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Would-be Reagan assassin John Hinckley Jr. set for June 15 release
U.S. judge confirms order after 67-year-old successfully completed nine-month observation period in Williamsburg, Va.
President Ronald Reagan, center, is shoved into a limousine by U.S. Secret Service agents after he was shot outside the Washington Hilton in Northwest Washington on March 30, 1981. (Ron Edmonds/AP)
Would-be presidential assassin John W. Hinckley Jr. will be unconditionally released June 15, ending one of the nation’s most notorious criminal cases 41 years after he shot Ronald Reagan and three others outside a D.C. hotel.
At a final court hearing Wednesday in D.C., federal prosecutors and a defense lawyer for Hinckley agreed that he had successfully completed a nine-month observation period that U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman had required in September in issuing a written release order that takes effect this month.
“I am confident Mr. Hinckley will do well in the years remaining to him,” Friedman said, adding that Hinckley had proved after four decades of supervision that he “should be ready to get on with his life.”
The Justice Department earlier had agreed to end court and medical supervision of Hinckley, who was freed from a government psychiatric hospital to live with his mother in Williamsburg, Va., in 2016.
Would-be Reagan assassin John W. Hinckley Jr. wins unconditional release
Hinckley, who turned 67 on Sunday, remains mentally stable and in compliance with his release and treatment conditions, according to his D.C. Department of Behavioral Health and private treatment team, which began recommending his full release in August 2020.
“The Government has found no evidence to suggest that Mr. Hinckley’s unconditional release should not be granted,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kacie M. Weston wrote to the court.
During the hearing Wednesday, Weston said the government had no objections to Hinckley’s release taking effect on June 15.
Hinckley was 25 when he shot Reagan, White House press secretary James Brady and two others with six exploding “Devastator” bullets from a .22-caliber pistol on March 30, 1981. A federal jury found Hinckley not guilty by reason of insanity in 1982, finding that he acted out of a deranged obsession to impress the actress Jodie Foster, setting off a historic debate that narrowed the insanity defense.
The Road to Assassination — The Washington Post
Over the years, Hinckley responded to treatment, winning court approval in 2000 for staff-supervised trips in Washington with family members. Under close supervision, his outings were gradually expanded to allow several nights and then two weeks a month, before Friedman allowed Hinckley to leave Washington’s St. Elizabeths Hospital in 2016 under a host of medical, travel and other conditions, the remaining requirements of which will be lifted.
While on “convalescent leave” in recent years, for example, Hinckley has been ordered to stay away from D.C., people protected by the U.S. Secret Service, his victims and the news media. His access to social media and the Internet were restricted and subject to inspection, although Hinckley, who plays the guitar and paints, was allowed in 2020 to release writings, artwork and music under his name.
Hinckley was not in court Wednesday, but his longtime attorney, Barry Wm. Levine, said his doctors confirmed that his client does not and will not pose “a danger to himself or to others.”
Hinckley’s return to society “shows the fairness with which the system of justice should be administered,” Levine said. “There’s been no spin involved here. … The court has proceeded at a very cautious pace.”
Levine restated Hinckley’s apologies to victims including the Reagan family; Jim and Sarah Brady; Secret Service Special Agent Tim McCarthy, D.C. police Officer Thomas Delahanty and to Foster.
Weston said the court had had “very good reason” for caution, given what Hinckley did. She noted that Hinckley had received for his mental illness “a level of treatment most people don’t have access to and would greatly benefit from.” However, she said there is an “upside” in Hinckley’s rehabilitation.
“The government believes this case has shown and demonstrates the success that can come from a wraparound mental health system that really embraced Mr. Hinckley at every step of the process,” Weston said.
Friedman recited the case’s long history Wednesday, recognizing the health and legal practitioners who worked on Hinckley’s case over the decades. The judge noted that he and Levine had stewarded the case into their late 70s and that the judge had served in the U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. with Hinckley’s trial prosecutor, Roger M. Adelman, who died in 2015.
“We’ve all traveled a long road,” Friedman said in closing his remarks. “I don’t come to this conclusion lightly. … I am hopeful the public will understand.” | 2022-06-01T18:58:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | John Hinckley Jr. set for June 15 release - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/hinckley-release-reagan/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/hinckley-release-reagan/ |
Adm. Linda Fagan attends the U.S. Coast Guard change of command ceremony at Coast Guard Headquarters on June 1. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)
At a change-of-command ceremony at U.S. Coast Guard headquarters in Washington, Biden noted the history-making nature of Fagan’s promotion.
“There’s no one more qualified to lead the proud women and men of the Coast Guard, and she will also be the first woman to serve as commandant of the Coast Guard, the first woman to lead any branch of the United States armed forces,” Biden said. “And it’s about time.”
Fagan thanked her parents for “their courage to allow me to begin this journey 41 years ago.”
“I was 16. I announced my intent to attend the academy, full of righteousness as only a 16-year-old can be. And like all good parents, they said, ‘Oh, she’ll outgrow it,' ” Fagan said, drawing laughter from the crowd of about 1,800 uniformed Coast Guard members and guests.
“I did not,” she added.
In her remarks Wednesday, Fagan gave a symbolic nod to Adm. Owen W. Siler, the former Coast Guard commandant who played a key role in integrating women into the service beginning in the 1970s. She told the crowd that the shoulder boards she was wearing, which display an officer’s rank, were the same ones Siler wore while leading the service.
“If it was not for Owen Siler’s courage, I do not believe I would be standing here today,” Fagan said.
Biden’s nomination of Fagan in April followed the president’s promise to diversify the leadership ranks of the government and his administration. He noted Wednesday that Fagan joined the Coast Guard only five years after the first women graduated from the academy.
Women comprised 8 percent of Fagan’s Coast Guard Academy graduating class in 1985, Biden said. By contrast, about 40 percent of the academy’s cadets today are women.
“We need to ensure women have an opportunity to succeed and thrive throughout their professional careers, and that means providing support and resources so women can compete fairly and fully for promotions and make sure women are not penalized in their career for having children,” Biden said. “It also means creating an environment where every member of the armed forces feels safe in the ranks — including from sexual assault and harassment — where their contributions are respected.”
During an event last year for a local chapter of the Coast Guard’s Women’s Leadership Initiative, Fagan appeared with her daughter, Lt. Aileen Fagan, herself a 2016 graduate of the Coast Guard Academy.
“That’s the whole point, is to have that representation,” Aileen Fagan said. “I’ve had it all my life, knowing that I could be successful in the Coast Guard because I could see my mom being successful in the Coast Guard. I think we all want to be able to look up and down the chain, across positions, and see people who look like us or who think like us and be able to see that representation and know that we can do it, too.” | 2022-06-01T18:58:22Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Adm. Linda Fagan becomes first woman to lead U.S. Coast Guard - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/01/adm-linda-fagan-becomes-first-woman-lead-us-coast-guard/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/01/adm-linda-fagan-becomes-first-woman-lead-us-coast-guard/ |
Florida abortion providers seek to block state’s new 15-week ban
With future of Roe v. Wade in doubt, legal battle over abortion shifts to state courts
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed legislation in April to ban abortion in the state after 15 weeks of pregnancy starting July 1. (Chandan Khanna/AFP/Getty Images)
Abortion providers in Florida filed a lawsuit Wednesday to try to block the state’s new law banning abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, which is slated to take effect July 1.
The constitutional challenge in Florida comes as Republican-led states have moved to restrict abortion access and weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court is slated to issue a major abortion ruling that is expected to undermine if not overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
If the justices roll back the fundamental right to abortion established nearly 50 years ago, the legal battle over reproductive rights will shift to state courts. Florida and 10 other states have already recognized and protected abortion access independently from the U.S. Supreme Court, through state constitutions and past state court decisions.
The case filed Wednesday in Leon County will test the strength of the state’s protections embedded in the constitution and a decades-old state Supreme Court decision at a time when Florida’s highest court has become more conservative.
“The Florida Supreme Court has long held that their state constitution protects the right to end a pregnancy. That means even if Roe falls, abortion should remain protected in Florida, and this ban should be blocked,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, one of the groups behind the lawsuit, which also includes the ACLU of Florida and Planned Parenthood on behalf of health centers in the state.
Like Florida, courts in Alaska, Minnesota and Montana have also issued rulings emphasizing that the government may not intrude into certain private decisions, including whether to terminate a pregnancy, according to a report by the Center for Reproductive Rights. In Kansas, the state’s highest court has held that “natural rights” protect “personal autonomy,” including the right to abortion.
State constitutions loom as the next front in abortion battle
For more than three decades in Florida, courts have interpreted a voter-backed privacy provision of the state constitution to include the right to abortion. The state Supreme Court in 1989 invalidated a law requiring minors to obtain parental consent to get an abortion based on the provision that states that every “person has the right to be let alone and free from governmental intrusion into his private life.”
The court’s ruling stated that it could “conceive of few more personal or private decisions concerning one’s body that one can make in the course of a lifetime.”
Florida has some of the least restrictive abortion laws in the southeast. The state currently allows abortion up to 24 weeks, the standard established by Roe, which protects access until a fetus is viable outside the womb.
The 15-week ban — passed by the Republican-controlled legislature in March and signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in April — is modeled on the Mississippi law under review by the U.S. Supreme Court. The Florida law includes exceptions to save the life of the mother and for “fatal fetal abnormalities” but does not for rape or incest. Clinics and health-care providers face licensing and disciplinary action for performing abortions after the 15-week mark.
State Rep. Anna V. Eskamani, a Democrat from Orlando, said the new law is at odds with the “Florida value around privacy, around personal medical decisions, including someone’s pregnancy. There’s an understanding that it is not a politician’s place to get involved,” said Eskamani, who began her career as an abortion rights advocate.
Despite the state constitutional protections, the legal landscape in the state has changed as DeSantis has appointed new, more-conservative judges.
“I don’t think we can be naive about this,” Eskamani said.
In their filing Wednesday, lawyers for Florida abortion providers and abortion rights advocates urged the circuit court for Leon County to issue an injunction to prevent the 15-week ban from taking effect July 1.
“Despite Florida’s history of protecting the right to abortion, the Florida legislature recently engaged in a brazen attempt to override the will of the Florida people,” the attorneys wrote in the 33-page filing. The legislature, they said, passed a law that will “unlawfully intrude upon the fundamental privacy rights of Florida women. It will deny Floridians’ autonomy over their own bodies and undermine their ability to make deeply personal decisions about their lives, families, and health care free of government interference.”
John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, an antiabortion organization, characterizes to the state’s abortion protections as an “artificial superpowered abortion right,” more expansive than the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe and subsequent decisions. If the constitutional challenge filed Wednesday makes its way to the state Supreme Court, he said the newly configured, seven-member court is likely to reexamine past decisions.
State supreme courts “have the unique privilege of looking at the constitution with fresh eyes,” said Stemberger, who served on the judicial nominating commission for former Republican governor Jeb Bush. Florida’s high court, he added, “has already shown in the past year in multiple cases, its willingness to do this and to say, ‘the previous Supreme Court got it wrong.’”
At the U.S. Supreme Court in December, the conservative majority at oral argument appeared likely to uphold Mississippi’s 15-week ban. A draft majority opinion made public last month by Politico showed that five justices had tentatively voted to overturn the right to abortion established in Roe. A final decision is expected before the term ends in late June or early July.
The outcome of the Mississippi case and the state case filed Wednesday will influence future legislative efforts in Florida to restrict abortion access, said state Sen. Kelli Stargel, the lead sponsor of the 15-week ban.
“If all abortion decisions go back to the states, I would hate for our state to be seen as a place to have more opportunity for abortions than others,” said Stargel, a Republican from central Florida now running for an open congressional seat. “That’s disturbing to me. We are a pro-life state and we want to protect the unborn.”
Caroline Kitchener contributed to this report.
Take a look: White House releases video, photos of Biden and BTS | 2022-06-01T18:58:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Florida abortion providers seek to block state’s new 15-week ban - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/01/florida-abortion-states-roe/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/01/florida-abortion-states-roe/ |
The interim report of the California Reparations Task Force comes as task members remain split on what reparations should look like
California’s first-in-the-nation task force on reparations for Black Americans said it has documented 170 years of systemic discrimination by the state and demanded “comprehensive reparations” for those harmed by that history of government-sanctioned oppression.
In a 500-page report released Wednesday, a legislatively-mandated task force argues that the present-day wealth gap between Black and White Americans in California and the rest of the country is the direct result of slavery, Jim Crow laws, redlining, and other government policies that locked Black Americans into failing schools and over-policed communities.
“Segregation, racial terror, harmful racist neglect, and other atrocities in nearly every sector of civil society have inflicted harms, which cascade over a lifetime and compound over generations,” the report said.
The task force called its work, an interim report, the most extensive document on government discrimination against the Black community since the landmark 1968 Kerner Commission report.
It called for the creation of a government office to address past harms and potential future ones, and help eligible Black Californians through a reparations program. But it does not put a price tag on its recommendations; that is expected to be detailed later in a second report.
The report recounted a history of California’s mistreatment of Black Americans stemming back to its founding. While California was admitted to the union as a free state, the report points out that the state passed and enforced a fugitive slave law that required the return of enslaved people who sought freedom in there.
The report also cites the extensive history of “sundown towns” in California, communities that prohibited Black Americans from living within their boundaries; the report says that many suburban communities outside of Los Angeles and San Francisco, and most Orange County cities, were once “sundown towns.” It also documents the history of urban renewal and highway projects that dismantled once thriving Black neighborhoods like San Francisco’s Fillmore district, effectively destroying generations of wealth accumulation.
A historic all-Black town wants reparations to rebuild as a ‘safe haven’
Committee members themselves said they were at odds on whether direct cash payments are politically feasible in the state. The report, issued in conjunction with the state’s Department of Justice, lands in a Sacramento awash with cash. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed budget included a $97.5 billion surplus, but the Democrat also has faced demands for refunds for taxpayers, and other programs have a call on specific sums of money.
Even supporters admit the campaign for reparations faces an uphill battle in a state where just 6 percent of the population identifies as Black and where voters recently rejected a move to bring back affirmative action.
“I’m hoping that this report is used as an education tool and an organizing tool, educating the state of California and the United States at large about the harms against the African American community and the contributions of the African American community in the United States,” said Kamilah Moore, chair of the task force. “This report is documenting the full corpus of evidence around the harms against the African American community, which will substantiate the claims for reparations in the final report.”
The interim report comes halfway through the two-year term of the state’s reparations task force. It was created in 2020 by legislation championed by then-Assembly member Shirley Weber (D), who has since become the first African American to serve as California’s secretary of state.
California’s work comes as the idea of reparations has entered the mainstream of the political conversation. More than three decades after it was first introduced in Congress, a House bill that would create a federal commission to study reparations for Black Americans has enough votes to pass on the floor, its key champions say. With odds against the bill in the evenly split Senate, supporters are pushing President Biden to sign an executive order that would create a commission resembling California’s task force.
A 2021 Washington Post poll found that 65 percent of Americans opposed the idea of cash reparations to Black Americans. A plurality of Democrats — 46 percent — favored the idea, while over 90 percent of Republicans opposed it. Two-thirds of Black respondents supported reparations, but only 18 percent of White respondents did. While a majority still oppose reparations, the numbers of those who support the idea is up markedly from past polls. A 1999 ABC News poll found that just 19 percent of Americans approved of reparations for Black Americans.
Supporters say they have the votes in the House to pass a reparations bill after years of lobbying
“This has to be a political campaign on top of a matter of policy and any sort of moral argument,” said James Lance Taylor, a political science professor at the University of San Francisco and a member of the city of San Francisco’s reparations task force. “Anything in favor of expanding rights to Black people has always been negatively received. The odds are always against us, but we are further along than we’ve ever been.”
Much of the thorniest work for the task force remains to be done. After months of debate, in March, the task force voted 5-4 to limit cash reparations only to people who can show that they are descended from Black Americans who were in the country before the turn of the 20th century. But broader questions about the size and scope of a cash reparations — and if they are even possible — remain unanswered.
“I personally feel, this is just me, this is just my perspective, that white folks ain’t going to give Black folks no money to put in their pockets,” said the Rev. Amos Brown, the task force’s vice chair and pastor of Third Baptist Church in San Francisco’s Fillmore District. “But if we can get programmatic solutions in areas where we can quantify the gap and show that the state is responsible, in areas like education, economics, and our cultural enclaves, if we can get some form of reparations along those lines, than I think we will have done a job well done.”
But Chris Lodgson — an organizer with the Coalition For A Just and Equitable California, an advocacy group that helped write the bill calling for the task force and that continues to work closely with the commission by running listening sessions — said cash payments are a must.
“We’re of the position that if it isn’t direct compensation, it ain’t reparations,” Lodgson said. “So crafting actual proposals that rely very heavily on direct financial compensation is the big challenge for us over the next year, but I’m confident that we will do it.”
Supporters remain optimistic that they can find a path.
“California has shown the way on a number of big issues that were just as difficult as reparations, namely marriage equality and marijuana legalization, so if there’s any place that can initiate a similar kind of effect around the issue reparations it’s California,” Taylor said. “It’s the largest state in the union. It’s politically important, and it represents a kind of promise to the rest of America that no matter how outrageous the sort of backlash politics are, there’s a blue wall of California.” | 2022-06-01T19:07:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | California Reparations Task Force reports systemic bias by state - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/01/black-american-reparations-california/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/01/black-american-reparations-california/ |
ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s government on Wednesday sent a 50-member delegation of tribal elders to Kabul to negotiate an extension of a truce with the Pakistani Taliban that expired this week, two security officials said. Talks between the two sides that led to cease-fires in the past have been mediated by the Taliban in Afghanistan. | 2022-06-01T19:08:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pakistan sends 50-member team to Kabul to discuss cease-fire - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pakistan-sends-50-member-team-to-kabul-to-discuss-cease-fire/2022/06/01/c661d2b4-e1da-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pakistan-sends-50-member-team-to-kabul-to-discuss-cease-fire/2022/06/01/c661d2b4-e1da-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Transcript: World Stage: Ukraine with Sergiy Kyslytsya
MS. RYAN: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Missy Ryan, national security reporter with The Washington Post, and I’m thrilled to be joined here today by Sergiy Kyslytsya, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United Nations, to discuss the war in Ukraine, the international response, and prospects for peace.
Ambassador, welcome to Washington Post Live.
AMB. KYSLYTSYA: Good morning, Missy. How are you?
MS. RYAN: Great. Thank you. Thanks so much for joining us.
AMB. KYSLYTSYA: My pleasure.
MS. RYAN: And remember we always want to hear from you, our audience. You can share your thoughts and questions for our guest today by tweeting @PostLive.
So, Ambassador, let's just dive in. There's a lot to discuss here. I wanted to start with the Biden administration's decision to provide medium‑range rocket systems to Ukraine. It's a new step that hadn't been taken before. So I'd like to ask you, what significance do you see in this provision of the HIMARS system, a new system to Ukraine, and what do you think it says about the evolving Western response to the conflict?
AMB. KYSLYTSYA: Well, I think that has a very fundamental impact and importance because what we currently observe‑‑and as my very good colleague, our ambassador to Washington, D.C., said yesterday in one of your public statements‑‑we currently see an artillery dwell in the east front, and basically, none of the sides can achieve a victory, and the offensive of the Russians is stalled, although there are some very limited offenses that have no military importance, however.
But both sides are stalled, and what happens, basically, the Russians kill Ukrainians at a rate, as my president said yesterday, of 60 to 100 soldiers per day, add to that hundreds of wounded, while we do our best to stop the offensive. And if we do not receive in the most near future necessary weaponry, weapons and arms and munitions, I mean, that may last for quite a long time, and it wouldn't really be helpful to any of us, including the third parties' concern. It wouldn't be U.S. administration and our European allies.
MS. RYAN: Do you think that this signifies the West really coming to terms with the stakes of the Ukrainian conflict? There has been, as you know, a disconnect between‑‑for a long time, since the beginning of the conflict, between what Ukraine has said it needs to be able to fight off Ukraine not just for its own sake but for the sake of all Western democracies and the sort of European system and what the West has been willing to provide. How do you see this step playing into the overall equation there?
AMB. KYSLYTSYA: Well, I think that the U.S. administration, probably like many‑‑perhaps the UK was also part of this long‑term vision‑‑was very well informed about the state of the preparations on the Russian side. So they were already signaling both publicly and most importantly behind the closed doors. There are concerns about the preparations, at least starting from the last year. So it was not coming as a surprise to the U.S. administration.
You may recall how many times a press person of the White House or a State Department would say "imminent, imminent, imminent," until that usage of "imminent" caused such a confusion that the White House had to withdraw the use of the word "imminent."
But, anyway, unlike the Americans and unlike, perhaps, the British, some Europeans were not even sure that Putin will‑‑would launch an assault, and secondly, some of them unfortunately were so badly informed that they believed that Ukraine would surrender in two or three days. So they were not even planning midterm or long‑term plans how to assist Ukraine. And only the resolve and the heroic fight of the Ukrainians made them change their opinion and their military and political planning.
MS. RYAN: I'd like to ask you about oil, Ambassador. As everyone, I think, our viewers know, Russia's status as a major energy exporter to Europe and to much of the world has been an important impediment to more deep‑cutting economic effects from the already significant sanctions that are out there. So we've now seen the‑‑after weeks of negotiations, the European Union countries agreed to end seaborne deliveries of Russian oil within months, although pipeline deliveries will continue to flow. What do you think the impact of these measures will be on Russia's economy and potentially, more importantly probably for Ukraine, Putin's calculations when it comes to the war?
AMB. KYSLYTSYA: Look, we are dealing with a kind of war that cannot be stopped or run only militarily, including the objective reality where neither NATO nor individual countries, be NATO members or not, are not willing to engage next to the Ukrainians fighting, in the battlefield, the Russian aggressors. So we cannot have the cumulative effect of military forces of Ukraine and allies in the battlefield to achieve breakthrough at the moment. Hence, the application of other tools to stop the aggression is essential, and among the most important tools is the economic pressure and trade embargoes.
As a matter of fact, I think that all of your listeners and readers should really acknowledge it. Trading with Russia is basically financing of the war, whether we like it or not. Everyone who buys Russian goods or services finances the war. That's a matter of fact. That's one of the things I am telling here in New York when I speak to the UN Secretariat. It continues to procure goods and services from the Russian Federation. I tell them that this is the most absurd situation when the United Nations, where the General Assembly declared the Russian Federation an aggressor, continues to buy goods and services, continues to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian economy through the pension fund.
When it comes to the energy supply from the Russian Federation, I mean, we sincerely, no doubt about it, perceive all financial assistance, be it money or be it loans, be it goods, weapons, but it's also the matter of fact that Europe until very recently, during the first months of the war, was paying almost 1 billion euros to the Russian Federation daily, daily, buying energy, buying gas and oil. So, you know, that is the absurdity of today's globalized war of the world, and it is also the result of irresponsible policy of many, if not all, European leaders until very recently who made their countries, their economies so dependent on energy supply from the Russian Federation.
MS. RYAN: I heard you, Ambassador, when you're saying that energy purchases are essentially financing the war, and I do‑‑I've also heard several European leaders openly question or criticize the policies of their predecessors, including German‑‑Germany's new government criticize its reliance on Russian energy. At the same time, there is an expectation that there could be increasing economic hardship, especially in Western Europe in places like Germany as they try to wean themselves off of these Russian energy supplies. Are you at all concerned that the potential for recession or economic hardship among European consumers will erode the support has really allowed Ukraine to have this incredibly strong response to the Russian invasion?
AMB. KYSLYTSYA: Well, to say that I am or my government is not concerned would not be true, and we should always factor in the reality in our analysis and in our planning. But to say that we should follow this narrative and we should buy this narrative is irresponsible, and it is irresponsible not only for us but also for the European leaders because it is their duty. And I would like to underline it once again. It is their duty to explain to their constituents the whole range of most negative consequences of not taking the necessary, although painful, measures to liberate Europe from the dependency on the Russian gas and Russian oil.
If some politicians are driven by populist sentiments and they have no courage or guts to explain to their constituents the whole danger, I mean, that will backfire, you know, and if Europe does not take measures today, then when Russia hits again, they will all pay triple price for it.
MS. RYAN: I'd like to talk a little bit about the prospects for peace in Ukraine. Obviously, there have been some on and off discussions since the very beginning of the war between the Ukrainian and Russian governments and a variety of different interlocutors, including Turkey and France trying to get some peace talks going. And more recently, we've seen some suggestions from European leaders and from people, including the former American Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, suggest that Ukraine make certain concessions in order to secure a peace deal to end the war, concessions including acknowledging or accepting Russian control of Crimea which, as our audiences knows, was annexed by Russia in 2014 and areas of the Donbas where the separatist conflict has been taking place since then. What is your response to that?
AMB. KYSLYTSYA: You know, I will not dignify Kissinger by responding in details to his most irresponsible drivel about Ukraine making concessions, territorial concessions to the Russian Federation.
I mean, as a matter of fact, I was always amazed, even being a student 30 years ago, including in this country, how that person could maintain his position of respectability and the [unclear] of the American political elite after what he said in 1973, and let me remind all of you what he said. He said‑‑while discussing it with the then President Nixon the situation with the Soviet Jews, he said if the Soviets put them in gas chamber, that is not of concern to the American foreign policy. I mean, that's disgusting. So if a person who is a Jew himself can say that about Jews in the Soviet Union, could say‑‑could say that, I mean, how can I respect him?
The whole range of his deals with the Soviets, starting with the times of Gromyko and‑‑I wouldn't really dwell on that.
But, anyway, it's a matter of principle that the Ukrainians as a nation, they're so determined that no deals that involve permanent territorial concessions are supportable by public. Any politician that would try to bring such a deal with the Russians or whoever has no political future, I believe, and it's very, very dangerous.
The Ukrainians have already sacrificed so many lives that it's totally impossible to make them give up the territories for nothing, and so‑‑
MS. RYAN: So, just to confirm then, Ambassador, so you're saying that the Ukrainian government would categorically not accept any territorial concessions and would only sign off on a peace deal that would involve a full withdrawal of Russian forces basically going back to pre‑2014 situation. Is that right?
AMB. KYSLYTSYA: I think that is exactly what my president and my foreign minister says almost daily. You know, they have to make a decision, however, and they also do that when it comes to the situation with temporarily occupied Crimea. That is a separate case, but when it comes to the withdrawal of the Russians as a result of the recent invasion, that is sine qua non, as they say, as lawyers say. I don't really see any chance for any peace deal that would let the Russians stay where they are right now as possible. It's politically impossible.
MS. RYAN: And just to push you a little bit more, you're saying that Crimea is‑‑Crimean Peninsula is a separate case. Does that mean that the Ukraine government could potentially accept a peace deal that would allow Russia to retain some level of control over Crimea? I just want to make sure what your‑‑
MS. RYAN: No. I mean, from the legal‑‑no. From the legal point of view, the situation is very clear. The Ukraine government and the United Nations, the General Assembly, the international law, they all recognized that the presence of the Russian authorities on the territory of Crimea is the presence of the occupational authority. So they are occupiers, and there is no need, and these positions won't be changed until the full de-occupation of Crimea. So it's already the acknowledged and established facts not only by the government of Ukraine but also by the United Nations.
So the process of the occupation of Crimea may be much longer, you know, than the process of military defeat of the Russian Federation in the mainland of Ukraine.
MS. RYAN: I see. And do you think‑‑I'd like to ask you a little bit about the morale of Ukrainian forces and sort of the psychological state, if we can make any sweeping statements about the Ukrainian people as they contemplate what you're saying and many Ukrainian leaders have said could be a protracted conflict in their country. Can you talk a little bit about the state of readiness for that kind of extended war in Ukraine?
AMB. KYSLYTSYA: You know, Ukrainians are very resilient, and that resilience is in their DNA, and it's not just a lofty statement. It is a matter of fact.
If you look at the last 100 years, how many times Ukrainians were devastated, invaded, made to flee from their country, I don't really see any other nation in Europe who would be so many times devastated.
Look, from what I see and from what I hear, talking to average people, my friends, my colleagues, I don't see and I don't register any sort of frustration or despair. I mean, people are unhappy, but people are also realistic, and I think that most of the citizens of my country do understand that we are in a kind of long‑haul situation where the war may last beyond the next winter, and the consequences of war will be there for generations. So I don't think people have wrong expectations about what is going on.
And the level of the support of the armed forces of Ukraine, of the government of Ukraine, of the president of Ukraine are unprecedented.
MS. RYAN: Let's talk a little bit about the United Nations. You're sitting there in New York, and there have been a series of these very dramatic moments at the UN since the beginning of the conflict, and we discussed that a little bit when I came up to interview you in New York, some of that involving you and the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vasily Nebenzya. And stepping back from that a little bit, I'd like you to talk to our listeners a little bit about the role of the United Nations in the war so far. How do you see the UN having advanced the cause of peace and having failed to advance the cause of peace of Europe?
AMB. KYSLYTSYA: Well, as I told you, perhaps, when we met in New York City, it is very important to understand that, unfortunately, some people do not really acknowledge it.
I mean, the United Nations is not a concrete and glass structure on the East side. The United Nations is the assembly of nations, of leadership of those nations. So, when we criticize the United Nations or when we criticize inaction or wrong actions by the United Nations, we criticize, first of all, ourselves and our inability to respond to crises in an adequate manner.
The United Nations is not perfect as an organization. The United Nations is a product of the last century, and the United Nations should be reformed. That's a matter of fact. Whether the United Nations can be reformed in an efficient manner is still an open question, and I am quite pessimistic about it because even now I do not register any genuine desire of the permanent members of the United Nations to launch a profound reform.
And the UN Charter was drafted and then approved, basically guided by the wishes of three nations, the United States, the UK, and the then Soviet Union, who did their best to protect their powers. Nothing can be changed in the charter unless there is agreement of the permanent members.
So, when it comes to the conflict, as we all see now, basically, the UN and, in particular, the Security Council are immobilized because the interests of one of the permanent members are at stake.
MS. RYAN: And just to clarify, you're getting at the fact that Russia as a permanent member of the Security Council has been able to exercise its veto to shut down what would be any sort of legally bonding or notionally legally binding move to compel it to withdraw forces from Ukraine or have a ceasefire or something like that. Correct?
AMB. KYSLYTSYA: Well, several corrections. First of all, I never say that Russia is a permanent member. I always say that Russia occupies the seat of the Soviet Union in the Security Council who is, according to the current text of the charter‑‑is still the permanent member of the Security Council.
Secondly, the Russian Federation is‑‑rather allowed to apply its veto right by other permanent members, you know, and there were some recent developments, as you know. There was the Liechtenstein initiatives ordered by the‑‑overwhelmingly, in fact, by consensus of the General Assembly on veto. There was a recent application by‑‑double veto by China and Russia, and we will now see whether the new resolution on accountability of the Security Council for applying veto right will work.
But the matter of fact is that all of us have made so many mistakes, including letting Russia to occupy the seat of the Soviet Union in a manner that was inconsistent with the UN Charter. So we all now face the consequences of our irresponsible actions in the course of the last 30 years.
MS. RYAN: So, just to provide a little bit more context for our audience, you're referring to the fact that Russia basically inherited the Soviet Union seat as a spot as a permanent member of the Security Council after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and countries such as Ukraine say that that happened improperly. And, you know, I've heard American officials acknowledge the same thing.
But to your point about other major powers at the UN being unwilling to address that, there doesn't seem to be any willingness that I've heard on the part of the United States to do anything about it, so‑‑
AMB. KYSLYTSYA: Well, the only reason‑‑Missy, I think that the only reason why Russia still occupies the seat of the Soviet Union in the Security Council is the possession of nuclear arsenals by Moscow. Should Russia be nuclear arsenals‑free, nobody will really care because, other than that, Russia is a charade. I mean, economically, it is weak, although the territory is huge, but the GDP of the Russian Federation today is probably less than GDP of California or Texas. So the only reason that Washington, Paris, and London are so cautious about the issue of how the Soviet Union was replaced by Russia in the Security Council is the nuclear arsenals.
MS. RYAN: Ambassador, I just want to ask you one more question on the UN before moving on to a couple other questions about President Putin, and the question on the UN is, where do you see the UN having played an active and positive role in the war so far? We talked a little bit during our discussion about its humanitarian efforts, about the Secretary‑General's trip to Kyiv. Can you just address what other parts of the UN system have done that you think have been valuable?
AMB. KYSLYTSYA: Well, you see, both you and me, unless we are ambassadors to the United Nations, we would be members of the general public, and the general public does see the United Nations almost exclusively through the optics of the Security Council because it is the most politically exposed, controversial, lots of hype and fights inside the Security Council.
However, the Security Council, although a very important part of the United Nations system, is just one of many. There is another important pillar of the United Nations, and that is the General Assembly that is composed of representatives of 193 countries, where every country has the same rights as any other country. It doesn't matter whether you are Kiribati or Marshall Islands or the United States. You still have the same vote, and the General Assembly is one of the most democratic platforms in the United Nations.
So, when it comes to the response to the military invasion by Russia of Ukraine, the General Assembly in 2022 has been doing quite well. I mean, let us be reminded that on the 2nd of March, the General Assembly approved by 141 votes, the resolution on aggression that established the fact that Russia was committing an act of aggression. On the 24th of March, the General Assembly approved a very important resolution on the humanitarian situation, and I was pretty much sure that we would have even more votes that we lost due to the very unfriendly aggressive action, as we call it, by the South African republic that put‑‑that tried, rather, to put to a vote an alternative draft.
So the General Assembly is quite important, and as I said earlier, now the General Assembly got this particular right to consider the veto application in the Security Council.
There's also the Secretary‑General, but Secretary‑General is more secretary than general because in the whole history of the United Nations, neither of the permanent numbers or other important members or influential members of the United Nations ever wanted the Secretary‑General to play an important political role. You know, through the entire history of the United Nations, the only‑‑in my opinion, the only super active and super principled Secretary‑General, Dag Hammarskjöld, we all know how he ended. He was killed in the air accident, and that still has not been fully investigated. I mean, the least favorite Secretary‑General, Secretary‑General Kurt Waldheim, he said if you are too active, you will only stay on your job for two weeks, you know.
When it comes to the current Secretary‑General, Guterres, I respect Guterres very, very much, sincerely, because I think that as a person, as a human being, he has very high moral standards. So I always trust what he says. It's another thing that he may not say what we would like to hear because he's framed, once again, as the civil servant, and he is a civil servant hired by all of us. He's framed by the position of the permanent members, you know, and we all remember that until the night of the 23rd of February, he was still hoping that no aggression will take place. But then when it happened, he took a very principled position.
And the last thing I would like to mention, speaking about the United Nations, is the whole family of agencies and institutions of the United Nations, including such important agencies as UNHCR, UNICEF, OCHA, others that provide so valuable humanitarian assistance in the time of conflict.
It's also quite questionable whether their efficiency is adequate and especially when it comes to the circumstances of Ukraine, but we should not fully discard their important role.
MS. RYAN: Ambassador, I have a long list of questions that I would love to ask you and keep the conversation going, but unfortunately, we've hit the 30‑minute mark, so we're going to have to leave it there.
Ambassador Kyslytsya, thank you again for joining Washington Post Live.
AMB. KYSLYTSYA: Thank you.
MS. RYAN: And thanks to all of you for joining us here at Washington Post Live. For information about our upcoming programs, you can go to WashingtonPostLive.com, and thanks so much. Have a great day. | 2022-06-01T19:09:26Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transcript: World Stage: Ukraine with Sergiy Kyslytsya - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/01/transcript-world-stage-ukraine-with-sergiy-kyslytsya/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/01/transcript-world-stage-ukraine-with-sergiy-kyslytsya/ |
Transportation for All
With Michael Berube & Wes Edens
Electric vehicles and high-speed rail are regarded as critical facets of the future of transportation in the United States. On June 7 at 12:30 p.m. ET, Washington Post Live convenes Michael Berube, deputy assistant secretary for sustainable transportation at the Department of Energy, and Wes Edens, founder and co-CEO of Fortress Investment Group, to discuss the progress made and the potential that remains to expedite a transition to more affordable, environmentally friendly modes of transportation.
Michael Berube
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Sustainable Transportation, Department of Energy
Founder & Co-CEO, Fortress Investment Group and Chair, Brightline
Content from Hitachi
Sustainable Transportation: Unlocking Innovation in Rail
In a segment presented by Hitachi, Hicham Abdessamad, Chairman & CEO, Hitachi America will speak with Andrew Barr, Group CEO, Hitachi Rail. Mobility is key to providing a better quality of life for Americans while solving complex and urgent challenges like climate change, sustainability and urbanization. We know that transportation contributes about 29% of U.S. carbon emissions, and Hitachi is focused on providing innovative transportation solutions across the country, including road and rail. The U.S. has the largest freight rail system in the world, and rail passenger services are essential in many areas across the country, particularly in dense population centers such as New York and Chicago. Our Rail division is delivering projects across America for both passenger transit and freight operators – increasing the range of services and making existing systems safer, greener, and more reliable. In addition to upgrading the physical infrastructure of U.S. railroads, Hitachi is also focused on enhancing and integrating digital systems to maximize the benefits of innovative technology to continue to improve rail’s efficiency and value for customers.
Hicham Abdessamad
Chair & CEO, Hitachi America, Ltd.
Group CEO, Hitachi Rail Ltd. | 2022-06-01T19:09:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Transportation for All - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/07/transportation-all/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/07/transportation-all/ |
Report: Denmark, U.K. on track for net-zero emissions by 2050 as U.S. lags
A fisher boat passes wind turbines between the island Langeoog and Bensersiel at the North Sea coast in Germany on May 15, 2019. (Martin Meissner/AP)
Denmark and the United Kingdom are among “only a handful of countries” on track to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, according to the ranking published Wednesday in a leading global environmental index. Botswana and Namibia are also projected to hit that target, as significantly wealthier and more developed countries lag behind.
The United States ranks 43rd overall in the Environmental Performance Index, which also takes into account issues such as air quality and biodiversity. The United States together with China, India and Russia will account for 50 percent of residual global emissions in 2050 if current trends hold.
“What we see is a credibility gap between what countries say they’re going to achieve and the policies they’re implementing in the here and now,” said Martin Wolf, principal investigator for the project.
The index, published biannually by Yale and Columbia universities over the past two decades, scores 180 countries on their efforts related to environmental health, ecosystem vitality and climate change. The ranking is based on 40 performance indicators across 11 areas, including biodiversity, water resources and climate change mitigation. It calls out “leaders and laggards” in how close countries are to meeting global targets.
The index introduces a new metric this year to project how close countries would come to attaining net-zero emissions, a target that allows for some residual emissions counterbalanced by carbon sinks, by mid-century — a goal set at the U.N. COP26 climate summit in Scotland last year.
The United States is among the bottom 10 countries worldwide in its likelihood of hitting that goal. It ranks 20th out of 22 wealthy Western democracies overall on environmental performance — a placement the report’s authors attribute to the rollback of environmental protections under the Trump administration, especially the withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement and weakening of methane emissions rules.
“The United States really lost crucial time,” Wolf said. “During those four years, our peers in the global West were making progress.”
The climate projections were based on data from 2010 to 2019, Wolf said, so the index doesn’t take into account President Biden’s climate policies. Biden rejoined the Paris agreement and his administration has introduced new environmental regulations. But he has not been able to pass ambitious climate legislation at home, in the face of congressional opposition.
Wealthy European countries took the top spots, with Finland, Malta and Sweden following Denmark and Britain. The EPI’s authors “feel very confident” Denmark is doing everything right to reach net-zero emissions before 2050 — and probably closer to 2045, Wolf said. The Scandinavian country, already a leader in wind power, is expanding renewable energy. In April, the government proposed an additional carbon tax for high-emitting companies.
Britain’s high placement on the list mostly reflects steps taken over the previous decade to replace coal-burning power plants with natural gas and renewable energy — moves Wolf described as “low-hanging fruit.” Further progress would require tougher action in years ahead, according to a committee advising the U.K. government on climate policy.
Smaller, lower-income countries also outperformed the United States. Namibia and Botswana ranked with Denmark and the United Kingdom as top performers on the climate index. They are also projected to reach zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, though Wolf cautioned that maintaining the trendline will depend on how they grow their economies. Climate funding promised by wealthier countries will be crucial, Wolf said.
The report projects China, Russia, India and the United States will remain major emitters into the second half of the century. For the first time since the index’s creation, India ranks last in overall environmental performance. The assessment comes as India recently announced it would reopen old coal mines and increase output to cope with electricity shortages. The country has lagged on a pledge to install 175 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity by this year.
China has also ramped up its dependence on coal, which a new study shows will boost levels of methane. China, Russia and India did not sign onto the pledge agreed at COP26 to slash emissions of the potent greenhouse gas.
The EPI projected China will account for roughly 29 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2050, followed by India at 11 percent and the United States at 8 percent and Russia at 5 percent.
As China mines more coal, levels of a more potent greenhouse gas soar
Germany is the only European Union country expected to be among the “dirty two-dozen” emitters by that year, largely due to the country’s move to shut down nuclear plants after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, Wolf said. Natural gas and coal replaced a significant portion of the energy previously supplied by nuclear plants.
Many of the countries that ranked low face conflict and instability, and have limited access to funds. Developing countries have accused rich countries, which bear the most responsibility for climate change, of passing along the problem to poorer nations without providing sufficient funds to help developing countries implement climate-friendly policies or doing enough to cut back on their own emissions.
Wolf said the index is meant to facilitate comparisons between peer countries in terms of geographic, economic, social and other factors.
At the Glasgow summit last year, rich nations pledged to help fund climate change adaptation measures in poorer, vulnerable countries. They also agreed to halt deforestation, cut methane emissions and try to “revisit and strengthen” their national climate goals within a year. But six months later, climate experts said countries have made little progress — and none of the world’s top emitters has committed to putting forward a more ambitious climate plan this year.
John F. Kerry, President Biden’s global climate envoy, told The Washington Post in April that he didn’t “see the evidence” that the largest emitters were revisiting climate targets. He said the war in Ukraine has distracted leaders from efforts to reduce emissions and prompted a scramble to find substitutes for Russian gas. The conflict has fueled concerns about energy security as energy prices rise and countries face pressure to wean themselves off fossil fuels from Russia.
Countries also continue to deal with the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, which led to emissions reductions and dramatic improvements in air quality initially. But air pollution and emissions have since rebounded in many places, the EPI report says, and policymakers are “squandering” the opportunity to “rebuild their economies and societies on a more sustainable basis.”
Officials from around the world are slated to convene for the next climate summit in Egypt in November. The report’s authors hope the index can spur policy changes on climate change mitigation and on separate but related issues such as habitat protection and biodiversity.
Trajectories could change, Wolf said. “Current trends aren’t a country’s destiny.” | 2022-06-01T19:59:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | EPI report: Denmark and Britain only countries on track for net-zero emissions by 2050, as U.S. lags - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/01/environmental-performance-index-climate-change-emissions-ranking/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/01/environmental-performance-index-climate-change-emissions-ranking/ |
After ‘life-changing’ lottery win, man gets life in prison for murder
After Michael Todd Hill collected his winnings from a $10 million lottery scratch-off ticket, the North Carolina nuclear-plant worker described the lucky 2017 event as “life-changing.”
Nearly five years after his win in a gas-station parking lot, he was convicted of killing his girlfriend in a hotel.
Hill, 54, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole Friday after a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder for the death of Keonna Graham in 2020. He had confessed to fatally shooting Graham, 23, in the back of the head, telling authorities that he killed her because she was communicating with other men at the hotel where she was staying.
“Surveillance footage from the hotel showed Hill as the only individual in the hotel room with Graham,” prosecutors for the 15th Prosecutorial District of North Carolina wrote in a news release.
Hill, of Leland, N.C., was also sentenced to 22 to 36 months in prison for a charge of possession of firearm by a felon. That term will run concurrent with his life sentence for murder, according to prosecutors.
It’s unclear whether Hill has an attorney. Prosecutors did not list attorney information for Hill in their news release.
While lottery wins can give people winnings ranging from a few bucks to life-altering fortunes, they can also lead to crime — and death. In 2015, a fight over a $500 scratch-off ticket in Fort Worth led to a murder-suicide of a couple. The next year, seven people in Georgia were charged in the home invasion killing of Craigory Burch Jr., 20, who had won a $400,000 lottery jackpot. Years after a Michigan couple won a $500,000 jackpot, police arrested them in 2019 after authorities accused Stephanie Harvell and Mitchell Arnswald of being behind a months-long string of burglaries targeting houses in the state.
In North Carolina, Hill played an Extreme Millions scratch-off ticket at a gas station and came up short in August 2017, according to the state’s lottery administrator. He went back to the clerk and decided to play Ultimate Millions instead, he said that year.
“I joked with her, ‘How come you didn’t sell me a winning ticket?’ ” Hill said.
He returned to his car and started scratching in the parking lot. It didn’t take him long to recognize he might have a winning ticket.
“When I got to the dollar symbol, I knew I won something,” he said in 2017. “I saw the one and then the zero and it still didn’t hit me.”
Hill went back inside and asked the clerk what the ticket’s message meant.
“She told me, ‘Sir, I think you just won $10 million,’ ” he told the state lottery. He soon called his wife to let her know of the “life-changing” news: “I told her to pack her bags, because we just won $10 million!”
Hill agreed to take a lump sum of $6 million, which came to $4,159,101 after state and federal tax withholdings, according to the lottery. He said he had planned to pay off bills and invest in his wife’s business.
Almost three years later, Hill was in the middle of an 18-month relationship with Graham, who was decades younger than him, according to WRAL. The two had a history of domestic problems, according to an autopsy report from the state medical examiner’s office.
On July 20, 2020, Graham’s mother filed a missing-persons report when her daughter did not show up at her job as a corrections officer at Pender Correctional Institution, WWAY reported. On the same day the report was filed, the maid staff at the SureStay Hotel in Shallotte, N.C. — about 40 miles southeast of Wilmington — entered Room 310 and found Graham on the bed with a gunshot wound on her head, according to WECT.
Authorities concluded that Graham was asleep when she was fatally shot by a .45-caliber handgun.
Hill eventually confessed to authorities that he had killed Graham after she was texting men at the hotel.
Family friend Tiffany Wilson recounted to WECT in 2020 how Graham “was very loved and she’s very beautiful,” and she reiterated her disgust over the lottery winner’s actions.
“All that money and you are seducing a young girl to go into a hotel?” Wilson said at the time. “I don’t know what the situation is but you had no business being in a hotel with her.” | 2022-06-01T20:03:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Lottery winner Michael Hill gets life in prison for murdering girlfriend, years after $10 million win - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/01/lottery-winner-murder-prison-hill/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/01/lottery-winner-murder-prison-hill/ |
Student loan forgiveness is not enough. We need major reform.
Student loan borrowers gather near the White House to tell President Biden to cancel student debt on May 12, 2020 in Washington, D.C. (Paul Morigi/Getty Images)
The reaction to the news that the White House is on the verge of forgiving $10,000 worth of federal debt for the vast majority of student loan borrowers is a reminder that the issue is a problem from hell. Many activists, demanding $50,000 in debt forgiveness or more, with no earnings limit, are unlikely to be fully satisfied. Others are indignant over what they see as an egregious misuse of government funds, a giveaway to people who don’t need help.
They are both wrong. It’s an extraordinary gesture, and one that will almost certainly benefit Democrats in the short run. But forgiveness is not good enough, and the amount in question is not the issue. It’s a bigger problem: If the cancellation is not accompanied by larger, systemic reforms, we will almost certainly arrive at this pass again.
Make no mistake: The nation’s $1.7 trillion in student loan debt is an economic albatross.
Seven out of 10 recent college graduates borrowed money to help get them through college, up from half 30 years ago. People who attend graduate school will acquire even more debt, sometimes into the six figures. They aren’t all high-flying corporate lawyers, either. Future veterinarians graduate owing, on average, more than $180,000.
The reason for this mountain of growing debt is not mysterious. Both federal and state support for students seeking higher education has fallen over the past several decades, even as the cost of attendance soared. (It fell again during the pandemic.) People were repeatedly told their best chance of getting ahead was to seek an advanced education, whether through academia or by upgrading or retraining in vocational skills. The result: teenagers not even old enough to buy an alcoholic beverage legally are now signing up for life-altering amounts of debt.
Decades of policy and regulatory failures compounded the crisis. Dodgy for-profit colleges saw desperate Americans as easy financial pickings — leaving their former students in debt with little in the way of enhanced career prospects. Income-based repayment plans proved both difficult to navigate and useless for actually eliminating debt. After 12 years, many student loan debtors using them will owe more than they originally borrowed. At the same time, we made student debt more onerous with legislation that made it all but impossible to excise it in bankruptcy court — thanks to President Biden, among others.
counterpointBiden can still avoid offering wasteful student debt forgiveness
All this is why, contra the claims of Washington wonks, polls repeatedly find at least some forgiveness enjoys majority support, especially when combined with income caps. Research released Friday by Data for Progress and the Student Borrower Protection Center found that people who attended college are less likely to support forgiveness than those who did not. This doesn’t surprise me. Many of the borrowers and their families I’ve spoken to over the years have been first-generation college students, and couldn’t afford to attend college unless they borrowed money.
And $10,000 in debt cancellation can make a substantive and life-changing difference. A third of all borrowers owe less than $10,000, and half owe less than $20,000. Many borrowers who default on their loans owe even less, under $10,000 — and in some cases, these are the people who never received a degree, leaving them worse off than if they had never gone to college at all.
All this also explains why debt forgiveness is a likely political winner for Democrats in 2022. But forgiveness simply kicks the bucket down the road. It does not solve the larger issues: why college got so expensive, and how we as a nation should help people pay the tab.
This is where we need Congress to step up. Lowering the interest rate on student loans, which Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has proposed in the past, would cut into the number of people who make their monthly payments, only to find themselves falling further and further behind. Permitting financially overwhelmed borrowers to seek relief in bankruptcy court short of “extreme hardship” would help too. (There is currently bipartisan legislation in the Senate that would permit this after 10 years.)
It is Congress that would need to vote to increase the funds lower-income students can receive if eligible for Pell Grants. And, of course, it is Congress that would need to authorize the funds to, as Biden promised in his campaign, make community college free.
Instead of carping — or, like Republicans, proposing legislation to stop forgiveness in its tracks — Congress might want to get on it. Our economy would almost certainly benefit. Student debt is the responsibility of the individual borrower, but it impoverishes us all. It impacts career choices, decisions on the quality of school attended, whether to start a small business, even the decision of when to have a child and, as a result, people’s contributions to the overall economy. But a one-time debt jubilee is not enough. We need to put this problem behind us once and for all. | 2022-06-01T20:12:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Student loan forgiveness is worthwhile--but what we need is major reform - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/01/student-loan-forgiveness-congress-reform/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/01/student-loan-forgiveness-congress-reform/ |
The Potomac River overflows into historic Old Town Alexandria on Oct. 29. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Regarding the May 26 Metro article “Environmental group’s suit says Alexandria pollutes Potomac with coal tar”:
The D.C. Department of Energy and the Environment classifies the Potomac River as impaired for bacteria. A decrease in permeable land surrounding the river has led to an increase in the volume and flow of water containing fertilizer and other pollutants. An old natural gas plant in Alexandria has a pipe directly under it that discharges contaminated water straight into the Potomac. This had gone unnoticed for years.
Runoff from polluted urban streets in Alexandria and other surrounding urban areas is undoing the progress made in the past 20 years to conserve the Potomac River. In 2016, more than 11 million gallons of raw sewage from Alexandria was spewed into the river from the run-down and aged sewer system in Alexandria. This carelessness needs to stop if we ever want to make serious progress. If we keep allowing this to happen, the Potomac will stay in this unsafe, polluted state.
The community of Alexandria must advocate stricter dumping and waste laws for corporations. Awareness of the issue must increase if we want to change the Potomac River for the better.
Hugh Reed Trigg, Alexandria | 2022-06-01T20:20:55Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Alexandria must stop Potomac River pollution - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/01/alexandria-must-stop-potomac-river-pollution/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/01/alexandria-must-stop-potomac-river-pollution/ |
By Lizette Alvarez
Mourners after a candlelight vigil for the 17 people killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, in Parkland, Fla., in 2018. (Gerald Herbert/AP)
For three decades, shame-proof Republicans in Congress have failed to support significant measures to restrict firearms purchases. Meanwhile, the ghastly roll call of mass shootings in schools, bars, stores, places of worship and elsewhere is unceasing.
After the carnage last week in Uvalde, Tex., with 19 elementary school students and two teachers dead, a bipartisan group of senators has been huddling to push a bill, even a minor one, over the 60-vote Senate filibuster hurdle. One conservative-endorsed proposal being weighed by Republicans could make a difference.
Known as a red-flag law, the measure sanctions the use of extreme-risk protection orders to temporarily remove or restrict firearms from people considered a threat to others or themselves. The policy, which is often misunderstood and typically underfunded, exists in D.C., and 19 states — including, surprisingly, Florida, sometimes called the “Gunshine State.”
“It can help take the gun out of someone’s hands before they do something terrible,” Detective Christopher Carita told me. He oversees extreme-risk protection order training for the Fort Lauderdale Police Threat Response Unit. “I’ve seen how they can prevent a mass shooting. The orders work.”
In 2018, Rick Scott — governor at the time, now a U.S. senator — defied fierce opposition from the National Rifle Association and signed a gun-control law that included a red-flag program. The signing came a few weeks after 17 people were shot to death at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. The law also raised the minimum age for gun purchases to 21 and lengthened the waiting period.
Scott and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) — hardly known as a gun-control advocate — have introduced a red-flag bill in the Senate that would provide grants to help states implement the program. Senate Republicans aren’t keen to federalize the policy but don’t seem to mind sending money.
As Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a moderate Democrat from Arizona, told reporters, “There’s some shared agreement on red flag.”
Shannon Frattaroli, a professor and expert on gun violence prevention policy at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told me that red-flag programs typically transcend political ideology. “There isn’t a lot of pushback.”
Police officers and researchers with expertise in the laws say they have preempted what could have become mass shootings or suicides.
Depending on the state, the policies give law enforcement, families and even clinicians who have observed troubling behavior the authority to file an emergency civil petition to block someone from purchasing guns and, for a limited time, to prohibit them from accessing guns they already own. In some states, including Florida, only police officers can file a petition, a rule that advocates want to broaden.
Immediately removing a troubled person’s ability to access firearms for as much as a year, after a court hearing, can defuse lethal situations. Frattaroli said it is useful that the law focuses on specific behavior — is the person stockpiling firearms while planning a shooting? Has the person made alarming statements or social-media posts? — rather than simply on mental illness, which is relatively common and seldom leads to violence.
“It provides an opportunity to intervene,” Frattaroli said. “To say, ‘Whatever you are going through right now, we have to figure it out without your access to guns.’”
The laws, modeled after domestic-violence orders of protection, are not foolproof. Even though the suspect of the mass shooting in a Buffalo supermarket where 10 died had exhibited troubling behavior in the past and had been referred to police, they didn’t make a red-flag request.
More funding for red-flag laws is needed to raise awareness among residents and help inform and train police departments, Carita said. And while the laws can help connect people to mental health resources, shortages of affordable treatment options are often insurmountable.
In all, nearly 9,000 orders have been issued in Florida, some for potential suicides, and 2,845 were active as of last week, a relatively high rate. Still, some Florida counties have never issued a red flag.
But Carita said the law has saved lives. He remembers one case in which a mother noticed her son’s rage and drove him to a doctor. The young man was hospitalized after he told the doctor he wanted to “kill some people,” as Carita recalled. That’s when the police unit became involved.
