top of the record books during an era of both player salary expansion and persistent racial discrimination. Bryant’s vivid and extensive account, written with access to Henderson and his wife, Pamela, shines a light on this unique and charismatic legend.
“Elsewhere” by Alexis Schaitkin (Celadon, June 28)
The author of “Saint X,” a novel about a teen’s disappearance from a Caribbean resort, returns with another fictional meditation on disappearance — in this case, a succession of mothers who vanish from an isolated town. Young girls fear one day they could develop “the affliction,” as they call the “going” of the mothers. Nobody knows why it happens, but with hindsight, everyone finds missed signs that the women were “unsuccessful” mothers. Schaitkin skillfully calls into question the meaning of motherhood with all its attendant judgment, self-doubt and profound love.
‘Saint X’ is more than the story of a missing girl. It’s a story about why such stories fascinate us.
“American Royalty,” by Tracey Livesay (Avon, June 28)
Livesay’s new series may call to mind a real-life romance, but steamier. Danielle “Duchess” Nelson, famous American rapper, is on her way to the top of her profession when she meets Prince Jameson, an heir to the British throne, who prefers solitude and philosophy to the limelight. His grandmother, the Queen, has charged him with overseeing a royal tribute concert where Duchess will perform. Their attraction is immediate and all-consuming, but as their relationship intensifies, so does pressure from outside forces, and they face difficult choices between dreams and duty.
“Dele Weds Destiny,” by Tomi Obaro (Knopf, June 28)
Three Nigerian women are inseparable while at university, calling themselves the “Trio,” helping each other figure out adulthood, sexuality, love and loss. Although different choices and thousands of miles have kept them apart, they reunite 30 years later in Lagos at the wedding of one of their daughters. Over the course of three days, they reclaim their closeness as they share intimacies about their lives and long-held dreams. Obaro’s writing gives richness and depth to female friendship, depicting the beauty of bonds that last a lifetime. | 2022-05-31T12:30:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | June books to read now - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/05/31/june-books/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/05/31/june-books/ |
‘When We Fell Apart’ is a powerful story about women in Korean society
In Soon Wiley’s new novel, a young woman struggles with identity, belonging and outsize expectations
Review by Jung Yun
“When We Fell Apart” by Soon Wiley (credit: Rachel EH Photography; Dutton)
Soon Wiley’s moving debut novel, “When We Fell Apart,” begins shortly after the suicide of Yu-Jin Kim, a promising student in her final semester at a prestigious university. Bright, talented and beloved by her father — the powerful South Korean minister of national defense — Yu-Jin seemed like a person with everything to live for. Her boyfriend, Min, convinced that he missed a sign or an opportunity to help, seeks answers about what Yu-Jin was struggling with — and possibly hiding.
The novel’s chapters alternate between Yu-Jin’s perspective in the years leading up to her death and Min’s attempts to understand what happened afterward. As the voices build, they slowly reveal a powerful story about the pressures experienced by young adults living in Korean society. Reminiscent of Cho Nam-Joo’s international bestseller, “Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982,” Wiley’s novel depicts the rigid social and cultural expectations that govern women’s careers, relationships and bodies. Even for a woman like Yu-Jin, who was born and raised with every privilege, the future is a path lined with choices that already seem predetermined.
With the encouragement of her best friend, Sora, Yu-Jin was attempting the seemingly radical act of doing what made her happy in a country where some, including her highly controlling, shadowy father, still regarded the pursuit of happiness as an American convention, “a foolish idea to place in the minds of the weak.” After years of always doing what was expected of her, Yu-Jin was secretly taking a film class that inspired her, and while still dating Min, she was also having a passionate relationship with someone whose identity, if discovered, would probably ruin both her and her family’s reputations.
While Yu-Jin’s chapters read like a mystery — propulsive and forensic in their examination of her secrets and desires — Min’s storyline is more reactive. Other characters, including Yu-Jin’s roommates and a detective assigned to her case, instruct him to meet them at various clandestine places in and around Seoul, and he dutifully obeys, collecting more pieces of the puzzle along the way. At times, Min seems more motivated by self-absorption than his feelings for Yu-Jin. At one point, he looks back on their happy, easy relationship and thinks, “Perhaps there was still something wrong with him, a deficiency. Why else would this have happened? Why else would she be gone?” It turns out there were many reasons, few of which had anything to do with Min, who was the one relatively uncomplicated source of pleasure in Yu-Jin’s increasingly complicated life.
Wiley is a master of structure and pacing, with a gift for ending chapters at their most gripping moments, which gives this quiet, mournful novel the page-turning quality of a thriller. Yet what makes “When We Fell Apart” such a must-read is its portrayal of the extraordinary pressure faced by young people in Korea to conform and perform. (Suicide has been the leading cause of death for young people in South Korea since 2007 due to a number of contributing factors, including financial troubles, high unemployment rates, a widening gap between rich and poor, and a hypercompetitive education system.
‘If I Had Your Face’ explores women’s lives amid unnatural expectations.
In one particularly memorable chapter, Yu-Jin prepares for life after graduation under her father’s careful supervision. This includes a haircut and makeup consultation, a fitting for a custom-tailored suit, and a professional headshot session in which her cheeks ache “from holding an expression that my father said must exude ‘serious but not intimidating, hard-working but not difficult.’” She also meets with a female job interview coach whose rules and tips are “all seemingly aimed at subservience and decorum.”
In the end, Min, a biracial Korean American struggling with his own issues of identity and acceptance, is the perfect person to search for answers about what happened to this bright young woman who wanted to choose another path, one focused on art, love, freedom and individuality. It’s a fitting role given that “everything he’d ever done, everywhere he’d gone, Min had only wanted one thing: acceptance. It was a desire Yu-Jin must have known well.”
Jung Yun, an assistant professor of English at George Washington University, is the author of the novels “O Beautiful” and “Shelter.”
Dutton. 368 pp. $27 | 2022-05-31T12:30:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | When We Fell Apart book review by Soon Wiley - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/05/31/soon-wiley-novel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/05/31/soon-wiley-novel/ |
‘The Phantom of the Open’: A slyly beguiling portrait of a golf legend
Mark Rylance plays Maurice Flitcroft, the amateur golfer who crashed the 1976 British Open, posting the worst score in history
Mark Rylance as Maurice Flitcroft in “The Phantom of the Open.” (Nick Wall/Sony Pictures Classics)
Just a glance or two at the trailer for “The Phantom of the Open” — a dramedy loosely based on the true story of Maurice Flitcroft, a British crane operator who somehow managed to compete in the 1976 British Open despite never having previously played a round of golf — might lead you to roll your eyes. There’s something about Mark Rylance, who plays Maurice. Is it the fake teeth? The flat Cumbrian accent? The tone of twee amusement set by the jaunty score, which portends a silly, perhaps even clownishly derisive caricature, one that looks down on its protagonist with an air of superiority? Well, yes.
But just hang on, and give this sly little gem of a film a chance.
Based on Scott Murray and Simon Farnaby’s 2010 nonfiction book of the same name, “The Phantom of the Open” is grounded in a fantastic performance by Rylance, who, as he did in the recent crime thriller “The Outfit,” brings the sense of a life wholly and fully lived — one whose edges and nuances extend well beyond what we see and hear on the screen. As for those last two things: The screenplay is also by Farnaby, writer of the almost unreasonably pleasurable “Paddington 2,” and the direction is by Craig Roberts, a young actor turned filmmaker whose still-slender résumé (”Just Jim,” Eternal Beauty”) belies his stylistic assurance and commitment to emotional truth.
As if that weren’t enough of a pedigree, the ever-marvelous Sally Hawkins plays Jean Flitcroft, whose support for her husband’s pipe dreams — which continue well after Maurice posts a score of 121, the worst ever recorded in the Open’s history — contributes mightily to a story that isn’t ultimately about golf at all.
Family, for one thing. In addition to centering on the relationship between Maurice and Jean, “Phantom” includes a subplot that runs parallel to that of Maurice, who seemingly can’t stop taking stabs at professional golf tournaments, resorting to crazy disguises and pseudonyms — Gene Paycheki, Gerald Hoppy and James Beau Jolley, among others — even after being banned from competition. Rhys Ifans plays Keith Mackenzie, the snooty golfing official from the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews, the home of the Open, who becomes Maurice’s de facto nemesis. But smartly, the film doesn’t dwell on the entire litany of Maurice’s scams.
That secondary subplot involves Maurice’s twin sons, Gene and James, played with enormous charm, respectively, by twins Christian and Jonah Lees. Gene and James are competitive disco dancers, and their pursuit of what they love doing, in the face of ridicule, enriches and deepens Maurice’s main narrative. There’s another son, Michael, played by Jake Davies; he’s a stuffed shirt who’s embarrassed by his father until — just watch the movie.
“The Phantom of the Open” isn’t a terribly deep or even important story. It’s the portrait of a person who became a sports footnote, albeit one whose name went on to become associated with joke tournaments like the Flitcroft Spring Stag, organized by the Blythefield Country Club in Grand Rapids, Mich., and honoring the highest-scoring players with facetious prizes. (Note: A high score in golf is a bad thing, as Jean is surprised to learn in the film.)
Despite its light subject matter, “Phantom” is about something more than an obscure British folk hero (although it is also that). It’s a story about following your passion, not because of the heights this path will take you to, but because it makes you happy. “Practice is the road to perfection,” Maurice is constantly saying in the film, with a naivete that is more endearing than annoying. Maurice never really gets there, but this modest film — as crafty as its subject — comes close.
PG-13. At area theaters. Contains some strong language and smoking. 106 minutes. | 2022-05-31T12:30:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'The Phantom of the Open' tells the story of Maurice Flitcroft, who crashed the 1976 British Open - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/05/31/phantom-of-the-open-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/05/31/phantom-of-the-open-movie-review/ |
Boutique condos in D.C.’s Columbia Heights offer charm, location
The living area in model Unit 3 at 1435 Clifton St. NW. Exposed brick is one of the building's traditional charms. (Benjamin C. Tankersley for The Washington Post)
City life appealed to new homeowner Denise Baltuskonis.
The 32-year-old was renting in the Arlington neighborhood of Clarendon and actively looking to buy for about a month, narrowing her search to one-bedroom units. She’d already lost one deal in a bidding war.
Then she found the building at 1435 Clifton St. NW in D.C., a rowhouse that was converted to an eight-unit condominium building. It checked all the boxes.
Baltuskonis picked a one-bedroom unit in the front of the building because of the natural light that beamed through the south-facing bay windows. Her Arlington apartment doesn’t get direct sunlight from November to mid-March, she said.
“It really affected my mood and energy levels,” she said. “I knew good light was important wherever I would choose to buy.”
Baltuskonis said she also liked the amount of storage included in the floor plan. “Thoughtful storage,” she said, “really seemed to be lacking in a lot of the units that I saw.”
Five units are available for sale at 1435 Clifton St. NW, at prices ranging from $425,000 to $815,000 for 535 to 1,275 square feet. All but one of the available units have one bedroom and one bathroom. The other available unit is a penthouse — one of two in the building — and has two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a roof deck. Some other units have private outdoor spaces. Two parking spaces are available for $40,000 each. The building has no shared amenities.
Move-ins are expected to start in early June.
For Baltuskonis, the location in Columbia Heights was another plus.
“I really liked that this particular building was between Columbia Heights and U Street Metro stations,” she said, “so it’s convenient to all the restaurants, bars, and stores in both areas, as well as Meridian Hill-Malcolm X Park.”
She added: “But most importantly, it’s walking distance to Trader Joe’s. I also have several friends that live nearby, and I’m looking forward to no longer having to drive to have to see them.”
D’Ann Lanning, head of the Compass-affiliated sales team, said the mix of traditional charm and modern convenience is helping to close deals.
“Buyers love all of the extra touches like exposed brick, solid slab backsplashes, LED [recessed ceiling] downlighting and all of the bathroom details,” Lanning said.
Columbia Heights borders 16 Street Heights to the north and the U Street corridor to the south. Park View and Pleasant Plains are to the east and Adams Morgan and Mount Pleasant to the west.
New-home building resumes at Scotland Heights in Waldorf, Md.
The Columbia Heights Metro station, in service since 1999, has spurred decades of redevelopment in the neighborhood, including the renovation of the landmark Tivoli Theatre building and the opening of the DC USA shopping mall.
Meridian Hill Park, also known as Malcolm X Park, is a 12-acre National Park Service property and an important community asset, with lawns, shaded walkways, statuary and a majestic cascading fountain.
Schools: Marie Reed Elementary, Columbia Heights Education Campus (middle), Cardozo Education Campus (high).
Transit: The Columbia Heights Metro station is about a half-mile north. The U Street Metro station is just over a half-mile south. Both are on the Green and Yellow lines. The 52 and 54 buses run on 14th Street; the H2 and H4 on Columbia Road; 90 and 92 on U Street.
Nearby: Meridian Hill Park, Girard Street Park, U Street corridor, DC USA mall, Howard University
1435 Clifton St. NW
1435 Clifton St. NW, Washington, D.C.
The building has eight units, and five are still available at prices ranging from $425,000 to $815,000.
Builder: 10 Square
Features: Exposed brick, hardwood floors, Blomberg appliances
Bedrooms/bathrooms: 1 or 2/1 or 2
Square footage: 535 to 1,275
Condominium fee: $165 to $314
View model: Make an appointment anytime, info@trentandco.com
Sales: Trent & Co. at Compass, info@trentandco.com | 2022-05-31T12:38:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Boutique condos in D.C.’s Columbia Heights offer charm, location - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/31/boutique-condos-columbia-heights-offer-historic-charm-location/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/05/31/boutique-condos-columbia-heights-offer-historic-charm-location/ |
Crushed by Crypto Losses? Here Are Some Tax Tips.
MIAMI, FLORIDA - JUNE 04: An attendee wears a necklace at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention, a crypto-currency conference held at the Mana Convention Center in Wynwood on June 04, 2021 in Miami, Florida. The crypto conference is expected to draw 50,000 people and runs from Friday, June 4 through June 6th. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images) (Photographer: Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America)
Investors in Bitcoin and other digital assets have been pummeled recently by the longest losing streak since 2011. If that’s you, you might be glad to hear that there are ways to ease some of the sting of those losses: Act promptly and you can cut your tax bill for next April and beyond.
The Internal Revenue Service allows taxpayers to use losses in stocks and other investments, including crypto, to offset gains. If your losses exceed your total gains for the year, you can deduct up to $3,000 against your taxable income. Losses beyond $3,000 can be carried forward every year until death to offset gains in future years.
Here’s the rub: You have to actually sell the investment to take the capital loss; it can’t just have dropped in value on paper. But crypto investors get a special deal. Stock owners have to follow what’s called the wash-sale rule; if they sell a stock for a loss, they have to wait 30 days before buying the same security again, or else it won’t be eligible for a deduction.
So far, the IRS hasn’t said that the wash-sale rule applies to digital assets. (There was a provision included in the Build Back Better Act that would have made crypto investments subject to the rule, but it fizzled.)
That means you can sell crypto that has fallen in value since you bought it, lock in the loss, and then turn around immediately and buy it back again. The move has its limits — the IRS knows crypto investors have been doing this for years and may be looking for a chance to recoup that revenue. To do so, the agency could turn to another part of the tax code that requires transactions to have “economic substance” to be eligible for tax benefits, according to Matt Metras, an accountant in Rochester, New York, who represents taxpayers before the IRS. In other words, you have to expose yourself to some kind of market risk before rebuying the same coin.
The big question then is how long you should wait before repurchasing to still qualify for the deduction. The most conservative approach is to wait 30 days, just like you would with stocks before rebuying. But most accountants I spoke to argued you would be able to make a pretty compelling case in a shorter period of time that you exposed yourself to market risk given how volatile the crypto market is.
How much shorter is anybody’s guess. The IRS hasn’t come out with any detailed crypto guidance since 2019. Whether you wait 20 minutes or 20 days really comes down to personal risk tolerance: Are the tax savings worth the potential pain and scrutiny of an audit?
Separately, there has been some buzz lately about taking a full write-off for losses on coins that have been completely decimated, like Luna, which means you could deduct the total amount of losses against your taxable income without being subject to the $3,000 annual cap.
That’s a no-no for most. To meet the IRS requirements to take a full investment write-off, the coin must be genuinely worthless. Even if Luna has tanked, it’s still worth something. And its creator has proposed a revival plan, so it’s possible it could become more valuable in the future. Plus, you have to completely dispose of the asset to claim the full write-off — you would have to send it to a burn wallet (which removes the coin from circulation).
There is a workaround to the $3,000 cap for those who are full-time traders, provided they abide by certain rules. If you qualify for “tax trader status” and make a special election, you recognize gains or losses at the end of the year, without actually selling anything. Losses can be deducted in full from taxable income. But beware, if you’ve had gains, they’ll be taxed as short-term gains regardless of how long you’ve held them. That means they will face your ordinary income tax rates, which are higher than long-term capital gains rates, says Sharon Yip, a certified public accountant in Reston, Virginia.
If you plan on selling any crypto for a loss, make sure you’re aware of how long you’ve been holding your coins — anything under the one-year mark is considered a short-term capital loss. Short-term losses will be used to offset short-term gains first, and then long-term gains (and vice versa, with long-term losses offsetting long-term gains first before being applied to short-term ones).
Need I point out that you should never let fear of paying higher rates for short-term gains make you hold onto a crypto investment for longer than you’d like? Colby Cross, an accountant in Seattle, says he had one client who had an eye-popping gain on Filecoin in less than a year, but was worried about paying more in taxes if she sold it. If you think your coin is trading at an all-time high, don’t try to save a bit on taxes, especially given how quickly crypto markets can turn, Cross warns.
Finally, some bad news: If you’ve been scammed by a crypto scheme, there’s no more tax break following changes under the 2017 tax overhaul. Prior to the law, many fraud victims were able to write off what they lost. Now, they will be saddled with those losses, without a tax write-off to soften the blow.
Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Terra Is Back From Bankruptcy
Lessons From the World’s Best Stablecoin: Andy Mukherjee | 2022-05-31T12:38:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Crushed by Crypto Losses? Here Are Some Tax Tips. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/crushed-by-crypto-losses-here-are-some-tax-tips/2022/05/31/a135f1d2-e0d1-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/crushed-by-crypto-losses-here-are-some-tax-tips/2022/05/31/a135f1d2-e0d1-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
If you had $1 million to invest in a better workplace, how would you spend it? For factory workers at C.H.I. Overhead Doors, the answer was air conditioning.
As part of its investment in C.H.I., KKR & Co. set aside about $1 million each year and asked its hourly workforce to decide how to spend it to improve their day-to-day experience. “We said, ‘We’ll follow your lead, wherever you want to go, we will spend it. But we don’t want a new $1 million piece of equipment. We want life to be better in the factory,’” said Pete Stavros, co-head of Americas private equity at KKR, which acquired C.H.I. in 2015 and is now selling it for $3 billion to steelmaker Nucor Corp. A C.H.I. manufacturing plant in central Illinois would heat up to more than 100 degrees some days during the summer. “Those days were when people got hurt because they were exhausted or in a rush,” Stavros said in an interview. “We put the AC in, which was a massive undertaking for 1 million square feet of uninsulated space. The next summer, there were fewer injuries and, by the way, the quality is higher. It’s about listening to employees. They weren’t overtly saying this will make us more safe. They were saying this will make us happier and help us enjoy our jobs more.”
Read more: What Does Nucor See in Garage Doors? An Opening
Thanks in part to the air conditioning but also a methodical, data-driven assessment of how and when injuries were happening, the rate of incidents reportable to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration fell 58% over the course of KKR’s investment. The next year, C.H.I employees chose to spend their $1 million annual budget on a cafeteria with healthier food options. The following year, it was better breakrooms in the newly air-conditioned plant. The latest installment went to fund an on-site health clinic that saves employees in the rural community from having to make a 45-minute drive for simple checkups and prescriptions. C.H.I. was the first company where KKR instituted this annual employee-driven spending, but it’s replicating the blueprint elsewhere.
The program is an offshoot of Stavros’ passion project of putting equity in the hands of rank-and-file workers with a goal of making those employees more invested in the company’s operational health and chipping away at income inequality. At C.H.I., all 800 company employees became owners of the company alongside KKR. These equity grants were on top of, not a replacement for, wages and benefits and were free to those making less than $100,000 a year. The result is that everyone at the company is in line for a windfall in the sale to Nucor. KKR is set to earn 10 times the original equity it invested in C.H.I., making the return one of its highest ever for a US buyout. Meanwhile, the average hourly plant worker or truck driver will receive a $175,000 payout on their ownership stakes, while some long-tenured staff will receive as much as $800,000 before taxes. A big reason the payouts will be so high is because of the operational strides C.H.I. has made: Revenue more than doubled on an organic basis while earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization has increased almost fourfold.
Watch: Should Workers Be Owners, Too?
By any measure, C.H.I. is a massive success story for the concept of equity grants for all. KKR has broad equity-ownership programs at 25 companies and counting. This is now the firm’s “only way of doing business in the US,” Stavros said. Every time I hear about this effort, my first thought is, “Why aren’t more companies doing this?”
Stavros has started a foundation called Ownership Works, which aims to encourage rank-and-file equity issuance and provide a forum for sharing best practices. There are more than 60 partners, but the vast majority of them are financial and professional services companies that will lend programmatic support, labor advocates, foundations and other private equity firms who have committed to rolling out similar programs at some of their portfolio companies. The number of public company partners is a mere two. They are manufacturer Ingersoll Rand Inc., which issued $100 million in equity to employees as part of a 2017 public offering for the former Gardner Denver after a KKR buyout and an additional $150 million of grants in 2020, and motorcycle maker Harley-Davidson Inc., which cited KKR as inspiration for a decision last year to distribute stock to 4,500 employees, including hourly factory workers.
Broad-based equity ownership can work in a range of industries, but manufacturing is a particularly good fit because there tends to be less turnover at the hourly employee level than, say, in retail or food-service businesses. With growth difficult to come by in many corners of the industrial world, companies rely heavily on productivity improvements, which tend to be best carried out by those working on the factory floor rather than the headquarters executives who usually receive stock payouts. The industrial sector also has a particularly acute labor shortage that companies have been complaining about long before the latest pandemic disruptions.
More public manufacturing company CEOs should be thinking about out-of-the box ways to bolster productivity and retain employees. But I’ve asked quite a few of them over the past two years whether they would ever consider issuing equity to their factory workers, and the response is usually a mixture of declining to answer, pointing to other programs like 401(k) matching that are nice but aren’t capable of generating the same kind of wealth, or offering myriad excuses for why broader equity grants won’t work for their particular workforce.
“It’s going to take changing a lot of minds and hearts and case-study building to get people to think differently,” Stavros said. “We’re there on climate. If you pull any sustainability report on climate, you won’t see return-on-investment metrics. No one cares. When it comes to labor for some reason, we’re still stuck in this mindset of ‘show me the numbers.’”
To be fair, making these broad equity-distribution programs successful isn’t as easy as flipping a switch. They require a significant amount of paperwork, investment in proper personal financial education for staff and an overhaul of training to help workers think through decisions like owners. At C.H.I., as part of the equity payout from the Nucor deal, all 800 workers will receive a year of prepaid financial coaching through Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Ayco arm and tax preparation services from Ernst & Young. Private equity also has the benefit of more concentrated decision-making, and public company boards tend not to be big risk takers.
But allocating a certain percentage of profits each year to a workplace improvement budget that employees have a direct say over involves a fairly minimal amount of financial capital and effort on the part of the company but a potentially material payoff in terms of workforce engagement and quality of life. This seems as if it would be a very easy first step for companies that say they care about doing the right things for society and are serious about investing in a more committed and productive workforce. There are likely countless other factories nationwide where trappings like air conditioning and on-site health clinics could make a big difference.
• The CEO Pay Ratio Rule Is a Failed Experiment: Michelle Leder
• Walmart Truckers Pull Even With Junior Bankers: Jared Dillian | 2022-05-31T12:39:06Z | www.washingtonpost.com | KKR Wins by Treating Workers More Like Owners - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/kkr-wins-by-treating-workers-more-like-owners/2022/05/31/04e9c9bc-e0da-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/kkr-wins-by-treating-workers-more-like-owners/2022/05/31/04e9c9bc-e0da-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
New homes at the Cielo at Sand Creek by Century Communities housing development in Antioch, California, U.S., on Thursday, March 31, 2022. U.S. home prices shows signs of becoming unhinged from fundamentals like they did in the housing bubble that preceded the 2008 crash, according to a blog post by the Dallas Federal Reserve bank. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
The housing market has turned in the past few weeks. We’re probably looking at a cooling-off period rather than something nastier, but both possibilities lead to the same conclusion for would-be homebuyers: Be patient.
It makes more sense to wait to see how much the market will loosen rather than rushing in now at the first sign of improvement. Buying conditions are likely to be more favorable in a month or two than they are today.
It was mortgage rates that finally broke the fever. Their relentless rise got to a level that changed buyer behavior. Earlier this month 30-year mortgage rates rose to their highest level since 2009. Mortgage purchase applications have fallen to their lowest level since 2018. The inventory of unsold single family homes, while still far below pre-pandemic levels, is now rising on a year-over-year basis, according to Altos Research.
This still appears to be a manageable shift for homebuilders. Toll Brothers, a high-end homebuilding company, reported strong earnings last week. In their conference call they said the moderation in demand they’ve seen recently looks on par with the seasonal swings they experienced prior to the pandemic. Their customers put down non-refundable deposits of $75,000 when they place an order — a far cry from the low deposit days of the mid-2000’s housing bubble — so their cancellation rate in May isn’t meaningfully different from the 1% rate they had in the prior quarter.
They’ve also been trying to rebuild their inventories so that when customers come looking for homes, the wait is closer to the 9 to 10 months it’s been historically, rather than the 15 months this past year. A mild slowdown that allows builders to focus on completing existing orders and replenish inventories is fine by them.
For people looking to buy, there are three good reasons to wait. The first is that we’re exiting the seasonally-strongest period of the year. Even in a normal housing market you’d expect the supply of houses to rise and pricing to flatten out over the next few months. In general, if you haven’t found what you want by Memorial Day, there’s no reason to buy a place in a hurry.
The second is that for the first time since the pandemic, the market is softening. There are going to be more homes for sale a month from now than there are today. The percentage of homes taking price cuts, while still below normal, is rising quickly. If the economy experiences a soft landing rather than a hard landing, investors in stocks might regret waiting to buy, but housing is slower-moving and a different dynamic. Whether we get a soft landing or a hard landing, you have time to wait a little while to see which one it’s going to be.
The third reason is that with the overall economy showing signs of weakness, longer-term interest rates have actually been declining in recent weeks, which is just starting to show up in mortgage rates. Mortgage rates fell to a one-month low this week — if the economy continues to deteriorate, the conversation on mortgage rates could shift from whether they’ll hit 6% to whether they’ll fall back below 5%.
My view of the housing market is we’re getting the rebalancing we knew we needed at the end of the year. Inventories are rising from historic lows to something closer to normal. Price growth should level out for awhile, perhaps with some modest declines in the markets that experienced the largest growth. But above-trend employment and wage growth should prevent things from getting too extreme. And there’s a decent chance mortgage rates will fall more from current levels as markets get more confident that the Federal Reserve will be able to curb inflation.
Conditions might not work out exactly as I expect, but it still makes sense for homebuyers to wait until the picture is clearer. Economically-sensitive stocks will surge ahead of a stabilization in the economy but the housing market isn’t like that. A lot has changed in the past three months, and another month or two could make an even bigger difference.
Adjustable Mortgage Rush Isn’t the Same as 2008: Alexis Leondis
Long Covid in Real Estate Weighs on Core Inflation: John Authers
Red-Hot Home Prices Freeze Out Lower Earners: Jonathan Levin | 2022-05-31T12:39:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Ready to Buy a House? Just Wait a Few Weeks - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ready-to-buy-a-house-just-wait-a-few-weeks/2022/05/31/a0f3c0be-e0d1-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/ready-to-buy-a-house-just-wait-a-few-weeks/2022/05/31/a0f3c0be-e0d1-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
“Every time you lose a foot of peat, there are just so many emissions associated with that," says one federal official. But the long-running restoration efforts need private partners in order to scale up.
Sunlight illuminates steam in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge on March 15 near South Mills, N.C. The refuge, which straddles the border with Virginia, is the largest remnant of a forested swamp that once covered more than a million acres. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post)
GREAT DISMAL SWAMP NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE — George Washington himself aspired to drain this sprawling wetland that straddles the border of North Carolina and Virginia — one in a long line of investors eager to carve out farmland, harvest stands of Atlantic white cedar and make something useful out of what many once saw as a “miserable morass” of swamp.
These days, as Eric Soderholm rumbles through this wilderness in his truck just after dawn, determined to do precisely the opposite: make as much as possible of the once-drained wetland wet again.
At one stop on his usual rounds, he crosses a man-made canal by canoe and navigates the thorny underbrush until he reaches a small clearing, where he checks a monitoring gauge buried in the muck.
“I spend a lot of time bushwhacking through trails into these peatlands so we can get an accurate picture of water levels,” says Soderholm, a wetland restoration specialist for the Nature Conservancy. “We are trying to mimic what the natural hydrology of these peatlands would look like.”
Nearby, Fred Wurster, a hydrologist for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, points out tree roots that stand exposed a couple feet above the ground — an unmistakable sign that the peaty soil below has degraded and subsided over time.
“We are trying to stop the loss,” Wurster says. “To turn this back into a sink of carbon rather than a source.”
Up and down the coast of North Carolina, as well in other parts of the Southeast, environmental advocates and wildlife officials have spent years working across tens of thousands of acres to reverse the toll caused by the network of ditches and roads that long ago altered a landscape critical to plants and animals, and essential to combating climate change.
Site by site, grant by grant, they have constructed a series of water control structures — some of them little more than aluminum or wooden risers installed across existing ditches — to help regulate the flow of water and maintain moisture across vast swaths of parched peatland.
“A big plumbing job,” Brian Boutin, director of the Nature Conservancy’s Albemarle-Pamlico Sounds Program, calls it.
And as scientists scramble to restore as much peatland as possible in this corner of the South, they are insistent that nonprofits and public agencies have neither the funding nor the manpower to do it alone — so they’re looking for ways to make it attractive for private landowners to become saviors of peat, as well.
Peat could be a 'carbon bomb' or a climate change solution
While the basic idea is simple, the implications can be profound.
Restoring peatland can reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires that in the past have fed on the parched peat and burned for months on end, sending greenhouse gases and other pollution into the air, scientists say. It can safeguard habitat for black bears, migratory birds and other animals that call these wetlands home. Healthy peat can improve local water quality and help mitigate flooding.
And as the world speeds toward dangerous levels of global warming, few landscapes can prevent as much carbon from escaping into the atmosphere as peat, which is made up of decayed organic matter that forms over thousands of years. It is one of nature’s least glamorous, most powerful forms of carbon capture.
‘It builds resiliency’
The type of peat that populates much of North Carolina and neighboring states, known as “pocosin,” is marked by woody shrubs and acidic soils. It can store huge amounts of carbon when wet, or release huge amounts when drained or burned.
The United Nations has said that while peatlands cover only 3 percent of the world’s land surface — from Scotland’s bogs to the yawning tropical tracts in the Congo Basin — they store twice as much carbon as in all the planet’s forests. Protecting them could reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated hundreds of millions of tons per year.
But while scientists and conservationists have long focused on the role that trees and oceans play in storing monumental amounts of carbon, only more recently has the power of peat to help the world meet its climate goals gained more widespread attention.
“They are enormous carbon sinks,” Curtis Richardson, director of the Duke University Wetland Center, said of peatlands. “And if you allow them to oxidize away because they are drained, you are adding tremendous amounts [of carbon] to the atmosphere and causing a huge problem.”
By the time the government established Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in the early 1990s, much of the peatland in the area west of North Carolina’s Outer Banks was dry and brittle. Decades of ditching and draining by previous owners had altered a third of the landscape and left parts of the area dried out and degraded.
Over time, devastating wildfires ravaged parts of the landscape, requiring huge firefighting resources and releasing millions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere.
One in particular, known as the Evans Road fire, caused a lasting scar and underscored the importance of the efforts officials already had started to restore as much peat land as possible.
The fire began with a lightning strike on private land on June 1, 2008, and burned for nearly four months. Ultimately, it scorched more than 40,000 acres, including parts of the federal wildlife refuge. Smoke from the blaze reached the state capital, Raleigh, 150 miles west, and the firefighting costs approached $20 million.
“Every time you lose a foot of peat, there are just so many emissions associated with that,” said Sara Ward, a U.S. Fish & Wildlife ecologist who has worked for more than a decade to restore peat lands in the area.
The Democratic Republic of Congo faces pressure its peatland and the huge amount of carbon it holds
In the years since, the peat restoration effort at the refuge has grown into one of the largest in the nation, encompassing the re-wetting of more than 43,000 acres of peatlands. Officials maintain a system of infrastructure — mainly water control structures and dikes in existing ditches — aimed at counteracting the artificial drainage that can starve wetlands of their natural moisture, make them susceptible to fire and the release of stores of carbon.
“This is both a climate mitigation and an adaptation strategy,” Ward said one day as she rode through the refuge and its massive plots of shrubby vegetation stretching in every direction. “It builds resiliency.”
Despite the tens of thousands of acres environmental activists and public officials have restored, scaling up the effort — including into areas that are privately owned — is neither cheap nor easy.
“We have no illusions that the Fish & Wildlife Service is going to have the budget to do these restorations at scale,” Ward said. “We need partners.”
‘Those emissions reductions are real’
One way advocates hope to find those partners is by demonstrating that restoring drained and deteriorating peat land can be financially beneficial.
Beginning nearly a decade ago, environmental advocates teamed with government and university scientists to launch a pilot project at Pocosin Lakes that examined how greenhouse gases are released and absorbed from peat that is restored, vs. those left drained.
In 2017, the Nature Conservancy, along with the greenhouse gas accounting firm TerraCarbon, won approval for a first-of-its-kind carbon accounting methodology that created a path for landowners to generate carbon offsets from the restoration of peatland.
“We are able to show tangible greenhouse gas reductions immediately upon re-wetting peatland,” said Boutin, of the Nature Conservancy. “Those emissions reductions are real, and they are measured.”
It is still early days, but the hope is that with a proven methodology on the books, private landowners will eventually be enticed to restore pocosin sites and sell the certified carbon credits that result. The approach could help cover the upfront restoration costs and create a new source of income for landowners, while improving wildlife habitat and keeping a growing amount of carbon in the ground.
A similar notion was behind an effort backed by Duke University in recent years, where researchers undertook a pilot project on about 300 acres. They measured how much carbon saturated peat can store, which will influence the amount of credits the land might ultimately produce.
“We’ve got a couple really good years of data that demonstrated scientifically how many tons of carbon these systems could store if they were restored,” said Richardson, the Duke wetlands expert. “It looks very promising, and the science supports it.”
Richardson said he expects that the approach will pick up steam in coming years if the financial incentives prove worthwhile. “It’s not a gold mine,” Richardson said. But, he added, “I think it’s a win-win.”
Boutin agrees. “Nobody is going to become a gazillionaire because they are sitting on drained pocosin land,” he said. But it could be an additional revenue stream that helps landowners and the environment at the same time.
That’s the goal of Angie Tooley, manager of the Carolina Ranch of Hyde County, a 15,000-acre private ranch that sits near the Pocosin Lakes refuge.
“I didn’t know what carbon offsets were four or five years ago,” Tooley said, but these days the ranch is working toward transforming its thousands of acres of drained pocosin into an active carbon farm. The idea is to generate credits to offset some of the ranch’s tax burden, while also funding conservation work, making the land more resilient to wildfire and creating habitat for wildlife.
“We have had a lot of landowners up and down the coast who have pocosins knock on our door and ask, ‘How do you do this?’ ” Tooley said. “It’s exciting; it’s generated an interested that you didn’t see before.”
Until such private efforts proliferate, public officials and environmental advocates continue to try to expand the footprint of their restoration work. The Nature Conservancy, for instance, is involved in pocosin projects across more than 100,000 acres and numerous government refuges.
Back in the Great Dismal Swamp, where two massive wildfires over a decade ago released more than 6 million tons of carbon into the atmosphere, Soderholm makes his rounds through the shrubby wilderness, where bald cypress, tupelo, maple and pine trees that rise from its murky floor.
He stops to inspect the water flowing through a series of structures meant to keep drainage in check, to keep the wetland as close to natural as possible, to keep the carbon safely stored in the loamy soil.
“We are setting these sites up for long-term sustainability,” Soderholm said.
The project, he said, is undoubtedly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and there is “an urgency to do that,” he said. But Soderholm feels a similar urgency to maintain this wild and diverse landscape, which took thousands of years to form but which humans managed to alter in a number of decades.
He hopes people today will be able to show their grandchildren the same trees and the same species of birds and bears that have long thrived in a swamp that others once sought to drain.
“Restoration is such an important part of our work as humans going forward,” he said, “if we want to make it possible for our descendants to enjoy all these things we take for granted.” | 2022-05-31T12:39:24Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In North Carolina, a quest to restore peat and keep carbon in the soil - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/05/31/north-carolina-peat-carbon-capture/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2022/05/31/north-carolina-peat-carbon-capture/ |
Monkeypox patients should abstain from sex while symptomatic, U.K. says
Guidance comes as 179 cases have been confirmed in the country — the highest reported number worldwide
An employee works in a lab for vaccine maker Bavarian Nordic in Martinsried, Germany, on May 24. (Lukas Barth/Reuters)
People who have monkeypox or think they could have it “should avoid contact with other people until their lesions have healed and the scabs have dried off,” the guidance says.
The WHO said Sunday that nearly two dozen countries have reported a total of 257 confirmed cases and about 120 suspected cases of monkeypox. In Britain, which has the highest reported number of confirmed monkeypox cases in the world, according to the WHO, health authorities have suggested new measures for health-care workers and the public.
Rosamund Lewis, the WHO’s technical leader on monkeypox, said in a briefing Monday that most confirmed cases have been identified in gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men, and that the risk to the wider population is “low.”
“This group of people [men who have sex with men] are those who are most affected by the cases at the present time, and the idea is to obviously stop further spread so that it doesn’t affect the more general population,” she said. “Having said that, anyone can be at risk.”
Lewis said “the world has an opportunity to stop this outbreak” by identifying confirmed or potential cases, isolating them and tracing their close contacts, and keeping an eye on those who have been exposed, who under WHO guidelines do not need to stay home if they are not exhibiting symptoms.
“At the moment, we are not concerned about a global pandemic,” she added. “We are concerned that individuals may acquire this infection through high-risk exposure if they don’t have the information they need to protect themselves.”
People with monkeypox can isolate at home, as long as they are monitored by local health authorities, the guidance states. Their close contacts don’t have to quarantine if they are asymptomatic but will be monitored and may be “told to isolate for 21 days if necessary.”
People with confirmed or suspected monkeypox should “abstain from sex while symptomatic, including the period of early symptom onset, and while lesions are present,” it says.
It adds that “there is currently no available evidence of monkeypox in genital excretions” but recommends “as a precaution” that those who have had monkeypox “use condoms for 8 weeks after infection,” noting that the guidance could change.
The British Health Security Agency, one of the departments behind the guidance, has started offering a smallpox vaccine, a new version of which has been approved in the United States for use against monkeypox, to close contacts of confirmed cases “to reduce the risk of symptomatic infection and severe illness.”
Studies suggest that the smallpox vaccine is at least 85 percent effective against monkeypox, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The United States stopped vaccinating people against smallpox — which was eradicated globally in 1980 — as a matter of routine in the 1970s.
The WHO has not recommended universal monkeypox vaccination, though it says countries may want to vaccinate close contacts after they have been exposed to the virus or health-care workers who may be exposed in the future. | 2022-05-31T12:39:30Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Monkeypox patients should abstain from sex while symptomatic, U.K. says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/05/31/monkeypox-sex-abstain-uk-guidance/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/05/31/monkeypox-sex-abstain-uk-guidance/ |
How to prevent squirrel damage to a wood deck
A reader wants to know how to get squirrels to stop gnawing on this deck. (Reader photo)
Q: My partner and I bought a condo in a historic garden apartment complex about 18 months ago. Individual-unit owners are responsible for construction and maintenance of the rear decks. When we moved in, it seemed as if our deck was in working order. It had been repainted recently and is less than 10 years old.
However, squirrels seem to be gnawing at the deck. The cap to the top post of the staircase is chewed, and the first two steps have some damage at the edge. Two giant holly trees abut the deck, and I’m sure squirrels live in them. We can’t do anything about the trees (unless we prove that they’re damaging the house), and we can’t attach anything permanent to the back exterior wall aside from the deck itself. There are also constraints on the materials we can use for the decks: treated lumber or composite.
How do we get rid of the squirrels? Do we just need to replace the deck with composite?
A: Replacing the deck with a composite material might eliminate the problem, but it would be expensive, and there’s no guarantee the squirrels won’t damage it, too.
The animals aren’t actually eating the decking; they’re gnawing it to wear down their teeth, which grow constantly. Wood is relatively soft and becomes even more so when it absorbs moisture, so if given the choice between wood and composite (usually a mixture of wood fibers and plastic), they’ll probably prefer wood. However, if wood isn’t available, they’ll still need to gnaw, so they’ll find something else.
Trapping them also doesn’t seem like a good option, especially if you’re someone who would find this acceptable only if the animals could be released unharmed. In Virginia, as in many states, it is illegal to trap and move wild animals to a different property. Even licensed trappers cannot transport the animals. Trappers must kill the animals on the property, whereas commercial nuisance animal permit holders can move the animals for “humane dispatch” at another location.
Even if you don’t care whether the squirrels are killed, removing the ones in your yard wouldn’t be a permanent solution. Some will probably remain in the neighborhood, and they will have babies, usually twice a year. As they grow up, they will seek new homes and will probably discover whatever is making your yard a good place for squirrels to hang out.
There may be ways to make your backyard less hospitable to the squirrels. However, two large holly trees are a powerful magnet; the trees provide shelter year-round and food during the winter, provided at least one is a female tree and a male tree is nearby.
If the trees are English holly (Ilex aquifolium), you might be able to make the case that this species is nonnative and invasive and is therefore appropriate for removal and replacement. But this argument won’t work if the trees are American holly (Ilex opaca), which is native to Virginia and most of the East Coast. The leaf shapes and red berries are similar, but the native holly has duller leaves and berries. Holly berries are poisonous to people and pets, but they’re good food for birds — and squirrels, who will eat them off the tree and store them to ensure food during winter and early spring.
So, what can you do? The quickest and least-expensive solution is to make chewing on your deck an experience that squirrels find repellent. There are products for this, such as motion-activated devices that make noise, flash lights or spray water, as well as home recipes, such as concoctions that smell or taste repulsive.
In considering which to try, factor in how unpleasant it would be if you were confronted with the same deterrent. You probably don’t want to hear noisemakers or have water spray you in the face when you walk on the deck, nor do you want to smell mothballs or garlic when you’re looking to sit in the sunshine and enjoy the breeze. But things that target the taste buds are perfect for turning away squirrels.
Try spritzing the exposed wood and nearby painted areas with something rich in capsicum, the fire in red pepper. One recipe — you’ll find many online — consists of two tablespoons of hot sauce, four cups of water and a squirt of hand dishwashing detergent. (The soap helps the mixture stick.) Apply via a squirt bottle or a brush.
You also can buy a taste deterrent. You’ll need to reapply the treatment after a heavy rain, but after a time, the squirrels should conclude that there’s something better to chew on. Even if you don’t get out right after a storm, they may stay away, especially if you’ve provided them with a piece of lumber or another gnawing alternative.
If the problem persists, call a pest-control company. Most companies offer free estimates, and experienced eyes may see things you’ve missed that can make your deck less of a target. If even that fails, a composite deck might be the solution — but it’s not the first thing to try. | 2022-05-31T12:39:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tips for preventing squirrel damage on a wood deck - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/05/31/tips-preventing-squirrel-damage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/home/2022/05/31/tips-preventing-squirrel-damage/ |
Young activists create Asian American history lesson to fight racism
Mina Fedor and other Youth Rising AAPI members came up with a program to teach the contributions of Asian Americans.
Mina Fedor, second from right, attends the Act to Change Community Reception this month in Los Angeles, California, with fellow AAPI Youth Rising youth board members, from left, Siwoo Rhie, Max Wong and Charlee Trenkle. Mina received the Changemaker of the Year award at the event for founding AAPI Youth Rising and working to stop prejudice against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. (Family photo)
“Education is so important to creating change and fighting racism,” said Mina Fedor, who is 14 years old. “But there’s so little [taught] in schools about AAPI [Asian American and Pacific Islander] history and the contributions of Asian Americans.”
An organization Mina founded last year called AAPI Youth Rising aims to correct that. She and several other middle-schoolers in Oakland, California, created the group “to take small actions to make positive change in our communities.” Those who belong — AAPI youths and their allies across the United States — have been involved in speaking out, supporting legislative action, art activism — and most recently, a program of free lessons on AAPI history.
Mina and three other teens launched the program this month to coincide with Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. Since March, they’ve been researching and designing their slide presentation. Their hope is that, over time, more schools nationwide will offer at least one such lesson during the school year.
The debut took place at Chandler School in Pasadena, California. Mina, Siwoo Rhie, Charlee Trenkle and Max Wong traveled from their homes in the San Francisco Bay area to speak to the fifth- and eighth-graders there.
The team talked about the diversity of the Asian American experience, with more than 20 million Asian Americans, representing more than 20 countries, living in the United States. They shared information about early anti-Asian laws and the rise of the AAPI civil rights movement 40 years ago.
“I was a little nervous at first [about the presentation], but I had a great time,” Mina told KidsPost by phone from Pasadena.
“The students seemed really interested,” Max said.
Calling out prejudice
The past two years have seen a spike in attacks on Asian Americans.
This is connected to the coronavirus pandemic. Some people falsely blame China, the site of the first cases, for the pandemic, and some have reacted by lashing out at anyone of Asian descent. The Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism reported that 369 anti-Asian hate crimes occurred in 21 major U.S. cities in 2021. That was an increase of 224 percent from 2020.
Even when anti-Asian actions aren’t criminal, they can be hurtful. Mina and Max have experienced bullying, including mean jokes aimed at whether they had covid-19 or ate certain animals. Mina was also disturbed early last year by a racist gesture directed at her mother, who is Korean.
To speak out against hostility and violence, Mina planned a rally in Berkeley, California, in March 2021 that drew more than 1,200 people. Young activists carried signs that read “I am not a disease” and “Stop Asian Hate.” AAPI Youth Rising was created soon after.
“We wanted to uplift youth voices,” Mina said. “Young people have opinions and ideas, but we weren’t seeing any of that” made public.
Since the rally, the organization has sponsored a diverse-voices youth art exhibit, helped with a mural on Asian American heroes in San Francisco’s Chinatown and spoken to other social-justice groups.
Their work has been widely recognized. Mina recently received the Changemaker of the Year Award from the anti-bullying group Act to Change. In January, American Girl partnered with AAPI Youth Rising when the company announced its doll of the year: a Chinese American doll named Corinne Tan. In February, Mina was named a finalist for Time’s 2022 Kid of the Year.
Plans for AAPI history video
Mina doesn’t focus on awards, though, but on next steps. Schools have signed up for the AAPI history lesson, which will be offered virtually and in-person till the end of the school year. This summer, the team plans to adapt their lesson to a video format. It will be available on the organization’s website.
“That way we can reach more schools because we won’t have to be there” to present, Mina said.
The team’s lesson in Pasadena is prompting greater understanding and change, according to Jill Bergeron, director of Chandler’s middle school.
“By raising awareness, [Mina and her team] are helping to curb bias in our communities,” she said. “Our students see that people their age are doing work often attributed to adults, and they are getting a sense of what’s possible and how they might be involved.”
If you’re interested
To become involved, kids and teens can contact AAPI Youth Rising through aapiyouthrising.org. There are chapters in California, Maine and Michigan.
To schedule an AAPI history lesson for grades 4 through 12, teachers can contact aapiyouthrising.org. It’s free. | 2022-05-31T12:39:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Young activists create Asian American history lesson to fight racism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/05/31/mina-fedor-aapi-youth-activist/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/05/31/mina-fedor-aapi-youth-activist/ |
Post Politics Now Biden to host New Zealand’s PM, the Fed’s Powell and South Korea’s BTS
Noted: Visiting New Zealand PM oversaw swift passage of gun measures
Noted: Biden wants to rebuild the EPA but doesn’t have the money to do it
On our radar: K-pop juggernaut BTS to meet with Biden on Asian hate
Noted: The role James Biden plays in his older brother’s life
The latest: Biden says he won’t give up on ‘common sense’ gun measures
President Biden makes his way to a magnolia tree planting ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House on May 30. (Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post)
Today, President Biden will have parade of visitors coming through the Oval Office at the White House: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell and South Korean superstar pop group BTS.
Each visit has a noteworthy angle: New Zealand moved swiftly to change its gun laws after a 2019 mass shooting. Powell and Biden have a shared agenda of taming inflation. And Biden and members of BTS are scheduled to discuss a rise in anti-Asian hate crimes and discrimination that began in the early stages of the pandemic.
11 a.m. Eastern: Biden meets with Ardern in the Oval Office of the White House.
1:15 p.m. Eastern: Biden meets with Powell in the Oval Office of the White House.
3 p.m. Eastern: Biden hosts BTS in the Oval Office of the White House.
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who’s visiting President Biden at the White House on Tuesday, oversaw swift passage of gun control measures in her country after the mass shootings at mosques in the city of Christchurch in 2019, including a ban on military-style semiautomatic weapons.
“We are a very pragmatic people. When we saw something like that happen, everyone said, ‘Never again.’ And so then it was incumbent on us as politicians to respond to that,” Ardern said during an appearance last week on CBS’s “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
“Now, we have legitimate needs for guns in our country for things like peace control and to protect our biodiversity, but you don’t need a military-style semiautomatic weapon to do that. And so we got rid of that,” Ardern added.
The reforms in New Zealand also included a firearms buyback program.
The White House has billed the visit between Biden and Ardern as an opportunity to advance the U.S.-New Zealand partnership and their shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific region. In a statement last week, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the meeting would also touch upon “countering terrorism and radicalization to violence both off and online.”
It remains unclear whether there are enough Republican votes to cut a deal on new gun restrictions in the wake of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Tex.
But there is one thing Senate Democrats can do on their own to impact the nation’s gun laws: confirm a permanent director to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, The Post’s Leigh Ann Caldwell and Theodoric Meyer write in The Early 202:
President Biden has tapped Steve Dettelbach to lead ATF, the federal agency tasked with enforcing gun laws and prosecuting illicit activity, including gun trafficking. His confirmation hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee was last week and he is gaining support among Democrats critical to his quest for confirmation. …
Inflation is expected to be high on the agenda Tuesday as President Biden meets in the Oval Office with Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell.
The meeting will be the first since Biden renominated Powell to lead the central bank and the Senate confirmed his nomination for a second term on May 12 by a lopsided bipartisan vote.
In his role, Powell faces the daunting task of slashing the highest inflation in 40 years without sending the country into a recession.
Biden, meanwhile, has called fighting inflation his top domestic priority. The issue is dogging him and fellow Democrats heading into the fall midterm elections.
In an op-ed published Monday by the Wall Street Journal, Biden pledged to “work with anyone — Democrat, Republican, or independent — willing to have an open and honest discussion that delivers real solutions for the American people.”
Prices for just about everything Americans buy — gas, groceries, housing, cars, clothes, even televisions — have spiked in the past two years.
In an advisory, the White House said Biden and Powell would discuss “the state of the American and global economy” more broadly, as well as inflation. Reporters will be permitted in the Oval Office for the start of the meeting, the White House said.
You can read more about how Biden and other officials have responded to inflation here from The Post’s Mike Madden and Rachel Siegel.
After years of neglect, President Biden has promised to reinvigorate the EPA as part of his push to tackle climate change and ease the pollution burden placed on poor and minority communities. But the agency’s budgetary woes are preventing the nation’s top pollution regulator from doing its job, in ways large and small, writes The Post’s Dino Grandoni writes.
Per Dino:
Members of the superstar South Korean pop group BTS are scheduled to arrive at the White House on Tuesday afternoon for a meeting with President Biden that is expected to focus largely on anti-Asian hate crimes and discrimination.
The White House announced Sunday that the meeting would be closed to the press, a move that will keep the event from having a paparazzi-like atmosphere.
A spike in anti-Asian hate crimes began early in the pandemic when China was blamed for the outbreak, including by President Donald Trump.
“President Biden and BTS will also discuss the importance of diversity and inclusion and BTS’ platform as youth ambassadors who spread a message of hope and positivity across the world,” the White House said in a statement in announcing the visit.
BTS is the best-selling musical group in South Korean history and has won multiple awards in the United States.
About a year ago, Biden signed legislation that aimed to make the reporting of hate crimes more accessible at local and state levels. It also directed the Justice Department to designate a point person to expedite the review of hate crimes related to the pandemic and authorized grants to state and local governments to better respond to hate crimes.
James Biden has in many ways always been the protector in the Biden family, the one who made sure the machinery ran while his brother soared.
The Post’s Matt Viser takes a deep look at the president’s younger brother in a piece that includes a rare interview and touches on a number of his financial deals, some of which have turned sour, involving Hunter Biden, the president’s son.
Matt writes:
President Biden as recently as late last year referred to James Biden as “my brother Jimmy, who fixes everything.” He has been there for the bad times, comforting family members in distress, visiting the bedside of loved ones, getting them into rehab when needed. He was by his brother’s side at his first wedding, was at the hospital when Beau died, found a neurosurgeon when Joe had a brain aneurysm.
In the interview, James Biden said he tries to keep a low profile, and he used more than a few expletives to describe unwelcome attention from Republicans and the media.
You can read Matt’s full piece here.
President Biden told reporters Monday that he would not give up on efforts to achieve “common sense” gun legislation a day after spending nearly four hours visiting with the families of the victims in the Uvalde, Tex., shootings that left 19 children and two teachers dead.
Meanwhile, the chairwoman of the House judiciary subcommittee on crime called for hearings on Capitol Hill to give families a chance to tell their stories and to seek ways to prevent mass shootings.
The Post’s Ellen Nakashima and Paulina Villegas take a look at the latest pledges from politicians in response to the shootings. You can read their full story here. | 2022-05-31T12:39:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Biden to host New Zealand’s PM, the Fed’s Jerome Powell and South Korea’s BTS - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/biden-jerome-powell-bts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/biden-jerome-powell-bts/ |
Bills in blue states target the fossil fuel industry for climate damage
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! We hope you had a great Memorial Day weekend. Today in bizarre climate news, we're reading about how a man disguised as an old woman threw cake at the glass protecting the Mona Lisa at the Louvre and shouted at people to think of planet Earth. But first:
Democratic lawmakers in two of the nation's most populous states are pushing legislation to punish the fossil fuel industry for its apparent role in causing droughts, wildfires and other disasters exacerbated by climate change.
In California, the state Senate last week passed a measure that would prohibit the state's public pension funds from investing in the largest oil, gas and coal companies within a decade.
And in New York, Democratic lawmakers last week introduced a bill that would require the biggest fossil fuel firms to help pay for infrastructure investments necessary to adapt to mounting climate disasters.
The action in both blue states comes as Democrats in Congress continue to struggle to pass President Biden's stalled Build Back Better Act, including its investment in combating climate change and boosting clean energy.
Here's what to know about both bills — and whether they could pass before the end of their respective legislative sessions:
California eyes pension divestment
Senate Bill 1173, California's Fossil Fuel Divestment Act, would require the state’s public pension funds to divest from the 200 largest fossil fuel companies by 2030. The funds would need to report annually on their divestment progress starting in 2024.
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System are the two biggest public pension funds in the country, with an estimated $9 billion invested in oil, gas and coal.
If passed, the measure would prevent the retirement savings of the state's teachers, firefighters, and other public employees from being used to finance fossil fuels at a time when California faces climate-change-driven extreme drought and a relentless wildfire season.
“California can't be investing in the very thing that is to our detriment,” Majority Whip Lena Gonzalez, a Democrat who co-sponsored the bill, told The Climate 202. “So this bill makes a big statement, but it also puts our money where our mouth is.”
While the state Senate passed the bill on Wednesday by a vote of 21 to 10, the state Assembly has yet to consider the measure. There's still time to pass the bill before Aug. 31, when California's legislative session ends, but the proposal could face hurdles in the Assembly's Committee on Public Employment and Retirement, where Chair Jim Cooper (D) has signaled opposition to divestment as a concept, Gonzalez said.
Cooper's office did not respond to a request for comment.
Meanwhile, a debate has surfaced over the costs of divestment. CalPERS has said it would cost between $75 million and $100 million to sell the stocks named in the bill, while CalSTRS has said divestment would potentially incur a $20 billion loss for the fund. But Fossil Free California, an environmental group, accused the two public pension funds of presenting “wildly exaggerated” cost estimates in a recent report.
The numbers reported to the Senate Appropriations Committee last month were “absolutely ridiculous,” Miriam Eide, coordinating director of Fossil Free California, told The Climate 202.
A CalPERS spokeswoman said in an email that while the pension fund recognizes the risks of climate change and has a “strong commitment” to reducing emissions, “as a global investor with a fiduciary duty to its members and employer partners, CalPERS does not believe that divestment is an effective solution to this problem.”
New York weighs polluter payouts
Senate Bill 9417, the Climate Change Superfund Act, would impose a fee on the fossil fuel companies that have historically emitted the largest amount of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. If passed, it would generate an estimated $30 billion over 10 years, chipping away at the companies' soaring profits amid the war in Ukraine.
The proceeds would be used to pay for a portion of climate adaptation projects, such as efforts to build sea walls, raise the elevation of roads and bridges, and repair damage caused by floods. On Capitol Hill, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) introduced similar legislation last year, but the proposal ultimately was not included in Democrats' Build Back Better package.
State Senate Finance Chair Liz Krueger, who sponsored the Climate Change Superfund Act, acknowledged that the bill is unlikely to advance before the legislative session concludes on Thursday. But Krueger, who is running uncontested for reelection in November, said she plans to push for the measure's passage when the next session begins in January.
“I'm fairly confident I'll be returning to the New York State Senate in January 2023, and I'll be working hard to build support,” she said.
The bill shares the same goal as lawsuits brought by Democratic-led states and municipalities seeking to hold the fossil fuel industry financially responsible for climate damage. So far, the lawsuits have been tied up in procedural wrangling over whether they belong in state or federal court, although Baltimore's case made it to the Supreme Court last year on a narrow technical question.
President Biden campaigned on a promise to reinvigorate the Environmental Protection Agency as part of his push to tackle climate change, but the agency’s limited spending power is preventing the country's top pollution regulator from doing its job, The Washington Post’s Dino Grandoni reports.
The EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, which is tasked with monitoring dangerous chemicals, is running on roughly the same budget it did in 2016, despite needing about 200 more toxicologists to complete critical evaluations and meet regulatory deadlines.
The agency's budgetary woes come as Republicans in Congress remain reluctant to fulfill Biden’s budget request of $11.9 billion for the EPA for fiscal 2023, especially since it just received billions as part of the bipartisan infrastructure law.
“It’s not a good idea to starve the agency when it comes to trying to protect the public health,” EPA Administrator Michael Regan said during congressional budget hearings this month. “We have to rebuild the agency.”
The European Union on Monday finally reached a deal to phase out Russian oil, although the impact will be blunted by an exemption for oil transported by pipeline, a concession to Hungary and other landlocked nations, The Post's Emily Rauhala and Quentin Ariès report.
The announcement comes after weeks of frenzied negotiations among the 27-nation bloc. Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, had obstructed a deal, insisting on more time and money to upgrade his country's oil infrastructure.
While several countries will get exemptions or extensions, European Council President Charles Michel said the agreement would cover more than two-thirds of Russian oil imports, cutting off “a huge source of financing for its war machine.” E.U. officials and diplomats will still have to agree on technical details to ensure formal adoption by all member nations.
Facing a power crisis and searing heat, India falls back on coal
While India faces a persistent heat wave turbocharged by global warming, its government is scaling away from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision for the nation to become a leader in clean energy, underscoring the struggle of the world’s third-largest greenhouse gas emitter to satisfy green ambitions while meeting soaring energy demand, The Post’s Gerry Shih reports.
Despite previously pledging to install 450 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by 2030, India’s coal ministry announced in the past month that it would reopen old mines to offset rolling blackouts caused by increased electricity consumption for cooling. Meanwhile, the power ministry ordered plants that burn imported coal to run at full capacity.
“Earlier we were hailed as bad boys because we were promoting fossil fuel and now we are in the news that we are not supplying enough of it,” Anil Kumar Jain, India’s deputy coal minister, told reporters.
Agatha barrels into Mexico as its strongest May hurricane
Hurricane Agatha slammed into Mexico’s southern west coast on Monday as a Category 2 storm, the strongest the country has ever recorded in the month of May, with winds reaching 105 mph, Jason Samenow reports for The Post.
Agatha strengthened as it passed over abnormally warm water, which is linked to climate change. As the storm moves inland, the National Hurricane Center warns that Agatha will unleash life-threatening winds and an extremely dangerous ocean surge, along with flash flooding and mudslides.
If the storm stays on its current path, it could bring rain to Florida by the weekend. If a storm takes shape at that point, it will be named Alex and become the first of the Atlantic hurricane season that begins June 1.
Up and down the coast of North Carolina, environmental advocates and wildlife officials have spent years working to restore a landscape essential to the fight against climate change, The Post's Brady Dennis reports.
North Carolina’s peatlands can store huge amounts of carbon when wet, but they can also exacerbate global warming by releasing enormous amounts of carbon when drained or burned. Restoration efforts involve re-wetting more than 43,000 acres of peat to counteract the artificial drainage that can starve wetlands of their natural moisture, making them susceptible to fire.
If such areas are protected, the United Nations has said that peatlands across the globe can store twice as much carbon as in all the planet's forests, reducing greenhouse gas pollution by hundreds of millions of tons annually and helping the world meet its climate goals.
Greenville was destroyed by wildfire. Can it be rebuilt to survive the next one? — Alex Wigglesworth for the Los Angeles Times
Hit hard by high energy costs, Hawaii looks to the sun — Ivan Penn for the New York Times
Saudi Arabia names veteran diplomat as new climate envoy — Vivian Nereim for Bloomberg News
In nature, bear boop you.
Seeing a bear in the wild is a treat for any visitor to a park. While it’s exciting, it’s important to remember that bears in national parks are wild. Check out bear safety tips at: https://t.co/SFBTo6hVR1
P.S. Never boop a bear.
📸@LakeClarkNPS 🐻 pic.twitter.com/7gNPYV5OpQ | 2022-05-31T12:40:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Bills in blue states target the fossil fuel industry for climate damage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/bills-blue-states-target-fossil-fuel-industry-climate-damage/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/bills-blue-states-target-fossil-fuel-industry-climate-damage/ |
Washes and wipes remain popular, especially among Black women, even though doctors say they are unnecessary and potentially harmful.
Amber Ferguson
(Advertising Educational Foundation; iStock; María Alconada Brooks/The Washington Post)
The Honey Pot Company, one of several Black or women-owned intimate care brands that have risen in popularity in recent years, largely built its appeal on a commitment to products that are “plant-derived” and “free of chemicals.” Therefore, when loyal customers recently discovered that the company had added preservatives and other ingredients to its intimate washes, the online backlash was swift.
The social media drubbing prompted co-founder and owner Beatrice Dixon to acknowledge on Instagram and Twitter that the company “should have communicated more directly” about the changes. She also assured users that the washes “continue to be safe, gentle and kind to skin.” In a statement to The Washington Post, Dixon said, “After extensive testing, we have found that these specific preservatives are the best ingredients to ensure our formula, which is rich in herb and plant ingredients, remains effective down to the very last drop.”
Diamond Redden, a Honey Pot customer, has used different intimate care products off and on, including vaginal douches, since she started menstruating. Her mother, who washed with Summer’s Eve, wanted to make sure Redden developed a ritual for caring for herself during her period, such as resting, eating well and staying hydrated, said the 32-year-old mother of four daughters from Newark. And, Redden said, her mother’s tips also covered guidance on “intimate washing.”
Redden’s experience isn’t uncommon. A study based on data from a 2001 to 2004 national U.S. survey of more than 700 women aged 20 to 49 found that a greater proportion of Black women reported using vaginal douches or other feminine washes, wipes, powders and related menstrual products. In a more recent study of about 350 women aged 18 to 34 in California, Black people also reported using intimate care products, including douches, more than other women.
Experts are especially concerned about douching, which is washing the inside of the vagina with water or a specially formulated solution. “We as gynecologists realized a long time ago that vaginal douching was just not a good thing for women to do,” said Tacoma McKnight, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine.
Research has shown that douching may be associated with higher exposures to diethyl phthalate, a type of industrial chemical found in many consumer products. It may also be linked to health risks, such as infertility, vaginal infections and sexually transmitted diseases. In 2002, more than 30 percent of women aged 15 to 44 reported douching, according to the CDC’s National Survey of Family Growth. That figure dropped to around 11 percent in the latest survey, which was conducted from 2017 to 2019.
But the market has since become dominated by other intimate care products, such as external washes and wipes. “There’s a really high interest in using all kinds of ‘feminine products,’” McKnight said. The popularity of such products has been fueled, in part, by word of mouth and social media, she and other experts said.
“There’s this unrealistic standard of what a vulva and vagina should smell like, look like, feel like,” said Fatima Daoud Yilmaz, an OB/GYN in New York. “People with vulvas and vaginas are spending their money chasing after an ideal that’s not rooted in reality or being made to think that their normal, healthy bodily functions are somehow pathologic and need to be addressed.”
And while these standards can influence anyone with a vulva and a vagina, Daoud Yilmaz said people in marginalized groups may feel the effects more greatly because norms around beauty and health often evolve “through a Caucasian lens.”
Astrid Williams, the Environmental Justice Program manager for the organization Black Women for Wellness, agreed. “It’s a multibillion dollar industry that we’re paying into each year at the cost of trying to uphold these beauty standards — and it’s affecting our health.”
An ugly legacy
Modern-day menstrual and intimate care practices have been heavily shaped by historical views about women’s bodies being unclean. This “ingrained thought” can be traced to the practice of sequestering or restricting women during their periods, which has continued in some cultures, and antiquated ideas of the “vagina being dirty,” McKnight said.
“Since the earliest contacts between Europeans and people of African descent, negative olfactory stereotypes have been wielded against those with dark skin,” historian Michelle Ferranti wrote in a 2011 research article.
As part of the racist justification for slavery, White men created a “construct of race” based on so-called “phenotypic differences” that included smell, said Ami Zota, an associate professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at George Washington University’s Milken School of Public Health.
This history of “pervasive olfactory discrimination” was a significant factor in shaping ideas about cleanliness and deodorization among Black people, Ferranti wrote. “For many recently emancipated African-Americans, a clean and odor-free body signified personal progress and enterprise, and the hope for racial assimilation.”