“We learned he had already purchased an AK-47 pistol, known as a Draco, and it was being held at the gun store on the three-day wait period, so he hadn’t received it yet,” Carita told me.
Carita’s unit secured an extreme-risk protection order and worked with his family. Two months later, the man tried to buy another Draco, but the order flagged him and a background check blocked the sale.
The man benefited from counseling and the buffer provided by the red flag that had allowed his anger to subside, Carita said. “He is now back with his family, working and living his life.”
I’ll never forget the autopsy I performed on a baby | 2022-06-01T20:21:07Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | How Florida’s red-flag law helps stop potential mass shootings - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/01/florida-red-flag-law-mass-shootings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/01/florida-red-flag-law-mass-shootings/ |
By Michael McFaul
A passenger looks at a departures board at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow on Feb. 28. (Stringer/REUTERS)
The United States, the European Union, Britain, and other supporters of democratic Ukraine have responded to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine with a remarkably broad set of sanctions against Russian companies and individuals. The E.U. has even moved forward with a ban of Russian oil imports, a major achievement.
And there is still much more the West can and should do on the sanctions front. Every day that Putin’s army remains in Ukraine is a day that the free world should ratchet up new sanctions.
At the same time, one aspect of the sanctions regime urgently needs fixing: the wrongful punishment of Russian opposition leaders, human rights activists and independent journalists who fled their homeland rather than support Putin’s war of aggression. Now, many of them are stuck in places such as Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Israel, Turkey and Cyprus with only short-term tourist visas and limited access to their credit cards or European bank accounts. Some don’t even have passports or travel documents.
The fate of Dmitry Gudkov is illustrative. A decade ago, Gudkov was a young, charismatic rising star in the Russian parliament. Gudkov opposed many of the Kremlin’s favorite moves, such as the annexation of Crimea and the Anti-Magnitsky law (which sanctioned a number of U.S. officials and prohibited U.S. citizens from adopting Russian children). Back then, Gudkov was an elected member of parliament who sought to move his country toward democracy through peaceful cooperation, not confrontation, with other politicians. Today, however, Putin has demonstrated zero tolerance for any opposition.
So far, the democratic world has not done enough to help Gudkov and his family living in exile in Europe. He has been unable to open a bank account because he is considered a public official from Russia. He and his family entered Cyprus on tourist visas but can only obtain temporary resident status there if they open a bank account. Yet, his U.S. bank account has blocked his funds, pursuant to Executive Order 14024, and now requires a special license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control for their release.
Gudkov is a famous opposition leader and member of the Russian Anti-War Committee, a group of exiled Russian figures actively working against the war. Thousands of less well-known Russians who also fled after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 face similar challenges, but with little hope of convincing authorities that they deserve to access their credit cards and bank accounts or to receive visas, travel documents or temporary residency.
These are hard issues to fix. We should not give refugee status to Russians who support or were indifferent to the war — but we should certainly not punish those who actively resist Putin. It is in the long-term national interests of the United States, the E.U. and Ukraine to help those who have chosen exile over acquiescence with Putin’s policies. We should help them to foster opposition to the Kremlin — and especially those independent journalists who provide reporting that can filter back into Russia, offering urgently needed alternatives to government propaganda. Such Russians might someday return to their country and help to push it in a more democratic direction. The free world has every incentive to prepare for that day.
To help solve this problem, governments sanctioning Russian citizens should establish a “Russia freedom commission” of independent experts who could make recommendations about exiled Russian activists who need bank accounts, credit cards, travel documents, visas and work permits. Members of this commission could be drawn from the Russian Anti-War Committee, True Russia (another Russian group in exile dedicated to ending Putin’s war), human rights activists from both Russia and Ukraine, and nongovernment democracy promotion organizations that previously operated in Russia and therefore know the opposition movement well. A stamp of approval from this committee could help banks, landlords, credit card companies and governments when making decisions about these Russians living in exile.
The United States, the European Union, Britain, Canada and other democracies must also create special visa programs to actively encourage Russia’s best and brightest to emigrate. Even if such people don’t want to return to Russia any time soon, we should help them regardless. Encouraging brain drain also undermines the Putin regime over the long term by depriving the country of vitally needed talent. Those Russians with special skills already living abroad should be given accelerated opportunities to renounce their Russian citizenship and become citizens of their countries of residence. Israel and the Silicon Valley are just two places that have benefited tremendously from earlier waves of Russian emigration. We should be thinking creatively to facilitate this new wave now.
Sanctions against Russians in response to Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine are both just and effective. But we need them to work more fairly to bring an end to this war. We should not be inadvertently punishing those Russians willing to risk everything to oppose Putin. | 2022-06-01T20:21:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Want to undermine Putin? Help Russians who are opposed to the war. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/01/west-help-antiwar-russians-exile/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/01/west-help-antiwar-russians-exile/ |
Baltimore mayor: ‘Ghost gun’ company fueled public health crisis
Glock semiautomatic pistols for sale in California last year. (Bing Guan/Bloomberg)
Baltimore on Wednesday sued one of the country’s largest “ghost gun” manufacturers, seeking unspecified damages for its alleged role in “flooding” the city with illegal weapons and for the “injuries and trauma” those guns have caused.
The lawsuit, filed in the city’s Circuit Court against Nevada-based Polymer80 and Hanover Armory, a gun store in Anne Arundel County, represents the city’s efforts to use every tool available to address a deepening public health crisis, Baltimore Mayor Brandon M. Scott said.
“Takedowns are not enough. Legislation is not enough,” Scott said during a Wednesday news conference. “We have to crack down on the companies that are profiting off of destruction and death in our communities.”
A spokesman from Polymer80 did not respond to repeated requests for comment. A person who answered the phone at Hanover Armory would not answer questions. Lawyers for the city accuse Hanover Armory in the complaint of regularly selling Polymer80 gun kits in Maryland without determining whether customers are prohibited from owning a firearm.
The lawsuit, similar to ones filed by the District and Los Angeles, does not spell out how much the city is seeking in punitive and compensatory damages. City Solicitor James L. Shea said the amount would be “very substantial” and that officials are still working on an estimate. Shea said the amount will encapsulate the “societal problems that are created, down to cleaning up the mess that Polymer80 created here in the city.”
The legal action, which was taken on the same day a state law goes into effect that bans the sale, transfer and receipt of untraceable firearms, was filed by the city’s affirmative litigation division within the Department of Law, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and Sanford Heisler Sharp, a national public-interest law firm.
The lawsuit also comes days after an 18-year-old gunman killed 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in Texas, a mass shooting that has again raised questions about the country’s gun-control laws and how to prevent gun violence.
The lawsuit alleges that Polymer80 intentionally undermines federal and state firearms laws by designing, manufacturing and providing ghost-gun kits and parts, which lack serial numbers — making them nearly impossible to trace — to people who do not undergo background checks.
“Polymer80’s primary market consists of those who want to evade law enforcement or who cannot obtain a gun from a [federal firearms licensee], including underage buyers, buyers with criminal convictions, and gun traffickers,” the lawsuit reads.
City officials said ghost guns, which are sold in parts and can be assembled at home, make up 19 percent of all the guns recovered so far this year by Baltimore police and that 91 percent of those seized ghost guns were manufactured by Polymer80. No ghost guns were recovered in 2018; three years later, the police department seized 352 ghost guns. In the first five months of 2022, there have been 187 recovered, authorities said, which outpaces last year’s rate.
According to the lawsuit, Baltimore police linked 32 of the 352 ghost guns recovered last year to a homicide or shooting. Dante Barkdale, an outreach worker with the Safe Streets Baltimore program and one of the more than 300 victims of gun violence last year, was shot nine times with an unserialized Polymer80 handgun, the lawsuit reads. Teens as young as 14 have been arrested for possession. Nearly a quarter of recovered ghost guns have been in the possession of individuals younger than 21, the legal age to possess a firearm in Maryland.
“I’ve said time and time and time again that firearms that do not have serial numbers and/or registration have no place in our city and, dare I say, in the United States of America,” Scott said. “It should not be easier for me to purchase a ghost gun than it is for me to buy my allergy medicine at CVS or go to buy a used car. If a young person can’t drink or buy alcohol from a liquor store, if they can’t rent a car, they shouldn’t be able to go online and buy a ghost gun.”
Under the new state law, the definition of a firearm is expanded to include “an unfinished frame or receiver.” A dealer can be charged with a crime and lose its license if, among other things, it “knowingly or willfully manufactured, offered to sell, or sold a handgun not on the handgun roster.”
Anyone who sells or transfers a ghost gun can face punishments of up to five years in prison and a fine up to $10,000. Beginning in March, when the second phase of the law takes effect, a person who possesses a ghost gun can face two years in prison and a fine up to $10,000. | 2022-06-01T20:25:16Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Baltimore files lawsuit against 'ghost gun' manufacturer, gun store - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/polymer80-baltimore-ghost-gun-lawsuit/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/polymer80-baltimore-ghost-gun-lawsuit/ |
Modernist masterpieces in Montreal? Mais oui.
By Siobhan Reid
LEFT: The Notre-Dame Basilica. RIGHT: The Montreal Biosphere. (Shutterstock; iStock)
In Old Montreal, historical landmarks, European charm and tourists
Strolling around Old Montreal (Vieux-Montréal) — with its cobblestone streets, archaeological sites and imposing stone buildings — is a window to the city’s centuries-old past.
In 1642, a group of French missionaries founded the city at Place Royale, in the heart of what’s now considered Old Montreal, on land that had been used as a camping spot by Algonquins, Hurons and Iroquois. The French named their settlement Ville-Marie, after the Virgin Mary, and dedicated the site to “the glory of God and the salvation of the Indians.” Today, visitors to the Pointe-à-Callière Montréal Archaeology and History Complex, built on the site where Ville-Marie was established, can learn about the city’s origins and about the First Nations people who predated it.
A short walk away is the Notre-Dame Basilica, a resplendent Gothic Revival-style church designed by New York architect James O’Donnell and completed in 1829. The soaring, vaulted interiors feature gold-leaf ornamentation, a Casavant Frères pipe organ and stained-glass windows that depict the history of the city. O’Donnell, a Protestant, allegedly converted to Catholicism to be buried there.
Rising 150 feet above the Old Port is the Montreal Clock Tower, built between 1919 and 1922 to commemorate the seamen who died during World War I. In the summer, visitors can climb 192 steps to the top, which offers views of the city’s skyline and the St. Lawrence River.
As atmospheric as the area can be — especially during the warmer months, when cafes overflow onto streets and colorful parasols dot the Clock Tower Beach — the crowds can seriously spoil the mood. And with touristy attractions such as zip lines and haunted houses popping up, you may want to skip Old Montreal altogether and discover some of the city’s other architectural treasures.
Elsewhere in Montreal, relatively unknown modernist masterpieces
In 1967, the six-month-long International and Universal Exposition in Montreal drew about 50 million people to a pair of islands constructed in the St. Lawrence River to display futuristic exhibitions organized around the theme of “Man and His World.”
Gleaming buildings designed by world-renowned architects went up in other parts of the city, and the subway system — a wonder in its own right, with Brutalist stations and public art — was completed just in time for the big event.
Today, most of the expo’s original sites and pavilions have disappeared. But several key landmarks remain. Located within the grounds of Parc Jean-Drapeau on St. Helen’s Island is the Montreal Biosphere, a geodesic dome designed by American architect Buckminster Fuller to serve as the U.S. pavilion. During the expo, the energy-efficient dome housed garden displays and environmental exhibitions; today, it’s a museum that explores themes such as climate change, meteorology and global warming.
Also on the grounds of Parc Jean-Drapeau is the Montreal Casino, which occupies three buildings, two of which are former pavilions from Expo 67. In 2013, a $300 million makeover was completed, and it included a sculpturelike metallic exterior that pays homage to the angular design of the original French pavilion.
One of the most striking interpretations of the expo’s “Man and His World” theme is Habitat 67, a jumble of residential complexes designed by Israeli Canadian architect Moshe Safdie. A utopian vision for urban design, the structure includes 148 residences made up of 354 identical cubes with porthole-like windows and private terraces. During the summer, visitors can take 90-minute guided tours.
Fans of modernist architecture might want to make a pilgrimage to Nuns’ Island to see a gas station designed by architectural master Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. With a sleek roof that offered shelter from the elements, the boxy brick-and-glass structure was held up as a model for service-station design. The building operated as a gas station until 2008; these days, it’s a community center, newly reimagined by architect Éric Gauthier.
Reid is a writer based in New York City. Her website is siobhanreid.com. Find her on Instagram: @siobhanmreid. | 2022-06-01T20:29:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Montreal's modernist masterpieces - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/01/montreal-modernist-expo-67-habitat/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/travel/2022/06/01/montreal-modernist-expo-67-habitat/ |
GM’s iconic Buick brand plans to go all-electric by 2030
GM's Buick plans to go all-electric by 2030
General Motors’ Buick brand, once one of America’s pioneer auto companies, said Wednesday that its future North American lineup will be all-electric by 2030.
That target will make Buick one of GM’s lead brands, along with Cadillac, in pursuing the corporate goal of phasing out internal combustion engines by 2035.
Buick said it plans to introduce its first EV in 2024, but did not provide specifics. Supplier sources said the brand is planning to build at least two electric crossover vehicles in that time frame, with production sourced in both China and North America.
Today, China is Buick’s largest market, representing about five times its U.S. sales. Nearly all of those vehicles in both markets still feature gasoline-fueled engines.
Buick said its Chinese lineup won’t be fully electrified until after 2030.
Buick traces its roots back nearly 120 years — five years before GM’s 1908 founding — to an era when electric cars briefly outsold gasoline models in the U.S. All Buicks sold back then were gasoline-powered.
Ruger investors seek human rights report
The passage of the shareholder resolution marked a setback for the Southport, Conn.-based company, which had opposed the measure. It came after mass shootings in May, including one in Uvalde, Tex., where a teenage gunman killed 19 schoolchildren and two teachers, that reopened a long-running gun control debate.
The resolution, put forward by a nonprofit Roman Catholic health system, said, “The inherent lethality of firearms exposes all gunmakers to elevated human rights risks” and that the company lacks sufficient policies or practices to account for product misuse.
After the vote, Sturm Ruger Chief Executive Christopher Killoy referred to proponents of the measure as “anti-gun activists.”
Choix, a start-up that provides women with pills that induce an abortion, has raised $1 million in seed funding from venture capitalists, weeks after a report indicated the Supreme Court was on the verge of overturning Roe v. Wade. Choix connects customers with a medical provider within 24 hours after they fill out a questionnaire. Then, for $289, it sends patients seeking an abortion mifepristone pills. The patients need to be 16 or older, and reside in California, Colorado or Illinois.
Meta Platforms accused the European Union's antitrust authority of acting like "a fishing super trawler" by netting vast amounts of "wholly irrelevant" documents in an attempt to build a case against the U.S. tech giant. The commission was "hoovering up the whole sea bed — with the intention that it will later see what species of rare fish it finds within its vast nets," Daniel Jowell, a lawyer for Meta, told the E.U. General Court in Luxembourg on Wednesday in a clash that turns the tables on regulators concerned with data collection by Meta's Facebook social network. | 2022-06-01T20:38:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | GM’s iconic Buick brand plans to go all-electric by 2030 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/gms-iconic-buick-brand-plans-to-go-all-electric-by-2030/2022/06/01/7ded5a98-e19a-11ec-be47-cbd01021a7bb_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/gms-iconic-buick-brand-plans-to-go-all-electric-by-2030/2022/06/01/7ded5a98-e19a-11ec-be47-cbd01021a7bb_story.html |
A 16-year-old Alexandria City High School student has been charged with murder for the fatal stabbing of a schoolmate during a large melee outside an Alexandria shopping center last week, authorities said Wednesday.
The juvenile, who is from Alexandria, is being held at the Northern Virginia Juvenile Detention Center following his arrest in the slaying of 18-year-old high school senior Luis Mejia Hernandez, Alexandria Police said.
The 16-year-old was a student at Alexandria City High School like Hernandez, a police spokesman said. Authorities did not identify him, and The Post generally does not name juveniles charged with crimes, unless they are charged as adults.
The stabbing occurred during a fight that involved 30 to 50 people at the Bradlee Shopping Center around midday on May 24, police said. A witness said dozens of high school students scattered from the scene as police arrived.
Hernandez was found suffering from stab wound and was transported to the hospital, where he later died.
Marcel Bassett, a spokesman for the Alexandria police, said a motive for the stabbing and the cause of the brawl is still under investigation. He said there have been no other arrests in connection with the fight, but the investigation is ongoing. Bryan Porter, the Commonwealth’s Attorney for Alexandria, said the 16-year-old is expected to appear in court later this week.
Alexandria City High School’s nearby grounds were placed in “secure the building” status on the afternoon of the stabbing and instruction was shifted to virtual learning on May 26 and 27. Officials canceled after-school activities on May 24, and students were escorted in small groups to the exits, according to a statement from school officials.
Many students have stayed on virtual instruction this week, as the school said it would have “modified return” to classes through Friday. Seniors who need to finish graduation requirements or have to report to graduation rehearsal Friday are required to report to the high school’s four campuses, and students in all grade levels are required to attend class in-person if they have to fulfill required testing or they participated in a specialized instruction program.
The school system’s communications team declined to make an administrator available for an interview. Peter Balas, the high school’s executive principal, said through a spokesperson the decision to shift to virtual instruction was made so staffers could “focus on social, emotional, and academic learning.”
The high school’s last day is June 10, according to its website.
Balas said in a letter that the killing had shaken the school and enhanced security measures remain in place on campus.
“I would like to again express our condolences and support for the family of Luis Mejía Hernández. Our team will continue to support our students, staff and families,” Balas said in a letter to the school community.
Nicole Asbury and Salvador Rizzo contributed to this report. | 2022-06-01T20:38:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 16-year-old charged in fatal stabbing of schoolmate during Alexandria melee - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/arrest-alexandria-shopping-center-stabbing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/arrest-alexandria-shopping-center-stabbing/ |
Homeless camp cleared at Union Station: ‘We don’t have nowhere to go’
By Kyle Swenson
Marissa J. Lang
Robert Wade, 62, said he would end up in another nearby park after the Columbus Circle clearing Wednesday. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)
The garbage truck rumbled to a stop near the edge of the nearest tent Wednesday morning, and a half-dozen National Park Service employees got to work.
Wrapped in hazmat suits and face masks, they began pitching everything into the truck — blankets and trash, tarps and tent poles — as onlookers watched the removal of a homeless encampment that had grown over the past two years at Columbus Circle.
“Hold up! Hold up!” shouted Ami Angell, the executive director of the nonprofit H3 Project and one of a few homeless-outreach advocates on-site. “We were told NPS would hold untended items for 60 days?”
The workers shrugged and continued dismantling the tent, as Angell grabbed an abandoned suitcase and went looking for a supervisor. But as the morning proceeded, the speedy clearing of the encampment outside Union Station, within sight of the U.S. Capitol, captured the District’s homelessness issue in microcosm: an extreme need that remains unmet, and policy struggling against realities on the ground.
“I don’t get mad at the District for moving people, because all they do is trash it, honestly,” said Toni Irons, 53, who had been living at the Columbus Circle camp for a month and a half. “But I don’t think they should move us when we don’t have nowhere to go.”
Wednesday’s closure of the Columbus Circle encampment signaled to many advocates and homeless Washingtonians that the clearings were back on, after a long pause. The District stops clearing encampments during cold-weather months, beginning each Nov. 1, and pandemic-related guidance from the federal government had for the past two years advised agencies like the National Park Service to allow encampment residents to stay put, rather than forcing them to move to, perhaps, less safe environments or crowded indoor shelters.
Outreach workers from Pathways to Housing, one of the largest homeless-services providers in the D.C. area, had spent days coaxing about 35 encampment residents to vacate the site ahead of the Wednesday morning deadline. Because Columbus Circle is federal property, the Park Service oversees maintenance and enforcement of no-camping rules.
For a number of the encampment residents, Union Station wasn’t their first stop. Several told case workers they had stayed at other encampments until those were cleared in the fall. Others said their previous camp sites had recently grown so overcrowded they decided to leave, according to Christy Respress, the executive director of Pathways to Housing.
Encampment crackdown drives homeless from park to park as officials debate solutions
On Wednesday morning, Tommy Richard, 66, stood watching the removal near the shopping cart that held his possessions. “They’ve had the signs up for a while” warning of the June 1 camp removal, Richard said, and many people had taken down their tents or left in recent days. Richard, who said he had been homeless since 2013, was not sure where he would go next. “I guess I’ll figure something out,” he said.
Experts say those who end up sleeping on the street typically are averse to other housing options, including shelters, for a variety of reasons that advocates refer to as “the four P’s”: pets, partners, property and, more recently, the pandemic.
“People are looking for safety. They’re looking for well-lit areas, well-traveled areas, access to resources,” Respress said. “By the time someone is living in a tent, if that’s the best option they can come up with, it means the other options do not work for them.”
Being forced to leave amid the chaos of an encampment closure — with garbage trucks waiting to collect refuse and workers in hazmat suits lined up to clear out tents — can be deeply traumatic for people who are already among the most vulnerable in the city, Respress said.
A handful of encampment residents had recently been approved for housing vouchers, officials said, and case workers were trying to secure them temporary housing at apartments meant to bridge the gap between homelessness and more permanent places to live.
Others were deemed medically at-risk, prompting outreach workers to offer to move them into hotel rooms, funded by D.C.'s Pandemic Emergency Program for Medically Vulnerable Individuals, instead of traditional congregate shelter facilities.
Those with few other options, Respress said, were encouraged to leave on their own terms ahead of the Wednesday morning deadline. Case workers offered to help such individuals transport or store their belongings, she said.
“Our staff is literally with each person talking through questions, like have you found another spot? Have you considered shelter? Do you want to reconsider shelter? Do you need storage? Do you have enough bags? Can you pack up your own tent? Can we help you?” Respress said in a call Tuesday. “We don’t want people to be rushed. We don’t want them to pack up their things in a rush. We don’t want them to put things in storage if they don’t want them there.”
Mayor Bowser promised to end homelessness. Here's how it's going.
Respress said encampment clearings are inherently disruptive and make it harder to engage unhoused individuals in systems that can help them obtain housing, health care, addiction treatment and employment support, among other things.
“It’s very hard to find people sometimes when they’re being forced to move constantly,” Respress said. “It’s a human game of shuffleboard, which is not healthy.”
Over the past two years, homelessness in the District has steadily declined, driven largely by a steep drop in family homelessness. But encampments, one of the most visible forms of homelessness, have grown.
Number of homeless residents in D.C. lowest in 17 years, mayor says
Wayne Turnage, D.C.'s deputy mayor for health and human services, has said the number of encampments increased by more than 40 percent from 2020 to 2021.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) cleared out some of the city’s largest encampments last fall as part of a $3.9 million pilot program, which turned specific sites into no-camping zones and offered one-year leases to encampment residents through the District’s rapid rehousing program. As of last month, the program had placed 99 people into apartments, according to D.C. officials.
In a recent interview with The Post, Bowser declined to say whether she would expand or continue the program to address other encampments.
Local advocacy groups, homeless-outreach workers and the American Civil Liberties Union have opposed the program, calling the mayor’s efforts to clear some of the District’s largest encampments harmful. Despite that mounting pressure, the D.C. Council voted in December not to limit the mayor’s authority to remove the camps.
As the heat increased Wednesday morning, outreach workers helped encampment residents pack their belongings while the work crew continued. H3 Project’s Angell eventually confirmed with an NPS supervisor that items left behind would be held for 60 days. But the lack of communication between the individuals setting policy and those executing it was troublesome, she said.
“There some good ideas on the top level, but it’s not getting to the lower levels,” Angell said. “We need more support, and we’re not seeing it today.” | 2022-06-01T20:39:02Z | www.washingtonpost.com | DC homelessness: NPS clears Union Station camp - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/dc-union-station-homeless-camp-clearing/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/dc-union-station-homeless-camp-clearing/ |
Early rounds of National Spelling Bee are ‘no joke’
Only 38 percent of spellers advanced to the quarterfinals.
Charlotte Walsh, 13, of Merrifield, Virginia, prepares to spell the word, “palapala” correctly Tuesday during the quarterfinals during the Scripps National Spelling Bee at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Maryland. A new format made the earlier rounds tougher than they had been. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)
The Scripps National Spelling Bee returned fully in person this week for the first time in three years. The competition, held in Oxon Hill, Maryland, used to start gently, eliminating only the weakest or most nervous spellers. But a new preliminary-round format gives spellers no time to get comfortable.
In years past, the real action was a written test that determined who would make the cut for the semifinals.
The judges ultimately decided to let Annie-Lois return after the day’s last scheduled speller. She got her substitute vocabulary word right but misspelled “apery” to conclude the day’s action. Although Annie-Lois could have been eliminated for exceeding the 30-second time limit for the earlier vocabulary question, Brooks said the speller’s clock was paused because she was experiencing a legitimate emergency.
The bee finals will be broadcast live Thursday at 8 p.m. on the ION network. | 2022-06-01T20:39:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Early rounds of National Spelling Bee are ‘no joke’ - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/06/01/national-spelling-bee-2022/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/06/01/national-spelling-bee-2022/ |
Uvalde schools chief, criticized for shooting response, warned long ago of dangers
The official blamed for a delayed response to a mass shooting told his school board in 2021 that such an incident could happen
Uvalde School Police Chief Pete Arredondo, third from left, stands during a news conference outside of the Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., on May 26. (Dario Lopez-Mills/AP)
UVALDE, Texas — Pedro “Pete” Arredondo sat before the Uvalde school board last year and let them know what the school system police force needed to be ready to face an active shooter. The pandemic had cut into trainings for his six-officer department, the chief said, and while they had completed a program the previous summer, they needed more — as many as possible.
“It’s just like golf, if you play once a year, in six months you’re just not all that great,” Arredondo said, according to a video posted on YouTube of the March 2021 meeting. He stressed that he wanted neighboring law enforcement agencies to have a sense of the layout of school campuses in the small city of 15,000. If something major were to happen, he predicted, off-duty personnel would arrive and be part of the response.
Last week, his force’s readiness and his leadership of the small department were tested when an 18-year-old with an assault rifle stormed an elementary school, killing 19 children and two teachers inside a locked classroom at Robb Elementary School. It took well over an hour for police, led by Border Patrol tactical agents, to burst in and kill the gunman.
According to state police, Arredondo, in his role as incident commander, told officers to wait for backup and better equipment before rushing the classroom, despite protocols developed since the 1999 Columbine school massacre that say police should confront mass shooters as soon as possible.
Now a grieving community is scrutinizing Arredondo and his role in the shooting, finding themselves divided over whether one of their own made a fateful decision that may have cost children’s lives.
“I think it was cruel of him not to act faster,” Diana Hernandez, a lifelong resident, said of Arredondo, speaking in Spanish as she visited a memorial to the victims with her sister and her grandson this week. “I don’t know him personally. I just know it was his job and he didn’t do it well.”
An investigation of the shooting, and the police response, is underway. While state officials have offered shifting explanations of what happened, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw last week put the blame squarely on Arredondo, offering a devastating indictment of a law enforcement officer with decades of experience.
“It was the wrong decision. Period. There’s no excuse for that ... we believe there should have been an entry as soon as you can,” McCraw said, noting that the delay prevented medics from reaching injured and bleeding children.
Timeline: How police responded to Uvalde school shooter
Arredondo — a native son with a big smile who directs security at local school events and was recently elected to the city council — did not respond to multiple interview requests for this story and has not spoken publicly about the shooting, telling CNN on Wednesday that he would have more to say after the funerals for victims are complete. He and other Uvalde police officers have largely disappeared from public life here, replaced by a fleet of volunteers from police agencies across the state who are providing basic services and protecting the homes of those involved in or impacted by the shooting.
A DPS spokesman said Tuesday that Arredondo had yet to respond to a request for a follow-up interview in their investigation into the shooting, though the chief told CNN, “I am in contact with DPS everyday.”
In a private ceremony on Tuesday, Arredondo was sworn in as a city council member. Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said the event was closed to the public out of respect for those who are grieving. In a statement, he appeared to stand by the beleaguered chief. “There is nothing in the City Charter, Election Code, or Texas Constitution that prohibits him from taking the oath of office,” the mayor said. “To our knowledge, we are currently not aware of any investigation of Mr. Arredondo.”
Texas officials: Uvalde teacher didn’t leave door propped open before massacre
Keelie Beard, a stay-at-home mom from Uvalde whose Border Patrol agent husband responded to the shooting, also wants to give Arrendondo — and all the officers who responded — the benefit of the doubt. They were doing what they could with the information they were given, she said in an interview, including those officers who forcibly blocked parents from entering the school to try to save their children.
“They did know that the shooter was barricaded [inside a classroom], and the amount of rounds he had [and] didn’t use, he was prepared to do a lot of damage,” she said. “And by them not letting those parents in and kind of standing around if you will... I think in hindsight saved those parents from being hurt as well.
“Pray for those officers that wake up, put the belt back on, and go back to work again,” she urged.
Other in the community say they want accountability.
“He has to go,” said Anita Ybarra, a retired teacher who attended Robb Elementary as a child and was visiting the town square memorial to the dead this week. “He failed the kids, their parents and this whole town.”
These are the victims of the Uvalde school massacre
Bobby Castañeda, a retired police officer from San Antonio who drove to town to pay his respects Tuesday, said the mayor’s apparent support for Arredondo was an example of government officials trying to “sweep this under the rug.”
“He is the one who caused this, he is the one who held the other officers up, and by doing it he made everything worse,” he said. “And now you want to make him city council member? Come on!
“People here are hurting and they need this,” Castañeda said. “They need to see him being held accountable.”
Arredondo’s mother was born in Mexico and immigrated to South Texas, according to obituaries in the Hill Country Herald. His father was born here in Uvalde, a small, mostly Mexican American town about two hours south of San Antonio.
In high school, Arredondo was given the superlative of “friendliest” senior, according to the 1990 yearbook, the Coyote, where he was one of the student staffers. He attended Southwest Texas Junior College in Uvalde and Texas A&M University at Commerce, where he majored in organizational management.
Arredondo worked in Uvalde’s police department for 16 years, according to Texas Commission on Law Enforcement records, and then went south to the border town of Laredo to continue his law enforcement career with the Webb County Sheriff’s Office. At a candidate forum during his council bid, he said he started out as a 911 dispatcher and worked his way up to assistant chief of police. He then served as police captain of the Laredo United Independent School District police force before returning to Uvalde two years ago.
Uvalde school district police chief Pedro Arredondo said in a televised forum on April 19 that “through communication everything could be resolved.” (Video: The Washington Post)
“It’s nice to come back home,” he told the Uvalde Leader-News when he moved back to helm the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, or UCISD, police force. “When I heard about the opening at UCISD, I didn’t even have to think twice about applying.”
Many residents here know Arredondo, who has described himself to the school board as a “social butterfly,” or know of him and his family. He might be the friendly officer lending a hand at security at the latest school festivity. The man who knocked on their door asking for their vote for city council. Or the neighborhood guy with the boat who keeps placing in the top ranks at Uvalde Bass Club fishing tournaments.
There are still signs from his city council candidacy dotting yards here. In a low-turnout election, he won the District 3 seat with 126 votes — 70 percent of the total.
Arredondo’s yearbook shows him participating in the Powder Puff football game as a senior — a traditional event where the girls play football and the boys cheerlead. It included a jovial photo of him wearing an ankle-length dress, a necklace and large sneakers above the caption “Beauty queens for a day!” Another Powder Puff was J.J. Suarez, who is now a member of the school board, which presides over the school police force.
Members of the school board did not respond to interview requests in recent days.
The Uvalde massacre 'stirred something' in his. So he gave up his gun.
During his three years with the much larger Laredo school police department, Arredondo was well-liked and “good to work with,” said Chief Ray Garner. “He was at the sheriff’s office and, you know, he had a good rapport with them. But he wanted to advance, so we brought him here.”
Laredo’s school police department includes 88 officers and security guards, with at least one at each of the city’s 62 school campuses. Four years ago, it became the first school district in Texas to have an officer at each campus.
Arredondo was with the department when they trained on active-shooter scenarios, Garner said. He said it makes sense for the schools police chief to be the incident commander in such a situation, even as other agencies arrive. But he is mystified about why police on the scene waited so long to go in.
“I don’t know what happened up there. It doesn’t look good,” he said. “I don’t know all the facts but I tell you this: My officers are going to go in. Especially if there’s children in that room and all those shots are firing — they’re going in.”
Arredondo — and the city of Uvalde — had experience in dealing with violent events.
In 2018, while Uvalde was still in Laredo, the city police force detained two teens who had threatened to commit a Columbine-inspired mass shooting in their middle school, specifically targeting several students and drawing “weapons capable of causing mass destruction.”
Last May, one year into Arredondo’s tenure as police chief, a resident called 911 to report a man wearing camouflage and loading a rifle near the Uvalde High School stadium during the graduation ceremony, according to the Leader-News.
Arredondo told the newspaper he saw the man on the nearby bridge. Arredondo said at the time that officers had evacuated about half of the students and visitors before it became clear that the individual was not carrying a rifle, but a stick to fend off animals.
“What we did was we made sure that the kids were surrounded. We set a perimeter of officers around the students, because there was a big parking lot full of students there. A couple officers were directed to approach the gentleman from there; they went on foot and ran up towards the bridge,” Arredondo said at the time.
“We don’t ever want to overreact, but we also don’t want to underreact or be reactive either,” he said.
Uvalde’s school district created the police chief position in early 2018, designating a salary range of between $63,713 and $89,839 as it established the small department, according to school board records. That year, the district approved the purchase of two Ford Fusions to add to two other vehicles already in the district fleet.
After the department’s first chief resigned, Arrendondo took over in March 2020. The next month, he met with officials of neighboring law enforcement agencies about threat training he planned to host at school campuses, according to the briefing he gave the school board.
Photos of a training held that August show officers role-playing an active-shooter situation along a school corridor.
On Dec. 17, 2021, Arredondo completed an eight-hour active-shooter course, according to Texas Commission on Law Enforcement records.
The previous March, in the school board briefing, he emphasized the importance of agencies working together.
“This is a small community. Our law enforcement community is very tight. And I say that because I see it every day.” he said. “If we were to have anything occur at one of our campuses, we’re going to have a lot of off-duty personnel coming in here.
“And it’s going to happen, and you’re not going to control it. So the least we can do is at least give them some kind of idea of what our campuses look like, and provide them the training so we can all respond as accordingly as possible in a situation like that.”
Thompson reported from Washington. Alice Crites contributed to this report. | 2022-06-01T20:39:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | School police chief Pete Arredondo, a native son of Uvalde, under scrutiny after school shooting response - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/01/arrendondo-uvalde-schools-police-chief/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/01/arrendondo-uvalde-schools-police-chief/ |
NASA awards contracts to build new spacesuits
The contracts for suits that could be worn in orbit or on the lunar surface went to Axiom Space and Collins Aerospace
Astronaut Sunita Williams gets in her spacesuit as she prepares to practice for space missions. (Jonathan Newton/The Washington Post)
NASA wants new space suits to replace the old, bulky ones that its astronauts have been wearing for more than 40 years whenever they venture outside into the vacuum of space — suits not only protect the astronauts, but also provide more mobility and can be used both for spacewalks and on the surface of the moon.
On Wednesday, NASA reached a key milestone in a sometimes tortured journey to produce such a suit, announcing contracts for design and production to two companies, Axiom Space and a team led by Collins Aerospace. In total, the contracts could be worth a total of $3.5 billion through 2034, NASA said. The suits should be ready for testing on the space station within a few years.
“History will be made with these suits,” Vanessa Wyche, the director of NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, said during a news conference Wednesday. “When we get to the moon, we will have our first person of color and our first woman that will be wearers and users of these suits in space.”
Last year, NASA’s Office of Inspector General issued a withering report on NASA’s problems in its efforts to design new spacesuits, saying they would delay its return to the lunar surface. The space agency had spent 14 years working on next-generation suits, the report found. In 2016, NASA consolidated two suit designs into a single program but had already spent $200 million on the program.
NASA has a new challenge in reaching the moon: Its spacesuit program
The report noted that the spacesuits aboard the International Space Station “have exceeded their design life by more than 25 years, necessitating costly maintenance to ensure astronaut safety.” NASA last designed a new spacesuit 40 years ago.
On Wednesday, Dina Contella, NASA’s space station operations integration manager, said the existing suits have “been the workhorse for the agency for 40 years” and have been worn on 169 spacewalks. But she added that “the spacesuit technology though, of course, at 40 years is now aging, and so we’d like to try new future technologies.”
How to dress for space
The current suits also don’t fit all body types. In 2019, NASA astronaut Anne McClain canceled going on what would have been the first all-female spacewalk outside the space station after deciding that the spacesuit was too large for her. That touched off a wave of criticism that NASA wasn’t accommodating its female astronauts in a program that had long been dominated by men.
The new suits should be able to fit a broad array of body types, from women in the 5th percentile for size as well as men in the 95th percentile, NASA said.
By choosing a pair of private companies to build the suits, NASA is once again relying on a growing commercial space sector that has played an increasingly significant role in human exploration. Private companies, such as SpaceX, now fly cargo and crews to the space station. Axiom Space, which is based in Houston, is also working to build a commercial space station that would eventually replace the International Space Station.
“We have a number of customers that already would like to do a spacewalk, and we had planned to build a suit as part of our program,” said Mike Suffredini, Axiom’s president and CEO. “And so it’s fantastic to have a partnership where we can benefit from the years of experience that NASA has.”
Collins said it too wants its next-generation suit to be more modern than its predecessors.
The suits should not “feel like a spacecraft, but feel like a rugged-ized set of extreme sport outerwear,” said Dan Burbank, a senior technical fellow at Collins Aerospace and former NASA astronaut. “That should be the goal.” | 2022-06-01T20:40:52Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NASA awards contracts for new spacesuits - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/01/nasa-spacesuit-contracts/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/01/nasa-spacesuit-contracts/ |
The chief operating officer is leaving the company after 14 years.
Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg is leaving the company, she announced Wednesday. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)
Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg said she would leave the social media service after fourteen years, marking the departure of one of the most high-profile female executives in the U.S. at a time of tumult for the company.
“I am not entirely sure what the future will bring — I have learned no one ever is,” she wrote on the social media site. “But I know it will include focusing more on my foundation and philanthropic work, which is more important to me than ever given how critical this moment is for women.”
Facebook is opening a physical store to show off its virtual gadgets
The high-profile executive had been with the company, which changed its corporate name to Meta last year, for 14 years and has been the second most recognizable figure behind CEO Mark Zuckerberg. She is a major political donor to Democrats and has made a name for herself as a women’s advocate.
Sandberg said she planned to focus on her foundation and philanthropy, and would get remarried this summer to Tom Bernthal. Her previous husband Dave Goldberg died in 2015. She said she would continue to serve on the company’s board of directors.
Sandberg’s time with the company has been marked with major successes, including creating one of the wealthiest and most powerful online advertising juggernauts in the world, as well as a steady stream of political controversies. One of the biggest came after the 2016 presidential election, when Russian operatives sowing disinformation abused the service.
Facebook’s Sandberg deflected blame for Capitol riot, but new evidence shows how platform played role
Sandberg, who sought for years to position herself as a champion for women in the workplace, authored the best-selling book “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,” in which she encouraged women to promote themselves in corporate workplaces.
She had been making moves to expand the scope of leaders under her in the year before the announcement, including elevating a key deputy, Marne Levine, to a newly created role of chief business officer, and elevating Nick Clegg to President for Global Affairs.
Zuckerberg said he didn’t plan to replace Sandberg’s role, a sign that the reorganization of duties at the top of the company had already been underway before the announcement on Wednesday.
The title of chief operating officer will go to another longtime Zuckerberg deputy and friend, Javier Olivan, although the role will be more limited in scope.
Facebook loses users for the first time in its history
Sandberg for years was among Zuckerberg’s most trusted deputies, and the founder wrote on his Facebook wall that he met Sandberg when he was 23 years old and “barely knew anything about running a company.” He credited her with “architecting” the company’s booming ad business, hiring great people, and “teaching me how to run a company.”
Sandberg leaves as Facebook’s business is under threat from younger social media apps such as TikTok and Snapchat. Facebook reported it lost daily users for the first time in its 18-year history — falling by about half a million users in the last three months of 2021 prompting the company’s stock to go into a free fall. Facebook later showed modest user growth during the beginning of this year.
Facebook is also trying to remake itself as seller of virtual and augmented reality-powered devices. In October, Facebook renamed itself Meta to signal that the company plans to stake its future on creating the so-called Metaverse — a term used to describe immersive virtual environments that are accessed by virtual and augmented reality. Facebook envisions that people will want to work, play and connect in these new digital realms.
In recent months, Sandberg had focused her attention on being a public champion of small businesses regularly talking with entrepreneurs around the world about how they were adapting their businesses during the pandemic.
Sandberg was also often the face of the company’s criticism of Apple’s new privacy changes which aimed to curtail targeted advertising. Sandberg and other Facebook executives argued that the new changes would hurt small businesses’ ability to tailor their small marketing budgets toward their customers. | 2022-06-01T20:40:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Sheryl Sandberg is leaving Facebook - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/01/sheryl-sandberg-leaves-facebook/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/01/sheryl-sandberg-leaves-facebook/ |
Heat breaks records in East while storms, sharply cooler air close in
Some locations had their hottest May weather in more than a decade Tuesday, while others saw their temperatures abruptly drop
A spectator stands near a sign announcing the extreme heat on the course during a practice round for the U.S. Women's Open golf tournament at the Pine Needles Lodge & Golf Club in Southern Pines, N.C., Wednesday. (Chris Carlson/AP)
The Northeast ended May with some of the month’s hottest weather on record while the Mid-Atlantic has started June with a sizzle. But this burst of heat will not endure, as cooler air closes in from both the north and west.
The hot weather has already abruptly ended in Boston and New York, and will conclude in Washington and Baltimore by late Thursday, but not before a probable round of strong-to-severe thunderstorms.
Even if abbreviated, the heat may be a preview of what’s to come, as the National Weather Service projects a hotter-than-normal summer throughout the region.
Such hot weather has increased in recent decades due to human-caused climate change and is projected to become more frequent, intense and prolonged in future decades.
Tuesday’s temperatures soared 15 to 20 degrees above normal from Virginia to Connecticut, setting multiple records as a strong dome of high pressure, or heat dome, sprawled over the region.
Highs in the mid-to-upper 90s were among the hottest ever observed during May in several locations:
Newark’s high of 98 was its second hottest on record in May, only surpassed by 99 degrees in 1996.
Philadelphia’s high of 96 degrees was its second hottest on record for May, only surpassed by 97 degrees in 1991.
Washington’s high of 96 degrees ranked among its top 20 hottest May days, and was the hottest during the month since 2011.
The excessive heat even forced some schools in Baltimore and Philadelphia to close early.
Abnormally hot weather continued in the Mid-Atlantic on Wednesday but focused south of the Mason Dixon line. While temperatures climbed into the low-to-mid-90s from the eastern Carolinas to Maryland, they hovered near a much more comfortable 85 degrees in Philadelphia.
Farther north, it was downright chilly in comparison. In New York City, it was only around 65 degrees Wednesday afternoon while Boston and Portland, Maine, held in the 50s.
The relatively cold weather in the Northeast was the result of what meteorologists call a “backdoor” cold front — a southward-moving boundary that shifts the winds from out of the south to a much chillier northeasterly direction, drawing air off the Atlantic Ocean.
[24 Hour Temp Change] You don't need us to tell you that it's a much colder this morning than yesterday morning...but here's the proof! pic.twitter.com/Q8iPSgZi4S
The front sunk through Boston Tuesday morning when the temperatures plummeted 19 degrees in just 10 minutes — from 82 to 63. The temperature drop was accompanied by a “wall of pollen,” according to the Boston Globe, and it was visible on weather radar. The winds along the front helped stir the pollen into the air.
Did you see the "wall of pollen" this morning? 🤧 https://t.co/sN32cP5Y9o
By just after 5 p.m. Tuesday — when the front was pushing through Connecticut — an enormous temperature difference spanned just 90 miles in New England: It was 93 degrees in Hartford and just 57 in Boston.
New York City felt the front around 8 p.m. Tuesday when the mercury plunged from 91 to 70 degrees in just 15 minutes at LaGuardia Airport.
That front won’t make it much farther south than Philadelphia before returning north as a warm front Wednesday night into Thursday. This will allow high temperatures to climb well into the 80s in Philly on Thursday; Washington will again eclipse 90.
However, a strong cold front approaching from the west will end the heat everywhere by Friday. As the front passes, there is an elevated risk of severe thunderstorms from North Carolina to New Jersey Thursday afternoon and evening, including Richmond, Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia.
The storms could producing damaging winds in addition to torrential downpours and frequent lightning, according to the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center.
Friday into the weekend, in the front’s wake, sunshine and closer to normal temperatures are forecast in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. a welcome respite from the oppressive heat, dreary chill, or both — depending on location. | 2022-06-01T20:41:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Heat breaks records in East while storms, sharply cooler air close in - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/06/01/record-heat-northeast-cold-front/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/06/01/record-heat-northeast-cold-front/ |
Meryl Kornfield
Investigators stand outside during a moment of silence for the victims of the Buffalo supermarket shooting outside the Tops Friendly Market on Saturday, May 21, 2022, in Buffalo, N.Y. Long before an 18-year-old avowed white supremacist inflicted terror at a Buffalo supermarket, the city's Black neighborhoods, like many others around the nation, had been dealing with wounds that are generations old. (AP Photo/Joshua Bessex, File)
The White man accused of killing 10 people at a Buffalo grocery store on May 14 was indicted Wednesday on 25 counts, including a domestic terrorism charge and murder as a hate crime, authorities said.
The grand jury’s indictment came more than two weeks after police say Payton Gendron, 18, traveled to Buffalo and opened fire at Tops Friendly Markets store in a predominantly Black neighborhood, shooting 13 people — nearly all of them Black.
The gunman surrendered, police said, and was charged with murder. Investigators came to believe that the suspected attacker had posted a rambling, racist 180-page document online in which he declared himself a white supremacist, called his planned rampage terrorism and expressed a desire for it to incite more violence.
The victims of the Buffalo shooting
Authorities quickly said the shooting appeared to be a hate crime fueled by racism.
A grand jury considering the case against Gendron returned one count of domestic terrorism motivated by hate, 10 counts of first-degree murder as a hate crime, 10 counts of second-degree murder as a hate crime, three counts of attempted second-degree murder as a hate crime and one count of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
Gendron is scheduled to be arraigned on the charges Thursday afternoon. His attorney and the district attorney’s office declined to comment before the court appearance.
The shooting shook Buffalo and reverberated across the country, the latest in a string of attacks in which officials say accused or convicted gunmen were motivated by bigotry. When President Biden spoke in Buffalo three days after the killings, he invoked the sites of some of those other massacres, including El Paso, Pittsburgh and Charleston. Just 10 days after the massacre in Buffalo, a gunman fatally shot 19 students and two teachers at a Texas elementary school.
After the Buffalo shootings, details emerged suggesting extensive planning. The Washington Post has reviewed hundreds of pages of messages posted online by a writer who identified himself as Gendron, and they included details about plans to murder Black people.
Those messages also included mentions of a decision in February to target the Tops grocery store in Buffalo because of the community’s robust Black population; a March trip to the store to assess its security; and plans to attack other nearby locations.
Biden assails bigotry after Buffalo attack, says ‘white supremacy is a poison’
Police in Buffalo have said they confirmed the suspected attacker was in the city in March. They also said investigators believe he planned to continue killing Black people following the grocery store attack.
Residents of Buffalo are still reeling after a gunman launched a racially motivated attack at a grocery store, killing 10 people. (Video: Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post) | 2022-06-01T21:13:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Buffalo shooting suspect indicted on domestic terrorism, hate crime charges - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/01/buffalo-shooting-indictment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/01/buffalo-shooting-indictment/ |
Men who commit mass shootings haven’t lost their masculinity. They’ve lost their humanity.
Winsome Earle-Sears greets supporters on Nov. 2, 2021, in Chantilly, Va. (Salwan Georges/The Washington Post)
Twice, in the days since a gunman killed 19 children and their teachers at a Texas elementary school, Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears (R) has spoken publicly about the shooting.
And twice, she has offered this as one of the reasons mass shootings occur: “We have emasculated our men.”
Earle-Sears first said that on Friday during a keynote speech for a women’s lunch at the National Rifle Association’s annual conference in Houston.
Then she said it again on Sunday during an appearance on “Fox & Friends Weekend.”
“We have fathers who aren’t home,” she said during that appearance. “We have emasculated our men. Our children are at stake. You notice that these shooters, they have had family problems. The Parkland shooter — 37 times police were called to his home. It’s not the gun.”
Afterward, Fox News ran on its website the headline: “Winsome Sears on Texas school shooting: ‘It’s not the gun’.”
It’s not surprising that Earle-Sears has spent the days since the Uvalde shooting defending guns. For her campaign, she appeared in an ad with an assault-style rifle strapped across her chest. Her decision to attend the NRA event even before the caskets for those fourth graders in Texas had been picked and personalized was disrespectful and disappointing, but it was not unexpected.
It might not have even gained much attention if it weren’t for her words about mass shootings at that event and in the days that followed. They have drawn her praise and criticism. They have made her a voice for people who are worried their guns will be snatched away in the next round of legislation, and they have made her a source of worry for those who fear their children will be snatched away in the next round of bullets.
Because there will be a next round of bullets, and another, and another. That, unfortunately, we can all agree on. Over the Memorial Day weekend alone, there were more than a dozen mass shootings, as reported by The Washington Post. And in the hours after the Uvalde, Tex., massacre, a child was shot on a sidewalk in Virginia, the state Earle-Sears represents. That 9-year-old girl was left screaming repeatedly, “I can’t feel my legs!”
Reporters were not allowed to cover the NRA event, but a copy of her remarks provided by her office to my colleagues shows that Earle-Spears spoke about how the Uvalde shooting should “not have happened again” and then pointed to social factors — not guns — as the problem.
At NRA gathering in Texas, Winsome Sears says guns aren’t the problem
At one point, she said, “Our language has degenerated such that f-bombs and even the startling mf-bombs are spoken across our airways without so much as a gasp or even a clutch of the pearls, real or fake.”
At another point: “Why? Because we took prayer out of schools. We have so liberated our sexuality that we are now informed that men can have abortions.”
Then, after listing more reasons, as a punctuation point, she said: “We have emasculated our men.”
Words hold power, and no one knows that better than a high-ranking politician. If Earle-Sears had chosen to attend that NRA event and call on gun owners to protect their right to possess weapons by supporting reasonable measures that would keep an 18-year-old with a history of aggressive behavior from being able to easily buy two assault-style rifles and more than 1,600 rounds of ammunition (as the Uvalde shooter did), she would have gained the respect of many. She would have shown the country that responsible gun owners can and should be part of the solution.
But the words Earle-Sears chose to say when talking about Uvalde were not uniting. They were divisive and dangerous. They showed her unwillingness to take action toward making it more difficult for a potential mass shooter in Virginia to build an arsenal, and they echoed the woman-hating rhetoric of many of these gunmen.
“Emasculated” is a passive word. For a man to become “emasculated,” someone has to do that to him. That phrasing makes him the victim. It validates his destructiveness.
“The unifying trait of mass murderers is hatred for women,” Virginia resident Erika Crawford wrote in a tweet, tagging Earle-Sears. “Instead of stroking their fragile egos, we should be raising boys to become better men so this doesn’t happen. @WinsomeSears’ rhetoric about emasculated men is dangerous & perpetuates violence.”
Before that gunman in Uvalde killed those children and their teachers, he threatened to rape and kill teenage girls. The girls who encountered him online saw him post images of dead cats, joke about sexual assault and say, “Everyone in the world deserves to get raped.”
He didn’t hide his misogyny from them. He put it on full display, just as other mass shooters before him have done. Those gunmen didn’t kill people because they weren’t made to feel manly enough.
The other danger in the lieutenant governor’s words is that they distract from the work that needs to be done to prevent future shootings.
I grew up in Texas, surrounded by legal and illegal gun owners. I lost a classmate in eighth grade to a mass shooting and know how that trauma stretches wide and lasts long. I also have friends and family members who have responsibly owned guns. I don’t view gun-control measures as a them-vs.-us issue. I see it as one we have to work on together because our children deserve that.
I now live in Virginia and have two sons who attend elementary school. My older son is in the same grade as those children who died in Uvalde and I’d be lying if I said I haven’t mentally placed myself in those parent’s position. That shooting has forced me to worry about my own children and others in a way that has sat dormant in me and makes me want to do whatever I can to protect them before it’s too late.
Guns are now the leading cause of death among American children, according to researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Car accidents used to hold that place, but not anymore.
Earle-Sears said, “It’s not the gun.” But it is guns, when they are too easily obtained.
One thing she said at that NRA talk that was insightful and worth keeping in mind is this: “If we fail to identify the real problem, we come away with the wrong solutions.” | 2022-06-01T21:21:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The danger of blaming mass shootings on 'emasculated' men - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/emasculated-men-mass-shootings/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/emasculated-men-mass-shootings/ |
Michelle Wie West is set to take an extended break from competitive golf after this week's U.S. Women's Open. (Chris Carlson/AP)
SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. — Michelle Wie West was grabbing a quick bite at the players’ dining area at Pine Needles golf club, site of this week’s U.S. Women’s Open, when someone the golf trailblazer had not met approached with a message: She was named after her.
The 2014 U.S. Women’s Open champion at Pinehurst, which sits less than five miles from where the field of 156 tees off in Thursday’s first round of the most prestigious event in women’s golf, has been soaking in the atmosphere a bit more than usual over the past few days, even if that includes playful jabs at her longevity.
The levity and moments of introspection stem from Wie West’s recent announcement that she will be taking an indefinite leave from playing competitively following the U.S. Women’s Open to devote more time to advocating for representation and inclusion in the women’s game and more equitable treatment of its athletes.
“I think she’s one of those players that everybody looks to, those young people look to when they make that last putt,” said John Bodenhamer, the U.S. Golf Association’s chief champions officer. “They’re seeing Michelle Wie win the U.S. Women’s Open a few years ago, watching her play, her athleticism, and I think the diversity part of it just increases the inspiration. It’s where the game is going.”
The initiatives Wie West is in the process of managing include a partnership with equipment manufacturer LA Golf designed to provide female players with benefits in line with their male counterparts, most notably full health care with mental health days. Additional plans include paid maternity leave, performance bonuses and concierge services to reduce the stress of constant travel.
For most of her career, Wie West has had the luxury of traveling with a team that handled the details while she’s on the road. But many players don’t have the endorsement deals and/or resources that allow for such accommodations.
The USGA has addressed some of those issues by, for instance, reimbursing travel expenses for all amateurs at this year’s U.S. Women’s Open. It also is providing $8,000 to each professional who fails to make the cut at Pine Needles.
“Huge kudos to the USGA for really buying into the women’s sport and the LPGA for just growing and keeping pushing the boundaries,” Wie West said. “When doors get closed on us, we just keep pushing, and I’m just so proud of everyone on tour and the USGA for really buying in and setting the level right.”
Wie West’s association with the USGA goes back decades, with her first major highlight coming when, at 13, she finished first at the Women’s Amateur Public Links Championship to become the youngest winner in an adult tournament in USGA history. One year earlier, she became the youngest to qualify for an LPGA Tour event, the Takefuji Classic.
She achieved prominence at 14 by competing against male golfers at the Sony Open in Hawaii, a PGA Tour event, where she missed the cut by one stroke. After turning professional in 2005, she made seven more PGA Tour starts through 2008.