Advertising and generational influence
Strategic advertising focused on Black people may be somewhat to blame for the perpetuation of these ideas, according to Ferranti’s paper. For instance, Ferranti found “no commercials for vaginal deodorants” in all LIFE magazines issues published in 1970, whereas the Ebony magazines from that same year “typically included more than one per issue.”
Her paper included a Lysol advertisement for douching that appeared in a 1958 issue of the Daily Defender, a Black newspaper in Chicago. The ad emphasized “daintiness” and claimed to stop odors, telling consumers “you know you can’t offend.” In a 1982 issue of Jet, an ad for FDS “feminine deodorant spray” stated that the product offered “Important odor protection to keep you feeling fresh and confident all month long.”
“A lot of products for women are often sort of wrapped in a veneer of empowerment,” Ferranti told The Washington Post in an interview.
“This company, through its words and images, told Black women that we were offensive in our natural state and needed to use their products to stay fresh,” Janice Mathis, the council’s executive director said in a statement at the time. “Generations of Black women believed them and made it our daily practice to use their products in ways that put us at risk of cancer — and we taught our daughters to do the same.”
Mathis’s statement highlighted what experts say is a key point about intimate care, particularly among people of color: Ideas and routines are often passed down within families.
In her two decades of experience as an OB/GYN, Shari Lawson, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins, said she frequently sees that Black and Brown people have “had this idea of feminine hygiene handed down from the women in their lives — mothers, aunts, grandmothers,” which includes “making sure that everything’s very clean, that there’s no odors associated with the vagina or the vulva.”
“These are misinformation, misconceptions, misperceptions that seem right, but they aren’t,” McKnight added, “and they get passed on and it’s just hard to break the cycle.”
Over the years, many of these products have become “part of the African American beauty culture,” Zota said.
Health concerns about intimate care products
No matter where the pressure comes from, Williams and other experts, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, don’t recommend using douches, washes, wipes and other similar products. “The female reproductive system is incredible just completely by itself. It contains its own ecosystem, a microbiome of healthy bacteria. It cleanses itself. It protects itself. It lubricates itself,” Daoud Yilmaz said. “It does all of this, and we expect it to not create some discharge? We expect it to not have a little bit of a smell that is normal and natural and healthy?”
In a statement to The Post, Dixon said the Honey Pot Company is aware that “cleaning one’s vagina is unnecessary.” She added that its products remain free of parabens, dioxides or sulfates and are meant to be used externally on a person’s vulva, which she said “attracts lots of different bacteria and can often be a hostile environment.”
But, experts said, external products can also lead to problems, such as skin irritation. Vulvar skin tends to be thinner and more absorbent, said Alice Watson, a dermatologist and genital skin specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Watson recommends only rinsing the vulva with water or, at most, using a gentle, low-allergen soap. Even many brands of baby wipes have “very common allergens in them and can cause a lot of issues,” she said. Any products with dyes or fragrance should also be avoided, Daoud Yilmaz added.
Redden, who spends about $300 a month on Honey Pot’s menstrual pads, wipes and washes, said she wasn’t aware of the history behind intimate care products, nor did she know that doctors often don’t recommend them. Discussions about using these kinds of products are “not typically in the conversation” during her 10- to 15-minute OB/GYN appointments, she said.
Gabriela Diaz, another Honey Pot customer, said she knows the vagina cleans itself and that “women are not supposed to smell like a unicorn peed through your vulva.”
“But I don’t necessarily want to stink either,” said Diaz, 22 of New York City, who is Dominican. “Even though you could put just water, I feel like it’s not as effective on my body.”
Still, Ferranti would encourage buyers to look into the “very important history” of these products. “If you know a little bit about the history, you can really be a discerning consumer.” | 2022-05-31T12:40:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Honey Pot and the history of feminine wash products explained - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/05/31/feminine-wash-honey-pot-history/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2022/05/31/feminine-wash-honey-pot-history/ |
In ‘Bad Gays,' historical figures are products of their times
Review by Tom Fitzgerald
Lorenzo Marquez
Every marginalized group struggling to find its way toward equality will inevitably wrestle with the question of who gets to tell their stories, what voices and perspectives within their group should be elevated and spotlighted to accurately reflect the truth of their existence. Authors Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller sidestep that question to ask an even more pointed one: What stories should we be telling about ourselves? They suggest an answer in “Bad Gays,” a contextual history based off the popular podcast of the same name, about “the gay people in history who do not flatter us, and whom we cannot make into heroes: the liars, the powerful, the criminal, and the successful.”
At a time when a conservative Supreme Court is signaling its willingness to revisit questions of privacy and self-determination long considered settled, and the rights of LGBTQ people to live their lives freely remain an open debate, a book telling the stories of some of the worst gays in history might seem ill-timed, but Lemmey and Miller argue that stories like these are more crucial than ever. “The history of homosexuality is a long history of failure,” they write. “Failure to understand ourselves, failure to understand how we relate to society, and the failures of racism and exclusion.”
The title “Bad Gays” is a bit of a misnomer, however. These are the stories of gays and queers who did terrible things and held terrible views, but the bulk of these histories are less about “evil” gays and more about gays who reacted to the world around them, sometimes in shocking ways, sometimes in destructive ways, but quite often in ways that made the only sense to them given the times. This approach is especially helpful in framing the lives and choices of people like Frederick the Great or notorious Italian Renaissance satirist and blackmailer Pietro Aretino, well before the idea of gayness as an identity existed. The authors express an acute understanding that people have always lived in a stew of history, and they situate each of their subjects not just within the ideas and attitudes of their day, but within the legal and religious constraints that defined them as outcasts and abominations. Still, they never forget that they’re talking about conquerors and colonialists, racists and anti-Semites, criminals and conspirators, from Hadrian to Ronnie Kray to Roy Cohn.
Some of the subjects selected, like Victorian sex worker Jack Saul or 20th-century star anthropologist Margaret Mead, might raise an eyebrow at first, but the authors make their case against every one of them, with the precision of a surgeon and the zeal of a prosecutor. Absolutely no one in this book gets a flattering portrait, which is as it should be. Context is provided for choices and actions, but the authors take every one of their subjects to task for their racism, misogyny, genocidal actions, predatory natures and all-around bad behavior if not bad taste.
How a stubborn ex-federal employee launched the gay rights movement
The book is at its most biting when a bad gay’s aesthetic choices come up, such as a description of Roy Cohn’s houses being “well-stocked with young, blonde men draped over the furniture or in the pool,” or an acid aside about the architect Philip Johnson’s musical tastes: “like so many [slang term for gay men] before him, he was captivated by the music of Wagner.” The authors don’t forget that it can be fun to be faced with the stories of so many awful queers, one after another, partially because of a long-standing gay tradition of shade and gossip: a tradition in which they occasionally indulge, to the book’s benefit. It also feels like a bracing slap in the face to the “love is love” corporate logo form of gay identity and an acknowledgment of its limitations at a time when the rights of trans people to simply live their lives unimpeded is threatened and even the most conservative of hard-fought victories, gay marriage rights, could be in jeopardy.
The book is meticulously and exhaustively researched, taking the reader through much of American and European history and walking them right up to the present-day conversations about cancel culture, critical race theory and anti-trans legislation, tying it all together in a way that’s satisfying but maddening in the relentlessness of its cyclical, repetitive truths. The language is crisp and at times appropriately sharp and openly critical. The points about nationalism, white supremacy, toxic masculinity and colonialism collectively influencing almost all bad gays throughout history are well made, but there are times when the chapters seem like a series of podcast episodes rather than a cohesive history. This can be seen as a feature not a bug, however, giving the book an ease of use that allows the reader to put it down or pick it up as it suits them.
The people who teach us history aren’t always historians
The book is anathema to respectability politics, drawing power from the stories of people who thought, said and did terrible things in their time. It manages this because the authors acknowledge the difficulties their subjects’ sexual and romantic orientation tended to bring upon them as well as the shortcomings of the form of gay identity that coalesced around them. Lemmey and Miller write that they wanted to convey “the story of the evolution and failure of white male homosexual identities,” a story that resulted in choosing rainbows over radicalism, in service to a strain of mainstream conservative equality that hampered and nearly crippled the liberation politics that gave it the space to exist. “Bad Gays” succeeds in its goals in every way, offering an infuriating, thoughtful, deliciously judgmental history of the very worst we had to offer.
Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez are the authors of “Legendary Children: The First Decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race and the Last Century of Queer Life” and hosts of the “Pop Style Opinionfest” podcast.
Bad Gays
A Homosexual History
By Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller
Verso. 368 pp. $29.95 | 2022-05-31T14:10:17Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Tom and Lorenzo review 'Bad Gays' - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/05/31/bad-gays-book-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/05/31/bad-gays-book-review/ |
The 50th anniversary of the Watergate arrests is approaching: The first break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters was on May 28, 1972, but the botched return on June 17 produced arrests and eventually brought Richard Nixon’s presidency to a premature end on Aug. 8, 1974. The Washington Post’s Margaret Sullivan has what is sure to be a popular opinion: Had Watergate played out in today’s media environment, Nixon would have survived.
I’m not so sure.
There are many issues involved — the media, Congress, overall partisanship, and the nature of Nixon’s crimes and presidency. Yes, today’s news environment is very different from that of the early 1970s, which was the peak of “neutral” media — that is, news organizations whose journalists explicitly thought of themselves as neutral.
This doesn’t mean that they were truly neutral; no such thing is possible. But their biases were different from those of the explicitly partisan press of the 19th century — and the revived partisan press that has become far more important, especially on the Republican side, in the 21st century. It was also the peak of broadcast television, with the vast majority of TV viewers tuned in day after day and night after night. People watched the network evening news because there weren’t many other options.
But Watergate wasn’t really a media story. Sure, the reporting was important. Yet the big breakthroughs in the investigation came from career prosecutors in the Department of Justice, the special prosecutors who took over the investigation in 1973, and Senate and House committees. Good investigative reporting broke stories, and those reports helped keep the pressure on the White House and Nixon’s campaign committee. But a lot of the pressure was internal, as various players who had committed a series of crimes attempted to shift the blame and find some set of someone-elses to take the fall.
True, there was no significant Republican-aligned media to either ignore the whole thing or to blame Democrats for it. It’s not clear, however, how much of a difference that really makes. Fox News and other Republican-aligned media were already in place during former President George W. Bush’s second term, yet his approval ratings dropped below 40% when things went bad in Iraq — and below 30% when recession hit. Granted, that’s not the same thing as scandal.
As for former President Donald Trump, it’s hard to be certain of where his approval ratings should have been based only on questions of peace and prosperity, but it certainly appears that economic conditions would have predicted solid approval ratings right up to the pandemic-induced recession in 2020. Instead, Trump’s approval ratings fell well below 40% in his opening months, and recovered only to the low- to mid-40s for most of the remainder of his presidency.
What else can the Trump experience tell us? Like Nixon, Trump was unable to prevent a special prosecutor from being named to investigate him. But the course of the investigation was different. By the time Robert Mueller was named special counsel in 2017, it was clear that Trump had welcomed Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and that he had almost certainly obstructed justice. That’s essentially what Mueller found. In 1973 and 1974, by contrast, regular disclosures made the crimes of Watergate look worse and worse.
When the Ukraine scandal broke in 2019, Democrats moved toward impeachment fairly quickly, and put little effort into pushing for an independent counsel. The same happened with Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election — which, of course, could still wind up producing indictments of high-ranking officials, including the former president. At any rate, while Trump escaped conviction twice, the second time was hardly a sure thing, with seven Republican senators joining every Democrat in finding Trump guilty.
The Watergate scandal unfolded slowly, and revelations continued right up to Nixon’s resignation in August 1974 (in fact, they continued for years after, since it took decades for all the White House tapes to be released). This was important not only because it made for a worse media narrative. It’s also important because for two years, Nixon had asked Republicans in Congress to trust him — only to have them find out he had lied.
Trump certainly lies frequently and enthusiastically. But with regard to his scandals, his lies were mainly about things that were already known. And Trump never really asked congressional Republicans to trust him. He did, however, deliver on what congressional Republicans cared about: judicial nominations and a tax cut. In other words, he mainly deferred to them on policy — in contrast to Nixon, who had also failed to campaign for congressional Republicans in 1972.
Would Nixon have survived in today’s conditions? One can never be sure. Partisan polarization would surely have made impeachment and conviction somewhat less likely, and therefore his resignation as well. Indeed, partisan polarization makes it much less likely that any president would treat Congress the way that Nixon did. But the same scandal might well have evolved in the same way, and I don’t see any reason to be confident that the outcome would have been different. | 2022-05-31T14:10:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | If Watergate Happened Today, Would Nixon Have Survived? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/if-watergate-happened-today-would-nixon-have-survived/2022/05/31/36345bfa-e0de-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/if-watergate-happened-today-would-nixon-have-survived/2022/05/31/36345bfa-e0de-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
UVALDE, TEXAS - MAY 27: A memorial for the victims of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School is seen on May 27, 2022 in Uvalde, Texas. Steven C. McCraw, Director and Colonel of the Texas Department of Public Safety, held a press conference to give an update on the investigation into Tuesday’s mass shooting where 19 children and two adults were killed at Robb Elementary School, and admitted that it was the wrong decision to wait and not breach the classroom door as soon as police officers were inside the elementary school. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images) (Photographer: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images North America)
The slaughter at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, has stunned a country tragically accustomed to mass shootings. Coming just days after the atrocity at Buffalo, New York, this latest outrage has strengthened calls for tighter gun laws. This time, perhaps, something might actually be done.
One approach looks especially promising. So-called red-flag laws — measures that allow police or family members to ask a court to intervene when someone poses a threat to himself or others — are commanding renewed bipartisan support. They aren’t infallible: Nothing could be in a country awash with guns. But more than half of mass shooters exhibited clear warning signs before committing their crimes, which makes such laws worthwhile. When it comes to gun control, the combination of efficacy and feasibility is rare. Policy makers should seize the moment.
Opponents of red-flag laws call them unfair because they lack due process. In truth, they’re no more burdensome than traditional domestic-protection laws, found in all 50 states. No one’s guns are taken away without a judge’s approval. If a temporary seizure is approved, another hearing is convened within weeks to allow the recipient of the order to offer a defense. In turn, the reporting parties must make their case for extending the order. The process isn’t foolproof but, given the stakes, it’s surely a fair one.
A more pressing concern is whether such laws really work. They’re now on the books of 19 states, but they’re relatively new, so it’s hard to sure just yet. Still, the research so far is encouraging. In Connecticut, which enacted one of the first red-flag laws, a study estimated that one life has been saved for every 10 to 20 protection orders issued. A California study looked at 21 orders issued against individuals who’d made mass shooting threats and found no violence subsequently attributed to any of them.
It’s unclear to what extent the shooter in Uvalde was known to pose a threat before he began his attack. The Buffalo case also underlines the limits, because New York already had a red-flag law. The killer was known to the authorities and had been subject to a mental-health evaluation. Upon release, with no extreme-risk protection order issued, he was able to go out and buy the murder weapon. Exactly what went wrong is being investigated.
These inquiries might yield lessons. Perhaps the responding officers and others were simply unaware of the law. The police need to be trained to apply such orders — and the general public needs to be made aware. Legal ambiguities also need to be cleared up. The Buffalo shooter was a minor at the time of his mental-health evaluation and hence forbidden to buy a gun in any case; perhaps the authorities thought the red-flag law was therefore irrelevant. Washington state has updated its red-flag law so that it clearly applies to teens who might have access to guns in the home.
Officials will never be clairvoyant. Mistakes will be made. Yet red-flag laws have real potential. In the US, public opinion and the courts constrain what can be done, so policy makers have to make the best of imperfect solutions. Whether red-flag laws are advanced state by state, or by action in the US Congress, the benefits will outweigh the drawbacks. After the horrors of Buffalo and Uvalde, there’s no excuse for failing to act.
How to Start Solving America’s Gun Culture Problem: Sarah Green Carmichael and Francis Wilkinson | 2022-05-31T14:11:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Red-Flag Laws Can Make a Difference - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/red-flag-laws-can-make-a-difference/2022/05/31/672b881a-e0e2-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/red-flag-laws-can-make-a-difference/2022/05/31/672b881a-e0e2-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
NEW YORK - JUNE 29: A woman holds up a shirt critical of the Security and Exchange Commission during the sentencing hearing for Bernard Madofff, who was convicted for running a multibillion-dollar ponzi scheme, in front of Federal District Court in Manhattan on June 29, 2009 in New York City. Madoff received a sentence of 150 years in prison for fraud that totaled an estimated $65 billion. Eleven victims spoke to the court of how they lost their life savings to Madoff. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) (Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America)
The US Securities and Exchange Commission is concerned that retail investors who want their investment managers to factor environmental, social and governance considerations into investment decisions are being duped by “greenwashing” — token actions with no material effects —and marketing materials that overstate what the managers are actually doing. This is a valid concern, but the SEC’s solutions are straight out of the New Deal, top-down playbook from the 1930s.
The first change proposed by the SEC is to apply the “80% rule” to funds with names that suggest a focus on ESG focus, meaning 80% of the asset value of the fund must be in assets described by the name. But for the last 70 years, Modern Portfolio Theory has held sway in finance. You don’t evaluate investment securities one at a time; you look at the statistical properties of the portfolio as a whole.
This idea is clearer with international stocks funds than with ESG. In the late 1980s, foreign stocks were strongly outperforming US stocks, so foreign stock and international stock mutual funds became popular. The easiest way to make a stock fund international was to buy large-cap, multinational companies that happened to be headquartered in Europe, Japan or elsewhere. But these companies were influenced by the same economic fundamentals as large capitalization US multinational companies, so the resulting funds had high correlations to the S&P 500 Index, often higher than most US equity funds.
What investors wanted wasn’t a high proportion of fund assets in companies domiciled outside the US, they wanted low correlation to the S&P 500 for diversification, and high correlation to foreign stock markets because those were doing well. That was harder to deliver because it meant going into foreign stock markets, analyzing companies that used unfamiliar accounting principles and whose documents were not always available in English, working with foreign banks and dealers, understanding differences in legal jurisdictions, etc. When you did that, you found that there were US-domiciled companies with strong foreign stock exposure, and foreign-domiciled companies with little foreign stock exposure. The optimal portfolio balancing S&P 500 correlation, foreign stock correlation and expected return might have more than 20% US-domiciled stocks.
The SEC proposal assumes a “Santa Claus” strategy. You make a list of naughty and nice stocks, and make sure 80% of your picks are from the nice list. But this is a silly way to advance ESG goals (and I don’t think it’s much good for getting children to behave either). I’ve spent a lot of time talking to investors concerned about ESG and what most of them want is an overall portfolio that will both make the world a better place and deliver a profit as the world becomes a better place. They want exposure to an “ESG factor,” not 80% of their money in nice-certified companies.
The 80% rule does not actually mandate a Santa Claus strategy. A manager could use a dynamic portfolio strategy and argue that 80% of the assets were directed toward the strategy goal. But that’s expensive and risky, and most managers won’t do it. The SEC blocks innovation not just by outlawing things. There was no law against innovations like money market funds and index funds, but people who tried to offer these things were frustrated for years by ticky-tack SEC objections and foot-dragging. Moreover, they needed determination and courage because many of them went broke trying or were hit with regulatory sanctions.
The other SEC proposals focus on disclosure. One major issue — which I expect will be corrected during the comment period — is that the “Scope 3” obligations go far beyond public companies to everyone the companies do business with. Nestle can fill out long forms about its carbon emissions at a cost that is a negligible fraction of its revenue. But a farmer selling crops to Nestle could find filing those disclosures prohibitively costly. The more basic problem is disclosure assumes a top-down perspective. Investors decide what is good and bad for ESG and instruct their managers, the managers tell the business executives what to do, who tell their employees and suppliers. The purpose of disclosure is for investors to make sure the employees and suppliers at the end of the line are following orders.
The trouble with this Soviet-style command economy is investors lack the information and expertise to make the billions of decisions the economy demands every day. Balancing the many environmental, social and governance goals — while making profits — is incredibly difficult, and cannot possibly be done by faraway, untrained, retail investors with one-size-fits-all principles.
The right approach to improving ESG is to use incentives. Investors should reward managers for meeting tough, objective ESG and performance goals. Managers should reward businesses, and businesses should reward employees and suppliers. Don’t tell a purchasing manager whether to buy a more energy-efficient product or one made by a minority-owned business, find a purchasing manager who cares about the environment and social justice, and make her bonus depend on her overall success in improving those things.
I don’t claim this is easy. Incentives can be gamed and can attract people who care only about the money, not the underlying issues. So, investment managers must work hard to find companies with real ESG cultures, reward them with cheaper capital, and encourage them to design proper incentives. This is expensive, and probably requires concentrated positions, activism, leverage and derivatives to increase influence. It’s much harder to do if you must disclose everything and offer daily liquidity. Investment managers are only going to do this if they are in turn rewarded with performance fees based on both ESG and performance.
All of this is impossible in a public mutual fund. Public mutual funds are only allowed to charge management fees, so the only way for them to grow revenue is to get more assets under management. They are very good at gathering assets under management, but as a group, pick stocks that are worse than random selections. Relying on people who can’t pick even average stocks — the relatively simple goal of finding companies with average or better returns on equity — to save the world is crazy.
My suggestion for the SEC is to create a new category of investment fund, open to retail investors, with relaxed financial rules in return for ESG focus. Allow monthly rather than daily liquidity and reduce holdings disclosure requirements. Loosen the rules on concentrations, leverage, derivatives and activism. Allow performance fees for funds that meet both performance and documented, objective ESG goals measured by independent third parties. The best thing for the SEC to do is get out of the way of innovators, not add new layers of regulation to impede them. | 2022-05-31T14:11:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | SEC Proposals for ESG Ignore 80 Years of Financial Science - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/secproposals-for-esg-ignore-80-years-of-financial-science/2022/05/31/35e4879c-e0de-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/secproposals-for-esg-ignore-80-years-of-financial-science/2022/05/31/35e4879c-e0de-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Students line up to enter an elementary school in Jersey City last year. (Seth Wenig/AP)
A survey released Tuesday documents the toll the pandemic has taken on students’ mental health, with 7 in 10 public schools seeing a rise in the number of children seeking services. Even more, 76 percent, said faculty and staff members have expressed concerns about depression, anxiety and trauma in students since the start of the pandemic.
“The pandemic has taken a clear and significant toll on students’ mental health,” said Peggy G. Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which conducted the survey.
In addition, just over half of schools offered teachers training on how to help students with their social, emotional or mental well-being, and nearly half created or expanded social and emotional health programs.
Indio High School in Southern California offers 14 support groups to address the social-emotional needs of students, Principal Derrick Lawson said. Groups address topics such as grief, wellness, anger management and social skills. Some are long term, and others meet for a short time.
“We have greater need than we can find the people,” he said.
In many cases, he said, the pandemic brought to the surface long-standing mental health struggles. He likened it to what appears to be a calm pool of water. “If you drain the water, all of a sudden, you find all kinds of stuff.”
Just 12 percent of schools strongly agreed with the statement “My school is able to effectively provide mental health services to all students in need.” An additional 44 percent said they moderately agreed.
The survey found that mental health needs were acute not just for students, but for school employees, too. About 3 in 10 schools reported an increase in workers seeking school-based mental health services, and 6 in 10 reported a rise in staffers’ concern over their own or their colleagues’ mental health. | 2022-05-31T14:11:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Schools struggle with student mental health - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/31/schools-mental-health-covid-students/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/05/31/schools-mental-health-covid-students/ |
Understanding America’s cruelty toward women on abortion
This is the second time I’ve tried to find a way to write about this. The first draft was a loud reminder of the value and the purpose of a good editor, which is to nudge you to the best while also pushing you, with force, away from the worst. The premise was fine, but the construction did not fit, and I’m grateful for my editor for being a strong breeze.
But even now, though, the way to get to where I want to go here isn’t clear. I want to write about body autonomy. I want to write about the irony of men who’ll never experience pregnancy dictating the bodies of people who can. I want to write about how that’s not quite irony. Because irony is when the opposite of what we expect to happen, happens. But we expect men to believe we should possess this power. Irony would be men collectively acknowledging that we should have no say.
I want to write about how abortion is an apolitical act that’s become politicized. And how the GOP’s support of it is an act of political pragmatism to galvanize White Christians. (I don’t want to write about how race and racism permeates everything, everywhere, here, because I can write about that every day, and I’d get bored.)
I want to write about how my opinion on whether a woman should have access to a safe medical procedure should matter as much as my opinion on whether she should prepare grits with butter or sugar. Which means that what I think shouldn’t matter at all. I want to write about that, too. The feeling of an opinion or a belief not mattering. I think some of us are addicted to mattering, and can’t conceive of a world where how you believe a person should live has no pull on how they actually live. I think one of the defining qualities of American-brand white supremacy is an inherent belief in guestlessness — of always believing you own everything and everyone you see. (I know I just said I don’t want to write about that. I lied.)
It almost feels like irony again that there’s so much overlap between people on the right who believe they possess a right to dictate women’s bodies, and people who believe the government has no right to mandate they wear a mask. But these people are fine with committing harm, not fine with experiencing inconvenience. So, while that feels like irony, it just means you’ve met an American.
I also want to write about the people who want women who have sex to experience pain and shame, which means I also want to write about cruelty. I try to remind myself that cruelty shames and dehumanizes the people who commit it, not the people harmed by it. But that always felt like a shoehorned silver lining; a Hallmark card for horror. The only consequence the cruelest seem to suffer exists in the afterlife. Which I believe in. But what if you don’t? And even if you do, why should we have to wait for death for comeuppance? What can we possibly tell ourselves — what can you possibly tell yourself — when cruel people sleep on clean sheets?
I think some of us are addicted to mattering, and can’t conceive of a world where how you believe a person should live has no pull on how they actually live.
I feel compelled, even, to write about the unseen. The invisible. The negative. And how the people who stretch and squint to distinguish themselves from people whose “poor decisions” led to single parenthood, poverty, are too dumb to know there’s so much they can’t know. I want to write about the lives of privilege maintained because of secret abortions. I want to write about the girlfriends with the “wrong” pedigree who cleared a path for them to start a family with the “right” one.
There’s so much here to say. So much to interrogate. But I think why I can’t quite get where I want to go here, why writing about this has been such a struggle, is the lingering sensation of unnecessary complication. I’m searching for a thousand words when a baker’s dozen will do. You own your body. Abortion is health care. Health care is a right.
This is not hard. But we’ve made it hard, because cruelty is more American than compassion is. | 2022-05-31T14:11:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Damon Young: Understanding America’s cruelty toward women on abortion - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/05/31/damon-young-understanding-americas-cruelty-toward-women-abortion/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/05/31/damon-young-understanding-americas-cruelty-toward-women-abortion/ |
‘Jazz Fest’ documentary isn’t just about jazz, or music, but life
‘Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story’ captures the vibrant energy of the Big Easy
"Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story" documents the 50th anniversary of the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Earth, Wind and Fire, pictured here, performed at the event in 2019. (Courtesy of The Kennedy/Marshall Company/Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics)
Jazz Fest — or, as the annual Big Easy music gathering now in its 51st year is more formally known, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival — isn’t now and never was just about jazz. As the lively and illuminating documentary “Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story” makes clear, it’s a celebration of funk, gospel, blues, rock, Cajun, zydeco, soul, hip-hop and many, many genres in between, including something called rap cabaret. That’s what’s practiced by the singer known as Boyfriend (Suzannah Powell), who appears on camera in her trademark giant hair rollers, waxing rhapsodic about the event, along with a host of other musicians, onstage and off.
Look for soul singer Irma Thomas; Ben Jaffe, musician and creative director of the Preservation Hall Jazz Band (and son of Preservation Hall founders Allan and Sandra Jaffe); rapper Pitbull; rocker Bruce Springsteen; and the late Ellis Marsalis, patriarch of the musical family that has brought us Wynton, Delfeayo, Jason and Branford Marsalis. Ellis died in 2020 and performed with his sons at Jazz Fest the year before.
Appreciation: Ellis Marsalis was a great musician and an even greater teacher
But just as the festival isn’t only about jazz, the movie — which documents the 50th-anniversary festival in 2019, before covid shut it down for two years — also isn’t just about music. “Jazz Fest” briefly detours from a discussion of how music is woven into the fabric of New Orleans life — Mardi Gras, the jazz funeral and the “second line” parades of brass bands, derived from West African dances — to talk about “the best food in the world,” as one interview subject puts it. (You won’t disagree, and should probably not watch that part of the film, featuring crab beignets, gumbo and other Louisiana dishes, on an empty stomach.)
The film’s main voice and spiritual guide is Jazz Fest producer Quint Davis, who has been involved in the festival’s production since its founding, in 1970, by George Wein (who also appears in interviews conducted before his death, at age 95, last year). Davis is now a youthful-looking 74, and he helps articulate the ineffable sense that Jazz Fest is, for the residents of New Orleans — and perhaps for the many others who have flocked to the city from elsewhere — much more than a giant concert. It also seems to be a tangible manifestation of the city’s resilient spirit: announcing to the world that New Orleans was still alive, as one interviewee puts it, through Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and even through a pandemic.
There are gray hairs on some of the people in this fascinating film: Jimmy Buffett, Tom Jones (yes, that Tom Jones — he played the 2019 show) and others. But the energy that the film puts out is vital and full of sap.
PG-13. At the Angelika Film Center Mosaic and AMC’s Shirlington 7. Contains brief strong language and some suggestive images. 95 minutes. | 2022-05-31T14:11:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'Jazz Fest: A New Orleans Story' captures the sounds and spirit of a city - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/05/31/jazz-fest-a-new-orleans-story-movie-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/movies/2022/05/31/jazz-fest-a-new-orleans-story-movie-review/ |
Brenden Aaronson prepares for the World Cup — and a leap to Leeds
Brenden Aaronson, 21, has made 18 appearances for the U.S. national team and scored twice in World Cup qualifiers. (Eric Gay/Associated Press)
CINCINNATI — On the final day of the Premier League season, Brenden Aaronson was with his girlfriend in a Vienna cafe watching Leeds United attempt to avoid relegation to England’s second division.
His own move to the world’s most popular soccer circuit hinged on the outcome.
Leeds’s survival May 22 would trigger his transfer — the second-largest in U.S. history — to the West Yorkshire club next season. Failure would leave him with RB Salzburg in Austria, where he had thrived for two years after leaving MLS’s Philadelphia Union.
While Aaronson stared at the TV, his girlfriend provided updates about Burnley’s match against Newcastle. Regardless of Leeds’s result at Brentford, a Burnley victory at home would doom Leeds’s — and his — Premier League hopes.
“It was on them,” Aaronson said Monday from U.S. national team training camp. “I wanted to be part of the club so bad; that game meant a lot to me. It was tough to watch it, but they got the job done.”
Burnley lost and, though a draw would have done the trick, Leeds left no doubt by winning on a goal deep in stoppage time.
Four days later, Leeds announced the $30 million acquisition of Aaronson, a 21-year-old attacker from Medford, N.J., who, 3½ years earlier, was paying his dues with Philadelphia’s developmental squad in Bethlehem, Pa. He signed a five-year contract with Leeds.
The only U.S. player to garner a larger transfer fee was Christian Pulisic moving to Chelsea from Germany’s Borussia Dortmund in 2019 for $70 million.
Starting this coming season, Aaronson and Pulisic — key figures in the U.S. attack ahead of the World Cup late this year in Qatar — will clash in the Premier League. Aaronson will also face U.S. regulars Antonee Robinson (Fulham), Zack Steffen (Manchester City), Ethan Horvath (with promoted Nottingham Forest) and Matt Turner, a New England Revolution goalkeeper who in late June will join Arsenal.
“The league is unbelievable,” Aaronson said. “I know that going into it, but it’s the best way to challenge myself as a player, being in the best league in the world. They’ve told me how hard it is. That’s something I thrive on.”
Aaronson will reunite with Leeds Manager Jesse Marsch, a Wisconsin-born, Princeton-educated former MLS midfielder hired by the club in February to skirt relegation. Two jobs prior, Marsch coached Aaronson in Salzburg.
“I know he will fit in here perfectly,” Marsch said.
From the archives: Jesse Marsch begins his next chapter
It’s been some time since Leeds raised a trophy. The last top-flight championship came in 1992, the season before the Premier League was born. The club last won the FA Cup in 1972 and was a finalist for the European Cup, the Champions League’s predecessor, in 1975. Between 2004 and 2020, Leeds was stuck in England’s second or third division.
Aaronson said the move was a “step I wanted to take.”
“It was the right time,” he said. “It was the right time to up my game by going to the Premier League. It’s definitely a risk, but a risk I was willing to take.”
The risk is getting lost in the crowd playing for a bigger club in a bigger league with greater roster competition. In Austria, Aaronson excelled in a lesser environment, starting 52 matches and scoring 13 goals across all competitions. He did, however, play 10 matches and post two goals at the highest level of European soccer, the UEFA Champions League.
The ramifications of having a smaller role on the club scene this coming season would carry over to the national team, which needs players in top form heading into the World Cup.
“A big part of playing for your national team is your club too,” Aaronson said. “You also have to play well for your country, but it’s also playing consistently week in and week out for your club.”
Aaronson understands what he’s getting into. Leeds supporters at Elland Road appreciate undying work ethic to counter stylish opponents from London, Manchester and Liverpool.
“They celebrate a tackle like a goal,” he said. “I am going to be that guy that’s not only going to be that creative outlet; I am going to be the guy that’s going to be working hard, too. That’s what Leeds is.”
Before reporting to Leeds training camp, Aaronson will aim to keep his stock high with the U.S. squad. The Americans will play four matches in a two-week span, starting Wednesday against World Cup-bound Morocco at Cincinnati’s TQL Stadium.
They’ll host another friendly Sunday against World Cup participant Uruguay in Kansas City, Kan., then play mandatory Concacaf Nations League games against Grenada on June 10 in Austin and in El Salvador on June 14.
The only other camp before the World Cup comes in September for two friendlies, likely against Asian confederation opponents at European venues.
When healthy, Aaronson was among U.S. Coach Gregg Berhalter’s most reliable players during the 14-game qualifying competition. Berhalter’s wing options are abundant, though: Pulisic, Tim Weah, Gio Reyna, Paul Arriola and Jordan Morris.
Impact performances in June coupled with a strong start in Leeds would solidify Aaronson’s place in Berhalter’s plans.
Moving to the Premier League, Aaronson said, was “the perfect next jump because I am going to have ups and downs there, but it’s going to make me the player I am going to be in the future.”
Notes: Montreal midfielder Djordje Mihailovic, one of a handful of fresh prospects called into camp, withdrew from the roster with an ankle injury suffered in an MLS match Saturday. No replacement was named, leaving 26 players on the squad.
Previously, New York City FC goalkeeper Sean Johnson replaced Steffen (family reasons). | 2022-05-31T14:12:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Brenden Aaronson preps for World Cup, Leeds United - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/31/brenden-aaronson-usmnt-leeds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/31/brenden-aaronson-usmnt-leeds/ |
Want to watch Rafael Nadal-Novak Djokovic? Your options are limited.
For the second straight year, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal will meet in the French Open. (Michel Euler/AP)
When tennis icons Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal meet Tuesday for the 59th time at 2:45 p.m. Eastern in the French Open quarterfinals. American fans will have only one over-the-air option to watch: the Tennis Channel, a cable network that’s available in 61 million homes via cable and satellite providers.
Tuesday’s match will not air on one of the networks owned by NBCUniversal, or Peacock, its streaming service. While NBC and Peacock will televise the men’s and women’s semifinals and finals this weekend, they only can offer a limited number of midweek matches under the terms of their contract with Roland Garros.
The bulk of the French Open matches — 80 percent — are aired in the United States by Tennis Channel under a deal reached in 2016 that runs through 2023. Tennis Channel does offer a streaming service called TC Plus, but it costs $109 annually, is available only in year-long subscriptions and does not include the main Tennis Channel feed, which can be accessed online only with a cable or satellite subscription. The Djokovic-Nadal match only will air on the main Tennis Channel feed, according to a schedule on the network’s website.
Djokovic, the world’s No. 1 player and the defending French Open champion, holds a 30-28 edge in matches against Nadal, ranked No. 5 in the world and the greatest clay-court player ever, with 13 titles at Roland Garros. The two have met nine times previously at the French Open, with Djokovic earning a four-set win in last year’s semifinals. It was only Nadal’s third-ever loss at Roland Garros; two of them have been to Djokovic.
Tuesday’s match could be one of the last in the rivalry, as Djokovic turned 35 on May 22 and Nadal turns 36 on Friday.
“Being honest, every match that I play here, I don’t know if it’s going to be my last match here in Roland Garros. … That’s my situation now,” Nadal said after outlasting No. 9 seed Felix Auger-Aliassime, 3-6, 6-3, 6-2, 3-6, 6-3, in a fourth-round match that took nearly 4½ hours on Sunday. “That’s why I am just trying to enjoy as much as possible.”
Nadal had not lost a set at Roland Garros this year until Sunday’s match and afterward alluded to the chronic pain in his left foot (he also cracked a rib during a tournament in March). Djokovic hasn’t played a match longer than three sets at this year’s tournament and can equal Nadal’s 21 grand slam victories by defending his title.
But first, he has to get through a quarterfinal meeting with the King of Clay, a match that will feature a combined 41 grand slam titles, three more than the previous record for one match (38, set three times: Nadal vs. Roger Federer in the 2019 Wimbledon semifinals and two Djokovic-Nadal matches last year).
And after Sunday’s straight-sets win over Diego Schwartzman, Djokovic seemed confident.
“I like my chances,” he said. | 2022-05-31T14:12:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Rafael Nadal-Novak Djokovic French Open match lacking in ways to watch - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/31/nadal-djokovic-time-tv-channel/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/31/nadal-djokovic-time-tv-channel/ |
WP Subscriber Exclusive: David Duchovny, Actor & Author
Actor and best-selling author David Duchovny talks with Washington Post chief film critic Ann Hornaday on Tuesday, June 7 at 3:00 p.m. ET about his latest novella, “The Reservoir,” which he was inspired to write while living through the pandemic quarantine.
Actor & Author, “The Reservoir: A Novella” | 2022-05-31T14:13:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | WP Subscriber Exclusive: David Duchovny, Actor & Author - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/subscriber/2022/06/07/wp-subscriber-exclusive-david-duchovny-actor-author/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/subscriber/2022/06/07/wp-subscriber-exclusive-david-duchovny-actor-author/ |
Queen Elizabeth II’s image was projected onto Stonehenge. Cue the controversy.
Photo issued by English Heritage Trust shows images of Britain's Queen Elizabeth II from each decade of her reign, projected on to Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain in Wiltshire, England, to mark her Platinum Jubilee. (Jim Holden/English Heritage/AP)
LONDON — As part of preparations to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, eight portraits of the monarch were beamed onto the ancient stone faces of Stonehenge, one from each decade of her 70-year reign.
The projection of the 96-year-old onto the 5,000-year-old monument was called a “spellbinding homage” by organizers — yet merging two of the most iconic pillars in Britain sparked controversy on social media.
Some said the World Heritage Site in Wiltshire, England, should be left untouched, citing its apparent history as an ancient religious site. Others said the move was “distasteful” to turn the prehistoric monument into effectively a billboard.
“This is nuts, or should I say, completely unhenged,” read one of almost 6,000 replies to the tweet.
Others appeared more enthusiastic about the idea, with one person branding the tribute “thronehenge.” The queen’s former press secretary and royal commentator, Dickie Arbiter, called the series of images “beautiful.”
Stonehenge, which is believed to have been built by in stages between 3000 and 1520 BC, has remained at the center of historical speculation for centuries. While the purpose of the site is unknown, English Heritage has concluded that “there must have been a spiritual reason why Neolithic and Bronze Age people put so much effort into building it.”
Other analysts say the sarsen stones may have served as a giant solar calendar so that people knew the time of year. Experts have also concluded that the site hosted feasts, burials and ceremonies, with a 2019 study revealing that Stonehenge served as a “hub for Britain’s earliest mass parties.”
Research and excavations at the site, which also served as a burial place, continue. The stones are positioned to line up with the sun’s movements. Experts from the 17th and 18th centuries believed it served as a Druid temple and even to this day, modern Druids flock to the site to celebrate the spiritually significant summer and winter solstices.
People buried at Stonehenge 5,000 years ago came from far away, study finds
English Heritage Trust, the organization responsible for managing hundreds of historic sites including Stonehenge, told The Washington Post that the display was part of “a range of events and activities” organized nationwide at its sites to celebrate the Jubilee.
“From the 2012 Summer Olympics to commemorating the centenary of the First World War, Stonehenge has played a part in marking important moments in this country’s recent history, including — now — the Platinum Jubilee,” English Heritage said in a statement.
While English Heritage did not comment on backlash, it said that it has beamed images onto Stonehenge before.
In 2020, as one recent example, the faces of eight people who helped support Britain’s art and heritage sectors amid the coronavirus pandemic were beamed onto the stones. And in November 2014, footage of World War I soldiers was projected onto the landmark as part of a military tribute.
Images of the queen are also popping up in homes and shop windows and beamed onto other iconic sites — including London’s Marble Arch.
“The story of Stonehenge continues to evolve and change,” English Heritage states on its official website, adding that “an air of mystery and intrigue” will always shroud the site’s complex and widely debated history.
Jubilee celebrations are set to begin Thursday and continue through Sunday, with street parties across the country, the annual British Army ceremony of Trooping the Colour, led by Prince William during a rehearsal over the weekend, and a traditional royal family balcony appearance. | 2022-05-31T14:13:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth II's Stonehenge images spark controversy before Platinum Jubilee - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/31/stonehenge-queen-elizabeth-jubilee-controversy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/31/stonehenge-queen-elizabeth-jubilee-controversy/ |
One D.C. stop-sign camera brought in $1.3 million in tickets in 2 years
A stop sign in Northwest Washington. (Justin Wm. Moyer/The Washington Post) (Justin Wm Moyer/The Washington Post)
Rebecca Goldfield hadn’t received a moving violation in more than 50 years of driving. Then, at an unassuming intersection in Northwest Washington, her spotless record received its first black mark: She got a $100 photo ticket for going a few inches over the line, she says, at a stop sign at 37th Street and Whitehaven Parkway NW.
Images of her vehicle at the intersection show her brakes lights were on, said Goldfield, a retired documentary filmmaker. The fine for what she deemed a non-offense was unreasonable, but contesting the ticket seemed pointless.
Goldfield said she “resented it heartily.”
“I think it’s just a way for the city to cash in on people not in 1,000-percent compliance and don’t even know that they’re not,” she said. “I’m all for safe driving ... but the rules have got to be clear.”
This stop sign, it turns out, has proved lucrative for the District. Public records obtained by The Washington Post show a traffic camera posted there generated more than $1.3 million in the past two years.
The camera — loathed by some residents who say it is overly sensitive though praised by others who say it promotes safe driving — is one of more than 130 traffic cameras that officials expect to generate around $100 million this fiscal year. Ninety of those cameras are speed cameras, 38 are at traffic lights and only eight are at stop signs, according to May data from the District Department of Transportation.
The sentinel posted at 37th Street and Whitehaven provided evidence for more than 17,000 photo tickets since March 2020, according to a D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles response to a public-information request from The Post. Though more than 1,600 tickets were contested by those who received them, more than 1,400 were deemed “liable dispositions” that those ticketed must pay.
D.C. parking, traffic tickets snowball into financial hardships
The total amount paid: $1,361,596, the records response said. It was not immediately clear how this compared with the District’s other stop-sign cameras.
In a statement, the District Department of Transportation said that nationally 20 percent of fatal crashes occur at intersections.
The statement cited a 2011 study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that showed a 24 percent decrease in fatal crashes in 14 cities with a red-light camera program. A follow-up study showed 78 percent of D.C. drivers favored such cameras.
The statement also said revenue from traffic cameras go into the city’s general fund — not to companies that provide the cameras, as some of those ticketed believe.
“Crashes are easily preventable if the driver stops completely as required by law,” the statement said. “Drivers should come to a complete stop prior to the stop bar at an intersection controlled by a stop sign or traffic signal. The stop sign units use radar to detect if a vehicle stopped at, rolled through, or ran a stop sign. Tickets will be issued when vehicles fail to stop at a stop sign.”
D.C. proposes expanding the number of traffic cameras that issue fines
Residents of Glover Park, the upscale Northwest neighborhood that’s home to the camera, offered mixed opinions of its usefulness and purpose.
Some defended the camera in a residential neighborhood where children walk to school. Southbound 37th Street is a two-lane road that carries some commuter traffic, including Metrobuses and delivery trucks.
Sharat Ganapati, who lives in Glover Park and often pushes his son in a stroller around the neighborhood, said the camera is welcome when “half the neighborhood walks.” Though commuters often blow through stop signs elsewhere, they cannot break the social contract at 37th and Whitehaven without suffering the consequences.
“It’s nice to see some place for once where people have to actually obey the law,” he said.
An economics professor at Georgetown University, Ganapati said pedestrian injuries and fatalities are “externalities” — that is, a side effect or consequence — of unsafe driving. Our society has accepted these costs, he said — but with this stop sign camera, the District has charged for the externality in the hope of eliminating it.
In other words, Ganapati said, there’s nothing wrong with a stop-sign camera designed to generate revenue as long as it reduces violations and doesn’t disproportionately impact poor people.
“D.C. likes money. D.C. decided to solve this problem but also get some money out of it,” Ganapati said. “It’s just the way D.C. does things.”
Jackie Blumenthal, an advisory neighborhood commissioner, said initial fury about the camera — which has ticketed her and her husband — has faded to resignation.
“When the camera first started generating fines, the sentiment ... was decidedly angry,” she wrote in an email. “But there was a lot of back and forth about safety and stop-sign scofflaws, and the complaining gradually went away.” She added: “The camera’s settings may be unforgiving, but as I said, it’s a small price to pay for reminding people that stop means stop.”
D.C. Council member Mary M. Cheh (D-Ward 3), who represents Glover Park, said she’d tried to address concerns about the camera by urging the city to change signage. Drivers could be confused by a “photo enforced” sign near the intersection that could refer to the speed limit or the stop sign, she said.
But however drivers are alerted to the camera, according to Cheh, the fines it generates are too large.
“Any time you have high amounts of fines accruing from a particular camera, you have to assume that there’s something wrong or at least you have to take a good look," she said.
Paul Wittrock said he’d lived in Glover Park for more than 30 years, an avid cyclist for much of that time. While not opposed to any traffic camera per se, he thought fines could be income-adjusted to make them more equitable.
Also, the camera could be more forgiving, Wittrock said. When manual transmissions were more common, authorities overlooked the rolling “California stop.” Why punish it today when rolling stops would save fuel, helping mitigate climate change?
“How many people literally come to a complete stop where your car is 100 percent stationary?” he said. “Virtually nobody. If they set it at a threshold to represent generally law-abiding behavior, it would be more acceptable.”
Luz Lazo contributed to this report. | 2022-05-31T14:40:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A DC stop-sign camera brought in $1.3 million in tickets in 2 years - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/31/stop-sign-camera-northwest-washington/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/31/stop-sign-camera-northwest-washington/ |
What an executive producer does in a workday
Perspective by Tracey Baker-Simmons
(Tracey Baker-Simmons/Washington Post illustration)
Welcome to The Work Day, a series that charts a single day in various women’s working lives — from gallery owners to stay-at-home parents to chief executives. In this installment, we hear from Tracey Baker-Simmons, an executive producer for TV and film. She recorded a workday in May.
Name: Tracey Baker-Simmons
Location: West New York, N.J.
Job title: Executive producer
Previous jobs: I have been working in the entertainment industry for more than 25 years. I started in marketing and promotions for a major label in the early 1990s for a couple of years, then transitioned into music videos and commercials. I produced hundreds of music videos and commercials for artists including Brandy, Monica and Nas, and commercials for brands such as Sprite, McDonald’s and many more. Then, in early 2003, I started my company B2 Entertainment, which is where I conceptualized “Being Bobby Brown.” In 2011, I relocated to the New York area and took a job as head of development for Jarrett Creative. There, I helped develop shows such as “Boston’s Finest,” “Alaskan Women Looking for Love” and “Rock the Boat.”
What led me to my current role: In 2015, I decided to once again venture out on my own to launch my boutique production entity, Baker Simmons Media. I am a risk-taker, and taking the big leap to create a project like “Being Bobby Brown” — with stars like Bobby Brown and Whitney Houston, whom I didn’t know before approaching them about a show at the onset of reality television — really led me to understand that nothing is impossible. Last year, I executive-produced a Christmas movie for the Hallmark Channel, “Sugar Plum Twist.”
How I spend the majority of my day: I spend most of my days developing new show concepts or working with my agent to set up pitches. I’m always up early proofing anything I wrote the night before, as well as checking emails and social media. A few days a week, I muscle enough energy to meet with my trainer at the gym, and most mornings, I try to have a smoothie or coffee with my husband as we discuss what we have going on and when he thinks he’ll be home. (My husband runs food and beverage for one of the private clubs in Manhattan and has a photography business on the side.)
People send me new show ideas a lot, and I try to respond to them all. Although I’m an early riser, I also go to bed fairly late, because I am most creative in the evening. My assistant is virtual, and we mainly interact via email and text, with a weekly Zoom on Mondays. The middle of the day is filled with meetings.
I do my best writing after 8 p.m., and I try to take in some good TV. (I really feel it’s important for me to watch television to see what’s out there.) Between 11 p.m. and midnight, I wind it down with a little YouTube and some water or tea.
5 a.m.: My first alarm goes off and I roll over.
6 a.m.: I finally wake up. My iPad and glasses are next to me, so I’m able to check emails and send a payment to a graphic designer for a presentation they’re creating for the new series I’m pitching next week.
6:15 a.m.: Today I have a shoot in the city with a celebrity client for a project with A&E Networks, not to be named yet, because it doesn’t air until next year. (I am working as the co-executive producer on it.) We shoot a couple of days a week, and today happens to be one of our shoot days. I check the call sheet to confirm my call time.
6:20 a.m.: I complete my bed stretches, then roll out of bed to see the sunrise and say my prayers and manifestations for the day.
6:50 a.m.: I jump in the shower and get dressed. I like wearing makeup, even if it’s covered with a mask. I make sure I have my tools: My iPad mini and headphones are must-haves on set.
8 a.m.: My car arrives. The goal is to arrive on set around 9 a.m. to be ready when the client arrives. The location is downtown, near Wall Street.
9 a.m.: I arrive at the location, a recording studio in the city. I am excited, because this building has one of my favorite coffee shops, Gregorys.
I head up to the 22nd floor and meet with the team. We do the walk-through. On this particular shoot, my role is to explain the overall creative big picture. Luckily for me, the studio we are shooting in is not on the main level, so we have to climb two flight of stairs. (So much for skipping the gym.)
9:45 a.m.: The walk-through is complete and talent isn’t due to arrive until 11 a.m., so I take this as a sign that I can go take a real coffee break. I head down to Gregorys and have a cappuccino in a mug and a warm croissant.
10:45 a.m.: I head back upstairs, so I’m ready for talent.
11 a.m.: We get a call from management: Talent is going to be one hour late. (Glad I had that coffee break.) The team and I decide to walk through the day once more, so we can move things along quickly as soon as talent arrives.
12:30 p.m.: Talent finally arrives and is very apologetic.
1:30 p.m.: Filming begins, and all is well, except we are supposed to break for lunch at 3 p.m. Today’s celebrity has a hard out, so we will need to roll through lunch.
4:45 p.m.: We finally wrap on the celebrity talent and break the crew for lunch.
5 p.m.: It’s a walkaway lunch, so the other executive producer and I head to a nearby salad bar. I have a kale Caesar, something I only eat at restaurants.
6 p.m.: We are all back from lunch and review the lists of pickup shots the team needs to grab before we wrap (exterior shots of the building, etc.). I stick around for a bit to offer any needed creative support.
6:30 p.m.: The filming part is complete, and I can head home. However, I realize today is Cinco de Mayo, so I swing by Soho House to have a margarita with a friend. (I like mine spicy.) I skip the guacamole for fried calamari.
Unfortunately, I can’t stay long, because I need to complete an early script for a Christmas movie my partner and I recently pitched to a network.
8 p.m.: I head home to Jersey. The weather is nice, and I decide to enjoy my new favorite rosé and get to writing.
9:30 p.m.: I send the email to my producing partner for review and decide I’ll make any changes in the morning. I jump in the shower, so I can spend some quality time with my husband when he’s home.
10 p.m.: My husband is finally home, and we tell each other how our days went. He grabs a rum, and I take sips. (It’s too late for me to have another cocktail.) We watch TV, and I do my usual after a long shoot day and fall asleep in his lap. Then he gently nudges me to head to bed.
11:15 p.m.: No YouTube tonight. I have given this day all I have and need to get some rest. | 2022-05-31T15:15:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What TV producer Tracey Baker-Simmons does in a workday - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/05/31/workday-executive-producer-tracey-baker-simmons/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/05/31/workday-executive-producer-tracey-baker-simmons/ |
Analysis by Erin Lowry | Bloomberg
Even in 2022, pensions still command an aura of reverence. A benefit where you work for one company for 30 years and then retire with a livable wage? And you don’t have to fret about picking investments? What’s not to like?
Although pensions are increasingly rare in the U.S., they’re not obsolete. About 38% of the private workforce had access to a defined benefit plan in 1980. By 2008, that had fallen to 20%. In spring of 2020, it was only 3% of private-sector workers, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The majority of today’s pensions are offered to those working in the government at a state or federal level.
When evaluating a potential job today, should pensions carry as much weight as they did decades ago? In most cases, no, not for those early in their careers. Many modern pensions have been diluted to the point of being mediocre golden handcuffs. It’s often better to focus on the total benefits package instead.
Pensions, after all, are complicated. Most require a combination of years of service, a vesting period and hitting a certain age to receive the maximum benefits.
Let’s look at the New York City teachers’ pension scheme as an example. (Full disclosure: My husband works as a New York City teacher.) The pension is segmented into Tiers I through VI. Older millennials are Tier IV if they joined between Aug. 31, 1983 and April 2012. Younger generations are Tier VI if they joined after March 31, 2012. (There’s no Tier V for city teachers.)
The tiers have differing rules and eligibility criteria, with older tiers being able to access maximum benefits with less of a time commitment.
Tier IV teachers see their pensions vest at five years of total service, whereas Tier VI teachers need 10 years. And things diverge further. Tier IV teachers can receive unreduced benefits one of two ways: either by putting in 30 years of service and being 55 or by being at least 62 and vested. But Tier VI teachers must be at least 63 and vested in order to receive unreduced benefits. That means a Tier VI teacher who started their career at age 24 needs to work nine extra years compared with a Tier IV educator. A Tier VI teacher who retires at 55 would receive only 48% of their possible retirement allowance, compared with a Tier IV teacher who would receive 100% retiring at the same age (if they started 30 years prior).
Actual retirement allowances can vary too. The calculations can get complex(1), but the required additional time commitment and the penalty for retiring before 63 generally makes Tier VI’s benefit less generous than Tier IV’s.
In short, younger generations of teachers are being asked to put in as much or more time, for less of a pension benefit. Of course, one could argue that current teachers have higher salaries, but that’s mostly due to cost-of-living adjustments, so watering down their benefits is even more damaging when accounting for future inflation. Other industries have also seen pensions become harder to fully maximize.
Because having a pension no longer guarantees financial security, millennials and Gen Z should consider saving for retirement in additional ways. This could mean contributing to a Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), Tax Deferred Annuity (TDA), 403(b), or an IRA.
Having multiple retirement pots is important for two reasons. First, it ensures you’re truly prepared for the type of life you’d want to live in retirement. A pension alone may not provide enough for what you deem as comfortable. Second, it can set you up to be less dependent on having to stay in a job until your pension vests or reaches unreduced benefit, especially if it’s proving toxic or becomes physically difficult. The sunk cost fallacy can rear its ugly head once a teacher — or any employee — has put in, say 10 years, and begins to believe it’s too hard to switch jobs and they might as well stick it out for the pension.
Early-career employees should also evaluate all the benefits available. Even if a pension alone is not a strong selling point, the overall benefits package just might be.
United States Postal Service workers, for instance, can contribute to a TSP — which is similar to a 401(k) — and receive up to a 5% employer match in addition to their pension plan. Their non-retirement benefits are also compelling as they include quality health care with dental and vision, flexible spending accounts and life insurance. Employees can enroll in long-term care insurance, which is fairly expensive to secure privately.
Investing for retirement outside of a pension gives you flexibility to change career paths or to retire when you want. It also helps hedge against the mismanagement of pension funds or underfunded pensions. Nearly 200 pension plans are on the U.S. Department of Labor’s list of pensions in peril.
The pensions of Boomers and older Gen Xers are not the same deal current workers will inherit. There’s no question that younger workers got a raw deal. They will be better served calculating a pension’s true value and evaluating other benefits of the job, especially access to health insurance in retirement.
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(1) A Tier IV teacher’s retirement allowance may get calculated as 60% of their Final Average Salary (FAS) for their first 30 years of teaching, plus an additional 1.5% of the FAS for each additional year over 30 years. Let’s say the FAS was $100,000 and the retiree departed at 60 after teaching for 35 years. The allowance would be $60,000 + $7,500 for a total of $67,500.A Tier VI teacher gets 35% of their FAS for the first 20 years of service, plus 2% of their FAS multiplied by each year beyond 20 years of service. At $100,000 FAS, the Tier VI teacher would receive $35,000 + $30,000 for a total of $65,000. That’s only $2,500 less than Tier IV, but then there’s the age reduction. The Tier VI teacher would only get 80.5% of that $65,000 if they retired at 60. That drops the retirement allowance down to $52,325.
Erin Lowry is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering personal finance. She is author of “Broke Millennial.” | 2022-05-31T15:41:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Today’s Pensions Just Don’t Favor Millennials and Gen Z - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/todays-pensions-just-dont-favormillennials-and-gen-z/2022/05/31/f7edf99e-e0ee-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/todays-pensions-just-dont-favormillennials-and-gen-z/2022/05/31/f7edf99e-e0ee-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Plan your summer with this guide to D.C.’s festivals and events
We’ve picked something to do every weekend from now through Labor Day
(Angela Hsieh for The Washington Post)
Over the last two summers, we’ve learned to not plan too far ahead.
“Will this concert series actually happen?”
“Will that festival get canceled at the last minute?”
“Should I bother putting together a costume for the anime con?”
This year, however, feels different. We’re confidently looking forward to all the mileposts of summer — enjoying movies and listening to music outdoors, delighting in pop-up festivals and theater, cheering for parades and demolition derbies — even if they’re happening months from now. Tickets are on sale, and dates are on the calendar (as long as it doesn’t rain, of course).
To help with planning, we’ve picked something to do every weekend through Labor Day. Some are limited-time activities, and others are available beyond the weekends listed. Most of the events are outdoors, too, so you can enjoy the fresh air while you stay busy all summer long.
WEEK OF: June 3
Watch movies among the tombs at Congressional Cemetery
Neighborhood parks throughout the D.C. area are awash in outdoor movie screenings during the summer months. It can be hard to tell the difference between the various series, especially when so many seem to be showing a combination of “Space Jam” and “The Princess Bride” and “Encanto” this year. What elevates outdoor movies is the setting: watching the Library of Congress screen entries from the National Film Registry on its lawn, or seeing inspirational films at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial. For atmosphere, though, it’s tough to beat the monthly Cinematery at Congressional Cemetery in Southeast, where attendees picnic among the rows of headstones while watching “E.T.” (June 3), “Galaxy Quest” (July 1) and other space-themed films on a large screen. BYOB is permitted, and the mood becomes more atmospheric as shadows get longer. Just remember to buy tickets early, as events sell out well in advance. Movies begin at sunset, and gates open an hour before. Recommended donation of $10 per adult and $5 per child.
WEEK OF: June 10
Celebrate Pride in all its forms
The Capital Pride Parade and Festival are, naturally, going to be two of the biggest in-person gatherings of the summer: The parade (June 11 at 3 p.m.) is taking a new route that will “acknowledge the evolution of the LGBTQ+ neighborhoods” in D.C., starting at 14th and T streets NW and moving through Shaw, Logan Circle and Dupont before ending near 21st and P streets. The festival and concert (June 12 at noon) fill Pennsylvania Avenue with three performance stages of music, dancing, and kings and queens; hundreds of booths and vendors; interactive sports zones; family activities; and an outdoor food court and beer gardens. The main event is headlined by Joe Jonas’s band DNCE, “RuPaul’s Drag Race” winners Willow Pill and Symone, and a DJ dance party.
But Pride is about much more than the “official” events and dance parties over one weekend: The Library of Congress’s after-hours Pride Night hosts a discussion about “Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington” (June 9). The Embassy of Argentina is organizing a month of weekly “Queer Tango” dance classes and milongas at Dupont Underground (June 7-28). The Smithsonian’s Futures exhibition hosts a conversation wondering what Pride will look like in 2050 (June 10). There’s a Bike Party Pride Ride, a parade through Annapolis, a family day at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, a French embassy-sponsored film screening on the Mall, fireworks at the Wharf and much more.
Salute freedom on Juneteenth
The biggest event taking place June 19 is Pharrell Williams’s Something in the Water festival, but D.C. and the surrounding region have long celebrated Juneteenth, a holiday commemorating the day in June 1865 when enslaved people in Texas learned they were free, two-and-a-half years after the Emancipation Proclamation. Juneteenth became a federal holiday in 2021 and will be officially observed on Monday, June 20, but events are taking place across multiple days.
The National Museum of African American History and Culture begins its in-person Juneteenth programming June 11 with a discussion about the Freedom Colonies, the African American communities created in Texas after 1865. Events include a conversation with Nicole A. Taylor, the author of the Juneteenth cookbook “Watermelon and Red Birds,” on June 13; a panel discussion about Juneteenth’s legacy of social justice and democracy on June 15; and a Community Day on June 20 with storytelling, crafts, living history demonstrations, and live music from Alphonso Horne and the Gotham Kings. Registration is required for all events, which will also be live-streamed.
Among other events that have been announced: The African American Civil War Memorial Museum holds a wreath-laying ceremony at 11 a.m. June 20 followed by a living history program on the plaza at the Spirit of Freedom statue. Montgomery County’s 25th annual Juneteenth Celebration is at the BlackRock Center for the Arts in Germantown on June 18 — a free day of movies, music and dance performances, hands-on family activities, food trucks and talks. Prince George’s County’s annual Juneteenth is held at Watkins Regional Park on June 18. Union Stage is hosting a Freedom Day Music Festival on June 19, with a lineup that includes Black Alley and Nia Dinero. Classical Movements, which puts on the “Secret Garden” outdoor concert series in Alexandria, is hosting “Steps Toward Freedom,” a Juneteenth concert with the Coalition for African Americans in the Performing Arts, on June 16.
Learn about a different culture, or how communities are trying to save the world
It has been a rough couple of years for the Smithsonian’s decades-old Folklife Festival. In 2019, organizers cut the festival from 10 days to two, citing the government shutdown and funding delays, and decided to postpone programs focused on the cultures of Benin and Brazil until 2020. Then both the 2020 and 2021 festivals were held virtually. This year, the festival reverts to its “normal” schedule of activities from June 22 to 27 and again from June 30 to July 4. The two topics — the United Arab Emirates and the Smithsonian’s sustainability-focused Earth Optimism project — were both part of the 2020 virtual “Beyond the Mall” festival, but now will allow visitors to experience hands-on activities, craft demonstrations, talks with experts, poetry readings and concerts. Learn about conservation efforts from the Chesapeake Bay to the savannas of Kenya, or try weaving a sculpture with date palms.
WEEK OF: July 1
Watch the fireworks from a rooftop deck — or just enjoy the rooftop deck
July Fourth may be one of the biggest days on the nightlife calendar — especially for bars with rooftop decks and sightlines to the Washington Monument — but it’s unlikely most bars have begun thinking about their Independence Day parties yet. Many bars don’t announce their firework viewing plans until the latter half of June.
In previous years, U Street has been a hot spot for events, with free rooftop parties at the Brixton, the Hawthorne and other bars drawing crowds hours before the first fireworks are launched. The Wharf has become another prime viewing location, with ticketed parties at Tiki TNT, Officina and other rooftops with views of the monument selling out in advance.
Newer rooftops worth checking out include Ladybird, atop the Banneker Hotel at Scott Circle, which has unobstructed views down 16th Street NW, and CloudM, at the CitizenM hotel in Southwest, where the Washington Monument looms over neighboring office buildings.
These hotel rooftop bars offer excellent — and very different — views of D.C.
Ooh and ahh over beautiful flowers at a picturesque park
Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, the only national park dedicated to aquatic plants, can be a destination year-round, but it has its spotlight moment in July. That’s the peak season for brightly colored lotuses and water lilies, which are celebrated at the multi-week Lotus and Water Lily Festival throughout the park. Visitors wander dirt paths to look at gorgeous flowers in more than 40 human-made ponds, as well as turtles, dragonflies and butterflies. (Pro tip: Lotus petals open in the morning and close in the afternoon, so stop by before work or get up early on a weekend to enjoy the blossoms in their full glory.) From July 8 through the end of the month, the gardens stay open until 8 p.m. on Saturdays, instead of the usual 4 p.m. closing. Activities include live music, canoe tours, yoga and smartphone photography classes. See the Friends of Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens website for the full calendar and event registration.
From 2021: Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens are in bloom. How to make the most of this hidden gem.
WEEK OF: July 15
Explore a Shakespearean “Playhouse” before enjoying “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
In summers past, the National Building Museum has transformed its vast Great Hall into a verdant green “Lawn” with hammocks and croquet; a maze with 18-foot-high walls; and “The Beach,” a wildly popular adult ball pit. This year’s immersive Summer Block Party installation transports visitors to somewhere completely different: a Shakespearean theater. By day, from July 1 through Sept. 5, “The Playhouse” will be used for sword-fighting demonstrations, costume displays, and tours “showing the art and mystery of stagecraft,” while the museum holds scavenger hunts and challenges visitors to design their own Globe Theatre. At night, from July 12 to Aug. 28, the Folger Theatre will take to the same stage for productions of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” (Note you’ll need separate tickets to tour the Playhouse and to watch the play.)
Experience demolition derbies, carnival rides and a Pig Scramble
Some people try to paint the D.C. area as out of touch with the rest of America, but we love a demolition derby, livestock show, pie-eating contest or carnival midway as much as anywhere else. Late summer is county fair season: Prince William, Montgomery and Howard hold theirs in August, alongside Fairfax’s 4-H Fair and Carnival, while Prince George’s, Calvert, Charles and Frederick wait until September. Get an early start on the fun at the Loudoun County Fair, a traditional 4-H fair in Leesburg from July 26 to 30. Entertainment includes livestock shows and tours, competitions ranging from canning to needlepoint, a rodeo, a demolition derby, live music, carnival rides and the Pig Scramble, a pig-catching competition in which the winner has the choice of taking home $20 or the pig. And for fair fans who don’t have a car, the Arlington County Fair, held in mid-August, is Metro-accessible.