Injuries have altered Wie West’s playing schedule significantly in recent years, and she took 2020 off for the birth of her daughter, Makenna. (Her husband, Jonnie West, is the director of basketball operations for the Golden State Warriors.) At the 2019 Women’s PGA Championship at Hazeltine following a nine-month break, Wie West shot an opening-round 84 and broke down in tears while addressing reporters. She then proceeded to take off the rest of the year.
Still one of Wie West’s most enduring legacies as she embarks on an extended hiatus is having contributed to expanding the profile of women’s golf to the point where the total purse at this year’s U.S. Women’s Open is a record $10 million, up $4.5 million from last year at Olympic Club in San Francisco, with $1.8 million going to the winner.
“Michelle has done some amazing things for the women’s game,” said sixth-ranked Lexi Thompson, who when she was 12 became the youngest to qualify for a U.S. Women’s Open. “Just the things that she does off the golf course, branding-wise for herself as well, it’s inspiring. I’m happy for her. She has a family now, and I think she realizes that, like I am, there’s more important things to life than just golf.” | 2022-06-01T21:22:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Michelle Wie West will take extended leave after U.S. Women's Open - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/01/michelle-wie-west-us-womens-open/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/01/michelle-wie-west-us-womens-open/ |
Florida man searching for golf discs found dead in possible alligator attack
An alligator warning sign is posted in water near the location where a man was found dead after going into the lake to retrieve lost golf discs at John S. Taylor Park, on May 31, 2022, in Largo, Fla. (Martha Asencio-Rhine/Tampa Bay Times via AP)
A Florida man believed to be searching for golf discs in a lake where alligators were swimming was found dead along the shoreline Tuesday with injuries related to the large reptiles, authorities said.
The man, identified by authorities Wednesday as 47-year-old Sean Thomas McGuinness, was found by a bystander who was walking a dog in John S. Taylor Park in Largo, Fla., not far from St. Petersburg, police said.
Largo police spokeswoman Megan Santo said in a statement to The Washington Post that “detectives believe the victim was looking for frisbees in the water” in the late-night hours and “a gator is believed to be involved in the death.” Although Santo referred to Frisbees, those familiar with the park say McGuinness was probably looking for golf discs, which are similar to Frisbees, but are smaller.
Santo said the medical examiner will determine exactly how McGuinness died.
Attempts to reach McGuinness’s family Wednesday afternoon were unsuccessful.
A woman was walking her dog by a lagoon. Then an alligator pulled her underwater, police say.
The lake where McGuinness’s body was discovered is near a disc golf course in John S. Taylor Park. Witnesses told police that McGuinness, who was transient, used to get in the lake — which has no-swimming signs — to find lost discs and sell them back to the park.
Those who frequent the park said it is not unusual to see people hunting for lost discs.
“These are people that are down on their luck,” 56-year-old Ken Hostnick told the Tampa Bay Times. “Sometimes they dive in the lakes, they’ll pull out 40 discs. You may sell them for five bucks a piece, and you may sell them for 10 bucks a piece, depending on the quality.”
Sydney Criteser, a Pinellas County spokeswoman, confirmed to The Washington Post that McGuinness was known to park management and had been previously warned about entering the water to retrieve the discs. He was even threatened with a trespassing charge in late April, Criteser added.
Police said trappers with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) responded to the scene Tuesday. Two alligators — one 8 feet long and another one 10 feet long — were captured, wildlife officials said in an emailed statement. Wildlife officials said initial necropsies, or animal autopsies, did not show evidence that the alligators were involved in McGuinness’s death, but the area is being monitored for others.
Authorities did not release any further details, saying that the investigation is ongoing.
What you need to know about alligator attacks, according to Jack Hanna
There are an estimated 1.3 million alligators living in Florida, usually in fresh water but sometimes in salt water, according to the Conservation Commission. Typically, alligators fear humans but when people feed them, they learn to associate people with food and may be more likely to attack, the commission said.
When alligators do attack, it is most often in and around water, the commission added.
“Bites on humans have occurred in a variety of water bodies, many of which are small and not regularly used by alligators. Although alligators can move quickly on land, they are not well adapted for capturing prey out of the water. However, they can lunge at prey within a few feet of the shoreline,” it said.
Since 1948, there have been 442 instances in which alligators have bitten people in Florida, 26 of which resulted in death, according to the wildlife commission. But there has not been a fatal attack since 2019, it said.
The wildlife commission said people should beware of alligators when in or near fresh or brackish water in Florida, watching children and pets especially closely. People should also swim only during daylight hours — and never in an areas with signage indicating swimming is prohibited, the commission said.
A person who is bitten by an alligator should fight back, “providing as much noise and resistance as possible,” the wildlife commission said.
“Hitting or kicking the alligator or poking it in its eyes may cause it to release its grip. When alligators seize prey they cannot easily overpower, they will often let go and retreat,” the commission said. | 2022-06-01T21:47:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Florida man Sean Thomas McGuinness found dead in possible alligator attack, police say - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/01/alligator-eats-florida-man/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/01/alligator-eats-florida-man/ |
Gun violence doesn’t usually look like Uvalde
Demonstrators allied with the Texas American Federation of Teachers march toward Sen. Ted Cruz's office during a “Take Action: Stop Gun Violence” rally in Austin on May 31, 2022. (Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg News)
Last week, an 18-year-old armed with a semiautomatic rifle entered Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Tex., and fatally shot 21 people, including 19 children, before being killed by police.
It was a shocking example of the way in which readily available weapons can inflict a high death toll in a short amount of time. It was also an outlier event in America’s enormous annual toll of gun violence.
To be very clear: What happened in Uvalde was horrifying and demands some effort at preventing similar attacks. But, in part thanks to the enormous amount of attention such attacks receive, it also risks presenting gun deaths in the United States as something other than a grinding, macabre norm that usually escapes the public eye.
Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows that, in 2019 and 2020, an average of about 3,500 people per month died of gun violence. The toll was higher in 2020, the first year of the coronavirus pandemic. That year was the deadliest for gun violence on record.
While the increase in 2020 was a function of an increase in homicides and accidental shootings, it was still the case that about half of the recorded deaths were suicides. In 2019, about 61 percent of gun-related deaths were suicides. In 2020, about 54 percent were.
Notice that we’ve also included the death toll from recorded mass-shooting incidents, using the standard from the Gun Violence Archive. Only a small percentage of deaths in a given month were a function of incidents in which four or more people were shot.
This isn’t good news. That thousands of people are fatally shot a year in separate incidents is a reflection of how widespread gun violence is.
That the shooter in Uvalde used a rifle is also not the norm. There are a few ways to categorize weapon ownership in the country, none perfect. If we look at FBI background checks for new permits or sales (transfers) from licensed dealers in 2020 and 2021, we see that most are for handguns. There were spikes in March 2020 (at the outset of the pandemic) and June of that year (as protests erupted across the country). But in no month during those two years were most checks not for handguns.
As you might expect, given that bit of data, most of the firearms manufactured in the United States in 2020 were handguns — nearly 60 percent of the 11 million firearms produced in this country. When it comes to firearms used in crimes, handguns are far more common. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives found that 80 percent of the 393,000 guns it recovered from crime scenes and traced were pistols or revolvers.
A medical analogy is apt. Incidents like Uvalde are terrifying, acute manifestations of America’s unique gun culture. But the chronic problem is daily death at a smaller scale from people killing themselves or others, often by accident.
Ending incidents like the one in Uvalde is obviously important. But there would still be more than 100 gun deaths a day on average in the United States, most of them people taking their own lives. | 2022-06-01T21:56:38Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Gun violence doesn’t usually look like Uvalde - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/01/gun-violence-doesnt-usually-look-like-uvalde/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/01/gun-violence-doesnt-usually-look-like-uvalde/ |
Chase Young returns to practice, details recovery from ACL surgery
Defensive end Chase Young is continuing to rehab from an ACL injury suffered in a game last November against Tampa Bay. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)
“I'm taking it one day at a time,” Young, 23, said. “Obviously, if I can go fast, I'm gonna go fast. You know what I'm saying? If [I] go too fast, they pull the reins back on me.”
In April, tight end Logan Thomas told the radio station 106.7 The Fan that, after tearing the ACL and MCL in his left knee and the meniscus in both on Dec. 5, he had a different surgery than Young. Even though Young injured his knee three weeks earlier, Thomas added, they were on similar timelines because Young “had to rehab … both of his legs.”
“I never really had problems with [the left leg] ever,” Young said Wednesday. “It was just a little graft, and nothing was ever torn or anything. … It’s good.”
While he’s in Ashburn, Young will rehab with Commanders head athletic trainer Al Bellamy, one of his first high-profile assignments since being hired in April. But Young is still following the patient, big-picture plan laid out months ago.
After Young initially tore his ACL against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, he waited about a week for the swelling to subside before surgery, according to Ian Thomas, Young’s manager. Andrews conducted the operation at his facility in Pensacola, Fla., and afterward, Young spent about six weeks rehabbing at the Andrews Institute.
“I'm running,” Young said. “I've squatted some substantial amount of weight. I ain't gonna put no numbers out there, but everything is going as planned.”
Practice recap: During scrimmages, John Bates caught two fourth-down conversions. OTA practices don’t mean much — as safety Bobby McCain emphasized Wednesday — but the second-year tight end continued producing while Thomas is out. Quarterback Carson Wentz also found rookie receiver Jahan Dotson several times, particularly on screens, as the two develop a rapport.
Stadium squabbles: After Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) criticized the city’s mayor and council chairman for a lack of unity Tuesday, saying it prevented her from introducing legislation to gain control of RFK Stadium, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) pointed the finger back at her.
Bowser, one of the biggest advocates among city officials for the Commanders to return to the District, also expressed some concern about the current state of the team. She said D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson (D), who’s said he’ll support the team’s return if the NFL releases the findings of its sexual harassment investigation, “has made some good points, that I share, about the situation with the team and those issues needing to be resolved.”
Was able to follow up with Mayor Bowser on this story today. On Del. Eleanor H. Norton's "stuck up stupid" line, Bowser says, "I don't really know what she was referring to. I've had conversations with the congresswoman and that certainly hasn't been her sentiment." (1/6) https://t.co/pQNEufhG8d
— Michael Brice-Saddler (@TheArtist_MBS) June 1, 2022
Michael Brice-Saddler contributed to this report. | 2022-06-01T22:00:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chase Young returns to practice, details recovery from ACL surgery - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/01/chase-young-acl-recovery/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/01/chase-young-acl-recovery/ |
Nats’ minor youth movement changes little as the Mets complete a sweep
The Mets' Tomás Nido scampers home in front of Nationals catcher Riley Adams in the seventh inning Wednesday in New York. (Adam Hunger/Getty Images)
NEW YORK — June 1 was never circled on the Washington Nationals’ calendar, nor was it a loose date for the next baby step of their rebuild. Luis García was called up Wednesday because shortstop Alcides Escobar went on the 10-day injured list with a strained right hamstring. Evan Lee debuted against the New York Mets because the Nationals cut ties with one of their struggling starters last weekend.
The minor youth movement was entirely circumstantial, but it added new layers to another loss at Citi Field.
“I’m excited to see them both,” General Manager Mike Rizzo said before the Nationals fell, 5-0, and were swept in the three-game series. “I like when you have the middle of the field of [catchers] Riley Adams and [Keibert] Ruiz, [center fielder Victor] Robles out there and García out there — and a young pitcher on the mound. Up the middle is where these things are built, and I think you’re seeing kind of the beginning of what we’re trying to do with this reboot. And don’t forget the guy in right field is fairly young, too.”
Rizzo started Wednesday with his weekly radio spot, where he said he has no intention of trading Juan Soto, that 23-year-old star in right field. Yet those questions exist, at least in part, because Washington (18-34) has the National League’s worst record and one of its best players. There’s a disconnect Rizzo hopes to solve around Soto in the coming years. And he feels Lee and García could help with that, even if prospects named Cade Cavalli, Brady House and Cole Henry get more attention.
Lee, a 24-year-old with no appearances above Class AA, battled shaky command for most of his 3⅔ innings. In the first, second and third, though, he made enough pitches — mixing a sinker, curve and change-up — to avoid damage. At one point, he had thrown 21 balls and 21 strikes, leading to early walks and a few long at-bats. His final line showed four hits, two earned runs, three walks and two strikeouts. The runs scored on one of four hits for catcher Tomás Nido, with Dee Strange-Gordon booting a ball in center for an error to help push the second across. Nido, the Mets’ No. 9 hitter, entered with a .481 on-base-plus-slugging percentage.
“It’s just a little kid’s lifelong dream,” said Lee, who was a two-way player at Arkansas and a 15th-round draft pick in 2018. “Can’t thank the Nationals enough for the opportunity to go out here and pitch against the Mets. Hats off to the player development of the Nationals, because coming out of college I didn’t have much experience as a pitcher and they built me into who I am. I hope that I made them proud today.”
How did he feel the outing went?
“The biggest thing for me is that my fastball was a little excited to the front side,” Lee said. “I felt like if I could get about 12 to 15 pitches back that were uncompetitive pitches ... that’s something I’m going to have to work on, just getting outs through the zone.”
García, who turned 22 last month and played 110 games for the Nationals over the previous two seasons, had been at Class AAA Rochester to sharpen his defense at shortstop. Rizzo said he was close to his third promotion before Escobar injured his hamstring Tuesday. The need for a shortstop just expedited the decision.
After leaving the Red Wings with a batting average/on-base percentage/slugging percentage slash line of .314/.368/.531, García finished Wednesday with a single and three strikeouts. On defense, he handled a grounder and the back half of a double play, but the Nationals’ fielding did them in again — even though they were charged with just one error.
Strange-Gordon’s fourth-inning bobble aided the Mets (35-17). In the seventh, with Steve Cishek pitching, second baseman César Hernández booted a sharp grounder and Soto took a bad route to a ball that fell just out of his reach. Nido, on second after Cishek’s wild pitch, went to third on Soto’s misplay and scored when Francisco Lindor lifted a sac fly off Kyle Finnegan. In the eighth, Nido’s fourth hit dropped well in front of a diving Yadiel Hernandez and rolled to the wall, bringing in two insurance runs against Jordan Weems.
It’s a difficult time to pitch for the Nationals and induce a lot of contact. If Lee sticks around, he’ll learn.
“They just to have come out and catch the baseball — plain and simple,” said Manager Dave Martinez, adding that Lee probably will get another start in five days. “It’s a big part of the game. We got to limit our mistakes. Can’t give good teams 30, 31 outs. You’re beating yourselves then, so we got to play better defense.”
What has Rizzo made of the Nationals’ dreadful start? “The discouraging thing is that we’re not playing good defense and we’re not running the bases well. And those are fundamental mistakes that shouldn’t happen at the rate that they’re happening now,” the GM said. “So that’s the biggest takeaway I’ve seen from the beginning of the season. Unhappy with the pitchers’ aggressiveness — the starting pitchers’ aggressiveness, really — going into their starts. We have to be more aggressive in the strike zone, want to pitch inside more, we’ve to get outs over the plate and we can’t be nibbling.
“We’re a team that the margin for error is small. We can’t be giving extra outs on defense and running into outs on the base paths. To me, walks and errors have been the Achilles’ heel of the start.”
What hurt the offense most Wednesday? Yadiel Hernandez stranded five runners with a bases-loaded strikeout in the third and a three-foot dribbler in the fifth. Strange-Gordon failed to execute a safety squeeze before grounding into a rally-ending double play in the fourth. And with the Nationals trailing by three in the eighth, Maikel Franco (swinging strikeout), García (swinging strikeout) and pinch hitter Ruiz (groundout) went down in order against Adam Ottavino to strand two.
This latest shutout came courtesy of starter Carlos Carrasco, Seth Lugo, Ottavino and closer Edwin Díaz. The Nationals couldn’t capitalize on Carrasco walking five batters in five innings. The Nationals didn’t score in the final 21 innings of this series and have scored two or fewer runs in 24 of their 52 games.
What’s the Nationals’ record against the first-place Mets? They’re 2-8 with nine matchups to go. | 2022-06-01T22:01:05Z | www.washingtonpost.com | National are swept by Mets with 5-0 loss - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/01/nationals-mets-sweep-luis-garcia-evan-lee/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/01/nationals-mets-sweep-luis-garcia-evan-lee/ |
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy plans to call for boosting domestic fossil fuel production and streamlining the permitting process for large infrastructure projects
Jeff Stein
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on May 11. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) plans to unveil a strategy Thursday outlining how Republicans would address climate change, energy and environmental issues if their party gains control of the House in the midterm elections, according to three people familiar with the matter.
The individuals cautioned that the road map is far-reaching and includes a variety of environmental priorities with broad support across the Republican conference. The final details will be announced Thursday afternoon, although additional information will be shared in the coming weeks, according to one of the people.
The plan is expected to take a much more modest approach to slashing planet-warming emissions than proposals from President Biden and congressional Democrats, who have focused on accelerating the nation’s transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Leading scientists have said the world must rapidly phase out fossil fuels to stave off the consequences of unchecked climate change.
Republicans have historically opposed measures to tackle climate change, and the de facto leader of the party, former president Donald Trump, has mocked the scientific consensus on global warming. It is unclear whether the GOP plans would, in fact, reduce carbon emissions, or if they instead largely amount to an attempt to deflect political blame over Republicans’ long-standing opposition to addressing catastrophic global warming.
“I welcome the efforts of anyone, regardless of party, who is willing to seriously tackle climate change — but on its face this does not look like a serious proposal," Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) said Wednesday of the GOP plan.
“Most people understand that a serious climate solution requires a shift towards cleaner sources of energy, but the Republicans apparently want to take us in the opposite direction, with more dependence on dangerous, dirty energy sources," Beyer added. "I understand that my Republican colleagues love fossil fuel production, but it simply isn’t genuine or helpful to call that a climate change strategy.”
Biden’s climate and social spending plan, formerly known as the Build Back Better Act, has stalled in the Senate for months amid opposition from Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.). If Democrats lose full control of government in the midterms, the president’s climate agenda would face even greater legislative roadblocks, threatening his goal of cutting U.S. emissions in half this decade.
McCarthy, who would probably become speaker if the GOP picks up enough seats in the midterms, last year tasked Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) with chairing a task force on climate, energy and conservation. The strategy is the result of months of internal deliberations within that task force, which includes 17 GOP members.
Spokespeople for McCarthy and Graves declined to comment on the record ahead of the official rollout on Thursday.
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McCarthy has said that House Republicans plan to release a broad policy agenda ahead of November’s elections to give voters an idea of how the party would govern if it takes control of the House. That stands in contrast to the approach being taken by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who has said Senate Republicans do not plan to release any policy proposals and will instead campaign on their criticisms of congressional Democrats and the Biden administration.
The House GOP plan comes as Republicans seek to make gains with well-educated suburban voters in November. Some of these voters may want to see Republicans take a more proactive stance on climate change and energy policy, rather than letting Democrats dominate the debate, said George David Banks, a Republican climate policy expert who served as a White House climate adviser under Trump.
Philip Rossetti, a senior fellow on energy at the R Street Institute, a free-market think tank, agreed.
“Republicans are poised to take the House, but keeping it is going to require showing moderate voters that they can govern,” Rossetti said. “Building a climate platform that Americans can support helps them show that they’re about more than just opposing Democrats.” | 2022-06-01T22:09:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to unveil conservative climate, energy agenda - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/01/kevin-mccarthy-climate-change-energy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/06/01/kevin-mccarthy-climate-change-energy/ |
Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, have filed for authorization of a coronavirus vaccine for children younger than 5. (Matt Roth for The Washington Post)
Pfizer and its German partner, BioNTech, on Wednesday finished submitting their application for regulatory authorization of a coronavirus vaccine for children younger than 5, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The development marked another important step toward providing vaccines for the last segment of the U.S. population that still does not have access.
The news comes a week after Pfizer and BioNTech announced that three shots of their low-dose pediatric vaccine triggered a robust immune response in young children and was safe. The companies began sending data to the Food and Drug Administration in February.
The advance toward a vaccine for infants, toddlers and preschoolers has been an achingly slow and incremental process, with pediatricians and families impatient for the final outcome — the opportunity to vaccinate young children. The people who described Wednesday’s filing spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
FDA advisers are scheduled to meet June 15 to discuss the three-shot Pfizer-BioNTech pediatric vaccine and a two-shot regimen from Moderna. The agency is expected to act quickly, meaning young children could get their first shots later this month.
The data from both vaccines has been seen only in news releases so far. The agency review of the details and the all-day session in which outside experts dig into the data will be critical in showing what is known about how well the vaccines work and any differences between the two regimens.
When Pfizer and BioNTech announced their data last week, they unveiled a preliminary analysis that suggested — albeit with a small number of cases — that their vaccine was 80 percent effective in preventing symptomatic illness among the youngest children.
Pfizer and BioNTech had said the 80 percent efficacy finding was preliminary and based on 10 cases of covid-19 in the study population as of the end of April. Once 21 cases have occurred, the companies will conduct a more formal analysis of efficacy.
Moderna’s two-shot regimen provoked a strong immune response in young children, and was 51 percent effective in preventing illness in children between 6 months and 2 years old, and 37 percent effective in children 2 to 5 years old.
While both companies have said their vaccines are safe, the side effects are likely to be scrutinized, particularly the rate of high fevers.
Pfizer’s data may have further complexity. The third shot was added to its pediatric trial in December after it became clear that two shots failed to muster a sufficiently strong immune response in children 2 to 4 years old. The third shot is to be given at least two months after the second shot, but the data in the trial may include a much larger time gap for some children.
If there is a longer gap between shots for some children in the trial, it could raise a debate about the timing of the shot — and whether there should be more time between the second and third shots.
If the FDA deems both vaccines safe and effective, it is expected to act quickly. Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would then debate how the vaccines should be used, and CDC Director Rochelle Walensky would then make a recommendation.
About two-thirds of children between 5 and 11 are not vaccinated, according to the CDC. While a vocal segment of parents has been demanding that the FDA move faster to get shots to the youngest children, other parents are expected to move more slowly to get their children vaccinated, or to refuse a shot altogether. | 2022-06-01T22:09:54Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Pfizer seeks authorization of a coronavirus shot for children under 5 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/01/coronavirus-vaccine-young-children-pfizer/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/01/coronavirus-vaccine-young-children-pfizer/ |
President Biden speaks during a meeting on Capitol Hill on June 1. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
The tide of war in Ukraine has shifted against the nation’s defenders. After being driven back from the capital, Kyiv, and other major cities in the north of the country, Russian forces regrouped and launched a more focused attack on the southeastern Donbas region. The port of Mariupol fell on May 16 and the Russians are at the brink of taking Severodonetsk, the last large city they do not hold in the province of Luhansk. Gone is the near-euphoria about Ukraine’s early military successes. A new time of testing is at hand, both for Ukrainians themselves and for their supporters in the U.S.-led NATO alliance. We do not doubt the staying power of the former; but what about the latter?
There have been worrying indications of flagging resolve among the United States’ European partners. Various governments have hinted they would push for a cease-fire that might leave Russia in possession of conquered territory. Germany failed to follow through quickly on promises to supply heavy weapons systems to Ukraine. And the 27-member European Union dickered for weeks over a ban on Russian crude oil imports, as billions of euros worth of purchases meanwhile continued — funding Moscow’s war effort. Cracks were bound to appear in Europe’s united front, given the economic pain the continent is experiencing because of the war and war-related sanctions, and how unevenly that pain is felt by countries depending on how much they rely on Russian energy. Instead of rushing much-needed long-range rocket systems to Ukraine, the Biden administration spent precious time making sure that they would not be used to attack Russian territory directly, apparently in deference to fears of provoking wider Russian aggression.
No doubt one reason Russian President Vladimir Putin has persisted in his war after his early setbacks is his assumption that the ever-fractious West will not be able to sustain a united front against him. And yet, the international pro-Ukraine coalition is still essentially holding. The E.U. at last agreed this week to ban all but about 10 percent of Russian oil imports by the end of the year. Germany announced on Wednesday that it would supply Ukraine its most modern antiaircraft system, along with 15 tanks. President Biden has decided to send Ukraine the United States’ High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, capable of precisely striking distant targets, albeit only with less-capable ammunition so as to prevent strikes into Russia.
Most important, the United States is articulating clear objectives for the conflict that are capable of winning support — or at least acquiescence — across the alliance. Mr. Biden put them in writing Tuesday, in a New York Times op-ed. There was a modicum of reassurance to Mr. Putin, and the most skittish Europeans, that the United States “will not try to bring about his ouster.” Otherwise, the president’s position was, in essence, peace through strength. The United States seeks a democratic, independent, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine that can defend itself. While the United States will not impose territorial concessions on Ukraine or preempt a negotiated settlement, it will also not prolong the fighting “just to inflict pain on Russia.” The point of arming Ukraine is so that it can fight is way into "the strongest possible position at the negotiating table.” Mr. Putin’s spokesmen expressed fury at the new U.S. arms shipments and the president’s words, a sure sign the Kremlin fears that the West is sticking together and that Ukraine will regain the initiative. | 2022-06-01T22:10:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Biden set clear goals for Ukraine. That could hold the West together. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/01/biden-set-clear-goals-ukraine-that-could-hold-west-together/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/01/biden-set-clear-goals-ukraine-that-could-hold-west-together/ |
The hidden perversity behind our debate over AR-15s
(Luke Sharrett /for The Washington Post)
Sen. Bill Cassidy was recently asked why ordinary Americans need to own an AR-15, and the Louisiana Republican offered a rather creative answer.
“If you talk to the people that own it,” Cassidy said, “killing feral pigs in the, whatever, the middle of Louisiana, they’ll wonder: ‘Why would you take it away from me?’”
While we would never minimize the threat posed by feral pigs, Cassidy’s answer points to a deep perversity lurking behind our gun debate. There’s a reason it’s hard for Republicans to defend the current accessibility of AR-15-style weapons: Federal law on this matter is rooted in a deeply anachronistic understanding of what rifles in America are for, and the law hasn’t come close to catching up with today’s realities.
Right now, federal law dictates that you must be 21 years old to buy a handgun from a licensed dealer. But under federal law you can buy a rifle (including an AR-15-type assault rifle) at age 18, and while a handful of states have raised that age threshold higher, most have not.
Democrats want to change federal law to implement a national requirement that buyers of rifles are 21 years old. It remains to be seen whether Republicans will support such a change.
But for now, the idea that the threshold is lower in many places for semiautomatic rifles seems completely out of step with the last few decades of cultural change in America.
Back in the 1960s, there weren’t hundreds of manufacturers turning out military-style rifles for civilian use. When the assault weapons ban passed in 1994, there were around 400,000 AR-15s in circulation, according to Zusha Elinson, a reporter who’s writing a book on the AR-15. But that ban expired in 2004, and there are now around 20 million AR-15s in circulation.
Which leaves us with the federal legal age to buy the most dangerous weapons, the ones favored by mass shooters, being lower than the age to buy handguns.
This deep disconnect has forced Republicans into contortions to defend keeping the status quo on semiautomatic rifles in place. There’s the aforementioned Sen. Cassidy line about shooting feral hogs. Then there’s the notion offered by two judges appointed by Donald Trump that 18-year-olds fought in the Revolutionary War, so today’s 18-year-olds have a right to buy what are in effect human-killing machines.
Indeed, among some Republicans, the rationale for doing little to restrict access to AR-15-style weapons seems untethered from any real-world considerations. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) recently opined that people need AR-15s to prepare for a future doomsday in which law and order breaks down entirely and police protection essentially vanishes.
Meanwhile, as The Post’s Colby Itkowitz reports, AR-15 variants have appeared in numerous GOP ads of late, and they are often brandished as little more than cultural signifiers. Assault-style weapons have taken on a kind of “own the libs” cultural life of their own: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-Ga.) website recently enthused that such weaponry “TRIGGERS the Fake News Media and Democrats all across the country.”
Federal law seems decades behind this cultural shift. “The concept of what a long gun is in American culture has changed a lot in recent decades,” Mark Follman, the author of “Trigger Points,” a new book on mass shootings, told us.
Follman noted that the long gun was once understood as being primarily about hunting. But now, he said, rifles are increasingly marketed as a weapon of aggression and an “object of masculinity,” with a deliberate eye toward encouraging the “militarization” of gun culture.
In this sense, federal law is trapped in something of an anachronism. “The law may need to catch up with the way these weapons are perceived by 18-year-olds,” Follman said, citing massacres in Texas and Upstate New York.
There’s still another layer of perversity here. As Follman notes, mass shootings were historically carried out by semiautomatic handguns. “But that’s begun to shift in recent years,” he said. “More and more of these attacks are being carried out with AR-15s.”
“We know from case evidence that many mass shooters emulate their predecessors,” Follman continued. “The marketing of the AR-15 as the most popular rifle in America may be feeding into his problem as well.” Perhaps the law needs to catch up with this, too.
Ryan Busse, a former gun company executive who has emerged as a fierce critic of the industry, notes another absurdity: The age was set at 21 for handguns, Busse says, in part precisely because they were deemed more likely to be used by criminals against human victims than rifles would be.
“Now we have the AR-15,” Busse told us, which is the “most lethal, offensive thing out there.” Yet it isn’t treated as on a par with handguns, Busse notes, adding: “This demonstrates how behind-the-times our gun laws really are.” | 2022-06-01T22:10:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | The hidden perversity behind our debate over assault weapons - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/01/hidden-perversity-debate-assault-weapons/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/01/hidden-perversity-debate-assault-weapons/ |
By Rushan Abbas
Dolkun Isa
United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet attends a virtual meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on May 25.
Rushan Abbas is the founder and executive director of Campaign for Uyghurs. Dolkun Isa is president of World Uyghur Congress.
U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet faced her most important test last week — and she failed miserably. Her visit to China in May — as the world waited for her to release a long-overdue U.N. report on human rights abuses in the Uyghur homeland — summarily undercut more than five years of efforts by Uyghur activists and our allies to tell the world what is happening to our people.
For years, Uyghurs have worked tirelessly to cut through China’s propaganda machine and shine a light on its ongoing genocide against our people. Countries around the world have acknowledged this genocide, and an independent panel of legal experts concluded last December in a people’s tribunal that China’s actions amounted to genocide and crimes against humanity.
In her visit, Bachelet had the opportunity to confront this Orwellian police state. Instead, she repeated talking points from China itself, offering soft words that do not match the thousands of testimonies of survivors and families in the diaspora. She invoked Beijing’s false rhetoric characterizing this persecution as “counterterrorism and deradicalization” and did not insist on visiting a single camp in which Uyghurs — an estimated 2 million — are being held.
The trip raised alarm bells among human rights advocates and Uyghur activists from the outset. The Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights’ team did not receive unfettered access. Beijing arranged for travel in a “closed loop” with no foreign press in attendance, claiming this was to prevent the spread of covid-19. Under such circumstances, the U.N. and Bachelet should never have agreed to the visit. There could be no neutral and balanced visit without free and independent access to the people affected. Bachelet did not meet or speak to the family members of the victims, and only offered meek suggestions for change. It was a trip entirely curated by China to amplify their state media propaganda.
By allowing Beijing to frame her visit, Bachelet has caused irreparable harm. In fact, report after report have found accounts of widespread torture and abuse, including systematic rape, forced sterilization and forced separation of children from their families.
Just last month, a consortium of news organizations released the “Xinjiang Police Files,” a major leak of documents and photographs from inside China’s brutal genocidal machinery. The cache includes thousands of photos of detained Uyghurs and documents instructing police to blindfold, cuff and shackle detainees. One part of the leak describes an apparent shoot-to-kill policy for detainees who try to escape.
Amid all the disturbing images, what left us especially worried and full of grief were photos of thousands of Uyghurs who have been verified as detained. When China claims that their concentration camps are “vocational” and voluntary, the tearful eyes of Hawagul Tewakkul say something different. This is what Bachelet’s promised human rights report should have publicly documented.
In March, Campaign for Uyghurs and the World Uyghur Congress joined more than 190 other organizations urging Bachelet to release the report, which she said her office was finalizing in September. Our organizations sent private letters. We were met with a deafening silence. Before her visit, a group of 60 organizations once more demanded the release of the report and transparency. To this day, we are still waiting.
For us, the delay and reluctance to confront Beijing are heartbreaking and terrifying. In September 2018, Rushan Abbas’ sister, Dr. Gulshan Abbas, was taken away by the Chinese regime days after Rushan spoke against the Uyghur genocide, in what was clearly an act of retaliation. Dolkun Isa’s mother was also taken and died in 2018, at the age of 78; Dolkun only learned of her passing through reports nearly a month later. Dolkun has also learned that his younger brother Hushtar Isa was given a life sentence, while his older brother Yalqun Isa was reportedly given a long-term sentence. Politically-motivated sentences are not rare, especially for those with vocal relatives in the diaspora.
Bachelet, with her mandate of uplifting and protecting human rights, has a responsibility to defend the oppressed. She needed to forcefully and publicly demand that China release those who are arbitrarily detained and end its brutal and systematic violence. In failing to do so, she has let down Uyghurs — and the world.
Bachelet’s term as commissioner, which ends Aug. 31, is concluding on the worst possible note. We hope the next high commissioner will not bow to China as Bachelet has — and will unequivocally speak the truth and push for an end to this unspeakable evil.
Opinions about China
How the U.N. became a tool of China’s genocide denial propaganda
Biden might be on the verge of making a blunder with China | 2022-06-01T22:10:37Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Michelle Bachelet's visit to China fails Uyghurs — and the world - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/01/uyghurs-michelle-bachelet-china-visit-failure/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/01/uyghurs-michelle-bachelet-china-visit-failure/ |
By Lisa Rein
“It’s a welcome first step in understanding who has been harmed by the apparent abuses by Social Security’s Office of the Inspector General, and to what extent,” Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) said in a statement.
Rep. Gerald E. Connolly (D-Va.), who leads the government operations panel on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said in a statement that “inspectors general must be pure as driven snow” and said other watchdogs have lingered in their positions for years while the council investigated.
Dozens of senior auditors, law enforcement agents and other staff have quit or retired, many in frustration with what they describe as Ennis’s mercurial leadership and lack of focus on the office’s mission, according to current and former staff members. Ennis has defended her leadership and said some employees bristle at changes when a new leader comes in.
Audits have also plummeted. So has morale, which has taken a nosedive in successive surveys of the federal workforce since Ennis took over. New data for 2021 collected by the Office of Personnel Management for the annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) and released internally Tuesday shows 28 percent of those who responded consider the inspector general’s office a good place to work, with 13 percent agreeing that their senior leaders generate high levels of motivation and commitment. And 22 percent said senior leaders maintained high standards of honesty and integrity.
Rose, a spokeswoman for Ennis, called the inspector general’s staff “our most valuable resource in accomplishing our mission” and said the office has made efforts to “improve workplace engagement” for several years. “We are analyzing the 2021 FEVS survey results,” she wrote. | 2022-06-01T22:10:43Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Watchdog opens investigation into Social Security program that issued massive fines to poor, disabled - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/01/social-security-ennis-investigation-white-house/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/01/social-security-ennis-investigation-white-house/ |
Gas prices hit record highs as states eye fuel tax pauses
New York and others are acting, but Congress has yet to pass any legislation aimed at soaring prices
Fuel prices at a gas station in New York on May 17. From record prices to blowout spreads and falling stockpiles, a handful of financial and physical indicators are pointing to expensive and possibly tighter gasoline markets across the United States this summer. (Stephanie Keith/Bloomberg News)
New York on Wednesday became the latest state to suspend its gas tax entering the travel-heavy summer months, as local and federal leaders scrambled anew to address record-high fuel prices across the country.
The announcement came as the average cost of unleaded gasoline nationwide exceeded $4.67 per gallon, according to AAA, which has warned about further spikes while global markets remain rattled by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and the sanctions applied in response.
In New York, the decision halted the state’s roughly 16-cent-per-gallon levy through the end of the year, a move that Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) estimated would provide “$609 million in direct relief” to residents. The state’s gas tax holiday complements temporary caps that local counties recently placed on the sales taxes charged on gas and diesel purchases.
In suspending its fees, New York joined five other states in implementing such policies since the start of the year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. But the pauses are unlikely to save drivers more than a few dollars each time they fill up their tanks, since fuel taxes are not the main cause for high prices in the first place. Instead, it is the tumult in the oil market — and record-high economy-wide inflation — that continues to push up the costs of groceries, housing, travel and other goods and services.
In Washington, meanwhile, the Biden administration this week continued to grapple with the harsh reality that gasoline costs roughly $1.60 more per gallon today than it did at this same time last year. “We understand what the American people are going through,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday. “We understand what inflation is doing to gas and food prices.”
For now, the average cost of gas appears poised to continue its climb, as countries are forced to choose between penalizing Russia for its invasion and safeguarding their economies from the harsh financial blowback. Earlier this week, for example, the European Union agreed to a plan to wean itself off most Russian oil deliveries, striking at the Kremlin in a move that is also likely to raise energy prices across the continent in the weeks to come.
The U.S. government banned Russian oil imports in March, meting out a punishment that President Biden described at the time as costly to Americans yet necessary, even though Russian oil only made up about 3 percent of U.S. fuel consumption. But the move, meant to force the Kremlin to the negotiation table, has produced little change in the conflict. In the meantime, the Biden administration has tried to tamp down the gas price spike by releasing millions of barrels of oil from the country’s strategic reserves.
Fearing an impact on summer travel, some states have taken matters into their own hands. Along with New York, three other states — Florida, Georgia and Connecticut — have implemented similar gas tax holidays. A fourth, Illinois, delayed a planned increase in its rate. And a fifth, Maryland, had instituted a pause in March, early in Russia’s war, but its 30-day pause expired last month even as oil prices continued to climb.
To some critics, the gas tax holidays have only “superficial appeal,” said Jared Walczak, the vice president for state projects at the Tax Foundation, noting the policies sap funds from key transportation-related programs. “It’s not well-targeted relief. The savings are a small fraction of the increase in gas prices.”
At least 18 other states are still discussing similar moves, according to NCSL. And governors from six states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, have called for a pause in the roughly 18-cent-per-gallon federal gas tax: In a March letter, they described it as a key way to “reduce costs for Americans.”
Democrats unveil new push to punish oil and gas giants for high prices
A number of House and Senate Democrats have proposed such a pause, most recently Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), who on Tuesday announced a new bill that would replace the lost revenue with a new tax on oil giants’ profits.
“This is exploitation, plain and simple, and it’s unacceptable to all of the people who are having to spend hundreds of dollars more every month just to go about their daily lives, at a time when so many are already struggling to make ends meet,” he said in a statement.
But the general idea has drawn seemingly unsurmountable skepticism from lawmakers in both parties. Republicans have lambasted a gas tax holiday as a political stunt, arguing instead for new regulations that open the door for more drilling. And some Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), have raised concerns that oil giants may not pass on the savings to consumers — rendering such a new federal policy moot.
Pelosi and her fellow Democratic leaders instead have focused their energy on legislation that would penalize oil and gas giants for alleged price-gouging. The speaker secured passage of such a measure in May, aiming to empower the Federal Trade Commission to investigate price-setting practices and impose fines and other punishments for abuse.
But not a single Republican supported the House bill, foreshadowing its likely demise in the Senate, where Democrats require GOP votes to advance legislation in the narrowly divided chamber.
Other Democrats, led by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), are set to unveil a proposal as soon as next week that would tax the industry’s windfall profits and limit its ability to buy back its stock. And still others are trying to scrounge together a broader package that might foster new, clean energy technology, which Biden endorsed in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal this week, calling on lawmakers to revive a staple element of his economic agenda. | 2022-06-01T22:12:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | New York pauses gas tax as fuel prices hit record highs - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/06/01/gas-tax-holiday/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2022/06/01/gas-tax-holiday/ |
50th Anniversary of Watergate: Inside the Story
With Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein
They are responsible for what may be the most famous story in the history of investigative journalism. Join Washington Post Live on Friday, June 17 at 1:00 p.m. ET to hear from legendary reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as they discuss the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in, how they got the story and its lasting impact.
Reporter & Author | 2022-06-01T22:12:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 50th Anniversary of Watergate: Inside the Story - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/17/50th-anniversary-watergate-inside-story/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/washington-post-live/2022/06/17/50th-anniversary-watergate-inside-story/ |
FILE - Actor Damian Lewis and partner actress Helen McRory pose for photographers on arrival at the 2019 BAFTA Television Awards in London, May 12, 2019. Lewis is among hundreds of Britons honored by Queen Elizabeth II on Wednesday as she celebrates 70 years on the throne. Lewis, 51, was recognized for services to drama and charity. He and his wife Helen McCrory raised money for a charity providing meals to health care workers during COVID-19 lockdowns. McCrory, an actor who starred in TV drama “Peaky Blinders,” died of cancer in 2021 aged 52. (Grant Pollard/Invision/AP, File) | 2022-06-01T22:12:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Damian Lewis, Ian Rankin honored by queen on her jubilee - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/damian-lewis-ian-rankin-honored-by-queen-on-her-jubilee/2022/06/01/b0eacf40-e1f2-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/damian-lewis-ian-rankin-honored-by-queen-on-her-jubilee/2022/06/01/b0eacf40-e1f2-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
The subtler ways our elections could be undermined
A supporter of former president Donald Trump holds a cutout of him during a “Stop the Steal” rally outside the Georgia Capitol in downtown Atlanta on Nov. 21, 2020. (Kevin D. Liles for The Washington Post)
Since the 2020 election, most of the coverage of the GOP push for the power to question and even overturn future elections has focused on positions at the highest levels of government. And for good reason. Donald Trump has made a concerted effort to install loyalists and election deniers as secretaries of state and in other high-ranking positions with election responsibilities in key states. And the overall tenor of such GOP primaries nationwide has trended decidedly toward Trump’s baseless allegations of a “stolen election” — despite the lessons of Jan. 6, 2021. When people who say they wouldn’t have certified President Biden’s 2020 win might be in a position to stop that come 2024, that matters a lot.
But it’s worth emphasizing and reemphasizing just how much these battles could truly be forged at the lowest levels of government — involving people and positions you’ve probably never heard of. These are the positions Republicans have long proven superior at mobilizing their side to focus on. And a new Politico report reinforces how an effort to sway future elections could spring from those positions.
As Heidi Przybyla writes:
Video recordings of Republican Party operatives meeting with grass roots activists provide an inside look at a multipronged strategy to target and potentially overturn votes in Democratic precincts: Install trained recruits as regular poll workers and put them in direct contact with party attorneys.
Indeed, that is where it’s largely going to be fought, at least initially. And the fact that it’s being preemptively pitched as a war tells you what kind of people might be drawn into taking part, especially in a party in which a majority wrongly believe that the 2020 election was illegitimate.
You need only look to 2020 for proof of the importance of these lower-profile positions, particularly in Michigan. It was the GOP canvassers in Detroit-based Wayne County who momentarily declined to certify the results there. It was poll workers and challengers whose claims and affidavits — often quickly debunked — became the basis for far-fetched legal challenges seeking to throw out votes. (One of them was Kristina Karamo, who has now parlayed that to become the GOP-backed candidate for Michigan secretary of state). It was a clerk in Antrim County and a GOP state senator who rejected claims that an easily-explained error there was some kind of a canary in a voter-fraud coal mine.
Around the country, it was officials like Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) standing in the way of these efforts — but it was also lower-profile officials like GOP supervisors in Maricopa County, Ariz., and a statewide Republican canvasser in Michigan, Aaron Van Langevelde.
Since then, there has been a concerted effort to remove them and the roadblocks they posed.
Several Michigan canvassers who certified Biden’s win — Van Langevelde and also others at the county level — are now out. The deniers are being elevated, while those who stand by the election results have repeatedly been censured.
Just as important, laws are being changed, despite no evidence calling the 2020 election results into question. As we wrote late last year, not only are secretaries of state being targeted for defeat by Trump allies, but two (Raffensperger and Katie Hobbs in Arizona) have been stripped of election-related power. Wisconsin Republicans are trying to get rid of a bipartisan election commission and put the process under more partisan control (and recently succeeded in pushing a critic of Trump’s fraud claims to resign). They’ve increased the penalties for supposed wrongdoing by election administrators. A report last week from a watchdog showed 14 states had passed laws that would make it easier to challenge elections in various ways.
It’s possible to oversell the true danger of any of this. Some doubt, for instance, the impact that canvassers can have when it comes to not certifying a vote — given that such canvassers’ jobs are generally ministerial. Even poll workers who raise a fuss about mundane vote-counting issues could see their efforts rebuffed by the courts when push comes to shove, as they were in 2020. It’s possible the 2024 election won’t be close enough for any of this to matter, and that the fever in the GOP surrounding voter fraud could break if, for instance, Trump fades politically.
But one of the lessons of 2020 is that the few Republicans who clearly rebuked Trump’s claim were, not coincidentally, disproportionately those who were forced to actually take a position by virtue of their official duties. Such people have since been weeded out, often through targeting in GOP primaries, but also through attrition (such as election workers heading for the exits due to threats); in several cases Republicans have warmed to voter-fraud claims they never endorsed back in 2020. The pressure has been palpable, and it’s manifested itself in a number of ways that matter, irrespective of Raffensperger somehow managing to win renomination last week.
The problem with telling that story — of how democracy could be undermined at the grass roots — is that it’s very difficult to get a handle on it in any truly authoritative and quantitative way; it depends so much on the views of people whose views have never been recorded, because nobody outside of a select few even know who they are.
But there is little doubt about what kinds of people will be drawn to these lower-level positions, because we’re seeing what kinds of people are being drawn into running for similar, higher-profile roles.
And the problem could go beyond poll workers raising legally valid complaints or canvassers and secretaries of state refusing to certify results. As we saw in 2020, the simple presence of enough smoke and misinformation was enough to get state and congressional Republicans to seriously consider overriding the vote totals in certain states. The effort to get GOP state legislatures to send alternate slates of electors and Congress to reject the results on Jan. 6 was haphazard and didn’t pan out, but we’re in a very different environment even than we were then.
And if enough election truthers are in place to color the process from the grass-roots level up — in a way they failed to in 2020 when the groundwork wasn’t yet laid — it’s not so difficult to see Republicans justifying decisions to themselves that they didn’t in 2020. Because if there’s one thing the Trump era has reinforced, it’s that these things often flow up from the bottom. | 2022-06-01T22:31:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The subtler ways our elections could be undermined - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/01/subtler-ways-our-elections-could-be-undermined/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/01/subtler-ways-our-elections-could-be-undermined/ |
Federal prosecutors allege Nathaniel Chastain abused insider information to profit off of the tokens
The Bored Ape Yacht Club non-fungible token (NFT) collection on the OpenSea marketplace. (Tiffany Hagler-Geard/Bloomberg News)
Nathaniel Chastain, formerly OpenSea’s head of product, is charged with buying dozens of digital collectibles known as NFTs based on advanced knowledge they would soon be featured on the platform’s homepage, then selling the assets for up to five times what he paid for them.
“NFTs might be new, but this type of criminal scheme is not,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams said in a statement. “Today’s charges demonstrate the commitment of this Office to stamping out insider trading — whether it occurs on the stock market or the blockchain.”
Prosecutors allege Chastain, who was responsible for selecting which tokens OpenSea featured, launched the scheme in June of last year. He used anonymous accounts on OpenSea and anonymous cryptocurrency wallets to try to hide his tracks, prosecutors said. But crypto sleuths caught on in September, calling out Chastain and the company on Twitter. OpenSea responded at the time by launching an investigation, then requesting and accepting Chastain’s resignation.
“As the world’s leading web3 marketplace for NFTs, trust and integrity are core to everything we do,” an OpenSea spokesperson said in a statement. “When we learned of Nate’s behavior, we initiated an investigation and ultimately asked him to leave the company. His behavior was in violation of our employee policies and in direct conflict with our core values and principles.”
The five-year-old company was valued at $13.3 billion in January, based on a $300 million round of venture capital funding it announced at the time. It has drawn major buzz even beyond crypto industry circles as NFTs became a cultural juggernaut over the last year — and drawn investments from Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, basketball star Kevin Durant, and actor and entrepreneur Ashton Kutcher. | 2022-06-01T22:48:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | OpenSea executive used NFTs for insider trading, prosecutors allege - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/01/nft-insider-trading-opensea/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/01/nft-insider-trading-opensea/ |
Safety update also comes as state ban on “ghost guns” takes effect
Police vehicles block a road outside Col. Zadok A. Magruder High School in the aftermath of a shooting in Derwood, Md, on Jan. 21, 2022. (Craig Hudson for The Washington Post)
A week after a gunman at an elementary school in Uvalde, Tex., killed 19 students and two teachers, Montgomery County officials discussed the school system’s safety protocols in the event of an active-shooter situation and other threats during a news conference Wednesday.
Interim superintendent Monifa B. McKnight said parents have conveyed that they’ve felt uneasy about their children’s safety since the shooting took place, adding that leaders had to address “the anxiety and fear our community has felt.”
“I will be the first to tell you as the superintendent of Montgomery County Public Schools, [safety] is absolutely my priority,” McKnight said. “It’s all of our priority.”
McKnight along with other system administrators, county council and police officials detailed safety measures used at the county’s schools. Every entry point at the county’s 209 schools is locked. Visitors have to be buzzed in and register before they can enter a school. The school system and the county’s police agencies signed a contract in April bringing officers back into schools and defining how those officers respond to school-related incidents.
Officials also highlighted the school system’s expansion of mental health services at its high schools. Students have called for expanding further expansion of related programs.
The Montgomery County school system, which is Maryland’s largest, has more school safety officers than any other in the state — with at 252 of the state’s 942, according to Maryland’s School Safety dashboard. It’s followed by Prince George’s County school system, which has 240 trained officers.
Montgomery County Police Chief Marcus Jones noted police officers in the county have undergone active-shooting training since a mass shooting took place at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colo., in 1999. Since then, those trainings have been enhanced, he said, adding that detectives “do a lot of legwork” by talking to individuals who may be involved in making threats, and partnering with the school system to determine a response. And in the event of an active shooter, officers are trained to go in and eliminate a threat, even in areas such as portable classrooms outside of the traditional school building.
“We don’t stop assessing. We don’t stop training,” Jones said. “We don’t stop planning on a worst-case scenario.”
D.C. students call for gun control; schools focus on security after Texas shooting
The school system has also reviewed its safety plan after a 17-year-old student allegedly shot a 15-year-old student in a Magruder High School bathroom in January using a “ghost gun” — a firearm assembled from parts and sold in kits on the Internet without background checks. A report including an assessment of the school system’s handling of that incident has been submitted to state school safety officials for review.
Wednesday’s safety update also came as a Maryland law took effect that banned the sale, receipt and transfer of ghost guns. Both County Executive Marc Elrich (D) and County Council President Gabe Albornoz (D-At Large) pointed to the legislation passed by the Maryland General Assembly in their remarks, adding the federal government needed to pass a similar item.
“When we lose a student to violence and guns, we lost that battle no matter where it started,” Elrich said. “We have to do a better job. We have to learn to get involved before it’s too late.” | 2022-06-01T22:53:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Montgomery County officials talk school safety after Texas shooting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/01/montgomery-county-school-safety-shooting-threat/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/01/montgomery-county-school-safety-shooting-threat/ |
Jada Pinkett Smith addresses Oscars slap, alopecia on ‘Red Table Talk’
Jada Pinkett Smith hosts an episode of “Red Table Talk” on alopecia. (Jordan Fisher/Red Table Talk via AP)
Jada Pinkett Smith directly addressed the infamous Oscar night slap during an episode of “Red Table Talk” on Wednesday.
Two months after her husband, Will Smith, struck comedian Chris Rock for making a joke about Pinkett Smith’s shaved head during the Academy Awards telecast, the actress used “the moment” on her influential Facebook Watch show to shed light on the autoimmune condition that caused her hair loss.
“This is a really important ‘Red Table Talk’ about alopecia. Considering what I’ve been through with my health and what happened at the Oscars, thousands have reached out to me with their stories,” she said in an introduction to the episode.
“Now about Oscar night,” Pinkett Smith said. Since that night, Smith has resigned from the academy and was banned from attending Oscar ceremonies for 10 years; Rock has given no public statements about the incident. “My deepest hope is that these two intelligent, capable men have an opportunity to heal, talk this out and reconcile. The state of the world today, we need them both,” she continued. “Until then Will and I are continuing to do what we have done for the last 28 years and that’s keep figuring out this thing called life together.”
And with that, the “Girls Trip” star pivoted to an emotional conversation with Nicole Ball, whose 12-year-old daughter, Rio, died by suicide after being bullied at school for her alopecia areata, which caused her to lose her hair.
Two weeks after Rio’s death, the 94th Academy Awards aired live from Los Angeles. Pinkett Smith and her husband, who would go on to win the Oscar for his role in “King Richard” later that evening, sat in the front row as Rock joked that the actress looked like she was auditioning for “G.I. Jane 2.”
Since 2018, Pinkett Smith has been public about her own struggles with the disease. “There was so much shame,” she said on Wednesday’s show, which also featured a medical doctor who explained the condition and a message from Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who has alopecia, too.
Pinkett Smith will likely address the Oscars controversy and its other far-reaching effects later this season on her show. Less than a month after the slap happened, she opened the season premiere of her online talk series with this statement: “Considering all that has happened in the last few weeks, the Smith family has been focusing on deep healing. Some of the discoveries around our healing will be shared at the table when the time calls.”
More on Will Smith's slap of Chris Rock
Oscars slap was PR nightmare, and celebrity publicists still shudder
Will Smith resigns from film academy after ‘inexcusable’ Oscars slap
Comedians are still rattled by the Oscars slap | 2022-06-01T23:10:35Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jada Pinkett Smith uses 'Red Table Talk' to talk Oscars slap, alopecia - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/01/jada-pinkett-smith-oscars-alopecia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/01/jada-pinkett-smith-oscars-alopecia/ |
In an interview, Mayor Don McLaughlin (R) calls for compromise on measures like background checks
Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin visits the memorial for the Robb Elementary School students and teachers at Town Square on May 29 in Uvalde, Tex. (Joshua Lott/The Washington Post)
UVALDE, Tex. — As a massacre unfolded inside an elementary school here last week, a would-be negotiator deployed in a funeral home across the street tried frantically to reach the gunman via cellphone, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said Wednesday.
In an interview with The Washington Post, McLaughlin (R) said he rushed to Hillcrest Funeral Home about 15 minutes after “the first call” reporting that 18-year-old Salvador Ramos had crashed his pickup truck nearby. He found himself standing near an official he identified only as “the negotiator,” while frightened parents gathered outside the school and police waited well over an hour to storm the classroom.
“His main goal was to try to get this person on the phone,” McLaughlin said in the interview, which was conduced by Telemundo San Antonio. “They tried every number they could find,” but the gunman did not pick up the phone.
McLaughlin offered few other new details of the police response to the mass shooting, which is under investigation by the Texas Department of Public Safety and which state officials have described in contradictory ways over the last 10 days.
Officials change account of how shooter got in, saying teacher did not prop door open
He said he doesn’t believe the negotiator was aware there were children calling 911 and asking police to save them while the gunman was in the classroom. The mayor said he was not aware of those calls, nor did he hear shots fired from inside the school, across the street.
The gunman was killed by a phalanx of law enforcement officers that included three Border Patrol Tactical Unit agents, a Border Patrol Search, Trauma and Rescue agent and at least one sheriff’s deputy, The Post has previously reported. McLaughlin said he has been told that the group also included at least one officer from the Uvalde Police Department and one from the six-officer school system police force.
McLaughlin said he has not been in touch with Pete Arredondo, the embattled head of the Uvalde school district’s police department, who served as the incident commander during the shooting and has been criticized for not sending officers in sooner.
Arredondo has not spoken publicly about the incident, telling CNN on Wednesday that he would do so after more time has passed and the victims of the massacre are buried.
Pete Arredondo spent years preparing for a mass school shooting. Then it happened.
McLaughlin, who uses a walker or a cane and has called himself a “small potato” in politics has not been shy about speaking out against higher-profile Texas politicians in either party.
In the recent Texas primary for governor, he opted not to endorse the Republican incumbent, Gov. Greg Abbott, labeling him a “fraud” over his approach to the border and immigration. And he has appeared on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” multiple times to lambaste the Border Patrol’s release of migrants into the streets of Uvalde and lament that he cannot get a call back from the state’s two Republican senators, Ted Cruz and John Cornyn.
Last week, in the wake of the shooting, he called Texas gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke a “sick son of a b----” for confronting Abbott about gun control during a news conference.
During the interview on Wednesday, however, McLaughlin took a much more conciliatory tone, urging compromise between Republicans and Democrats to find a set of laws that “work for everyone.”
“Both [parties] have an attitude of ‘It’s my way or the highway,’ ” he said. “And that’s not what we elected them for. We elected them to go up there and represent the American people, and that means you sit at a table and you sit down and you negotiate.”
One example of compromise? Background checks for gun purchases, he said.
“Why should any of us be afraid of expanding background checks? There’s nothing wrong with that, I don’t have anything to hide,” said McLaughlin, who has also long pushed to build a psychiatric hospital in Uvalde.
Tension has been building between local and state law enforcement in Uvalde, as questions mount over the shifting public accounts of what happened last Tuesday and who bears the responsibility for the law enforcement response.
Last week, Abbott said he was “misled” by law enforcement authorities about the series of events that took place.
“The information I was given turned out, in part, to be inaccurate, and I am absolutely livid about that,” he said, sitting next to Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) and McLaughlin.
But McLaughlin rebutted such comments on Monday, saying in a statement that local law enforcement did not “mislead anyone.” He reiterated that point in the interview, saying “local authorities have not lied to anyone.”
“The briefing that the governor and the lieutenant governor and everybody else in that room [had] ... was given by the DPS, not local law enforcement,” McLaughlin said.
“They’ve had three press conferences,” he added. “In all three press conferences, something has changed.”
McLaughlin said he hasn’t “lost trust” in the Department of Public Safety and the Texas Rangers. Relatives of the 21 people who were killed “need answers,” he said. “And we want to make sure they get those answers.”
On Wednesday, Abbott asked state lawmakers to convene a pair of “special legislative committees” to address the issues of school safety and mass violence. During remarks last week to the National Rifle Association, the governor ruled out new gun restrictions in response to the massacre.
In his letter to Patrick, who presides over the Senate, and House Speaker Dade Phelan (R), Abbott asked that both chambers form committees to explore five issues: school safety; mental health; social media; police training; and firearm safety.
“As leaders, we must come together at this time to provide solutions to protect all Texans,” Abbott said in his letter.
Patrick late Wednesday announced the formation of the Senate Special Committee to Protect All Texans, which will hold a hearing on or after June 23. He named eight Republicans and three Democrats to the committee. Noticeably absent from the list was Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat whose district includes Uvalde and who has been outspoken about the need for gun restrictions.
Uvalde mourns teacher who died protecting children, and husband who died two days later
Abbott also announced new instructions for the Texas School Safety Center, a research center focused on campus safety and security that is statutorily responsible for auditing schools for safety processes and establishing best practices.
According to a letter Abbott sent to education officials, the governor said the San Marcos-based safety center should start conducting “random intruder detection audits,” designed to find weaknesses in campus security systems.
Uvalde school officials said Wednesday that they are working to identify safety improvements that may be needed on school campuses in the city. In addition, officials said the Robb campus would not reopen in the wake of the tragedy. Students will be enrolled elsewhere.
McLaughlin said he could not imagine the school returning to normal operations.
John Wagner in Washington and Eva Ruth in Austin contributed to this report. | 2022-06-01T23:10:42Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin describes attempts to phone gunman during school massacre - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/01/uvalde-mayor-interview-school-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/01/uvalde-mayor-interview-school-shooting/ |
Fagan is first woman to lead Coast Guard
Los Angeles area faces water restrictions
New restrictions on outdoor water use went into effect for more than 6 million residents in the Los Angeles area on Wednesday. The rules, set by the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, limit outdoor watering to one day per week in many jurisdictions — while others opted to stay below a volume limit — as authorities try to dramatically reduce urban water use amid the record-breaking drought fueled by the warming climate.
The goal is to cut water use by 35 percent as California is in its third consecutive year of severe drought, there is measly snowpack in the mountains, and reservoirs have dwindled to record lows. Water authorities have described the situation as an emergency requiring more severe restrictions than in the past — but they also warn they might be just a prelude to further cuts. If conditions don’t improve by September, Metropolitan Water District officials have warned they might ban outdoor water use entirely.
Since the new rules were announced in April, the drought in the West has not let up. The most recent data from the U.S. Drought Monitor shows that 76 percent of the American West is experiencing severe to exceptional drought, an area home to some 55 million people. Major reservoirs along the Colorado River — such as Lake Mead and Lake Powell — are down to their lowest levels in decades.
— Joshua Partlow
Deputy won't face charges in shooting
Two court-appointed prosecutors declined Wednesday to charge a Wisconsin sheriff’s deputy in the 2016 fatal shooting of a man sleeping in a park, saying they didn’t believe they could defeat a self-defense argument.
The decision echoes a district attorney’s finding years ago that Joseph Mensah had acted in self-defense when he shot Jay Anderson Jr.
The special prosecutors, Milwaukee attorney Scott Hansen and La Crosse County District Attorney Tim Gruenke, spent months reviewing the case and repeatedly found they couldn’t overcome the self-defense argument.
Mensah came upon Anderson, who was 25, sleeping in a car after hours in a Wauwatosa park in June 2016. Mensah said he fired after Anderson reached for a gun on the passenger seat, and Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm declined to charge Mensah later that year. | 2022-06-01T23:10:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Fagan is first woman to lead Coast Guard - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fagan-is-first-woman-to-lead-coast-guard/2022/06/01/c0a2393c-de2d-11ec-a744-f4da26d516e8_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/fagan-is-first-woman-to-lead-coast-guard/2022/06/01/c0a2393c-de2d-11ec-a744-f4da26d516e8_story.html |
Jury rules in favor of Depp in defamation trial
Johnny Depp is awarded $15 million in damages in lawsuit against his ex-wife Amber Heard. Jurors also found for part of her counter-claim, awarding her $2 million.
By Travis M. Andrews
Amber Heard waits in a courtroom at the Fairfax County Courthouse ahead the jury's verdict. (Evelyn Hockstein/Pool/Reuters)
A Fairfax County Circuit Court jury found Wednesday that Amber Heard defamed ex-husband Johnny Depp with a 2018 opinion article in which she described herself as a representative of domestic abuse, and agreed with Depp that Heard’s statements harmed his reputation, awarding him $15 million.
At the same time, the seven-person jury also found that Depp, through his lawyer Adam Waldman, defamed Heard in one of three counts in her countersuit, and awarded her $2 million.
The unanimous decision was delivered after about 13 total hours of deliberation that began Friday, ending a trial that featured sometimes-graphic testimony and was hotly debated by viewers and legal experts as it streamed and was televised worldwide for nearly seven weeks.
Some cheered for what they saw as a victory for men who are wrongly accused of physical and sexual abuse, while the decision struck others as a cruel statement on the rights of victims to speak out. While the details of the case may have enraptured the millions who watched it — Law&Crime Network alone saw more than 3 million viewers tune in to its live stream of the verdict — and saw the social-media vitriol directed at Heard, it leaves behind serious questions about the future of abuse victims’ willingness and ability to come forward — and perhaps their legal options.
“The jury gave me my life back,” Depp, 58, said in what amounted to a lengthy victory statement. The “Pirates of the Caribbean” star, who has been seen playing guitar in rock concerts in England over the weekend, chose not to return to the Fairfax County Courthouse for the verdict.
“From the very beginning, the goal of bringing this case was to reveal the truth, regardless of the outcome,” Depp’s statement continued. “Speaking the truth was something that I owed to my children and to all those who have remained steadfast in their support of me. I feel at peace knowing I have finally accomplished that.”
Heard, 36, who solemnly watched in the courtroom as the verdict was read, said in a statement that the “disappointment I feel today is beyond words. I’m even more disappointed with what this verdict means for other women.”
“It is a setback,” the statement continued. “It sets back the clock to a time when a woman who spoke up and spoke out could be publicly shamed and humiliated. It sets back the idea that violence against women is to be taken seriously.”
Depp filed a defamation lawsuit seeking $50 million from Heard over a 2018 op-ed she wrote in The Washington Post, in which she referred to herself as a public figure representing domestic abuse. He claimed the piece damaged his career, and he has denied all allegations of abuse. Heard countersued Depp for $100 million after Waldman gave several statements in the media describing her claims as false. The Post was not a defendant in Depp’s lawsuit. (Part of the jury’s amount awarded to Depp on Wednesday — $5 million in punitive damages — will be automatically reduced to $350,000, per Virginia law.)
In the minutes after the verdict was announced, Depp fans rejoiced — at the courthouse, online and elsewhere — over what they largely characterized as a heavily one-sided victory for Depp. David Ring, a civil trial lawyer based in Los Angeles who specializes in sexual assault cases and civil litigation, agreed with that takeaway. “Johnny Depp is the slam-dunk winner. No question,” Ring said. “I think 99 out of 100 cases, when you have a big celebrity involved, the celebrity wins, whether it’s criminal or civil. Jurors love celebrities.”
The courtroom was filled almost to capacity Wednesday, though it was quieter than the days during the trial when Depp fans packed the seats. When the verdict was ready, some of the actor’s loyal followers were in attendance, but much of the crowd was composed of curious onlookers.
The reading of the first question from the verdict drew soft gasps, but the crowd remained mostly silent afterward — adhering to Judge Penney Azcarate’s warnings about outbursts.
After the verdict, Heard left the courthouse from the back entrance, while a woman shouted “liar, liar.” Meanwhile, in front of the courthouse, a few hundred people — mainly Depp supporters — gathered amid a mass of reporters to cheer on the actor’s legal team, who addressed the crowd with a brief statement. “We are also most pleased that the trial has resonated for so many people in the public who value truth and justice,” Depp’s lawyer Ben Chew said, adding that it’s time to turn the page and look to the future.
As the lawyers departed, a swarm of fans followed, cheering and chanting: “Johnny for president!” And also “Camille for president!” referring to the actor’s lawyer Camille Vasquez.
A contentious case
For Depp’s claim, the jury weighed seven questions, including whether Heard made or published three statements in the op-ed (which included the headline); if those statements imply or insinuate anything about Depp; and if so, whether they were false and/or made with actual malice. Under Heard’s counterclaim, the jury decided six questions, including whether Waldman made the statements on Depp’s behalf, and whether they were false and/or made with actual malice.
Azcarate ruled Friday that the names of the jurors — two women and five men, plus one female alternate and one male alternate — will remained sealed for a year, given the high-profile nature of the trial.
Heard alleged a pattern of verbal, physical and, at times, sexual abuse from Depp, which she said worsened with his increased alcohol and drug use. She testified to multiple occasions in which he beat her — sometimes leaving her fearing for her life — screamed at her and, on one occasion, sexually assaulted her with a liquor bottle.
Her lawyers presented many photographs of her alleged injuries, of a passed-out Depp and of property destruction he allegedly wrought. They pointed to text messages he wrote to friends in which he described killing her in gruesome detail.
During closing arguments, Heard’s attorney Ben Rottenborn stressed that it doesn’t matter whether the former spouses abused each other or whether Depp abused Heard multiple times — all that matters is whether there was a single instance of Depp abusing Heard.
Depp, meanwhile, maintained that she was abusive toward him and that her allegations amounted to a “hoax.” His team played audio recordings in which Heard insults him, taunts him and discusses hitting him. His lawyers pointed both to a lack of witnesses who saw Depp hit Heard and a lack of medical records detailing any injuries.
His team attempted to paint Heard as vindictive, arguing that she purposely destroyed his career with abuse allegations. Vasquez said the actor enraged Heard by seeking a divorce in May 2016, after one year of marriage. “She didn’t just want a divorce. She wanted to ruin him,” Vasquez said during closing arguments.
Wednesday’s outcome contradicts the results of a similar case in United Kingdom, in which Depp sued the Sun tabloid for calling him a “wife beater.” In that country, libel law has traditionally been more favorable to plaintiffs, even leading to “libel tourism.” While Heard was not named in the British lawsuit, she did testify over several days, and a judge ultimately ruled the allegations against Depp were “substantially true,” writing in a ruling that “the great majority of alleged assaults of Ms. Heard by Mr. Depp have been proved to the civil standard.” By contrast, the outcome of Depp’s American trial was decided by a jury, not a judge. Depp appealed the U.K. decision and lost.
“I believe Johnny’s attorneys succeeded in getting the jury to overlook the key issue of Freedom of Speech and ignore evidence that was so conclusive that we won in the UK,” Heard said in her statement on Wednesday. “I’m sad I lost this case. But I am sadder still that I seem to have lost a right I thought I had as an American — to speak freely and openly.”
Jill Huntley Taylor, a legal analyst who owns Taylor Trial Consulting, suggested that Heard may have hurt her case by making it more about the abuse allegations rather than the op-ed itself. “She took on a huge burden,” Taylor said. “She had nothing she needed to prove in his case against her.”
Not only did that potentially complicate “simple” legal claims Depp’s team brought, it also called into question her credibility and likability — rather than the legal claims — and made her testimony much more important than it may have been.
“She turned a case about defamation into a case about abuse,” Taylor said.
During closing arguments on Friday, attorneys from both sides suggested the trial had much more far reaching implications than which celebrity should prevail. Heard’s team argued that the future of the #MeToo movement was at stake in the trial, while Depp’s team framed the trial as a First Amendment issue.
Heard’s attorneys had argued that the case — verdict aside — would resonate for years to come.
“Think about the message that Mr. Depp and his attorneys are sending to Amber, and by extension, every victim of domestic abuse everywhere: If you didn’t take pictures, it didn’t happen,” Rottenborn said. “If you did take pictures, they’re fake. If you didn’t tell your friends, you’re lying. If you did tell your friends, they’re part of the hoax.”
University of Louisville law professor Jamie R. Abrams agreed, pointing out that “watching this are young people who are going to be a victim of sexual assault on their college campus and are going to be even more worried about coming forward with their claims than they would have been even before the #MeToo movement began.”
Abrams has already been contacted by real people who faced defamation lawsuits for publicly discussing being sexually assaulted. The legal maneuver, which Abrams calls a “hatchet” and a “legal slammed door,” could add a tremendous burden on anyone alleging assault. Even if the lawsuit is thrown out, fees could amass. For victims, it could be “a $30,000 cost to tell their story.”
It’s already “happening throughout the country,” Abrams said. “Ordinary people in Kentucky, Mississippi and Louisiana are going to keep their stories silent.”
A social-media storm
Much of the trial played out on social media, where Depp fans dominated by using a few specific hashtags to voice support for the actor and to hurl insults at Heard. The most popular hashtag, #JusticeforJohnnyDepp, has received more than 19 billion views on TikTok. Meanwhile, the roughly 69 million videos tagged #JusticeforAmberHeard are negative toward Heard. Many of these videos are supercuts from trial footage, edited to make Heard’s accusations appear unfounded.
In the United States, already deeply divided on politics, the trial served as another cultural battleground. After the rendering of the verdict, the official Twitter account belonging to Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee tweeted a GIF of Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, standing triumphantly on his ship.
“This trial has become a media circus, and it’s perhaps the first real media circus of the social media TikTok age. We’ve now seen what a high-profile celebrity trial looks like on social media, and it’s not pretty,” said Matthew Belloni, the former editor of the Hollywood Reporter and founder-partner of Puck. He pointed out that it was so inescapable, he doesn’t “believe it was possible for these jurors to avoid seeing this social media stuff during the trial.”
At the courthouse, onlookers began camping overnight in hopes of getting one to receive one of 100 admissions into the courtroom. Depp’s fans would wave supportive signs, cheer and wave as he came and went from the back entrance; they would boo and jeer Heard.
The two actors originally met around 2008 or 2009 when Depp cast Heard in “The Rum Diary,” based on the book by Hunter S. Thompson, and began a whirlwind romance as they promoted the film a couple years later. Depp said he thought of her as the “perfect partner,” and Heard described their relationship as “a dream. It felt like absolute magic.”
In 2012, about a year after their courtship began, Depp resumed heavy drinking and drug use, according to Heard. And, as many testified, the two began fighting constantly. Heard said Depp began hitting her. They married in February 2015, but in May 2016, Heard filed for divorce and a restraining order.
Heard — who moved to Los Angeles as a teenager in the early 2000s to seek acting work — broke out in 2017′s superhero film “Justice League” playing an underwater princess named Mera.
Depp became a teen idol in the late 1980s after being cast in the Fox TV series “21 Jump Street,” and played a string of eccentric characters in Tim Burton films such as the titular “Edward Scissorhands” and Willy Wonka in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” He found global fame in 2003, when he first played Captain Jack Sparrow in Disney’s billion-dollar Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, earning his first of three Academy Award nominations.
His career has been on a downward trajectory during the past decade, following a string of critically dismissed box-office bombs such as “Mortdecai” and “Alice Through the Looking Glass” — which he has blamed on Heard’s allegations while the defense points to his on his alcohol and drug use as the cause.
Belloni said this isn’t necessarily the end of either Depp’s or Heard’s Hollywood careers, though they will likely stall in the short term. “People have short memories, and I’ve already heard from a couple of producers who say they would be open to casting them. … I don’t think either will work in a studio movie for a while, but never say never,” he said.
“It is possible to come back from a bout of negative notoriety,” Belloni said.
Helena Andrews-Dyer, Bethonie Butler, Ashley Fetters Maloy, Elahe Izadi and Paul Schwartzman contributed to this report. | 2022-06-01T23:27:59Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Jury rules in favor of Depp in defamation trial - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/01/depp-wins-jury-verdict/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/01/depp-wins-jury-verdict/ |
Draft shows Bowser’s latest strategy to curb violence as election nears
The plan, called ‘Roadmap to Reducing Violent Crime in the District,’ seems to tout much of what city officials were already doing
City officials — including Mayor Muriel E. Bowser — with guns collected from a shooter who terrorized the Van Ness area in April. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post)
D.C. government officials are circulating a draft document that lays out D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser’s latest comprehensive strategy to reduce violent crime that has surged during the coronavirus pandemic, a document that has surfaced as public safety takes center stage in the mayoral primary election.
The April draft, obtained by The Post, outlines broad goals like cultivating effective policing and addressing the needs of those affected by violence. It also details a medley of more specific steps, such as increasing the size of the D.C. police force and creating employment programs for those with criminal histories.
Most of the programs discussed in the draft are already in place in D.C., and the document is in some ways an effort to rebrand them under a new umbrella.
City Administrator Kevin Donahue said the draft is a “living document” that makes sure the city has “operational discipline and coordination internally” and is consistent in external communication. He said it grew out of a report generated in 2016 through a working group the mayor established after a spike in gun violence and homicides.
“You are seeing the 2022 version of the underlying work projects,” he said.
The mayor has previously touted programs aimed specifically at gun violence. In early 2021, Bowser (D) highlighted a crime plan called Building Blocks DC, a $15 million initiative meant to focus prevention and intervention efforts on the city’s most dangerous blocks. A year later, top Bowser officials conceded that program was more of a concept, and instead touted People of Promise, a program that pairs about 200 at-risk D.C. residents with support teams from various city agencies.
“So, why a comprehensive plan now?” the draft says. “It has been several years since we last presented a comprehensive plan for reducing violent crime.”
The draft plan, titled “Roadmap to Reducing Violent Crime in the District,” was circulated for feedback outside the government with a spreadsheet that city officials said they use to track how they are implementing the strategy. It includes some new programs, such as a “threat assessment center,” which the document describes as a “public reporting tool” where residents can share information about individuals or groups they believe may soon turn violent.
The document also acknowledges pain points in the city’s effort to reduce violence. It describes a need for “effective Comms so we’re all talking from the same playbook,” and a “clear delineation of responsibilities and leadership.” The document also says the city must evaluate its existing initiatives to “make sure our programs are working.”
Last year, the District surpassed 200 homicides for the first time in over a decade, and the city is on track to outpace that grim milestone this year. Violent crime is also up by 17 percent compared with the same time in 2021, driven largely by a surge in robberies that has shaken the sense of safety for residents across D.C.
Less than three weeks out from the primary election — with mail-in voting already underway — Bowser is under pressure to show that she can bring down the violent crime rate while responding to demands from activists to de-emphasize the role of law enforcement and treat crime as a public health emergency. The draft shows the Bowser administration attempting to strike a balance between punishment and rehabilitation. The first strategic goal, for example, is to “deter violence through effective policing,” and the fourth is to “prevent violence through effective interruption and mediation.”
In May, an independent D.C. agency released a report that outlined a comprehensive gun violence reduction strategy for the city. Compiled by the National Institute for Criminal Justice Reform, the document’s recommendations included the establishment of a “Peace Room” where data and crime analysts, violence reduction managers and liaisons from government agencies would coordinate immediate responses to shootings that extend beyond police.
At the time, Bowser was hesitant to commit to adopting the proposals outlined in the institute’s plan. She has described the report as an “excellent document to build on” and told residents at a community meeting that she was working on a “comprehensive approach.”
At an event Tuesday, D.C. Director of Gun Violence Prevention Linda Harllee Harper said not to take the institute’s plan “word for word” and that the city was coming up with its own extensive strategy.
Discussing the draft, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety and Justice Christopher Geldart said the document includes “95 percent” of what the institute proposed. | 2022-06-01T23:36:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Draft shows Bowser’s latest strategy to curb violence as election nears - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/draft-shows-bowsers-latest-strategy-curb-violence-election-nears/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/draft-shows-bowsers-latest-strategy-curb-violence-election-nears/ |
Biden administration to cancel $5.8B in debt of ex-Corinthian Colleges students
The move marks the largest group discharge of federal student loans
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona speaks at the White House on April 27. The Biden administration says it will forgive all remaining federal student debt for former students of the for-profit Corinthian Colleges chain (Susan Walsh/AP)
Nearly a decade after the collapse of Corinthian Colleges, 560,000 former students of the defunct for-profit chain are set to have a total of $5.8 billion in federal student loans automatically canceled, the Education Department said Wednesday.
This marks the largest group discharge of federal student loans. The decision covers people who were enrolled in Corinthian schools — Everest Institute, WyoTech and Heald College — from its founding in 1995 to its closure in 2015. Former students are not required to submit an application and will receive a letter from the Education Department informing them of the pending discharge.
“As of today, every student deceived, defrauded, and driven into debt by Corinthian Colleges can rest assured that the Biden-Harris Administration has their back and will discharge their federal student loans,” Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said in a news release. “For far too long, Corinthian engaged in the wholesale financial exploitation of students, misleading them into taking on more and more debt to pay for promises they would never keep.”
The group asserted that a little-known statute called “borrower defense to repayment” gave the agency broad authority to cancel federal student loans when colleges violate students’ rights and state law. Based on the findings of the department and state attorneys general, Corinthian fit the bill — yet the Obama administration was slow to act.
After months of pleading with the Education Department to forgive the loans, the Corinthian 15 went on strike, refusing to repay their debt in protest.
“When we launched this strike, we had no idea what we were doing. We just knew we had to do something,” Nathan Hornes, one of the Corinthian 15 who attended Everest College in Ontario, Calif., said Wednesday. “We were called entitled spoiled brats … but Corinthian preyed on us. The government let us down, and we had to act.”
As the protest grew, so did the number of borrower defense claims submitted to the department.
At the time, the claims process had only been used a few times since it was enacted in 1995 and the department had to appoint an independent monitor to hammer out the details of the process. Then-California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris’s investigation into Corinthian served as the basis for the department canceling the loans of former students in California and Florida.
Some of those cases yielded forgiveness for borrowers, but others remain ongoing. Wednesday’s announcement should put them to rest. Still, there are tens of thousands of debt relief claims from people who attended other for-profit schools that have yet to be resolved.
“It is extremely remarkable to have achieved this outcome,” said Eileen Connor, director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending, a group that has represented borrowers in several borrower defense to repayment lawsuits. “This will reduce the backlog of claims, but it certainly doesn’t wipe it out. There’s still a lot of work to do.” | 2022-06-01T23:41:27Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Former Corinthian Colleges students to have federal loans forgiven - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/01/corinthian-colleges-student-loans-forgiveness/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2022/06/01/corinthian-colleges-student-loans-forgiveness/ |
Employees affiliated with a group called No Hate at Amazon disrupted a Pride Month event hosted by the company
Amazon headquarters in 2020. (Elaine Thompson/AP)
A group of Amazon employees on Wednesday disrupted a Pride Month event at the company’s headquarters in Seattle, protesting the company’s continued sale of books they say are anti-trans.
Approximately 30 employees participated in the protest, interrupting Amazon’s annual raising of the pride flag by laying on the ground wrapped in trans flags, according to an employee who attended the event. The participants are members of No Hate at Amazon, which is demanding that the company stop producing and selling books the group says are harmful to trans youth.
“Amazon does have standing policies against hate speech in its content and technically they say we don’t sell it,” said an organizer with the group, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “But we’ve obviously seen through a number of these books that that’s not the case when it comes to transphobic material.” (Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)
Booksellers association apologizes for ‘violent’ distribution of ‘anti-trans’ title
The Amazon group is part of a larger movement of tech workers including Google, Twitter and Facebook employees who have organized with a goal of not just improving working conditions, but influencing broader company policies. Amazon Employees for Climate Justice, which was founded by two employees who later settled charges of illegal retaliation after Amazon fired them, has continued to pressure the company on its environmental record. And Amazon employees have recently come together in protest of the company’s participation in Project Nimbus, an Israeli government cloud computing contract.
In March, the No Hate at Amazon group circulated a petition demanding that Amazon stop selling titles like “Johnny the Walrus” and “Irreversible Damage,” and that the company set up an oversight board that would allow employees to democratically determine what content is appropriate for sale on the site. The organizer said at least 500 people using verified Amazon email addresses have signed that petition, which was presented to company leadership last summer. At the time, some employees quit over the company’s refusal to stop selling these books, NBC News reported.
One participant in Wednesdays’ event, senior software engineer Lina Jodoin said she also quit her job at Amazon this week for the same reason. “As much as it’s about the books being for sale, for me personally, this is also very much about the response that we’ve gotten from leadership as we’ve tried to escalate,” said Jodoin, who worked for Amazon for eight years. “I’m worried that bad actors outside of Amazon … will continue to escalate their harassment of our customers and employees, given that we’ve shown there aren’t repercussions for harassing behavior when it comes to our marketplace.”
LGBT rights group GLAAD has also criticized the decision to continue selling the books the activist employees oppose.
Amazon has previously been willing to remove content from its site, pulling a book called “When Harry Became Sally” in March 2021 because it described “LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”
But more recently, it has declined to remove these books — some of which, like “Irreversible Damage,” the company sells as Kindle editions and others of which, like “Desist, Detrans, & Detox: Getting Your Child Out of the Gender Cult,” it distributes through its direct publishing arm. Amazon has continued to sell and print “Irreversible Damage” even after the American Booksellers Association apologized for promoting it and retail competitor Target removed the book from its website in July.
Here’s what to know about the Amazon union push in New York
Amazon has run afoul of some LGBT rights groups ahead of this year’s Pride Month, which began Wednesday. Seattle Pride, the group that organizes the city’s annual pride parade, banned Amazon as a corporate sponsor in March and declined to accept a $100,000 donation because of the company’s ties to certain legislators and organizations. Specifically, the organization cited Amazon’s donations to lawmakers who have voted against anti-discrimination bills and failure to remove anti-gay groups that raise money via its charitable platform, AmazonSmile. | 2022-06-01T23:43:49Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Amazon employees protest the sale of books they say are anti-trans - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/01/amazon-trans-pride-month-books-protest/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/01/amazon-trans-pride-month-books-protest/ |
Prince George's County Council member Calvin S. Hawkins II shakes hands after a meeting in 2018. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
The Prince George’s County Council adopted a $5 billion spending plan on Wednesday for the fiscal year that begins July 1 that boosts investments in education and public safety, keeping intact the priorities of County Executive Angela D. Alsobrooks (D).
The budget — which is nearly 10 percent larger than this year’s — is designed to help the county navigate the long tail of the pandemic while equitably providing resources to county residents. The Board of Education will see its budget rise about 12 percent under the plan, to $2.63 billion, accounting for the largest slice of the pie. Public safety resources such as police, fire and corrections departments follow, receiving a combined $827 million.
“Last year, my remarks announced an adopted county budget that would cautiously begin the process of creating a path forward from the impacts of the devastating, historic and unprecedented global pandemic,” County Council Chairman Calvin S. Hawkins II (D-At Large) said at Wednesday’s meeting. “Over the last year, we have begun to focus on the many opportunities before Prince George’s County.”
The county had more to work with this cycle, thanks to federal, state and outside aid for the Board of Education, and increased property and income tax collections, according to a budget proposal review.
Education funding includes $15 million for school construction, as well as $127 million for Prince George’s Community College. The county’s public library system is slated to receive $36 million.
Public safety spending is slated to rise from $765 million last year to $827 million. When Alsobrooks announced the budget plan earlier this year, she said the increase reflects a response to residents’ concerns about crime. More than 130 homicides were recorded in 2021 in Prince George’s, the most since 2007. Alsobrooks also said the budget reflects an increased commitment to police accountability.
The final budget includes funding for a police accountability board and an administrative charging committee, which were mandated last year under sweeping police reform legislation passed by the General Assembly. The council must establish the bodies before a July 1 deadline. The spending plan contains $5 million to help with retaining and recruiting officers and money for more body-worn cameras for the county’s public safety agencies.
The council added $1 million above Alsobrooks’s proposal for “use of force” tracking, new enforcement technology and new personnel in the Police Aviation Unit, among other initiatives.
Last year’s budget was shaped by interest to address health disparities made unusually clear by the pandemic’s impact on the majority-Black county, and by calls for police reform that followed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.
This budget includes $3.3 million for litter-reduction programs and $4 million for technology to help improve the permitting and licensing systems for businesses. It also includes increased investments in efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change, including $95 million for a storm-water management fund. The council added additional funding for environmental protections and clean communities such as funding for illegal dumping surveillance cameras and staffing support for the county’s Climate Change Action Plan.
The council also boosted spending on cybersecurity at county libraries, established and funded a six-year program in the county’s Department of Public Works and Transportation for local road repairs, supported immigration legal defense efforts in the Office of Human Rights, and provided support for a labor trafficking unit to investigate incidents and enforce prohibitions on labor trafficking.
“It’s an exciting budget given that we’re talking about $5 billion,” council member Deni Taveras (D-District 2) said. “It’s a budget that is reflective of the county executive and the chair’s priorities.”
Taveras, who is term-limited, said it was transformational to see the budget increase by so much since she was first elected in 2014.
“We’re closing my final budget at $5 billion,” Taveras said. “I’m very proud of that.” | 2022-06-02T00:07:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Prince George's County Council passes $5 billion budget - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/prince-georges-county-council-2023-budget/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/prince-georges-county-council-2023-budget/ |
Division’s blue-gray patch might get the ax
Steve Melnikoff, 102, participated in D-Day as part of the 29th Infantry Division and thinks its patch should remain unchanged. (Lloyd Fox/Baltimore Sun)
BALTIMORE — Steve Melnikoff wore the patch during the D-Day invasion of Europe 78 years ago as he crouched in a tank landing ship off Omaha Beach, German artillery shells screaming over his head.
He wore it the next day, too, as his unit in the 29th Infantry Division secured a position behind enemy lines under heavy fire, and for another 11 months amid some of the bloodiest fighting in history.
When the occasion arises, Melnikoff, 102, still sports the blue-and-gray, yin-yang-style patch that the 29th made famous. And it’s on generous display in his home in Cockeysville, Md. But he knows it could soon end up on history’s proverbial ash heap, and he likes the idea about as much as he did the German soldiers he fought in World War II.
A congressional naming commission, an eight-member panel created last year, is scrutinizing the names of hundreds of U.S. military bases, as well as “symbols, displays, monuments and paraphernalia,” to identify and retire any that “commemorate” the Confederate States of America and its causes. The 29th Division logo is under consideration.
The military brass created the 29th Division 52 years after the Civil War by combining units from states with legacies on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line, including Maryland and Virginia. Its first administrative officer, James Ulio, designed its insignia around the yin-yang symbol, a figure that in Asian traditions signifies a balanced embrace of opposing forces. He made the left half blue to evoke Union uniforms and the right side gray — the color the Confederates wore.
Historians say U.S. military leaders hoped the formation of the 29th would help reconcile a divided nation, and the unit went on to make history in World War I and World War II. An estimated 15,000 to 16,000 troops wear its patch today, including soldiers who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I don’t know how they can even think about getting rid of the patch,” says Melnikoff, one of the handful of veterans still alive who took part in the Normandy invasion. “Thousands of men died wearing it. They’re buried in cemeteries all over Europe. All that time I served, there was never any discussion of what it meant. I’ll never take the patch off, and I don’t think most people wearing it today will, either.”
Officials with the 29th Division Association, an advocacy group based in Baltimore, say they have met with the commission to let it know they oppose changing the symbol. Members are using the group’s website to raise funds for lobbying efforts against a switch and to sponsor a petition, which has more than 900 signatures. The group produced a five-minute video that it is preparing to send to members of Congress.
Others see the matter differently. Dartmouth College history professor Matthew Delmont has been studying military symbols and their effects on Black Americans for years. He is the author of a forthcoming book, “Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad.”
On learning of the patch controversy, Delmont said he believes American culture has progressed to a stage where it can look objectively at Confederate imagery, consider what it stands for, and make decisions accordingly. The logo was born and gained fame during an era when Black Americans were systematically discriminated against in the military, Delmont says, which he believes undercuts the argument that it reflects national unity.
He also wonders why the U.S. government would keep a symbol that evokes a military that fought in support of views that didn’t represent all Americans.
“It’s not as clear-cut an issue as the Confederate flag. But if we take the time to discuss and think about what the gray in it signifies, we should ask ourselves why a division that is meant to represent the country should honor a force that took up arms against it,” he says.
Richard Brookshire, co-founder of the Black Veterans Project, a group that aims to address systemic racial inequities across the military, is more blunt.
“Any attempt to retain symbols of the Confederacy, whether blatant or implied, is an insult to the service of Black Americans,” he wrote in an email to the Baltimore Sun.
For the commission, some of its tasks are clear-cut. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2021, which created the panel, required members to recommend new names for nine Army posts named for Confederate officers, including Forts Lee and A.P. Hill in Virginia.
Some calls, like the 29th’s logo, will be trickier. The fight to preserve it remains intense.
Retired Maj. Gen. Linda L. Singh is the former adjutant general of the Maryland National Guard — the first African American and the first woman to head the Guard — which includes 29th Infantry Division units. She says the 29th patch doesn’t belong in the same category as the Confederate flag or monuments. That’s because, she says, it includes the color gray not for its own sake, but in symbolic juxtaposition with the blue.
“I definitely understand the angst in and around the meaning of different logos, patches, and names,” Singh said. “But the 29th logo is different; it has always been about the power of bringing together the North and the South. It’s a symbol of unity, one of the highest American values. To me, it’s exactly the kind of insignia we should be lifting up right now.” | 2022-06-02T00:07:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Division’s blue-gray patch might get the ax - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/divisions-blue-gray-patch-might-get-the-ax/2022/06/01/54f93c8a-e15c-11ec-9611-6f35e4fddfc3_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/divisions-blue-gray-patch-might-get-the-ax/2022/06/01/54f93c8a-e15c-11ec-9611-6f35e4fddfc3_story.html |
Stalwart Johnny Depp supporters stayed to celebrate the jury’s decision, even though the film star went to England. Amber Heard’s supporters remain concerned about the implications of the outcome.
Paul Schwartzman
Supporters of actor Johnny Depp listen Wednesday afternoon as the verdict is announced outside the Fairfax County Courthouse. (Craig Hudson/AP)
The first mood Wednesday afternoon at the Fairfax County Courthouse was confusion. Johnny Depp won, right? But Amber Heard received damages, too? A group of Depp fans quietly walked out of the courtroom, talking among themselves — a judge had warned the crowd about outbursts when the verdict was read — while journalists and other curious onlookers tried to figure out what it all meant.
The verdict, as painstakingly explained by lawyers and experts to a captive audience in the hallway, was mostly in Depp’s favor: The seven-person jury found that Heard, 36, defamed ex-husband Johnny Depp, 58, with a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post in which she referred to herself as a public figure representing domestic abuse, and awarded him $15 million in damages. Simultaneously, the jury found that Depp — via his attorney Adam Waldman — defamed Heard in one of three statements calling her accusations a hoax, and awarded her $2 million.
Heard left the courtroom with her sister, Whitney Henriquez, who had testified on the actress’s behalf during the trial. Outside, Heard was greeted by the reaction she has garnered from the beginning of the six-week trial, as many Depp supporters have made it clear they don’t believe her.
As Heard left the courthouse in a black pickup truck, a television reporter shouted, “The jury didn’t believe you, what’s your reaction?” The vehicle kept moving, its black-tinted passenger window rolled up.
The second mood was elation. For weeks, Depp’s fervent fan base has shown up, sleeping outside on the sidewalk so they could be one of the 100 people allowed a seat in the courtroom. On Wednesday, they gathered in smaller numbers than usual — many went home after closing arguments Friday — but they were still a couple hundred strong in the 93-degree heat, waiting outside to give a hero’s welcome to Depp’s legal team. The actor himself was not there; he left Fairfax last week and flew to England, where he has been seen playing guitar in concerts with Jeff Beck.
“Words can’t describe how happy I am,” said Sofia Cadena, 24, of Tysons, Va., who would wait outside the courthouse for Depp’s car when he arrived at the courthouse in the morning and when he left in the afternoon. “My heart stopped when I heard that he won the case.”
Sarah Proctor, 33, of Fairfax, is a Depp fan and had her confetti cannon ready, but quickly decided not to use it after she asked a sheriff’s deputy if it would be okay — and got stern words in return.
“I was really happy to hear he was awarded as much money as he was,” Proctor said. “I was really happy to hear that jury found that certain things in the storyline from Ms. Heard were not accurate.”
Sandy Riley acknowledged that she was on Depp’s side. “Don’t judge me,” she said. “That man has the most genuine smile. My Johnny. We’re used to politicians with their empty waves and empty smiles. But this man was looking into peoples’ eyes and their hearts.”
The third mood at the courthouse, though you had to look to find it, was dismay. Heard’s supporters have grimly watched as public opinion swung overwhelmingly in Depp’s favor on the Internet, with an enormous number of anti-Heard TikToks, Instagram posts and tweets going viral every day.
“I’m disappointed but not surprised,” said Sydni Porter, 30, of Prince George’s County, Md. Reporters lined up to talk to her, the only Heard fan they could find at the courthouse. She was holding a banner that said “We Stand With Amber Heard,” with supportive messages written out from some of her online supporters. Her phone started glitching and she didn’t catch the verdict at first, but when she heard loud cheers outside, she knew what it meant.
While Heard has seen animosity online since 2016 when she filed for a divorce and a restraining order against Depp (and after the actor’s 2020 libel lawsuit in the United Kingdom against the British tabloid the Sun for calling him a “wife beater,” which he lost), her defenders have been taken aback by the level of mockery toward her allegations of abuse. Her supporters have been attacked online from Depp fans when they try to defend her.
“I’m a little confused, because I feel like it’s very obvious who suffered more in terms of the allegations people made,” Porter said, adding that she thinks it was a mistake to live-stream the trial and not sequester the jury. She hasn’t had a chance to talk to the other Heard supporters she knows, but just glanced online.
“I looked at Twitter and saw how disappointed everyone is,” Porter said. “I’m hoping that maybe she’ll appeal.” | 2022-06-02T01:12:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | After Depp-Heard verdict, elation and disappointment at the courthouse - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/01/johnny-depp-amber-heard-verdict-courthouse-scene/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2022/06/01/johnny-depp-amber-heard-verdict-courthouse-scene/ |
Marion Barber III, former Cowboys running back, found dead at 38
The Cowboys remembered Marion Barber III, shown in 2010, as “an old-school, hard-nosed football player who ran with the will to win every down.” (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
Marion Barber III, a former NFL running back, was found dead Wednesday at his Dallas-area apartment. The ex-Cowboys star was 38.
Authorities in Frisco, Tex., have yet to release a cause of death. A spokesman for the Frisco Police Department confirmed that Barber’s body was found after officers performed a welfare check at his residence.
Barber had several legal issues after his NFL career ended in 2011. In 2014, he was reportedly taken to a hospital by police for a mental health evaluation after an unspecified incident in Mansfield, Tex.
Last year, former teammate Dez Bryant tweeted a message of despair over the way Barber’s life was “going right now” and added that the ex-back was “down and out bad.”
In April, Barber was sentenced to 12 months probation and 60 hours of community service after he was charged with two counts of criminal mischief following a 2018 incident in which he was accused of physically running into two cars, causing dents in them.
A fourth-round pick out of Minnesota in the 2005 draft, Barber began to blossom in his second season, averaging 4.8 yards per carry for the Cowboys. In 2007, he played so well that he was selected for the Pro Bowl despite never starting a game; while spelling Julius Jones that season, Barber racked up 1,257 yards from scrimmage and 12 touchdowns. He remained an effective player through the next two seasons before his performance began to slip, and after being released by the Cowboys in 2011, he spent one final season with the Chicago Bears.
Barber was known for his hard-charging style, which made him difficult to bring down on first contact but may also have exposed him to more punishment than other backs might have taken in similar circumstances. On one legendary 2007 carry that officially gained just two yards — but required approximately 60 yards of running by Barber — he shook off tackle attempts by six New England Patriots defenders, including five in the end zone who would have caused a safety.
The son of former New York Jets running back Marion Barber Jr., Barber was also the brother of former Houston Texans defensive back Dom Barber. Another brother, Thomas Barber, was a college linebacker at the Minnesota, where his siblings also played, as did their father.
During his college career, Marion Barber III climbed to third all-time in Golden Gophers history with 3,276 rushing yards. He and then-teammate Laurence Maroney, who became a first-round pick by the Patriots, formed the first pair of Minnesota backs to each rush for 1,000 yards in consecutive seasons.
Over his seven NFL seasons, Barber accumulated 4,780 yards on the ground with 53 touchdowns, and he added 1,330 yards and six touchdowns as a pass-catcher.
Barber is the fourth former NFL player to have died at a relatively young age since December, when ex-wide receiver Demaryius Thomas was found dead at 33 at his Georgia home. In April, 24-year-old Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback Dwayne Haskins was killed in a traffic accident in Florida, and on Monday, 25-year-old Arizona Cardinals cornerback Jeff Gladney was killed in a car crash in Dallas. | 2022-06-02T01:34:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Marion Barber III, former Cowboys running back, found dead at 38 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/01/marion-barber-dallas-cowboys-death/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/01/marion-barber-dallas-cowboys-death/ |
By Elahe Izadi
Johnny Depp at court in Fairfax County, Va. (Steve Helber/Pool/AP)
The reason, according to legal experts, may simply boil down to the fact that Depp’s action against his ex-wife Amber Heard in the U.K. — which he lost — happened to be decided by a judge, whereas his case in the United States was decided by a jury.
Depp sued Heard in Fairfax County, Va., in 2019 for defamation over an op-ed published a few months before in The Washington Post. Heard did not name Depp in the article but wrote that she was “a public figure representing domestic abuse.”
So it surprised some when Depp prevailed in the U.S. case, given plaintiffs here face a much higher bar for proving libel of a public figure. Under American law, a plaintiff in a libel trial has to prove that they were harmed by an entity acting with actual malice, meaning they knew a libelous statement was untrue when they made it.
Although Heard was not named in the British case, she testified over several days as a witness called by the Sun. The British judge ultimately ruled that the allegations against Depp were “substantially true,” writing in a 2020 ruling that “the great majority of alleged assaults … have been proved to the civil standard.”
That might explain why Depp lost in the U.K. even though he was not required to prove the wife beater label was false. Rather, under British law, the publication had to prove that Depp was, in fact, a wife beater.
“If Depp had filed that same case here in the U.S., he would have the burden of persuading the jury that the accusation was false,” said Lee Berlik, a Virginia-based attorney who specializes in defamation law and business litigation.
The distinction is significant because in cases where there is evidence on both sides and the jury can’t determine which party is telling the truth, the party with the burden of proof loses. “It is remarkable that a judge in the U.K. found that the Sun had proven 12 separate acts of ‘wife beating’ by Depp, but in Virginia a jury essentially found zero acts of domestic abuse and that Ms. Heard’s claims to the contrary were basically a ‘hoax,’” Berlik added.
The other difference between the two cases is the mayhem that took place online outside the courtroom. While the U.K. case prompted outsize media coverage, the trial in Virginia took it to another level. The trial was live-streamed, with millions tuning in and dissecting the testimony on social media. “Saturday Night Live” even lampooned it. | 2022-06-02T01:42:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why Johnny Depp lost his libel case in the U.K. but won in the U.S. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/06/01/johnny-depp-libel-law-uk-us/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2022/06/01/johnny-depp-libel-law-uk-us/ |
D.C. Democratic mayoral candidates (from left) Muriel E. Bowser, Robert C. White Jr. and Trayon White Sr. faced off at a Georgetown University/Fox 5 debate Wednesday night. (From left to right: Stefani Reynolds for The Washington Post; Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post/The Washington Post)
Freed from their Zoom squares to stand side-by-side onstage in front of a whooping and chanting audience, D.C.’s Democratic mayoral candidates showed their sharper elbows Wednesday night in what may be their last significant chance to debate each other before the June 21 primary.
Mayor Muriel E. Bowser and her challengers, Council members Robert C. White Jr. and Trayon White Sr., traded barbs as their supporters, packed into Georgetown University’s historic Gaston Hall, called out repeatedly with cheers like “Four more years!” and “I’m with Tray!”
The debate, which aired live on Fox 5, trod much of the same ground that Bowser, Robert White and Trayon White have covered in many candidate forums. But some of the attacks were sharper.
The first 20 minutes of the hour-long debate focused on crime; while Robert White and Trayon White argued that Bowser had been too slow to support violence interrupters and other alternatives to policing, she accused them of reducing police funding in 2020 in a move that was more politically calculated than appropriate to the needs of the city. (The council has since raised the police budget twice.)
“We know what they chose to do was serve an ideology and not the residents of the District of Columbia and making sure that we have the police officers we need,” she said.
On education, Robert White said he offers a bold vision, including “a massive expansion” of career training for high-schoolers who aren’t bound for college and public boarding schools. “Anybody who doesn’t have a sense of urgency has to go,” he said, then adding that money meant to help high-need students was being misdirected because “we have underfunded public education.”
Bowser, who has increased the District’s annual spending on schools to a record high of more than $2 billion, responded, “One thing we have not done in this city, thanks to our taxpayers, is underfunded education.” She added, “The reason why our taxpayers trust us to do it is because we have mayoral accountability and council oversight,” criticizing both of her opponents’ interest in weakening mayoral control of the schools.
Robert White and Trayon White both criticized Bowser’s use of the Housing Production Trust Fund, through which she has spent $1 billion subsidizing housing developments to pay for them to include affordable units.
“We spent almost a billion dollars in the last 10 years on affordable housing, but almost every day I’m getting calls in my office, ‘I can’t find anywhere to live,' ” Trayon White said.
Robert White said he would “stand up to developers” to convince housing providers to build more units priced for working class residents. “What the mayor has done to address affordable housing, she says she spent a lot of money. If you ask me how I fixed a hole in my roof and I say I spent a lot of money, I probably still have a hole in my roof," he said.
Bowser responded, “I think what you heard is we don’t need money for affordable housing? What I’m telling you is what I’ve done, because it takes money to do it. If somebody is telling you they’re going to build housing and they’re not going to have developers and they’re not going to put in public money, they’re not going to have any housing.”
At the conclusion of the debate, Georgetown’s Mo Elleithee asked the candidates about a choice they regret. Robert White and Trayon White each spoke broadly about growing into their roles as council members, while Bowser described “a political regret.”
“My parents always taught me to stand up for myself and defend myself and make sure people respect me. And that led me to oppose a sitting Council member in her reelection," she said. "I don’t regret standing up and defending myself, but I do regret that it got personal.”
In 2018, Bowser campaigned for Dionne Reeder’s unsuccessful bid to unseat Council member Elissa Silverman (I-At Large), who is running for a third term in November and has long had a frosty relationship with Bowser.
Perhaps the biggest applause of the night came when Trayon White denounced the cost of traffic tickets and fines in the District and promised to wipe out some of drivers’ debts. One of the few moments that audience members booed: When Robert White spoke against the prospect of the Washington Commanders building a stadium at the RFK Stadium site. He explained that the land would be better used for housing, and “if anybody believes housing is going to be affordable next to a professional football stadium, they are fooling themselves.”
Robert White tried to make the case that the voters should support someone with big ideas, like his campaign-trail promises to guarantee every resident a job. The District, he said, needs “a forward-thinking mayor, not a reactive mayor. What we have had for the past eight years is a reactive mayor. It is going to require somebody who is bold enough to try new things.”
Bowser offered a competing vision: “What this election is about, it’s about D.C.’s comeback and who do you trust to lead it,” she said. “I keep my promises. I do what I say I’m going to do, and I don’t waffle.” | 2022-06-02T02:43:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C. mayoral candidates meet on TV, with voting underway and passions high - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/dc-mayoral-debate-tv/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/01/dc-mayoral-debate-tv/ |
Christian Pulisic played a strong game against Morocco on Wednesday night in Cincinnati. (Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
CINCINNATI — For three years, through a pandemic, mandatory tournaments and World Cup qualifying, the U.S. men’s national team got its fill of Honduras, Costa Rica and the rest of the region known as Concacaf.
There were two Gold Cups, an inaugural Nations League and 14 World Cup qualifiers stretching from Canada to Panama. The Americans raised two trophies and booked tickets to Qatar late this year.
Soccer’s borders, though, reach far beyond North America, Central America and the Caribbean, and to truly gauge the gains of a young, bold and exciting roster — and to properly prepare for the World Cup — Coach Gregg Berhalter and Co. need to explore other neighborhoods.
“I feel like we’ve played Concacaf teams for the past two years,” midfielder Tyler Adams said on the eve of a 3-0 victory over Morocco on Wednesday at TQL Stadium. He is not far off. Forty-one of the previous 50 matches since early 2019 came against teams from regional territory.
The Americans will play another World Cup entry (Uruguay) on Sunday in Kansas City, Kan.; after two Concacaf matches this month, they will face two Asian teams at European venues in September. (European teams are preoccupied with their own intramural exercises.)
That’s it, and then the World Cup begins in November with group-stage matches against Wales or Ukraine, then England and Iran.
“Concacaf is great, but it’s not the rest of the world, and it’s not the talent we’re going to be facing in our group” at the World Cup, right back Reggie Cannon said. He called it a “huge opportunity for this group to grow and learn and see what we’re up against.”
They passed the first test with mostly high grades, led by Christian Pulisic’s dynamic performance.
“We talked about establishing a baseline for this group, how we can perform against World Cup opponents,” Berhalter said. “The group went out and showed exactly how good we can be but also at times vulnerable. We still know we need to keep improving, and that’s why this game was so good for us.”
In past World Cup cycles, the schedule has been sprinkled with compulsory Concacaf events and broader exams. The latest four-year whirl, though, was marred by pandemic travel restrictions.
When play resumed, most items on the calendar remained the same: the Gold Cup every other summer and the qualifying voyage. But the dates typically set aside for friendlies against teams from around the globe had to be filled with the Nations League.
The Nations what? It’s another regional competition, this one designed in part to provide additional activity for smaller countries that otherwise struggle to arrange matches.
So June 10, the Americans are stuck playing Grenada (population 113,000, rank 170) in Austin before visiting No. 74 El Salvador on June 14. Those games are beneficial to test players vying for the last World Cup roster slots — and little else.
Knowing that, Berhalter will emphasize the first two matches.
“We’re really going to have to value that and compete in those games,” he said, “and see where we stack up.”
Within Concacaf, the Americans received stiff competition across several competitions from archrival Mexico, the No. 9 team in FIFA’s rankings. Only two others in the region crack the top 50: Costa Rica (31st) and Canada (38th).
Until Morocco, the last U.S. opponent outside of Concacaf that ended up qualifying for the 2022 World Cup was Switzerland in May 2021. (Qatar was a Gold Cup guest last summer, but as the World Cup host it received an automatic berth.) In 2019, Ecuador and Uruguay were on the agenda.
The last stretch of heavy lifting came in 2018, before the Nations League launched, when U.S. opponents included France, Brazil, England and Italy.
Morocco is ranked 24th, nine slots behind the United States, but employs players with big clubs, such as Paris Saint-Germain, Sevilla and Benfica. In other words, it was a good test for the Americans, who rose to the challenge despite the injury absence of four key figures (Gio Reyna, Sergiño Dest, Miles Robinson and Chris Richards) and a recovering regular on the bench (Weston McKennie).
After weathering several threats, the United States went ahead in the 26th minute on a lovely sequence.
Center back Walker Zimmerman targeted Pulisic with a long ball. The Chelsea star looked back over his right shoulder to follow its flight, then settled it with a cotton-soft touch. He cut the ball back on two defenders and laid it off to the onrushing Brenden Aaronson for an 11-yard one-timer.
Six minutes later, Tim Weah capitalized on a pocket of space and ripped a 23-yard shot that handcuffed goalkeeper Yassine Bounou, who made contact but allowed it to fly into the net.
After intermission, Pulisic continued to dazzle and Matt Turner made a fine reflex save. Joe Scally, Haji Wright and Malik Tillman debuted. Wright converted a penalty kick, drawn by Pulisic, who initially stepped to the spot before bouncing the ball to his former youth national teammate.
“The selflessness of giving Haji the penalty kick in that moment — not needing the spotlight, not needing to score the goal, wanting to put his teammate in a great position,” Berhalter said. “When you have leaders like that, you’re lucky.”
Morocco’s Selim Amallah missed a late penalty kick after a dubious call against Scally. And a U.S. team in need of fresh challenges capped a night of promising qualities.
“It’s nice to have the weight of qualifying off our back, and we’re ready to go to this World Cup,” Pulisic said. “And now it’s just about preparing. ... We wanted to see it like a World Cup game.” | 2022-06-02T03:31:36Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Christian Pulisic lifts USMNT past Morocco - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/01/usmnt-morocco-concacaf/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/01/usmnt-morocco-concacaf/ |
Platinum Jubilee live updates Crowds gather to mark Elizabeth II’s 70 years as queen
What is ‘Trooping the Colour’?
What is a ‘jubilee’?
How Britain is celebrating the Platinum Jubilee
People have been amassing in front of Buckingham Palace, some of them camping out overnight, ahead of the queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations. (Chris J. Ratcliffe/Bloomberg)
LONDON — Britain is celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee, her 70 years on the throne, with a huge dollop of pomp and pageantry.
Here’s what to watch on Thursday:
The celebration begins with a military parade in London, “Trooping the Colour,” to honor the queen’s formal birthday.
Members of the royal family will gather on the Buckingham Palace balcony at the end of the parade — and there’s been much speculation about who will be there and who won’t be.