Dress up for anime, K-pop and video games
For fans of anime, manga, cosplay and video games, there’s no bigger weekend than Otakon, an annual celebration of Asian art and pop culture at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center from July 29 to 31. The 28-year-old event, run as a nonprofit “for fans, by fans,” drew more than 28,000 attendees pre-pandemic. It’s known for elaborate and incredibly detailed costumes inspired by anime and manga characters — the schedule includes both costume contests and live-action role play, or LARPing — but the weekend is packed full of events. Attend a formal ball or masquerade, play free arcade or VR games, browse original artwork in the Artist Alley, watch dance groups perform, try hands-on crafting or participate in a Pokémon battle. Panels and workshops feature big names and die-hard fans. Special guests include voice actor Steve Blum, who has lent his talents to “Cowboy Bebop,” “Star Wars: Rebels” and more than 400 video games, and Friday night’s concert features K-pop band PIXY, making its North American debut.
Otakon isn’t the only cosplay convention in town this summer: Blerdcon, held July 8 to 10 at Hyatt Regency Crystal City, centers on Black and POC nerd culture, with gaming, costume contests, anime screenings, comedy shows and late-night parties.
WEEK OF: Aug. 5
Get your groove on at a Civil War-era fort
More than 160 years ago, Fort Dupont and Fort Reno were among the defensive fortifications protecting Washington from Confederate attacks. And for half a century, they’ve served as D.C.’s premier spaces for summer concerts. Fort Dupont, known for its ice arena and bike trails, began offering Saturday night concerts in 1972, and over the years, crowds of thousands have welcomed Gil Scott-Heron, Roy Ayers, Jill Scott, the Stylistics, William DeVaughn, and Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers, among other jazz and R&B notables. More recent years have seen classic hip-hop and go-go in the mix, as seen during last year’s virtual concerts. This year’s 50th anniversary program, which is targeting a July 23 start for five or six weekly concerts, will feature “artists whose music recalls the early days of the Fort Dupont concerts and contemporary performers,” according to the National Park Service, which oversees the shows.
On the other side of the city, the Fort Reno concert series, established four years before Fort Dupont’s, is gearing up for another summer in Tenleytown. Fort Reno has long been known as a place for punk and alternative shows — it hit its apex in the 1990s and 2000s when headliners Fugazi, Q and Not U, and the Dismemberment Plan drew crowds of thousands — but the lineup has diversified, with local musicians playing blues and hip-hop onstage, and there’s still a great atmosphere, with families, friends and group house roommates picnicking before rocking out to Hammered Hulls or Branch Manager. Fort Reno’s 2022 series includes eight concerts, beginning July 18, and will be similar to previous seasons, with shows taking place on Monday and Thursday evenings. The lineup hadn’t been finalized as of press time but will be posted on fortreno.com when ready. (Also, it’s worth following Fort Reno’s Instagram account, @fortrenoconcerts, for updates, including weather-related schedule changes.)
WEEK OF: Aug. 12
Take a well-deserved beach day — and maybe bring your dog, too
Lying on the sand with a good book in hand or taking a refreshing dip in the water doesn’t mean driving as far as Rehoboth or Ocean City. Beaches on the Chesapeake Bay or Potomac River may not have the large waves or amenities that you’ll find on the Atlantic Coast, but they’ll also save gas money, time and stress. Some beaches have entry fees and are open only certain days, so check their websites before you pack up the car.
Sandy Point, in the shadow of the Bay Bridge, is the best-known beach on this side of the bay, but it’s popular and fills quickly. Instead, try Fort Smallwood, located near the northern tip of Anne Arundel County, where small beaches face the bay, separated by narrow jetties, and there’s room to spread blankets on the sand. The water is calm, warm and shallow — perfect for wading and floats. Mayo Beach Park, in Edgewater, has four crescent-shaped beaches, with rock jetties that keep the waves gentle. Heading south, options include Aquia Landing in Stafford County, which has a wide, sandy beach and calm water, and Flag Ponds Nature Park and the nearby Calvert Cliffs State Park in Calvert County, where kids can hunt for fossilized shark teeth when not taking a dip. Note that not all beaches are open this summer: Chesapeake Beach has closed Brownie’s Beach to nonresidents “until further notice,” and Beverly Triton Nature Park in Anne Arundel County is under construction this summer and has no parking.
Don’t want to go swimming alone? Fort Smallwood has a dog beach where canines can splash alongside their owners, and Aquia Landing’s beach is open to dogs as well as people. At Quiet Waters Park, just south of Annapolis, dogs can wade in the South River, though their owners must stay on shore.
Feast on steamed crabs
Blue crab lovers know that late summer and fall are the best time to enjoy Maryland’s official state crustacean, once the crabs have grown and molted a few times and started bulking up before hibernation. At the same time, you don’t have to wait until October to get pickin’. The Point, located at a marina in Arnold, north of Annapolis, has quickly become a favorite for its waterfront setting and quality seafood. Captain Billy’s in Newburg offers sunset views over the Potomac as well as steamed crabs and hush puppies. Just outside Baltimore, Schultz’s specializes in crab cakes as well as steamed crabs and was named an American classic by the James Beard Foundation in 2017. Grabbing crabs to enjoy at home? Try Captain White’s, which relocated from the Wharf to Oxon Hill, or Ernie’s, a takeout spot in Brentwood.
Listen to music on the waterfront during D.C. JazzFest
In 2020 and 2021, the organizers of D.C. JazzFest postponed the festival from its traditional dates around Father’s Day until late August, in hopes that conditions would improve enough for an in-person event. The festival went virtual in 2020 and returned in a truncated format in 2021. This year, JazzFest is still shorter than in past years, with a schedule of more than 20 concerts over five days, but it’s keeping the late-summer slot on the waterfront at the Wharf. More importantly, the bulk of performances, which take place over two days on stages next to the Washington Channel, will be free for anyone who wants to watch, with reservations required. Audience members can also pay to upgrade to dedicated seats or closer standing areas. The DC JazzPrix, a competition for up-and-coming artists, will return indoors at Union Stage. The full schedule, including set times, will be available the week of the festival.
WEEK OF: Sept. 2
Embrace your inner bookworm at the National Book Festival
After two years of virtual readings and author talks, the National Book Festival returns in person at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center over Labor Day weekend. “Books Bring Us Together” is the theme of the free Sept. 3 event, and while the participating authors won’t be announced until July — keep an eye on loc.gov/bookfest for updates — more than 200,000 book lovers attended pre-pandemic festivals to hear from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Amy Tan, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Roxane Gay, Dave Eggers and other authors. Whether your tastes run to history, fiction or “Big Nate,” there’s sure to be someone on the bill you want to see, and maybe get an autograph.
18 books that capture the spirit and essence of living in D.C. | 2022-05-31T15:42:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Summer festivals, concerts, outdoor movies and other events in Washington, D.C. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/31/best-summer-events-dc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/31/best-summer-events-dc/ |
Lester Piggott, champion British jockey, dies at 86
He was Britain’s most successful jockey of the late 20th century
Lester Piggott on Hokusai at the start of the Ever Ready Derby at Epsom racecourse in Epsom, England, in 1991. (Chris Cole/Getty Images)
Lester Piggott, whose 11 jockey championship titles and a record nine English Derby wins made him Britain’s most successful jockey of the late 20th century, died May 29 at a hospital in Geneva. He was 86.
His daughter Maureen Haggas announced the death but did not provide a cause. He had reportedly had heart problems.
In a career spanning 47 years, Mr. Piggott rode 4,493 winners in Britain and more than 850 elsewhere. He won the 1990 Breeders’ Cup Mile at Belmont Park, N.Y., worth $500,000 at the time, on the Irish-trained Royal Academy, powering his way from the back of the field.
He took the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in 1973 at the Longchamp track in Paris on Rheingold, and the 1968 Washington, D.C., International at Laurel Park, Md., on Sir Ivor. He went on to win the latter race twice more, on Karabas in 1969 and Argument in 1980.
In Britain, although Gordon Richards (4,870) and Pat Eddery (4,632) rode more winners overall, and U.S. jockey Bill Shoemaker had 8,883 career wins, Mr. Piggott’s record in the big races — including the five British “Classics” — remains unsurpassed. In addition to the nine Derbys, the British equivalent of the Kentucky Derby, he won 21 of the other Classics — the 2,000 Guineas, the 1,000 Guineas, the Derby, the Oaks and the St. Leger.
Mr. Piggott was the British champion jockey in 1960, in every season from 1964 to 1971 and again in 1981 and 1982. He captured England’s Triple Crown — the 2,000 Guineas, the Derby and the St. Leger — in 1970 on the brilliant Canadian-bred, Irish-trained colt Nijinsky, owned by the American mining and metals magnate Charles W. Engelhard Jr. No horse has won the English Triple Crown since.
Relatively tall for a flat-race jockey — he stood 5 feet 7 ½ inches — and with the shortest of stirrups, he was easy to pick out in any race, his backside high in the air. He was nicknamed “The Long Fellow” by jockeys because of his height.
Within the racing game, Mr. Piggott also was known as “Old Stoneface” because of his unsmiling determination to win. But the description also partly came about because of a lingering shyness from the partial deafness that had left him with a slight speech impediment since childhood.
He won a reputation from an early age for his aggressive riding and unfettered use of the whip — he once nudged a fellow jockey off his mount and over the trackside rail — and his ruthlessness in eliciting rides from owners and trainers, even at the expense of other jockeys.
Mr. Piggott retired from the saddle in 1985 to become a trainer but had already become embroiled in a tax evasion scandal, dating back to his riding years, which threatened his future in what Britons call “the Sport of Kings.”
A copy of a private letter from a leading trainer, Henry Cecil, to a horse owner, referring to special undeclared payments and bonuses to the jockey, was sold by persons unknown to a Fleet Street newspaper. That got the attention of Her Majesty’s Inland Revenue — the taxman — and police and tax officers raided Mr. Piggott’s home, arresting him and seizing bank statements and other documents.
He was prosecuted on 10 charges of failing to declare income of more than 3 million pounds on which he should have paid around 1.7 million pounds, and of making false statements to the tax authorities. He did not deny the charges, and his trial took only a day in October 1987. He was found guilty and sentenced to three years in prison, a record sentence for tax evasion at the time.
After 366 days in prison — during which time his wife, Susan, ran the training stables — Mr. Piggott was freed and returned to training his string of up to 100 thoroughbreds, although the trainers’ license remained in his wife’s name. He eventually settled with the tax authorities by paying 4.4 million pounds.
Lester Keith Piggott was born in the market town of Wantage, near Oxford, on Nov. 5, 1935. His father, Keith, was a top National Hunt (hurdle and steeplechase) jockey before World War II. He won the coveted Champion Hurdle at the historic Cheltenham track in 1939 and went on to train the steeplechaser Ayala to a 1963 win in the world’s most famous “jumps” race, the Grand National at Aintree, Liverpool.
Lester’s paternal grandfather, Ernie Piggott, had won the Grand National three times in the saddle, while his mother, the former Iris Rickaby, also came from a multigenerational racing family and twice won the Newmarket Town Plate for female riders, a rarity in racing at the time.
Determined to be a jockey, Mr. Piggott became an apprentice at his father’s stables in Lambourn, Berkshire, when he was 12, getting his general education from a private tutor a few days a week. He got his first ride in an official English race in April 1948 and was still only 12 when he rode his first winner at Haydock Park racecourse in August that year. (The current minimum age for a jockey is 16.)
He was 18 when he won his first Epsom Derby, the most prestigious flat race in Britain, on the colt Never Say Die. He was the youngest jockey to win that race since 16-year-old John Parsons triumphed in 1862 on a horse called Caractacus. It is said that instead of celebrating, young Lester hurried home to mow his father’s lawn as he had promised.
He married Susan Armstrong, daughter of a trainer, in 1960 and they had two daughters, Maureen and Tracy.
From the late 1960s, Mr. Piggott became the first British jockey to break away from a specific trainer and go freelance, improving the lot of riders ever since, making many of them millionaires.
He liked to say that balance, for the horse and jockey, was key to success. “If the horse loses balance he loses speed and direction, and that might cost him the race,” the Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying. “The horse has his own center of gravity just behind his shoulders. The jockey has a center of gravity. But the jockey can shift his and the horse can’t. At every stride the horse’s center of gravity is shifting in relation to the jockey’s. Getting a horse balanced means keeping your balance, every stride, every second, to suit his.”
Mr. Piggott became known for his ability to keep his weight down to around 120 pounds, way below his natural body weight, usually on a diet of coffee, champagne, cigars and saunas.
Having initially retired from riding in 1985, as the tax evasion scandal surfaced, Mr. Piggott made a spectacular return to the track in October 1990, just short of his 55th birthday. One of his first races back was his surging win on Royal Academy in the Breeders’ Cup mile at Belmont. After a few up-and-down years in the saddle, he finally retired in 1995, still the most famous name in British racing at the time.
In 2012, he left his wife of 52 years, Susan, and moved to the picturesque lakeside resort of Rolle, near Geneva, with a new partner, the Swiss-born Lady (her father was an English lord) Barbara FitzGerald, and the blessing of his wife and daughters. They all survive him, along with a son, Jamie, from a relationship with his former assistant Anna Ludlow. | 2022-05-31T15:42:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lester Piggott, champion British jockey, dies at 86 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/05/31/lester-piggott-dead-jockey-english/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/05/31/lester-piggott-dead-jockey-english/ |
Corgis play a starring role in Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations
A London cafe celebrates the queen's platinum jubilee and her love of corgis. (Natalie Thomas/Reuters)
Corgi images adorn commemorative ornaments, pillows, mugs and biscuits. Corgi sculptures have been installed around the streets of central London. And during a finale pageant procession on Sunday, a giant puppet of the queen will be surrounded by a pack of puppet corgis.
Queen Elizabeth II loses her last corgi, Willow, marking the end of a scrappy canine dynasty
Of all the jubilee celebrations happening across the country this week, London’s pop-up “Corgi Cafe” was one of the most unusual.
On Sunday, around 300 pooches, and their humans, found their way to the Refinery, a restaurant in central London that was decked out in royal memorabilia. A life-size cardboard cutout of the queen with a “dogs this way” sign greeted customers outside.
“Her Majesty has always kept corgis, and I think this is the right way to celebrate,” said Ian Middleton, 58, an airline pilot.
The Platinum Jubilee, he said, was probably the last major hurrah that the public would be holding for Britain’s 96-year-old monarch. “I think there’s a realization that this is the last major event and it’s a way to say thank you,” he said.
His corgi, Sue Baker, was squirming in his arms and less interested in a Washington Post reporter’s questions than in the nearby “pupuccino bar.”
The corgis were let off their leashes and allowed to roam the cafe, weaving through a sea of tables, eyeing leftovers, sniffing at everything. Some were tempted — with treats — to stick their heads through a cardboard cutout in the shape of a giant jubilee mug.
Pug Café, a dog events company that put on the event, designated a “chill zone” for nervous and older corgis.
At one point, a pair of corgis were giving the feet of Abbie Keane, 43, a lot of attention. She works at a doggy bakery and was selling an array of dog treats at the event, many in the shape of crowns and corgis.
But her treats were considerably higher than the corgi pair could reach, so the dogs moved on to Sara Fancourt, 30, who works for recipe box company and was sitting down at the dog’s level. The dogs suspected, rightly, that she had a stash of dog treats she was willing to share once they climbed onto her lap.
She said she had a “mad passion” for corgis. “I’m here as a corgi lover. I love that they are a small dog but still super chunky, so you get a good hug,” she said.
“This is the year that superfans get to really indulge themselves,” she said, referring to admirers of corgis, not the royals. | 2022-05-31T15:43:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Corgis feature in Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee celebrations - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/01/corgi-queen-platinum-jubilee/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/01/corgi-queen-platinum-jubilee/ |
Queen Elizabeth II: A visual timeline of her 70 years on the throne
Portrait photograph by John Hedgecoe, 1966
Illustrations by Marianna Tomaselli for The Washington Post
LONDON — Monarch since age 25, she has been served by 14 British prime ministers and met with 13 U.S. presidents. She has presided over the shrinking of the British Empire and the rise of globalization. She has anchored the country through uncertainty — and the royal family’s own dramas.
As Britain this week celebrates Queen Elizabeth II’s 70 years on the throne, here are some key moments from her long reign and life.
Elizabeth dedicates her life to public service
Princess Elizabeth broadcasts remarks from Cape Town, South Africa, on her 21st birthday, on April 21, 1947. (AP)
Princess Elizabeth was on a tour of South Africa, part of the British Empire at the time, when she turned 21 and made one of her earliest public addresses. “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong,” she said in a speech broadcast on the radio from Cape Town.
Queen Elizabeth II and her husband, Philip, wave from Buckingham Palace on her coronation day, June 2, 1953. (Getty Images)
Elizabeth’s path to the throne was hastened by the abdication of her uncle and the early death of her father, King George VI. She became queen in February 1952, at age 25, and was 27 at the time of her official coronation in June 1953.
The event was televised for the first time — a decision encouraged by her husband, Philip, that would catapult the royal family into people’s homes for decades to come. Millions in Britain and around the world watched the BBC broadcast from Westminster Abbey.
“Although my experience is so short and my task so new, I have in my parents and grandparents an example which I can follow with certainty and with confidence,” Elizabeth said, addressing the nation that evening. “I thank you all from a full heart.”
First state visit to America
Queen Elizabeth II, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, first lady Mamie Eisenhower and Prince Philip pose at the White House on Oct. 17, 1957.
Queen of the jet-setting age, Elizabeth has made more than 90 state visits, in addition to traveling widely in the British Commonwealth. While projecting the symbolism of the crown, she has helped to strengthen ties with allies and smooth fraught relationships in places such as India, Russia, South Africa and Ireland.
Elizabeth visited President Harry S. Truman in 1951 when she was a princess, but she made her first state visit to the United States as queen in 1957, meeting with President Dwight D. Eisenhower to mark the 350th anniversary of the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown, Va.
First televised Christmas address
Queen Elizabeth II smiles just before the end of her first Christmas Day television speech in 1957. (Keystone/Getty Images)
Queen Elizabeth II has never given an interview. But she has found ways to connect with her subjects, including through her annual Christmas address, a central part of British holiday traditions.
As both head of state and head of the Church of England, she has mixed words of wisdom, faith and occasionally personal reflections.
“I cannot lead you into battle, I do not give you laws or administer justice, but I can do something else, I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations,” she said in her first televised Christmas remarks in 1957.
Beatlemania comes to Buckingham Palace
A policeman loses his helmet while holding back Beatles fans outside Buckingham Palace on Oct. 26, 1965. (AP)
Among the notable cultural moments of the second Elizabethan era was the Beatles’ visit to Buckingham Palace in London on Oct. 26, 1965. Thousands of adoring fans pressed past policemen and climbed onto palace gates and lampposts as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr arrived to meet the queen.
Wearing a pale gold gown, she bestowed medals of honor on the British pop culture icons. “She was very friendly,” McCartney said after the meeting. “She was just like a mum to us.” Four years later, Lennon would return his medal, in protest of Britain’s support of the U.S. war in Vietnam and its involvement in the Nigerian Civil War.
Aberfan mine disaster
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip visit Aberfan in Wales to comfort the families of the 144 people who died when a coal tip collapsed on the local school. (Stan Meagher/Getty Images)
The queen’s reign has also been marked by moments of national devastation. On Oct. 21, 1966, an avalanche of coal debris that had come loose from a rain-soaked mountain rushed through the Welsh town of Aberfan, killing 144 people, most of them children at school.
As the nation mourned the tragedy, Elizabeth drew criticism for waiting eight days before visiting the disaster site, a decision she is said to regret.
A visit from the Apollo 11 astronauts
Queen Elizabeth II receives Apollo 11 astronauts, left to right, Michael Collins, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, at Buckingham Palace. (Bettmann Archive)
Space exploration ranks high among the scientific and technological advances during Elizabeth’s reign. After becoming the first people to land on the moon, Americans Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins and Buzz Aldrin undertook a global goodwill tour, stopping at Buckingham Palace on Oct. 14, 1969.
Armstrong later revealed that he was so sick that day he considered skipping the event; instead he went and ended up coughing on the queen. Collins, meanwhile, nearly fell down the stairs trying not to turn his back on Elizabeth, Aldrin said in a 2016 tweet.
The first royal walkabout
Queen Elizabeth II takes part in a “walkabout” in Sydney, Australia, with Mayor Emmet McDermott in May 1970. (Keystone/Getty Images)
Queen Elizabeth II broke centuries of tradition when, instead of waving from afar, she greeted people up close on a royal tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1970. Wearing a lemon-yellow dress, with a signature hat and handbag combination, she walked through the streets of Sydney smiling and speaking to giddy onlookers.
Queen Elizabeth II meets Maoris in New Zealand in 1977. (Anwar Hussein/Getty Images)
Since then, the “walkabout” has become a regular practice for many members of the royal family.
Charles and Diana’s marriage
Queen Elizabeth II poses with her son Charles and his fiancee, Diana Spencer, at Buckingham Palace on March 27, 1981. (Fox Photos/Getty Images)
One of the rockier periods of the queen’s family life began with the fairy-tale wedding of her eldest son and heir, Prince Charles, to Diana Spencer on July 29, 1981. Up to a million people sought to get a glimpse of the procession in central London, while the BBC estimated that 750 million people around the world watched on television.
Although Diana was beloved as “the people’s princess,” the couple had a troubled marriage, with mutual accusations of infidelity. They separated in 1992 — a year the queen called “annus horribilis,” (“a disastrous year in Latin), as it also involved her son Andrew’s separation, her daughter Anne’s divorce and a fire at Windsor Castle.
First British monarch to visit China
Elizabeth and Philip visit the Great Wall of China in October 1986. (Tim Graham/Getty Images)
President Richard M. Nixon had gone before her. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, too. But in October 1986, Elizabeth became the first British monarch to visit China. The trip was seen as an important piece of Britain’s diplomatic effort as it prepared to return Hong Kong to Chinese control. The queen saw the Great Wall and newly unearthed terra cotta warriors. And, unlike Thatcher, she remained unperturbed when Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping spat into a spittoon by his seat.
Hosting Nelson Mandela
South African President Nelson Mandela stands with Queen Elizabeth II on his arrival at Buckingham Palace for a state banquet in his honor in July 1996. (AP)
South African President Nelson Mandela arrived in Britain in July 1996 for a four-day state visit to his country’s former colonizer. Addressing members of Parliament, he denounced racism as “a blight on the human conscience.”
On that trip, Mandela and the queen developed a lasting fondness for each other. She hosted him at Buckingham Palace and took him on a carriage ride through central London. At a party at the Royal Albert Hall, Mandela had the queen on her feet, though she “has seldom been known to boogie in public,” the Daily Telegraph reported.
Diana’s death
Elizabeth and Philip view the thousands of flowers and tributes left outside Kensington Palace in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales, on Sept. 5, 1997. (John Stillwell/AFP/Getty Images)
Millions can still remember exactly where they were in 1997 when they learned of the death of Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris. The moment shocked the world and put intense public scrutiny on the British royal family.
The queen faced criticism for a slow response. Days later, she spoke to the nation live from Buckingham Palace and said: “No one who knew Diana will ever forget her. Millions of others who never met her, but felt they knew her, will remember her.” She added, “We have all been trying in our different ways to cope.”
50th anniversary of the first Christmas television broadcast
Elizabeth tapes her Christmas Day message in the 1844 Room at Buckingham Palace in 2007. (Steve Parsons/Pool/AFP/Getty Images)
In 2007, the queen marked 50 years of her Christmas broadcast with a modern flair: She posted the speech on YouTube.
“One of the features of growing old is the heightened awareness of change,” she said. “To remember what happened 50 years ago means that it is possible to appreciate what has changed in the meantime; it also makes you aware of what has remained constant,” like family, the monarch added.
Officials applaud as Queen Elizabeth II arrives during the Opening Ceremonies of the Summer Olympics in London on July 27, 2012. (Matt Dunham/AP)
The famously staid queen surprised audiences at the 2012 London Olympic Games by appearing in a dramatic opening segment alongside Britain’s most famous spy, James Bond, played by actor Daniel Craig.
A video showed 007 coming to the palace to escort the monarch to the opening ceremony, with the two appearing to parachute from a helicopter into the Olympic Stadium amid wild applause from startled fans. The real queen, poker-faced as always, entered her box seat with a familiar yet cheeky wave.
Harry and Meghan’s defection
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle leave St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle after their wedding ceremony in Windsor, England, May 19, 2018. (Danny Lawson/AP)
The wedding of Prince Harry to American actress Meghan Markle in 2018 was a global event — and prompted questions about whether a biracial, politically active, self-proclaimed feminist might help modernize the British monarchy.
But by 2020, Harry and Meghan announced that they felt hounded by the media and would be stepping back from their royal duties. The queen brokered their departure from the family firm, writing in a statement: “Although we would have preferred them to remain full-time working Members of the Royal Family, we respect and understand their wish to live a more independent life as a family while remaining a valued part of my family.”
Prince Philip’s death
Elizabeth and Philip walk together at Broadlands, Hampshire, in 2007. (Fiona Hanson/AFP/Getty Images)
Elizabeth had been married to Philip for 73 years when Buckingham Palace announced his death on April 9, 2021. His funeral, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, was attended only by close family members and friends. The queen sat alone in a pew, wearing a black face mask, in keeping with national restrictions.
Britain's Queen Elizabeth II sits alone in St. George's Chapel during the funeral of Prince Philip. (Jonathan Brady/AP)
Elizabeth, whom Philip affectionately called Lilibet, had described him as her “strength and stay.” In her Christmas message that year, she recalled that his “mischievous, inquiring twinkle was as bright at the end as when I first set eyes on him.” Then she added: “But life, of course, consists of final partings as well as first meetings.”
Red London buses and taxis pass beneath Union Jack flags, put up to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's Platinum Jubilee, on Regent Street in central London on May 27. (Adrian Dennis/AFP/Getty Images)
Parades, parties and a public holiday this week will mark the queen’s Platinum Jubilee, which celebrates Elizabeth as the first and only British monarch to reach 70 years on the throne.
Union flag bunting and decorations already adorn major monuments in London and cities across the country — a taste of the pomp and celebration that will take place from Thursday to Sunday, as Britain reflects on the long life and reign of Queen Elizabeth II.
Portrait photograph by John Hedgecoe. Illustrations by Marianna Tomaselli. 2022 Platinum Jubilee photograph by Steve Parsons/AFP/Getty Images.
Editing by Matt Callahan, Morgan Coates, Reem Akkad and Marisa Bellack. Copy editing by Vanessa Larson.
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Sarah Hashemi creates motion graphics and animation for The Washington Post's video team. Her work ranges from graphic explainers through branding and documentary. | 2022-05-31T15:43:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Queen Elizabeth II: A visual timeline of her 70 years on the throne - Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/queen-elizabeth-jubilee-reign-photos/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/queen-elizabeth-jubilee-reign-photos/ |
The verdict is a defeat for Special Counsel John Durham, appointed three years ago by then-Attorney General William Barr.
The Sussmann jury began deliberating Friday, weighing testimony of current and former FBI officials, former Clinton campaign advisers, and technology experts. In closing arguments, prosecutors told the jury that Sussmann thought he had "a license to lie” to the FBI at the height of the 2016 presidential campaign. Sussmann’s defense lawyers countered that the case against Sussmann was built on a “political conspiracy theory.”
Over two weeks of testimony, the case rehashed some of the bitter controversies from the Donald Trump-Hillary Clinton presidential contest. Sussmann was charged with a single count of lying to the FBI when he delivered allegations of a secret communications channel between the Trump Organization and Alfa Bank, which is based in Russia.
Sussmann prosecutors also take aim at Clinton, the FBI, and the press
The jury was tasked with answering a fairly simple legal and factual question — whether Sussmann lied about his client and whether that lie was relevant to the FBI investigation. Prosecutors argued Sussmann’s lie was just one part of a larger scheme by Clinton loyalists to use the FBI and news reporters to launch a damaging, last-minute revelation against Trump that would tip the election to Clinton.
The jury ultimately rejected those claims, apparently swayed by the argument from Sussmann’s lawyer, Sean Berkowitz, countered that the prosecution was trying to turn a brief 30-minute meeting more than five years ago into a “giant political conspiracy theory.”
What's at stake in the Sussmann trial
The key witness of the trial was James Baker, who was the FBI’s top lawyer when he met with Sussmann on Sept. 19, 2016. Baker told the jury he was “100 percent confident” that Sussmann insisted to him he was not acting on behalf of a client and that if he had known, he would have handled the conversation differently and perhaps not even agreed to the meeting at all.
Baker was the sole direct witness to the conversation, since Sussmann did not testify. Sussmann’s lawyers repeatedly challenged Baker’s credibility, noting that in one earlier interview, Baker said Sussmann was representing cybersecurity clients; in another, he seemed to say he didn’t remember that part of the talk. In response to questions on the witness stand, he said he couldn’t remember 116 times, according to Berkowitz.
Baker, who now works for Twitter, testified that Sussmann told him a major newspaper — he later learned it was the New York Times — was preparing to write about the allegations. That apparently worried Baker, who said he knew a news story would probably cause any suspicious communications to stop, so he wanted the FBI to be able to investigate before an article appeared. Prosecutors say it was Sussmann himself who had provided the allegations about Trump information to the Times. | 2022-05-31T16:12:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sussmann not guilty of lying to FBI in 2016 for Hillary Clinton - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/05/31/sussmann-not-guilty-lying-fbi-hillary-clinton/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/05/31/sussmann-not-guilty-lying-fbi-hillary-clinton/ |
What Peter Navarro might have to offer federal investigators
White House trade adviser Peter Navarro speaks with reporters at the White House on June 18, 2020, in Washington. (Alex Brandon/AP)
The way Peter Navarro came to the White House under Donald Trump is perhaps unique in American history. During the 2016 campaign, Trump’s aide-de-camp-in-law Jared Kushner was tasked with finding someone who could inform the candidate on economic issues. Kushner skimmed Amazon, finding a book with the appealing title of “Death by China.” Navarro was its author; he became an aide to the candidate and then the president.
In the years since, Navarro’s role in American politics has been similar. He offers concise assertions — very much in the sense of being assertive — backed up with voluminous scribblings that aren’t subjected to much scrutiny. At times he lands on target, as when he pushed the Trump administration in early 2020 to buy protective gear aimed at containing the coronavirus. Often, he’s far from the mark.
That’s particularly true with his post-2020-election insistences. People often forget that Trump’s infamous effort to cajole supporters to show up in Washington on Jan. 6 — “be there, will be wild!” — was not a stand-alone imperative. It was, instead, the conclusion to a tweet that began with his promotion of a 30-plus page document written by Navarro that purported to show how the election had been stolen. At the time, I described that report succinctly (and I believe accurately) as perhaps being “the most embarrassing document created by a White House staffer.”
He went on to create more reports of the same ilk and, later, to try to defend Trump against criticism for his role in sparking the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, by insisting that the goal was simply to block President Biden’s inauguration through nonviolent means. Navarro has predictably refused to cooperate with the House select committee investigating the riot, making a concise, dubious point (Trump doesn’t want him to) at unnecessary length.
All of this is useful context for the revelation Monday that Navarro was subpoenaed to provide testimony to a federal grand jury in Washington. True to form, Navarro has made this request the centerpiece of an 88-page document obtained by Politico in which Navarro purports to seek to sue House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the members of the House committee and the U.S. attorney who signed that subpoena.
It is the nature of grand jury subpoenas that we don’t know a lot about them. Navarro’s proposed lawsuit suggests that it is downstream from contempt charges sought by the House committee in response to his refusal to provide them with information related to his discussions with Trump before the Capitol riot. But his word is all we have here, and his is not a word we should necessarily take at face value.
“[I]t would be unusual if a grand jury subpoena were related to his potential contempt case, since he would likely be the target of such a probe and less likely to be asked for testimony,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney and Nicholas Wu write, correctly.
We do understand that the Justice Department has been working to build a criminal case against someone that necessitates testimony from aides and attorneys who were involved in Trump’s post-election efforts. Attorney General Merrick Garland has been criticized from the left for not having announced any charges, criticism that often fails to appreciate 1) what’s been done and 2) the diverging natures of quiet criminal investigations and loud political ones. If the Navarro subpoena — stompily referred to as “Grand Jury Subpoena #GJ2022052590979 USAO #2022R00631” in Navarro’s new document, upholding his clear belief that unnecessary complexity is an effective rhetorical tool — is in fact part of a Justice Department probe, it’s useful to note (as the New York Times did) that it comes from a different grand jury than the one that sought information from those attorneys.
The proposed lawsuit in which Navarro revealed this subpoena does an admirable job of summarizing the various reasons that investigators would probably like to pick his brain, or at least those parts of it that he has not already committed to paper or revealed in various television interviews. It’s ostensibly a lengthy argument against the validity of the House committee, an argument made both for its utility to himself and his former boss but also because he argues that a subpoena that stems from the committee is itself invalid.
He states flatly, for example, that what he sought from Jan. 6 “was to delay certification of the election for at least another several weeks so that Congress and legislative bodies could probe the “fraud and election irregularities” that were revealed during the counting of electoral votes. To an outside observer, this perhaps sounds sensible — except that the election had been certified in each state weeks earlier and that there were no “fraud and irregularities” raised during the process that had not already been dismissed as irrelevant.
The document includes lines like this one: “There is no definitive proof offered by the Committee or available in the public square that the November 3, 2020 presidential election was a fair election unmarred by election irregularities.” Students of first-year logic classes will recognize the twin flaws here. First, that no one has offered definitive proof that Peter Navarro is not a space alien who came to Earth solely to increase human PDF production; by Navarro’s standard, it’s up to him to show that my theory is incorrect, not on me to prove it. And second, of course, that there is no credible proof at all of the inverse of Navarro’s assertion: that the results were tainted by any significant fraud.
At one point Navarro writes — with apparent seriousness — that “Occam’s Razor teaches us that the simplest explanation is also the most likely” as he tries to dismiss a document from the Biden White House. Occam’s razor would have decapitated Trump’s fraud claims by noon on Nov. 4 had Navarro or anyone else chosen to deploy it.
It’s a reminder that the simplest explanation is not always the most useful, as Navarro himself has repeatedly made clear. But for prosecutors looking to learn as much as possible about what was happening inside the Trump White House as his time in office wound down, having sworn testimony from an aide close to the president who likes to talk a lot would be an awfully useful development.
Trump and his team might like just the titles, but Navarro likes to offer up books. | 2022-05-31T16:12:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What former Donald Trump aide Peter Navarro might have to offer federal investigators - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/what-peter-navarro-might-have-offer-federal-investigators/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/what-peter-navarro-might-have-offer-federal-investigators/ |
Interviews with children who survived the Uvalde, Texas, shooting resonated with Andy Murray, who was a student when the shooting in his Dunblane, Scotland, school occurred. (Manu Fernandez/Associated Press)
Even now, so many years later, what Andy Murray went through as a child comes back in stark relief every time there’s a school shooting.
The shooting, in which 19 children and two teachers were killed in Uvalde, Texas, prompted Murray, now a 35-year-old father of four, to speak out. The tennis star was a 9-year-old student in March 1996 at Dunblane Primary School in Scotland when a gunman killed 16 of his fellow students and a teacher before killing himself.
“It’s unbelievably upsetting and it makes you angry,” Murray, who is playing in the Surbiton Trophy grass-court tournament, said of the Uvalde shooting (via the BBC). “I think there’s been over 200 mass shootings in America this year and nothing changes. I can’t understand that … My feeling is that surely at some stage you do something different. You can’t keep approaching the problem by buying more guns and having more guns in the country. I don’t see how that solves it.
The United Kingdom acted after Dunblane, the deadliest mass shooting in modern British history, by enacting tough gun laws. Since then, it has experienced no mass-casualty shootings.
“I heard something on the radio the other day and it was a child from that [Uvalde] school,” Murray said. “I experienced a similar thing when I was at Dunblane, a teacher coming out and waving all of the children under tables and telling them to go and hide. And it was a kid telling exactly the same story about how she survived it.
Murray and his brother Jamie, also a Dunblane student, had previously shared a car with Thomas Hamilton, the shooter, and attended children’s clubs at which he was present. Dunblane, like Uvalde, is a small close-knit community of less than 10,000 people.
The Murray boys were in class when Hamilton, armed with four handguns, burst into the gym and began shooting students before killing himself. Murray opened up about the about the trauma he experienced a few years ago in a 2019 Amazon Prime documentary, “Andy Murray: Resurfacing.” (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
’You asked me a while ago why tennis was important to me,” he told filmmaker Olivia Cappuccini in the documentary. “Obviously I had the thing that happened at Dunblane. When I was around 9. I am sure for all the kids there it would be difficult for different reasons. The fact we knew the guy, we went to his kids club, he had been in our car, we had driven and dropped him off at train stations and things.”
His mother described a scene that is terribly familiar to parents. “Andy’s class had been on their way to the gym,” Judy Murray told the Radio Times (via the Guardian) in 2014. “That’s how close he was to what happened. They heard the noise and someone went ahead to investigate. They came back and told all the kids to go to the headmaster’s study and the deputy head’s study.
“They were told to sit down below the windows, and they were singing songs. The teachers and dinner ladies did an amazing job, containing all these children, feeding them, and getting them out without them being aware of what had happened. I don't know how they managed it.”
Judy Murray was working at the family’s toy shop when she learned of the shooting, and headed straight for the school. “I was driving there thinking I might not see my children again. There were too many cars on the road — everyone was trying to get there. I got angry, shouting ‘Get out of the way!’ About a quarter of a mile away I just got out and ran.”
Upon arrival, she found a group of parents whom she described as “shocked, quiet. It was before mobile phones. Nobody knew anything.” They were told to wait in a classroom, packed so tightly that Judy shared a chair with a woman she had gone to school with. A policeman finally entered and asked the parents of a class to leave with him.
“The girl sharing my chair said ‘That’s my daughter’s class,’” Judy Murray said. “I don’t know if I have survivor’s guilt, but I had an awful moment then when I was so relieved it wasn’t my kids, and then felt terrible. She lost her daughter.”
Murray said in the documentary that the Dunblane shooting marked the beginning of a tough stretch for him in which his parents divorced within a year after the shooting and Jamie moved away to play tennis. “We obviously used to do everything together. When he moved away that was also quite hard for me,” he said, adding that he had “lots of anxiety” that surfaced while playing.
'When I was competing I would get really bad breathing problems. My feeling towards tennis is that it’s an escape for me in some ways because all of these things are stuff that I have bottled up.” | 2022-05-31T16:29:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Andy Murray, who survived childhood gun violence, angered by Uvalde shooting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/31/andy-murray-angry-uvalde-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/31/andy-murray-angry-uvalde-shooting/ |
By Jamie Tarabay and Sarah Zheng | Bloomberg
The National Security Agency (NSA) campus is seen in this aerial photograph taken above Fort Meade, Maryland, U.S., on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2019. Democrats and Republicans are at odds over whether to provide new funding for Trump’s signature border wall, as well as the duration of a stopgap measure. Some lawmakers proposed delaying spending decisions by a few weeks, while others advocated for a funding bill to last though February or March. (Bloomberg)
For years, the US government and American cybersecurity companies have alleged that China is behind brazen hacks that have pilfered troves of sensitive documents.
Chinese government officials have denied the claims and repeatedly accused the US of its own cyber-espionage, without providing evidence.
That changed in February, when a well connected Chinese cybersecurity firm went public with what it claimed was a US National Security Agency campaign aimed at computers in 45 countries and regions, including China. US officials didn’t respond to requests for comment at the time.
The disclosure suggested a more aggressive public response by China toward foreign hacking attempts. It also highlighted the growing clout of Qi An Xin Technology Group Inc., a Chinese technology firm established in 2014 that has ambitions of becoming a global cybersecurity giant.
The company, whose headquarters are a 10-minute drive from the Forbidden City, has been the beneficiary of a three-year plan, unveiled last year, to expand China’s cybersecurity industry to more than 250 billion yuan ($39.3 billion) by 2023 by increasing investments in the sector and streamlining regulation.
Qi An Xin was entrusted with handling cybersecurity at Tiananmen Square for the 70th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s rule, and it oversaw network security for the Beijing Winter Games. In December, the Beijing city government selected Qi An Xin as one of 20 “invisible champions,” a designation given to companies that develop technology critical to China’s national strategy.
“Their talent is, without a doubt, top 10 globally, as far as companies are concerned,” said Dakota Cary, a consultant on China’s cyber capabilities at Krebs Stamos Group. “When there’s an issue at a provincial level or even at the central level, when the government needs a response team, it seems like Qi An Xin is the go-to.”
A representative for Qi An Xin declined to comment on this story.
China’s cyber industry accounts for less than 7% of the global market, compared to the U.S. at around 40%, according to a study last year from the International Institute of Strategic Studies.
Chinese cybersecurity companies have struggled to grow their business in the private commercial market because of low awareness about the risks of cyberattacks particularly within the small and medium-sized business community, said Cary and two other cybersecurity experts. Public reporting on threats or attacks is rare, so investing in cyber isn’t considered a critical business cost, according to multiple analysts with knowledge of China’s cyber industry.
That lack of demand for cyber protection among businesses and individuals in part explains Qi An Xin’s reliance on state clientele, said Cary. Its contracts with government, public security agencies and military clients comprise 52% of its revenue in 2019, according to the research firm Dongguan Securities.
Overall, Qi An Xin brought in 5.81 billion yuan ($871 million) in revenue in 2021, lagging behind some of the bigger Western cybersecurity firms. Palo Alto Networks Inc., for example, reported $4.3 billion in revenue during its fiscal year 2021.
But the company has ambitions to compete globally against U.S. cybersecurity firms and others in the West. Founder Qi Xiangdong told reporters he wants Qi An Xin to “walk out into the world” this year.
The company has some business outside the Chinese mainland that includes providing cybersecurity services for the overseas operations of Chinese companies and banks in places such as Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Africa, according to a report by Avic Securities.
It also holds contracts to provide cybersecurity infrastructure for governments including those in Indonesia, Algeria, Angola and Ethiopia, Avic analysts say.
China’s cyber industry is still mainly driven by compliance, so its security products are made to meet domestic regulatory requirements that may be at odds with needs outside of the country, said Vivien Pua, security industry analyst at market research firm Frost & Sullivan.
In addition, trust is more difficult for Chinese companies such as Qi An Xin to build in Western countries, said Niko Yang, a senior analyst at the Beijing-based investment research firm EqualOcean. Qi An Xin’s connections with the government may complicate any attempts to appear to be independent to potential clients overseas, a concern many Chinese-linked cyber services face.
“For this kind of critical infrastructure, it is hard for countries to be willing to completely hand things over to others,” he said. “It is the same in China’s domestic cybersecurity - they also won’t have foreign companies carry out the most critical security tasks.”
Those close ties to the government are indisputable.
Its founder, Qi Xiangdong, 57, worked for 17 years at Xinhua, the national media agency, where he ascended to the role of deputy of its communications technology bureau. He also serves as a delegate to a Beijing city government political advisory body.
Company president Wu Yunkun, meanwhile, serves as vice president of a working committee at the China Information Ministry Association, which is supervised by the Ministry of Civil Affairs. Vice President Yang Hongpeng, was also previously in the communications department of Xinhua. Board members Meng Yan, Xu Jianjun and Zhao Bingdi have had state-connected roles in finance and technology.
In February, a security team at Qi An Xin called Pangu Labs -- known in China for exploiting vulnerabilities to access Apple Inc. iOS systems -- issued a report saying that it had found malware in domestic IT systems that it claimed was created by a hacking group called “Equation.” That group is “generally believed” to be linked to the NSA, according to the researchers.
Malware was allegedly found within an unnamed Chinese agency in 2013 and 2015, which Pangu Labs claims was part of a 10-year campaign that infiltrated key institutions around the world, according to the report, which was covered by the Communist Party-backed Global Times.
The alleged espionage campaign occurred in 2013, and information about the malware had previously surfaced during leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, meaning other hacking groups could have also accessed the code. However the details of the hack were perhaps less significant than the fact they had been published at all, according to Cary, of Krebs Stamos Group.
“There’s something in the relationship between Qi An Xin and the government that has allowed them to publish something like this,” he said. “That’s part and parcel of why they have so many contracts.”
Pangu Labs previously told Bloomberg News it had waited nearly a decade to disclose details about the hack because it was analyzing the data in question.
Chinese cybersecurity firms have rarely directly shared details about foreign attacks.
In March 2020, Qihoo 360 Technology Co. Ltd., which was co-founded by Qi, blamed a group suspected to be associated with the CIA for alleged hacks against China. The US government added Qihoo 360 to its Entity List over national security concerns.
The state-owned China Electronics Corporation purchased a 23% stake in Qi An Xin in 2019, replacing Qihoo 360 as the second-largest shareholder behind Qi Xiangdong.
While outing the NSA could further endear Qi An Xin to the Chinese government, it may complicate its efforts to expand in the West. So could U.S. restrictions on some Chinese tech firms, and China’s own reluctance to integrate with the global talent pool, said Greg Austin, an IISS senior fellow for cyber, space and future conflict. | 2022-05-31T17:13:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chinese Firm That Accused NSA of Hacking Has Global Ambitions - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/chinese-firm-that-accused-nsa-of-hacking-has-global-ambitions/2022/05/31/c63ec838-e0f8-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/chinese-firm-that-accused-nsa-of-hacking-has-global-ambitions/2022/05/31/c63ec838-e0f8-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
In recent days, prominent venture capital funds have come out with survival tips for their portfolio companies. While asking startup founders to tighten their belt is sound advice, it’s worth wondering when venture capital titans might be urged by their investors to scale back their own pay, too.
Their compensation has been rising fast. Last year, median cash pay for a partner at a venture capital firm, including base salaries and bonuses, rose 10% to $928,000, reported The Information, citing a survey conducted by Holt Private Equity Consultants.
Managing general partners would be paid a lot more. In testament to their earning prowess, more venture capitalists are joining the ranks of hedge fund managers in buying properties in Palm Beach, Florida, one of the world’s most exclusive enclaves. Last year, Scott Shleifer, co-founder of Tiger Global Management LLC’s private equity arm, purchased a home there for a record $132 million. Months later, Jeffrey Epstein’s one-time estate, located roughly a mile from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago, was sold for $25.8 million to David Skok, a serial entrepreneur now at Matrix Partners.
Venture capital firms make money from management fees and carried interest, or the firm’s profit share from their investments. However, in the last two years, a whirlwind of fundraising — thanks in large part to the Federal Reserve’s unprecedented quantitative easing — allowed top venture capitalists to make a handsome living on management fees alone.
Private-market fund managers have been coming back to fundraising six months sooner than the norm; in addition, more than 80% of the time, they increased the size of their next fund, with a median step-up of 60.9%, according to PitchBook. Case in point: In March, Tiger Global, now the world’s busiest venture capital investor, raised $12.7 billion, almost twice its previous fund, which had collected $6.7 billion just a year earlier.
Here’s the beauty of large fund sizes. While the carry — or profit share — is paid to a VC when holdings are sold, the management fee is collected every year on the capital investors had committed. For instance, with a typical 2% fee structure, a new $10 billion fund with, say five-year horizon, could collect $1 billion in fees alone over time.
As such, rapid fundraising has spawned dizzying wage inflation. Even associates, who are typically a few years out of college, earned a median salary and bonus of $196,000 last year, according to The Information. And since fees alone could cover all of a firm’s personnel expenses, they enable general partners to keep carry — potentially the most lucrative source of compensation — mostly to themselves.
But the world is changing. As Sequoia Capital recently warned its startups, “capital was free. Now it’s expensive.” It’s a matter of time before top-tier VC investors, such as pension funds and college endowment funds, ask whether they have overpaid.
Already, the Securities and Exchange Commission has announced plans to force greater fee transparency on private-market fund managers. Often, investors pay above and beyond the typical 2% management fee. Some funds bill activities such as travel related to deal sourcing, hosting annual investor meetings, or even legal expenses to fulfil regulatory requirements, to their clients. Why can’t the 2% management fee cover all of these items?
When the Fed was flooding the world with cash, investors with long horizons were eager to pay anyone who could generate returns. And to venture capital’s credit, this asset class recorded a 30.5% internal rate of return over the past three years. However, much of that reflected only paper gains that will need be marked down now that Nasdaq is in bear territory.
Pension and endowment fund managers have long accepted that venture capitalists are paid a lot more than their own government and nonprofit salaries. But once VC funds stop performing, will they tolerate the current pay structure? Those beachfront properties may prove to be too ostentatious for their clients.
• Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Private Funds Are the New Public Fund | 2022-05-31T17:13:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Venture Capitalists’ Soaring Pay Is Tempting Fate - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/venture-capitalists-soaring-pay-is-tempting-fate/2022/05/31/3d197590-e0fc-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/venture-capitalists-soaring-pay-is-tempting-fate/2022/05/31/3d197590-e0fc-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Chairman Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, has said the panel’s work seeks to “uncover the facts, tell the American people the full story of January 6th and ensure that nothing like that day ever happens again.” One focus is what role Trump and his advisers played in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election -- which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden -- or to organize the events that preceded the storming of the Capitol while Congress was certifying the results of the 2020 election. Another is what explains the 187 minutes of inaction before National Guard troops and additional police were sent to the Capitol. Other areas of inquiry include why the Capitol and federal and local law enforcement agencies weren’t better prepared, whether any lawmaker gave a tour of the Capitol on Jan. 5 to members of the public casing the building for the next day’s incursion, and whether there were crimes or violations of campaign finance law in the funding of events to promote claims the presidential election had been stolen.
Much of that is private, for now. Some of the biggest early committee headlines stemmed from text messages sent or received by Trump’s White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, on Jan. 6 or in the days leading up to it. The texts, provided to the committee by Meadows, include messages to him from members of Congress and others pleading for Trump to call on his supporters to stop the assault. Other texts show Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, advocating for invalidating the results of the 2020 presidential election. The committee revealed in March it had uncovered a more-than-seven-hour gap in White House telephone logs of Trump calls during the riot -- a period when lawmakers were urgently trying to get him to quell the mob.
Former White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Dan Scavino, former trade adviser Peter Navarro and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon refused to comply with subpoenas seeking their testimony. So did Meadows, even as he initially complied with the committee’s request for text messages. Their matters were referred to the Department of Justice for potential criminal prosecution. Bannon has been indicted and is set to go on trial in July on two counts of contempt, which can potentially carry a penalty of up to a year in jail plus a fine. More recently, the committee announced it was subpoenaing five Republican House members. Those include the Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, who spoke to Trump by phone during the Capitol riot. McCarthy resisted complying with his subpoena, challenging the committee’s legal standing. Trying to compel testimony from sitting members of Congress is legally complicated and underscores a key facet of the case: Lawmakers were participants in some of the events on Jan. 6 and have information germane to the probe.
In remarks echoed by other Republicans, McCarthy argues the committee is partisan and “not conducting a legitimate investigation.” Some of those refusing to cooperate cited Trump’s claim of executive privilege, the limited right of a president to decline requests from Congress and the courts for information about internal White House talks and deliberations. Longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone invoked his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. Trump’s onetime lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, said he invoked attorney-client privilege to refuse to answer some questions. Part of what could be motivating the resistance is a desire to delay the committee’s progress. All 435 House seats will be on the ballot in November, and Democrats could lose their majority. Republicans have been clear that, should they gain House control at the start of 2023, they would shut down an investigation they view as a partisan waste of taxpayer dollars. | 2022-05-31T17:13:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | What the Jan. 6 Committee Has Done, and What’s Next - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-the-jan-6-committee-has-done-and-whats-next/2022/05/31/4a9792d6-e0fe-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/what-the-jan-6-committee-has-done-and-whats-next/2022/05/31/4a9792d6-e0fe-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Biden can still avoid offering wasteful student debt forgiveness
President Biden speaks in the East Room of the White House on May 25. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
With sagging poll numbers and midterm elections a little over five months away, senior Democrats have pressed President Biden to wipe away huge amounts of student debt — in the neighborhood of $50,000 per person — which, they argue, the law allows the president to do with a wave of his hand. Mr. Biden has properly resisted such a giveaway, which would lavish federal aid on many wealthy college graduates who do not need the help.
Until, perhaps, now. After months of uncertainty, The Post’s Tyler Pager, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel and Jeff Stein reported that Mr. Biden is poised to announce a student debt plan that is not as spectacularly bad as the ideas some other Democrats have pushed. But that is not much of a distinction; the president’s apparent plan would still be an expensive and inequitable election-year stunt.
Mr. Biden’s reported policy, which he had hoped to announce last week, would forgive $10,000 in student debt per person. Erasing $10,000 rather than $50,000 per borrower would be a nod toward those who point out that eliminating large amounts of student debt would cost the government huge sums of money — money that would be spent in ways that Congress did not intend when lawmakers created the federal student loan program. Mr. Biden’s plan would also limit debt forgiveness to individuals earning less than $150,000 per year or couples earning less than $300,000, heading off criticism that government money would be delivered to rich, well-educated people.
These provisions, while welcome, would not stop the policy from becoming yet another taxpayer-funded subsidy for the upper middle class. The president’s means test would be almost useless, as some 97 percent of borrowers would still qualify for forgiveness. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonpartisan watchdog, estimates that such a plan would cost at least $230 billion, that 71 percent of the benefits would flow to those in the top half of the income scale — and that a quarter of the benefits would go to the top 20 percent. Even this does not express fully how regressive the policy would be, because many recent graduates from medical, law and business schools would qualify for forgiveness even though their lifetime income trajectories don’t justify it.
Rough estimates suggest that a third of borrowers would see their balances disappear, and an additional 20 percent of student debtors would see their balances at least halved. Doing so, it must be said, would help some genuinely needy people. Low-income borrowers who have relatively small amounts of debt yet still struggle to make their payments could see their balances eliminated or substantially reduced. The aid could be life-changing for some former students toiling under the weight of default, since student loan debt generally cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.
But Mr. Biden could ease the burden on the truly disadvantaged in a variety of more targeted ways — and avoid setting a precedent of broad loan forgiveness that future presidents will be pressured to match. Administration officials stressed that Mr. Biden has not made a final decision and that his goal is to aid the neediest. Good. He still has time to change course. | 2022-05-31T17:14:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden can still avoid offering wasteful student debt forgiveness - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/biden-can-still-avoid-offering-wasteful-student-debt-forgiveness/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/biden-can-still-avoid-offering-wasteful-student-debt-forgiveness/ |
Biden just admitted he doesn’t have a clue how to fight inflation
President Biden has finally laid out his plan to fight inflation. But the strategy demonstrates what many have long suspected: He doesn’t have a clue what to do about rising prices.
Biden’s plan, revealed in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, has three parts. First, let the Federal Reserve do its job. Second, enact a series of micro reforms to bring down prices in discrete economic segments, such as housing, prescription drugs and freight transport. Third, bring down the federal deficit by raising taxes on corporations and the rich.
That’s it. That’s the plan.
Each part is either disingenuous or will be ineffective. His stance on the Federal Reserve, for example, is basically an acknowledgement that the president does not legally, and ought not morally, dictate monetary policy. Central bank independence is a touchstone of modern monetary policy lest politicians be tempted to turn on the money spigots to juice the economy before an election year. When Biden criticizes his unnamed predecessors for trying to improperly influence Fed decisions, he’s saying that controlling monetary policy is outside of his control. That might be correct, but it’s not a presidential plan to fight inflation.
The second part of Biden’s plan is a tacit recognition that it’s a bad political look for the president to stand aside on the issue dominating voter consciousness five months before the midterms. Thus, he proposes a set of actions — all of which, mind you, would require congressional approval — to reduce prices. Sounds good, until you look at the specifics.
Biden’s proposed solution to higher housing prices, for example, is to pass his Housing Supply Action Plan, which he claims will close the housing shortfall within five years. Of course, that’s a long time from now, so passing the plan would do nothing to reduce inflationary pressures anytime soon. That’s passing the buck, not fighting inflation.
His other specific ideas are similarly laughable. He wants to crack down on energy prices by passing clean energy tax credits, which will do nothing to reduce prices at the pump or even significantly cut into electricity bills. Allowing the federal government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies for drug prices might help cut drug costs, but they aren’t driving inflation anyway. The most recent inflation report shows that prescription drug prices rose only 1.7 percent in the last year, well below the 8.3 percent overall inflation rate. Increasing subsidies for child and elder care as he proposes would likely increase inflation in the short term, as the new federal money would increase demand without hiking supply. And improving infrastructure, another one of his ideas, would take years and could also aggravate inflation by adding to transportation tie-ups as roads, bridges and other improved structures are closed for upgrades.
This isn’t an inflation-fighting plan. It’s a bait-and-switch to get an exasperated public to buy the same bill of goods he has been peddling all along.
Biden’s third idea, reducing the deficit, has merit, but his plan is incomplete. Inflation today is largely the result of the federal government increasing the money supply to record levels during the pandemic. It did this by approving multitrillion-dollar deficits, mostly purchased by the Federal Reserve. Since the Fed doesn’t have trillions of dollars of deposits sloshing around in its vaults, it effectively printed the money, which was then disbursed to the rest of the country. Reducing the deficit, then, would reduce the amount of money the Fed prints to finance its bond purchases, thereby slowing the growth of the money supply.
The problem with Biden’s plan is that he relies solely on tax increases and other revenue hikes without any spending restraints to cut the annual deficit. Hiking taxes on corporations and business means they will have less money to handle soaring inflation. That would make it more difficult to pay workers higher wages to match rising prices, which means business and ordinary workers would have to sacrifice if Biden got his way. Meanwhile, the new revenue from the higher taxes would likely be used to pay for Biden’s new proposed programs.
Runaway inflation is a serious problem, and it demands a serious plan to combat it. Unfortunately for the country, Biden’s isn’t it. | 2022-05-31T17:14:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden just admitted he doesn’t have a clue how to fight inflation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/biden-just-admitted-he-doesnt-have-clue-how-fight-inflation/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/biden-just-admitted-he-doesnt-have-clue-how-fight-inflation/ |
On abortion and guns, Republicans are ready to abandon federalism
In the wake of two horrific mass shootings, the pessimists among us have said that we’re likely to see the repeat of a familiar pattern: grief and outrage, calls for legislation to address the endless carnage that American gun culture has brought us, and then nothing happening.
It’s actually worse than that. The intense debate we’re now having is already pushing the Republican Party further to the right on guns. There’s a change underway, part of a shift that will see the American right all but abandon its alleged commitment to federalism.
Guns and abortion are where this change will be most evident. But it won’t stop there.
Federalism has meant different things at different times. But these days, people who proclaim their devotion to federalism mean that in our system that divides power between the federal and state governments, preference should almost always be given to the states. Centralized power drifts toward tyranny, state governments are closer to the people, and if Mississippi and Maryland want to make different rules, they should be allowed to do so.
This is at the core of how conservatives define their beliefs about government. There’s a conservative online magazine called the Federalist. The organization that captured the courts for the right is called the Federalist Society. Conservatives’ advocacy for “states’ rights” is not just an echo from the past, when it put a less hateful face on secession and Jim Crow; the idea is constantly invoked by conservatives even today.
We’ve been hearing it lately about abortion: Overturning Roe v. Wade, Republicans say, will merely return the question to the states. Yet even before Roe is officially overturned, the antiabortion movement is already pressing for a nationwide abortion ban. This will become the core demand of the movement, one no Republican with national aspirations will be able to resist.
Now let’s consider guns. As Zack Beauchamp of Vox reminds us, in the wake of mass shootings, Republican states usually loosen gun restrictions, not tighten them. The very fact of heightened debate on gun laws causes the right to redouble its devotion to the cult of the gun.
Yet the gun movement has nearly maxed out on laws it can promote at the state level, unless it wants to literally require all citizens to carry guns at all times. So going national is the logical next step.
It’s something gun advocates have been working on for a while. As a midway point, they’ve advocated “concealed carry reciprocity,” which would allow people from conservative states to carry their own state’s laws with them wherever they go, bringing and carrying guns in states that restrict them. Republicans in Congress have legislation to make it federal law.
Even better from the gun advocates’ point of view would be to have the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority radically restrict the ability of Democratic-run states to make their own decisions about how to fashion the gun laws under which their citizens will live. Which is what it might be about to do.
In weeks or even days, the court will hand down a decision in a suit against a gun law in New York that requires people to show a special need to carry guns outside their homes. In oral arguments, the conservative justices made clear their eagerness to strike down that regulation.
There are other cases in the pipeline. This month, two Trump-appointed judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit struck down a California law requiring people to be 21 before buying a semiautomatic rifle. In arguing that it was vitally important for teenagers to be able to get AR-15s, the judges waxed eloquent on the nobility of 18-year-olds who fought in the Revolutionary War.
We don’t know how the Supreme Court will rule on that case, or how far it will go in the New York case to make it difficult or impossible for states to regulate guns. But gun advocates will bring one suit after another against regulations in Democratic-run states. The goal is to nationalize America’s gun laws, in effect making us all live in Texas.
There’s no reason to think it won’t succeed. Antonin Scalia’s decision in D.C. v. Heller, the 2008 case that for the first time established an individual right to own guns, proclaims that “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions” on guns. This includes “laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
But that was a 5-to-4 decision of a court with four liberals. The current court has six conservatives, five of whom are activists carrying out a right-wing legal revolution.
When that court hands down its gun rulings, no Republican will say, “As much as I love guns, this seems to conflict with our federalist principles.” The very idea is laughable.
That’s not to say conservatives won’t still pretend they believe in federalism. They’ll extol the wisdom of the states when it serves their purposes. But the next time they control Washington, they’ll embark on a spree of legislating to add to what the Supreme Court is doing, one that will attempt to bring all Americans, no matter where they live, under conservative rule.
So if nothing else, we should all stop pretending they ever cared about federalism. It was never about anything other than getting what they want, and it still isn’t. | 2022-05-31T17:14:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | On guns and abortion, Republicans are ready to abandon federalism - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/guns-abortion-republicans-abandon-federalism/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/guns-abortion-republicans-abandon-federalism/ |
Parking lot at FedEx Field on Jan. 2 in Landover, Md. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
For months Virginia state lawmakers have tussled over legislation that would determine the size of a public subsidy to help build a new stadium for the National Football League’s Washington Commanders — a figure that began at roughly $1 billion and is now being whittled down to $300 million or less. But really, only one amount should make sense to taxpayers where it concerns a stadium handout to Commanders owner Daniel Snyder, one of the richest men in America. That number is zero.
The legislature convenes Wednesday in Richmond to hammer out the state’s budget in a special session; the stadium subsidy deal is also on the table. Support for the measure has been shrinking along with the team’s fan base, disheartened by a franchise that has made the playoffs just four times since 2007 — and lost in the first round each time.
In fact there are several better reasons than the team’s failings on the field not to divert taxpayer dollars for a new stadium, which Mr. Snyder wants to build for the season starting in 2027, and just one not-very-good reason to do so.
To start with the latter, it is true that Virginia is the most populous state in the nation without a big-league sports franchise, and is bracketed by other states — Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, as well as D.C. — that do have such teams. That explains at least some of the political impetus behind a stadium subsidy deal. Gov. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican who took office this year, would clearly regard the Commanders’ move to Virginia as a feather in his cap, and has not mentioned any subsidy amount he would see as excessive.
Mr. Youngkin, and any other elected official who would divert stadium tax revenue that would otherwise go into the state treasury and use them to slash Mr. Snyder’s own bill to build a stadium, would make a mockery of any claim of careful stewardship of the public coffers. Mr. Snyder is a multibillionaire. Another billionaire who owns the L.A. Rams, Stan Kroenke, didn’t ask for a dime when he built his team’s new SoFi Stadium, completed last year. He didn’t need the money; neither does Mr. Snyder.
Mr. Snyder apparently believes he can play Virginia and D.C. against Maryland, where his team has played since 1997 in a stadium, now known as FedEx Field, that is antiquated, poorly located and widely disliked. Hence his legislative machinations in Richmond.
Beyond Mr. Snyder’s deep pockets and his opportunistic strategy of pitting jurisdictional bidders against each other, there are other compelling reasons to oppose a stadium subsidy. One is that the team is considering at least one site in Virginia with poor access to transit — a main cause for FedEx Field’s disrepute. More compelling is that Mr. Snyder is embroiled in investigations of sexual misconduct and financial improprieties by Congress, the NFL and Virginia’s own attorney general’s office. The allegations are serious and substantive, if still unproven. That alone should give lawmakers serious pause in writing a check to the Commanders owner.
The Editorial Board on the Washington Commanders
From the Archives: Change the name of the Washington NFL team. Now. | 2022-05-31T17:14:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Virginia should not pay for a new Washington Commanders stadium - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/virginia-washington-commanders-stadium-no-subsidy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/virginia-washington-commanders-stadium-no-subsidy/ |
Anthony Faiola named a correspondent-at-large for The Washington Post
WASHINGTON, DC - NOVEMBER 30: Washington Post staff member Anthony Faiola on November, 30, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
We’re thrilled to announce that Anthony Faiola will become a correspondent-at-large, a big job that will draw on the experience, agility and talent that has long enabled Tony to do almost anything when it comes to international reporting.
In fact, there is little that Tony hasn’t already done as a foreign correspondent. In 28 years at The Post, he has been bureau chief in Buenos Aires, Tokyo, London, Berlin and, since 2017, for South America and the Caribbean, based in Miami. (In between, he served as bureau chief in New York and as global economics correspondent in Washington.)
Tony is a dogged reporter and gifted writer, a combination that over a long career has produced a rich tapestry of work, including deep investigations into two attempts to overthrow Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, a prize-winning dive into the role of deregulation in the 2008 financial crisis and an innovative, visually rich project on the rise of migration barriers across the globe. He had stepped away from reporting earlier this year to fill in as anchor of the Today’s WorldView newsletter – displaying another talent, for commentary – but has already begun to take on a broader mandate.
For now, we have asked Tony to play a major role in covering the global reverberations from Russia’s war in Ukraine. An early dividend of this approach emerged with Tony’s evocative portrait of the battered Ukrainian fighters and their families trapped in the steel plant in Mariupol. We expect that he will report during much of 2022 both from Europe and from a distance, bringing his high-altitude perspective and on-the-ground knowledge to stories utilizing his ability to write with sweep and scope. In the future, his focus will widen to more thematic coverage on subjects that transcend borders while still allowing him to anchor high-priority reporting efforts.
With Tony’s shift to a more global role, The Post’s correspondents in Mexico City, Bogota and Toronto will take on additional coverage responsibilities in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Tony joined The Post in 1994 and has reported for the paper from more than 60 countries on six continents. He is a graduate of Florida International University, with a B.A. in journalism, and has been a Knight Foundation Innovator in Residence there. He is a winner of multiple awards, including the National Press Foundation’s Innovative Storytelling Award for the barriers project. He speaks fluent Spanish. His new role takes effect immediately. | 2022-05-31T17:15:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Anthony Faiola named a correspondent-at-large for The Washington Post - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2022/05/31/anthony-faiola-named-correspondent-at-large-washington-post/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2022/05/31/anthony-faiola-named-correspondent-at-large-washington-post/ |
Taiwan offered hope after they fled Hong Kong. Now, they’re leaving again.