After dark, “beacon masters” will light 3,200 fires on hilltops, castle walls, country estates and farm fields.
Queen Elizabeth II attends first Jubilee event, gets standing ovation
Prince William takes center stage at Queen Elizabeth II’s jubilee rehearsal
By Adela Suliman12:08 a.m.
“Trooping the Colour” is the annual military parade, typically in June, to honor the monarch’s official birthday.
It has been a central feature of the British royal calendar for more than 260 years and sees a huge display of over 1,400 parading soldiers, many clad in iconic red uniforms and black bearskin hats. More than 200 horses and 400 musicians take part in the pageant, a display of British military pomp and fanfare to celebrate the monarch — technically the head of the British armed forces.
“The colour” (or “color,” for Americans) refers to the “regimental colour” — a flag unique to each military unit that historically served as a rallying point on the battlefield.
Except for during the pandemic, which forced a pared-down version at Windsor Castle, the parade takes place in central London. The procession starts at Buckingham Palace and heads down the Mall to Horse Guards Parade, as the queen and other senior royals carry out an inspection of the troops. The queen would traditionally ride with the military parade on horseback but in recent years has shifted to driving alongside in a carriage.
Trooping the Colour normally ends with Royal Air Force planes zooming over, while the royal family watches from the palace balcony.
A jubilee is an anniversary celebration with Judeo-Christian origins that was adapted to mark milestones of a British monarch.
The biblical book of Leviticus commands that people “shall sanctify the fiftieth year … for it is the year of jubilee.”
Records from the 14th century show that King Edward III celebrated 50 years on the throne, his Golden Jubilee, with a week-long joust and a procession from the Tower of London.
Many of today’s jubilee traditions can be traced to the reign of George III — the king known for losing the American colonies and his struggle with mental health. The beginning of his 50th year on the throne was marked with church services, feasts, fireworks and souvenirs.
When Queen Victoria reached her Diamond Jubilee (60 years) in 1897, there was a grand procession in London and a church service of thanksgiving at St. Paul’s Cathedral. According to Britain’s Royal Collection, Victoria wrote in her journal: “No one ever, I believe, has met with such an ovation as was given to me, passing through those 6 miles of streets.” She added: “The cheering was quite deafening & every face seemed to be filled with real joy. I was much moved and gratified.”
Queen Elizabeth II, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, is the first to celebrate a Platinum Jubilee, marking 70 years on the throne.
By Ellen Francis12:06 a.m.
Trooping the Colour: On Thursday morning, 1,400 officers and soldiers, 200 horses and 400 musicians will participate in a parade that has marked the official birthday of the British monarch for more than 260 years. The ceremony will conclude with a Royal Air Force flyover watched by the royal family from the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
Beacon Lighting: After the sun sets on Thursday night, more than 3,000 beacons will be ignited across Britain, recalling an early communication system used to warn of a coming invasion.
Church Service at St Paul’s Cathedral: The largest church bell in the country will ring before a Friday morning service attended by members of the royal family.
Derby Day: Some of the queen’s own horses are expected to compete on Saturday at the Epsom Derby horse race. The queen, though, may miss the races to attend a birthday party for her great-granddaughter.
Party at the Palace: A Saturday night concert at Buckingham Palace will open with a performance by British rock band Queen, close with Diana Ross, and in between feature performers including Alicia Keys, Andrea Bocelli and cast members of “Hamilton” and “Six.”
The Big Lunch: An annual get-together for communities around the country will celebrate the jubilee on Sunday. Tens of thousands of people have registered to host neighborhood gatherings. And there will be an attempt to break the record for the world’s longest street party.
Platinum Pageant: The Westminster Abbey bells will chime Sunday afternoon, as they did on the day of the queen’s coronation, to kick off another parade — this one telling the story of the queen and her country over the past 70 years. | 2022-06-02T04:16:08Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Platinum Jubilee live updates: Crowds gather to mark Elizabeth II’s 70 years as queen - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/02/platinum-jubilee-queen-elizabeth-live-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/02/platinum-jubilee-queen-elizabeth-live-updates/ |
The United States has long served as a place of refuge for those fleeing repressive governments. But as authoritarianism creeps across the world and social media grants dissidents a border-crossing megaphone, exiled activists are facing increasingly aggressive blowback from the countries they fled.
In a new report released Thursday, pro-democracy think tank and watchdog Freedom House said it had recorded 85 new incidents of “public, direct, physical incidents of transnational repression” in 2021, bringing the total recorded between the start of 2014 and the end of last year to 735.
Even those living in the world’s preeminent superpower aren’t spared. Iran, China, Egypt, Russia, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and others have targeted those in the United States, Freedom House found, and were “increasingly and more aggressively disregarding US laws to threaten, harass, surveil, stalk, and even plot to physically harm people across the country.”
The act of transnational repression goes back at least decades: During the Cold War, the Soviet Union frequently crossed borders to assassinate so-called “enemies of the state.” But the way some governments act now has become “brazen, even outlandish,” Freedom House’s Yana Gorokhovskaia told me in a phone call.
Autocratic governments were cooperating to promote the alarming idea, Gorokhovskaia said, that “people do not have the right to criticize those in power, no matter where they are in the world — not only at home but once they leave home as well.”
Transnational repression came to Brooklyn last summer. Masih Alinejad, an Iranian American journalist and activist, was the apparent target of a plot that could have seen her abducted from a waterfront neighborhood in New York City and taken out of the country, possibly by speedboat, for an uncertain fate.
“This is not some far-fetched movie plot. We allege a group, backed by the Iranian government, conspired to kidnap a U.S.-based journalist here on our soil and forcibly return her to Iran,” FBI Assistant Director William F. Sweeney Jr. said in a statement announcing the plot last July.
Much of the harassment that targets dissidents on U.S. soil is less dramatic but no less powerful. Gorokhovskaia noted that the incidents counted for the report this year didn’t include the subtler forms of pressure, from online abuse and hacking claims to blackmail via threats to relatives and friends still living back in their home country.
In 2020, a New York City police officer originally from Tibet was charged with acting as an illegal agent of the Chinese government and using his position to collect information about the Tibetan diaspora. The officer, Baimadajie Angwang, had been granted asylum in the United States at the age of 17 after claiming he would be tortured if he returned to China.
Freedom House interviewed a dozen people from other places now living in the United States about how the threat of transnational repression had influenced them. “When you don’t feel safe in your house in the U.S., that’s a disaster,” Sardar Pashaei, a former wrestler and activist from Iran, told the report’s authors. “That’s a shame. … Where else on this planet should we go to feel safe?”
Gorokhovskaia said: “When you talk about authoritarianism, I think often we tend to talk about it as a problem over there. This is a problem right here, and it’s happening to people who live in this country, many of whom are citizens or permanent residents. It really limits their exercise of rights that I think most of us think are ordinary and fundamental.”
The U.S. government has taken some steps to push back against the problem. The Justice Department has begun indicting individuals in connection with transnational repression while the FBI has been tracking the crimes and published a website that gives victims advice and raises awareness.
But there is more that could be done. Freedom House points to the difficult path to lawful immigration status that exists for many immigrant communities, even those that have legitimate claims for asylum. The United States is also a diplomatic ally of some of the countries targeting dissidents abroad, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Riyadh’s attacks on foreign critics were brought to international attention by the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a contributor to The Washington Post and a U.S. permanent resident, in Istanbul. But the United States has sought to repair relations with Saudi Arabia in the years since; it never moved to personally sanction Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
For Saudi dissidents in the United States, this pragmaticism sent a message. “MBS was not forgiven, but he was not sanctioned. He was not included,” one unnamed Saudi in the United States told Freedom House. “Right after that, things quickly changed for us. … It seemed like there was a reaction from the Saudi government that, okay, there’s no consequences. We can do whatever we want.”
By its nature, transnational repression is hard for any one country to fix. International bodies like Interpol are part of the problem, with countries like Turkey, Russia and China using the crime-fighting body to issue Red Notices against dissidents and exiles, Freedom House writes, that allow them to reach people abroad.
There has been some progress. Congress passed the Transnational Repression Accountability and Prevention (TRAP) Act in late 2021, calling on the United States to use its influence as Interpol’s largest funder to better influence the body. In March, the governments of Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the United States called on Interpol to suspend Russian authorities’ access to systems after the invasion of Ukraine.
Freedom House calls for more to be done, with like-minded governments working together to come to an international standard of transnational repression and working with technology companies and bodies like the United Nations to limit its impact.
It won’t be easy, but the problem is unlikely to go away soon. As Freedom House and other bodies have noted, authoritarianism has been spreading in recent years and democracy declining. But the flip side of growing transnational repression is that social media and online communications pose new threats to autocratic governments.
“There have always been people in exile and people who have remained engaged in the politics of their homeland from exile. But it’s undeniable that people’s voices are amplified by being online, by social media platforms,” Gorokhovskaia said. “There is this feedback loop. They can stay in touch with what’s happening at home, and they can be advocates on behalf of causes and movements at home from abroad.” | 2022-06-02T04:16:14Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Foreign governments are targeting dissidents on U.S. soil - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/02/transnational-repression-report-china-russia/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/02/transnational-repression-report-china-russia/ |
Redcar Beach with the shuttered Teesside Steelworks in the background in 2017. Photographer: Matthew Lloyd/Bloomberg (Photographer: Matthew Lloyd/Bloomberg)
One of the many advantages of monarchy is that it provides a handy way of marking the passage of time. Think of “Henrician England” or “Edwardian Britain” and you instantly summon up a discrete era, captured in images and quotations. But what about Elizabeth II’s Britain? The Queen has been on the throne for so long, and the pace of change during her reign has been so rapid, that the phrase doesn’t really convey anything. What do the dour 1950s have in common with the swinging 60s? Or the crisis-ridden 70s with the booming 90s? Other than, of course, the fact that Elizabeth Windsor sat on the throne?
The Britain that the 25-year-old Elizabeth inherited when her father, George VI, died on Feb. 6, 1952, was astonishingly different from the Britain that is celebrating her platinum jubilee — not so much “a foreign country,” in L.P. Hartley’s wistful phrase, but “a far-off continent” (and one that was habitually referred to as “England,” as if the regional appendages didn’t matter). The country was dominated by a tiny “establishment” — a collection of intermarried families who dominated the Conservative Party (which held power without interruption from 1951 to 1964), Oxbridge, the public schools, the Church, the upper professions and the armed services. Though the Queen was at the heart of the establishment, she was also a rare female in a resolutely homosocial world.
Britain still thought of itself as an Empire, though, in fact, George VI was the last British king to have the formal title of “emperor.” His daughter’s coronation oath was deliberately vague about what countries she ruled over, pronouncing her “Queen of this realm and of all her other realms and territories,” a vagueness that led the young Tory MP, Enoch Powell, to deliver an agonized speech in the House of Commons. It also continued to think of itself as a Great Power. The Coronation Naval Review at Spithead, in June 1953, featured more than 300 ships, including representatives from the US, the USSR and France, headed by the battleship HMS Vanguard. Not to be outdone, the Royal Air Force later responded with an overhead display of 600 planes, including prototypes of three V-Bombers.
Yet this establishment-dominated and imperial-minded country was also, at root, a white working-class one. Some 80% of the population worked in manual occupations — coalmining and steelmaking were still big industries — with distinctive clothes (cloth caps for men) and branded on their tongues with distinct local accents. George Orwell’s famous description of his countrymen as “gentle”— by which he meant socially conservative and instinctively law-abiding — continued to apply. In 1955, the anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer reported that the English were “gentle, courteous and orderly… you hardly ever see a fight in a bar (a not uncommon spectacle in the rest of Europe or the USA)… football crowds are as orderly as a church meeting.”
This public respectability was reinforced by the power of the establishment, usually by tacit agreement but sometimes by legal force. The BBC did not broadcast anything “derogatory to political institutions,” making a particular point of banning impersonations of leading public figures. Magistrates ordered the destruction of more than 1,500 “obscene” works of fiction, including Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857). During the “Lady Chatterley Trial,” when Penguin Books was prosecuted for publishing D.H. Lawrence’s rather dire bodice-ripper, the prosecuting council asked the jury whether it was a book “you would… wish your wife or your servants to read.”
The country that the Queen inherited was too much of a balancing act to remain as it was: elitist but proletarian, gentle but arrogant, great but also fading. But it was transformed not just by the logic of these contradictions but also by four powerful forces.
The first was the rise of the meritocracy, the title of a book published by Michael Young in 1958. The “rise” had been going on since the introduction of open competition into the civil service and Oxbridge colleges in the middle of the 19th century, as Young’s account made clear. But hitherto the “rise” had meant recruiting a few exceptional children into the establishment. What Young’s book heralded was the meritocracy’s capture of the establishment. The Conservative Party was led by two grammar school products in a row: Edward Heath and Margaret Thatcher. Establishment types such as Harold Macmillan and Quintin Hogg were mocked into irrelevance by a new generation of satirists such as Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Women flooded into the elite professions and, rather more slowly, into the upper ranks of business. Being “self-made” was transformed from a mark of opprobrium to the highest compliment. Thatcher’s government added entrepreneurs to grammar school-educated civil servants and academics as solvents of the old society of rank and degree.
The second factor was the rise of the permissive society, a phrase coined by the flamboyant and gay Tory MP, Norman St John Stevas. The government began to get out of the business of micro-managing morality even before it got out of the business of micromanaging the economy, led by a Labour home secretary, Roy Jenkins, but also cheered by liberal Conservatives. “Sexual intercourse began in 1963,” in Philip Larkin’s famous phrase, two years after the “the pill” was introduced. Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1967. The BBC embraced not just satire but a more aggressive interviewing style, eventually treating politicians not so much as grandees but as criminals in the dock. Children whose births were registered by only one parent rose from 4% in the 1960s to 24% in the 1990s.
The third is harder to name: Call it “deindustrialization” if you’re on the left, “the rise of the entrepreneurial society” if you’re on the right, “the creation of a post-industrial society” if you’re a technocratic. Britain has arguably seen the biggest economic transformation of any country in Western Europe during the Queen’s reign. Gone are the big industrial blocks along with the trade unions that represented, or, as the 1970s wore on, misrepresented them. In their place is a service economy that boasts some of the world’s best-paid knowledge workers at the top but also an army of just-in-time casual workers. This economic revolution put an end to the bitter industrial strife of the late 1970s. But it also provided the material for new strife — the alienation of the former industrial north manifested in Brexit and a Scottish independence movement that could yet succeed in dividing the Queen’s realm.
Britain’s agonies over which economic model to adopt are only matched by its agonies over relations with the rest of the world. The country has been thoroughly transformed by globalization. In the 80s, the City of London regained its Victorian status as a global hub of finance, though this time it had to share its position with New York. The number of foreign-born workers doubled between 1997 and 2007 to 3.8 million, the biggest influx of immigrants in British history. For all their disagreements Tony Blair and Boris Johnson both championed “global Britain.”
But what kind of globalization did people actually want?
Some thought that the only way that Britain could continue to punch above its weight was to join the what was then called the European Economic Community, or, having joined, play a bigger role in the European Union. “Europe is today the only route through which Britain can… maintain its historical role as a global player,” Blair pronounced. Others said it needed to revive the old Commonwealth in the guise of a new Anglosphere. Still others declared it should retreat from formal ties and play the role of a buccaneering power in a world of giant global blocks, tied to nobody but free to act anywhere.
The result was a mess of a policy: First joining the EEC on the (deliberately) mistaken grounds that it was nothing more than a common market and then, after the most divisive debate of the Queen’s reign, leaving without taking the trouble to work out the details of our relationship with the EU, let alone the rest of the world. It is sufficient comment on Johnson’s prime ministership that he has decided to mark the Queen’s 70 years on the throne with the re-introduction of imperial measures.
Such wrenching change might have torn apart other countries: it’s impossible to look at Donald Trump’s reaction to the storming of the Capitol or the wider Republican Party’s response to the loss of the 2020 presidential election without worrying about the future of the Republic. It certainly caused agonies in Britain, particularly during the miner’s strike of the 1980s but also during the Brexit debates more recently. But Britain has, nevertheless, survived wrenching change without losing either its balance or its distinctive character.
There are lots of reasons for this. The transformation of the establishment into a meritocracy has prevented the formation of an alienated intelligentsia. The great political parties have shown a genius for reform. The Tories have absorbed immigrants (two of the three great offices of state, the Treasury and the Home Office, are held by ethnic minorities). The Labour Party has adapted to a new economy — despite a disastrous relapse under Jeremy Corbyn. Oxbridge dons continue to dine by candlelight even while illuminating exciting new areas of knowledge. Barristers still wear horse-hair wigs even as they debate complicated pieces of corporate regulation.
The Queen must claim a good deal of the credit — not only by providing a point of continuity in a world that often seems to be spinning out of control but also by showing that ancient institutions can subtly adapt to change without losing any of their essential magic. | 2022-06-02T05:46:28Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Multiplicity of Britains Under One Queen - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/a-multiplicity-of-britains-under-one-queen/2022/06/02/ab7b3ccc-e231-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/a-multiplicity-of-britains-under-one-queen/2022/06/02/ab7b3ccc-e231-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Analysis by Howard Chua-Eoan | Bloomberg
Princess Margaret, Prince Harry, Princess Alexandra, Prince William, Diana, Princess of Wales, Prince Charles, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, left to right, on the balcony of Buckingham Palace following the Trooping the Colour in 1989. (Getty Images)
When I moved to London from New York in 2018, I lived in Tower Hill. It might as well have been Wolf Hall. On a corner by my building was the spot where Henry VIII had Thomas More and Thomas Cromwell executed. Across the street was the Tower of London, where two of Henry’s wives, Anne Boleyn and her cousin Catherine Howard, lost their heads.
Among the other privileged folk decapitated in the neighborhood: Robert Devereux, the favorite courtier of Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth I; also, her cousin Thomas Howard, who dallied seditiously with another royal relative and rival, Mary, Queen of Scots (who went to the chopping block years later and much farther away). I told friends I wouldn’t be surprised to see blood seeping from the ground after a long rain.
You’re predisposed to magical realism when you get to Britain because the acts of the kings and queens have been euhemerized into mythology. Shakespeare, gunboat diplomacy, colonial education and imperialist commerce have made them object lessons and cautionary tales, as well as entertainment the world over.
Yet the long, benign reign of Queen Elizabeth II has imparted a glow of soft power to the crown. Her seven decades on the throne have bent the arc of royal history away from centuries of mayhem and skulduggery toward more mellow soap operas. The lives and loves of the Windsors stream into our consciousness via Netflix, HBO, Hollywood and YouTube — their tried, if not altogether true, plots get told over and over again, usually twinkling with tiaras and dripping with diamonds.
I gave up resisting the monarchy a long time ago. Not that I had much choice. I was the duty editor at Time magazine the weekend of Aug. 30, 1997, when news broke of a car crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris. Only a tiny band of magazine staffers were in town, and we unhappy few dashed to the brink of deadline to tell the doleful tale of Diana.
And, so, the royals were added to my other beats: world news, politics, religion, crime. I became a monarchivist, joining the army of hacks who examine royalty’s every jot and tittle. We served up stories heavy with insinuation because that was all most of us really had — weighing rumors in titillating detail only to dismiss them; seeing motives and conspiracies in the color of frocks, guest lists at weddings, the behavior of corgis and Rottweilers.
Old interviews always provided new fodder. “I’d like to be a queen of people’s hearts, in people’s hearts,” Diana told the BBC, “but I don’t see myself being the queen of this country.” Was she aware that English history had a previous Queen of Hearts? That was Elizabeth Stuart, the popular daughter of James I of England (VI of Scotland), who was briefly queen of Bohemia before enemies deposed her husband. She then lived in exile in the Netherlands, away from the court of her father and brother (who, by the way, also lost his head), even though she was more beloved in England than they were.
Did Diana know whose mantle she was assuming?
Actually, Diana’s death was more dangerous to the Queen than obscure historical allusions. As the monarch hesitated to mourn her wayward but popular ex-daughter-in-law — while the realm heaped flowers in tribute to Diana in front of Buckingham Palace — the House of Windsor appeared to be on the verge of tipping over.
But we know the rest of the story. The Queen listened to the advice of Prime Minister Tony Blair, swallowed her pride and retook control of the narrative: She lowered the flag to mourn Diana, she dimmed her own majesty to eulogize the exile who had displaced her as the most famous woman on earth — and, by doing so, she reclaimed the title. Power gets you what you want, but sometimes you get what you need by relenting.
The dynasty has had a lot to atone for — mostly bad behavior by its menfolk. Elizabeth’s father started the apology tour. Loyal to his memory, she continued his mission. The Queen has so far always managed to master the public waves of emotion that threaten the family.
Somewhere in my apartment in New York City is an envelope containing a 26-year-old dehydrated rose. A friend plucked it from among the flowers that covered London in mourning for Diana. It’s probably next to my copy of a souvenir program of her marriage to Charles. And that’s likely in the box of books on the Windsors and other ruling families that I brought home after I retired from Time in 2013. I wrote an obituary for Prince Philip just before I left. It finally got to run in April 2021.
I only ever saw Diana once, in the early 1990s during a trip to London. Rolls-Royces pulled out of the Imperial War College and in one car, two women half-rotated their wrists in the style the Queen perfected: Diana and Anne, the Princess Royal. It was Remembrance Day.
I have never met the Queen or been in a place where she was even visible from a distance. But I regularly recite the prayer for the Queen’s Majesty in the Book of Common Prayer: “Endue her plenteously with heavenly gifts; grant her in health and wealth long to live; strengthen her that she may vanquish and overcome all her enemies...”
God save the Queen? Thank you. But the Queen can save herself.
Howard Chua-Eoan is the international editor of Bloomberg Opinion. | 2022-06-02T05:46:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Confessions of an Accidental Monarchist - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/confessions-of-an-accidental-monarchist/2022/06/02/abd106c0-e231-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/confessions-of-an-accidental-monarchist/2022/06/02/abd106c0-e231-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
FILE - In this image from video, Rep. Mike Levin, D-Calif., speaks on the floor of the House of Representatives at the Capitol in Washington on April 23, 2020. California is a heavily Democratic state, but the Republican Party retains pockets of strength in U.S. House districts that will be among the country’s marquee elections in the fight to control Congress. (House Television via AP, File) (Uncredited/House Television)
LOS ANGELES — California’s primary on Tuesday will set the stage for a November election where a handful of U.S. House seats in the Los Angeles area and Central Valley will help determine which party controls Congress. | 2022-06-02T05:46:58Z | www.washingtonpost.com | California US House races could help tilt power in Congress - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/california-us-house-races-could-help-tilt-power-in-congress/2022/06/02/40a8fa72-e233-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/california-us-house-races-could-help-tilt-power-in-congress/2022/06/02/40a8fa72-e233-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
In this image from a video provided by Sky News Australia, Nick Coyle, partner of journalist Cheng Lei who has been detained in China, speaks in a recent interview with Sky News Australia in Sydney. Coyle said Thursday, June 2, 2022 she is being denied the chance to speak with her family and consular staff, and her health is declining due to a poor prison diet. (Sky News Australia via AP) (Uncredited/Sky News Australia) | 2022-06-02T05:47:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Journalist detained in China denied calls, partner says - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/journalist-detained-in-china-denied-calls-partner-says/2022/06/02/53c2739e-e234-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/journalist-detained-in-china-denied-calls-partner-says/2022/06/02/53c2739e-e234-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Russia-Ukraine war live updates Street battles in Severodonetsk; Kyiv frustrates Kremlin’s grip elsewhere
Lawmaker: Russian-occupied areas could hold accession referendums soon
Updates from key battlefields: Russia’s focus on Severodonetsk is creating ‘vulnerabilities,’ analysts say
Photos: Ukraine celebrates Children’s Day in wartime
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said June 1 that Ukraine gave assurances it will not use long-range U.S. weapons systems against targets in Russian territory. (Video: Reuters)
Ukraine is suffering significant setbacks in parts of the country’s east, amid grueling street-by-street battles in the key city of Severodonetsk, which appears to be mainly under Russian control. A spokesman for Ukraine’s National Guard said Kyiv is “making every effort to hold back the enemy,” even as up to 100 of its fighters are killed daily. “We’re not seeing the Ukrainian defenses buckle. They’re hanging on, but it is a grinding fight,” a top Pentagon official said.
Ukrainian counteroffensives continue to frustrate Russia near Kherson, a southern city captured by the Kremlin in the early days of the war. Kherson is the only part of Ukraine where Russia controls ground on the west bank of the Dnieper River, according to the Institute for the Study of War. If Russia holds on to that territory, it’ll be well placed to push forward with future attacks; likewise, Ukrainian forces will be better positioned to defend themselves should they regain control of it the ISW said. Ukrainian operations have also pushed Russian troops farther from the city of Kharkiv in the northeast.
Russia’s European neighbors are stepping up their response to the war. Germany said it would deliver the most modern air defense system it has to Ukraine, while Danes voted to deepen defense relations with the European Union, in the latest sign of strengthening security ties on the continent after Russia’s unprovoked invasion. Ireland’s Senate also passed a resolution recognizing the invasion as an act of genocide.
Two hundred and forty three children have been killed by the war, with more than 200,000 deported to Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
Russia’s Gazprom said it cut off gas deliveries to a major Danish energy company that had refused to pay in rubles.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg will meet President Biden Thursday. He will convene diplomats from Turkey, Finland and Sweden “in the coming days” to push ahead with Helsinki and Stockholm’s applications to join the bloc, which have been stalled by Ankara.
Russia accused the United States of escalating tensions by providing advanced multiple-launch rocket systems to Ukraine. Washington rejected the allegation and said Moscow was solely responsible for the war.
Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine could soon hold referendums on joining the Russian Federation, a top lawmaker in Moscow said Wednesday, a step that would lay the groundwork for their annexation.
Officials in Ukraine, the United States and elsewhere have warned for weeks that Russia may try to absorb the swaths of territory its troops have taken since the invasion began, along with separatist-backed regions in the country’s east.
Leonid Slutsky, the chair of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s parliament, told the state media outlet Tass that such referendums could appear as soon as the summer in the Donbas provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, along with the southern region of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia in the southeast.
“I do not want to predict, but I can guess that initiatives to hold referendums in those regions may appear very soon, and they may take place, quite possibly, in the summer,” Slutsky said.
The Kremlin has falsely framed its war in Ukraine as a “liberation” effort, and Russian officials have employed similar rhetoric in discussing the fate of the occupied regions. However, in several Russian-held cities, Ukrainians have carried out defiant demonstrations protesting the invading forces, stunning displays that came despite the associated danger.
In early May, Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said Russia would probably hold sham referendums in the Donbas and Kherson as a pretext to formally seize the areas.
Severodonetsk: In an intelligence update Wednesday morning, the British Defense Ministry said that “over half of the town is likely now occupied by Russian forces, including Chechen fighters.” Serhiy Hadai, Luhansk’s regional governor, said that “most of Severodonetsk” — perhaps as much as 70 percent — was under Russian rule. The city has been cut off from central sources of water, gas and electricity, he said, and near-constant shelling has made evacuation and humanitarian aid impossible.
Kharkiv region: Kremlin forces have been prevented from seizing Ukraine’s second-largest city, with Ukrainian operations pushing the Russians almost out of artillery range of the city and stopping Russian advances from Izyum, to the southeast. But Kremlin troops occupy about one-third of the wider Kharkiv region, according to the regional military administrator.
Kherson region: Moscow’s focus on seizing Severodonetsk and Donbas is creating “vulnerabilities for Russia” in this pivotal region, where Ukrainian counter-offensives continue, the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, said. Kherson is critical terrain because it is the only part of Ukraine where Russian forces hold ground on the west bank of the Dnipro River, ISW’s analysts said. The city of Kherson fell under Russian occupation in the early days of the war. If Moscow holds onto it, it’ll be in a strong position once fighting stops to launch future invasions; likewise, if Kyiv regains Kherson, it’ll be in a stronger position to defend itself.
Lviv: Five people were wounded when a Russian missile hit railway infrastructure in this city not far from the Polish border, an official with the Interior Ministry, Anton Gerashchenko, wrote on Telegram. He said it was “an attempt to interrupt the western supply of weapons and fuel to Ukraine.”
Odessa region: Russia is “trying to intensify air reconnaissance” in the Odessa area, the head of the regional military administration, Sergey Bratchuk, said on Telegram on Wednesday. Odessa is the only major Black Sea port still under Ukraine’s control, and Russia is maintaining a blockade of grain exports from the area, threatening global food supplies.
Bryan Pietsch and Reis Thebault contributed to this report.
By Annabelle Timsit2:00 a.m.
Wednesday is the International Day for the Protection of Children in Ukraine and many other former Soviet countries. In past years, children may have marked the occasion with concerts and outdoor games, but this year some made gifts for Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines, as others hid from the fighting.
Photos from Bucha, where Russian forces were accused of committing war crimes during their month-long occupation of the normally quiet suburb of Kyiv, show children making “embroidered hearts and paper birds for soldiers on the front line,” according to the Getty photo service.
Ukrainian officials have said there is little cause to celebrate. The war has left 5.2 million children in need of humanitarian assistance, according to the United Nations, and has disrupted children’s lives and education.
Since Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion, at least 262 children have been killed and 415 injured in Ukraine, according to UNICEF, the U.N. children’s agency, citing confirmed figures that the United Nations acknowledges are incomplete and much lower than the actual tolls. | 2022-06-02T06:38:40Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Latest Russia-Ukraine war news: Live updates - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/02/russia-ukraine-war-news-live-updates/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/02/russia-ukraine-war-news-live-updates/ |
Serhiy Morgunov
The Central Analytical Laboratory at Ukraine's Chernobyl nuclear power plant site, where expensive equipment was stolen or destroyed by Russians during their one-month occupation. (Kasia Strek/Panos Pictures for The Washington Post)
CHERNOBYL, Ukraine — Six hundred ninety-eight computers. 344 vehicles. 1,500 radiation dosimeters. Irreplaceable software. Almost every piece of firefighting equipment.
The list of what Russia’s occupying forces stole, blew up or riddled with bullets in and around Chernobyl’s laboratories is still being compiled.
While the catastrophe that many feared has been avoided — war unleashing radiation across the region from the site of the world’s worst nuclear disaster in 1986 — officials at the Chernobyl plant are taking stock of Russia’s capricious and chaotic month here, in which nine of their colleagues were killed and five were kidnapped.
“I cannot say that they have caused damage to mankind, but certainly great economic damage to Ukraine,” said Mykola Bespaly, 58, director of the site’s Central Analytical Laboratory, sitting in a lecture hall defaced by Russian graffiti.
The enormous nuclear station in Chernobyl no longer produces power, but before the invasion nearly 6,000 workers still monitored the lasting effects of the disastrous meltdown more than three decades ago, as well as processing spent nuclear fuel from other plants in Ukraine and Europe.
Located just a few miles from the Belarusian border, Chernobyl was one of the first places occupied by Russian troops. Yevhen Kramarenko, the director of the “exclusion zone” — a thousand-square-mile area where radiation levels remain high and public access is limited — said that on the first day of the invasion, a Russian general presented himself as the new leader of the station, and introduced employees from Rosatom, Russia’s state nuclear agency.
“I believe that at the time when they came,” Kramarenko said, “they planned to be there permanently, they planned to take control for a long time.”
In the days before the invasion, all but a few hundred employees were evacuated. Those who stayed worked shifts lasting hundreds of hours under Russian supervision, often not resting for days while trying to keep the station safe and systems running.
Meanwhile, the station’s equipment and information were being systematically stolen or destroyed, said Kramarenko. Now that he’s back in charge, he’s been checking on some of the stolen equipment that had been fitted with GPS trackers. Some are still transmitting location data.
“We see that part of it is located on the territory of Belarus, along the border. And part moves around the territory of Belarus — Gomel, Minsk, other places,” he said.
All in all, he estimates the cost of replacing what was lost at more than $135 million. The software, however, was custom-made for the station and is irreplaceable. Bespaly said some of his laboratory’s most important work — monitoring radiation levels across the exclusion zone for signs of spikes — is nearly impossible without it.
“Now it is not possible to provide reliable information, whether the equipment is in working condition or not, because there is no software,” he said. “The Russians will not be able to use it because the software is unique, made specially for our devices.”
Even before the occupation, the station had a post-apocalyptic air. It is situated in a dense forest, swarming with mosquitoes and gnats. Pripyat, the city where employees lived before the disaster, is now being reconquered by nature.
A huge steel and concrete “sarcophagus” covers the site of the meltdown. Under its dome, 200 tons of lava-like nuclear fuel, 30 tons of highly contaminated dust and 16 tons of uranium and plutonium continue to release high levels of radiation.
In the nearby labs, sites once sterile and filled with fluorescent lights and the sound of mechanical whirring, there are now stains, burn marks and debris strewn about. Some buildings were entirely destroyed.
A few technicians have returned to work. They showed visiting reporters videos on their phones taken as they reentered their workplaces and found them in complete shambles, narrating with shock and grief each newly discovered piece of destroyed equipment.
“I’ve been working here since May 1, 1986, and everything that I was working on for 30 years was spoiled and plundered,” said Leonid Bohdan, 59, head of the lab’s spectrometry and radiochemistry department. He had interacted with Rosatom officials in the past — even traveling to Moscow in 2013 for a conference. Now he feels an intense rage toward his Russian counterparts, whom he accuses of destroying Chernobyl out of jealousy.
“We will restore everything. It will all work again,” he said. “But this is as if someone came to your house, saw that everything is well and beautiful, and therefore s---s on your white bed. They are jealous that we can do something.”
Bohdan, Bespaly and Kramarenko expressed skepticism that Rosatom officials took software or equipment from Chernobyl for their own purposes. The Russians would know they couldn’t use it anyway, they said, and so the most likely explanation was that the destruction was punitive.
Another possibility, they said, was that Russian nuclear officials had begun to believe the Kremlin’s propaganda in the lead-up to the invasion, which claimed falsely that Ukraine was working with Western powers to develop a nuclear weapon. While the officials at Chernobyl found it hard to believe that their Rosatom counterparts would ignore all they knew about the Chernobyl plant — which their Soviet predecessors built — they acknowledged propaganda’s immense power, especially in wartime.
What’s at risk in Chernobyl
“When I saw [the propaganda], I laughed — although the situation is not funny,” said Bespaly. “My wife also works in the laboratory — we both looked at each other, there were no words.”
Over the coming months, Bespaly expects work to slowly gather steam again, though a full restoration won’t happen until martial law is lifted. For now, officials are working on better evacuation plans in case of another invasion. Russian troops have begun building up a presence again along the border near Chernobyl, and Belarusian troops have bolstered their positions, too.
The Ukrainians have decided not to refill trenches dug throughout the exclusion zone by Russian soldiers for the time being. They believe radiation emissions to be low there, and the worst damage would be to the lungs of the soldiers who inhaled radioactive dust for those weeks of occupation.
The real risk, Kramarenko said, is from forest fires as summer approaches. All the equipment they would have used to fight them is now gone or unusable.
“There is a danger here, and we are negotiating with donors, and appealing to the government to purchase equipment,” he said.
Perhaps the most lasting damage will be to the psyches of those employees who lived through the occupation. Their work was essential to preventing any catastrophic systems failures, and the Russians forced them to work past the point of exhaustion.
Paramedic Lyudmila Mikhailenko tended to sleep-deprived employees who were given little to eat and drink during their marathon shifts. She remembers Russian jets swooping in close overhead, and the sound of constant artillery fire as Ukrainian and Russian troops traded shells in the forests dangerously close to the plant. She said she was dealing with post-traumatic stress, and was nagged by a persistent, unanswerable question about the “madness” of the situation.
“The Russians were under orders to occupy and destroy and bomb Chernobyl,” she said. “What kind of madman issues an order to hold this place of catastrophe and tragedy hostage?” | 2022-06-02T06:38:46Z | www.washingtonpost.com | At Chernobyl plant, Ukrainians survey damage done by Russians - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/02/ukraine-chernobyl-damage-done-by-russians/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/02/ukraine-chernobyl-damage-done-by-russians/ |
Father Eduardo Morales, also known as “Father Eddy” to parishioners at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Uvalde, Tex., talks to a volunteer. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
UVALDE, Tex. — Scribbled on the whiteboard affixed to a rectory wall inside Sacred Heart Catholic Church was a somber list: funeral after funeral, sometimes two in one day, that will all take place here for students and teachers killed last week at Robb Elementary School.
“There’s a lot of pain and a lot of hurt,” he said over the weekend, before an impromptu vigil for the victims behind the church, home to the only Catholic congregation in town. “But we can’t lose our faith. Faith has to be part of this journey to find comfort.”
It is not the first such journey for Morales, a man who has both an intimate knowledge of this tightknit, largely Hispanic community and a cruel insight into what may lie ahead for many in the city of nearly 16,000 people.
Born and raised in Uvalde, Morales — known as “Father Eddy” to his parishioners — grew up with 10 siblings just two blocks away from Sacred Heart. Nearly 26 years ago, as some family members were driving back from San Antonio after watching him celebrate his very first Mass, his sister, Michelle Contreras, was killed in a car accident, several longtime parishioners said.
More recently, he presided over aching funerals as the coronavirus pandemic coursed through Uvalde.
But as one of few local faith leaders tasked with comforting a town submerged in new grief, he must now find a way to persuade stunned and mourning families that their slain loved ones are in a better place.
“I just pray that he has enough energy to be in all the Masses,” Estela Murillo, 72, said as she slipped inside the church on Monday evening, gripping an unlit white candle. “It must be overwhelming. It must be impossible.”
Morales has stuck to a few key tenets in the last week, placing them at the heart of the sermons he has delivered from the pulpit and speeches he has recited at vigils: Anger cannot turn into hate. The lives of the victims must be celebrated. The parish — and the city — must try to heal as one.
That is a particularly sensitive command in Uvalde, where some parents of victims have expressed outrage at the slow response during the shooting by law enforcement officers — some of whom are also members of the parish.
“I’m not going to explain to them what happened. I can’t,” he said of the parents, many of whom he has been meeting with to discuss homilies or provide counseling. “Just being present might be more meaningful than trying to say things that may not bring them comfort.”
By his own account, Morales has been compartmentalizing his own grief. Even as offers to help have poured in from priests and parishes near and far, he has insisted he will take part in all 11 funeral Masses scheduled to occur at the church.
While he can’t help but smile a bit in describing the opportunity he had Sunday to bless President Biden, Morales has been circumspect about how his life’s tragedies have affected him, rejecting any role as the sudden center of attention.
“The way I operate is I have things to do,” he said on Monday, his face framed by thick, rectangular black glasses. “I keep doing, doing, doing, and then once everything is finished, it’s all my emotions” that come rushing out.
In this small, rural community, some older scars had not yet healed before the new wounds were suffered. Uvalde County’s coronavirus death rate — 542 deaths for every 100,000 residents — is almost twice as high as the national average, according to data tracked by The Washington Post.
In August 2020, as the pandemic ravaged Southwest Texas and suspended Sacred Heart’s regular operations, Morales posted periodic updates on his church-affiliated Facebook page, trying to comfort parishioners.
“Unfortunately life does happen and for the past several weeks we have had a funeral Mass pretty much every day and this week was no exception,” he wrote. “We ask you keep all of those we have lost in your prayers and remember their extended family members from time to time.”
This week, Morales was repeating the same rhythm of funeral masses, their rituals meant to ease the grief of the survivors. But the sudden loss of children — all of them so young that he presided over some of their First Communions only a few years ago — meant there was a new level of tragedy to overcome.
“When someone was sick with covid, we weren’t sure if they would survive,” he said. “These kids were in school celebrating their last few days of school without knowing it would be their last day of life.”
Morales was out of town, on vacation in Boston, when he got the urgent call from San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller last week about the tragedy at home.
He arrived in Uvalde late Wednesday, and by the time he woke up Thursday morning, there was more devastating news: Joe Garcia, a loyal parishioner whose wife, Irma, was one of two teachers killed at Robb Elementary, had died of a heart attack after visiting a memorial to the victims.
The two clergymen went to speak that day with Joe and Irma’s four children inside the family’s one-story white brick house, where a crowd of 50 extended family members had assembled in a mix of grief and support.
“The main key is to connect with them, to be present with them in gestures and attitude,” García-Siller said. “We need to build trust with presence and service, because this is going to be a long journey.”
But García-Siller said Morales already had a big head start: He could address every single person in the room by their first name — all because he was serving as pastor for parishioners who were his childhood friends and neighbors. On Wednesday, Morales concelebrated the Garcias’ joint funeral, though García-Siller gave the homily.
The Morales clan is perhaps best known locally for his mother’s role in fighting school segregation in Uvalde, where Mexican Americans were confined to schools — including Robb Elementary — with fewer resources. His mother, Genoveva Morales, helped to organize a six-week student walkout in 1970 and served as the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit that forced the district to bus students. One junior high in town now bears the Morales family’s name in her honor.
Genoveva Morales would eventually put some of her children through Catholic school at Sacred Heart, but she never expected that one of them would end up joining the priesthood.
She did not initially take it well. As he recounted to the Austin American-Statesman in 1996, she told him: ''They’re going to lock you up, and we won’t see you for years. And you’ll only come home to tell me they’re going to send you to Africa or South America.''
Six years ago, he moved back, down the street from her. On Monday, a black car carrying his mother pulled up to the front of the church and Morales walked out to the vehicle to greet her.
“I’m good. I’m doing good,” he told her.
The sequence of funerals at Sacred Heart Church began Tuesday afternoon, with the service for Amerie Jo Garza, 10, the first little victim to be memorialized. Hundreds — some in Girl Scout uniforms, others in purple, an apparent nod to her favorite color — packed the modest white church for the funeral Mass.
After recalling Garza’s creativity and her dream of becoming an art teacher, he prepared the congregation for the coming days of funerals by previewing one of his favorite sayings at times of mourning.
“You will hear me say this at ever single funeral celebration that we have,” Father Eddy told his parishioners. “We are not in the house of God to celebrate her death. We are here to celebrate her life. We are here to celebrate the life that allows her to continue to be among us.”
Annie Gowen in Uvalde and Alice Crites in Washington contributed to this report. | 2022-06-02T09:32:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Uvalde Catholic priest prepares funerals for Texas school shooting victims - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/02/uvalde-church-priest-texas-shooting/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/02/uvalde-church-priest-texas-shooting/ |
Live updates:Russia-Ukraine war live updates: Street battles in Severodonetsk; Kyiv frus...
A network of former military veterans is providing commercially available equipment they say is lacking in front-line units engaging Russian forces, often at close range
A Ukrainian soldier, seen through a night-vision device, aims his rifle while patrolling outside Avdiivka, in Ukraine's Donetsk region, in early February. (Vadim Ghirda/AP)
In the three months since Chris left the United States to join the war in Ukraine, he has fought, he said, in some of its diciest battles, in places like Irpin, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
A former member of the U.S. Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment, he went to Ukraine with extensive experience conducting nighttime raids in Iraq and Afghanistan. But until recently, he was unable to employ it against Russian troops because the Ukrainian units with which he has been paired lacked the necessary technology.
“In the American military, these kinds of things get provided. The night vision and thermals, those are things I can’t afford,” said Chris, who spoke on the condition that his full name not be disclosed, citing the sensitivity of his work in Ukraine. “Without it, it was just difficult. … It’s pretty terrifying to be at the front and you can’t aim your weapons systems about half of the time.”
It’s a delicate venture, one that involves close scrutiny of U.S. laws governing the sale and distribution of sensitive military equipment, people familiar with the effort say. At least three members of Congress have been approached by groups seeking guidance on how to speed applications for government approval to export materiel that is closely regulated.
While aerial bombardment continues in select parts of Ukraine, the ground campaign in the east has become the central focus now. U.S. defense officials say the fight for Donbas especially has become an artillery war, fueling the trend toward sending heavier, long-range systems to buttress the local resistance. Ukrainian troops, aided by Western weapons and volunteers, have mounted a potent resistance, destroying Russian tanks and aircraft, and taking potentially tens of thousands of troops off the battlefield.
Weapons and other equipment have been flowing into Ukraine in recent weeks from a host of NATO countries. Since the start of the Russian invasion, the U.S. government alone has provided almost $4 billion in security assistance to Kyiv, with billions more authorized for use in the coming weeks and months. According to the Pentagon’s accounting, the equipment sent to Ukraine includes more than 50,000 sets of body armor and helmets, 2,000 optics and laser range finders, night-vision devices, thermal imagery systems and more.
“The Ukrainians have told us repeatedly that they do not need additional small arms from the United States,” Navy Capt. Mike Kafka, a Pentagon spokesman, said in response to questions about these auxiliary efforts to supplement Ukraine’s arsenal. “We remain in constant communication with Ukraine about their capability needs. … Once the equipment is delivered to the Ukrainians, how they distribute it inside Ukraine is up to them.”
Ad hoc groups working to help the Ukrainians say certain Western military aid is not getting where it needs to be fast enough or in sufficient supply. “There is a massive disconnect from the very top to the guy on the front lines,” said Ryan Gisolfi, co-founder of Delta Level Defense, a security firm established this year that is helping move military equipment being sourced independently of Western governments to special operations units in Ukraine.
Hunter Ripley “Rip” Rawlings, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel, went to Ukraine at the start of hostilities and has been working through his group, Ripley’s Heroes, and with other foundations and vendors to transfer nonlethal military gear and medical equipment. “The military aid packages that are moving through, they are … not night-vision goggles and they’re not body armor,” Rawlings said in an interview from Kyiv. “So we’ve filled a niche — and the niche is large.”
A few weeks ago, Chris, the former Army Ranger, acquired advanced night-optical devices and thermals from one of the groups in Rawlings’s network, Project SIRIN. The organization formed this year and counts Chris among its on-the-ground network, helping to identify where there are needs for such equipment.
Project SIRIN is a small conglomerate of Americans and Canadians, almost exclusively veterans like Chris with special operations experience, that raises money largely through crowdfunding and donations from other veteran-backed organizations. Neither its business model nor its motivation is unique: In the past three months, several such groups have sprung up in the United States and Europe to source and send materiel to support Ukrainian fighters. They bankroll their efforts through appeals for donations or the sale of Ukraine-themed merchandise.
To date, most groups that have managed to do this work successfully have focused on things like medical supplies, vehicles and communications equipment. Project SIRIN’s attempt to move military materiel brings a series of extra hurdles. Military-grade weapons are tightly controlled, so while the group waits for the U.S. government to approve its export license, it buys specialized equipment from domestic and foreign distributors, including firms that cater to dedicated hobbyists with high-end gear.
Delivering the goods to Ukraine — which also happens without government sponsorship — depends on personal connections forged through the often cryptic ties that bind the community of special operations troops and veterans. Mystery is hard-wired into the organization’s culture: Despite wanting to draw attention to their work and the need that inspired it, the organizers of Project SIRIN refused to disclose their full names, fearing direct reprisals from Russia and its supporters. The organization is a subsidiary of the Ukraine February Fund, which was registered in Pennsylvania this year and is awaiting approval of nonprofit status. Its officers are not identified in public records.
Patrick, a nonveteran who handles communications for the group, said the decision to focus on night vision and thermal optics came after extensive discussions with special operations units in the Ukrainian military, police and national guard.
“We were reaching out to them, going: ‘What are you guys missing right now?’ And that was the No. 1 answer: night vision, night vision, we need night vision,” he said. “We all know that antitank and MANPADS have proliferated in this conflict … and that’s been a game changer. It hasn’t been the case for NODs. … There’s just not enough for the number of qualified people.”
MANPADS is shorthand for man-portable air-defense systems — or shoulder-fired weapons. NODs are nighttime observation devices.
Chris said the night-vision equipment and thermals, which are used to detect an enemy’s presence in darkness through its heat signature, have benefited not only the unit to which he’s assigned but also those operating nearby. The information on Russian movements they are able to glean with the equipment improves the Ukrainian side’s broader ability to conduct strikes accurately and safely.
“Having the ability to conduct reconnaissance at night, that’s huge,” he said, “because not every Russian has night capability.” He estimated that 1 in 4 people in his unit now have the equipment.
Shipping any military-grade equipment from the United States requires approval from the State Department and adherence to export controls established in the International Traffic in Arms Regulations. Project SIRIN’s application is being evaluated, a process that has taken months, even with support from Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), whose staff has advised the group on how to navigate the process, his office confirmed. Kinzinger has also indirectly supported the group’s efforts financially, via a donation to Rawlings’s group from funds collected through the congressman’s political action committee, Country First.
Other lawmakers have been approached by groups seeking help with providing Ukraine night-vision equipment, drones, secured communications equipment, cybersecurity systems and body armor. Thus far, congressional efforts to help expedite the application-review process have been unsuccessful.
For now, those organizations trying to help say they are buying high-end civilian products that mimic the functionality of military-grade equipment, while plumbing European suppliers to source and ship equipment legally through other means.
Project SIRIN organizers say they have given Ukraine nearly a quarter-million dollars’ worth of gear this way, including 22 night-optical devices, eight thermal-vision units and one drone. Rawlings said he has brought into Ukraine about 60 sets of night-vision goggles and about 20 sets of thermals, relying on U.S., Polish and Ukrainian groups.
Such efforts may change the fortunes of an individual unit, experts say, but they’re not a permanent fix.
“As a Band-Aid, this can be helpful. This is not a broad solution,” said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel and a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ International Security Program. “In any large enterprise, there are always going to be gaps. … You can’t send people down to every platoon or squad to find out what they need and bring it to them.
“Long-term,” Cancian said, “the Ukrainians have to build a system where they can [meet] these needs.” | 2022-06-02T09:41:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Private groups work to bring specialized combat gear to Ukraine - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/02/ukraine-special-operations-combat-gear/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/02/ukraine-special-operations-combat-gear/ |
Christian Talavera, left, is 31 and a chemist at a federal agency. He is looking for someone “assertive, ambitious … humble and emotionally mature.” Adam Smith is 39 and works in advocacy and legislation for a political action committee. He’s seeking a “friendly, playful” and outgoing man. (Daniele Seiss)
Christian Talavera, 31, is looking for a serious relationship. “I want a life companion,” he said. “Someone that I can rely on emotionally, physically, intellectually, spiritually.” He lost a parent to covid-19, “and that just really struck a note within me: I’m losing people that I really care about,” and he doesn’t want to be without a romantic partner.
But in Christian’s experience, it’s tough to find a date with real relationship potential through apps like Grindr and Scruff; he’s also tried Match, but no luck there, either. A co-worker who’d participated in the column recently suggested that Christian, a chemist at a federal agency, try Date Lab, and he was happy to sign up.
We matched Christian with Adam Smith, a 39-year-old working in advocacy and legislation for a political action committee. Adam said that whenever he read a Date Lab with two guys in it, he’d clock it: “Oh, that looks like fun!” Because he had “nothing going on” in his romantic life, he finally applied. He described himself as “open-minded” to different types of people but admitted that his friends would say he has a type: “Guys that are a little bit younger than me. And I’ve dated a lot of bearded men with glasses.”
Christian was “super happy, super excited, super nervous” for the date. He told his co-worker and his friends and even his therapist, all of whom, he reported, were very excited and reassuring. “My therapist said, ‘Just go out and keep your expectations low.’ ” Adam, who has lived in D.C. for 16 years and describes it as a small town, wondered if he’d “end up knowing the person.”
We sent these gents to Madhatter, and on behalf of the column I feel like we need to own a Date Lab misstep of sorts: “Madhatter is fine,” Adam said. “But it was very funny to pick the straightest bar in Dupont Circle for two men to go on a date.” Forgive us! But on the bright side, joking about it gave our daters something to bond over.
When Adam saw Christian at the restaurant, his first impression was that “he seemed friendly and cute. And he was on time. All three are important.” And Adam didn’t know him; he was excited to go out with a real-deal stranger. As for Christian, his immediate reaction to seeing Adam was: “ ‘Oh great, he’s not ugly!’ I was just relieved he was not unattractive. And he was well-dressed and groomed.” (Remember: low expectations.)
They ordered a bottle of wine. Over a couple of hours and dinner, they covered the basics: family, work, favorite D.C. haunts. Adam was impressed with how close Christian is with his mom. “I thought that was really sweet and really nice,” he said. “Anybody who loves their mother, that’s a good sign for me.” Christian noted that Adam got interested in biking during the pandemic, investing in a Peloton and a real bike for summer rides.
Still, the dinner didn’t really get to that date-feeling level for Adam. “It felt more platonic,” he said. “Nice guy, very friendly. But I didn’t feel a ton of chemistry between us. … There wasn’t a ton of back-and-forth conversation.” He added: “He is maybe a little quieter than I prefer, so I felt like I was leading a lot of the conversation. I think I need someone a little more outgoing.”
Christian’s assessment was even less enthusiastic: “The conversation lacked depth, it lacked complexity and it pretty much lacked interest.” For every question Christian asked, he said, Adam failed to volley back. “I asked him about religion, but he didn’t ask me about mine. I asked him about hobbies, and he didn’t ask about my hobbies. … I had more fun playing with my food than listening to him.”
“To be brutally honest, I’ll tell you what I told my friends,” Christian said. “That I was set up on a date with a basic gay White D.C. male.” Christian, who is Latino, defines this type as “someone that is very big on the gay scene, goes to gay bars, all his friends are gay but they’re mostly White … and who doesn’t leave Northwest.”
At the end of the night, they walked outside together but parted after a few blocks. No swapping numbers and no expressing interest in seeing one another again, beyond Adam’s open-ended “see you at bocce sometime,” because they belong to the same league. Christian interpreted that as “code for: ‘I’m not going to see you again on another date,’ ” and was even more turned off by what he perceived as Adam’s insincerity. “Why can’t you keep it real with me?”
Adam insisted that the offer was genuine. “Listen, I’m a very friendly guy. If I see him out, I’ll say hello and chat with him. It would be good to see him. But I don’t think there’s going to be a second date.” I pointed out that it is difficult, though not impossible, to schedule a second date with someone when you do not have their contact information. He conceded the point.
As for Christian’s assessment of him, Adam responded, “I think it’s clear we’re looking for different things in a partner and I hope he finds someone who’s a better match.”
Christian: 1.5 [out of 5].
Adam: 2.
Jessica M. Goldstein is a regular contributor to the magazine and The Post’s Style section.
Date Lab: Their goodbye was one big miscommunication
Date Lab: She felt like her jaw hit the floor when she first saw him
Date Lab: An awkward exchange kicked off the evening | 2022-06-02T10:11:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Date Lab: He thought his match was friendly, cute and ... forget it - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/02/date-lab-he-thought-his-match-was-friendly-cute-forget-it/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2022/06/02/date-lab-he-thought-his-match-was-friendly-cute-forget-it/ |
A program gives those stopped by officers a QR code to rate their experience anonymously.
Police officer Chris Ford patrols in Warrenton, Va. (Shuran Huang for The Washington Post)
WARRENTON, Va. — Chris Ford stepped on the gas in his police cruiser and rolled down Gold Cup Drive to catch the SUV pushing 30 mph in a 15 mph zone. Eleven hours and 37 minutes into his shift, the corporal was ready for his first traffic stop of the day.
“Look at him being sneaky,” Ford said, his blue lights flashing on a quiet road in this small town where a busy day could mean animals escaped from a local slaughterhouse.
“I was doing 15,” said the driver, a Black man in a mostly White neighborhood of a mostly White town.
“Every time I pull over someone of color, they’re standoffish with me. Like, ‘Here’s a White police officer, here we go again.’ ” Ford, 56, said. “So I just try to be nice.”
Ford knew the stop would be scrutinized — and not just by the reporter who was allowed to ride along on his shift.