People from Hong Kong see their long-term residency applications rejected by Taiwan over ties to China — the place they escaped
Carver Law packs up inventory at his bookshop in Taipei, Taiwan, as he prepares to move to Britain. (Alicia Chen/FTWP)
TAIPEI, Taiwan — The day after his bookshop officially closed, Carver Law sat in the small store methodically packing books into boxes. The half-empty shelves still held a collection of essays by Hong Kong pop singer and activist Denise Ho, an account of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, and books on the nature of dictatorships and Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
The 51-year-old paused to say goodbye to the last few customers who had come to wish him well. Two years before, Law had fled the expanding repression in Hong Kong for the promised safety of Taiwan and opened a bookstore in the heart of Taipei. It was meant to be a space for Hong Kongers and Taiwanese to exchange ideas and learn from one another. Now, he was leaving again.
“It’s a shame. I wanted to put down roots and was starting to feel like I was building something here,” he said. “Now it’s gone.”
As protesters flee Hong Kong, Taiwan quietly extends a helping hand
Law had fulfilled the requirements for permanent residency but his application had been pending for months. Uncertain if it would ever come through, he and his wife decided to move to Britain, where their applications for British national overseas status were approved after just five days.
Law is part of a growing group of Hong Kongers who had once hoped to resettle in Taiwan, where officials tout their support for those fleeing Beijing’s tightening grip over the territory. Instead, the exiles have discovered the limits of their welcome here as authorities, worried about overly provoking Beijing or exposing Taiwan to mainland infiltration, have stopped short of giving Hong Kongers permanent residency.
After escaping Beijing’s oppression in their home city, Hong Kongers paradoxically find themselves under suspicion in their new home for possible links to China. They have become victims of the increasingly urgent debate on this independently governed island over the threat from China, which sees it as a province.
In May, a plan to allow those from Hong Kong and Macao, another Chinese territory, to obtain permanent residency after five years in Taiwan on a work permit was delayed when some lawmakers argued that it would open the door to influence campaigns and agents of the Chinese Communist Party trying to undermine Taiwan’s democratic system.
“The argument is that Hong Kong is now China-controlled, so if you allow these people to come in, they will be Chinese people,” said Huang Cheng-Yi, a research professor at Academia Sinica. “If Hong Kong people equal Chinese citizens, then why do we want to let them come in?”
“Fear of China has increased,” Huang said, citing Xi’s increasingly ideological turn as he prepares to take on a precedent-breaking third-term as China’s leader, as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which some worry could be a model for a Chinese takeover of Taiwan. “So the fear in the mind of Taiwanese people became very strong,” he said.
As Beijing tightened its control over Hong Kong in the aftermath of mass protests in 2019, Taiwan emerged as a refuge for fleeing activists and supporters of the pro-democracy movement. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen pledged to “stand with Hong Kong” and assist those persecuted under a sweeping national security law imposed in 2020. The protests formed a key part of her reelection campaign that year.
More than 27,000 Hong Kongers — including entrepreneurs, professionals and students, as well as activists — came to Taiwan on temporary visas between 2019 and 2021, according to government figures. A special office was set up to coordinate a humanitarian response, while authorities personally oversaw sensitive cases. A group of Hong Kong escapees who arrived by boat lived in government housing, where they were provided clothing, television, cigarettes and English tutors.
But Hong Kongers say the welcome does not appear to be indefinite. Many who have applied for permanent residency have seen their applications denied on the basis of their connections to mainland China, or just left hanging.
Eight Hong Kongers living in Taiwan, including Law, described to The Washington Post why they had recently left the island or were planning to move to countries such as Britain and Australia where starting a new life would be easier. Others said they had no choice but to return to Hong Kong.
Ceci, a recent graduate, fled Hong Kong after seeing her friends arrested one after another under the new security law. In Taiwan, she had to renew her “special case” visa, given to individuals involved in the 2019 demonstrations, every month. Ceci — who, like others, asked to be identified by only her first name for fear of repercussions — constantly worried that her status would be affected by cross-strait tensions, or by Taiwan’s next elections if a party less committed to helping Hong Kongers came to power.
Late last year, she quietly left her new home of Taipei for London. Ceci and her friends took selfies at the nearly deserted international airport. Having already said goodbye to so many friends over the last few years, they were not emotional.
“This place does not give me a sense of security. I feel like at any time I may have to leave everything behind again,” she said.
Sympathy for Hong Kong is high in Taiwan, where resistance to the idea of unification with China under a similar “one country, two systems” model has grown as residents observe the increasingly authoritarian bent of China’s top leaders. In March, a documentary about the 2019 demonstrations, “Revolution of Our Times,” broke box office records in Taiwan, with politicians and groups hosting private screenings.
But that sympathy is tempered by anxieties about large-scale immigration to Taiwan, home to 24 million people competing for limited jobs and housing, as well as pockets of long-standing prejudice against migrants from mainland China.
Observers say the government has made a political calculation that the silent majority of Taiwanese do not want to see large inflows from Hong Kong. For some, it is an uncomfortable reminder of the arrival of about 2 million refugees fleeing China after the Nationalist government’s defeat by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, which irrevocably changed the makeup of Taiwanese society.
“I feel like the main aim of the policy now is to not let Hong Kongers in. Pretending that they are helping is enough,” said one former official who worked on assistance efforts for Hong Kongers, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.
As Hong Kong comes more firmly under China’s hold, those from the city are also seen with more suspicion. A review of 13 cases of Hong Kongers whose applications for permanent or short-term residency were denied found that the applicants were all rejected for connections to China.
One of the rejected applicants was Cherry, 60, who has been selling health products in northern Taiwan for more than a year. In a decision letter from the Interior Ministry, her application was denied because she was “suspected of endangering national interests” on the basis of her work at a public university in Hong Kong.
Another rejected applicant, Sandy, 40, who arrived in Taiwan in 2019 and set up an accounting firm, said she was shocked when she was turned down on the basis of her birthplace: China.
“I was so disappointed,” she said. “I spent every day in fear, asking myself if I had done anything wrong.” In July 2021, she returned to Hong Kong.
The stricter approach began in August 2020, when the Interior Ministry started requiring extra review of residency applications from former residents of Hong Kong and Macao who had served in Chinese public institutions, were born in mainland China, or had worked for organizations with investment from Chinese state entities.
According to Taiwan’s immigration authority, more than 3,200 have received permanent residency in 2020 and 2021. It declined to say how many applications had been rejected but said the proportion was “very low.”
Phyllis Yang, a manager at an immigration consulting company that has been providing services for Hong Kongers immigrating to Taiwan said that in the past, review of residency applications took two weeks to a month. Now it can take six months to a year, and those with connections to China or the Hong Kong government see a much higher rate of rejection.
Law and his wife had hoped to stay in Taiwan until their 11-year-old daughter finished high school. He regrets not only having to leave but also what Taiwan will lose as people like him move on — his dream of creating a space where Taiwanese and Hong Kongers could interact has been dashed.
“Hong Kong people have a lot of talent to contribute. If they are turned away, they will go to another place,” he said. “I don’t feel all that sad about leaving,” he added. “Even though our store won’t be here, our spirit remains.” | 2022-05-31T17:16:15Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Hong Kongers fled to Taiwan to escape China's crackdown. Now they are leaving. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/31/taiwan-hong-kong-immigration-china/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/05/31/taiwan-hong-kong-immigration-china/ |
Jolean Olvedo, left, wipes her tears while being comforted by her partner Natalia Gutierrez at a memorial for Robb Elementary School students and teachers who were killed in last week's school shooting in Uvalde, Tex., on May 31. (Jae C. Hong/AP)
On what can conservatives and liberals agree in the aftermath of the massacre in Texas?
Let’s begin with what Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in the 2008 D.C. v. Heller decision, the case affirming an individual’s right to bear arms: “Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.”
So: The right is not absolute, and no serious person believes it is. What, then, should Congress aim to achieve? And rather than bicker about our disagreements, let’s focus instead on those steps on which most people are likely to already agree.
First, the police should have acted very differently, beginning with the absence from the scene of any kind of regular “resource officer” and then the terrible decision to wait and wait to rush the killer.
I think a supermajority of voters also believe that well-trained, experienced and well-armed officers need to be on the campuses of our 131,000 K-12 public and private schools. Police officers who have called my radio show in the days since Uvalde and Buffalo suggest these should be neither rookies nor aging cops, but men and women working two-year tours after at least five years on the force, perhaps rotating through various campuses to gain familiarity with them all. The arms held securely in reserve must be able to defeat body armor.
These steps make sense to me. They are also expensive. The incremental cost would be somewhere between $40 billion and $50 billion annually. The federal government spent nearly $7 trillion last year. It could fund this additional expenditure.
There is probably widespread agreement that funding for police at schools should be available only to states that adopt a model statute on “red flag” laws and perhaps regulate gun sales of some types to adults ages 18 to 21. There is supermajority support for new state laws that set age limits for certain classes of weapons and allow for the seizure of a weapon or denial of the right to purchase following a complaint by a parent or a threatened party brought to a court by police for a hearing before seizure or denial. Due process must be protected.
The right to own guns is explicitly in the Constitution. To infringe on that right in any way requires at least a compelling rationale and narrowly tailored terms. A model state statute on which to condition new school protection funding is within reach, but it must also protect any citizen seeking to exercise his or her right to bear arms. A gun eligibility standard can be made constitutionally sound.
Neither the presence of police nor the passage of constitutionally sound red-flag laws will prevent violence in schools, but each might prevent the kind of massacres that scar individuals, families, communities and country. The center does exist and can hold, but we cannot continue to absorb these kinds of massacres, do nothing and keep our balance as a nation.
The killers in most of our mass shootings are deeply unbalanced. Heated rhetoric, slanders against gun owners and accusations of evil against people who believe they need to protect themselves and their families are indications of a different sort of disability: the refusal to understand an opposing viewpoint. Ours is a culture in which violence is routine and police are under siege in many places. Until that culture changes and the Constitution with it, voices raised against a citizen’s right to own weapons will go unheard. The minds that are closed to the reality of the Second Amendment are as shuttered as those who refuse to see that the mentally unbalanced ought not be able to buy weapons any more than felons can.
But steps can be taken. Neither gun rights absolutists nor gun confiscation enthusiasts ought to control the conversation anymore. There is a sound center. Let’s begin there. And quickly. | 2022-05-31T17:52:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | What the center wants after Uvalde - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/uvalde-next-steps-on-guns/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/uvalde-next-steps-on-guns/ |
An annoyed radio listener reports that Alexa is awoken by mistake
In at least one household, an ad for radio station WTOP is prompting an Amazon Echo to spring to life. (Jonathan Baran/The Washington Post)
The ancient, mystical image of a snake swallowing its tail is called an ouroboros. It symbolizes the endless cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth. What should we call an Alexa smart speaker swallowing itself? Progress?
Ray Lum lives in Arlington, where he uses his Amazon Alexa to listen to music, get weather updates and to pester with such questions as “Where does the light go when you turn off the switch?” What Ray doesn’t do is use Alexa to listen to the news on WTOP. For that, he utilizes a technology that would be familiar to Guglielmo Marconi, if the late Italian inventor was somehow reanimated and dropped into Ray’s kitchen: Ray turns on the radio in his breakfast nook.
There’s a promotional ad that runs on WTOP in which a voice proclaims: “We know you’re listening to WTOP for the latest news, traffic and weather on your commute but what about when you’re at home? Listening to WTOP on your smart speaker is easy. Just say, ‘Alexa, open WTOP’ or ‘Okay Google, play WTOP.’ ”
When those magic words issue forth from Ray’s kitchen radio, that’s exactly what happens: The two smart speakers in his other rooms spring to life, broadcasting WTOP.
“That's when I have to go out to the living room and dining room to deactivate my smart speakers,” Ray said.
I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that machines are talking to each other. Not long ago, I got a new washer and dryer. Among the setup instructions was a section on how to control them with an app on my phone. I didn’t bother to download it. (It might have been a different story if they had offered a “Find my sock” app.)
These days, we’re all living in a Philip K. Dick short story. Androids may not dream of electric sheep, but Alexa sleeps with one ear open, always listening for her “wake word.” To prevent this from happening by accident, advertisers can equip their radio or TV ads with an audio watermark, what’s called acoustical fingerprinting.
This technique was in the news in 2019, when there were Super Bowl ads for various smart speaker products. As Amazon described it at the time: “To produce an acoustic fingerprint, we first derive a grid of log filter-bank energies (LFBEs) for the acoustic signal, which represent the amounts of energy in multiple overlapping frequency bands in a series of overlapping time windows.”
Amazon says its Echo devices can also check themselves against known instances when “Alexa” is used in media. The company asks advertisers to provide the ad to Amazon 12 days before it starts to run so they can work their audio magic. WTOP tells me they haven’t done this.
And Amazon tells me Echo users can choose other wake words, including “Echo,” “Computer,” “Amazon” and “Ziggy.” You do that by saying “Alexa, change the wake word” or using the Alexa app. As always when it comes to technology, it’s the humans who have to make accommodations.
Said Ray: “It’s a minor irritation, but it still bothers me.”
This is as good a place as any to point out that The Washington Post is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.
Remembering sacrifice
On Memorial Day afternoon, about two dozen people assembled under the hot sun at the corner of 16th Street and Alaska Avenue NW to reclaim a bit of history. A plaque was unveiled celebrating the District’s first memorial to residents killed during World War I.
It was an echo of a ceremony held on May 30, 1920, when a crowd gathered there to dedicate 530 maple trees planted on both sides of 16th Street from Alaska Avenue to Varnum Street. Sunk into the ground at the base of each tree was a small concrete plinth to which was affixed a tiny copper name tag.
Time and the elements — not to mention lawn mowers and errant automobiles — were not kind to these little markers. Traces of only a few remain. The new plaque recounts the earlier memorial’s history and lists the names of all the war dead. The project was overseen by Barbara Bates and William Brown of the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of the District of Columbia (AOI). Financial support was provided by AOI, the District chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and D.C. Water.
Why D.C. Water? That corner houses a pumping station that was remodeled a few years ago. The plaque is affixed to a handsome brick retaining wall. | 2022-05-31T18:40:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Some smart speakers are a little too smart for their own good - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/31/alexa-miscues-speaker/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/31/alexa-miscues-speaker/ |
BOSTON — The suspect in a nearly four-decade old killing in South Boston that authorities have linked to notorious mobster James “Whitey” Bulger and his iron-fisted control of the drug trade in the neighborhood was held without bail on Tuesday.
Lewis “adamantly denies the allegations and looks forward to his day in court,” defense attorney James Sultan said.
“We had a glimpse in the courtroom today of a very different Boston, a Boston that we can never allow to happen again,” Hayden said. “After nearly 40 years we are reminded of the mayhem and murder inflicted by cold-hearted and corrupt, cruel men.”
That lawless era in Boston’s history has often been romanticized in the movies, said New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella, who attended the arraignment to represent several law enforcement agencies in the state that contributed to the investigation.
“I think it’s a stark reminder that while Hollywood and others tend to glorify that era, the criminal actors of that era were not Robin Hoods, they were not heroes,” he said. “The human suffering and the toll that was taken from the criminal acts that were committed during that era are still being felt today, and this case is an example of that.”
Bulger, the model for Jack Nicholson’s ruthless crime boss in the 2006 Martin Scorsese movie, “The Departed,” fled Boston in 1994 after his FBI handler warned him he was about to be indicted. Bulger spent 16 years as a fugitive before he was caught. He was convicted in 2013 of participating in 11 killings. | 2022-05-31T18:44:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Authorities make arrest in 1984 killing linked to Bulger - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/authorities-make-arrest-in-1984-killing-linked-to-bulger/2022/05/31/45b495f6-e10e-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/authorities-make-arrest-in-1984-killing-linked-to-bulger/2022/05/31/45b495f6-e10e-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
How the Second Amendment was reinterpreted to protect individual rights
Pro-gun groups rally in Virginia in 2020. (Julia Rendleman for The Washington Post)
To counter calls for stricter gun laws in the wake of the massacre of elementary school students in Uvalde, Tex., Republican politicians cite the Second Amendment, saying that the government cannot infringe on people’s right to protect themselves, and that this is fundamental to preserving liberty.
“[R]arely has the Second Amendment been more necessary to secure the rights of our fellow citizens.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said at this year’s National Rifle Association convention, held in Houston days after the shooting.
But historians say that the notion that the amendment protects people’s right to have guns for self-defense is a relatively recent reading of the Constitution, born out of a conservative push in the 1980s and ’90s.
“That was the first Supreme Court decision to strike down a gun-control law in constitutional history,” Siegel said — and at the time, the court’s reading was considered broad even to a number of conservatives.
In the ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the “militia” phrase was merely a “preface” rather than part of its integral meaning. With the exception of felons, some people deemed to have serious mental illness, “sensitive places” such as schools or courthouses, or “dangerous weapons,” the Second Amendment allows regular people to own firearms in their homes, he argued.
More liberal and moderate justices like Justice John Paul Stevens dissented, advocating for the long-standing view that the amendment concerned the use of guns in connection with militia service.
It is “striking” that professed originalists of the constitution, like Scalia, would set aside such a major phrase in the constitution — about militias — in favor of a more modern-day interpretation, Siegel wrote in her paper.
So how did we get here? She and other historians attribute it to a relatively recent political push by gun rights groups to reinterpret the Constitution. “There has been a decades-long and very successful movement to change the public perception of what the Second Amendment is for,” Blocher said.
Susan Liebell, a political science professor at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, said that in the ’80s and ’90s, conservatives began advocating for the appointment of judges and funding of scholars who would interpret the Second Amendment more broadly.
Historians and political scientists don’t fully know why the conservative culture around guns hardened. Around the Reagan era, the National Rifle Association shifted from an organization concerned with gun safety to one protecting gun rights at all costs, Liebell said.
In her paper, Siegel traces the pro-gun movement back to the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling in the 1950s, which desegregated public schools.
She writes that amid the civil rights movement and a nationwide increase in crime, pro-gun supporters framed individual access to guns as part of a law-and-order movement — sometimes in highly racialized terms. In 1975, an NRA leader testified to Congress that “law abiding … gun owners” were different from “criminals.”
“The argument for gun rights divided society into two classes — citizen and criminal,” she wrote.
Any day now, the Supreme Court will rule on its first major gun rights case since Heller. Their ruling could expand the definition of the Second Amendment even further, by knocking down severe restrictions on carrying guns in public.
The Heller decision specifically carved out a right to have guns inside the home. In their next case, the court, with its strong conservative majority, will decide whether the Second Amendment includes the right to bear arms in public spaces. Their ruling could knock down a New York law requiring people to show “proper cause” when applying for a gun license, and it could affect laws in other states in a way that would dramatically expand gun rights again.
“We have moved to more and more radical interpretation of the Second Amendment,” Liebell said. | 2022-05-31T18:45:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | How the Second Amendment was reinterpreted to protect individual rights - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/second-amendment-individual-rights/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/second-amendment-individual-rights/ |
Trump’s voter fraud claims are growing more outlandish
Trump now points to supposed fraud in an election his candidate lost more than 3-to-1.
Angela Rubino uses an accelerant to stimulate a fire at her home in Rome, Ga., on Jan. 22. Rubino is a conspiracy theory believer who stands with Republicans who espouse the belief that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
By now, the trend is abundantly clear: No matter the election, no matter the evidence, and sometimes no matter whether his side wins or not, former president Donald Trump is going to claim or suggest widespread voter fraud. It happened in 2012 and 2016. It happened in 2020. And it happened in two of the highest-profile elections since 2020: the California recall and the Pennsylvania primary.
It’s always baseless, and often someone has already debunked either his exact claim or a version of it. But rarely is it as dubious as the latest iteration.
In an email from his political action committee on Tuesday, Trump promoted an analysis that suggested former senator David Perdue’s loss in the Georgia governor’s primary, by 74 percent to 22 percent, somehow was the result of voter fraud.
Among the claims made in the piece the former president sought to promote:
It’s inexplicable Trump’s candidates lost so much in Georgia, because his endorsement has been so successful elsewhere. This ignores that his endorsement has failed plenty, including in high-profile races in Idaho, Nebraska and North Carolina. The vast majority of Trump’s endorsees win, but that’s because most of them face only token opposition; when it’s actually a competitive race, he’s much closer to 50-50.
“Nobody in any election in America gets 74% of the votes. Ever. It doesn’t happen.” It does indeed. In fact, a 2009 study found that only around 1 in 10 Senate incumbents took less than 75 percent of the vote in their primaries. Many faced token or no opposition, but it does happen — very regularly. Trump also got at least 74 percent of the vote in nearly 1,100 counties in the 2020 general election. Combined, they accounted for more than 8 million of the votes he received, about 11 percent of his vote total.
Trump’s endorsed candidate for insurance commissioner somehow “got the same percentage of votes in 122 out of 159 counties in Georgia.” If true, that would be suspicious! It is not true.
The author of the piece declined to respond to questions about the substance of the claims.
Trump’s effort to blame his Georgia losses on fraud is merely the latest evidence of something that has become increasingly evident since 2020: that without a true rebuke from his party, Trump is just going to keep undermining democracy through more and more outlandish claims.
But it’s worth a look at just how that progression has taken place.
It seems like eons ago, but on Election Day 2012, with GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney headed for predictable defeat, Trump baselessly tweeted about “reports of voting machines switching Romney votes to Obama.” Late that night, with Romney having lost, Trump called for people to rise up. “We can’t let this happen,” he tweeted at 11:29 p.m. “We should march on Washington and stop this travesty. Our nation is totally divided!”
By 2016, Trump was a candidate in his own right. And his baseless allegations of fraud began after the first votes were cast. After initially conceding his loss in the Iowa caucuses, Trump two days later falsely blamed it on fraud allegedly committed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tx.). Trump later walked back the claim that Cruz had done something illegal.
Trump went on to win the 2016 general election, but even in victory he cried “fraud” — because he had lost the popular vote. Trump cited a social media conspiracy theory in claiming 3-5 million undocumented immigrants had illegally voted, and that somehow every one of them had voted for Hillary Clinton, with none for him. As we wrote back then:
Once you get past the lack of a factual basis for Trump’s strange and incredible claim, this is what really doesn’t make sense about it. Trump is alleging that as many as 3.6 percent of the votes cast in a 2016 contest decided by even fewer votes may have been illegitimate. He’s saying the number of illegal votes may have been larger than the populations of 38 states. He’s saying that as many as 30 to 40 percent of the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States cast ballots.
(For some reason, despite this large degree of supposed fraud and it having been enough to change the outcome, Trump did not doubt the legitimacy of his win. He delayed calling for an investigation until after he was in office. The investigation turned up no evidence of widespread fraud.)
The 2020 election, of course, is what sparked Trump’s most infamous claims of voter fraud. That’s in large part because of how concerted the effort was and its consequences, including the Jan. 6 insurrection and a majority of Republicans coming to believe the general thrust of Trump’s claims.
By 2021, all eyes turned to the California recall, where Trump ally Larry Elder appeared to have a fighting chance against Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). Even before Election Day, Elder’s website blamed voter fraud for Newsom being “reinstated” as governor, and Trump claimed the election was being “totally rigged.” But when Elder lost by a huge margin — 62-38 percent — they largely backed off the claim.
An even larger margin in the Georgia governor’s was apparently not enough to exempt it from this treatment. And that treatment comes two weeks after Trump urged his preferred candidate, celebrity physician Mehmet Oz, to declare victory in a very tight race before many votes were even counted. Trump argued that doing so would somehow prevent the election from being stolen.
Oz did not heed that advice, but he did not publicly reject the argument from his benefactor. And that’s how the GOP has generally handled these things: They won’t completely echo Trump, but they’ll either treat him like he’s just some guy spouting off on the Internet or offer a watered-down version to make it sound like they’re on the same page.
As an anonymous White House official infamously said a week after the 2020 election, “What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time?” The biggest downside was soon revealed to be the Jan. 6 insurrection. But the party hasn’t stopped humoring him. And apparently that means he’ll cry foul even after elections in which his side is defeated more than 3-to-1.
Philip Bump contributed to this report. | 2022-05-31T18:45:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Trump’s voter fraud claims are growing more outlandish - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/trumps-voter-fraud-claims-are-growing-more-outlandish/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/trumps-voter-fraud-claims-are-growing-more-outlandish/ |
Sparks’ Liz Cambage denies using racial slur toward Nigerian players
Liz Cambage, shown here playing earlier this WNBA season for the Los Angeles Sparks, has denied making racial comments toward Nigerian players while playing for Australia's national team last year. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images)
Los Angeles Sparks center Liz Cambage has denied directing racial slurs toward Nigerian women’s basketball players while playing for the Australian national team in a closed-door scrimmage before the Tokyo Olympics.
The Sunday Telegraph obtained video that shows Cambage — the daughter of a Nigerian father and Australian mother — elbowing a Nigerian player in the head and slapping another player across the face during the scrimmage last July in Las Vegas, which took place one day before the WNBA All-Star Game. She then calls the players “monkeys” and tells them to “go back to your third-world country.”
In an Instagram post Sunday, Cambage called the Telegraph account “inaccurate and misleading” and said she “did not use the racial slur towards the Nigerian team that has been circulating.”
“After I unintentionally fouled a Nigerian player on court I was then physically assaulted by this player on the sideline of my bench,” Cambage wrote. “I was hit in the face and pushed to the ground but I walked away. Prior to the game I asked to sit out because I was concerned about my mental and physical health, which I have addressed publicly. We did not have professional referees to manage and prioritise both teams’ safety during this highly physical scrimmage.
Cambage pulled out of last year’s Olympics two days after the scrimmage and only 11 days before Australia’s first game, saying she was a “long way” from her physical and mental peak. She said she had been experiencing panic attacks for the previous month, had been neither sleeping nor eating and had been taking medication to help with anxiety.
In May 2021, Cambage threatened to boycott the Games after a promotional photo shoot featuring Australian Olympians and Paralympians failed to include any athletes of color, and the Telegraph report says Cambage told the Nigerian players before the July scrimmage that she wished she was playing for Nigeria and not Australian because her teammates were racists. The Telegraph adds that Cambage apologized to the Nigerian players one day after the scrimmage, though one Nigerian player said she didn’t think it was sincere.
Australia would end up winning only one of four games in Tokyo but advanced to the quarterfinals, where the Opals were eliminated by the United States. It was the team’s second straight Olympic quarterfinal elimination after medaling in five straight Games from 1996 to 2012.
In November, Basketball Australia reprimanded Cambage after conducting an investigation of the incident during the scrimmage but said she remained eligible to play for the national team at the FIBA World Cup, which will be held in September in Australia. But in December, Cambage posted a story to her Instagram in which she told Basketball Australia that she has “zero” interest in returning to the national team.
Cambage reiterated that stance in an interview before the WNBA regular season began, telling Australia’s ABC network that she was “living my best life” with the Sparks and that she was “protected on a level that the Opals or the Australian team never gave to me.”
New York Liberty Coach Sandy Brondello, Australia’s Olympic coach last year, declined to discuss the situation at length during a video call with reporters on Sunday.
“Right now, I’m not going to make a comment,” she said. “To be quite honest, I’ve really moved on from it. It wasn’t a very fun time, that situation. I’ll make a comment at an appropriate time.”
Nneka Ogwumike, a first-generation Nigerian American who attempted to join Nigeria’s Olympic team last year but was denied by FIBA regulations, is one of Cambage’s teammates on the Sparks. She told reporters Sunday that the team had discussed the scrimmage incident and was “past it.”
“Whatever agenda is happening with it resurfacing, that’s other people’s business,” she said, per ESPN. “Quite frankly, we talked about it before she came to the team. And, granted, people have their own accounts of what happened. But we addressed it. We talked about how important it is for us to be together, be transparent, and also the power of giving people second chances.”
Cambage has started all 10 games for the Sparks this season and is averaging 15.6 points and 5.9 rebounds, both second-best on the team behind Ogwumike. | 2022-05-31T18:46:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sparks’ Liz Cambage denies directing racial slur at Nigerian players - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/31/liz-cambage-australia-nigeria/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/05/31/liz-cambage-australia-nigeria/ |
Transcript: The Path Forward: The U.S. Economy with Lawrence H. Summers
MR. IGNATIUS: Welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m David Ignatius, a columnist for The Post. Our guest today is one of the world’s most respected economists, Lawrence Summers, former Treasury secretary under President Clinton, Director of the National Economic Council under President Obama, President Emeritus of Harvard University, and also a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. Welcome to Washington Post Live, Mr. Secretary.
MR. SUMMERS: Good to be with you, David.
MR. IGNATIUS: [Audio distortion] out of this meeting, and specifically, what do you hope Fed Chairman Powell will say to the president about what he's doing?
MR. SUMMERS: I think that the president's column today in The Wall Street Journal articulated the right broad principles, that inflation is now our preeminent short-run economic problem, that it has to take priority over other problems, that the first part of any strategy for it has to be monetary policy, that the president has to respect the independence of the Federal Reserve as the Federal Reserve does what's necessary to contain inflation.
Frankly, it's been my view that the Fed was way slow to recognize the gravity of the gathering inflation score, even though there was substantial evidence of it. But I've been heartened in recent weeks and even the last several months by Chairman Powell’s statements about the importance and centrality of inflation. I think the question is going to come in terms of policy going forward. I think the right presumption is that you have to increase interest rates by more than inflation has gone up if you want to have any prospect of containing inflation.
And inflation has gone up a lot. It depends on what measure you use. You could find measures where it's gone up 7 percent. I think that's an exaggeration. But it's hard to find a measure where inflation has gone up less than three or four percentage points. And I think that's the kind of increase in interest rates that, at a minimum, we're going to need if we're going to have a prospect of containing inflation--unless, of course, the economy heads towards recession on its own, which given the turbulence in the stock market, and given some of the disturbing indicators about consumer confidence, is also a possibility. But I think that we need to recognize that a soft landing is going to be very difficult in these circumstances.
MR. IGNATIUS: That's a pretty pessimistic forecast. If I hear you right, either we're going to have a recession from external causes, disruptions in the global economy, or we're going to have such substantial increases in U.S. interest rates because of Fed policy on the order of 4 percent that it seems almost certain to produce a recession. So is that something that our viewers should just assume is in the future as a result of policy or just the circumstances in the world?
MR. SUMMERS: David, nothing is certain in economics, and so no forecast should be made with greater than a 75 or 80 percent probability. But we do know this. We know as your clip introducing this quoted me to say that when inflation has been above 4 percent and unemployment has been below 4 percent, we've always had a recession within the last--next two years. And right now, inflation is well above 4 percent and unemployment is properly measured well below 4 percent. So, I think the likelihood is that we're not going to get through this with a soft landing.
Now, the consensus forecast is more optimistic than that, and it may turn out to be correct. But my own judgment is that given where we have been, it is going to be very difficult to get through--get through this, that we now have wage inflation running at a close to 6 percent rate and the tightest labor markets we've ever seen in our country. And I don't see how we can get inflation to substantially decelerate without wage inflation falling substantially, and I don't see any reason to think wage inflation will fall substantially unless there's a substantial loosening in labor markets, which would mean higher unemployment.
MR. IGNATIUS: You, as you said, have been a very frank critic of Fed Chairman Powell. It's also the case that you've been discussed for at least a decade as a possible Fed chairman yourself. I want to ask without specific criticism of Powell what you would do if you were Fed chairman now that isn't being done. Are there additional instruments, tools that could be used that might smooth this process and make it a little less bumpy?
MR. SUMMERS: I don't think there are additional instruments for the Fed to use. I think that I would distinguish somewhat more sharply between the quantitative easing policies with respect to mortgage securities and with respect to treasuries than the Fed has, because I think that needlessly exacerbated the housing bubble.
I do think there needs to be considerable soul searching at the Fed as to how they missed this as badly as they did. They were declaring that inflation would be transitory through most of 2021, even as it was becoming clearer to--clearer and clearer to a growing number of observers that inflation was not a path to being purely transitory. So, I think some review of the modeling and forecasting techniques that the Fed uses is in order and I think it would give confidence that these kinds of mistakes are less likely to be repeated in the future.
You know, David, I did an experiment. I'm not sure it was done exactly right, and I'm sure there are people who would quibble with the way it was done. But I asked a research assistant to take the FRB/US, FRB/US macro econometric model, and take that model and simulate a hypothetical experiment in which we added 10 percent to the budget deficit every year for six or seven years and say what happened to inflation. And that model said that the inflation rate at the end of those six or seven years would go up by 70 basis points. Well, if that's even close to right, that says much more about the FRB/US model that is used at the Fed than it says about the U.S. economy. So, I think there does need to be some soul searching here at the Fed, some after action analysis of what has happened. Now it may be that that is underway. And I know that Chairman Powell and others at the Fed are always Looking for outside advice as to--as to what best to do. But I think that is something that would be in order.
MR. IGNATIUS: Just curious whether they--Fed Chairman Powell and others at the Fed have sought your advice. You indisputably got that right.
MR. SUMMERS: David, I've got--I’ve got a longstanding--I've got a longstanding rule that when I talk to officials in government, I don't discuss it with The Washington Post or other journalistic outlets. So, I'm just not going to answer that question.
MR. IGNATIUS: Well, I'm sorry to hear that, but we'll accept that. So let me just dial back to your earliest warnings. In February of 2021, a month after President Biden took office, you frankly warned at the time that he was crafting his stimulus package that the stimulus he was proposing could--and I'm quoting here--set off inflationary pressures of a kind we have not seen in a generation. As we've discussed painfully, that warning was correct. I am curious what you heard from the administration--or if you don't want to talk about that, what's your sense is of whether they fully took that in. It didn't seem that that was the case for at least six months.
MR. SUMMERS: David, I'm happy to talk economics with you. I'm not going to talk--I'm not going to talk about the personalities and politics within the--within the administration.
MR. IGNATIUS: Okay. Let me--let me introduce another personality, one that we know well at The Washington Post, and that's Jeff Bezos. You publicly criticized Jeff, former CEO of Amazon, now owner of The Washington Post, for a tweet that he had made that questioned whether raising taxes was effective as an anti-inflation measure. And you said--and I'm quoting here in your tweet--"It's perfectly reasonable to raise taxes to reduce demand to contain inflation, and the increases should be as progressive as possible." Explain that and why you thought it was appropriate to take issue with Bezos’ tweet.
MR. SUMMERS: Bezos, who's obviously a leading figure in the country by virtue of being its second wealthiest citizen, attacked the administration by saying that it was wrongheaded--I don't remember exactly what word he used--confused, to conflate the discussion of tax policy with the discussion of inflation, that they were somehow completely separate and that it was misleading and disingenuous of the administration to suggest otherwise. I thought that was just wrong. I thought that it was very natural to think of reducing demand as an important part of any inflation strategy, and that it was very reasonable to think of tax increases as an appropriate part of a strategy for reducing demand. So, I didn't think the argument which was being lively discussed was a logical one, and I thought it was appropriate to point that out.
MR. IGNATIUS: On this question of stimulus and the administration's not only stimulus legislation that was passed but plans for additional significant stimulus on the order of $2 trillion, I’m just wondering whether you think, in your view, the nation owes Senator Joe Manchin, who was the principal opponent of the additional spending, a vote of thanks for avoiding something that could have contributed even more seriously to the inflation problem we're experiencing now.
MR. SUMMERS: I've got great respect for Senator Manchin, and I thought that a compromise between Senator Manchin and the administration, if it had been worked out, could have been a very important contributor to economic policy and to macroeconomic stabilization in our country. The difference between the Rescue Act, which I was very critical of, and the Build Back Better Act was that the Build Back Better proposals were paid for, that, yes, the government spending was going to increase demand, but the tax increases were going to reduce demand.
And so I think the right program of raising taxes and making necessary public investments would have been a very important step forward. It would have been an important step forward for the environment in important respects. It could have been an important step forward on poverty reduction. And I'm sorry that it didn't take place. I don't think it would have been appropriate to have done it in a way that had further stimulated the economy. But that was not a necessary part of the kind of public investment program that the administration was advocating.
MR. IGNATIUS: Let me ask you, Mr. Secretary, to go back to the question of inflation and help us think about the trajectory downwards. Inflation fell a little bit in April to 8.3 percent, but it's still near a 40-year high. I'm curious. You've talked about significant additional interest rate increases. If that program that you advocate was followed, how long do you think it would take to bring inflation down?
MR. SUMMERS: David, it's very hard to say because nobody can forecast what's going to happen to oil prices. Nobody can forecast what's going to happen to commodity prices. They're things that right now are very much in the realm of geopolitics. It's very difficult to forecast what's going to happen to expectations. What I’d be watching is what's going to happen to the labor market.
And I don't think there's a durable reduction in inflation without a meaningful reduction in wage growth. And right now, with the labor markets so tight, I don't see such a meaningful reduction in wage growth taking place. Perhaps it will. And there are some signs that some firms that were very short on labor three months ago are now reporting that, if anything, they no longer have a big problem in hiring workers. So perhaps we will see a disinflationary process start to take hold. But I would be surprised if this year, like last year, we didn't have inflation, way, way above the 2 percent target. And it would surprise me if we returned to the 2 percent target next year.
MR. IGNATIUS: You were very critical of a recent Congressional Budget Office forecast, which was way more optimistic than what you just said, which predicted that by the fourth quarter of this year, year over year, inflation will drop to 4 percent, and a year after that, in the fourth quarter of 2023, will fall to 2.3 percent. You said that was the least plausible CBO forecast that you could remember in 40 years. Just expand on that a little bit. That was such an extraordinary, upbeat account. Why do you think it was so wrong?
MR. SUMMERS: So by the way, in fairness, I think the CBO has been a bastion of credibility over time. So, most of its forecasts have been eminently reasonable and honest, and you know, very sound forecasts. So, least plausible coming from the CBO is a little bit like LeBron James’ worst game. There's a very high standard that it’s being--that it's being compared to. But I go back to the basic logic of [audio distortion] logic is some kind of Phillips curve that says wage inflation is unlikely to slow when the labor market is overheated, and price inflation can't slow that much if wage inflation is very high.
Another way of looking at this is to look at the behavior of interest rates. Whereas you know, David, economists focus on the real interest rate, the interest rate subtracting the inflation rate, the interest rate in terms of purchasing power, and those are at extraordinarily low levels by historical standards right now and usually easy money, which is manifest in low real interest rates, shows up as higher inflation. So, in the absence of positive real interest rates, in the presence of overheated labor markets, I'm not sure why one would form as one's best guess the idea that the economy would be very strong, but inflation would not come down. We don't have any examples historically where inflation has come down very substantially without meaningful economic slack. And I'm not sure what the basis is for thinking that this will be the first--the first time.
Now, in fairness, mine is a more pessimistic than consensus view. And you know, that kind of view proved to be right a year ago. I hope it won't prove to be right now, but I fear that it will.
MR. IGNATIUS: Let me ask you as we near the end of our--of our time to talk about another interesting criticism you made recently of economic policy. The headline was that you were criticizing "hipster" antitrust policies from the administration that could drive inflation higher. But I want to quote your comment in full because it's interesting, and then just ask you to explain it. You were responding to a speech by Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter, who talked about his concerns about private equity, among other things. And what you said is, "What's badly misguided and potentially dangerous to our economic future is the set of doctrines that people jokingly referred to as hipster antitrust. That's a theory that says antitrust shouldn't be about maximizing benefits to consumers but about other objectives, such as dealing with private equity." And then you said, "That tilts very easily into a kind of dangerous populism." It’s a clear warning. I want to ask you if you'd explain to our viewers a little more what you're concerned about.
MR. SUMMERS: Sure, David. I am all for competition. I think we've not enforced the antitrust law vigorously enough in this country for some substantial number of years. I think mergers--for example, mergers of major hospitals within the same city that create large amounts of monopoly power should be subject to attack and more attack than they have been in the past. Those are attacks on monopolies that raise prices.
There's another older idea about antitrust. It's the idea that says we shouldn't let Walmart expand because it hurts small merchants. It's the idea that says that firms that are able to produce more efficiently, but because they're producing more efficiently need fewer workers, shouldn't be allowed to realize that economy. It's the argument that says that firms that are able to be aggressive about reducing prices shouldn't be able to do that. Those theories, which are basically theories that lower prices are bad, seem to me to usually not be in our broad economic interest, and certainly, by definition, when they're saying that lower prices are bad, are a negative from the point of view of reducing inflation. And I think in the writings of the FTC chair, and at least as I interpreted some of what was said in that speech, those arguments seem to potentially be present.
But look, it is early days yet. We'll have to see. It's the deeds that matter, not the words. But I think that we all want to be able to agree, wherever exactly we are on the political spectrum, that if you're making things better for consumers by reducing prices, that's presumptively good, and if you're raising prices, that's presumptively bad, and that if government is going to start interfering with efforts to reduce prices, it had better be awfully, awfully careful.
MR. IGNATIUS: So, fascinating comment. This is a rare discussion about economics that I wished could go on for another hour. I want to thank my friend Larry Summers for joining us to discuss these issues. Thanks for being with us. I hope you come back.
MR. SUMMERS: David, good to be with you.
MR. IGNATIUS: So please join us for other Washington Post Live programming. Go to WashingtonPostLive.com to look at what we’ve got coming up and register for the programs that interests you. Thank you for joining us today with Lawrence Summers. | 2022-05-31T18:47:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: The Path Forward: The U.S. Economy with Lawrence H. Summers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/05/31/transcript-path-forward-us-economy-with-lawrence-h-summers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/05/31/transcript-path-forward-us-economy-with-lawrence-h-summers/ |
On heels of Agatha, tropical storm may form in Gulf of Mexico
Agatha is dissipating but its remnants are forecast to be drawn into a system that could bring heavy rain and gusty winds to Florida
People try to travel through a flooded avenue in the municipality of Tehuantepec in the Mexican state of Oaxaca on Monday as Hurricane Agatha strikes. (Luis Villalobos/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)
Hurricane Agatha crashed into the west coast of southern Mexico Monday, unleashing winds up to 105 mph. The Category 2 hurricane became the most intense storm on record to strike the nation during May.
The storm has since rapidly weakened while passing over land, but its remnants are forecast to be drawn into a developing system in the Gulf of Mexico that has increasing chances to become a new tropical depression or storm later this week.
Should a storm form, it will probably earn the name Alex and become the first of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, which officially begins Wednesday. Heading into the weekend, the nascent system could churn toward Cuba and Florida while bringing heavy rain and gusty winds.
While finishing its transit across southern Mexico Tuesday, the remnants of Agatha are projected to produce rainfall totals of 10 and 20 inches of rain over the higher terrain in the states of Chiapas and Oaxaca. The National Hurricane Center says they have potential to cause “life-threatening flash flooding and mudslides.”
Agatha made landfall at 4 p.m. Central time on Monday, just west of Puerto Angel in the state of Oaxaca, mostly affecting sparsely populated small beach towns and fishing villages. It became only the third hurricane to lash Mexico during the month of May.
Reuters reported that Mexico deployed its National Guard ahead of the storm in the states of Oaxaca, Guerrero and Chiapas to offer assistance. It wrote the storm left two highways impassable and brought down telephone lines.
A new storm?
Once Agatha’s remnants emerge near the Yucatán Peninsula or eastern parts of the Bay of Campeche in the southern gulf, they are expected to nucleate new storm growth. The National Hurricane Center places substantial odds, around 70 percent, of this happening.
While it’s unusual for tropical storms or hurricanes to cross from one ocean basin to another it’s not entirely unheard of. Usually it happens as westward-drifting storms in the Caribbean trek west over the thin spine of central America. Hurricane Otto, for example, made landfall on the Atlantic side of Costa Rica on Nov. 24, 2016 as a Category 3 storm. It continued trekking westward as a tropical storm in the Pacific while retaining its name.
That raises an important question — will whatever forms in the gulf keep the name Agatha, or will it claim the first name on the 2022 Atlantic list, which is Alex? It depends on storm organization.
If Agatha’s quickly-withering central vortex were to somehow remain intact with a discernible circulation and that vortex became the anchor point of a new storm in the Atlantic, “Agatha” would remain. More likely, however, Agatha’s vortex will disintegrate, and its remnants will be absorbed by a new area of spin — which will earn a new name — in this case, Alex.
A new storm in the Gulf?
Computer models generally agree that a system will develop in the gulf but differ on how strong it will become. The European model hints that a circulation will tighten in the late Thursday or Friday time frame and become a tropical storm near Florida by the weekend. The American GFS model, on the other hand, is less assertive.
If the stronger models are correct and Alex forms, Florida’s greatest threat would probably be heavy rains, with secondary risks from wind, coastal flooding and tornadoes. It will take at least another day or two for forecasts of the system’s strength to become more clear.
“Regardless of development, locally heavy rainfall is likely across portions of southeastern Mexico, the Yucatán Peninsula, Guatemala, and Belize during the next few days, spreading across western Cuba, southern Florida, and the Florida Keys by the end of the week,” the Hurricane Center writes.
Models suggest rainfall totals of 4 to 6 inches are possible along the western coast of Florida over the next week.
After affecting Florida, the system — whether named Alex or not — is projected to ride parallel to the East Coast and sweep north and east out to sea, tugged north by a dip in the stream. It’s not out of the question that coastal areas of the Southeast are clipped by the system as it exits late in the weekend or early next week.
The possible formation of Alex is likely a harbinger of what’s to come — experts anticipate a very active Atlantic hurricane season. | 2022-05-31T18:47:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | On heels of Hurricane Agatha, Tropical Storm Alex could form in Gulf of Mexico - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/05/31/hurricane-agatha-tropical-storm-gulf/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/05/31/hurricane-agatha-tropical-storm-gulf/ |
Virginia lawmakers to delay vote on NFL stadium for Commanders
Virginia State Sen. Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) in Richmond in February. Saslaw said the General Assembly will delay voting on a bill intended to bring the Washington Commanders to the state. (Steve Helber/AP)
RICHMOND — The General Assembly will delay voting on legislation meant to lure the Washington Commanders football team to Virginia, a key senator said Tuesday, signaling trouble for a plan that began the year with broad bipartisan buy-in.
With legislators returning to the Capitol on Wednesday to vote on the state budget and other measures kicked into a special session early this year, Senate Majority Leader Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax) said a pair of stadium bills will not come to the floor as planned.
The delay will not be the last word on the stadium effort generally or even the current legislation, which Saslaw said will stay alive because the General Assembly will not take the usual vote to conclude the special session Wednesday. That move will extend the session for an unspecified period.
But the delay suggests that the proposed taxpayer-subsidized stadium has become a tougher sell in Richmond than in January, when a pair of bills emerged with powerful bipartisan support, and newly inaugurated Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) endorsed the idea in his first speech to the legislature.
While negotiators have worked since then to slash the size of the state’s contribution — from an initial estimate of $1 billion to less than $300 million — controversies have grown around team owner Daniel Snyder. Snyder has been accused of sexual misconduct and financial improprieties — allegations he denies.
“I think we’ve still got some work to do, and the votes are probably close,” said Sen. Jeremy S. McPike (D-Prince William), who has raised questions about transportation issues around a potential location for the project in Woodbridge, where the team recently obtained an option to buy land. “If it was ready, it’d be on a vote for tomorrow, but it’s not ready.”
Team president Jason Wright greeted the delay as an opportunity to promote the project.
“We are grateful for the bipartisan support the stadium authority legislation has already received, and any additional time will certainly provide us with more opportunities to share how this project can create new jobs, generate significant tax revenue, and spur economic development for surrounding communities and the Commonwealth as a whole,” Wright said in a statement.
The Commanders, who are contractually obligated to play at FedEx Field in Landover, Md., until 2027, have been shopping for a new home for years in Virginia, Maryland and D.C.
Snyder wants to build not just a new stadium but a massive commercial and residential complex that supporters call a “mini-city,” including a convention center, concert venue, hotels, restaurants and housing. Supporters have said the stadium and surrounding development would provide a tremendous economic boost to the community where it is built.
Saslaw and a powerful Republican, House Appropriations Chairman Barry D. Knight (R-Virginia Beach), introduced bills to create a stadium authority to oversee construction and financing of the project. As originally proposed, the bills would have allowed the team to collect a share of state tax revenue generated by the stadium and the more expansive commercial development to finance construction of the stadium.
The Republican-controlled House of Delegates and the Democratic-led Senate passed separate bills in February by hefty, bipartisan margins.
But there were concerns about the amount of tax revenue the state would forfeit, initially estimated at $1 billion. In March, negotiators trying to smooth out differences in the bills said they would cap the state’s contribution at $350 million. They failed to strike a deal before the legislature wrapped up its regular session that month, so the legislation rolled into a special session called primarily to complete work on the state budget.
Sen. Stephen D. Newman (R-Bedford), one of the negotiators, said last week that they planned to lower the cap again, to under $300 million. He also said that he expected the compromise bill to let the team have a share of revenue generated only from the stadium, not from the broader commercial development — an approach that Saslaw has embraced as a way of limiting the impact on ordinary taxpayers.
“If you don’t ever attend a game or you’re not an employee of the football team, not one penny of your taxes will ever go toward paying off that stadium. Not a penny,” Saslaw said. “Unless they’re a player or a coach or go to the stadium and buy something, there is not a penny of their money in there.”
Saslaw was referring to state tax revenue. The locality where the stadium is built would have the option to give the team a break on local taxes, which would not apply toward the $300 million cap.
Although they continue to explore locations in Maryland and D.C., the Commanders also acquired the right to purchase 200 acres in Prince William County for the project. Leaked a little more than a week before the General Assembly was expected to vote on the stadium bill Wednesday, the disclosure of the acquisition could have been intended to pull the measure over the finish line.
Some members of the General Assembly remained upbeat about the plan’s prospects last week, even as Newman and Sen. Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax City) — for many years the team’s most vocal cheerleader in Richmond — voiced doubts about it.
The Commanders and Snyder have been embroiled in scandal for much of the past two years amid allegations of sexual misconduct and financial impropriety, which have prompted investigations by the NFL and Congress, as well as possibly the Federal Trade Commission. Last month, Attorneys General Karl A. Racine (D) of D.C. and Jason S. Miyares (R) of Virginia launched their own probes of the team.
Sam Fortier contributed to this report. | 2022-05-31T19:45:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Legislators in Virginia to delay vote on NFL stadium for Washington Commanders - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/31/commanders-stadium-virginia-delay-vote/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/31/commanders-stadium-virginia-delay-vote/ |
Musk plans to open all-night Tesla diner and charging station
(Jae C. Hong/AP)
Though the technology might be cutting edge, the idea behind it harks back to the golden age of the drive-in, which was as much a place to show off your finned, chrome-trimmed ride as it was to fill up on cheeseburgers and fries. Tesla founder Elon Musk sounded cognizant of the connection in his 2018 announcement of the plan in which he promised an old-school “roller skates & rock restaurant” at one of the company’s “supercharger” stations.
The newly filed plans feature a rooftop bar, a drive-in theater and a carhop area, though the vibe seems more futuristic than retro, according to electric vehicle news site Electrek, which first reported on them. The facility will be built on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood, where a Shakey’s Pizza is located. The design includes 29 stalls for charging cars, allowing patrons to dine and watch short movies while they wait.
Much about the restaurant, whose construction the city must first approve, still isn’t clear, including its menu and opening date, and an email to the company was not immediately returned. Musk tweeted in 2018, though, that it would take payment in the cryptocurrency dogecoin.
And the plan for the Tesla diner isn’t without detractors. Some are bemoaning the proposal to demolish Shakey’s Pizza, which has been open since 1964, to make way for the new complex. Tour company Esotouric Los Angeles, which specializes in preservation and history, called it “a Rte 66 loss” and poked fun at the renderings Tesla submitted. “If this is the promised retro futuristic ‘50s Tesla drive-in, meh,” it tweeted. “Looks like the existing Shakey’s in a cheap Hallowe’en costume.” | 2022-05-31T19:50:01Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Elon Musk and Tesla are getting into the restaurant business - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/05/31/tesla-diner-elon-musk/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/05/31/tesla-diner-elon-musk/ |
Virginia lawmakers to vote on tax cuts in compromise state budget plan
The Virginia Capitol in Richmond. (Steve Helber/AP)
RICHMOND — Virginia lawmakers return to the Capitol Wednesday to vote on a state budget that includes billions in tax relief as well as more money for teachers and other public employees and record spending on education.
The budget deal, reached by House and Senate negotiators in the weeks since the General Assembly wrapped up its regular session on March 15, also includes language setting out new penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana.
In addition, Democrats in the House will vote on new leadership, with Del. Don Scott (Portsmouth) — a relative newcomer — vying with at least two veteran lawmakers to serve as House minority leader.
The state’s two-year spending plan is the star of the show, with Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) hoping to get at least a modest victory on his campaign for sweeping tax cuts. Republicans who control the House of Delegates had passed a package of tax breaks that cost about $3 billion more than those passed by the Democratic-controlled Senate, leading to a stalemate that prevented lawmakers from agreeing on a budget during this year’s regular legislative session.
Last week, negotiators said they had finally reached a compromise deal that gives Youngkin some, but not all, of his wishes. The centerpiece: Increasing the standard income tax deduction, which Youngkin had wanted to double. The legislature’s proposed budget would fall just short of that, increasing it from the current $4,500 for individuals and $9,000 for joint filers to $8,000 and $16,000 respectively.
But the increases would only take place if state revenue continues to grow by certain amounts, and would end before the 2026 tax year.
Virginia General Assembly adjourns with job unfinished
The agreement also calls for cutting the 1.5 percent state tax on groceries, but not the additional 1 percent grocery tax that localities may levy. Youngkin had wanted to eliminate both.
Lawmakers did not agree to suspend the state’s gasoline tax, which Youngkin had proposed. But they went along with his proposal to reduce taxes on military pensions, which they would phase in over several years.
The General Assembly’s proposed budget also achieves a longtime goal of Democrats: making 15 percent of the earned income tax credit refundable for low-income working families.
“This is an historic budget in many ways,” said Del. Mark Sickles (D-Fairfax), who was part of the negotiating team. “Most of the things people expect states and want states to do, we‘ve done more than ever,” he said, crediting an almost unprecedented surge in revenue.
A faster-than-expected recovery from the economic wound of the coronavirus pandemic, as well as waves of federal relief payments related to the pandemic, have left the state with billions in surplus revenue.
Both the House and Senate will vote on the proposed budget Wednesday. If it passes, the plan goes to Youngkin — who can still propose amendments. The state needs to get the budget wrapped up by the end of the month because a new fiscal year starts July 1.
Youngkin proposes new crimes for pot possession, changes to CBD retail
The marijuana provision was an unusual component of the budget agreement, aimed at solving a legislative stalemate over one element of Virginia’s legalization effort.
Under a legalization plan passed last year, adults may possess up to an ounce of recreational marijuana, though the state has not yet implemented a process for the legal sale of weed. Possessing an amount between an ounce and a pound currently is punishable with a civil fine, but having more than a pound is considered a felony.
The proposed budget language would make it a misdemeanor to possess more than four ounces or up to a pound. Some lawmakers have argued that creating a new criminal category goes against the idea of legalization.
Before the legislature convenes at 10 a.m. Wednesday, House Democrats will caucus and are expected to vote on new leadership. Scott, in only his second term, led an uprising last month in which Democrats ousted former House Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn (D-Fairfax) as minority leader, partly out of frustration that the party lost its majority in the chamber in last fall’s elections.
Scott is said to be vying for the top party role against at least two rivals — Del. Charniele Herring (D-Arlington), who is the caucus chairwoman, and Del. Richard “Rip” Sullivan Jr. (D-Fairfax). | 2022-05-31T20:03:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Virginia's General Assembly will vote on a state budget Wednesday that includes tax cuts - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/31/virginia-general-assembly-budget-tax-cuts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/05/31/virginia-general-assembly-budget-tax-cuts/ |
Former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro subpoenaed by DOJ in Jan. 6 probe
Then-White House trade adviser Peter Navarro listens as President Donald Trump speaks during a news conference at the White House on Aug. 14, 2020. (Patrick Semansky/AP)
Former Trump White House official Peter Navarro has been subpoenaed by the Justice Department as part of the probe into the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
Navarro, who was a trade adviser to Trump, revealed the subpoena Tuesday in a lawsuit he filed against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and the bipartisan House committee investigating the attack.
“On May 26, 2022, two FBI special agents banged loudly on my door in the early morning hours to present me with a fruit of the poisonous tree,” a grand jury subpoena “commanding me to comply with the original … subpoena issued to me by the Committee dated February 9, 10 2022,” Navarro said in the 88-page complaint.
The committee subpoenaed Navarro in February seeking records and testimony from the former trade adviser, who has written and publicly discussed the effort to develop a strategy to delay or overturn certification of the 2020 election.
Navarro responded at the time with a statement rejecting the request and the committee’s legitimacy and blaming Pelosi, among others, for the violence that occurred on Jan. 6, 2021. He argued that Trump “has invoked Executive Privilege; and it is not my privilege to waive.”
The House then voted in April to hold Navarro and former White House communications chief Daniel Scavino Jr. in contempt of Congress, leading to criminal referrals to the Justice Department, which has the power to charge the two former officials with misdemeanors that can result in up to one year in prison and a fine of up to $100,000.
The pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 was trying to stop the certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election win. The attack resulted in the deaths of five people and injuries to about 140 members of law enforcement.
Navarro is among several Trump advisers who have been subpoenaed by the select committee and are seeking to avoid testifying by citing Trump’s claim of executive privilege. The panel has also issued subpoenas to five House Republicans, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.).
In a February letter accompanying the original subpoena, Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), chairman of the select committee, cited news reports that Navarro “worked with Steve Bannon and others to develop and implement a plan to delay Congress’s certification of, and ultimately change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.”
The letter also cited Navarro’s recent book, in which he detailed a plan he called “The Green Bay Sweep,” which he described as the “last best chance to snatch a stolen election from the Democrats’ jaws of deceit.” The subpoena also described a Navarro report released online that repeated “many claims of purported fraud in the election that have been discredited.”
Navarro said in his lawsuit against Pelosi and the committee that he was directed to testify before a grand jury on June 2 and present “[a]ll documents relating to the subpoena dated February 9, 2022” that he received from the committee, “including but not limited to any communications with formal President Trump and/or his counsel or representative.”
“As demonstrated in this brief, the executive privilege invoked by President Trump is not mine or Joe Biden’s to waive,” Navarro maintained. “Rather, as with the Committee, the U.S. Attorney has constitutional and due process obligations to negotiate my appearance before [the grand jury] not with me but rather with President Trump and his attorneys and I am bound by privilege to fail to comply with this Grand Jury Subpoena absent these negotiations and guidance from President Trump.”
Jacqueline Alemany, Tom Hamburger and Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report. | 2022-05-31T20:07:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Peter Navarro subpoenaed in Jan. 6 investigation - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/navarro-subpoena-capitol-probe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/31/navarro-subpoena-capitol-probe/ |
Federal judge orders IBM to pay $1.6 billion to BMC in software dispute
Judge orders IBM to pay $1.6 billion
IBM must pay $1.6 billion to BMC Software for swapping in its own software while servicing their mutual client, a Houston federal judge ruled.
U.S. District Judge Gray Miller, after a seven-day nonjury trial, rejected IBM’s claim that their mutual client AT&T opted to switch software products on its own and ruled that IBM’s role in the decision to dump BMC “smacked of intentional wrongdoing.”
For more than a decade, IBM serviced AT&T’s mainframe computers, which ran on rival BMC’s software products. IBM and BMC have long operated under a carefully negotiated agreement that forbids IBM from encouraging mutual clients, like AT&T, to switch to IBM’s competing software product line.
BMC sued IBM in 2017 claiming its rival intended to breach their agreement and poach AT&T’s software business when the two companies renewed their power-sharing deal in 2015. IBM countered that AT&T dumped BMC’s products and jumped to IBM for its own reasons, which IBM claims is fair game under its BMC agreement.
“This verdict is entirely unsupported by fact and law, and IBM intends to pursue complete reversal on appeal,” IBM said in a statement. “IBM acted in good faith in every respect in this engagement. The decision to remove BMC Software technology from its mainframes rested solely with AT&T, as was recognized by the court and confirmed in testimony from AT&T representatives admitted at trial.”
BMC didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the order.
Los Angeles targets most gas appliances
Citing the climate crisis, the Los Angeles City Council has voted to ban most gas appliances in new construction, a policy that’s expected to result in new homes and businesses coming equipped with electric stoves, clothes dryers, water heaters and furnaces.
More than 50 California cities and counties have adopted similar rules banning or discouraging gas hookups in new homes and other buildings. The nation’s second-largest city was late to the game, said Councilmember Nithya Raman (D), the policy’s lead author — but no longer.
The vote Friday “puts us in line with climate leaders across the country,” she said in an interview.
The zero-emission policy is likely to take effect in the next few years, although the timeline isn’t clear yet. The motion leaves the details to city agencies, directing them to draft a regulation and bring it back to the council for approval by the end of 2022.
Home-price growth in 20 U.S. cities picked up for the fourth straight month with Tampa showing the biggest gains. A measure of prices in those 20 cities climbed 21.2 percent through March following a 20.3 percent gain in February, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index showed Tuesday. All 20 cities reported double-digit price increases for the year ending in March and prices in Tampa jumped 34.8 percent, according to a statement.
Israel and the United Arab Emirates signed a broad economic pact that will eliminate most customs fees and help expand bilateral trade to more than $10 billion within five years, officials said. The formal signing of the agreement comes less than two years after Israel and the Gulf Arab state forged full diplomatic ties. It was negotiated earlier this year. The pact is the fastest free trade agreement to be signed in Israeli history, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said in a tweet.
U.S. consumer confidence dropped in May to the lowest since February, underscoring the impact of decades-high inflation on Americans' economic views. The Conference Board's index decreased to 106.4 from an upwardly revised 108.6 reading in April, data released Tuesday showed. The figures suggest that persistently high inflation, particularly in categories like food and energy, is weighing on household sentiment and straining budgets. | 2022-05-31T20:16:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Federal judge orders IBM to pay $1.6 billion to BMC in software dispute - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/federal-judge-orders-ibm-to-pay-16-billion-to-bmc-in-software-dispute/2022/05/31/0440f670-e0d0-11ec-be47-cbd01021a7bb_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/federal-judge-orders-ibm-to-pay-16-billion-to-bmc-in-software-dispute/2022/05/31/0440f670-e0d0-11ec-be47-cbd01021a7bb_story.html |
FILE - Judy Huth appears at a news conference outside the Los Angeles Police Department’s Wilshire Division station in Los Angeles on Dec. 5, 2014. Eleven months after he was freed from prison, 85-year-old Bill Cosby will again be the defendant in a sexual assault proceeding, this time a civil case in California. Judy Huth, who is now 64, alleges that in 1975 when she was 16, Cosby sexually assaulted her at the Playboy Mansion. (AP Photo/Anthony McCartney, File)
The problems with the case's age were illustrated by a major change Huth made to her story just weeks before trial, after evidence uncovered by her attorneys led them to believe she met Cosby on the movie set in 1975, when she was 16, not in late 1973 or early 1974, when she was 15. Among the things they used to reach the conclusion: a dated photo of Cosby with the beard Huth remembers him having. Cosby attorney Jennifer Bonjean called the late change an “ambush” that would make presenting a defense more difficult, but the judge declined to dismiss the case or delay the trial. He did allow a final last-minute deposition of Huth. | 2022-05-31T20:16:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EXPLAINER: A look at Bill Cosby's sexual assault civil trial - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/explainer-a-look-at-bill-cosbys-sexual-assault-civil-trial/2022/05/31/1012ee6c-e112-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/explainer-a-look-at-bill-cosbys-sexual-assault-civil-trial/2022/05/31/1012ee6c-e112-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Virginia protests pit freedom of speech against judicial independence
A Fairfax County police vehicle outside the home of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. in Alexandria on May 11. (Craig Hudson/Bloomberg News)
It was a relatively minor news story when abortion rights demonstrators gathered outside the Fairfax County home of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. to protest the leaked draft majority opinion he wrote that would end federal legal protections for abortions.
The protest remained peaceful, and some credit goes to Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R). His office coordinated with local law enforcement and the Virginia State Police to ensure the safety of Alito and his family yet allow the protest to proceed without incident.
But then the governor moved to quell any further such protests, setting off a conflict over free speech and its limits. He co-wrote a letter with Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) imploring Attorney General Merrick Garland to have the Justice Department to enforce 18 U.S. Code § 1507 and prosecute future protesters outside justices’ homes in their states. He also stated his tougher position in a Fox News interview, then tweeted from his official account.
The statute, which dates to 1950, defines “pickets or parades” or other demonstrations near a building or residence occupied by a judge intended to interfere with or impede the administration of justice as obstruction of justice. Violations are punishable by a fine of up to $5,000 and a year in prison.
Many assert that enforcing the law is not optional, a point Hogan and Youngkin made in their appeal to Garland. But it creates friction between two foundational American institutions: a fair, independent judiciary, and the Bill of Rights’ guarantee of the people’s right to peacefully assemble and “petition government for a redress of grievances.”
Each side has important perspectives to consider.
In defense of the action Youngkin took that allowed the protest to proceed, the First Amendment provides no exception for judges’ residences as venues where the people may peaceably air their concerns. Some legal scholars doubt the statute’s constitutionality, which has never been tested. Youngkin’s action also enjoyed the practical benefit of a good outcome. Demonstrators did not provoke officers, nor did officers provoke protesters.
But the Constitution also guarantees fair and impartial due process, and there have long been statutes at both the state and federal levels that dissuade such actions as jury tampering, witness intimidation or ex parte efforts to improperly influence judges.
The Constitution authorizes courts to hear and decide cases in law and equity that arise under the Constitution and the laws of the nation. That means the courts defer to legislation and legislative intent, not act as a substitute capable of creating law.
Abortion rights in the United States arose from the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, not through an act of Congress. In Roe v. Wade, the court held that a constitutional right of privacy protects a woman’s decision to have an abortion. Alito’s draft majority opinion, if unchanged, rejects the Roe v. Wade precedent that such a right exists under the Constitution. Alito wrote that it can only be created legislatively — by the people’s representatives — as part of the political process.
Under that argument, the people’s right to petition their government comes not through pressuring the judiciary but by influencing legislatures: lobbying, state and national issue advocacy campaigns, motivating and mobilizing voters behind candidates who reflect their positions, and by lawful protests outside statehouses and the U.S. Capitol.
That argument, however, suffers from decades of wanton politicization of Supreme Court appointments, particularly during the past seven years. Democrats have neither forgotten nor forgiven a Republican Senate that refused to even hold hearings on President Barack Obama’s 2016 nomination of Garland to fill the late conservative Justice Antonin A. Scalia’s seat, but then swiftly rubber-stamped three of President Donald Trump’s conservative nominees — one just before his 2020 election defeat. All three were handpicked by antiabortion groups, confirmed after caustic Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings, and all three concurred in Alito’s draft opinion.
It’s an untenable dilemma that American politics has created for itself by subjecting jurists to rigid ideological litmus tests. It has corroded our collaborative lawmaking process and eroded American respect for its highest court’s impartiality, perhaps irreparably. | 2022-05-31T20:16:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Virginia protests pit freedom of speech against judicial independence - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/virginia-protests-pit-freedom-speech-against-judicial-independence/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/31/virginia-protests-pit-freedom-speech-against-judicial-independence/ |
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