After every significant encounter with residents, officers in Warrenton are required to hand out a QR code, which is on the back of their business card, asking for feedback on the interaction. Through a series of questions, citizens can use a star-based system to rate officers on their communication, listening skills and fairness. The responses are anonymous and can be completed any time after the interaction to encourage people to give honest assessments. The program, called Guardian Score, is supposed to give power to those stopped by police in a relationship that has historically felt one-sided — and to give police departments a tool to evaluate their force on more than arrests and tickets.
“If we started to measure how officers are treating community members, we realized we could actually infuse this into the overall evaluation process of individual officers,” said Burke Brownfeld, a founder of Guardian Score and a former police officer in Alexandria. “The definition of doing a good job could change. It would also include: How are your listening skills? How fairly are you treating people based on their perception?”
Two years after Floyd’s death, little movement on police reform in Washington
Particularly since the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, the nation has struggled with the question of how to incentivize fair and ethical law enforcement. Last week, President Biden signed an executive order calling for the creation of standards for police department accreditation and updates to their use-of-force policies, among other changes. But violent crime is rising, and many police departments say they are already doing much of what Biden has called for. Activists say the movement for substantive change has stagnated.
“It’s a way of letting the community know that the police are not here to attack you,” said Ellsworth L.B. Weaver Sr., 82, president of the Fauquier County NAACP branch. “They are there to help you and protect you.”
The program launched its first pilot in November, but there are still questions about its impact and whether it could be used at all in a major city. As of May, Guardian Score was active in just three places with relatively low crime rates: in Warrenton, at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, and at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Pa. So far, the number of people stopped who actually fill out the survey is low. In Warrenton, the response rate hovers just above 10 percent, the chief said. At VCU and Bucknell, the chiefs said it is around 20 percent.
In many ways, Warrenton was an easy place to start. An hour southwest of Washington, the solidly Republican town of about 10,000 people is friendly toward police. It is the type of community where local business owners know the lunch orders of each officer — one Italian restaurant even named a salmon dish after Ford — and residents in all neighborhoods wave from their porches as police drive by.
But the small police force is also eager to implement reforms. Chief Michael Kochis, who retired from his position as a lieutenant in the Alexandria Police Department before taking over in Warrenton, has spearheaded a series of new initiatives since Floyd’s killing. For example, he formed a team of community leaders to recommend policy changes at the department. That team, which meets monthly, changed the department’s use-of-force policy to ban chokeholds long before the Virginia General Assembly did the same, the chief said. The group also supported Kochis’s idea to pilot Guardian Score and then extend it for a year. The program in Warrenton, which costs $4,500 for the year, is funded through a grant from the PATH Foundation, a local charity.
“After George Floyd was murdered, we realized engaging the community wasn’t enough,” Kochis said. “We had to involve the community.”
“Sergeant Thomas Kamerer was very professional with me. I did yell at him out of frustration after he took care of the situation and I didn’t mean to do that,” one person wrote. “I appreciate his time and what he does for the community.”
“Officer Radel was nothing but professional,” another wrote. “I look forward to be pulled over by him in the future. Stand up guy.”
“Officers Ford and Stewart responded to my auto accident,” one citizen said. “They proceeded in a professional manner to assess the situation and take appropriate action.”
“I like the idea of it now,” said Ford earlier that day, taking a sip from the mug of Mountain Dew he keeps in his cruiser. He was skeptical of the program at first, he said, fearing it would negatively affect his evaluation. “I think it helps officers without them knowing it. It’s a mental check.”
At VCU, Venuti requires officers to give their cards every time they stop someone and then record that they handed out the card as part of their incident report. In Warrenton, Kochis put the QR codes on the back of officers’ business cards, which they are required to hand out every time they record an interaction. He said he checks on squads when they have a low number of responses over time. At Bucknell, the chief said police are supposed to give Guardian Score cards after every interaction that is more than a minute long. Each chief said it is important that officers explain at least a little bit about the program to encourage citizens to take the survey.
“At a time when many people are questioning police accountability and how police deal with citizens, police departments are looking for ways to measure how they are doing,” he said. “And this is one of them.”
“Just do me a favor, take it easy,” Ford said to the driver.
“Thank you,” the man replied, smiling now.
Ford handed his business card through the window. He said nothing about the feedback program, but the back of his card had “SCORE YOUR POLICE ENCOUNTER” written in bold blue letters with the QR code underneath.
“And that, my friend, is why I don’t get complained on in traffic stops,” he said, now back in the cruiser. | 2022-06-02T10:16:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | In this small Va. town, citizens review police like Uber drivers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/02/warrenton-virginia-police-reviews/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/02/warrenton-virginia-police-reviews/ |
Whether starting out or wanting to take riding to the next level, WABA’s Trey Robinson has some tips
Trey Robinson, D.C. bike ambassador coordinator for the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, is a seasoned cyclist who works to introduce biking to residents of the D.C. region. (WABA /Washington Area Bicyclist Association)
Looking for some exercise or a more environmentally friendly way to get around? Want to change your commute at a time when gas prices are at record highs? It might be time for a two-wheeled alternative.
Trey Robinson started cycling as a child at a park next to where his family lived, but after a pause, it wasn’t until college at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore that he took up riding again. When he moved back to Prince George’s County after graduation, he didn’t have a car, so a bicycle was his main mode of transportation.
A few years ago, Robinson turned his passion for cycling into a full-time job with the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, where he oversees the organization’s bike ambassador program.
WABA’s bike ambassadors are riders who help to promote cycling in the D.C. region. WABA offers resources for cyclists at all levels, including classes, workshops, tips on what equipment to buy and dozens of online tutorials. Robinson spoke to The Washington Post about how to get started and stay safe when cycling in the D.C. area. The interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Q: Was it intimidating when you started riding in D.C.?
A: It was hard getting used to biking in D.C., because I had always biked in Maryland, where I always rode in a park or somewhere that was closed to traffic. I wasn’t used to biking in traffic a lot, but I got used to it fairly quickly. Coming from where I am in Prince George’s County and going over into D.C., I actually had dedicated spaces to ride versus having to ride on the sidewalk or in traffic at times. It definitely took some time getting used to, but I definitely would call myself a confident rider.
Read more Q&As with transportation experts from across the U.S.
Q: How long do you think it took you to become a confident rider in D.C.?
A: It took me a few months, and I was persistent. I would often, of course, ride to work. But then, instead of after work going straight home, I would explore the streets of D.C. It definitely was challenging. I started working with WABA, and they gave me a lot of good tips. A lot of people that had been biking in the area also shared some helpful knowledge.
Q: What is it you love about biking?
A: I really enjoy being outdoors. [With biking] you really get to feel the breeze on your face and experience all of that open air. I love it. You are really seeing things because you aren’t trapped in a vehicle.
Q: Do you own a car?
A: I do own a car, but I leave it parked most of the time, especially now with gas prices. I only use it if I’m doing family events or other things, but for the most part my car is parked during the week and I am biking most of the time.
Q: Do you have tips for people who are just starting out riding?
A: Start in your neighborhood. Start in smaller places or on trails and then work your way up to riding in traffic or using bike lanes. I think riding on trails and in residential areas makes folks feel a little safer if they’re not confident with biking on the road or biking in traffic. In my experience, learning in places that are closed to traffic allows you to be a better rider when you are actually ready to get out there. Get to know your bike. Learn how the gears work and learn your brakes.
Q: Are there basic items that are good to have when you are starting out?
A: One of the essential tools is a light, because you never know when you are going to get caught riding in the dark. You want to make sure that drivers see you, so we recommend having front and rear lights, generally a white light and a red rear light, and you can pair them with reflectors. You can find [reflectors] as attachments that go directly on your bike or attachments for your body. There are reflective vests or reflective bands that attach to your leg. And a bike lock, because you never know when you’re going to need to lock up your bike and maybe come back for it later.
D.C. wants to double its 24 miles of bike lanes
Q: What are some tips for riding in traffic?
A: Remember that you should be following the rules of the road. That means stopping at all stop signs and red lights, using your hand signals so that the folks around you know what your next move is about to be. You can use hand signals, but you can also verbalize this, as well. I know when I’m out riding I indicate where I am going by yelling out or using my hand signals so the folks around me know where my next move is going to be. Keeping an eye out on road hazards, as well, is another thing. Be vigilant, look ahead and make sure there are no cars or any objects that might slow you down.
Q: For those who’d like to take it a step further, do you have tips for commuting by bike?
A: Yes, I think the first step of bike commuting is planning a route: figuring out where you’re going and test-riding that route. There may be a few different roads or places to go to get to your destination, so try them out. Maybe do it on a day when you don’t have to work so you don’t have to worry about time constraints. I bike to Metro, so that’s an option — they can bike and ride Metro so they don’t have to bike all the way.
Q: Are there other things to think about?
A: Bring a change of clothes, maybe something to quickly wash up with if possible. You can even leave some of your items at your workplace so you don’t have to ride with them. Having a change of clothes or something to freshen up and wear is very helpful, especially if you are commuting in the warmer months.
Car lanes vs. bike lanes: Proposals for busy Connecticut Avenue draw mixed reviews
Q: Are there other items that are good to have if you are biking to work?
A: When commuting, I find that having a bag of some sort is useful. Other things I like to take with me on my ride — plenty of water and a portable charger. There are some essential tools that I keep on hand — a patch kit with all the tools that you need to fix your flat. Also know there are a lot of bike shops that are around to help you out if you are not comfortable [fixing] it on your own.
Q: Do you have thoughts on how to encourage diverse communities to take advantage of biking as exercise and potentially when commuting?
A: Utilizing the resources that are around, so even if you don’t have your own bike there, there are bike rentals or places where you can use Capital Bikeshare to get around. There are a number of different cycling clubs that actually started during the pandemic. If you’re not comfortable riding by yourself and looking for groups or other people that have like-minded interests or come from similar backgrounds, try looking into some of the cycling clubs that are in the area.
Q: Can you talk about your work as a bike ambassador?
A: I coordinate a lot of our in-person and virtual events. We’re a mobile information hub, meaning that we can provide resources or can answer your questions. If you are intimidated, we can offer resources to point you in the right direction, depending on your comfort level. If you have questions about being a confident rider, we would direct you to maybe join the class that talks about that or walks you through being a confident rider and riding in traffic. Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of webinars which are aimed toward new bikers to teach them basic bike maintenance and tips for riding on trails and in traffic. | 2022-06-02T10:16:25Z | www.washingtonpost.com | With gas prices rising, D.C. cycling expert offers tips for biking - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/2022/06/02/dc-biking-tips-getting-started/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/2022/06/02/dc-biking-tips-getting-started/ |
During a hot spell this spring, energy officials in Texas urged consumers to turn their thermostats up to 78 degrees and avoid the use of large household appliances. It was one of a number of unusual warnings issued nationally amid fears of blackouts. (David J. Phillip/AP)
“We’re supportive of a cleaner, greener future but we need to have proper on- and off-ramps,” Denzler said. | 2022-06-02T10:20:32Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A summer of blackouts? Wheezing power grid leaves states at risk. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/02/blackout-states-summer-heat/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/02/blackout-states-summer-heat/ |
Closing costs are usually about 2 to 5 percent of the purchase price of a home. (iStock)
Closing costs when buying a home typically range between 2 and 5 percent of the purchase price. Naturally, when home prices rise, so do closing costs. A recent report by ClosingCorp, a subsidiary of CoreLogic, a property data analytics firm, found that the national average of closing costs was $6,905 in 2021 including transfer taxes. That’s an increase of 13.4 percent over average closing costs in 2020.
D.C. home buyers paid an average of $29,888 in closing costs including transfer taxes in 2021, far higher than the other most costly states such as Delaware ($17,859), New York ($16,849), Maryland ($14,721) and Washington ($13,927), according to the report.
When transfer taxes are excluded, D.C. still topped the list at $6,502, followed by New York ($6,168), Hawaii ($5,879), California ($5,665) and Massachusetts ($4,904).
While the amount of closing costs paid was higher, the percentage of the purchase price was lower in 2021 at 1.81 percent compared with 1.85 percent in 2020. Closing cost calculations for this report include the lender’s title policy, owner’s title policy, appraisal fees, settlement costs, recording fees, land surveys and transfer taxes.
Closing costs vary by jurisdiction, with Delaware’s average of 5.4 percent the highest percentage of the purchase price by state in 2021. Colorado and Wyoming tied for the lowest percentage of the purchase price charged for closing costs at 0.7 percent. D.C.'s closing costs averaged 3.9 percent of the purchase price, which is among the highest percentages.
High-cost housing markets such as Hawaii and California had lower percentages, at 0.9 percent and 1 percent, respectively. That kept average closing costs lower, at $7,463 in Hawaii and $7,953 in California.
How to avoid real estate scams
States with the lowest closing costs including taxes were Missouri ($2,061), Indiana ($2,200), North Dakota ($2,501), Wyoming ($2,589) and Mississippi ($2,756).
When transfer taxes are excluded, the states with the lowest closing costs were Missouri ($2,061), Indiana ($2,200), Nebraska ($2,210), Arkansas ($2,281) and West Virginia ($2,465). Missouri and Indiana don’t impose real estate transfer taxes. | 2022-06-02T10:20:39Z | www.washingtonpost.com | D.C home buyers pay highest average closing costs, report finds - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/02/dc-home-buyers-pay-highest-average-closing-costs-report-finds/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/06/02/dc-home-buyers-pay-highest-average-closing-costs-report-finds/ |
HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - AUGUST 13: An empty classroom is seen at Hollywood High School on August 13, 2020 in Hollywood, California. With over 734,000 enrolled students, the Los Angeles Unified School District is the largest public school system in California and the 2nd largest public school district in the United States. With the advent of COVID-19, blended learning, or combined online and classroom learning, will become the norm for the coming school year. (Photo by Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images) (Photographer: Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images North America)
Given that state education funding formulas rely on student population numbers, a large reduction in students will lead to a corresponding reduction in school budgets. That’s the law of supply and demand. Otherwise, at this rate, the public will soon be paying teachers to lead half-empty classrooms.
Since 2020, Congress has sent an additional $190 billion to schools, in part to help them reopen safely and stave off layoffs. But in many districts, union leaders resisted a return to in-classroom instruction long after it was clear that classrooms were safe. And by and large, remote instruction was a disaster. By one analysis, the first year of the pandemic left students an average of five months behind in math and four months behind in reading, with much larger gaps for low-income schools.
It’s abundantly clear that money was far from the biggest challenge facing public schools. The U.S. spends more per pupil on public education than virtually any other country, and many districts have struggled to spend all the federal funds they’ve received. Others have splurged on sports.
Meanwhile, enrollment at public charter schools has been moving in the opposite direction, thanks to their success, even as their federal funding has not risen in the last four years. From 2020 to 2021, nearly 240,000 new students enrolled in charter schools, a 7% increase year over year. Many charter schools around the country have long waitlists, and no wonder. In states and cities with strong accountability laws, charters have a proven academic track record of outperforming district schools. One recent nationwide analysis found that districts with a higher share of charters yield higher reading and math scores as well as higher graduation rates on average. Other research has found that the benefits are especially pronounced for Black, Latino and low-income students.
After a bipartisan backlash, there are signs that the department may reconsider the proposal. The White House should insist on it — and go further, by treating public charter-school students as equals in terms of funding and insisting that traditional district schools embrace the accountability standards that have made charters so popular with parents. That might lead some parents who have opted for home schooling or parochial schools to revisit their options — and help stave off deep cuts to schools with declining populations.
Otherwise, the shameful failures of the public school system will continue, hurting another generation of the most vulnerable children. For the U.S. to remain the world’s strongest economy, and to make any substantial progress on matters of racial justice, that is not an outcome Americans can afford to accept. The new enrollment data sends a stark signal. Schools will have to adjust to dropping enrollments either by getting smaller or by getting better. You can’t lose the students and keep the teachers. | 2022-06-02T10:20:45Z | www.washingtonpost.com | A Wake-Up Call for Public Education - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/a-wake-up-call-for-public-education/2022/06/02/32ec580a-e253-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/a-wake-up-call-for-public-education/2022/06/02/32ec580a-e253-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
By Cathy Bussewitz and Martha Irvine | AP
Eric Tarver stands on Wednesday, March 30, 2022, in the service area of the Toyota dealership his family owns in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Tarver, who’s also a school board member for Calcasieu Parish, is one of many residents who support the expansion of the liquified natural gas, or LNG, industry in the Lake Charles area. Though Louisiana offers a property tax break of 10 years to companies that build LNG terminals there, Tarver says the tax benefits are still huge for the schools and other government agencies. He also says resulting jobs have been a “shot in the arm.” To opponents of the LNG expansion on the Gulf Coast, he says, “The global demand for LNG is going to be there whether the U.S. serves it or not.” (AP Photo/Martha Irvine) | 2022-06-02T10:20:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As natural gas expands in Gulf, residents fear rising damage - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/as-natural-gas-expands-in-gulf-residents-fear-rising-damage/2022/06/02/eec7e10a-e25a-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/as-natural-gas-expands-in-gulf-residents-fear-rising-damage/2022/06/02/eec7e10a-e25a-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
The US didn’t invite Taiwan to join the framework, even after more than 50 senators wrote to President Joe Biden last month urging him to include the government in Taipei. The new initiative allows for greater tailoring of the conversation and the unique characteristics of the US-Taiwan trade relationship, the official said, adding that the administration takes an adaptable approach to IPEF participation.
President Tsai Ing-wen said in a Facebook post that her government looked forward to deepening economic ties with the US and hoped the talks would eventually lead to a bilateral trade agreement, a long-held goal for Taipei.
The US’s interactions with Taiwan are all unofficial and take place through the American Institute for Taiwan and the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the US. China’s Communist government protested Washington’s deepening bilateral engagement, including “discussing or signing agreements with implications of sovereignty” with the island, which it regards as part of its territory despite never controlling it.
“If the US insists on playing the Taiwan card, it will only lead China-US relations to a precarious state,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a briefing in Beijing on Thursday.
(Updated with comments from officials in Taiwan and China in seventh, eighth and ninth paragraphs.) | 2022-06-02T10:21:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | US and Taiwan to Deepen Trade Ties, Plan June Washington Meeting - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/us-andtaiwan-to-deepen-trade-ties-plan-june-washington-meeting/2022/06/02/6fddefe0-e257-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/us-andtaiwan-to-deepen-trade-ties-plan-june-washington-meeting/2022/06/02/6fddefe0-e257-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
The ‘great replacement’ theory rises again, ending in tragedy
Yet history shows that ethnic and racial diversity has proved to be renewal, not replacement
Perspective by Glenn C. Altschuler
Stuart M. Blumin
Vice President Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff stop by a street vigil after attending a memorial service for mass shooting victim Ruth Whitfield in Buffalo on May 28. (Malik Rainey/Pool/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Payton Gendron, who was indicted by a grand jury for killing 10 people May 14 at a Tops Friendly Markets in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo, repeatedly cited “the great replacement” theory as his motive for the shooting, according to authorities. Other deadly shooters have been similarly inspired, including the men responsible for the murder of 11 people at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, and for shooting 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso in 2019.
This theory posits that Jews, racial minorities and immigrants are actively seeking to replace White native-born Americans through higher fertility rates and migration. Versions of replacement theory circulate widely, appearing on extremist sites on the “Dark Web” like 4chan, where the 18-year-old Gendron took his inspiration, authorities say. It also shows up in a slightly more muted version propagated by those such as Fox News’s most-watched TV host, Tucker Carlson.
Carlson has argued on his program, for example, that “the left and all the little gatekeepers on Twitter become literally hysterical if … you suggest the Democratic Party is trying to replace the current electorate … but that’s exactly what they’re doing.” An AP-NORC poll released in early May found that about 1 in 3 Americans believe there is an active effort “to replace U.S.-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gain.”
While the specific targets and methods of spreading this theory may be new, White native-born Americans worrying about being replaced is not. And history demonstrates that the theory has been repeatedly used to legitimize discrimination and deadly violence.
Between 1880 and 1920, about 20 million immigrants entered the United States, the vast majority from Southern, Central and Eastern Europe. The arrival of these new immigrants, primarily Catholics and Jews from non-English-speaking countries, stimulated a backlash from “old stock” White, Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans, white supremacists, eugenicists and supporters of immigration restriction.
Like today, these fears circulated widely from influential platforms. In the best-selling “The Passing of the Great Race” (1916), Madison Grant, a friend of former president Theodore Roosevelt and vice president of the Immigration Restriction League, predicted that immigrants from Mediterranean and Alpine countries would soon outbreed Anglo-Saxons and Nordics, resulting in “race suicide.” Lothrop Stoddard’s “The Rising Tide of Color and the End of White World Supremacy” (1920) declared that the explosion of non-White people presaged the end of Western civilization, and recommended eugenics as a remedy. Frederick Boyd Stevenson, an influential newspaper columnist in Brooklyn, opined that only immigrants who think as well as speak in English should be admitted to the United States. Responding to the increasing presence of Jews in New York City, an article in Pearson’s magazine mused that “Gentiles will shortly be on exhibition at the Bronx Zoo.”
The depth and pervasiveness of racial prejudice in the United States was underscored by the popularity of D.W. Griffith’s 1915 film, “The Birth of a Nation,” an epic account of the Civil War and Reconstruction filled with racist stereotypes of African Americans. Inspired in part by the movie’s celebration of the Ku Klux Klan, the organization — which had grown dormant in the years since the end of Reconstruction — reemerged and added millions of new members nationwide in the 1920s. This time, Catholics and Jews joined African Americans among the Klan’s list of enemies.
Such ideas had consequences. In 1924, overwhelming congressional majorities passed the most restrictive immigration bill in American history. Albert Johnson, Chair of the House Immigration Committee, argued that the United States could no longer serve as an “asylum” to people around the world. The legislation deployed a harsh quota system based on national origin. Targeting new arrivals, it limited the number of immigrants allowed to enter to two percent of the total number from each national group residing in the United States in 1890, a period before the peak of immigration from Southern, Central and Eastern Europe. The bill stipulated that the number of immigrants within the confines of the quota system could not exceed 150,000 in any year.
The 1924 legislation also barred all Japanese migrants from entering the United States — isolating immigrants from one nation, as Congress previously had done to China with the 1875 Page and 1882 Chinese Exclusion Acts.
At the time, the triumph of xenophobes seemed irreversible. But it wasn’t. Immigration largely ceased, but the door had closed too late. The immigrant groups targeted had already formed their families, found jobs, established businesses, created a web of religious, philanthropic and social welfare institutions, built their own communities, become citizens and voted.
While life in the United States involved a substantial degree of assimilation, it rarely resulted in an abandonment of prior ethnic traditions, values and identities. In the 1920s and ensuing decades, many immigrants embraced the term “hyphenate,” which had been an epithet flung at them during World War I. They were not Poles or Italians who lived in America, but Polish-Americans and Italian-Americans.
Their lived experience conclusively refuted the proposition that only people of Anglo-Saxon and Nordic descent could be “good Americans.” And it validated the theory of cultural pluralism advanced in the first two decades of the 20th century by Horace Kallen, who emigrated to the United States from Poland when he was five years old and became a founder of and professor at the New School for Social Research in New York City.
Questioning the idea of homogeneity as the foundation of a democratic society and its civic institutions, Kallen countered the metaphor of a “melting pot” with that of a symphony orchestra — with each of its many unique instruments essential to every performance.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the great replacement theories of Grant and Stoddard fell out of favor, especially after these theories had been embraced by Adolf Hitler and other fascists. Revelations about the full genocidal dimensions of Nazi racism coming from liberated concentrations camps after the war also contributed to the inclusion of cultural pluralism as a fundamental component of the American creed.
Shifts in policy soon followed.
Many children of immigrants fought for the United States in World War II and then as honorably discharged veterans took advantage of the 1944 G.I. Bill of Rights to attend college and purchase homes with government-backed mortgages. With the government hoping to prevent another Great Depression by creating a large middle class with this legislation, male veterans with Southern, Central and Eastern European backgrounds were among those eligible — even as racial discrimination in higher education and the mortgage industry largely excluded non-Whites from benefits. Although just two decades earlier immigration from non-Anglo-Saxon nations had been restricted, the members of these ethnic groups were now deriving benefits from the government. In other words, they had become accepted as White Americans.
The Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 ended the policy of limiting immigration based on national origin. The legislation gave priority to highly-skilled individuals and those with family members living in the United States. Immigration increased to almost a half a million people per year, only 20 percent of them coming from Europe.
More recently, cultural pluralism has been supplemented, and to an extent supplanted, by the more racially-conscious concept of multiculturalism. And in the summer of 2020, millions of Americans, notable in their ethnic and racial diversity, took to the streets to protest racial injustice after the murder of George Floyd and affirm that Black Lives Matter.
The lesson is clear: The contributions of people from the widest array of nationalities have been indispensable to American prosperity, culture and democratic values. Over and over again, ethnic and racial diversity has proved to be renewal, rather than replacement. | 2022-06-02T10:21:34Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The ‘great replacement’ theory rises again, ending in tragedy - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/02/great-replacement-theory-rises-again-ending-tragedy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/06/02/great-replacement-theory-rises-again-ending-tragedy/ |
During Chase Young’s long road back, performance will outweigh personality
Chase Young, the 2020 defensive rookie of the year, has played in only 24 NFL games. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post)
Part of what Ron Rivera said about Chase Young sounded so natural that it’s easy to gloss over.
“Having one of your veteran players — one of your leaders — out and around in spite of the fact that he’s rehabbing,” the Washington Commanders coach said, “it’s good.”
That’s what Chase Young has to be for this franchise — not just a veteran and a leader but a rock of a presence who performs like a star. Were this the beginning of June 2021 rather than the beginning of June a year later, there would have been little question that’s not only what Young would become but what he already was. He was the second pick in the 2020 draft. He was the 2020 defensive rookie of the year. His teammates elected him a captain. He had arrived, and he was a force.
But on Wednesday, as he stood in shorts and sneakers under the relentless midday sun, no one could predict when Young’s next snap would come or what his production level would be when it did. His position in the organizational flowchart has to be what Rivera said it is — a veteran, a leader — because a rebuilding franchise can’t miss on the second pick in the draft.
Yet he has played just 24 NFL games. He is unable to participate in this spring’s offseason workouts because he is rehabilitating a torn ACL. He is, in a way, more of a work in progress — more of a question mark — now than he was at this time a year ago.
“That was last year,” Young said. “We on to this year.”
It makes sense for him to think of it that way. But put the questions about how his knee will respond — about how explosive he will be post-injury — aside for a minute. Last year colors how we view Young now because, before the injury, one of Washington’s most puzzling issues of 2021 was this: Why isn’t Chase Young producing?
A review of the numbers: In 15 games as a rookie, Young averaged 2.1 solo tackles. In the nine games of his second season, that dropped to 1.7. As a rookie, he had two tackles for loss every three games; that dropped to one every three games in 2021. His quarterback hits were essentially cut in half, and his sacks fell drastically — one every other game to just 1½ total in the nine games he played.
A year ago during training camp in Richmond, with fans crowding the sidelines after being kept away during the 2020 pandemic season, people clamored for Young, and his No. 99 jersey seemed ubiquitous. Give fans truth serum now, and they might be more concerned about whether the Commanders will sign wide receiver Terry McLaurin to a long-term deal than about Young’s progress.
Even while rehabbing, Young looks the part. When he gets back, he has to play it. His charisma is obvious. But in football, it takes more than personality to lead. It takes production.
“A lot of it, also, is the impact you make on the field,” Rivera said. “It’s a lot easier to lead, obviously, when things are easy. But when things are tough, it’s being able to find the right style of leadership. …
“So there’s a lot of things that he can glean from being out here and watching and seeing how things are happening. Today would have been a great day — an easy day — to lead. It’s when it’s the doldrums, it’s a drag, it’s hard to be out there, practice isn’t going well and you’re not having success on either side of the ball — and that’s the side that gets low. How do you build it back up?”
That’s where Young is: building it back up. During these relatively chill organized team activities, he said his role could be helping his fellow defensive ends — particularly his bookend, Montez Sweat — with details he can see from the outside but they don’t realize as a play unfolds. Was Sweat’s first stride too short? Are his pads at the right level?
“Just any tips I can give him,” Young said. “Just trying to be a good teammate.”
It all makes you think: The best way Chase Young could be a good teammate would be to become the player he’s supposed to be. That would lift up the locker room in a way no speech, no outside assessment, ever could.
It’s instructive to remember how Rivera was assessing Young and Sweat right before Young’s season-ending injury in November.
“They need to stop pressing and trust their teammates,” Rivera told the team’s website at the time. “… Sometimes Chase starts outside and plants his leg and cuts inside — because he’s trying to make a play — and the quarterback gets flushed to the outside. If Chase stays outside, he has an easy sack, but instead he dives underneath.”
The injury and the lost time don’t make those tendencies evaporate, and we have no new evidence to show whether Young has learned from those mistakes. So it’s imperative, a year after Young skipped OTAs to work out on his own, that his presence in Ashburn now isn’t merely to get back to running and doing some squats — the physical part of rehab. It’s essential that he understands what wasn’t working in the half season before he went down — and fix it.
He is saying all of the right things.
“Even while I’m out on the field standing with [defensive coordinator Jack] Del Rio, listening to every call, watching every guy — what he’s supposed to do,” Young said. “Even me looking at [Sweat], watching him, even watching Jon [Allen, the defensive tackle]. Just watching how they move, and just being here, man. I feel like being here and just watching and being out on the field is the biggest thing.”
Just being here is a step for Chase Young. But this fall, his presence will need to be accompanied by production. His standing in the locker room and the organization will be unquestioned only if he provides the performance to go with it. | 2022-06-02T10:22:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Chase Young's performance will outweigh personality in return from injury - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/02/chase-young-leadership-commanders/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/02/chase-young-leadership-commanders/ |
In ‘The Match,’ clutch putts give Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady the win
Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers show off the spoils of victory over their 26-year-old rivals, Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen. (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
Score one for the old guys.
The team of Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady — combined age: 82 — staged a comeback Wednesday to defeat their 26-year-old opponents, Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen, in the sixth installment of “The Match.” The matchup of NFL quarterbacks, held at the Wynn Las Vegas golf course, marked the first time the event did not involve a PGA Tour star.
After Brady leveled the match with a, go figure, clutch putt at the 10th hole, Rodgers followed suit by draining a birdie putt at the 12th and final hole for the win.
“I felt really good about it, to be honest,” Rodgers said afterward. “… I felt good about the line and, when I hit it, I knew it was going in. About four holes ago, things got pretty serious, and I think we buckled down a little bit because these two were playing really good and we didn’t want to come out of here with an ‘L.’ ”
Moments before, Allen had nearly sunk his birdie attempt from much farther away, but ultimately he and Mahomes were left to congratulate their elder counterparts on their victory in the made-for-TV charity fundraising event.
Previous versions of “The Match” featured the likes of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau, and on more than a few occasions Wednesday, the foursome’s play reminded the national audience that it wasn’t witnessing the highest possible standard of golf. Brady and Allen, in particular, hit their share of wayward shots, but Rodgers again proved steady in the event, following his winning performance at the “The Match IV” in 2021.
Brady referred to that showdown, in which he and Mickelson fell to Rodgers and DeChambeau, while praising the Green Bay Packers quarterback’s putting Wednesday. In each of the several times he has played with Rodgers, Brady said, the former has “made a 15-foot putt to win,” so “it didn’t surprise me when it went in” against Mahomes and Allen.
Mahomes also got hot with his putter in Las Vegas. His daring on the greens went a long way toward helping him and Allen overcome an early 2-down deficit to take a 1-up lead after the eighth hole. Mahomes also won a long-drive challenge with a 318-yard effort at No. 7 — which also happened to be the only drive that found the fairway and thus was eligible for the contest.
Along the way, the Kansas City Chiefs quarterback was pounding beers early and often, which he explained was meant to counteract his team’s slow start.
“It’ll help me for a while, as long as I don’t drink too much of it,” Mahomes said of his “swing juice” on the TNT telecast. “I was going to wait until the fourth hole, but I got down so I had to go and open one up a little bit early.”
Athletes... They're just like us on the golf course 🤣 #CapitalOnesTheMatch pic.twitter.com/aYSeDILV2t
As is always the case for “The Match,” the contestants wore microphones and frequently kibitzed with one another and a TNT announcing crew that included Charles Barkley. For his part, the Basketball Hall of Famer took advantage of the opportunity to take a shot at Shaquille O’Neal, his fellow TNT analyst, of whom Barkley said, “That’s the one good thing about doing golf: I don’t have to be around that idiot.”
Early in the match, Brady held up a ball featuring an image of the Lombardi Trophy printed on it and asked Allen whether he had “ever seen one of these.” The Buffalo Bills quarterback, the only member of the quartet who has yet to win the Super Bowl, could only flash a good-natured smile while replying, “I’ve seen one before.”
After hitting a ball fat and seeing it come up short on a par-3, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback proclaimed of the shot: “A little chunky. I call that a little Josh Allen-y.”
Much of the most notable trash-talk came in the lead-up to the event, particularly during a promotional conference call with reporters last week (via the Athletic), when Rodgers mocked Mahomes’s voice by referring to the Chiefs star as “Kermit the Frog.”
“Golf s--- talk is a little different than pro football s--- talk,” Brady said then. “Usually pro football s--- talk, you have to back that up. Josh really hasn’t backed much up on the football field in his career, let’s be honest — especially playing against me.”
When the 12 holes were finished Wednesday, Brady again got the better of Allen.
“It was nerve-racking, for sure,” Allen, who admitted earlier in the day that he vomits before every NFL game, said when “The Match” was over. “I didn’t compete how I wanted to today, but Pat went absolutely unconscious there for about five holes.”
“Obviously, we wanted to win, but we were able to give it a good run,” Mahomes said. “Hopefully we can run this back — maybe next offseason.” | 2022-06-02T10:22:11Z | www.washingtonpost.com | 'The Match': Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers defeat Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/02/golf-the-match-brady-rodgers-mahomes-allen/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/02/golf-the-match-brady-rodgers-mahomes-allen/ |
Current and former U.S. officials say deal could go against national interest
Reed Albergotti
China-made Model 3 Teslas at the carmaker's factory in Shanghai in 2020. (Aly Song/Reuters)
By dominating the supply of multiple components critical to the fortunes of Tesla, the Chinese government holds so much leverage over chief executive Elon Musk’s wealth that his planned acquisition of Twitter should concern national security leaders, a dozen current and former officials involved in reviewing foreign investments told The Washington Post.
While Musk has said he would have Twitter permit an even wider range of discourse than it does today, the ability of Chinese leaders to affect Musk’s fortunes could embolden them to ask that he identify opposition and American Twitter users, block content the government considers illegal, or at least allow its own propaganda to spread unchecked, these people said.
There is no way to know how Musk and a privately owned Twitter would respond, and Musk did not answer emailed questions. But because the majority of his wealth is tied up in or backed by Tesla shares, some experts said the interagency group that reviews foreign investments should escalate its nascent probe of the deal.
“Given the volume of information, the number of users that Twitter has, and the amount therefore of sensitive personal data that Twitter has, any foreign investment is likely to be closely scrutinized,” said Richard Sofield, who led such Justice Department reviews under the previous two presidents.
The potential access to user data alone is “clearly a significant national security concern,” said an official in the administration of then-President Barack Obama. U.S. officials have previously indicted Chinese nationals for hacking insurance company Anthem and credit reporting agency Equifax in pursuit of personal information that they feared could be cross-referenced with dossiers on U.S. intelligence officers, which were stolen from the Office of Personnel Management in 2015.
The ability to extract sensitive personal information from hospitals and insurers that could be used in counterintelligence work has been grounds enough to block or modify acquisitions in those industries, the former official said, and “obviously Twitter would be one of those things.” Like others, he asked to speak anonymously because of his previous involvement in the secretive process run by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, known as CFIUS.
Led by the Treasury Department and involving representatives from Justice, Defense, State and other departments, CFIUS was granted more power in 2018 to recommend blocking acquisitions where a foreign company was not directly taking control of an American one. The Washington Post reported Wednesday that CFIUS has begun asking questions about foreign investors participating in Musk’s bid.
Musk has not been accused of wrongdoing and, in his capacity as CEO of SpaceX, a partner in launching NASA missions, he has been thoroughly vetted by the U.S. government.
The potential Chinese influence over Tesla is hard to dispute, however.
The company’s Shanghai factory accounted for nearly half of Tesla’s 2021 manufacturing, and China is one of the biggest markets for the vehicles. Last year, Musk said it would become the biggest.
Musk also must deal with all-powerful authorities there, as he recently did over coronavirus pandemic restrictions that had shut the Shanghai factory.
China is even more crucial on the supply side.
In an impact report released in May, Tesla disclosed the direct sources for its batteries, most of which were in China.
All of those listed supplied cobalt, lithium or nickel, among the most sought-after commodities in the industry. Having focused on electric battery supplies as a strategic goal a decade ago, China produces the global majority of those.
Tesla and its rivals also source minerals from Congo and elsewhere, but China has maneuvered to take ownership stakes in relevant companies there and win longtime concessions from the governments.
To increase Tesla’s negotiating power and to secure future supplies, Musk has struck long-term deals with mines in Canada, Australia and other nations.
But China not only has a near-lock on key minerals, it has another on processing those minerals, analysts said.
Musk recently floated the idea of Tesla getting into mining itself, which would take 7 to 10 years in Western countries, according to Wood Mackenzie research director Gavin Montgomery.
“In the final analysis, it is not practical to fully get out of China,” Montgomery said. “They could cut off Tesla, or they could cut off everyone. And if we end up in a crunch, China has the option of keeping that cobalt for its own domestic industry.”
Musk raised hopes for more independence from China last year, when he said he would move Tesla’s cars to iron phosphate batteries that don’t need cobalt or nickel. In April, Tesla said nearly half of its previous quarter’s new vehicles had included those types of batteries.
Unfortunately for the company, the vast majority of so-called LFP batteries also come from China.
“You would think moving to LFP would reduce some of the dependencies, but all of the LFPs he uses are manufactured in China or supplied from there,” Montgomery said.
Some U.S. intelligence analysts and White House officials are among those concerned about the potential for arm-twisting by China if Musk gets hold of Twitter.
That would not be enough by itself to formally block the $44 billion transaction: CFIUS is generally prevented from intervening when the acquirer is American, as Musk is.
“Twitter wouldn’t be a 'foreign investment in the United States,’ and it’s a stretch to use that authority to examine it,” said Matthew Turpin, a senior Commerce Department and White House China analyst until 2019, when he became an adviser to government contractor Palantir Technologies.
All the same, after allowing and then regretting some deals in semiconductors and elsewhere, CFIUS has taken a more expansive view of its authority, looking not just at the acquirer but also at its financial backers and customers. That has been especially true for Chinese minority investments in tech companies.
In another pivotal case, Obama blocked a Chinese-backed acquisition of the American business of semiconductor firm Aixtron, in part because a former Chinese customer of Aixtron had connections to the acquirer and government support.
“Where there could be Chinese interests, such as if there are Chinese operations or customers of the existing U.S. business, CFIUS is conducting a very thorough risk-based analysis regardless of how benign the transaction may appear,” the law firm Covington & Burling wrote at the time.
Then-President Donald Trump later blocked chipmaker Broadcom’s attempted takeover of Qualcomm in 2018, shortly after the former said it was relocating to the United States from Singapore. In that case, CFIUS was concerned both about Broadcom’s Chinese customers and Qualcomm’s sensitivity as a supplier to the Defense Department and other critical industries.
Former officials said that there were at least grounds to ask further questions, and that they assumed Musk’s lawyers were preparing to brief officials and head off concerns.
“It is likely CFIUS will ask for more information, and they may want a submission to flesh out national security issues,” the Obama veteran said. “In theory, could they mess up the whole deal? Absolutely.”
A member of Musk’s legal team did not respond to emailed questions.
A former Senate Commerce staffer said questions probably would be forthcoming even though going further would carve out new territory.
“It’s clearly a national-security sensitive asset, but you have to find the jurisdictional hook,” he said, asking for anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue.
One route to getting more information, current and former officials said, would be to press Musk’s team about the influence and access to Twitter information that will be held by his minority investors, including a Qatar sovereign wealth fund and Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Alsaud.
Governments in countries like Russia, China and Saudi Arabia have invested in using Twitter to advance their national interests, and regulators fear that could be made easier by access to inside information or influence over Twitter’s leaders.
Countries such as Saudi Arabia are constantly looking for inside information on U.S. tech companies, including social media firms like Twitter, experts on national security say. In 2019, a former Twitter employee was charged with spying for Saudi Arabia.
Top cryptocurrency exchange Binance could also play a role in any inquiry, some officials said: While it moved out of its initial home in China, the company has partnered with a Chinese-government-owned firm on a blockchain initiative. A Binance spokesman said that effort was defunct, that it had no presence in China, and that it had never taken any investment from a Chinese government-controlled entity.
Ivan Schlager, a Kirkland & Ellis trade attorney, said the U.S. government was already highly attuned to the supply chain issues around the growing demand for batteries for electric vehicles, especially after it failed to stop a Chinese company’s purchase of a bankrupt American battery maker.
“CFIUS is increasingly concerned with access to raw materials and protecting what’s left of battery manufacturing,” Schlager said.
U.S. companies should be concerned as well, especially if they have Musk’s kind of money, said Robbie Diamond, founder of the nonprofit group SAFE, formerly Securing America’s Future Energy.
“The entire electric vehicle industry is currently handcuffed by China and completely dependent,” said Diamond, who has been supportive of Tesla and Musk.
“I can’t speak to Twitter. But I do think in some ways his money would be better spent to build that supply chain to support the auto company that gives him that wealth.”
Faiz Siddiqui and Gerrit De Vynck contributed to this report. | 2022-06-02T10:22:23Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Musk's Twitter deal and his dependence on China - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/musk-twitter-tesla-china-impact/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/musk-twitter-tesla-china-impact/ |
Sheryl Sandberg departure marks the end of an era for women in tech
Silicon Valley is losing one of its highest-profile female leaders
Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg, in France in 2018. (Jacques Demarthon/AFP/Getty Images)
For years, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg encouraged women to climb the corporate ladder by promoting themselves in the workplace and asking for more help from their spouses at home.
Now, her departure from Facebook as one of the highest-ranking female executives in corporate America marks the end of an era in the brand of self-empowerment feminism she championed as a critical tool to fight sexism in the workplace.
Sandberg, 52, announced Wednesday that she was stepping down as COO after a 14-year stint at a company she helped transform from a social media website for college students into a mammoth digital-advertising business. Sandberg, who has positioned herself as a champion of women in the workplace, said she would be leaving Facebook to spend more time with her family and on her philanthropic work.
“I’d like to think the career I’ve had and the career of other female leaders inspires women to know that they can lead,” she said in an interview with The Washington Post. “If you were growing up 100 years ago, you wouldn’t have known a single woman in business. If you are growing up today, you know some. I hope my daughters are going to grow up in a world where there are a lot more.”
As one of the wealthiest self-made female billionaires in the world, Sandberg was a symbol that women could make it to the top of a male-dominated industry like Sillcon Valley tech companies. Her advice to women who wanted to ascend higher in their careers was simply to “lean in,” or be more assertive at their jobs, which became a cultural phenomenon. Her 2010 TED Talk, a best-selling book and the nonprofit foundation Lean In propelled her into a kind of corporate stardom that few chief operating officers enjoy while being second-in-command at their companies.
Sandberg was among Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s most trusted deputies for years, and people spoke of the two informally as “co-CEOs” — making her one of the few high-powered women at the helm of a tech giant.
“This is a big loss in terms of just having women represented in Silicon Valley in a meaningful way,” said Crystal Patterson, a former senior manager at Facebook and current managing director at the lobbying firm Washington Media Group. “There isn’t another Sheryl.”
Over the years, Sandberg has struggled to retain her voice as a champion of women as Facebook, which changed its name to Meta last year, continued to be overrun with political controversies during her tenure. Sandberg has faced criticism over, among other things, viral covid misinformation and the role the company played in spreading former president Donald Trump’s false claims that 2020 presidential election was rigged.
“Her value as a messenger definitely shifted over time with the fortunes of the company,” Patterson added.
While women have made small gains in ascending to the highest levels of power in corporations, the C-suite is still dominated by men. In 2021, 26 percent of all CEOs and managing directors were women, up from 15 percent in 2019, according to a report by the women’s advocacy group Catalyst.
The movement to get more women into better roles in corporate America has stalled in recent years. Faced with tough choices about how to balance career aspirations with the demands of caring for loved ones during pandemic-induced shutdowns, many women leaned out. A 2021 report conducted by McKinsey in partnership with LeanIn.Org found that 1 in 3 women had considered leaving the workforce or downshifting their careers, which represented an increase from the share of women who said the same during the first few months of the pandemic.
And female workers, especially in racial minorities, were often overrepresented in careers that were hit hard by the pandemic. A recent report by the National Women’s Law Center found that there were still 1 million fewer women in the labor force in January 2022 than there were in February 2020, while men mostly recouped their job losses during that time frame.
Sandberg said in the interview with The Post that she thinks the Lean In campaign can and will survive her departure from Facebook.
There are some other high-profile women in tech who could pick up where Sandberg left off. Last year, Fidji Simo left her role as head of the Facebook app to become the chief executive officer of Instacart. Deborah Liu, also a former Facebook executive, became the CEO of Ancestry.com. Susan Wojcicki is the CEO of YouTube, and Safra Catz holds that title at software company Oracle.
Facebook’s chief legal officer, Jennifer Newstead, and chief business officer, Marne Levine, have recently taken on bigger roles at the social media giant.
“There are still a ton of issues for women in tech, but Sheryl leaves a long wake of female execs that can pick up this mantle,” said Katie Harbath, a former Facebook employee and CEO of the consulting firm Anchor Change.
Sandberg’s image as a corporate feminist was first burnished after the 2010 TED Talk, in which she chronicled what she saw as the reasons women were still struggling to compete with men in moving up the corporate latter. She argued, among other things, that women often held themselves back by not taking credit for their own wins or not seeking out more ambitious opportunities out of fear they wouldn’t be able to mange the demands of their home lives.
“No one gets to the corner office by sitting on the side, not at the table,” she said. “And no one gets the promotion if they don’t think they deserve their success.”
Sandberg followed up the talk with a 2013 book, “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead,” that helped thrust her into the spotlight. Later, she started the Lean In foundation, which helps organize networking groups for women to support one another in their careers.
The end of leaning in: How Sheryl Sandberg’s message of empowerment fully unraveled
But Sandberg’s ideas quickly faced criticism for failing to take into account the additional barriers faced by women of color and those who don’t work in corporate environments. Others argued she was downplaying the systematic barriers that keep women out of boardrooms and overplaying their level of personal agency in the matter.
Amy Nelson, founder and co-CEO of a co-working start-up for women called the Riveter, said she hopes Sandberg will focus on bringing greater equity to the conversation Lean In started.
“She was talking about something before a lot of people in terms of the need for professional women to have a community and advocate for one another, and I think Lean In played a critical role in changing that,” Nelson said. “But I also think it’s very clear that the ability to lean in is a privilege largely held by White women, and the discussion leaves behind women who don’t have money or connections or support.”
“I think we need to have that conversation,” Nelson continued. “Wouldn’t it be nice if Sheryl led that discussion?”
The Lean In strategy also faced philosophical challenges from the #MeToo movement, which highlighted the pervasive culture of sexual harassment and sexism that persists for even highly successful women in their careers.
Still, on Wednesday, women inside and outside Facebook congratulated her on making the move.
“I think that she started that movement,” said Debbie Frost, a former Facebook executive and current adviser to Lean In. “I don’t think that leaves when she leaves. In fact, I think that the impact that she can have on more companies and more organizations now will be what’s going to be the most profound and exciting thing.”
As for Sandberg’s future, she said it’s not yet fully mapped out. She’ll get remarried soon and continue to raise her kids, she said in a Facebook post announcing her departure.
“I am not entirely sure what the future will bring — I have learned no one ever is,” she said in the post. “I know it will include focusing more on my foundation and philanthropic work, which is more important to me than ever given how critical this moment is for women.” | 2022-06-02T10:22:29Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s departure marks end of an era for women in tech - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/sandberg-leaves-facebook/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/sandberg-leaves-facebook/ |
Consider a pilgrimage to see ‘Hamlet’ in Canada, Broadway shows in Kansas City and St. Louis, or ‘Cinderella’ in Utah
(Pierre Mornet/Illustration for The Washington Post)
Theater percolates in nooks and crannies, small-town recesses, and big-city buckets, all across America. Some favorite memories are of encountering shows, festivals and drama-focused conversations in far-flung parts of the United States. Like the time a modest-size Kansas town mounted a Kander and Ebb celebration — with Kander and Ebb in attendance. Or the tiny venue that premiered a drama about the Civil War, just blocks from the onetime battlefield that was its setting. Or the slate of stage-whodunnits that improbably cropped up in a less-traveled part of Kentucky, not far from the world’s reportedly largest sassafras tree.
Even in the wake of a pandemic, this summer brings striking examples of the theater field’s breadth, depth and glorious eclecticism. So think of the season’s extra daylight hours as additional time to look beyond your standard artistic horizon and your usual entertainment suspects, and make a pilgrimage or two, at least in spirit.
‘Bakkhai’
The ads say, “Party like it’s 399 B.C.” Playwright Anne Carson brings a new adaptation of Euripides’s “The Bacchae” to Baltimore, in a production directed by Mike Donahue, with music by Diana Oh and choreography by Willia Noel Montague. The play is billed as containing “original music, debauchery, and a whole lot of wine.” Let the summertime revels begin. Through June 19 at Baltimore Center Stage, 700 N. Calvert St., Baltimore. centerstage.org.
‘Common Ground Revisited’
Based partly on J. Anthony Lukas’s groundbreaking 1985 book “Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families,” this world-premiere play follows the history of mandated school busing in Boston through three families who represent a cross-section of the city. The piece, developed by Huntington Theatre Company in conjunction with ArtsEmerson, is directed by Melia Bensussen and Kirsten Greenidge. Through June 26 at the Huntington Theatre, 264 Huntington Ave., Boston. huntingtontheatre.org.
‘Hamlet’
Better late than never for the Stratford Festival in Canada: This summer marks the first time that the august Shakespeare company is staging “Hamlet” with a Black actor, Amaka Umeh, in the title role. The production in the company’s Festival Theatre is directed by Peter Pasyk and features Graham Abbey as Claudius, Maev Beaty as Gertrude and Andrea Rankin as Ophelia. Through Oct. 28 at the Stratford Festival, Stratford, Ontario. stratfordfestival.ca.
A dueling, lawbreaking, queer 17th-century opera singer will feint and parry at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival this summer. “Revenge Song,” a musical tale from playwright Qui Nguyen (“Vietgone,” Disney’s “Raya and the Last Dragon”), draws on the reportedly true story of Julie d’Aubigny, a French singer and sword fighter born around 1673. Other offerings this year at OSF include Mona Mansour’s “Unseen,” Dominique Morisseau’s “Confederates” and director Rosa Joshi’s production of Shakespeare’s “King John,” featuring female and nonbinary performers. Through Jan. 1, 2023, at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, 15 S. Pioneer St., Ashland, Ore. osfashland.org.
‘Noir’
Without a shadow of a doubt, if you find yourself in Houston, you should check out the world premiere musical “Noir” at the Alley Theatre. Duncan Sheik, the singer-songwriter and musical theater composer (“Spring Awakening”), and Kyle Jarrow (“The SpongeBob Musical”) wrote this homage to the classic crime-flick tradition. The pair are experienced at dramatizing atmospheric narrative genres, having collaborated on the ghost-story-steeped “Whisper House.” With direction by Tony Award winner Darko Tresnjak (“A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder”), “Noir” might wing as nimbly as a Maltese falcon. Through July 3 at the Alley Theatre, 615 Texas Ave., Houston. alleytheatre.org.
‘Texas’
There may be no more idyllic setting for a theater production this summer — or any summer — than the long-running tradition that is the concisely named musical “Texas,” staged for the past 50-plus years at an amphitheater carved out of a natural basin in Palo Duro Canyon. A family-friendly show about 19th-century settlers in the Texas Panhandle, “Texas” features horses, pyrotechnics and water effects, and 60-plus actors, singers and dancers. Patrons who arrive early can partake in such pre-show offerings as a wagon ride to the venue and a chuck wagon dinner. Through Aug. 13 at the Pioneer Amphitheatre, 11450 State Park Hwy. Rd. 5, Canyon, Tex. texas-show.com.
San Diego’s Old Globe
Evoking the venerated Globe Theatre in London, San Diego’s Old Globe features a trio of venues, including the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, a 615-seat outdoor stage that capitalizes on Southern California’s hospitable temperatures and oceanside breeze. That theater will host a pair of Shakespearean classics this summer: “The Taming of the Shrew,” directed with a contemporary spin by Shana Cooper (June 5-July 10), and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” helmed by Patricia McGregor (July 31-Sept. 4). June 5-Sept. 4 at the Lowell Davies Festival Theatre, 1363 Old Globe Way, San Diego. theoldglobe.org.
Starlight Theatre’s Broadway series
With an open-air setting in Kansas City’s Swope Park and space for nearly 8,000 spectators, the Starlight Theatre makes for a one-of-a-kind stop for touring Broadway shows. And it’s the second-longest-running self-producing outdoor theater in the nation, behind the Muny in St. Louis. This summer, audiences can catch “Hairspray” (June 7-12), “Anastasia” (Aug. 9-14), “Sister Act” (Aug. 16-21) and “The Prom” (Sept. 13-18) on the 72-year-old stage, which is framed by striking 60-foot towers. June 7-Sept. 18 at the Starlight Theatre, 4600 Starlight Rd., Kansas City, Mo. kcstarlight.com.
In 35 height-of-summer minutes, you’d barely have time to watch a Popsicle melt, or apply your sunblock properly before a dip in the pool. But if you’re in Raleigh, N.C., in June, that half-hour-plus could deliver not one, but two short, mysterious plays by the great Caryl Churchill. Burning Coal Theatre Company’s production of the roughly 20-minute “What If If Only” is billed as a U.S. premiere, and the 15-minute “Air” (which debuted in May 2020 as part of “The Lockdown Plays,” a British-produced podcast series) as that script’s onstage world premiere. Blink and you miss them, so don’t blink. June 9-26 at the Burning Coal Theatre Company, 224 Polk St., Raleigh. burningcoal.org.
Even the town’s name conveys promise: Spring Green, Wis., is home to American Players Theatre, which in the summer and fall produces multiple shows in rotating repertory in a 1,089-seat outdoor amphitheater and 201-seat indoor venue. This year’s nine-play lineup includes Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s comedy “The Rivals,” directed by Aaron Posner, and Jessica Swale’s adaptation of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility,” directed by Marti Lyons. Jen Silverman’s Bronte riff “The Moors” will also be wuthering. June 11-Nov. 20 at the American Players Theatre, 5950 Golf Course Rd., Spring Green, Wis. americanplayers.org.
The Muny’s 104th season
Billing itself as the nation’s oldest and largest outdoor musical venue, the Muny has been staging productions in St. Louis’s Forest Park since the early 1900s. The amphitheater accommodates nearly 11,000 patrons, with the last nine rows — some 1,500 seats — free to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. This summer’s slate features productions of “Chicago,” “Camelot,” “Mary Poppins,” “Sweeney Todd,” “Legally Blonde,” “The Color Purple” and “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat,” with myriad Broadway veterans among the casts. June 13-Aug. 18 at the Muny, #1 Theatre Dr., St. Louis. muny.org.
Shakespeare Dallas was born in 1972, when local actor and director Bob Glenn performed his one-man version of “Hamlet” free at Dallas’s Fair Park, and now the company is celebrating its 50th anniversary with another summer of Shakespeare in the Park. A pair of productions will take turns occupying East Dallas’s Samuell-Grand Amphitheatre: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” directed by Raphael Parry (June 15-July 23), and “The Tempest,” helmed by Jenni Stewart (June 22-July 22). June 15-July 23 at the Samuell-Grand Amphitheatre, 6200 E. Grand Ave., Dallas. shakespearedallas.org.
For many, the Public Theater’s Free Shakespeare in the Park programming is the first image conjured when discussing outdoor American theater. Staging Shakespeare at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater for six decades, the Public hands out same-day tickets via in-person distributions in Central Park and the five boroughs, plus an in-person lottery and a digital drawing. This summer, the Public will stage “Richard III” — directed by Robert O’Hara (“Slave Play”) and starring “Black Panther’s” Danai Gurira in the title role (June 17-July 17), followed by Shaina Taub’s musical adaptation of “As You Like It” (Aug. 10-Sept. 11). June 17-Sept. 11 at the Delacorte Theater, 81 Central Park West, New York. publictheater.org.
‘To Kill a Mockingbird’
The always incisive Richard Thomas seems an ideal choice to play Atticus Finch, the humane central character of both Harper Lee’s classic novel and Aaron Sorkin’s adaptation. A Broadway hit directed by Bartlett Sher, the play has commenced a national tour and arrives in Washington this summer after stops in Chicago, Cincinnati and Schenectady, N.Y. June 21-July 10 at the Kennedy Center. kennedy-center.org.
‘Broadway in the Park’
For the second straight summer, Arlington’s Signature Theatre is teaming up with Wolf Trap for an evening of show tunes under the stars. This year’s event is headlined by Tony winners Kelli O’Hara (“Kiss Me, Kate”) and Adrienne Warren (“Tina: The Tina Turner Musical”), with local favorites Erin Driscoll, Rayshun LaMarr, Kevin McAllister, Donna Migliaccio, Nova Y. Payton, Awa Sal Secka and Bobby Smith also on the docket. The performance is directed by Matthew Gardiner, Signature’s first-year artistic director who helmed vibrant productions of the musicals “Rent” and “She Loves Me” during the theater’s 2021-2022 season. June 24 at Wolf Trap, 1551 Trap Rd., Vienna, Va. wolftrap.org.
Anyone who caught director Daniel Fish’s iconoclastic take on “Oklahoma!” will be at least curious about his “Most Happy in Concert,” running July 13-31 at the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Conceived and directed by Fish, with choreography by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar and a cast slated to include Tina Fabrique and Mary Testa, the production bends a new lens on Frank Loesser’s score for the 1956 musical “The Most Happy Fella.” The festival’s other offerings include Alex Edelman’s “Just for Us” and Anna Ouyang Moench’s comedy thriller “Man of God.” July 5-Aug 14 at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, 1000 Main St., Williamstown, Mass. wtfestival.org.
In terms of sheer spectacle, this summer’s marquee outdoor event may be the Hollywood Bowl’s production of “Kinky Boots,” the rollicking 2013 Broadway musical featuring a book by Harvey Fierstein and music and lyrics by Cyndi Lauper. Original director and choreographer Jerry Mitchell returns to helm this special staging in the nearly 18,000-seat venue, which is marking its 100th anniversary. Emmy winner Wayne Brady and Scissors Sisters frontman Jake Shears are reprising the roles they played on Broadway, with “Star Wars” actress Kelly Marie Tran also starring. July 8-10 at the Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N. Highland Ave., Los Angeles. hollywoodbowl.com.
Cyberwar. Antarctic research. A psychiatric hospital in 1935. These and other eclectic topics have inspired the playwrights represented at the Contemporary American Theater Festival this summer. The showcase at Shepherd University in West Virginia always rustles up a goodly number of world-premiere and newish works, and this year’s lineup is additionally gratifying as a feat of commitment: The six plays — by Chisa Hutchinson, Victor Lesniewski, Jacqueline Goldfinger, Caridad Svich, Terence Anthony and Kevin Artigue — were originally slated for 2020. July 8-31 at the Contemporary American Theater Festival, 92 W. Campus Dr., Shepherdstown, W.Va. catf.org.
‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
Two years after “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was set to occupy the National Building Museum, William Shakespeare’s fantastical forest will finally take root for a production amid the museum’s vast atrium and dramatic Corinthian columns. Victor Malana Maog directs this staging, which is produced by the Folger Theatre amid renovations to that company’s historic East Capitol Street headquarters. The Building Museum’s theatrical makeover — billed as “The Playhouse” and developed in association with the University of South Carolina — also will host sword-fighting demonstrations, a “Midsummer”-themed scavenger hunt and other activities between performances. July 12-Aug. 28 at the National Building Museum, 401 F St. NW. folger.edu.
‘American Prophet’
It doesn’t get more D.C. than this. A new musical is birthed at Arena Stage, transferring to the stage the oratory and ideas of Frederick Douglass, the great 19th-century abolitionist. (His Anacostia home, Cedar Hill, is a national historic site.) The production, which was delayed by pandemic shutdowns, is steered by director Charles Randolph-Wright, with an original score by Marcus Hummon. July 15-Aug. 28 at Arena Stage, 1101 Sixth St. SW. arenastage.org.
‘Cinderella’ in Utah
Utah’s Sundance Mountain Resort has been staging outdoor theater in the shadow of Mount Timpanogos since 1970, and collaborating on productions with Utah Valley University since 2008. Having previously staged the likes of “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Footloose,” “The Sound of Music” and “Mamma Mia!,” Sundance this summer is producing Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical adaptation of “Cinderella.” For more adventurous theatergoers, the picturesque resort also offers fly-fishing, horseback riding, ziplines and mountain biking. July 21-Aug. 13 at Sundance Mountain Resort, 8841 N. Alpine Loop Rd., Sundance, Utah. sundanceresort.com. | 2022-06-02T10:22:41Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Summer theater is cropping up in unexpected places - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/06/02/summer-theater-outdoors/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/theater-dance/2022/06/02/summer-theater-outdoors/ |
Alejandra Ibarra Chaoul
Lenir López Salazar, 17, left, and Leyani Reyes Chaban, 15, embrace on Guanabo Beach near Havana. (Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)
Perfecta Carvajal was the beloved aunt from Miami, a gentle, gray-haired woman who loved children.
She was also an economic lifeline for her family in Cuba.
Two or three times a year, Aunt “Pepa” would take the hour-long flight from Florida to Santa Clara, nearly 200 miles east of Havana. Her suitcases would be stuffed with gifts: shoes, clothing, coffee and dried beans.
Then the visits stopped. First, President Donald Trump suspended U.S. flights to Cuban cities outside Havana in 2019. Next, the coronavirus struck.
Now, thanks to U.S. policy changes announced last month, the 94-year-old Miami resident is looking forward to returning. “I’m crazy happy about going back,” she said.
The flights are among a handful of measures introduced by the Biden administration to ease Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against the Communist government. The White House pledged to lift a cap on family remittances and to allow American groups to visit on educational trips. U.S. officials said they were “expanding support for the Cuban people” at a time of desperate shortages and surging migration from the island.
Yet, while the measures are bringing hope to families like Carvajal’s, they fall well short of the normalization of relations under President Barack Obama. Analysts say the recent steps underscore how Washington’s Cuba policy is largely paralyzed, with Biden wary of antagonizing powerful Cuban Americans such as Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), or losing ground before the midterm elections in November.
“The Cubans don’t trust the U.S. at all, and the U.S. clearly doesn’t trust the Cubans at all,” said Scott Hamilton, who served as U.S. chargé d’affaires in Havana during the Obama opening. Rather than reorienting relations, he said, Biden’s measures “are more about addressing the need to get the numbers down on migration.”
Biden to lift some Trump-era sanctions on Cuba
The 60-year-old Cuba trade embargo is the longest-running set of U.S. economic sanctions in the world. Trump added scores of prohibitions, saying he was fighting “Communist oppression” and Cuba’s support for the authoritarian government of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Biden campaigned on a pledge to “reverse the failed Trump policies,” which he said only hurt families.
“The day that Biden won, people in Cuba celebrated a lot. Both government officials and the population,” Johana Tablada, the deputy director for U.S. affairs at the Cuban Foreign Ministry, said in an interview before the new measures were announced. After the Democrat took office, though, “the Cuban people felt disappointed.”
Biden left Trump’s sanctions in place as the coronavirus pandemic overwhelmed the island’s medical system and strangled tourism, a crucial source of hard currency. The administration’s lengthy Cuba policy review ground to a halt last July when historic nationwide protests erupted over a lack of food, electricity, medicine and democratic freedoms. The government responded to the demonstrations with mass trials and harsh sentences.
The most visible result of Biden’s new measures may be the resumption of U.S. flights to cities outside Havana. They’re a crucial source of cash and goods for families, as Cuban American passengers carry car parts, powdered milk, household cleaning supplies and other items that are difficult to find on the island.
Cubans who joined July protests now face stiff sentences
How important is that human supply chain? Cuba received around $3.7 billion in remittances in 2019, before the pandemic closed airports, the Miami-based Havana Consulting Group estimates. Its president, Emilio Morales, calculates that up to $3 billion more arrived in the form of goods jammed into suitcases or the big plastic-wrapped bales that Cuban Americans haul to the island. More than a half-million made the trip that year. In addition, tens of thousands of Cuban residents flew back and forth as paid informal couriers, in a kind of personal shopper system on steroids.
Regular flights from the United States to Havana resumed last fall, but it’s complicated for travelers to continue on to the provinces. Few Cubans have cars, and gas is scarce. A taxi ride from the Cuban capital to Santa Clara costs about $150. Carvajal’s niece, Miladys Puentes, said it would be tough for her aunt to endure the four- or five-hour bus trip. A direct flight to Santa Clara would make it far easier for Carvajal to reunite with her last surviving sister and other relatives. “I’m so happy that I will get to see them again,” she said.
In 2016, as part of Obama’s thaw in relations, U.S. airlines began the first direct scheduled flights to Cuba in more than 50 years. Soon, around 200 flights a week connected the United States with Cuban cities including Santa Clara, Holguín, Camagüey, Varadero and Santiago. The Biden administration hasn’t yet announced when the flights will be allowed to resume.
Biden-hosted summit facing possible boycott over invitation list
Also pending are the new rules on family remittances. Biden plans to scrap the $1,000-a-quarter limit. But he won’t reverse Trump’s blacklisting of Fincimex, a major Cuban foreign-exchange company with ties to the military, and instead is seeking an alternative mechanism, officials say. Trump’s 2020 decision to bar transactions with that firm triggered the shutdown of more than 400 Cuban offices of Western Union, its U.S. partner. A shortage of dollars from remittances and tourism has contributed to Cuba’s raging inflation.
Cuba’s foreign minister, Bruno Rodríguez, called the announcements “a limited step in the right direction.” But he noted that many of Trump’s sanctions remained in place.
Americans still aren’t allowed to make individual “people to people” cultural trips to Cuba. And most hotels remain off-limits, under U.S. restrictions on patronizing companies linked to Cuba’s military or security services.
“That’s going to be a natural break on the number of people going,” said John S. Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council. Organizers of group tours will have to search for space in private homes or Airbnbs. Cruise ships that once disgorged thousands of passengers each week are still prohibited from visiting Cuba.
Cuba remains on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terror; Trump restored that designation after losing the 2020 election. Many channels of communication between the Cuban and U.S. governments, on issues such as the environment, human trafficking and law enforcement, are dormant.
“What’s striking about these measures is, there’s nothing about reopening the diplomatic dialogues that were ongoing at the end of the Obama administration,” said William LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University.
Conservative Cuban Americans and some Democrats have criticized Biden’s expansion of travel to the island, saying there’s no evidence it will foment democracy. Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the president’s announcement “risks sending the wrong message” at a time when the government “continues its ruthless persecution of countless Cubans” for taking part in the July demonstrations.
Menendez did praise one of Biden’s changes: Resumption of a family-reunification program providing 20,000 immigrant visas a year to Cubans. Processing of those visas in Cuba was halted in 2017 as the United States withdrew diplomats because of a mysterious condition dubbed “Havana syndrome,” marked by dizziness and ringing in the ears. Since then, diplomats in many other countries have reported similar symptoms. The CIA concluded this year that it was unlikely a foreign power was targeting U.S. officials globally.
The Biden administration is hoping the new measures will reduce soaring irregular migration. Apprehensions of Cubans on the U.S.-Mexico border have rocketed to more than 113,000 in the first seven months of this fiscal year, nearly three times as many as in all of 2021. Alarmed by the numbers, Washington recently resumed direct bilateral migration talks for the first time in four years. | 2022-06-02T10:22:47Z | www.washingtonpost.com | As Biden eases Trump sanctions, Cubans in crisis hope for an economic lift - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/02/cuba-embargo-sanctions-trump-biden/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/02/cuba-embargo-sanctions-trump-biden/ |
By Robert P. George
Josh Craddock
An antiabortion advocate demonstrates outside the Supreme Court in Washington on May 31. (Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University. Josh Craddock is an affiliated scholar with the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding.
If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, it will be an enormous achievement — and a necessary first step toward obtaining justice for vulnerable unborn members of the human family. But when blue states proceed to enact legislation to permit abortion to the very point of birth, it will be the duty of Congress to enforce constitutional rights for the unborn through federal legislation.
As Justice Samuel A. Alito’s Jr.'s leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization shows, the Constitution confers no right to abortion. Its 14th Amendment, however, entitles unborn children to the protection, indeed the equal protection, of the laws. States that fail to protect the rights of the unborn violate this guarantee.
The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, extended “the equal protection of the laws” to “any person.” Although the court in Roe rejected the argument that the fetus is a person protected by the 14th Amendment, the majority’s reasoning was notoriously poor and its conclusion incorrect. The historical evidence is overwhelming that at the time of the amendment’s ratification, the word “person” had a settled public meaning that included any child living in the womb.
As Robert P. George, together with Oxford University legal philosopher John M. Finnis, explained in a Dobbs amicus brief calling on the court to acknowledge fetal personhood, elective abortion — the taking of unborn human life where there is no threat to the mother — was, from the earliest centuries at common law, treated as unlawful during all stages of pregnancy.
The 14th Amendment, similar to the Civil Rights Act of 1866 it was meant to support, codified equal protection of the fundamental rights of persons — including life and personal security — as these had been expounded in William Blackstone’s “Commentaries on the Laws of England” and leading American treatises. The Commentaries began with a discussion of unborn children’s rights as persons across many areas of law. Based on these authorities and landmark English cases, state high courts leading up to 1868 declared that the unborn child throughout pregnancy “is a person” and hence, under “civil and common law,” “to all intents and purposes a child, as much as if born.” By the end of 1868, three-quarters of the states had enacted criminal laws against abortion at all stages. These statutes classified abortion as an “offense against the person,” and nearly all described the unborn victim of abortion as an “infant” or “child.”
Because state laws allowing elective abortion necessarily deprive a class of human beings — those at the earliest stages of development — of “the equal protection of the laws,” they violate constitutional rights. Such laws render generally applicable statutes against homicide inapplicable to a disfavored class of persons and expose unborn children to lethal violence.
These are precisely the sort of wrongs that the 14th Amendment was designed to rectify. It equipped Congress to meet this challenge by granting to it, in Section 5, “power to enforce, by appropriate legislation” the amendment’s due process and equal protection guarantees. As the Supreme Court explained in the 1880 case Ex Parte Virginia, whatever legislation is “adapted to carry out . . . the equal protection of the laws against State denial or invasion . . . is brought within the domain of congressional power.”
A false, pseudo-originalist approach to constitutional interpretation would claim that the 14th Amendment does not protect the unborn because it was most immediately intended to protect Black Americans against discriminatory — unequal — treatment. But the amendment’s framers deliberately chose the broad term “persons” to empower Congress to protect any human being who might be denied due process or equal protection on any ground.
Another mistaken argument claims that the unborn cannot be protected by the 14th Amendment because it begins by declaring that “persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States.” But that provision establishes which persons are citizens, and therefore entitled to the privileges and immunities of citizenship; it does not say that only citizens are persons. Indeed, it clearly acknowledges persons who are not citizens. And the due process and equal protection provisions of the amendment expressly protect all persons — not just citizens.
Finally, although the Supreme Court purported to narrow the scope of Congress’s Section 5 enforcement power in City of Boerne v. Flores, federal protection of unborn children remains within Congress’s prerogative. As Boerne acknowledged, “it is for Congress in the first instance to ‘determine whether and what legislation is needed to secure the guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment,’ and its conclusions are entitled to much deference.”
By reversing Roe and its rejection of fetal personhood, Dobbs sets the stage for Congress to remedy state encroachments on the equal rights of our tiny sisters and brothers at the dawn of their lives and secure our nation’s promise of equal justice for all. | 2022-06-02T11:17:12Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Federal legislation is necessary to protect the unborn, even if Roe falls - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/02/roe-abortion-congress-fourteenth-amendment/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/02/roe-abortion-congress-fourteenth-amendment/ |
This is how far Republicans will go to subvert the will of the voters
A man fills out a ballot at a voting station in Mt. Gilead, N.C., on May 17. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)
The amendment itself would require a 60 percent supermajority to enact any ballot initiative that would raise taxes by more than $10 million over five years — and it leaves it up to legislators to determine what any initiative’s cost would be. Republican sponsors of the legislation, including state Senate President Pro Tempore Lee Schoenbeck, haven’t tried to hide that they hope the amendment will thwart Medicaid expansion, which will be put to voters for approval in November’s general election. | 2022-06-02T11:17:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | South Dakota's attack on ballot initiatives shows how the GOP subverts voters' will - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/02/south-dakota-ballot-initiative-gop-subvert-voters/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/02/south-dakota-ballot-initiative-gop-subvert-voters/ |
Texas shouldn’t host the NCAA’s Final Fours until it fixes its gun laws
After spending 2022 in Minneapolis, the Women's Final Four will move to Dallas in 2023. (Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
If the NCAA had any moral standards, it would move the Men’s and Women’s Final Fours — one scheduled for Houston, one slated for Dallas — out of Texas next year. It would move all of its other championships from the state, too. And it would vow not to return until Texas reforms its gun laws.
This is a moment to put the usual excuse-making aside and do something that affects more than the wallets of NCAA members. Decisive action — demanding legislation that might help prevent tragedies like the one in Uvalde — could get the attention of Gov. Greg Abbott (R), the state legislature and the corporations (notably hotels) that would stand to lose millions of dollars if the Final Fours were taken away. At the least, it would send a message about what the organization stands for.
There is precedent and evidence that the NCAA can leverage the impact of its events to protest political action — or inaction — and play a role in bringing about meaningful change. In 2001, when lawmakers in South Carolina refused to remove the Confederate flag from the state Capitol grounds, the NCAA announced it would not place any pre-scheduled events in the state until the flag was removed. In 2015, the flag was finally taken down and the NCAA began scheduling events there again.
One of the first NCAA events held in the state after that victory was a 2017 men’s basketball regional. That event was held in Greenville after the NCAA pulled it out of Greensboro, N.C., in response to an anti-LGBT measure passed by the state legislature that required people to use public restrooms corresponding to the gender on their birth certificates. Pressure from the NCAA and the NBA — which moved its All-Star Game out of Charlotte — led to the repeal of the law in 2017.
As it did in North Carolina and South Carolina, the NCAA should remove all pre-scheduled championships from Texas, although the basketball tournaments clearly would have the most economic impact. Sadly, it won’t happen. The NCAA has crawled back into its cocoon.
Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president for basketball, told me the organization’s basketball committees don’t have the power to move previously scheduled events, which could only be done by the board of governors, a 21-member group chaired at the moment by Georgetown President John DeGioia.
So I tried to get in touch with DeGioia — first through the NCAA and then through Georgetown. Trying to get in touch with President Biden might have been easier — not to mention more productive. But in a statement — clearly written by mid-level NCAA drones but apparently authorized by DeGioia — the group made its intentions clear.
“At this time the NCAA and its member schools do not plan to move any NCAA championships based on a state’s gun control laws” was the key sentence among the three in the statement. The other two called the shootings “tragic.”
Way to take a stance.
While I never got a response to my request to interview DeGioia, I did get a statement with his name on it: “The NCAA board of governors has indeed addressed important issues in the past, but any action to block states from hosting championships based on the state’s gun laws require the most careful engagement with the membership. The board of governors would only take such a step following widespread discussion across all three NCAA divisions.” Translation: We aren’t messing with the gun activists.
In truth, relocating the Final Fours would not be that difficult, especially if the NCAA — for once — moved quickly and decisively. There are 21 states that require a background check or a permit to purchase a handgun, according to Everytown for Gun Safety. Hold your events there, even if it means (gasp!) having to play a Final Four or two in an actual basketball arena instead of in a dome. Yes, that would cost the NCAA some money, but it makes so much from its television deals that it could take the hit — in the name of making an important, if symbolic, point.
Additionally, states that don’t insist on background checks or laws that at least put common-sense restrictions on the kinds of guns that can be bought need not apply for future NCAA events until they also pursue reform. For the record, I’m fine with muskets — the gun of choice when the Second Amendment was ratified 231 years ago.
How do you decide what qualifies as meaningful gun legislation or gun-control laws? Appoint an independent committee to set minimum acceptable standards. There’s nothing the NCAA loves more than creating committees — and this one, at least, would have important work to do: making clear that gun violence has gone too far and that attention needs to be paid to potential solutions.
Americans, torn between mourning and normalcy, use our games to move on
Unlike politicians, no one from the NCAA has to run against NRA-funded candidates or worry about being targeted by gun advocates. In fact, this could be a chance for the NCAA to regain some moral sway. After spending millions in legal fees to fight uselessly against name, image and likeness reform, this is a worthy cause.
What’s more important: Continuing to fight for the scam that is “amateurism” in college athletics or taking a stand that might help save lives?
Go ahead and say “But what about?” from now until the Final Fours begin. No rule change or new law is going to be perfect, no advocacy effort will be without complications, and no policy will solve every problem. The easiest thing for the NCAA to do is to hide under DeGioia’s rock — as it is clearly planning to do — and say, “It is not our place to tell states what their gun laws should be.”
If you can tell states what kind of LGBT laws you think they should have, or to take down a flag that brings back memories of the days when slavery ruled the South, you can tell states: “You need more gun control. We want to do anything we can to keep Uvalde — or Buffalo or Newtown or Columbine or Parkland — from happening again.”
The NCAA rarely makes a headline for the right reasons. This is a chance to do that. | 2022-06-02T11:25:48Z | www.washingtonpost.com | NCAA should pull its championships from Texas over gun laws - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/02/ncaa-texas-championships-gun-laws/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2022/06/02/ncaa-texas-championships-gun-laws/ |
Just How Gruesome Is Gun Violence? Maybe the Public Should See
Jacqueline Kennedy made a point of wearing her pink, blood-spattered Chanel suit on the plane back to Washington after her husband was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Aides encouraged her to change. She refused. “Let them see what they’ve done,” she insisted.
Kennedy, who had a deep understanding of the power of imagery, was widely photographed in her suit. Those photos became part of the historical record as well — a catalogue of the raw violence that has always coursed through American life.
Photos of the blood-soaked back seat of John F. Kennedy’s limousine, with crushed rose petals on the floor, also got around. But the photos that have affected me the most — photos that didn’t circulate widely and surfaced on the internet long after JFK’s assassination — are from his autopsy.(1) They show the young president as the victim of a grisly murder. Part of his head has been blown away, and there is a gaping, bloody hole at the base of his throat, where another bullet passed through. His eyes stare upward, open and blank.
Photographs of murders and other atrocities force people to decide how much reality they want to absorb. If JFK’s autopsy photographs had been released in 1963, would they have had a greater impact than the poignant, wrenching images of his wife’s suit? It depends on how you define “impact” — and how the uses and abuses of photography come into play.
The massacre that left 19 children and two teachers dead in Uvalde, Texas, has also launched a debate about how much of a tragedy’s reality is suitable for public consumption, even though no crime-scene photos of those victims have been released. Still, sorting through hypotheticals about the pros and cons of disseminating graphic images from the shooting, as many thoughtful people already have, is essential to memorializing and responding to what happened.
Much of that debate has focused on the news media’s responsibilities. Should photos of murdered children in Uvalde be published, or should the privacy of grieving families be respected? The wishes of families come first. The Kennedys were trying to preserve their dignity and memories when deciding which crime scene photos to release, just as the Uvalde families rightly are today.
At any rate, when it comes to the impact of photos, legacy media isn’t the most important actor in the gun debate. It may have been decades ago, before the internet and social media arrived. Gun-control advocates can now launch messaging campaigns on social media that expose the grotesque realities of gun violence without trespassing on the privacy of victims and their loved ones.
In that context, the “impact” of graphic photos also doesn’t have to be defined by whether it changes gun policy or people’s minds in the short term. If we’ve learned anything about violence in the U.S., it’s that too many Americans have too much tolerance for other people’s suffering. There’s no quick fix for that.
But showing people the reality of gun violence — consistently, responsibly and without flinching — matters over time. And anyone hoping to end gun massacres in the U.S. should consider whether most of the images they encounter after shootings actually force them to grapple with reality or simply airbrush it.
Jaqueline Kennedy in a bloody dress evokes sympathy more than horror, perhaps. Her husband’s shattered head evokes horror, because the violence he was subjected to is so evident. Emmett Till’s mother left his casket open at his funeral, so mourners and the media would be forced to grapple with something horrible, too. That helped set the civil rights movement in motion. Horror may spur people to action more directly than sympathy.
Gun violence needs to be seen and understood as horrible and unacceptable, just as carnage from genocide, lynchings and other obscenities is unacceptable. And photos from mass murders need to do more than elicit sympathy, without dishonoring the dead, if they are going to spark the kind of outrage that eventually brings change.
• Why America Doesn’t Know How to Stop School Shootings: Julianna Goldman
• How to Start Solving America’s Gun Culture Problem: Carmichael and Wilkinson
• America’s Allies Just Don’t Get Its Gun Obsession: Lara Williams
(1) I don’t know how the autopsy photos found their way onto the internet. The National Archives has the originals and it says it has never released them. Neither the federal government nor the Kennedys have contested the authenticity of the autopsy photos on the web. | 2022-06-02T11:52:13Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Just How Gruesome Is Gun Violence? Maybe the Public Should See - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/just-how-gruesome-is-gun-violence-maybe-the-public-should-see/2022/06/02/8abc06c8-e269-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/just-how-gruesome-is-gun-violence-maybe-the-public-should-see/2022/06/02/8abc06c8-e269-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Equal mental health insurance coverage elusive despite legal guarantee
Max Tillitt, 21, seen at his mother's house in August 2015. He died of an overdose the following month. (Family photo)
Max Tillitt was finally making progress in his battle with addiction and mental illness when word arrived that United Behavioral Health was cutting off his benefits.
Tillitt, 21, had become addicted to opioids prescribed after a high school football injury, then moved on to heroin, relapsing seven or eight times over several years. He also suffered from head injuries, bipolar disorder, depression and a sleep disorder.
Beauterre Recovery Institute told United that Tillitt would need 45 days at its residential treatment center in the countryside south of Minneapolis. United paid for 21, forcing Beauterre to discharge him to outpatient care.
Little more than two months later, Tillitt was dead of an overdose. United paid the full cost of the failed effort to revive him in a hospital emergency department — $9,221, according to his mother, DeeDee Tillitt.
“They had to because it’s medical,” she said. “It’s emergency. There was nothing they could deny. That [money] could have paid for his goddamn treatment and saved his life.”
Unequal insurance coverage for mental and physical health is widely considered one of the major causes of the mental health crisis facing the United States. After two years of a pandemic that has fueled soaring rates of anxiety and depression and two decades into the worst drug epidemic in U.S. history, uneven coverage contributes to the current severe shortage of behavioral health services.
The opioid files
Consumers seeking psychotherapy and drug treatment contend with administrative roadblocks, network shortfalls and more-restrictive benefits than they receive in coverage for physical health, according to advocates, public officials and a host of analyses, court cases and government reports. Caregivers, plagued by lower reimbursements than medical doctors receive, continue to flee insurance networks for cash-only arrangements.
“Mental health and addiction care can no longer be separate and unequal,” said former congressman Patrick J. Kennedy, who helped pass a 2008 mental health parity law and now heads the Kennedy Forum, which is devoted to implementing it. “It has to be equal and integrated.”
The insurance industry says it should not be held responsible for the inadequacy of the U.S. mental health system, which long has lacked sufficient numbers of providers to meet the public need, something the pandemic laid bare.
In simplest terms, the 2008 Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act requires group- and self-insured health plans covering more than 50 workers to provide behavioral health benefits on par with services consumers receive for medical and surgical care. This is known as mental health parity. About 136.5 million Americans receive coverage through their workplaces.
In 2010, the Affordable Care Act extended it to individual and some small group plans.
In 2020, about 53 million adults — 1 in 5 — said they had suffered some form of mental illness in the previous year, according to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health. Symptoms of anxiety and depression more than tripled during the first 10 months of the pandemic, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It is difficult to determine the number of people who did not receive services due to inadequate behavioral health coverage — which encompasses mental health and substance abuse — but there is little question the total is considerable.
In a March report, the Government Accountability Office concluded that consumers “experience challenges finding in-network providers” and “with restrictive health plan approval processes and plan coverage limitations, which can limit their ability to access services.”
In a January report to Congress, the Labor Department, which enforces the terms of 2 million workplace plans, said that during fiscal 2021, it had recouped $20,000 for a family that was shortchanged for coverage of a child’s autism. It also said it had required parity from two plans covering 1.2 million people that paid for nutritional counseling for medical conditions such as diabetes but did not cover it for mental health problems such as eating disorders.
Examples such as those barely scratch the surface of the parity problem. When the consulting firm Milliman looked at the issue for a 2019 report, it found that consumers were more than five times as likely to have to use out-of-network providers for inpatient, outpatient and office behavioral care than for analogous medical services. Reimbursement for primary medical care was 23.8 percent higher than for behavioral care, Milliman found in data for 2013 to 2017.
People seeking inpatient care for a substance abuse disorder were 10 times more likely to have to find it outside their insurance network than those seeking inpatient medical and surgical care, the report concluded.
“I think it’s unfortunate how much more distance we have to go before we meet the letter or the spirit of the law,” said Ali Khawar, acting assistant secretary of the Labor Department.
The pandemic, in addition to stressing Americans, threw a spotlight on the mental health workforce shortage and other defects in the system, several insurance officials said.
“Not every problem with behavioral health is a mental health parity violation,” said Pamela Greenberg, president and chief executive of the Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness, which represents insurer interests in mental health. “And that’s where we have gone with mental health. … We expect every problem to be solved through the mental health parity lens. The workforce shortage is one of them.”
Kate Berry, senior vice president of clinical affairs and strategic partnerships for AHIP, the association of health insurers, said: “We don’t have enough providers in the system, in our country. And there’s no short-term fix to that.
“I would definitely say the pandemic has exacerbated what has been a long-standing mismatch between the need and the supply,” she said.
The industry has called for more use of telehealth visits and allowing providers with lesser credentials to shoulder more of the mental health care load as ways to stretch access to an overburdened behavioral health system.
Part of the problem also traces back to the government’s own enforcement regime, critics said, with myriad departments, agencies and states overseeing different types of health insurance, including Medicaid.
Some investigations can last years. The Labor Department, which oversees most workplace health coverage, closed just 74 parity investigations in fiscal 2021, finding violations in 12. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services completed four investigations, finding one violation. The Labor Department also has never used its authority to refer noncompliant plans to the IRS for imposition of an excise tax of $100 per individual per day. It has sued a big insurer only once, joining New York’s attorney general in securing a $15.6 million settlement with United in August.
The Labor Department alleged that United systematically reimbursed for out-of-network mental health services more restrictively than it did for medical or surgical care, among other accusations. The company admitted no wrongdoing in the settlement.
States, some of which have their own parity laws, have levied fines just 13 times since 2017, according to a tally kept on the Kennedy Forum’s parity tracker.
Khawar said that under the law, the excise tax would be imposed on employers, not the insurance plans and benefit administrators that are typically responsible for violations. That makes the department more reluctant to use that penalty.
The Labor Department’s Employee Benefits Security Administration has spent years explaining the regulations to insurance companies, helping them move forward and cajoling them into compliance, to maximize benefits to consumers, he said. In some cases, it used the threat of the excise tax or a lawsuit, he added.
In 2021, Congress gave the agency new power to require companies to submit written comparisons of their medical and mental health coverage. None of the 156 analyses requested by the Labor Department or the 15 requested by CMS was sufficient when first submitted, according to the agencies’ January report to Congress.
Insurers contend that outcome proves the Labor Department still cannot explain the documentation it wants to allow comparisons of mental health and physical health coverage.
“The goal posts keep moving,” Greenberg said.
Deepti Loharikar, senior director of regulatory affairs at the Association for Behavioral Health and Wellness, said compliance would be easier “if our members knew exactly what regulators were looking for. It’s unclear what [they are] looking for.”
Khawar responded that insurers are well aware of the requirements after years of working with them.
Under President Biden, enforcement of mental health parity has become a top priority for the Labor Department, which is adding enforcement staff and has asked Congress for the power to impose civil monetary penalties on noncompliant insurers. The House already has approved that authority in the stalled Build Back Better legislation, and two Senate committees are looking at how to beef up enforcement in mental health bills working their way through the chamber.
“We have to do something,” Labor Secretary Marty Walsh said in an interview. “Now is the time to really put the foot on the gas and to make some significant investment in services and payment for services.”
There is general agreement that over the years, insurers have improved parity in the provision of “quantitative treatment limitations” — rules that govern, for example, the number of visits a patient is entitled to, or the size of a deductible.
The focus now is on upgrading parity in “non-quantitative treatment limitations,” obstacles such as determinations of prior authorization and medical necessity that aren’t easily enumerated in coverage determinations. All sides agree they are more difficult to police.
“The two most significant barriers to care erected by the industry are medical necessity and network inadequacy,” said Meiram Bendat, founder of the law firm Psych-Appeal and one of DeeDee Tillitt’s lawyers in a class-action lawsuit that advocates consider a landmark case for mental health parity.
Tillitt, for example, argued in legal filings that United relied on guidelines for covering her son’s care that were more restrictive than commonly accepted standards for substance abuse and mental health treatment. The lawsuit seeks to define standards insurance companies must follow.
United said in a statement: “We are committed to ensuring all our members have access to care and to reimbursing providers consistent with the terms of the member’s health plan and state and federal rules. Over the last several years, we have taken concrete steps to improve access to quality care” by adding providers and via telehealth platforms, among other steps, the company said.
Max Tillitt was a healthy, athletic teen until a violent helmet-to-helmet collision in a football practice left him with a concussion and continued neck and back pain, according to his mother and her court filing.
He spiraled into addiction that began with his pain medication, relapsing “seven or eight times” before he landed at Beauterre, DeeDee Tillitt’s lawyers wrote. His longest stretch of sobriety in more than five years lasted seven weeks, according to the lawsuit. He twice tried to kill himself by overdosing, according to the court papers.
But her son seemed to take to Beauterre, enjoying the pastoral setting, Tillitt said. He and his fiancee had a child on the way, and after years of addiction, she said, he appeared to be making some progress.
“This was the first time we really had hope,” DeeDee Tillitt said. “He was at the right place at the right time, finally. He was just making great progress.”
In a letter denying Max Tillitt further care at Beauterre, provided by his mother, a United official wrote: “You have been able to get off drugs. You have made progress in the program. You do not have extreme health or emotional problems, including from coming off drugs. You do not need 24-hour nursing care. Your care could go on in a less restrictive setting, such as outpatient.”
After Beauterre appealed, United followed up with a letter four days later that listed other progress Tillitt had made. “You have been able to move towards recovery by identifying triggers or issues that often lead to substance usage,” it said. “Your mood and sleep have seemed to improve as well,” it added. United acknowledged that he needed more treatment, but not in a residential setting.
Max Tillitt was discharged without a treatment plan, according to court papers and his mother. It took two weeks to get him into an outpatient program. DeeDee Tillitt recruited friends and family to keep watch over her son 24 hours a day, every day, until arrangements could be made, she said.
But her son did not fare well and died 10 weeks later, in September 2015. “If he had been allowed to stay in Beauterre, I believe he would still be alive,” Tillitt said. “If he was in there for a heart attack, they’d never say, ‘We’re going to send you home now, even though you might have another heart attack.’”
Though the class-action lawsuit was brought in a California federal court under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, advocates consider David Wit et al v. United al Health a milestone in the enforcement of mental health parity.
In his 2019 ruling, federal Chief Magistrate Judge Joseph C. Spero wrote that “internal UBH communications … make it crystal clear that the primary focus of the guideline development process … was the implementation of a ‘utilization management’ model that keeps benefit expenses down by placing a heavy emphasis on crisis stabilization and an insufficient emphasis on the effective treatment of co-occurring and chronic conditions.”
Spero added that the company’s guidelines were seen internally as important in “‘mitigating’ the impact of the 2008 Parity Act.”
But in March, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision. The judges wrote that the “plaintiffs did not show that the plans mandate coverage for all treatment that is consistent with [generally accepted standards of care].”
United said in a statement “we are pleased with the court’s ruling and continue to support our members with the mental health care services they need, when they need it, as part of our broader commitment to accessible, quality care.”
Bendat and other attorneys have appealed for a rehearing of the case by the full Ninth Circuit panel of judges. | 2022-06-02T11:52:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Equal mental health insurance coverage elusive despite legal guarantee - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/05/25/equal-mental-health-insurance-coverage-elusive-despite-legal-guarantee/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/05/25/equal-mental-health-insurance-coverage-elusive-despite-legal-guarantee/ |
Woman killed, two children injured in parasailing crash in Florida Keys
A wind gust led the boat captain to cut the line to the parasail, investigators say
The old Seven Mile Bridge, shown here in 2012. A group of parasailing tourists crashed into the bridge on May 30, leading to the death of a 33-year-old mother. (Cammy Clark, Miami Herald/AP) (Cammy Clark/The Miami Herald/AP)
Charter fishing guide John Callion was watching tourists parasailing in the Florida Keys on Memorial Day when the weather turned. In a matter of seconds, calm conditions mutated into 30-mph winds.
“I knew right away the outcome was going to be bad,” Callion said in a Facebook post.
In normal conditions, the people parasailing that day would have been gently floating through the air, buoyed by the parasail behind them and tethered by a rope to a boat guiding them on a scenic adventure. Instead, as Callion watched, a gust of wind flooded the parasail, threatening to drag the 31-foot motorboat, investigators with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said in a report. So the captain cut the line tethering the parasail to the boat, according to the report, causing it to plunge and drop its three passengers into the water.
Propelled by the wind, the parasail itself stayed aloft and soared south, dragging the three occupants — who were still attached to it by rope — through the water, according to the report. As the parasailing boat gave chase, Callion started filming, thinking he would capture a dramatic rescue on video.
“But as time went on it was clear to me that the parasail boat was in dire need of assistance,” he wrote on Facebook.
Callion raced after them in his fishing boat.
Neither vessel was able to intervene before the parasail hit the Old Seven Mile Bridge, a decommissioned span that serves as a fishing pier and pedestrian walkway. At first, Callion didn’t think that was a problem.
“I thought the parachute hit the bridge and the people were just going to be dangling when I got there,” he told Good Morning America on Wednesday, “but it actually was a much worse situation.”
6 dead in Alaska sightseeing plane crash, Coast Guard says
What was supposed to be a fun activity during a family vacation had quickly turned into a horrifying chain of events that left a 33-year-old mother dead. Officials say the woman, Supraja Alaparthi of Schaumburg, Ill., was with a larger group of relatives vacationing in the Florida Keys. She had been on the parasailing excursion with her 10-year-old son and 9-year-old nephew, who were both injured but survived the collision. The incident is now being investigated by the U.S. Coast Guard and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
According to the fish and wildlife officials, Alaparthi and the children had gone out on Monday afternoon with Lighthouse Parasail, a Marathon-based outfit, WPLG reported. Once they were out on the water, Alaparthi strapped into the parasail with the two boys. Shortly after they took flight, a gust of wind “pegged” the parasail, an industry term to describe when the parasail chute becomes a sail that drags the boat it’s attached to. Callion estimated that, once it was detached from the boat, the parasail traveled one to two miles for several minutes at “a high rate of speed” before hitting the bridge.
Callion said he was the first boater to arrive at the crash site. There, he discovered that the parasail, instead of leaving its three passengers hanging uninjured, had dragged them into a solid part of the bridge, he said in the Facebook post. Callion cut each of them from their harnesses. The 10-year-old boy had only minor injuries, but Alaparthi and her nephew were unconscious, he said. After getting them on board, Callion drove his boat to the Sunset Grille & Raw Bar in Marathon as his passengers tried to revive the unconscious victims.
“It was pretty much the worst thing you could imagine,” he told the Miami Herald. “It was real bad.”
Alaparthi died at the scene, Monroe County Sheriff Sgt. Deborah Johnson said in a report; Alaparthi’s 9-year-old nephew was unconscious and “barely breathing.” Although initially delayed because of the severe weather, a helicopter eventually flew the 9-year-old to a hospital in Miami.
On Tuesday, the boy’s parents told Callion that they expect their son to make a full recovery, Keys Weekly reported.
Woman killed by jet-engine blast at popular Caribbean tourist attraction
The full sequence of events is still being investigated. According to state investigators, the captain of the parasailing boat, identified in an incident report as 49-year-old Daniel Couch, cut the line, causing the three parasailors to drop “from an unknown height.” A law enforcement source told the Herald that they believe Couch did so thinking he and his crew would then catch Alaparthi and the two children as they fell.
Mark McCulloh, who pioneered parasailing in the 1970s and serves as chairman of the Florida-based Parasail Safety Council, told the Herald that Couch should have used other tactics, like veering side to side in an effort to deflate the parasail. Cutting the line is considered a no-no.
Lighthouse Parasail didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Washington Post.
In his Facebook post, Callion described the incident as “life changing” and ended it by articulating the lessons he’d drawn from it, lessons he hopes others will also take to heart.
“Never take life for granted,” he said. “Things can change in a second.” | 2022-06-02T11:52:31Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Woman killed, two children injured in Memorial Day parasailing crash in Florida Keys - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/02/woman-killed-parasailing-florida-keys/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/06/02/woman-killed-parasailing-florida-keys/ |
Here's a plan for wooing more cyber pros to work for the government
Welcome to The Cybersecurity 202! Hat tip to the Wall Street Journal's Dustin Volz for this fine anecdote about Carl Bernstein planting a phony obituary in The Post when he was a young Washington Evening Star reporter. A housekeeping note: There's no Friday newsletter this week. We'll be back in your inbox Monday.
Below: U.S. Cyber Command says it has conducted offensive hacks during the Ukraine war, and the FBI blamed Iran for a thwarted cyberattack on Boston Children's Hospital.
Higher pay and less stringent degree requirements could attract more federal cyber workers
The U.S. government needs to radically overhaul the way it hires and compensates cyber pros if it wants to get ahead of the ever-growing digital threat, an advisory report out this morning warns.
Proposed top-line changes include blowing up pay scales to ensure government cyber pros are more competitive with the private sector and rejiggering job requirements so it’s easier to hire people with specialized cybersecurity certifications but who lack bachelor’s degrees.
The report, created under the auspices of the congressionally led Cyberspace Solarium Commission, was shared exclusively with The Cybersecurity 202 in advance of its release today.
It follows years of concern that the nation’s cyber workforce is chronically short staffed — both in government and the private sector — and that the problem is getting worse year by year.
The Solarium commission, which helped fundamentally reform the government’s cyber posture in recent years, ended its official work in 2021. But a handful of staff are still doing some follow-up work — and the cyber workforce gap is at the top of the list, the commission’s Executive Director Mark Montgomery, who co-wrote the report, told me.
The problem: The need for cyber pros in government and industry has skyrocketed in recent years amid a surge in hacking by criminals and government intelligence services that’s growing faster than universities and training programs can prepare workers to combat it.
“We’re about two-thirds manned now,” Montgomery told me. “When you’re two-thirds manned, you clearly aren’t getting the job done. It can make for low morale. … You can end up with an underperforming, unhappy, undertrained workforce.”
Montgomery wrote the report with Laura Bate, a former senior director on the Solarium commission. It’s being published by Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a think tank that’s housing the Solarium’s current work and where Montgomery is a senior fellow.
Efforts are already underway to get the report's recommendations enacted.
Congressional Solarium members have given their stamp of approval to the report and are likely to introduce many of its recommendations as legislation this year or next, Montgomery told me. The commission was co-chaired by Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) and Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.).It also included Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) and Rep. Jim Langevin (D-R.I.).
The report is being formally released today during an FDD panel discussion with National Cyber Director Chris Inglis, who was a member of the Solarium commission before he was appointed to his current role. Creating the national cyber director position was a key recommendation in the commission’s initial report.
A major throughline of the report and recommendations is the idea that cyber jobs are unlike other jobs the government has to fill.
For one thing, many people with the best skills have gained them without gathering traditional credentials such as bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
The field also moves so quickly that taking time off to retrain is far more important than in slower moving fields such as contract law.
As a result, the report recommends developing a specialized cadre of government human resources specialists that are highly trained in these differences and do nothing but hire and manage the careers of federal cyber pros.
That system could end up being a model for other highly technical specialties in government such as people working in artificial intelligence, Montgomery told me.
“I think this is the leading edge of some emerging tech issues we’re going to face,” he said.
Another big recommendation: Fix the government’s data about cyber hiring.
Government agencies hire cyber workers in such a haphazard fashion that it’s hard to even get a ballpark figure for how many cyber pros work in the federal government.
There are about 2,400 employees at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and Inglis is in the process of filling out his staff of about 75 employees. But it's far more difficult to figure out how many cyber pros are protecting computer networks at individual federal agencies.
Montgomery said his extremely back-of-the-napkin estimate is there are about 70,000 to 80,000 civilian government cyber jobs and about 70 percent of them are filled with 30 percent vacant. “Without data, I have no way of proving this,” he said.
Previous efforts to improve matters have also been hit and miss. The Department of Homeland Security spent seven years developing a streamlined system for cyber hiring that it rolled out last year. But so far, the system has only completed one hire while 15 to 20 more people are going through pre-hiring processes such as background checks, Natalie Alms recently reported for FCW.
Boosting congressional spending on recruiting and retaining cyber workers in the government
Increasing congressional funding for CyberCorps, a Scholarship for Service program that recruits cyber pros into the federal workforce
Some of the recommendations — like improving government data about cyber jobs — can be implemented in a matter of months. The bigger changes, however, will likely take several years, Montgomery told me.
“This will take years of implementation and attention to detail and tracing and tracking by the [national cyber director],” he said. “Then, five to seven years from now, we could have a stable, properly manned cyber workforce.”
Cyber Command has launched hacks amid Ukraine war, Nakasone says
U.S.-backed hackers have “conducted a series of operations across the full spectrum; offensive, defensive, [and] information operations,” U.S. Cyber Command Chief Gen. Paul Nakasone told Sky News’s Alexander Martin. It marks the first public acknowledgment that U.S. government-backed hackers are backing up Ukraine by launching offensive cyberattacks.
Nakasone pushed back against claims that the conflict's cyber components have been overblown. “If you asked the Ukrainians, they wouldn't say it's been overblown,” he said. “If you take a look at the destructive attacks and disruptive attacks that they've encountered … this is something that has been ongoing.”
Nakasone cited a cyberattack on U.S. satellite firm Viasat early in the conflict, which the U.S. government and its allies have blamed on Russia.
The Biden administration does not believe that cyberattacks violate the U.S. position of avoiding military conflict with Russia, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
FBI director blames Iran for foiled cyberattack on Boston Children’s Hospital
Going after the hospital — which is one of the country’s largest pediatric centers — was “one of the most despicable cyberattacks I’ve ever seen,” FBI Director Christopher A. Wray said. The FBI notified the hospital after learning about the threat, and the FBI was “able to help them ID and mitigate the threat,” Wray said, per the Wall Street Journal’s Dustin Volz.
“It is rare for the FBI to identify victims of cyberattacks, and such information is typically classified,” Volz writes. The hospital told Volz that it had “proactively thwarted the threat to our network” with the FBI’s help.
It’s not clear what the hackers would have done if they had been able to fully penetrate the hospital’s network. They could have shut down networks, hampering some medical care, an official familiar with the matter told Volz. They could have also stolen data and deployed ransomware, though an official told Volz that the hack didn’t develop far enough to find out whether it could have led to a ransomware attack.
Biden poised to select cyber executive to lead new State Department bureau
Nathaniel Fick is the likely pick to be the first leader of the State Department’s new Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy, CyberScoop’s Suzanne Smalley reports. Fick, who is general manager of security at the software firm Elastic, served in Afghanistan and Iraq as a Marine and spoke at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
The Biden administration hasn’t officially announced Fick’s nomination. A person with knowledge of the decision told Smalley that “Fick was still being vetted as recently as a couple of weeks ago and that the appointment could still fall through, pending President Biden signing off,” Smalley writes.
The State Department and Fick declined to comment to CyberScoop. The White House didn’t respond to the outlet’s requests for comment.
The State Department launched the cybersecurity bureau in April. It was designed to play a key role in talks about international cyber rules and ransomware, diplomacy over 5G equipment made by Chinese tech giant Huawei and Internet governance issues.
A bill that would mandate creating such an office passed the House but has stalled in the Senate.
Similar offices existed under former presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump but without a presidentially appointed official at their head.
FBI seizes domains tied to stolen records, DDoS services (CyberScoop)
CISA solicits feedback on finer points of coming software transparency requirement (NextGov)
US agencies: Karakurt extortion group demanding up to $13 million in attacks (The Record)
Tim Hortons app tracked too much personal information without adequate consent, investigation finds (CBC News)
China's draft cybersecurity rules pose risks for financial firms, lobby group warns (Reuters)
Europol shuts down FluBot malware operation alongside 11 countries (The Record)
The Cybersecuring Democracy conference kicks off today in Greece. It is organized by the USC Election Cybersecurity Initiative, the Greek Council for International Relations and the University of Piraeus.
National Cyber Director Chris Inglis speaks at a Foundation for Defense of Democracies event today at 2 p.m.
The House Committee on Veterans' Affairs holds a hearing on cybersecurity on Tuesday at 10 a.m.
The House Armed Services Committee’s cybersecurity subcommittee discusses the annual defense authorization bill Wednesday at 10 a.m.
Today’s fourth @washingtonpost TikTok features 4.4 million Americans https://t.co/SgHcQlVEYd pic.twitter.com/tC4jKrDOZp | 2022-06-02T11:52:44Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Here's a plan for wooing more cyber pros to work for the government - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/02/here-plan-wooing-more-cyber-pros-work-government/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/02/here-plan-wooing-more-cyber-pros-work-government/ |
House Republicans' climate strategy draws Democrats' jeers
Good morning and welcome to The Climate 202! As a scheduling note, the newsletter won't publish tomorrow — we have a short week with the congressional recess. But first:
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) plans to unveil a strategy today outlining how Republicans would address climate change, energy and environmental issues if the party gains control of the House in the midterm elections, according to three individuals familiar with the matter, Maxine and our colleague Jeff Stein scooped on Wednesday evening.
However, the GOP plan drew immediate criticism from congressional Democrats, who noted that leading scientists have said the world must rapidly phase out fossil fuels to stave off catastrophic consequences of the climate crisis.
“I welcome the efforts of anyone, regardless of party, who is willing to seriously tackle climate change — but on its face this does not look like a serious proposal,” said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). “Most people understand that a serious climate solution requires a shift toward cleaner sources of energy, but the Republicans apparently want to take us in the opposite direction, with more dependence on dangerous, dirty energy sources.”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who has been participating in bipartisan energy talks led by Sens. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), echoed that sentiment.
“Any climate plan must be judged on whether it reduces emissions and invests in renewables to diversify energy sources and bring a long-term reduction and stability in prices for all Americans,” Khanna said. “Based on what's been reported, this plan is just a Big Oil wish list.”
Rep. Melanie Ann. Stansbury (D-Ariz.) cautioned against undermining the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to assess the environmental consequences of major actions, in order to accelerate the permitting process. “This plan is out of touch with reality and is an end-run around environmental protections that have been in place for decades," she said.
McCarthy, who would probably become speaker if the GOP picks up enough seats in the midterms, last year tapped Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.) to lead a task force on climate, energy and conservation. The strategy is the result of months of deliberations within that task force, which includes 17 GOP members.
Spokespeople for McCarthy and Graves declined to comment on the record ahead of today's official rollout.
The House GOP plan comes as Republicans seek to make gains with educated suburban voters in November’s elections. Some of these voters may want to see Republicans take a more proactive stance on climate change and energy policy, rather than letting Democrats dominate the debate, said George David Banks, a Republican climate policy expert who served as a White House climate adviser under President Donald Trump.
National Hurricane Center director expects another monster season
Wednesday marked the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season, and it's expected to be another active one.
In its annual seasonal outlook, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecast the seventh-straight above-normal Atlantic season, with 14 to 21 named storms — compared with 14 in an average year — and three to six major hurricanes.
The Climate 202 spoke virtually on Wednesday with Ken Graham, director of the National Hurricane Center, about the link between climate change and supercharged storms. The following Q&A has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity:
Climate 202: How is climate change playing a role in more intense hurricanes?
Graham: In a warmer climate, we're starting to see heavier rainfall — not just in terms of the total amount, but also in terms of the rainfall rates. That's important, because if you get three to five inches of rain in an hour, that's a big difference from getting three to five inches of rain over a 24-hour period. And that will continue to have a significant impact on inland flooding.
The other thing is that with sea-level rise, the water from storm surge could be higher and could push farther inland. So areas that never experienced storm surge in the past could experience storm surge in the future.
Climate 202: The 2021 hurricane season produced 21 named storms, the third-most on record, exhausting all of the names of the National Hurricane Center’s conventional naming list. Could that happen again this year?
Graham: Yes. I mean, look at the forecast. We're forecasting 14 to 21 named storms, and if we get 21, we'll run out of names once again. That's not a common thing. We've only run out of names in 2005 and then again in 2020 and 2021. To have that happen two years in a row was pretty significant.
That being said, scientists still aren't sure whether climate change is increasing the number of storms. We have technology now from aircraft data and satellite data, so we're actually seeing more storms and naming more storms than we were before.
Much of the country could face blackouts this summer as temperatures rise
The nation's power grid is facing unprecedented stress, with regulators warning that rolling outages — familiar in states like Texas and California — could affect large areas of the country as an abnormally hot summer arrives, The Washington Post’s Evan Halper reports.
Already, New Mexico’s attorney general has launched a readiness task force to prepare for “worst-case scenarios,” while Arkansas power officials are establishing emergency conservation measures.
The unexpected warnings come as extreme weather tied to climate change strains the grid, and as the nation shuts down fossil fuel plants to help reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
New York suspends its gas tax in response to rising costs
In an effort to address high gasoline prices, New York on Wednesday became the latest state to temporarily suspend its gas tax ahead of the travel-heavy summer months, The Post's Tony Romm reports.
The decision, which halted the state’s roughly 16-cents-per-gallon charge through the end of the year, came as the average cost of unleaded gasoline nationwide exceeded $4.67 per gallon, according to AAA.
At the same time, high fuel prices stem from a complicated combination of economic and geopolitical forces, Abha Bhattarai reports as part of The Post's ECON 101 series. The economy’s rapid recovery from the pandemic created more demand for gasoline, pushing prices higher. Then, the invasion of Ukraine led to a global backlash against Russia, which produces more oil than all but two other countries, so prices rose again.
Another oil company backs out of Arctic leases
Regenerate Alaska has canceled the lease that it purchased in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge last year, becoming the latest company to abandon plans for oil and gas drilling in the 19-million-acre refuge, Alex DeMarban reports for the Anchorage Daily News. The Trump administration had sold the lease in its final days in January 2021.
Last week, Hilcorp and Chevron also exited separate leases on Indigenous-owned land in the refuge. Those companies spent $10 million to withdraw from their deal with Arctic Slope Regional Corp.
Vice President Harris on Wednesday announced an action plan that considers water security as a national security issue, Rachel Frazin reports for the Hill.
The White House Action Plan on Global Water Security outlines how the United States will use diplomatic resources to help ensure access to safe drinking water and sanitation services around the world. It comes as America faces water issues of its own, with roughly 76 percent of the West suffering from a severe drought fueled by climate change.
In a speech, Harris noted that water insecurity can drive migration and armed conflicts. “This action plan will help our country prevent conflict and advance cooperation among nations, increase equity and economic growth, and make our world more inclusive and resilient,” she said.
Haaland tests positive for coronavirus
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland tested positive for the coronavirus on Wednesday and has mild symptoms, the agency said in a statement. She tested negative during a visit to the White House on Monday and was not in close contact with President Biden.
Haaland, who is fully vaccinated and has received two booster shots, is quarantining in Nevada, where she participated in a roundtable discussion on Tuesday about increasing clean energy development on public lands. She has canceled travel plans elsewhere in the American West.
In a small Dutch town, a fight with Meta over a massive data center — Tracy Brown Hamilton for The Post
Report: Denmark, U.K. on track for net-zero emissions by 2050 as U.S. lags — Claire Parker for The Post
When the heat is unbearable but there’s nowhere to go — Sarah Sax for High Country News
Have we mentioned that it’s lambing season? 😍
Thank you for choosing not to hike at Thechàl Dhâl’ until June 15th.https://t.co/0VSuN3N5SF
📷 Sonny Parker pic.twitter.com/TY2yszW3B3
— Parks Canada Yukon (@ParksCanYukon) May 30, 2022 | 2022-06-02T11:52:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | House Republicans' climate strategy draws Democrats' jeers - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/02/house-republicans-climate-strategy-draws-democrats-jeers/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/02/house-republicans-climate-strategy-draws-democrats-jeers/ |
Jack Dorsey is wrong. The dollar is still a global reserve currency.
There are reasons the dollar is still king
Analysis by Mark Copelovitch
(Dado Ruvic/Reuters)
On Monday night, Twitter’s co-founder and ex-CEO tweeted the question, “When did the dollar lose global reserve currency status?” Like many other people who study political economy, I pointed out that Jack Dorsey was wrong. Equally predictably, a flood of commenters chimed in that it had already happened — when President Biden took office, or when the U.S. imposed sanctions on Russia, or in 2009, or whenever else they thought disaster had struck.
The dollar has clearly not lost reserve currency status. Reserve currencies are those held widely by governments, central banks and private institutions to conduct international trade and financial transactions. The dollar shares this distinction with only a few other major currencies, including the euro, Japanese yen, Swiss franc, British pound, Canadian and Australian dollars, and the Chinese renminbi. In fact, the dollar’s status as the dominant global reserve currency is stronger than ever and has become even more entrenched in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and economic crisis.
Russia’s been hit by a financial Cold War
The dollar’s increasing strength goes against the preferred popular narrative. A veritable cottage industry of news articles and op-ed pieces regularly offers new predictions about the imminent demise of the dollar. The drumbeat of predictions of the end of the dollar’s “exorbitant privilege” has grown louder in the wake of the coronavirus crisis and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, accompanied by hyperbolic claims that the U.S. faces hyperinflation and may soon be unable to borrow or service its debts. These views suggest that the end of the dollar’s role as the key global reserve currency is only a matter of time. Here’s why these views are almost certainly wrong.
The dollar is still the world’s dominant reserve currency
Jack Dorsey’s claim belies the facts. The dollar is not only a global reserve currency, it is the dominant global reserve currency. In 2019, 62 percent of official government/central bank foreign exchange reserves were in dollars, with the euro second at 20 percent, the yen in a distant third at 5 percent, the pound at 4.5 percent, and others, including the renminbi, all below 2 percent. (These figures are approximate.)
As a 2020 Bank for International Settlements report highlights, the dollar dominates across several dimensions. Nearly half of cross-border bank loans are dollar-denominated — only a third are euro-denominated, with loans in other currencies representing less than 20 percent. The dollar is only slightly less dominant in areas of the global economy like debt securities, trade invoicing and payments using the SWIFT financial messaging system. Nearly 90 percent of foreign currency trading involves the dollar on one side of the transaction.
Put simply, the global economy runs on dollars. This has been true for decades, despite repeated prognostications of imminent change. Indeed, we are now entering our sixth decade of dire predictions of the dollar’s demise, dating back at least to 1971, when President Richard M. Nixon ended the dollar’s convertibility into gold. In the 1980s and 1990s, the yen was going to take over. In the aughts, it was the euro. Pundits now praise bitcoin and the Chinese renminbi the new heirs apparent. Nevertheless, dollar hegemony persists.
Still, each time there is a crisis like the pandemic or Ukraine war, people claim that this time is different. But as economist David Beckworth points out, the pandemic has reinforced the dollar’s centrality rather than weakening it. Likewise, the rapid and near-total financial isolation of Russia by the Group of Seven nations has demonstrated the combined dominance of the dollar and euro as the world’s two main reserve currencies.
Banning Russia from SWIFT is a big deal. But the real pain comes from sanctions.
Dollar doomsayers overlook the deep and durable foundations of dollar hegemony. As former senior Treasury Department official Mark Sobel notes, the dollar remains king not only because of the size of the U.S. economy and historical inertia, but because of the unparalleled deep, liquid private financial markets and strong protections for property rights in the United States. Moreover, as international political economy scholar Daniel McDowell has shown, people rely on the dollar because the United States is far more willing than the European Union, China or Japan to act as the lender of last resort in global financial crises. Finally, as political scientists Aashna Khanna and W. Kindred Winecoff explain, the dollar’s enduring dominance is due to the deeply embedded hierarchical network structure of the global monetary and financial order.
No other country enjoys these advantages, and no other currency is ready to fill these roles. The E.U. is the world’s largest economy, but the Eurozone is neither a fiscal nor a political union, and this makes it difficult to persuade others that they can really rely on the euro in hard times. China is rising, and the renminbi is slowly becoming a global reserve currency. Still, China lacks deep and liquid private financial markets, does not allow free flows of capital and its rulers have shown no sign at all that they will accept the political economy trade-offs necessary for the renminbi to challenge the dollar, or even the euro.
Meanwhile, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are not really currencies. They are speculative assets, without the political backing or foundations they would need to become reserve currencies, especially in periods of financial instability.
Ultimately, the question of whether the dollar will remain a global reserve currency answers itself. To misquote a famous authority on political economy, “A day may come when the dollar loses its central role as the dominant global reserve currency, but it is not this day.” It is not even this decade, and quite likely not even this century. It won’t even become a possibility until the E.U. becomes a true fiscal and political union — or until China develops an accountable liberal government and much more developed private financial markets and finally accepts the free movement of capital flows. None of those scenarios seems likely to happen soon.
Professors: Check out TMC’s expanding list of classroom topic guides.
Mark Copelovitch (@mcopelov) is professor of political science and public affairs and director of European Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is the author (with David A. Singer) of “Banks on the Brink: Global Capital, Securities Markets, and the Political Roots of Financial Crises” (Cambridge University Press, 2020). | 2022-06-02T11:52:56Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Why the global economy runs on dollars - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/02/usd-dollar-reserve-currency-economy/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/02/usd-dollar-reserve-currency-economy/ |
Thenmozhi Soundararajan, a Dalit American scholar, technologist, and caste equity educator, was invited — and then uninvited — to speak at Google. (Kristen Murakoshi for The Washington Post)
Soundararajan — who has given talks on caste at Microsoft, Salesforce, Airbnb, Netflix, and Adobe — said Equality Labs began receiving speaking invitations from tech companies in the wake of the George Floyd protests. “Most institutions wouldn’t do what Google did. It’s absurd. The bigoted don’t get to the set the pace of conversations about civil rights,” she said.
Through its advocacy on content moderation, Equality Labs developed a strong network of Dalit tech workers. After the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed a lawsuit against Cisco alleging caste discrimination, their phone lines were flooded with reports about bias and the group once again began collecting data. (Although U.S. employment law does not explicitly prohibit caste-based discrimination, the DFEH argues caste is a protected under existing statutes. Caste is a protected category in India, however. This leaves companies such as Google and Cisco, which have offices in both countries, with different standards for discrimination.)
Soundararajan said Pichai has not responded to letter she sent him in April. Google declined to comment. | 2022-06-02T11:54:03Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Google cancelled a talk on caste bias by Thenmozhi Soundararajan after some employees revolted - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/google-caste-equality-labs-tanuja-gupta/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/06/02/google-caste-equality-labs-tanuja-gupta/ |
Thursday briefing: What to know about the Tulsa hospital shooting; Depp-Heard verdict; Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee; and more
A gunman killed at least four people yesterday at a Tulsa hospital.
What we know: The shooter apparently killed himself just before officers arrived. Police are looking for a motive and have released no details on the victims or number of injured.
The bigger picture: It’s the latest in a string of major mass shootings in the U.S., following Buffalo and last week’s Texas school shooting.
In Buffalo: The White man accused of killing 10 people was charged yesterday with murder as a hate crime and domestic terrorism.
Ukraine is facing significant setbacks in parts of the east.
There’s street-by-street fighting in the key city of Severodonetsk, which is mostly under Russian control. Ukraine is pushing back in other parts of the country.
What else to know: Ukraine’s soccer team beat Scotland last night. It’s one win away (the next match is Sunday) from qualifying for the World Cup.
The U.S. will cancel $5.8 billion in student loans.
Who qualifies? 560,000 former students of the for-profit chain of Corinthian Colleges schools (Everest Institute, WyoTech and Heald College) that collapsed in 2015. It’s the largest group forgiveness of student loans.
Why? The colleges misled students into piling on debt, officials said. Former students have been fighting for debt forgiveness for years.
Johnny Depp came out the big winner in his trial with Amber Heard.
A Virginia jury found yesterday that Heard, Depp’s ex-wife, made false claims three times that hurt his reputation and that Depp defamed Heard once.
How we got here: Depp sued Heard over an op-ed she wrote about surviving abuse. She countersued. The high-profile trial lasted over six weeks.
The bigger picture: This case leaves serious questions about the future of abuse victims’ willingness to come forward — and perhaps their legal options.
More students are struggling with their mental health.
The numbers: 7 in 10 public schools reported a rising number of children seeking help, according to a new survey, and many schools said they can’t meet those growing needs.
Why this matters: It adds to evidence that the pandemic is creating a generation of students struggling with depression, anxiety and trauma.
Britain is throwing Queen Elizabeth II a four-day party this week.
Why? It’s the queen’s Platinum Jubilee, her 70th year on the throne. She is Britain’s longest-reigning monarch.
Today: The celebrations — featuring many corgis — kicked off with a military parade in London in honor of the 96-year-old queen’s official birthday.
The rest of the week: There are events every day, leading up to thousands of street parties on Sunday.
The NBA Finals start tonight.
The matchup: The Golden State Warriors vs. the Boston Celtics, playing a best-of-seven series that starts with two games in San Francisco.
What’s at stake: The Celtics are going after their 18th championship; the Warriors are seeking their fourth title since 2015.
How to watch: Game 1 is at 9 p.m. Eastern time on ABC.
And now … in honor of Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee: Here’s a visual timeline of her 70 years on the throne. | 2022-06-02T11:54:09Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The 7 things you need to know for Thursday, June 2 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/06/02/what-to-know-for-june-2/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/the-seven/2022/06/02/what-to-know-for-june-2/ |
Most teens don’t play high school sports. We could change that.
Focusing on expanding opportunities to participate could help more kids turn into active, healthy adults.
Most high school students don't play sports. Not doing so is one reason that many teens become adults who don't get a healthy amount of physical activity. Putting the focus in youth sports on participation instead of competition could help change this. (iStock)
I have been thinking about kids and sports because I read a recent report by the Aspen Institute called “Sport for All/Play for Life: A Playbook to Develop Every Student Through Sports.”
Sports are important because studies show that kids who are physically active are less likely to be obese (overweight to a degree that puts their health at risk). They are also less likely to smoke or use drugs. In addition, physically active kids do better on academic tests and are more likely to go to college.
The Aspen Institute recently surveyed almost 6,000 high school students. The Number 1 reason these teens gave for not playing sports in high school is because they have too much homework.
While the Aspen Institute suggests solutions such as community partnerships and better training for coaches, it seems the problem is that youth sports in the United States emphasize finding the “best” athletes rather than encouraging as many kids as possible to play and be physically active.
If there were more “sports kids,” this might encourage high schools and middle schools to offer more intramural and club sports rather than just the usual varsity sports that serve only a small group of kids. Or perhaps city and county recreation departments would respond by organizing more recreational leagues and teams for high-school-age kids.
Bowen writes the sports opinion column for KidsPost. He is the author of 27 sports books for kids. His latest book is “Hardcourt: Stories From 75 Years of the National Basketball Association.” | 2022-06-02T13:10:19Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Most teens don’t play high school sports. We could change that. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/06/02/most-teens-dont-play-high-school-sports-we-could-change-that/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/kidspost/2022/06/02/most-teens-dont-play-high-school-sports-we-could-change-that/ |
The best things to do in the D.C. area the week of June 2-8
A library rooftop concert, ‘E.T.’ in a cemetery, Awesome Con and Pride events are some of the highlights of the week ahead
Geoffrey Himes
D.C. funk-punk sextet Lightmare will help kick off the D.C. Punk Archive’s library rooftop shows at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. (RoXplosion )
Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kent at Black Cat: On June 2 at Black Cat, you’ll get a chance to see a who’s who of D.C. punk past, present and future on a mega bill with proceeds going to help out Scream drummer Kent Stacks, who’s dealing with lung cancer treatments. Local supergroups including Hammered Hulls (with members from the likes of Fugazi and Helium) will perform, and Baby Alcatraz and Ian MacKaye will DJ between the eight acts scheduled for the night. Of course, Scream will play a few songs, too. The Baileys Crossroads natives, who formed the band in 1981 after attending what is now Justice High School, have been on and off for four decades. They set the tone for Dischord’s fast, furious and fun ethos along with Government Issue and Minor Threat. (Even if you don’t know Scream’s music, you might recognize the locally raised drummer who replaced Stacks in the late ’80s before ascending to mega stardom with Nirvana: Dave Grohl.) 7 p.m. (doors open). $25.
The D.C. punk family is putting on a benefit for drummer Kent Stacks
Afro-Atlantic Histories and Futures discussion at National Gallery of Art: You have until July 17 to catch the “Afro-Atlantic Histories” exhibition at the National Gallery of Art. Highlighting the African diaspora was important for the museum in many ways, including being the first show greenlighted by Director Kaywin Feldman, who took on her role in 2019. Washington Post art and architecture critic Philip Kennicott wrote in his review that the showcase is “a first step, pointing to yet more early steps in what will be a long and fruitful exploration of art very different from that which has traditionally been the focus of the National Gallery.” You’ll get a chance to hear from Kanitra Fletcher, associate curator of African American and Afro-diasporic art at the National Gallery, who originally brought the show stateside from Brazil, and her counterpart curators from the Museu de Arte in São Paulo. 3:30 to 5 p.m. In person at the West Building Lecture Hall or streaming online. Free.
Review: National Gallery enters new, overdue era with African diaspora show
Crusty Lyman’s returns at Lyman’s Tavern: If you can’t quite make it out to Ocean City, head to Lyman’s Tavern for the return of Crusty Lyman’s, a summer beach bar menu of fresh-squeezed fruit crushes and slushes. As an extra bonus, Thursday marks the eighth anniversary of the 14th Street NW standout pinball bar — with perhaps a proper soiree to come next week to mark the occasion. Expect campy beach decor on the patio and other additions to the menu, including summertime staples such as Shiner Ruby Redbird and, yes, Naturdays. Open daily at 11 a.m. Prices vary.
‘E.T.’ 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.
Plan your summer with this guide to D.C.’s festivals and events
Awesome Con at Walter E. Washington Convention Center: D.C.’s three-day pop culture convention Awesome Con is a tribute to geeky fandom, with more than 50,000 attendees expected at the convention center to see a slew of actors such as Simu Liu (“Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”), Anthony Daniels (C-3PO from “Star Wars”), Giancarlo Esposito (“The Mandalorian” and “Breaking Bad”) and Melissa Joan Hart, “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” herself. The exhibit halls will include activities like lightsaber training for little ones, cosplay meetups, wide-ranging panel discussions, a science fair, board game tournaments and a festival for short films. Through Sunday. $18-$90. Premium admission $165-$999.
Laurie Anderson presents ‘Lou Reed’s Drones’ at the Hirshhorn: One of the highlights of this year’s D.C. audio arts festival Sound Scene is a special performance by multimedia artist Laurie Anderson in honor of her late husband, rocker Lou Reed. Outdoors at the Hirshhorn, Anderson will create a droning wall of sound via amplifiers and a collection of Reed’s guitars. General passes for this free event are sold out, but the museum notes that the “four-hour performance is designed for attendees to drop in and out of throughout its duration” and that a select number of spots will be available for walk-ups. 3 to 7 p.m. Free.
Digable Planets at City Winery: “Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)” was Digable Planets’ intoxicating 1992 debut song, which went on to appear in an endless list of shows, movies and commercials. It was the breezy calm to the storm of hypermasculine hip-hop that dominated the airwaves at the time, smoothed out by its jazzy sampling of “Stretching” by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. The Brooklyn trio’s output has been sparse since the mid-’90s, but its influence on hip-hop lives on. “Rebirth” became a blueprint for the industry’s biggest producers and musicians in the present day — making Digable Planets’ legacy more relevant than ever. 6:30 and 9:30 p.m. $45-$60.
MusicWorks at Workhouse Arts Center: At this outdoor music festival, guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Cory Wong, mandolinist Sierra Hull and D.C.-based indie soul band Oh He Dead will play sets at a unique Northern Virginia venue. Workhouse Arts Center is a former prison facility that’s been transformed into a 55-acre campus of galleries, art installations and event spaces. In between the music at this inaugural event, you can buy food and drinks and then explore the arts center, including more than 65 artist studios. 4 to 10 p.m. $50-$90.
Open Streets at Seventh Street NW between Pennsylvania and Florida avenues: Seventh Street NW is one of the most important roads in central Washington, lined with restaurants, bars, shops, museums, residential buildings and Capital One Arena. On Saturday, more than 1 ½ miles of the street, from Pennsylvania Avenue to Florida Avenue, will be closed to traffic and given back to the people. Look for a bike rodeo and e-bike demonstrations, double Dutch competitions, fitness classes, live music, a pop-up arboretum and activities for kids, as well as expanded outdoor space (read: beer gardens) for Ivy and Coney, Morris American Bar, Stop Smack’n and other businesses along the route. 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Free.
Takoma Trukgarten in Takoma Park: Takoma Park’s one-day beer festival brings together such local breweries as Manor Hill, Streetcar 82, Peabody Heights and Union Craft, each offering multiple beers to try, plus selections from local businesses the Girl and the Vine and Zinnia. PhoWheels and Takoma Park’s new butchery Soko are on hand if you get hungry, and music comes from community radio station WOWD. Tickets include six or 12 drink tickets, with extra tickets available for purchase during the event. Noon to 5 p.m. 201 Ethan Allen Ave., Takoma Park. $35-$45.
Dupont-Kalorama Museums Consortium Walk Weekend at various museums: Six museums, historic houses and an art space open their doors to the public free this weekend, offering a diverse mix of programming. Explore modern art and participate in story time and other family activities at the Phillips Collection, learn about the experiences of Jewish Vietnam veterans at the National Museum of American Jewish Military History, or venture beneath Dupont Circle to see a Washington Blade exhibit about gender and identity. Anderson House, Dumbarton House and the Woodrow Wilson House are also participating. Be aware that not everything is included — you’ll have to pay extra to see special exhibitions at the Phillips — but it’s a wonderful chance to dip in and out of very different museums located only a few blocks apart. Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Full list of addresses and directions on dkmuseums.com. Free.
Black Violin at Wolf Trap: With its audience base shrinking, classical music is in a bind to maintain its relevance — and Black Violin may hold the key to its future. Kevin Sylvester and Wilner Baptiste of Florida mix high-energy hip-hop and classical music with their violins, bringing together two cultures that may seem a universe apart but sound effortless together. Black Violin’s first brush with fame was at the 2004 Billboard Music Awards when the duo played alongside Alicia Keys. On “New Life,” from Black Violin’s 2019 album, “Take the Stairs,” the group’s cinematic violin playing carries the uplifting lyrics, “The world is not the same / You know it’s dangerous / But it’s amazing to make it / Through the day / And know we won’t stop now / Won’t stop until we know we’ve found / A new life / I see days when everything will change.” 8 p.m. $30-$102.
‘A Monster Calls’ at the Kennedy Center: In 2018, when the acclaimed British director Sally Cookson was preparing to debut her stage adaptation of the popular young-adult novel “A Monster Calls” for the Old Vic in Bristol, England, she faced a daunting challenge: How do you transform a yew tree into a walking, talking monster, then back into a tree — all within the budgetary and time limitations of live theater? That metamorphosis was central to the appeal of Patrick Ness’s 2011 novel about Conor, a 13-year-old British boy trying to cope with his mother’s cancer. Cookson’s version of “A Monster Calls,” at the Kennedy Center through June 12, is a perfect example of the director’s theatrical methodology. Whether she’s adapting Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre,” Federico Fellini’s “La Strada” or “A Monster Calls,” she prefers to start without a script. Instead, she encourages the cast and crew to improvise action and design, as well as dialogue, to find the best way to tell the story. Performances through June 12. $35-$139.
Bringing ‘A Monster Calls’ from the page to the stage
‘A Long Way Down’ opening reception at Metrobar: Focus on the Story, which starts June 2, is a showcase of artistic, cultural and editorial photography at locations around D.C., including Lost Origins Gallery in Mount Pleasant and the Eaton DC downtown. But perhaps the most fitting exhibition is “A Long Way Down,” which features 11 local photographers and their snapshots of the beautiful, frustrating Metro that will be on display at Metrobar, the only spot to grab a drink in the city next to a decommissioned train car. The exhibit opens June 5 and will remain on view for the foreseeable future. Opening reception from 5 to 9 p.m. Free.
French Open watch party and ‘An American in Paris’ at City Ridge: New York expats and grocery store enthusiasts have been awaiting the opening of D.C.'s first Wegmans near Tenleytown. In the meantime, the area around it has been dubbed City Ridge, and to get festivities going around there, developers are hosting two outdoor watch parties aimed at Francophiles on Sunday. Starting at 9 a.m., you’ll be able to catch the men’s final of the French Open — the match competitors are still to be determined, but clay court legend Rafael Nadal, who graced the Rock Creek Tennis Center at last year’s Citi Open, is still in the mix. There will be lawn games, food trucks and a French Open trivia contest for a Wegmans gift card. Then at 6:30 p.m., there will be a screening of the Gene Kelly classic “An American in Paris” along with a free pop-up candy bar so you can snack while you watch. Both events are free (garage parking also comes at no charge), and guests are encouraged to bring blankets and chairs to cozy up on the lawn. French Open: 9 to 2 p.m. Movie: 6:30 p.m. Free.
EST Gee at the Fillmore Silver Spring: Louisville is known for many things, among them bourbon, the Kentucky Derby and bluegrass (both the plant and the music). It is not known for being a hotbed of hip-hop, especially the gangsta glorifying popular in street rap. But, in the rich tradition of rappers putting on for their cities, EST Gee is looking to change that. Gee, born George Stone III, started rapping during a house arrest that sidelined his college football career. He started getting mainstream attention in 2020 with a pair of hardened mix tapes, “Ion Feel Nun” and “I Still Don’t Feel Nun,” that established him as a trap nihilist numb to the vice and violence inherent to a life on the streets. “I hope the world hear my story before suckers get lucky,” he rapped on “Break Check.” “The most gangsterest street rapper to ever come out Kentucky.” 8 p.m. $29.50.
Babyface Ray at Union Stage: On the surface, Babyface Ray’s rhymes sound aloof — cold and distant. That could come across as apathy, but listening to the production and lyrical depth of Ray’s latest album, “Face,” it’s evident how much the Detroit rapper pours into his music. In a world that seems flush with overnight viral stars, Ray’s fame is homegrown, after he spent more than a decade building his street cred in Detroit’s underground rap scene. His latest release could have lost steam easily, with a lengthy track list of 20 songs. Instead, each one reveals a new side to the rapper’s creative bravado. “Overtime” with Yung Lean is a first-class collaboration in which Lean’s brooding croons are in lockstep with Ray’s heady flow. 8 p.m. $25-$84.
Kenny Loggins at Warner Theatre: For decades, Kenny Loggins has written America’s soundtrack: “Footloose,” “Danger Zone” and other seminal movie songs can be traced back to the venerable musician. Sure, they might be campy and irreverent, but they capture a snapshot of a pre-Internet time when movies catapulted, not capitalized on, the latest trends. And despite their age, the songs in Loggins’s catalogue transcend the constructs of time, revered by Gen Xers and embraced by Gen Zers. At Warner Theatre, he’ll play some of his hits while also sharing anecdotes from his forthcoming memoir, “Still Alright,” due June 14. 8 p.m. $55-$85.
D.C. Punk Archive Library Rooftop Shows at Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library: “What’s more punk than the public library?” is more than a clever T-shirt — it’s a way of life at the D.C. Public Library. The D.C. Punk Archive, established in 2014, is a public collection of records, fliers, zines, set lists and artifacts dating back to 1976 that tell the story of the city’s dynamic punk and indie music scene. But the library also works to make sure punk isn’t relegated to the dusty shelf of history: This summer, it’s hosting monthly concerts on the rooftop of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library downtown. First up are Lightmare, a sextet whose soulful funk-punk is driven by horns and keyboards, and the driving, fuzzed-out skronk of Faunas. The show is free, all-ages and open to anyone who shows up. What’s more punk than that? 6:30 to 8 p.m. Free. | 2022-06-02T13:23:18Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Things to do in D.C.: June 2-8 - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/02/best-things-to-do-dc-area-week-of-june-2-8/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/06/02/best-things-to-do-dc-area-week-of-june-2-8/ |
Is Biden’s White House Really ‘Adrift’?
US President Joe Biden speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., US, on Tuesday, May 24, 2022. Biden mourned the killing of at least 18 children and one teacher in a mass shooting at a Texas elementary school on Tuesday, decrying their deaths as senseless and demanding action to try to curb the violence. (Photographer: Bloomberg/Bloomberg)
In a predictable sequence, just after President Joe Biden’s approval rating fell below where Donald Trump’s had been four years ago, we get a story from NBC News about problems in a White House described as “adrift.” Political scientist Brendan Nyhan nails it:
Versions of this story are written about literally every modern president facing a bad economy or other challenges -- they’re frustrated with in-fighting and want a more effective message. (Hint: Lower inflation and less COVID would fix most of these problems.)
The Biden version of this story stands out, in fact, by how little disarray the reporters can conjure up. The biggest identified failure is that the White House and the Food and Drug Administration were slow to act — and to alert the president — about the baby-formula shortage. That seems an accurate assessment, and one can argue that the administration moved too slowly on a few other issues as well. Still, that doesn’t really add up to NBC’s accusation of “management breakdowns.” Nor is it a management breakdown when Biden shoots off his mouth and his staff walks it back. That’s just how things normally work in the presidency.That White House officials are apparently frustrated by all the problems they’ve had to face is also no surprise — all White Houses feel unfairly put upon — even though the only reasonable response each time is: What did they expect? Sure, there’s been a lot to deal with. There’s always a lot. Trump had a pandemic on his watch, after all. Barack Obama had a sluggish recovery from a deep recession that began well before he took office. George W. Bush had that recession, one other and terrorist attacks. Bill Clinton … well, he mostly had peace and prosperity, but he also inherited sluggish growth that took time to improve. George H.W. Bush — in only one term — had the end of the Cold War, the demise of the Soviet Union, the Gulf War, a recession and more. Biden is certainly facing challenges, but compared to Ronald Reagan’s first term? Or Harry Truman’s?What is legitimately frustrating is the weak relationship between presidential actions and the outcomes that most affect presidential popularity. Yes, it’s possible that Biden and congressional Democrats erred in making the 2021 recovery bill too large. On the other hand, Europe is dealing with inflation as well, and it’s easy to focus on what went wrong and ignore the strong jobs market and economic growth that the recovery bill helped to sustain. It’s quite plausible that different policy choices would have produced somewhat less inflation — but with a sluggish jobs market and slower growth. The point here isn’t to defend the policy. The point is only that for better or worse, presidents are judged on outcomes, not policies.Polling isn’t helpful in this regard. Earlier this year, people told pollsters that they were willing to pay more for gas to constrain Russia. But when prices went up, it turned out that those people were lousy at predicting their own reactions, since they did in fact get upset and blame Biden. Polling finds, too, that people want Biden to pay more attention to inflation. That’s clearly bunk. What they actually want are results. Sure, it can’t hurt for Biden to stage events that demonstrate his commitment to solving the problem. But if really wanting a certain outcome was all it took, then we would have had nothing but strong growth for centuries. And if voters cared about effort and not results, almost every president would be wildly popular.The truth is, if this White House thinks it’s functioning well, then the best choice is still to avoid panic and stay the course. Even if that can’t guarantee the outcomes that voters care about. | 2022-06-02T13:23:33Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Is Biden’s White House Really ‘Adrift’? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-bidens-white-house-really-adrift/2022/06/02/89eaf158-e270-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/is-bidens-white-house-really-adrift/2022/06/02/89eaf158-e270-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
Tools and lessons from this pandemic could aid the four-decade quest to end HIV, the forgotten pandemic
A researcher holds an experimental HIV vaccine in South African on Nov. 30, 2016. (Mujahid Safodien/AFP/Getty Images)
That agility is going to be crucial, because an HIV vaccine isn’t likely to be a shot, but a series of different shots, each tailored to nudge the immune system in the right direction, step by step.
“Even as recently as five years ago, there were a lot of people who would say this is a beautiful scientific idea but ridiculous to imagine in real life,” Stephenson said, describing the potential of mRNA vaccines. “I was one of those people. The world has changed.”
Despite years of effort, no HIV vaccine has coaxed the human immune system to churn out a protective force of highly specialized virus-fighting antibodies capable of blocking myriad versions of the virus. These broadly neutralizing antibodies, called bNAbs for short, have been a holy grail. But because it’s so hard to generate them, recent vaccination efforts have focused on other parts of the immune response, such as T cells or other types of antibodies.
‘A tall order’
In small human tests in clinics across the United States, a new generation of experimental HIV vaccines — powered by the same cutting-edge technology that brought leading coronavirus vaccines to the finish line in under a year — is being injected into people’s arms.
The emergence of coronavirus variants as a threat to vaccines pales, compared with the complexity and scale of the challenge posed by HIV variants. Often, so many variants exist in a single infected person that specialists don’t even count them, referring to a “swarm” of viruses. Also, HIV is cloaked in a shield of sugars that hide its vulnerable spots. And while the human immune system can clearly beat the coronavirus, the same is not true for HIV.
“HIV is the premier virus. It’s got more tricks on board than essentially any other virus,” said Dennis Burton, chair of the department of immunology and microbiology at Scripps Research Institute.
Wanted posters quickly become obsolete as the virus mutates. HIV can also distract, hide from and confuse the immune system, focusing the body’s immune firepower on decoys. The immune cells capable of making a virus-blocking response are exceedingly rare. And unlike a coronavirus vaccine, which is considered a success even if a recipient develops a mild case of illness or asymptomatic infection, an HIV vaccine must block infection completely, because HIV can integrate into the body’s cells.
“It’s a tall order for a vaccine,” said Dan Barouch, a vaccine expert at Beth Israel Deaconess and an architect of the HIV vaccine that failed last summer. “It will have to act very fast, and either block infection — which may or may not be possible — or eliminate it exceedingly quickly, before it is able to seed a reservoir.”
Scientists believe that stopping HIV won’t involve a single wanted poster. Larry Corey, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and a leader of a federally funded network that conducts human trials of HIV vaccines, compares the challenge in front of vaccine experts to raising a baby to be an elite athlete. Research right now, he said, is still at the infant-to-toddler transition.
“We’re now dealing with: How do you grow up that child?” Corey said. “There’s lots of ways to grow up.”
To do that, they’re going to have to try, fail, learn — and try again. That’s where messenger RNA comes in.
With mRNA, creating a vaccine can be done in about three months. In the coronavirus pandemic, mRNA vaccines were first out of the gate, in late 2020. The first traditional protein vaccine in the United States could receive authorization this month, even as some people are already getting their second booster of the mRNA vaccines made by Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech, and updated shots are being tested and prepared for the fall.
“If you want to do this iteration process and there’s a three-year gap between your idea and when you get into the clinic, it’ll always be the idea isn’t your best idea,” said Mark Feinberg, president of IAVI, a nonprofit research organization focused on developing vaccines for HIV and other infectious diseases.
There are theories about how to do this, but there is nothing on the shelf ready to protect against HIV. To test and perfect that regimen, researchers have shifted to small “experimental medicine” trials with a few dozen study subjects, which allows rapid testing to determine whether the immune response appears headed in the right direction.
“If it’s not inducing the right kind of antibodies, it doesn’t help to do 150 people. You can get that out of 10 to 20 people,” said Barton Haynes, an immunologist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. “Instead of taking a year and a half, it’s being done on the order of a few months.”
HIV researchers are clear-eyed about the challenges that lie ahead. “A lot of people say, ‘mRNA is not magic’ at meetings,” Stephenson said. But they also are optimistic — as the technology has matured, so has the scientific knowledge about how to make a successful vaccine.
“We kind of know, now, exactly what we need for an HIV vaccine. We haven’t known that until last year,” said Paul Goepfert, an infectious-diseases specialist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Only one experimental HIV vaccine regimen has ever displayed a glimmer of promise. In 2009, a trial conducted in thousands of healthy men and women in Thailand was 30 percent protective. It was a point of hope, but a slim and contentious one that split the field. Some experts debated whether the effect was real.
In February 2020, as a novel respiratory virus ricocheted across the planet, an HIV vaccine trial seeking to confirm results from the Thai study was halted when it became clear the vaccine wasn’t working.
“That’s a very high bar,” William Schief, an immunologist at Scripps Research Institute, said at the annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in February. “But at least we know what the bar is, and we can try and reach for that bar now.”
“The problem is, you could get a Pyrrhic victory — you could succeed in doing this, but if you require seven different immunizations, how is that going to go down in Soweto?” said John P. Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Weill Cornell Medicine, referring to the township in Johannesburg. “You have to have, in the back of your mind, that you could succeed in such a complicated way that it wouldn’t be useful.” | 2022-06-02T13:24:04Z | www.washingtonpost.com | There’s still no HIV vaccine. The science behind coronavirus shots may help. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/01/hiv-vaccine-covid-vaccine/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2022/06/01/hiv-vaccine-covid-vaccine/ |
In my six years as a wedding planner, I’ve seen countless women struggle with this. I did, too.
Perspective by Elisabeth Kramer
(María Alconada Brooks/The Washington Post)
Who gets to have a gift registry?
Weddings are booming again, and the industry is struggling to keep up
Elisabeth Kramer (she/her) is a wedding planner in Portland, Ore., who is fighting the Wedding Industrial Complex. She’s also the author of “Modern Etiquette Wedding Planner” and co-founder of Altared. | 2022-06-02T13:24:10Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Changing last name after marriage: Why it’s a hard decision - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/02/changing-last-name-after-marriage-why-it-hard-decision/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2022/06/02/changing-last-name-after-marriage-why-it-hard-decision/ |
By Nick Ut
South Vietnamese forces follow after children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places, on June 8, 1972. (Nick Ut/AP)
Nick Ut is a retired photographer.
Can a photograph help end a war?
Pictures from Ukraine by combat photographers, including contract photographer James Nachtwey and Associated Press photojournalists Felipe Dana, Mstyslav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka, have brought to light the horrific consequences of Russia’s invasion and the unconscionable treatment of innocent civilians.
Fifty years ago, I was in the same position as those photographers, working for the Associated Press in Vietnam.
I was inspired to become a photojournalist by my brother, who worked at the AP before I did, and whose mentor was the great Horst Faas. My brother taught me how to use cameras. Before he died covering a battle, he told me: “I hope one day you have a picture that stops the war.”
Horst strongly objected when I decided to follow in my brother’s footsteps. He said he did not want to have to call my mother to say that a second son had died. I told him that I understood the risk and that it was my choice.
I was inspired by my brother’s belief that photography can serve the cause of social justice, but I didn’t know if one photo could have the power he suggested. Today, many credit my photo “Napalm Girl” for hastening an end to the Vietnam War. What I know for sure is that it depicts the absolute horrors of war — defined by a young girl running naked amid destruction and death.
On June 7, 1972, I learned about fighting taking place in Trang Bang, a small village roughly 30 miles northwest of Saigon. I still have vivid memories of my drive the next morning to Trang Bang, seeing rows of bodies by the side of the road and hundreds of refugees fleeing the area. I eventually arrived at a village destroyed by days of airstrikes. The residents were so tired of the constant battles, they fled their village to seek refuge on the streets, under bridges or wherever they could find a moment of calm.
By midday, I had the photos I thought I needed. I was preparing to leave when I saw a South Vietnamese soldier drop a yellow smoke bomb, which served as a target signal, near a group of buildings. I picked up my camera, and a few seconds later captured the image of a plane dropping four napalm bombs on the village.
When the bombs exploded, we didn’t know if anyone had been injured. All morning, the village had seemed empty. But many people were hiding inside the village temple.
As we came closer, we saw people fleeing the napalm. I was horrified when I saw a woman with her left leg badly burned. I can still see so vividly the old woman carrying a baby who died in front of my camera and another woman carrying a small child with his skin coming off.
Then I heard a child screaming, “Nong qua! Nong qua!” Too hot! Too hot! I looked through my Leica viewfinder to see a young girl who had pulled off her burning clothes and was running toward me. I started taking pictures of her.
Then she yelled to her brother that she thought she was dying and wanted some water. I instantly put my cameras down so I could help her. I knew that was more important than taking more photos. I took my canteen for her to drink and poured water on her body to cool her off, but it created more pain for her. I didn’t know that when people get burned so badly, you’re not supposed to put water on them.
Still in shock, and amid the confusion of everyone screaming, I put all the kids into the AP van.
I drove them to Cu Chi hospital, since it was the closest to Trang Bang. The girl kept crying and screaming, “I’m dying! I’m dying.” I was sure she was going to die in my van.
At the hospital, I learned that her name was Phan Thi Kim Phuc. She had suffered third-degree burns on 30 percent of her body. The doctors were overwhelmed by the huge numbers of wounded soldiers and civilians already there. They initially refused to admit her and told me to bring her to the larger Saigon hospital. But I knew she would die if she did not get immediate help. I showed them my press badge and said, “If one of them dies I will make sure the whole world knows.” Then they brought Kim Phuc inside. I never regretted my decision.
Once stable, she was transferred from Cu Chi to the children’s hospital in Saigon and eventually to a burn unit there. But her injuries weren’t the only hurt Kim suffered in the attack. She lost two nephews, and one of her brothers was severely wounded, too.
Kim Phuc was allowed to return home for just one day after a year in the burn unit. I went to visit her that day, bringing toys and books from the Red Cross and fruits and cakes from the AP office. Her family home was destroyed, but Kim Phuc was smiling. It was nice to see her be with her entire family and play with kids again in the village.
After the fall of Saigon in 1975, I didn’t see Kim Phuc until I met her again in Cuba in 1989. I was on assignment and she was a visiting student studying Spanish and pharmacology. She introduced me to her fiance, named Toan. Before she met him, because of her burns, she thought she could never be loved and that nobody would want to marry her.
They both wanted to defect. After her wedding, a friend gave the couple money for a honeymoon to Moscow, and they found their opportunity. When the plane stopped to refuel on the way back to Cuba in Gander, Newfoundland, Kim Phuc and Toan left their things behind and went to customs, saying, “We defect.” The Canadians initially refused to accept her. But upon learning that she was the girl in the famous photo, she and Toan were granted amnesty.
Today, they live in Toronto with their two children. Kim Phuc is a goodwill ambassador for UNESCO. She has books about the war throughout her house but doesn’t want to see any war pictures, nothing to remind her of the nightmare there. She became a Christian and goes to church every week. Even though she is always smiling, I see her pain and what we saw and endured 50 years ago.
Though Kim Phuc hated the photo in the beginning, she now believes that it has given her a purpose. She uses her voice to work for peace and help others suffering a similar fate in war torn countries.
Kim Phuc and I are two people intertwined in history. To this day, I view her as family. She calls me “uncle,” and I talk with her often. But I will always hate the circumstances in which we met.
Viewing the horrors of war in person provides a perspective that few can ever experience. At the same time, amid the death and destruction of war, the resiliency of humanity shines through — and I am reminded of that each time I see a picture of Ukrainians supporting their fellow citizens through this challenging time.
It is with this optimism in my heart that I hope that when Russian soldiers come upon an innocent Ukrainian girl in need of help, they feel the same impulse I once did, put their guns away and take care of a fellow human.
I am proud of my photo and the emotions and conversations it created around the world. Truth continues to be necessary. If a single photo can make a difference, maybe even help end a war, then the work that we do is as vital now as it has ever been. | 2022-06-02T13:24:53Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Opinion | Nick Ut: I took the photo of Kim Phuc that helped end the Vietnam War. Photojournalism still matters today. - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/02/nick-ut-vietnam-war-photo-kim-phuc/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/02/nick-ut-vietnam-war-photo-kim-phuc/ |
‘The Foundling’ turns a serious subject into a perfect beach read
Recently I heard an author known for her beach reads discuss what makes a perfect beach read. Her contention was that it has nothing to do with whether the book has a beach in it. Plot, not setting, is the key element. It should have a narrative so compelling that reading it seems to take no effort at all, and everything around you — your job, your problems, your plans, even the beach you may or may not be sitting on — magically disappears. The act of reading itself is the vacation.
Well, it is, but it’s also insanely fun, with fascinating characters, jaw-dropping plot twists and a hair-raising caper finale that recalls the nail-biting climaxes of “Ocean’s Eleven” and “The Shawshank Redemption.”
The narrator of “The Foundling” is a smart, sardonic 17-year-old girl named Mary Engle. After her mother’s early death, Mary was raised for several years in a Catholic orphanage. When we meet her, she is living in Scranton, Pa., with relatives. The teacher of the secretarial class she is taking recommends her for a job with Dr. Agnes Vogel, who is passing through town on a speaking tour. Dr. Vogel is an elegant, attractive, suffers-no-fools type woman; she hires Mary on the spot, and they leave the next morning in her limo to the institution she runs in a rural part of the state.
Impressionable Mary has never met anyone like Dr. Vogel, and she easily absorbs the woman’s sense of mission: The inmates at Nettleton State Village for Feebleminded Women of Childbearing Age are being offered not just a healthy, invigorating lifestyle on a lovely farm, but protection from the rapacious men who would so easily take advantage of them, given their intellectual disabilities. At first, Mary worries she will die of boredom out in the sticks — her one potential friend, Gladys, is a bit dull. “Because I shared my bedroom and office with Gladys, and because she never shut up, I knew [her boyfriend] Hamish ‘Hammy’ Van Sutter more intimately than I’d known any man, and I’d never laid eyes on him,” she cracks. Fortunately, she soon meets the lively campus nurse, Bertie, who includes her in outings to speakeasies and dance halls in the nearby college town, and introduces her to heartthrob Jake Enright, a local journalist.
Then one day among the smelly, dirty “dairy girls” who do the farm labor, she recognizes someone she knew at the orphanage. It’s Lillian Faust. What could she possibly be doing there, Mary wonders. Feeble-minded? No way! Lillian was one of the smartest and most talented girls in the orphanage. Because she was a foundling, a baby dropped off with no identification, the Irish nuns believed she would be blessed with special good luck. Clearly, that luck has run out.
The story unfolds from there, with plenty of reverses and reveals that keep the momentum high. As Mary struggles to make sense of what is happening at Nettleton State Village, where she is moving up into the circle of power around her idol Dr. Vogel, she runs into prejudices and deep-rooted fears of her own. She has a lot to learn. For example, there is a great scene at a dance hall where she finds out her new boyfriend, Jake, doesn’t go to church. If he went anywhere, he explains, it would be a synagogue.
“‘So, do you mean … you’re a …’
“‘Jew. Yup.’ Jake said, grinning broadly.
This causes a little bump in the road of the relationship, as you might imagine, but it's just one example of the clever ways the author develops the character of Mary and our relationship to her. Similarly, when Mary finds out the real story on her old frenemy Lillian Faust, her ingrained racism and sexism are challenged. When Mary finally blossoms into a real heroine, it's a well-earned and richly satisfying fictional moment.
By Ann Leary
Scribner / Marysue Rucci Books. 336 pp. $27.99 | 2022-06-02T14:54:50Z | www.washingtonpost.com | The Foundling by Ann Leary book review - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/06/02/foundling-novel-ann-leary-review/ | https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/06/02/foundling-novel-ann-leary-review/ |
Are Workers More Productive At Home?
This is one of a series of interviews by Bloomberg Opinion columnists on how to solve the world’s most pressing policy challenges. It has been edited for length and clarity.
Justin Fox: The remote work revolution unleashed by the pandemic has brought huge changes in the labor market, with social and economic implications that we’ll be dealing with for generations. You’ve been one of the most important chroniclers and analysts of this phenomenon. But you started looking at it well before March 2020, right?
Nicholas Bloom, William D. Eberle Professor of Economics, Stanford University: I started working on this in 2004. At that point I’d already been doing a lot of work on management practices, and I began to notice that what I call being-nice-to-people practices — maternity leave, paternity leave, job sharing, part-time, work from home — vary tremendously. It felt strange because management practices seemed to be norming towards the view that you have performance evaluation data, provide people good targets, reward them if they meet the targets, get them training if they fail to. But there didn’t seem to be any consensus on, What’s the right length of maternity leave? What’s the right degree of work from home? And I thought, the first step is just to collect data on what actually exists out there.
JF: What did you find? Was there a specific set of policies that worked better?
NB: I found that pro-work-life-balance policies — maternity leave, job sharing, part-time work and work from home — were positively correlated with good management and positively correlated with good firm performance. It’s impossible to tell what causes what, but firms that perform well appear to have more progressive policies toward their employees.
JF: I’m most aware of this paper you published in 2015 that explicitly looked at remote work in terms of productivity. How did that come about?
NB: That was a classic Stanford experience. I’m teaching my Ph.D. second-year labor class, which is applied statistics, using datasets to look at interesting topics. I discover about a quarter of the way through that one of the people sitting at the back of the class is the co-founding CEO and, at this point, chairman, of Ctrip.com [now Trip.com], one of the world’s largest travel agents. I was kind of amazed and surprised, and started talking to him. James Liang, the student, said, “We’re thinking of evaluating work-from-home because office space in Shanghai is very expensive and we have this large call center.” I was like, “That sounds great, I’d love to get involved.” We went on to run a 250-person randomized controlled trial.
Going into the study, the company’s view was that work from home would save space but come at a productivity cost: working from home, shirking from home. The joke back then was that the three great enemies of work from home are the bed, the television and the fridge.
When the experiment was up and running and we started to see the data, we were astounded to see that productivity was up, not down. Maybe in 2022 it doesn’t seem surprising, but back then in 2011, it was pretty amazing. Productivity was up 13% for the people working from home, which is a huge improvement. Of that 13% increase, about two-thirds was due to the fact they were working more minutes because they were late less, and took shorter lunch and toilet breaks. Then one-third was that they were more productive per minute.
At the end of the experiment the company said everyone working in the call centers could work from home. But the uptake was low. By 2020, pre-pandemic, there were only 50, 60 employees left doing it. I asked James Liang why, and he said there was a negative stigma associated with volunteering to work from home. There’s a paper by [Natalia] Emanuel and [Emma] Harrington showing the same thing in US call centers pre-pandemic. People are about 10% more productive when they work from home, but there’s about a minus 10% selection effect. The pandemic obviously changed all of this because everyone was doing it. Now this negative stigma has disappeared and it’s become normalized.
In July 2021 I met James for dinner in London. He said, “We’re running another big experiment, this time on hybrid, would you be interested in getting involved?” I jumped at the chance. They took 1,600 people that are coders, finance and marketing professionals – around 25% managers – and randomized between fully in the office and working from home two days a week.
The results came in in February 2022, and they showed productivity performance is about flat. Maybe a mild positive, but nothing substantive. The big benefit was that quit rates dropped by a third and employees’ job satisfaction, work-life balance and intention to stay in the firm were significantly higher.
JF: You’re at home right now. Have you worked from home all along?
NB: I actually have a very unusual working pattern. I live on the Stanford campus so I have about a five-minute commute. Even before the pandemic, I worked hybrid, as in 50% at home, 50% in the office, but I tended to go in every day. There’s a range of activities I do each week that are definitely better in person: research seminars, teaching, advising students. Then there are other activities that I prefer to do at home: quietly working on data, writing, reading, Zoom calls with collaborators in different locations.
JF: In the US you’ve been involved in another data collection project, WFH Research. Describe that and how it got started.
NB: It was a Stanford student, Jack Blundell. I was his adviser, and he’d been running these online surveys looking at gender in the labor market in the UK. I thought, I’d love to collect information on what’s happening right now on working from home, and so started to run these surveys. Since May 2020, we’ve been surveying 5,000 Americans aged 20 to 64 every month, and asking relatively straightforward questions on levels of work from home, post-pandemic desires by them, post-pandemic intentions by their employers and various other factors.
This is now maybe the best data in the US on work from home. You’d think there’d be an official statistic where the Bureau of Labor Statistics would provide data. They do, but their question unfortunately was well-designed for the pandemic but is not well designed for 2022. It asks, “How many days a week do you work from home, because of the pandemic?” The “because of the pandemic” is a problem, because in 2022 it excludes people who worked from home pre-pandemic and people who are now working from home because their job offers it, independent of the pandemic. So that BLS series has fallen to below 10%, and it looks like no one’s working from home, which is not the case.
JF: In your time series, the percentage of days worked from home is stuck at a pretty high level. What’s changed is what people say about their own and their employer’s intentions going forward.
NB: This is like a play in three parts. In May 2020, Mark Zuckerberg said Facebook has decided it may stick with working from home post-pandemic. It was huge news. Up until that point, no firm had committed to sticking with it. It was seen as a short-run pandemic measure.
Roll it forward a year to May 2021, and for professionals and managers, most firms are saying you’re going to work from home post-pandemic, maybe one, two days a week. Three in the office, two at home, is the most popular plan.
Now we’ve had another year of heavy work from home, of tight labor markets, of productivity growth. Work from home has become entrenched and has actually grown. A good example of this is Apple. Apple announced its “three-two” plan in June 2021. There were complaints from employees, but our survey data suggested that was roughly in the middle of what people were wanting and what employers were promising a year ago. Now Apple’s plan looks kind of mean because the rest of tech has become increasingly generous.
It’s hard to know where we’ll settle down. I think most professionals, managers, most people reading this should expect to see something like two to three days a week in the office. One of my neighbors is a doctor. She now goes into the office four days a week and does telemedicine one day a week, which is new. But she says that’s roughly the mix that her patients want.
JF: One thing that’s striking in your survey data is when you ask people their preferences, the hybrid option that everybody’s talking about, two or three days in the office, is the least popular.
NB: This is why means and medians can be misleading. Just to explain in words, roughly one quarter of people don’t want to work from home at all. They want to go into the office five days a week. If you look at their demographics, they tend to be younger singles or older empty-nesters. Then one third are the opposite extreme. They want to work from home five days a week. They tend to be married with younger kids and have a long commute. The rest is spread out in between. You have a distribution that I call dumbbell-shaped. There are two masses at the edge and then a long, skinny bit in the middle.
It looks unlike most distributions you see in economics. For example, if I survey people about what temperature they want the air conditioning in the office, that’s typically a normal distribution: most of them in the middle, a few extremes. If you put something in the middle, most people are close to happy. With work from home, it’s really hard. The mean of that distribution is about 2.5, but as you point out, not many people actually live in that two or three days a week.
What I think is going to happen in the long run could be a bifurcation of the labor market. You’ll have some firms that say our thing is in-person, we are going to be a firm where people come in five days a week. One quarter of the labor market will love that and they’ll flock to that firm and the other three quarters will slowly drift away. Then there’d be other firms that are going to say our thing is fully remote, and if you’re a fully remote type person, go work for that company. I think there’s going to be a great reshuffle as companies start to differentiate themselves on work-from-home policies.
JF: A lot of your not-work-from-home work has been about management practices and which ones lead to more productivity, and on an economy-wide scale more growth. Is there potential for big productivity gains coming out of this re-sorting of work?
NB: There are two angles for gain from this. One is just productivity of people that can work from home. Our estimates are that it might increase their productivity by 3%, 4%, 5%. They’re maybe half the labor force, but about two-thirds of earnings, which is what’s relevant for GDP. So you can think about that as a 3%, 4% increase in GDP, stretched out over the next few years.
The other benefit that possibly is even larger in the long run is the positive impact on labor supply. There are a number of groups that are more able to work because of working from home. A lot of people – think folks with young kids, people that are disabled, people that are close to retirement age, students – may be happy to work three days a week for six hours a day without the commute, but wouldn’t be prepared to do that for five days a week, including commuting. I think that could push up labor supply by 2%, 3%, 4%, which would be a very large impact on growth.
JF: What about the negatives? One would seem to be the impact on cities. New York seems pretty lively, although I guess we’re going to have to figure out how to pay for our subway if usage stays 30% below what it used to be. And there’s the half of society that can’t work remotely.
NB: A lot of individuals, professionals, managers that used to live in city centers of New York, San Francisco, L.A., Chicago, etc., have decided, look, if I’m only having to come into work two or three days a week, I can live out in the suburbs and commute in. So you see evidence of 5% to 10% of the population leaving the city center. That’s pushed down city center rents and property prices. I see that as good because at the margin, some essential service workers that need to get to work five days a week are going to find it’s relatively more affordable to live in city centers. It’s still extremely expensive, but it’s kind of pushed back a little bit on the affordability crisis, which was a big 2019 issue.
The main worry I have is the one you highlighted, which is the strain on city budgets and particularly mass transit. The issue with mass transit is that almost all the costs are fixed, but the revenues are variable. So if you have a 30, 40% drop in ridership on the subway or BART or the London Underground, which is what’s forecasted, then your costs fall by a few percent and your revenues fall by 30%. Who pays for it? When you say the city should pay, the city is also facing lower property taxes, lower retail taxes, lower hotel taxes. Suburbs of big cities are doing very well, and I think we need to think about redistribution from suburbs to core city centers. Because if you let cities go bankrupt or just shut down the subway, that’s Carmageddon — and everyone suffers. | 2022-06-02T14:54:51Z | www.washingtonpost.com | Are Workers More Productive At Home? - The Washington Post | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/are-workers-more-productive-at-home/2022/06/02/1e0197dc-e27d-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html | https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/are-workers-more-productive-at-home/2022/06/02/1e0197dc-e27d-11ec-ae64-6b23e5155b62_story.html |
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